Anisotropic Metasurface-Based Beam-Scanning Dual-Polarized Fan-Beam Integrated Antenna System

Abstract

This paper presents a novel anisotropic metasurface (AMS)-based integrated antenna system to facilitate dual-polarized fan-beam patterns with independent beam-scanning ability. In the proposed configuration, the antenna subsystem comprises a specially designed differentially fed microstrip patch antenna (source antenna) along with a polarization rotator (PR). The differential antenna arrangement is realized using a square shaped microstrip patch capacitively coupled with two metallic strips, which are connected to a specially designed wideband hybrid coupler using two metallic vias for the microstrip feeding. This source antenna is loaded with a PR by placing it at a height of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$0.35\\lambda _{0}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> from the radiating aperture. The PR comprised two identical metallic layer patterns, separated by two substrates. Depending upon the relative orientation of these layers, the polarization of the linearly polarized impinging spherical electromagnetic (EM) waves (originating from the source antenna) either remains preserved or gets rotated by 90° while transmitting through this PR. After realizing the antenna subsystem, a novel AMS lens is designed and placed above the PR. The proposed AMS lens is realized by integrating two cylindrical MS (CMS) lenses, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$\\text {CMS}_{Y}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation= LaTeX >$\\text {CMS}_{X}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. This integration provides a unique phase profile to the AMS lens, thus introducing appropriate phase correction to the incident orthogonally polarized spherical EM waves along their respective polarization direction. The proposed configuration of AMS lens, thus, results into formation of the independent dual-polarized fan-beam radiation beams. Finally, the steering of the generated fan-beams along the direction of their respective polarization is facilitated using the proposed system by translating the AMS lens parallel to the source antenna.