Reflective Switchable Polarization Rotator Based on Metasurface With PIN Diodes

A planar metasurface that rotates the polarization of reflected signals by 90 degrees is presented in this article. The surface also permits the relative phase of the rotated, reflected signal to be controlled. The metasurface rotator uses a square printed patch element mounted above a conducting ground plane. The addition of PIN diode controlled vertical interconnect access (VIA) at the corners of each square patch provides the ability to modify the scattering properties of the surface. In particular, the surface can be programed to shift the phase of the rotated waveform by +/- 90 degrees. The polarization rotator was manufactured, measured, and compared against numerical simulations, and the maximum measured bandwidth was 25% (4.8-6.2 GHz) for co-polarized attenuation of 10 dB. The proposed surface can be adopted for practical applications, such as circularly polarized antennas.

Automated summary

This article introduces a planar metasurface that can rotate the polarization of reflected signals by 90 degrees and control the relative phase of the rotated signals. By adding PIN diode controlled vertical interconnect access at the corners of each square patch, the scattering properties of the surface can be modified. Experimental results show that the proposed metasurface has a maximum bandwidth of 25% in the 4.8-6.2 GHz range, making it suitable for practical applications such as circularly polarized antennas.