Recent Advances in Near-Field Meta-Steering

Abstract

This paper reviews the recent advances in Near-Field Meta-Steering (NFMS). In this relatively new low-profile tilt-free antenna beam-steering method, beam steering is achieved by independently rotating a pair of metasurfaces that are placed in very close proximity to a high-gain antenna aperture, obviously very much in the near-field region. Many advantages of this low-cost method have been identified and independently verified by different groups. Recent advances since its seminal paper published in 2017 include methods to minimize grating lobes that may occur during beam steering, realization of high-power microwave systems with beam steering, demonstration of the steering of dual-polarized beams for satellite communications and development of an accurate phase method to substantially reduce the error in analytically predicting the beam direction (azimuth and elevation angles) when metasurfaces are rotated independently, especially at large elevation angles.