High-gain reconfigurable polarization antenna based on metamaterial array for Terahertz applications

Abstract

This paper suggestsproposes a high-gain reconfigurable polarization antenna using a metasurface polarizaer. The metasurface polarizer is a rectangular array that consists of similar 25 unit-cell elements. Each metamaterial (MM) unit-cell element consists of a circular copper patch attached to two copper arrow-shaped strips installed at its circumference. The circular patch and two arrows are installed between a rectangular superstrate at the top and a rectangular substrate at the bottom, which is backed with a perfect electric conductor with a relative permittivity of εsub = 3.38. The MM characteristics are obtained in a wide range of frequencies from 1.4 to 2.1 THz. The metasurface polarizer array is installed at an optimized height of 25 μm under a linear polarized dipole antenna that operates at 1.81 THz with a bandwidth (BW) of 0.2 THz from 1.75 to 1.95 THz (11.05%, − 10 dB BW) and gain of 2.27 dBi. The incident-plane wave from the antenna can be converted into a reconfigurable left- or right-hand circular polarization according to the directions of the arrow of the MM unit-cell element. Moreover, the operating − 10-dB BW of the dipole antenna increases to 30.93%, and the gain is enhanced to 6.18 dBi at the same operating frequency. A reconfigurable polarization conversion for the dipole antenna can be obtained over wide 3-dB axial ratio BW from 1.45 to 1.95 THz (33.3% BW).