2606 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

16, 2017

Dual-Band Low-Scattering Metasurface Based on

Combination of Diffusion and Absorption
Yaqiang Zhuang, Guangming Wang, Jiangang Liang, and Qingfeng Zhang, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—In this letter, a low-scattering metasurface with dual- conductors divides the scattered waves into four main lobes and
band, wide-angle, and polarization-insensitive features is proposed redirects them along diagonal and off-diagonal directions [9].
and validated by measurement. The metasurface converts incident However, the chessboard metasurfaces suffer from fixed scatter-
electromagnetic wave into heat at S-band frequency, and disperses ing directions and high bistatic radar cross-section (RCS) val-
it into various reflected directions across X- and Ku-band frequen-
ues. Fortunately, the diffusion metasurfaces, constructed by ran-
cies. Furthermore, each operational mode works independently.
The agreement between simulated and measured results demon-
domly distributing meta-atoms with different reflection phases
strates that more than 8 dB radar cross-section reduction can be along the surface, have been proposed to overcome these draw-
realized over 3.9–4 and 7.7–19 GHz under different polarized wave backs [13]. As a result, the diffusion metasurface, mimicking
incidences. The dual-band and wideband characteristics are also a diffuse reflection surface, disperses the scattering waves into
well maintained within 0°–45° oblique incidence. various directions. Thus, the backward RCS will be significantly
suppressed. The random reflection phases of diffusion metasur-
faces are realized by randomly varying structural parameters
Index Terms—Absorption, dual-band, diffusion, metasurface,
radar cross-section (RCS) reduction.
of the unit cell, which requires time-consuming optimization
especially in multibits coding designs.
To date, most of the low-scattering metasurfaces achieve only
I. INTRODUCTION one function or operate in a single frequency band. The design
of multiband or multifunctional metasurface is rarely reported to
ETASURFACES exhibit many exotic properties of
M metamaterials, giving rise to various applications at a
subwavelength scale, such as polarization convertor [1], high-
date. Inspired by the design of multiband reflectarray [18], we
design a dual-band low-scattering metasurface that combines
both the absorption and diffusion functionality. The absorp-
gain lens antenna [2], holography [3], and stealth platform [4]. tion was realized by employing resistor-loaded cross dipoles,
In addition, application of metasurfaces in stealth technology while the diffusion was implemented by Pancharatnam–Berry
becomes a hot topic due to the increasing demand of stealth in (PB)-phase unit cell with random orientations. Furthermore, the
military platform. Several metasurface-based techniques have performance of each band can be designed independently. Both
been introduced to suppress the backscattering energy, such numerical and measurement results demonstrate that this meta-
as ultrathin metamaterial absorber [5], [6], mantle cloak [7], surface can reduce RCS with dual-band, broadband, wide-angle,
[8], chessboard metasurface [9]–[11], and diffusion metasurface and polarization-insensitive features.
[12]–[17]. The working mechanism of absorbers relies on con- This letter is organized as follows. In Section II, the con-
verting energy into heat, but the bandwidth was limited due to its figuration of PB-phase unit cell and absorber is introduced,
resonating nature [5]. Mantle cloak only cancels the scattered followed by the design procedure of the dual-band metasurface.
waves of small-size objects [7]. The metasurface with chess- In Section III, the low-scattering performance of the proposed
board configuration of two different types of artificial magnetic metasurface is numerically and experimentally characterized.
Finally, Section IV concludes the whole letter.
Manuscript received July 11, 2017; accepted July 31, 2017. Date of pub-
lication August 3, 2017; date of current version September 18, 2017. This
work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
II. CONFIGURATION AND PRINCIPLE
China under Grant 61372034 and Grant 61401191, in part by the Natural Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed metasurface.
Science Foundation of Shanxi Province under Grant 2016JM6063, in part by
the Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar un-
It is composed of randomly oriented anisotropic electric field
der Grant 2015A030306032, in part by the Guangdong Special Support Pro- coupled resonators (ELCRs) and resistor-loaded cross dipoles,
gram under Grant 2016TQ03X839, in part by the Shenzhen Science and Tech- acting as diffusion and absorption, respectively. It will be shown
nology Innovation Committee funds under Grant KQJSCX20160226193445, that the performance of the overall metasurface is simply the
Grant JCYJ20150331101823678, Grant KQCX201503311 0182368, Grant addition of the two individuals. Therefore, the two parts are
JCYJ20160301113918121, and Grant JSGG20160427105120572, and in part
by the Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission Funds under Grant separately designed and introduced as below.
[2015] 944. (Corresponding authors: Guangming Wang; Qingfeng Zhang.)
Y. Zhuang, G. Wang, and J. Liang are with the Air and Missile Defense A. Unit Cell for Diffusion
College, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an 710051, China (e-mail:
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]). Circular anisotropic structure is widely used as the PB-phase
Q. Zhang is with the Southern University of Science and Technology of element for diffusion due to its capability to control the phase of
China, Shenzhen 518055, China (e-mail: [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
the circularly polarized (CP) wave by rotating orientations [19].
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Here we employ ELCR in Fig. 1(a) as the basic meta-particle
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2735483 in our diffusion metasurface due to its simple configuration

1536-1225 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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ZHUANG et al.: DUAL-BAND LOW-SCATTERING METASURFACE BASED ON COMBINATION OF DIFFUSION AND ABSORPTION 2607

Fig. 2. (a) Reflection coefficients under linearly polarized wave incidence.

(b) Comparison of simulated and theoretical phase versus the rotation angle
under circular polarized wave incidence.

Fig. 3. Absorption performance with variation of (a) positions and

(b) resistances.

B. Unit Cell for Absorption

The absorber is a sandwich-like structure [20], as shown in
Fig. 1(b), with resistor-loaded cross dipoles on the top, F4B
substrate in the middle, and metallic ground on the bottom. This
Fig. 1. Schematic of (a) PB-phase unit cell, (b) absorber, and (c) overall
metasurface.
absorber is designed to work at S-band frequency. The period
of the unit cell is one space wavelength at 5 GHz, i.e., 60 mm.
The absorption frequency is controlled by the resistor position
and almost unchanged boundary when rotating orientations. An c. Fig. 3(a) shows the reflection magnitudes versus frequency
ELCR is placed on a grounded F4B substrate with a relative for different resistor positions, which are calculated by full-
permittivity of 2.65 and thickness of 3 mm. wave simulation using CST Microwave Studio (MWS). The
To achieve the PB-phase performance, the reflection phase absorption frequency is proportional to c. To achieve a good
and magnitude should satisfy |Argxx –Argy y | = 180◦ ± 30◦ absorption at 3.95 GHz, we choose c = 6 mm. The other pa-
and |Magxx | = |Magy y | within the specified frequency band rameters are p1 = 60 mm, w1 = 2 mm, and d = 56 mm. The
(e.g., covering X- and Ku-band in our case). The period of the resistance value does not change the absorption frequency, but
ELCR unit cell in Fig. 1(a) is set as 1/3 of the space wave- only the absorption level. This is well validated by Fig. 3(b),
length at 10 GHz, i.e., 10 mm. The stubs along x- and y-axis where R = 3.3 kΩ achieves the best absorption (with almost
inside the circle are used to control the reflection phases under –30 dB level).
x- and y-polarized wave incidences, respectively. The final opti-
mum parameters are r = 3 mm, w = 0.35 mm, a = 1.45 mm,
and b = 3.85 mm. The corresponding reflection responses for C. Overall Metasurface
both x- and y-polarized wave incidences are shown in Fig. 2(a). Once the unit cells of the diffusion part and absorption part
Note that the operational frequency band covers from 7.76 to have been designed, they are combined together to form the over-
18.48 GHz. The reflection magnitudes are almost uniform within all metasurface in Fig. 1(c). We employ 3 × 3 resistor-loaded
this frequency band. Once determining the dimensions, one ro- cross dipoles for absorption and 18 × 18 PB-phase elements for
tates the unit cell to achieve other different phases. The phase diffusion. The overall metasurface occupies 180 × 180 mm2
shift after a clockwise rotation, Δϕ, is related to the rotation area.
angle, θ, by Δϕ = ±2θ where the sign is determined by the For the absorption part, we use identical unit cells to achieve
helicity of incidence wave. Fig. 2(b) plots the reflection phases the best absorption at 3.95 GHz. For the diffusion part, every
versus the rotation angle calculated from both simulation and 3 × 3 unit cells are combined as a supercell with identical orien-
theoretical prediction (Δϕ = ±2θ). Note that the simulation re- tations, and all the 6 × 6 supercells have random orientations.
sults agree well with the theoretical ones. The reflection phase We employ a random number generation function to generate
covers a 360° range when the unit cell rotates within 0°–180°. 6 × 6 integer numbers corresponding to 6 × 6 orientations.
Therefore, one easily achieves a random phase distribution by The overall metasurface was constructed by directly combin-
employing randomly oriented unit cells. ing the diffusion part and absorption part. It will be shown

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 2608 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 16, 2017

Fig. 5. Simulated 3-D RCS pattern of (a) and (c) metasurface and (b) and (d)
metallic plate at (top row) 3.95 and (bottom row) 9.7 GHz.

Fig. 4. (a) RCS of the metallic plate, absorber, diffusion metasurfaces, and Fig. 6. Simulated bistatic RCS along phi = 0◦ and 90° plane of both meta-
the dual-band metasurface. (b) RCS reduction performance of the dual-band surfaces and metallic plate at (a) 3.95 and (b) 9.7 GHz.
metasurface under different polarized-wave incidences.

later that the overall performance is simply the addition of two

individuals because they work in separated frequency band with
very small couplings. This greatly simplifies the whole design
procedure.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Numerical Results
The designed absorption part, diffusion part, and overall meta-
surface are simulated individually using CST MWS and are Fig. 7. RCS reduction performance under oblique incidence. (a) x-polarized.
compared with a metallic plate with the same area. Fig. 4(a) (b) y-polarized.
shows the backward RCS of these plates. Note that the absorber
performs a low reflection at 3.95 GHz, and the diffusion part
significantly reduce RCS more than 8 dB within 7.7–19.0 GHz To better show the stealth performance under normal wave
in comparison with the metallic plate. The RCS reduction band- incidence, three-dimensional (3-D) RCS patterns at 3.95 and
width of the diffusion part is consistent with the operational 9.7 GHz are plotted in comparison with the metallic plate, as
bandwidth of the PB-phase unit cell. It is also interesting to note shown in Fig. 5. As expected, the incident energy was absorbed
that the RCS curve of the overall metasurface is simply the su- at 3.95 GHz, leading to low scattering at the upper half space. At
perposition of the absorption part and diffusion part. It turns out 9.7 GHz, the scattered waves are dispersed into various direc-
that the two parts have little effect on each other, which greatly tions, in contrast to the mirror reflection by the metallic plate.
simplifies the design procedure. Fig. 4(b) shows the RCS reduc- The bistatic RCS of the metasurface and metallic plate along
tion performance of the overall metasurface under x-polarized, phi = 0◦ and 90° at 3.95 and 9.7 GHz are given in Fig. 8 for
y-polarized, and CP wave incidence. Note that both the diffusion a quantitative comparison. Note from Fig. 6(a) that the bistatic
band and absorption band performances are insensitive to the RCS of the metasurface are lower than that of the metallic plate
polarization under normal incidence. at all elevation directions for both phi = 0◦ and 90°, because

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ZHUANG et al.: DUAL-BAND LOW-SCATTERING METASURFACE BASED ON COMBINATION OF DIFFUSION AND ABSORPTION 2609

fabricated, and measured. This metasurface converted incident

electromagnetic (EM) wave into heat energy in the S-band, and
diffused the incident EM wave into various directions across X-
and Ku-band. Each band can be operated and controlled inde-
pendently. The simulated and measured results revealed that the
metasurface suppressed the backward scattering by more than
8 dB within 3.9–4 and 7.7–19 GHz.

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