In this paper, a novel circularly polarized (CP) array antenna based on metasurface (MS) is designed to realize wideband radar cross section (RCS) reduction, wideband operation and high gain. The MS is composed of compact polarization-dependent artificial magnetic conductors (PDAMCs), by regularly arranging the PDAMCs like chessboard directly on the top of the patch antenna, the MS can significantly bring RCS down. On the other hand, due to the compact structure of MS and the driven array patches, surface wave propagates on the MS and generates additional resonances to achieve wide operation band and high gain. Both the simulated and measured results indicate that the RCS at bore-sight is reduced more than 6 dB from 5.08 GHz to 11.46 GHz (77.15%) except for some frequency points. The antenna yielded a good broadside left-hand CP radiation, the |S 11 | < -10 dB impedance bandwidth is from 5.03 GHz to 7.4 GHz (38.13%) and the 1-dB axial ratio bandwidth is from 4 GHz to 8 GHz. Both the radiating and scattering performances have been obviously improved.
KeywordsLow RCS, high-gain, wideband, metasurface antenna About the Authors… Xuewen ZHU was born in Inner Mongolia province in 1995. He received the B.S. degree from the Air Force Engineering University in 2016. He currently works towards the M.S. degree at the Information and Navigation College. His research interests mainly include the electromagnetic metamaterial and metasurface antenna design.