Designing Efficient Phase-Gradient Metasurfaces for Near-Field Meta-Steering Systems

We investigate the aptness of various 4
^th
order (90°) rotationally symmetric phase-transforming cells for the upper phase-gradient metasurface, which always receives an oblique incidence wave from the lower metasurface in a Near-Field Meta-Steering system. A comprehensive study on the behavior of various phase-transforming cells and corresponding supercells when a rotating oblique plane wave impinges on them is presented. First, we select the supercell with high transmission in the desired output Floquet modes, for both TE and TM input modes, when an oblique incidence wave is rotated. The selected supercell is then optimized using Floquet analysis in conjunction with particle swarm optimization (PSO). All the undesired modes are successfully suppressed below -32 dB in the optimized supercell, and the predicted broadside radiation pattern is free of spurious grating lobes. A Near-Field Meta-Steering system with an aperture diameter of 7.3λ
₀
(110mm @ 20 GHz) is presented. It has a pair of optimized phase-gradient metasurfaces and a dipole antenna array. A maximum peak directivity of 24.2 dB is achieved when the beam is in the broadside direction. The proposed steering system is capable of scanning a conical range with an apex angle of 126° when a 6 dB reduction in peak directivity is allowed. For a 3 dB variation in the peak directivity, the corresponding apex angle is 103°.