A Low-Cost Low-Power Radiation-Reflection-Integrated Programmable Metasurface Antenna for Dynamic Beam Scanning and Multiharmonic Independent Beam Control

A low-cost and low-power radiation-reflection-integrated programmable metasurface antenna (RRIPMA) is proposed, designed and demonstrated. Each meta-element of RRIPMA can be digitally programmed to operate in either the radiation mode or the reflection mode; moreover, it can achieve 2-bit radiation phase modulation and 1-bit reflection phase modulation from 9.6 to 10.6 GHz. By applying the space-time coding method based on particle swarm optimization algorithm, RRIPMA enables flexible control of radiated and reflected waves in both space and frequency domains. A prototype of RRIPMA array was fabricated and experimentally validated, demonstrating capabilities including low-sidelobe radiated beam scanning and wide-angle reflected beam scanning. In addition, its ability to simultaneously and independently control the radiated and reflected waves at multiple harmonic frequencies has been demonstrated. It is notable that the total power consumption of the entire RRIPMA system (including its control module) is only 188 mW, showing excellent low-power feature. The RRIPMA architecture offers a promising alternative to the conventional phased arrays, enabling highly integrated, low-cost, and low-power multi-tasking systems for applications such as wireless communications and sensing.