Breaking Radiation Symmetry via Continuous Pancharatnam–Berry Prephase for High-Gain and Compact 1-Bit Reconfigurable Transmitarray

Reconfigurable metasurfaces are promising candidates for 6G communications due to their ability to dynamically manipulate electromagnetic (EM) waves. However, conventional 1-bit metasurfaces are fundamentally constrained by binary phase quantization, leading to symmetric radiation patterns under normal incidence and impeding high-gain single-beam generation. Here, we introduce a continuous Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) prephase strategy to address this limitation. By rotating the meta-atom, a PB phase is added atop its 0/π digital state, yielding arbitrary initial phase compensation and breaking the symmetry. To validate this concept, a prototype composed of 16×16 elements is fabricated, designed receiver-transmitter (R-T) metasurfaces enabling circular-to-linear (CTL) polarization conversions. The metasurface is excited by circularly polarized plane waves generated by a feed array, enabling a highly compact overall profile of 0.44λ0. Beam steering within ±60° is achieved by switching the states of PIN diodes embedded in the meta-atom to introduce a 180° phase modulation. The proposed approach provides a compact, programmable, and polarization-diverse platform for wavefront shaping, paving the way for next-generation multifunctional metasurface-based communication systems.