Additive Manufactured Metal-Only Modulated Metasurface Antennas

David Gonzalez-Ovejero (1) , Nacer Chahat (2) , Ronan Sauleau (1) , Goutam Chattopadhyay (2) , Stefano Maci (3) , Mauro Ettorre (1)

1 IETR - Institut d'Électronique et des Technologies du numéRique
2 CALTECH - California Institute of Technology
3 UNISI - Università degli Studi di Siena = University of Siena

In metasurface (MTS) antennas, a surface wave (SW) is gradually transformed into a leaky wave, owing to the SW interaction with a reactance tensor periodically modulated in the aperture plane. In such antennas, the modulated reactance is typically obtained by subwavelength patches printed on a dielectric substrate. As an alternative technology, we propose the use of a class of metal-only MTSs in the synthesis of the reactance tensor. The absence of dielectric is useful to withstand harsh environments in space applications. The proposed element consists of a metallic cylinder with elliptical cross section, placed on a ground plane and arranged in a square lattice with subwavelength unit cells. This structure is well suited for fabrication by metal additive manufacturing. We have applied the metal cylinders in the design of a right-handed circularly polarized antenna, with broadside pencil beam at Ka-band. The obtained performance has been verified by full-wave simulations. A prototype has been successfully manufactured and measured, showing a good performance.

Keywords: metasurfaces (MTSs); leaky waves; surface waves (SWs); millimeter waves; Ka-band; Circular polarization

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

David Gonzalez-Ovejero, Nacer Chahat, Ronan Sauleau, Goutam Chattopadhyay, Stefano Maci, et al.. Additive Manufactured Metal-Only Modulated Metasurface Antennas. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 2018, 66 (11), pp.6106-6114. ⟨10.1109/TAP.2018.2869135⟩. ⟨hal-01935111⟩