IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 67, NO. 3, MARCH 2019 1535
Novel Filtering Method Based on Metasurface
Antenna and Its Application for Wideband
High-Gain Filtering Antenna With Low Profile
Wanchen Yang , Member, IEEE,SiChen , Quan Xue , Fellow, IEEE, Wenquan Che , Senior Member, IEEE,
Guangxu Shen
, Student Member, IEEE, and Wenjie Feng , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A novel filtering method based on the metasurface
antenna (MSA) with radiation nulls is proposed without loading
extra circuits. Due to the specific multiunit structure of MSA,
the filtering method is first realized on each radiating metasur-
face (MS) unit by introducing a multifolded U-shaped slot and
a defected ground structure to generate lower edge radiation
nulls. Meanwhile, coplanar parasitic patches are loaded around
the MS units to provide upper edge nulls and simultaneously
introduce extra in-band resonances for wide passband. Thus,
a low-profile, wideband, and high-gain filtering antenna is readily
constructed. To verify the concept, a prototype with a low profile
of only 0.04λ
0
is designed and fabricated. The simulated and
measured results agree well, demonstrating a good performance
with large impedance bandwidth of about 20%, high average gain
of 8 dBi, and high aperture efficiency of about 90%, together with
high out-of-band suppression levels of about 20 dB. In addition,
the radiation patterns are symmetric in both the E- and H-planes
with cross-polarization suppressions of over 20 dB. Compared
with the reported filtering antennas, the proposed filtering MSA
can achieve the wideband filtering response in a low profile,
as well as high gain with high aperture efficiency.
Index Terms—Filtering antenna, high gain, low profile,
metasurface antenna (MSA), radiation null, wideband.
I. INTRODUCTION
A
LONG with the development of communication
and information technology, electronic systems with
Manuscript received June 6, 2018; revised October 15, 2018; accepted
December 5, 2018. Date of publication December 21, 2018; date of cur-
rent version March 5, 2019. This work was supported in part by the
Guangdong Innovative and Entrepreneurial Research Team Program under
Grant 2017ZT07X032, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61571231, Grant 61601224, and Grant 61822110,
and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under
Grant BK20160844. (Corresponding author: Quan Xue.)
W. Yang and W. Che are with the School of Electronic and Information
Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641,
China, and also with the Department of Communication Engineering, Nanjing
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China (e-mail:
wcyang@scut.edu.cn; eewqche@scut.edu.cn).
S. Chen, G. Shen, and W. Feng are with the Department of Communica-
tion Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing
210094, China (e-mail: chen_si1994@126.com; shen_guangxu@163.com;
fengwenjie1985@163.com).
Q. Xue is with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China (e-mail:
eeqxue@scut.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2018.2889028
low-power consumption, high integration, and multiple
functions become a development trend. As the key components
in the RF front ends, filters [1], [2], and antennas [3] are
usually designed separately, which not only increases the
volume but also maybe degrades the in-band performance
due to the mismatch and extra insertion loss caused by the
interconnections. Therefore, the filtering antennas [4]–[24],
which efficiently integrating antenna and filter, are attracting
more and more interests. One approach for the filtering
antenna is to use antenna radiator as the last-stage resonator
of the filter [4]–[21]. This approach usually needs multiple
resonators to realize the filtering function, which would occupy
large area [4]–[6] or high profile [7], [8], and introduce extra
losses, resulting in lower antenna gains. Another approach
of realizing filtering characteristics can also be achieved
by adopting antenna units with radiation nulls [22]–[24],
thus effectively reducing extra losses brought from filtering
circuits. In [22], a filtering patch antenna is proposed by
introducing a U-shaped slot, several pins on the driven patch,
and loading a stacked patch to achieve good filtering response.
This design also simultaneously achieves the wideband and
high-gain radiation at the cost of a little bit higher profile.
In recent years, metasurface antenna (MSA) [25]–[28],
regarded as a new kind of antenna, has been proposed and
widely studied. This kind of antenna takes the features of
lower profile, wider operating band, and higher gain. In [16],
a square-patch MSA was investigated by loading filtering
resonators around feeding lines. A high-gain, high-selectivity,
and wideband filtering antenna was achieved with the profile
of only 0.06λ
0
. However, the aperture efficiency is very
low (∼39%), probably caused by insufficient excitations of the
MSA aperture and extra losses from the resonators. To the best
of the author’s knowledge, the filtering method based on the
radiating MSA with radiation nulls has not been investigated
for realizing high-performance filtering antennas. Note that
the method is much different from that of traditional patch
antennas [22]–[24] due to the special operation mechanism
and multiunit structure of MSA; thus, specific investigations
are required.
In this paper, the filtering method based on the radi-
ating MSA is, respectively, studied in terms of periodic
metasurface (MS) unit and the whole MSA. The MS unit
with a multifolded U-shaped slot and a defected ground
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