Integrated Control of Radiations and In-Band Co-Polarized Reflections by a Single Programmable Metasurface

Abstract

Integrated control of radiated and reflected electromagnetic (EM) waves is of great importance in information science and engineering, which are mostly achieved by elaborately integrating metasurfaces and antennas. However, most of the radiation-reflection-integrated designs remain difficulties to modulate the radiated waves directly without cascading additional radio-frequency (RF) modules. More importantly, the completely independent control of radiated waves and in-band co-polarized reflected waves has rarely been achieved. Herein, direct, dynamic and integrated control of radiated waves and in-band co-polarized reflected waves is realized merely by a single programmable metasurface. The radiation-reflection-integrated programmable metasurface (RRIPM) can dynamically choose to radiate EM waves only or reflect incident EM waves only, and even dynamically modulate the radiation phases and reflection phases, thus realizing arbitrary radiation functions and in-band co-polarized reflection functions without crosstalk. To illustrate the capabilities of RRIPM, an ultra-compact and broadband RRIPM prototype is designed and fabricated, and this is used for the radiation and reflection of multiple beams with arbitrary energy distributions, low-gain-fluctuation reflection-beam scanning, and low-side-lobe-level broadside radiation.