Design of a low-profile bi-directional radiated Fabry-Perot cavity antenna with independent forward and backward radiation based on metasurface technique

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC) antenna design based on metasurface technique to achieve bi-directional radiation with independent forward and backward beam control capability and a low-profile configuration. Two pieces of partially reflective metasurface (PRMS) based on receiver-transmitter architecture with independent control of transmission and reflection phases are designed to serve as the upper and lower layers of the FPC antenna, respectively. By manipulating the transmission phase distribution of the two pieces of PRMS, designable independent multi-beam bi-directional radiation patterns can be achieved. For validation, two FPC antennas based on the proposed configuration are designed with different bi-directional radiation patterns. Proved by simulated results, Antenna 1 can achieve forward dual-beam and backward single-beam radiation simultaneously with a return loss of less than -10 dB at 10.4 GHz. The two beams of forward radiation point in the -45° and 35° directions, respectively, with gains of 7.42 dBi and 7.70 dBi. The gain of the single beam of backward radiation is 10.82 dBi. Antenna 2 can achieve a four-beam radiation pattern with both forward and backward dual beams. The beam directions of the four beams are -153°, -44°, 37°, and 146°, respectively. The gains in each direction are 5.45 dBi, 6.63 dBi, 5.97 dBi, and 5.22 dBi, respectively. The overall profile is 23.72 mm (0.81 λ) for both antennas. The prototype of Antenna 1 is fabricated and measured. The results are in good agreement with the simulated counterparts, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed design methodology.