Ultra‐wideband RCS reduction of microstrip antenna array by optimised multi‐element metasurface

Abstract

A microstrip antenna array (MAA) loading with metasurface is designed and fabricated for ultra-wideband radar cross-section (RCS) reduction while preserving its radiation characteristics. A new physical mechanism based on size adjustment of the multiple basic unit cells is proposed for ultra-wideband manipulation of electromagnetic waves. To obtain the excellent RCS performance, the selection of the basic unit cells is optimised by the hybrid optimisation algorithm. Both simulated and measured results indicate that the proposed MAA can reduce the RCS significantly in an ultra-wide frequency band from 6.2 to 27.3 GHz under x-and y-polarised normal incidence. The radiation characteristics of the MAA are well preserved simultaneously.

A Novel Low-RCS and Wideband Circularly Polarized Patch Array Based on Metasurface

“…Traditional RCS-reduction methods are the combination of periodic perfect electric conductor (PEC) and AMC, but suffer from narrow RCS-reduction band. After that, different sizes or structures of AMC units have been designed to expand the bandwidth of RCS-reduction [10].…”

“…It has been a long period for researchers to solve the problem of reducing RCS while maintaining or enhancing the radiation performance. Recently, MS has received popular attention for light weight, low profile, ease of fabrication, extraordinary electromagnetic behavior, such as frequency selective surface (FSS) [7], [8], artificial magnetic conductors (AMC) [9][10][11], electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) [12], [13], polarization rotation metasurface (PRMS) [14] and perfect metamaterial absorber [15], [16]. In [7], the MS composed of new FSS units is applied as a superstrate on the original microstrip antenna to realize wideband RCS reduction and gain enhancement, but the operation-band is from 10.74-12.33 GHz (about 13.8%).…”

“…In [8], a novel FSS superstrate is put on a new circularly polarized patch antenna to achieve low RCS and high gain, but the operation band of the circularly polarized antenna is from 12.32-13.08 GHz and 12.31-13.22 GHz (7.3%) and the profile is much high. In [10], different sizes of unit cells are arranged on a microstrip antenna array for ultrawideband RCS reduction while the radiation performance is preserved not enhanced. In [17], a broadband low-RCS circularly polarized array using metasurface is designed, the antenna achieves -10dB impedance bandwidth of 17% with a high profile.…”

Wideband Polarization Conversion Metasurface for RCS Reduction of Antennas

“…The working principle of the checkerboard surfaces is that the scattering field of the adjacent checkerboard blocks is cancelled because the amplitude is the same and the phase difference is 180° [1][2][3][4][5][6]. A wider 10 dB RCS reduction bandwidth of 60% is obtained by combining two different types of electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures for the square and hexagonal checkerboard surfaces [1].…”

“…In [5], the RCS is reduced by more than 10 dB in the band of 9.4 GHz-23.28 GHz. The size adjustment metasurface (SA-MS) is composed of a wideband polarization conversion surface and a partially reflecting surface (PRS), which obtained a wideband RCS reduction in the frequency range of 9 GHz-17 GHz [6].…”