Simultaneous Beam Forming and Focusing Using a Checkerboard Anisotropic Surface

A novel design method of simultaneous beam forming and focusing using a checkerboard anisotropic surface is proposed and verified in this paper. The proposed multibeam control regardless of far and near regions can easily be achieved through a rearrangement of the checkerboard structure. The unit cell of the utilized anisotropic surface consists of two identical metallic structures divided by a dielectric material. When the EM wave with a circular polarization (CP) is incident on the unit cell, the maximum transmission phase variation of the unit cell is 360 degrees by half rotation of the unit cell. A microstrip patch antenna with trimmed corners is used to launch the CP wave and the distance between the microstrip patch antenna and anisotropic surface is about 2 wavelengths considering the optimized spillover and taper efficiencies. After designing each anisotropic surface for beam forming and focusing, the unit cells of the surface are rearranged in the form of a checkerboard. The feasibility of the proposed method is confirmed by full-wave simulation and measurement for anisotropic surface with a beam forming angle of 30 degrees and beam focusing point 60 mm away from center at 5.8 GHz. The forming angle and focal length are simulated and measured to be 28 degrees and about 65 mm, respectively.