High‐gain wideband all‐dielectric digital metasurface reflectarray antenna for millimeter‐wave applications

Abstract

This paper presents an additive manufacturing technique to design and prototype a reflective metasurface antenna for Ka‐band applications. The dielectric cuboidal element with an air‐filled void is designed to act as a unit cell for designing a three‐dimensional (3D)‐printed phase‐graded metasurface reflector. The designed phase‐graded metasurface reflector is a 3‐bit quantized highly reflective surface, designed by rigorous unit cell optimizations. The quantized unit cells are distributed to provide a 45° phase gradient and wideband reflections operating from 24 to 38 GHz. The designed reflector is excited by a wideband 3D‐printed horn antenna placed at the optimized focal point. The simulated and measured results indicate the designed antenna achieves a maximum gain of 23.66 dBi with a gain enhancement of 60%. The designed antenna is found to have a 1 dB stable gain bandwidth of 4 GHz, from 28 to 32 GHz with a maximum gain of 23.66 dBi at 30 GHz.