New steerable antenna with controllable metamaterial

In this paper, we realized a steering antenna using a type of active metamaterial with tunable refractive index in L-band. The controllable left-handed metamaterial is based on periodically printed sub-wavelength metallic resonant patterns with embedded microwave varactors. By controlling the phase properties of the radome, the antenna exhibits continuous scanning capability in a range of ±30° under very simple DC voltage control that does not exceed 10 volts. Simulation results on such structure are given, which agrees well with the theoretical analysis. This antenna has a simple structure, is very easy to configure the beam direction, and has a low cost.