Design of a PIN Diode-Based Reconfigurable Metasurface Antenna for Beam Switching Applications

In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable metasurface antenna for beam switching applications. The reconfigurable metasurface is formed by uniformly distributed double-split square rings loaded with positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) diodes for dual operations of a wave reflector and a wave director. Specifically, when the PIN diodes are forward biased, an epsilon-negative (ENG) metasurface is realized which reflects all incident waves with appropriate polarization; when the diodes are reverse biased, at the same operating frequency, a mu-near-zero (MNZ) metasurface is acquired which directs wave propagation. For excitation, a dipole radiator loaded with the same type of PIN diode is designed. Simulation and measurement results show good agreement and verify the beam switching functionality of the proposed metasurface antenna.