A metamaterial frequency-selective superstrate for phased-array applications

摘要

A new scheme for design of phased-array antennas is discussed in this article. The new approach proposes a reduced array by eliminating RF band-pass filters required in the antenna receive path. To perform the filtering, the array is covered with a thin metamaterial frequency-selective surface separated from the antenna by a dielectric spacer. The overall thickness of the cover (superstrate) is ~lambda/10. In addition to reducing the complexity of the phased-arrays, the metamaterial superstrate enhances the bandwidth of the antenna at least 250% in case of a patch-array considered in this paper.