A system-by-design approach for the synthesis of metamaterial printed WAIMs

Abstract

The design of a wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM) layer based on a metasurface structure is proposed to mitigate reflection issues for waveguide-fed planar phased arrays. To achieve this goal, the synthesis problem is formulated as a System-by-Design one where the degrees of freedom are represented by the geometry of the metasurface unit cells, and the objective is the minimization of antenna input reflections caused by impedance mismatching when the array is steered. The proposed solution technique is based on the combination of elementary functional blocks aimed at (i) exploring the search space, (ii) analyzing the resulting metasurface structure to deduce the equivalent permittivity/permeability tensors, (iii) computing the phased array response, and (iv) linking the obtained result with the problem constraints and objectives to determine the associated cost function. A preliminary numerical validation is illustrated to assess the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed synthesis strategy.