Modulated Metasurface Antennas with Enhanced Broadband Response

This paper deals with the crucial need of enhancing the gain-bandwidth of typically narrowband modulated metasurface (MTS) antennas. Despite their low-profile and low-mass, modulated MTSs have typically been limited in terms of bandwidth. In broadside MTS antennas, this shortcoming stems from the progressive mismatch between the periodicity of the modulation (usually constant) and the wavenumber of the dispersive surface wave (SW). Here, an optimization scheme is introduced for the periodicity function, which is described as a piecewise monotonically increasing function along the antenna radius. The variable period leads to the generation of annular active regions, where the SW wavenumber matches the local periodicity, and a strong radiation occurs at the prescribed frequency. On the other hand, outside the annular region the SW weakly interacts with the MTS modulation. This works shows that the proposed method can considerably extend the bandwidth of MTS antennas.