Metasurface-Enabled Advanced Short Backfire Antenna

Metasurfaces with independently tunable anisotropic dispersion characteristics have been designed to significantly improve the radiation efficiency of a short backfire antenna (SBFA) when placed within the antenna cavity walls. This advanced SBFA (A-SBFA) features a hexagonal aperture, which typically results in much lower aperture efficiency and increased cross polarization. However, the addition of metasurfaces leads to a higher aperture efficiency than is achievable with a conventional circular SBFA. Through careful design and optimization of the metasurface dispersion, the A-SBFA achieves high aperture efficiency across two discrete frequency bands while maintaining a relatively low height and weight. A detailed design and optimization methodology is presented here, along with the simulation studies that explore the design space and provide insight into how the antenna performance is affected as the metasurface parameters are adjusted. The A-SBFA is shown to be a promising candidate for future satellite-based antenna arrays due to its high aperture efficiency, hexagonal cavity, low weight, and low profile.