Performance enhancement of linear active electronically scanned arrays by means of MbD-synthesized metalenses

Abstract

The key problem of improving the radiation performances or enabling additive functionalities of linear active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs), without increasing the number of radiating elements nor requiring a re-design of the radiators and/or the feeding network, is addressed by means of a suitably formulated Material-by-Design (MbD) approach. The quasi-conformal transformation optics (QCTO) technique and a customized source inversion (SI) strategy are jointly exploited to synthesize enhanced architectures, composed by a metamaterial lens and a tapered version of the original feeding network, able to match the radiation characteristics of significantly larger and/or different (from the original one) apertures. A set of representative benchmark results is reported to assess the effectiveness of the proposed MbD-designed architecture as well as to highlight the existing trade-off between achievable improvements and the complexity of the arising architectural solution.

Keywords:

• Material-by-Design (MbD)
• linear array enhancement
• Quasi-Conformal Transformation Optics (QCTO)
• Source Inversion (SI)

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

1 To simplify the notation, the subscript z, which indicates the polarization of the electric field, is omitted.

2 The permeability distribution for is computed analogously and its expression is omitted to avoid repetitions.

3 Empirically derived after a calibration study.

4 That is, when being , while otherwise [] since .

5 According to the reference literature [56,57], DRR values in the range should be considered as very low.

6 Such permittivity profiles fall within the feasibility range of recent design and fabrication processes (e.g. dealing with the synthesis of electric-LC metamaterials [58,59]).

Additional information

Funding

This work benefited from the networking activities carried out within the FET Open CSA PROJECT NANOARCHITECTRONICS [grant Agreement number 737135] funded by the European Union in the framework of the Horizon 2020 – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020), the SNATCH Project (2017–2019) funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate General for Cultural and Economic Promotion and Innovation and within the Project Zero Energy Buildings in Smart Urban Districts (2014–2017) funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research [grant number CTN01_00034_594053] of the National Technological Cluster on Smart Communities.