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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TAP.2015.2502981, IEEE
Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Abstract—A novel broadband polarization rotation reflective
surface (PRRS) with a high polarization conversion ratio (PCR) is
proposed, which can reflect the linearly polarized incident wave
with 90° polarization rotation. The proposed PRRS consists of a
periodic array of square patches printed on a substrate, which is
backed by a metallic ground. By connecting the square patch with
the ground using two non-symmetric vias, a 49% polarization
rotation (PR) bandwidth is achieved with a high PCR of 96%,
which is a significant improvement from the state of the art 29%
PR bandwidth. Moreover, the frequency responses within the
operation frequency band are consistent under oblique incident
waves. Furthermore, another ultra-wideband PRRS with a
periodic array of quasi L-shaped patches is proposed, which
increases the PR bandwidth further to 103%. In addition, the
designed PRRS is applied to wideband radar cross section (RCS)
reduction. Different arrangements of the unit cells of the PRRS
are proposed and their effects on RCS reduction are investigated.
To validate the simulation results, prototypes of the PRRSs are
fabricated and measured. The measured results are in good
agreement with the simulated ones.
Index Terms—Polarization rotation, reflective surface, radar
cross section (RCS)
I. INTRODUCTION
Owing to its wide applications in radar section reduction and
circularly polarized antennas, there has been a growing
research interest in polarization rotators [1-5]. Generally
speaking, polarization rotators can be categorized into
transmission and reflection types. For the transmission type,
one can exploit either the birefringence effect of anisotropic
metamaterials [6-8] or the optical activity of chiral
metamaterials [9-11]. Most of these structures operate at a
narrow single or two separated narrow bands [6-9, 11]. In [10],
an ultra-thin chiral metamaterial slab stacked with twisted
complementary split-ring resonators for highly efficient
broadband polarization transformation is proposed. Its
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(No. 61372001, No. 61401336, and No. 61471278).
Yongtao Jia, Ying Liu and Shuxi Gong are with the Science and Technology
on Antenna and Microwave Laboratory, Collaborative Innovation Center of
Information Sensing and Understanding, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071,
China (e-mail: liuying@mail.xidian.edu.cn).
Y. J. Guo is with the Global Big Data Technologies Center, University of
Technology, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (e-mail:
jay.guo@uts.edu.au).
conversion efficiency reaches up to 96% with a bandwidth of
24%. For the reflection type, the plasmon resonances and
asymmetric high impedance surface are utilized to realize the
polarization rotation in [12-19]. A mushroom-like artificial
magnetic conductor (AMC) with the vias offset from the center
of the patches is used to generate three separated narrow
polarization rotation frequency bands [12]. A polarization
rotation reflective surface (PRRS) based on the substrate
integrated waveguide (SIW) is proposed in [13]. Three narrow
polarization rotation frequency bands are achieved and two of
them are combined together to form a wider one, whose
fractional bandwidth reaches up to 9.5%. New results on
broadband PRRSs have been increasingly published in recent
years. The split-ring resonator (SRR) is used to form a PRRS,
which achieves a polarization conversion ratio (PCR) greater
than 56% with a bandwidth of 77% in [14]. In [15], the SRR is
combined with a metallic disk and the bandwidth of the PRRS
reaches to 82% with the PCR being higher than 80%. An
ultra-wideband polarization conversion metasurface using
double-head arrow structure was designed in [16], whose
fractional bandwidth is as large as 118%. Unfortunately, its
PCR is less than desirable as the lowest PCR within the
working bandwidth is only 50%. In [18], a PRRS with two
grounded vias loaded along the diagonal direction of the AMC
patch is presented. By properly adjusting the distance between
two vias, which are symmetric to the center of the patches, a
29.1% polarization rotation band is obtained. It should be
pointed out that the studies mentioned above have not included
the characteristics of PRRSs under oblique incident waves. The
PRRSs proposed in the above literature either work at a few
separated narrow polarization rotation frequency bands or don’t
have high enough PCRs over the polarization rotation band.
There are a number of applications for PRRS, one of which is
to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of metallic bodies and
sheets. In the past few years, many research activities to reduce
the RCS of metallic targets have been reported. The AMC
structures are the most commonly used lossless metamaterials
for RCS reduction [20-23]. Within the operation frequency of
an AMC, the reflections from the AMC and a perfect electric
conductor (PEC) share the same magnitude but have opposite
phases. By combining the AMC and PEC in a chessboard-like
configuration, these two reflections cancel each other under a
normal incident plane wave and re-radiate the energy in other
directions, thus reducing the RCS in the normal direction [20].
Broadband Polarization Rotation Reflective
Surfaces and Their Applications to RCS
Reduction
Yongtao Jia, Ying Liu, Member, IEEE, Y. Jay Guo, Fellow, IEEE, Kun Li, and Shuxi Gong