Mechatronic Phase-Control Reflector System with in-Plane Axis Control

A simple mechatronic reflector system is proposed using an array of motorized resonator panels to dynamically control the reflection phase of an incoming waves. The proposed design features a static meshed metallic layer coupled with a ring-resonator array rotating about an axis parallel to the surface. A full-wave design in the X-band is presented here to illustrate this system, where electromagnetic couplings between the fixed mesh and resonator rings are exploited to achieve a near 2 pi phase variation with low reflection losses compared to their all-electronic counterparts using varactor diode, for instance. Two numerical examples are further shown to illustrate the beamforming features of the system - a binary phase surface and a linear phase gradient for steering the reflected beam. This proposed system thus features an in-plane mechanical actuation compared to vertical displacements or in-plane rotation of the unit cell resonators.