An Additively Manufactured Deployable Broadband Metasurface Lens Antenna

Abstract

This letter proposes a deployable broadband millimeter-wave metasurface lens antenna. The deployability is realized by way of the 3-D printed accordion origami structure between the source and the lens. The metasurface lens is designed on the 3-D-printed origami with two 3-D-printed rectangular gratings and an inkjet-printed I-shaped pattern. The broad bandwidth is achieved with a high transmission efficiency while full 360° phase coverage is obtained from the orthogonal polarization conversion characteristic of the unit cell. The performances of the proposed metasurface lens antenna are numerically and experimentally demonstrated. Its measured 10-dB impedance bandwidth is 24.0–34.9 GHz (38%) and 3 dB gain bandwidth is 25.0–33.5 GHz (30%). Moreover, its overall volume is reduced to 1/3 of its original size when folded for idle mode. Our simple additive manufacturing process can produce the additional advantages of lightweight and low cost.