Fluidically Beam-Steering Metasurfaced Antenna

This paper presents a fluidically beam-steering metasurfaced antenna. The proposed antenna consists of a source antenna and a bi-layered metasurface which acts as partially reflecting surface (PRS) as a superstrate. The top-layer metasurface composed of 4×4 conductive squared ring element array on the top side of thin dielectric substrate and a 3-D printed bottom-layer for fluid movement. Radiation beam has been steered by means of water as a fluid flow in the different channels inside the bottom layer of metasurface. A 2-D beam-steering of ±15° in theta axis with 10-dB impedance bandwidth of 2.54-2.68 GHz has been achieved. Stable radiation gain of more than 5-dBi has been demonstrated across the operating bandwidth. The proposed antenna is low cost, low profile and can be used in systems for radiation diverse applications where the periodic metasurface structures are needed.