Metasurface Near-field Measurements with Incident Field Reconstruction using a Single Horn Antenna

TL;DR

This paper introduces a numerical method to characterize planar electromagnetic metasurfaces using a single horn antenna by superimposing multiple near-field scans, enabling flexible incident field reconstruction for improved measurement accuracy.

Contribution

A novel numerical approach for near-field measurement of metasurfaces using a single antenna and multiple configurations, enhancing incident field control and measurement flexibility.

Findings

Method successfully reconstructs incident fields for metasurface characterization.

Applicable to all linear time-invariant metasurfaces, including space-time modulated ones.

Demonstrated through numerical simulations with promising results.

Abstract

A simple method of superimposing multiple near field scans using a single horn antenna in different configurations to characterize a planar electromagnetic metasurface is proposed and numerically demonstrated. It can be used to construct incident fields for which the metasurface is originally designed for, which may otherwise be difficult or not possible to achieve in practice. While this method involves additional effort by requiring multiple scans, it also provides flexibility for the incident field to be generated, simply by changing the objective of a numerical optimization which is used to find the required horn configurations for the different experiments. The proposed method is applicable to all linear time-invariant metasurfaces including space-time modulated structures.