Single-Beam 1-Bit Reflective Metasurface Using Pre-Phased Unit Cells for Normally Incident Plane Waves

A single-beam pre-phased 1-bit reflective metasurface is proposed to achieve single-beam patterns under normally incident plane waves. Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations are presented to show that, under normally incident waves, single-beam patterns can be achieved by introducing a fixed pre-phase distribution with two values in the 1-bit metasurface. Compared with conventional 1-bit reflective metasurfaces, the proposed scheme alleviates the inherent limitation of single-beam patterns on 1-bit reflective metasurfaces under normally incident plane waves. To verify the proposed scheme, a 1-bit unit cell is designed with a 180º ± 25º phase difference between the two states for frequencies ranging from 34.3 to 49.9 GHz, and a layer-stacking method is proposed to achieve two pre-phases with a 90-degree phase difference. As an example, three 1-bit reflective metasurfaces comprising 20×20 unit cells with single beams pointing separately at 0, 15 and 30 degrees are designed and measured over frequencies of 37.0 to 41.0 GHz; the measured sidelobe levels are less than -7.8 dB. Simulated and measured results show that the proposed pre-phased 1-bit metasurface can achieve single-beam patterns under normally incident plane waves.