Ultra-thin circularly polarized lens antenna based on single-layered transparent metasurface

Circularly polarized (CP) lens antenna has been applied to numerous wireless communication systems based on its unique advantages such as high antenna gain, low manufacturing cost, especially stable data transmission between the transmitter and the receiver. Unfortunately, current available CP lens antennas mostly suffer from high profile, low aperture efficiency as well as complex design. In this paper, we propose an ultra-thin CP lens antenna based on the designed single-layered Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) transparent metasurface with focusing property. The PB metasurface exhibits a high transmissivity, which ensures a high efficiency of the focusing property. Launched the metasurface with a CP patch antenna at its focal point, a low-profile lens antenna is simulated and measured. The experimental results show that our lens antenna exhibits a series of advantages including high radiation gain of 20.7 dB, aperture efficiency better than 41.3%, and also narrow half power beam width (HPBW) of 13° at about 14GHz. Our finding opens a door to realize ultra-thin transparent metasurface with other functionalities or at other working frequencies. (paper)