Compact Wideband Circularly-Polarized Mechanically Beam-Steering Antenna for Ka-Band Vehicular Communications

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 73; no. 3; pp. 3393 - 3403
• Main Authors: Wang, Jingru, Ge, Yuehe, Chen, Zhizhang David, Chu, Zhiyu, Chen, Jiahong, Zhou, Ziheng, Xu, Zhimeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.03.2024; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Antenna arrays; Antenna feeds; Antennas; Apertures; Bandwidths; Beam steering; Broadband; Broadband antennas; Circular polarization; Extremely high frequencies; High gain; Metasurfaces; Millimeter waves; phase gradient metasurface (PGM); Radar equipment; Space-air-ground integrated networks; substrate integrated waveguide (SIW); Substrates; Transmission efficiency; vehicular communication; Waveguides; Wideband
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2023.3327409

The stable vehicular space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) requires high-gain multi-beam/beam-steering antenna systems. In this paper, we propose a compact high-gain wideband circularly-polarized (CP) beam-steering antenna with novel rotatable phase-gradient metasurface (PGM) transmitarrays for the SAGIN. It consists of a novel substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) array feed and three innovative metasurface transmitarrays (M 0 , M 1 , and M 2 ), capable of providing any compensation phases between 0° and 360°. The novel PGM unit cells have two identical CP U-slot patches that perform CP-to-CP conversions with high transmission efficiencies. In addition, a new and accurate beam-steering analytical formulations are proposed for fast predictions of scanning angles. Experimental results show that the proposed compact SIW array feed achieves an aperture efficiency of 58.8%, a 3-dB gain bandwidth of 10.8%, and a 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth of over 23%. The proposed entire beam-steering antenna achieves a peak gain of 27.56 dBic, which corresponds to an aperture efficiency of 48.5%, and an exceptionally wide 3-dB AR bandwidth within the scanning range. It is a strong candidate for future millimeter-wave communications in satellite and radar systems and vehicular communications.