Multibeam and Beam Scanning With Modulated Metasurfaces

Multibeam and beam-scanning capabilities of metasurface (MTS) antennas using multiple feeds are investigated. The MTS synthesis is performed by direct inversion of an electric field integral equation (EFIE) obtained after expanding the unknown equivalent impedance profile into Fourier-Bessel basis functions. Two approaches are explored. The first one assumes a priori a discrete azimuthal symmetry in the impedance profile, so as to constrain the solution to a subspace which automatically provides multiple beams when illuminated with feeds regularly arranged along azimuth. In the second approach, there are not a priori assumptions on the impedance profile, but the systems of equations corresponding to each beam are stacked and solved simultaneously in the least-squares sense. This second approach can also be used to obtain polarization diversity. More importantly, it also enables continuous beam scanning. The latter functionality is achieved through the generation of two embedded patterns in a common azimuthal window with opposite phase slopes, followed by a continuous phasing of the two feed points. Various designs are presented in this article. All the results are validated with the method of moments (MoM)