The Design and Analysis of Electronically Reconfigurable Liquid Crystal-Based Reflectarray Metasurface for 6G Beamforming, Beamsteering, and Beamsplitting
Authors: Meng, X., Nekovee, M. and Wu, D.
Journal: IEEE Access
Volume: 9
Pages: 155564-155575
eISSN: 2169-3536
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3125837
Abstract:Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are becoming increasingly popular in the field of wireless communications, given their potential to ameliorate the challenges faced in millimeter-wave wireless communications. Specifically, liquid crystal (LC)-based RISs have demonstrated numerous advantages over other types of RISs in terms of cost, complexity, and radiation efficiency in the high-frequency regime. This paper presents the design, algorithms, implementation routines, and simulation of a novel reconfigurable LC-based reflectarray metasurface operating at 108 GHz. The scanning range of the proposed device is ±40° (azimuthally and horizontally), with an average scanning beamwidth of 8.6°. We present semi-analytical findings on the scalability and phase continuity of our design, showing how key performance indicators (KPIs) are affected by dimension and phase degree-of-freedom changes. We demonstrate agreement between our semi-analytical models and full-wave analysis, focusing on genetic algorithm (GA)-optimized beam manipulations. Our results present a feasible workflow that enables dynamic beamforming, beamsteering, and multibeams at 108 GHz, and is easily scalable for applications in other 6G and beyond frequency spectra.
https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/36378/
Source: Scopus
The Design and Analysis of Electronically Reconfigurable Liquid Crystal-Based Reflectarray Metasurface for 6G Beamforming, Beamsteering, and Beamsplitting
Authors: Meng, X., Nekovee, M. and Wu, D.
Journal: IEEE Access
Volume: 9
Pages: 155564-155575
ISSN: 2169-3536
Abstract:Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are becoming increasingly popular in the field of wireless communications, given their potential to ameliorate the challenges faced in millimeter-wave wireless communications. Specifically, liquid crystal (LC)-based RISs have demonstrated numerous advantages over other types of RISs in terms of cost, complexity, and radiation efficiency in the high-frequency regime. This paper presents the design, algorithms, implementation routines, and simulation of a novel reconfigurable LC-based reflectarray metasurface operating at 108 GHz. The scanning range of the proposed device is ±40° (azimuthally and horizontally), with an average scanning beamwidth of 8.6°. We present semi-analytical findings on the scalability and phase continuity of our design, showing how key performance indicators (KPIs) are affected by dimension and phase degree-of-freedom changes. We demonstrate agreement between our semi-analytical models and full-wave analysis, focusing on genetic algorithm (GA)-optimized beam manipulations. Our results present a feasible workflow that enables dynamic beamforming, beamsteering, and multibeams at 108 GHz, and is easily scalable for applications in other 6G and beyond frequency spectra.
https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/36378/
Source: BURO EPrints