Metasurface-Enabled Beam-Steering Antenna Architecture for Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Wireless Networks

Abstract

Metasurface antenna antennas have become an emerging paradigm of agile beam
steering in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) wireless networks, as
a small, energy-saving, and reconfigurable alternative to phased-array architecture.
This article presents a new metasurface-based beam-steering antenna design that is
proposed to something next-generation high-frequency wireless systems. The proposed
system will contain a programmable metasurface based on tunable unit cells (smaller
than a wavelength) together with a simple digital control architecture to dynamically
control electromagnetic wave fronts at mmWave and THz frequencies. Spatial phase
gradient synthesis is used to create beam steering allowing the control of wide-angle
radiation without using more than one RF chain or a large phase-shifting network.
Performance The proposed architecture is tested based on the full-wave electromagnetic
simulations and system level analysis at typical mmWave and THz frequencies. The
main performance indicators, such as the radiation pattern characteristics, beam
steering range, measured gain, aperture efficiency, and sidelobe levels are compared
and contrasted against the traditional phased-array and reflectarray-based applications.
The results of the simulation show that the proposed metasurface-enabled antenna
can attain broad-angle beam steering with a competitive level of gain and enhanced
sidelobe rejection and an extremely reduced hardware complexities as well as power
consumption. The results substantiate that beam steering using metasurfaces can be
an effective and scalable solution to 6G wireless network in the future, as it allows
enabling ultra-high-throughput, low-latency and energy-constrained communication
scenarios. The intended architecture offers a malleable bundle of clever and versatile
beamforming in the impending mmWave and THz applications.