A novel low‐cost beam‐controlling antenna based on digital coding metasurface

In this paper, a novel beam-controlling antenna based on a single-layer digital coding metasurface (DCMS) is presented. A transmission-type DCMS is placed in the near-field of the source antenna to form a low-profile structure with the height of 0.15λ0 in total. These DCMS elements have two kinds of particles with different transmissivity responses to y-polarized wave, corresponding to two basic digital element 0 and 1 respectively. By designing the coding sequences on DCMS carefully, the radiating mode can be dynamically and real-time controlled. The proposed antenna has multi-function that can realize wide-angle beam-scanning and wide-to-narrow beam switching simultaneously. The scanning angle ranges from −85° to +85° in H-plane with the gain fluctuation less than 2dBi. The simulation results are verified by experiments. This type of antenna can be applied in a variety of wireless communication systems with the outstanding advantages of low-profile, low-cost, and multi-function.