Low-profile electronic beam-scanning metasurface antenna for Ka-band applications

This article proposes a low-profile real-time electronic beam-scanning metasurface antenna (EBSMA) with hybrid (active and passive) meta-cells in the Ka-band. The EBSMA includes a radiating source, single-layered metasurface with dedicated microcontroller unit, and a power source. The proposed metasurface comprises 4 active subarrays and 11 passive meta-cells, where each subarray comprises 2 x 3 active meta-cells. The metasurface was using a source patch antenna. The EBSMA was realized by integrating one PIN-diode onto each slotted square-ring element in each subarray. Two-dimensional beam scanning was realized by controlling PIN-diode states in real-time for each active subarray using microcontroller hardware. The proposed EBSMA configuration produced a boresight beam at theta = 0 degrees or +/- 10 degrees tilted beam in the phi = 0 degrees and 90 degrees planes. The antenna achieved 14.18% 3 dB fractional impedance bandwidth with measured realized gains approximate to 10.7 dBi for all states. We fabricated an EBSMA device as proof-of-concept and measured its far-field radiation patterns. Two-dimensional beam-scanning for the proposed metasurface antenna was verified numerically and experimentally.