This paper presents a novel polarization-reconfigurable antenna based on the combination of circularly polarized (CP) modes, which is capable of changing its polarization states among arbitrary linear polarizations (LPs), left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) and right-handed circular polarization (RHCP). A truncated square patch with two isolated aperture-coupling feeds is used as radiation element operating at 2.45 GHz, which can operate in two orthogonal CP modes with low crosstalk. By exciting one of the two feeding microstrip lines, LHCP or RHCP mode can be independently generated. Meanwhile, by simultaneously exciting the two feeding microstrip lines with identical amplitudes but with different initial phases, LP mode with polarization plane oriented in any desired azimuth direction can be obtained. The simulated and measured peak gain of the proposed antenna remains at about 6.8 dBi at 2.45 GHz and the impedance matching bandwidth ranging from 2.25 to 2.60 GHz is fully overlapped for all the polarization states. Experimental results show a good performance of the proposed antenna.

The Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase or geometric phase metasurfaces have been extensively investigated in order to achieve flexible manipulation of circularly polarized (CP) electromagnetic waves. Typically, the thickness or structural complexity of the transmission-type PB metasurfaces may limit their efficiency. Here, we propose a single-substrate, ultrathin, transmission-type PB phase metasurface with a transmission coefficient of approximately unity for CP waves. To achieve this, the Huygens’ principle is applied in the design. The proposed metasurface is capable of achieving high-efficiency transmission amplitude of two orthogonal linear polarizations in the working frequency band, as well as the 180-degree phase difference. Thus, high-efficiency CP transmission with nearly unity can be obtained, and 360 degrees of phase modulation can be covered by rotating the element. Meanwhile, the proposed metasurface is a single-substrate structure and its thickness is only 0.06λ ₀ , offering a simple yet efficient method for antenna design. As a proof of concept, a metalens antenna and an orbital angular momentum (OAM) wave generator based on the proposed metasurface are experimentally demonstrated. The measured results show good agreements with the full-wave simulations, successfully verifying the design theory. The proposed metasurface offers an alternative platform for designing high-performance devices with the advantages of light weight, low cost, and simple fabrication.

In this paper, a beam shaping scheme is presented for the optimal design of base station antenna array. The antenna array consists of four linearly arranged dual-band dual-polarized antenna elements, and it is designed to cover the LTE frequency band (2.3-2.69 GHz) and 5G frequency band (3.3-3.6 GHz). The shaped beams with possible maximum gain, suppressed sidelobe level smaller than -16 dB, front-to-back ratio larger than 18dB, and filled-up null point larger than -23 dB are accomplished through two steps by using the unconstrained methods of maximum power transmission efficiency (MMPET) and constrained MMPTE, respectively. In the proposed beam shaping scheme, all the realistic factors of the antenna array have been taken into account, such as the difference of element radiation patterns, complexity and tolerance of the element structure and spacing.

In this work, a reconfigurable ultra-wideband transmissive terahertz polarization rotator based on graphene metamaterial is proposed that can switch between two states of polarization rotation within a broad terahertz band by changing the Fermi level of graphene. The proposed reconfigurable polarization rotator is based on a two-dimensional periodic array of multilayer graphene metamaterial structure, which is composed of metal grating, graphene grating, silicon dioxide thin film, and a dielectric substrate. The graphene metamaterial can achieve high co-polarized transmission of a linearly polarized incident wave at the off-state of the graphene grating without applying the bias voltage. Once the specially designed bias voltage is applied to change the Fermi level of graphene, the polarization rotation angle of linearly polarized waves is switched to 45° by the graphene metamaterial at the on-state. The working frequency band with 45-degree linear polarized transmission remaining above 0.7 and the polarization conversion ratio (PCR) above 90% is from 0.35 to 1.75 THz, and the relative bandwidth reaches 133.3% of the central working frequency. Furthermore, even with oblique incidence at large angles, the proposed device retains high-efficiency conversion in a broad band. The proposed graphene metamaterial offers a novel approach for the design of a terahertz tunable polarization rotator and is expected to be applied in the applications of terahertz wireless communication, imaging, and sensing.