Conformal Voronoi Metasurface Antenna Embedded in a Composite Structural Laminate

Abstract

This work presents a comparison between two metasurface antennas operating at 10 GHz utilizing either a conventional hexagonal grid (with a continuous distribution of gap dimensions) or a Voronoi partition (utilizing a constant gap dimension). The Voronoi partition was generated using the point-shifting method (proposed by Lee and Sievenpiper) and is (to the authors' knowledge) the first demonstration of this approach in the design of a radiating metasurface antenna. The traditional hexagonal artificial impedance surface (H-AIS) and Voronoi artificial impedance surface (V-AIS) antennas are shown to exhibit near identical surface impedance profiles, insertion loss, radiation efficiency, and realized gain. However, the Voronoi partition can be adapted to follow an arbitrary conformal surface, whereas the hexagonal grid is restricted to a 2-D plane. To reinforce this advantage, a third metasurface antenna on an arbitrary conformal geometry is designed utilizing numerically generated “reference” and “objective” fields. Lastly, the fabrication of all three antennas utilized a unique process that is compatible with conventional aerospace glass fiber-reinforced composite manufacturing. Hence, this work represents a significant step forward in the deployment of truly conformal multifunctional composite structures.