A frequency reconfigurable antireflection metasurface for GPR

Abstract The antireflection metasurface (AM) is employed in ground penetrating radar (GPR) to mitigate the strong reflection of electromagnetic waves at the air-ground interface due to impedance mismatch. However, due to constraints imposed by the relative bandwidth (RBW) and manufacturing processes, these layers tend to exhibit excessive thickness and bulky shape, narrow RBW, and fixed functionality in a passive configuration. This paper presents a novel, dual-band, independent wideband tuning, frequency reconfigurable AM based on varactor diodes with center frequencies of 1.35 GHz and 2.60 GHz. This metasurface possesses positive properties such as a single layer, the ultrathin thickness (0.03 & 0.06 λ ), the wide RBW (43.3% & 27.4%) and remarkable antireflection. The aforementioned metasurface achieves the described mechanisms and features through the destructive interference theory and the combine element technique. Numerical simulation results of surface currents and electric field energy power demonstrate the antireflection property. The equivalent electromagnetic parameter retrieval results also provide equivalent impedance conditions for non-perfect antireflection. The proposed AM samples demonstrate notable stepwise frequency reconfigurable properties in free-space experiments. The imaging effect after loading this AM is significantly improved in real-world GPR ballast roadbed anomaly detection experiments. This approach provides significant research value and promising prospects across various disciplines, including the stepped-frequency GPR, microwave imaging, and interdisciplinary fields.