Convenient Conformal Transmissive Metasurface Antenna Embedded on Arbitrary Cylindrical Surface

Abstract

Conformal metasurface antenna embedded on the platform with an arbitrary shape is of great significance for communication systems in practical applications. Herein, a convenient design strategy for conformal transmissive metasurface antenna with arbitrary cylinder surface is presented. First, a novel‐phase compensation concept for curved surface is inspired by ray‐tracing technique. Then, by using arc differentiation and numerical integration, the meta‐atoms’ coordinates calculation method is analyzed for arbitrary cylindrical surface. Next, the electromagnetic responses of planar and curved transmissive meta‐atoms are discussed, and conformal metasurfaces in single‐quadratic surfaces are simulated to validate the feasibility of the design strategy. Finally, for potential applications, three combined quadratics conformal metasurface antennas with capabilities of beam focusing, beam deflecting, and vortex generation are designed and measured. It is indicated in the results that the three conformal metasurface antennas with combined quadratic cylinder surfaces can transform the spherical wave efficiently into the plane wave, deflected beam, and vortex beam, respectively, verifying the validity of the designs. The convenient strategy has good generality and flexibility because it is applicable to arbitrary cylindrical metasurface with a specific alignment function, which has promising perspective in practical applications, and offers a novel approach to design conformal antennas without changing aerodynamic shapes of platforms.

Keywords

• arbitrary cylindrical surface
• conformal antenna
• metasurfaces