Broadband arbitrary-polarization reconfigurable folded reflectarray antenna based on twisted cascaded metasurfaces

Polarization is a fundamental characteristic of electromagnetic waves, and the dynamic manipulation of wave polarization has attracted significant attention in both academia and industry. Twisted cascaded metasurfaces have recently emerged as a potential tool for dynamic electromagnetic-wave manipulation owing to their unique advantages, including zero energy consumption and flexible functional integration. An ingenious strategy of rotator design is proposed to achieve linear-to-circular polarization conversion. Building upon the twisted cascaded metasurface concept, arbitrary linear-polarization rotation is realized through the cascading of fundamental meta-atoms, whose polarization responses can be continuously tailored by varying the relative rotation angle between two sub-plates from 0° to 90°. Consequently, a versatile polarization controller is constructed through the integration of these meta-atoms. By integrating the proposed twisted cascaded metasurface with a phase-compensation metasurface (PCM), a polarization-reconfigurable folded reflectarray antenna is developed to achieve arbitrary polarization rotation. The fabricated TCM-FRA can achieve a maximum gain of 25.1 dBi within the operating range of 10–12 GHz, corresponding to a fractional bandwidth of 18.18% and a maximum effective aperture efficiency of 33.13%. The proposed twisted cascaded polarization conversion metasurface enables tailoring the electromagnetic functionalities in mechanical patterns and provides an alternate avenue for reconfigurable metadevices.