On Properties of Phase-Conjugation Focusing for Large Intelligent Surface Applications -- Part II: Horizontal Polarization

TL;DR

This paper investigates the focusing properties of horizontally polarized antennas in circular large intelligent surface arrays, demonstrating improved performance with specific configurations and suggesting benefits for polarization flexibility in near-field applications.

Contribution

It extends phase conjugation near-field focusing analysis to horizontal polarization, identifying optimal array configurations for enhanced focusing performance.

Findings

Horizontal polarization configuration outperforms vertical in peak gain and focal width.

Aligning all antenna elements improves focusing characteristics.

Combining vertical and horizontal configurations enables better polarization adaptability.

Abstract

Near-field focusing (NFF) forms the basis for several applications of large intelligent surface (LIS) in sub-10 GHz bands, including wireless communications, wireless power transfer, positioning, and sensing. In this two-part paper, Part I analyzed the properties of phase conjugation NFF for vertically polarized antennas, in a circular array configuration. In Part II of this article, we continue to study phase conjugation NFF for circular arrays, but for horizontally polarized antennas. We investigate the focusing characteristics of a circular array in two distinct configurations. The numerical results show that the first configuration where all the antenna elements (including the user antenna) are aligned offers significant better performance in terms of peak gain, 3 dB focal width and sidelobe level, relative to the second configuration where the broadside of the elements faces the array center. This result points to the beneficial use of orthogonally oriented horizontally polarized antenna at the user to allow for flexible polarization alignment with the fixed array orientation. In addition, the vertical polarized circular array of Part I may be merged with the first configuration of Part II to provide optimal NFF to a randomly oriented user equipment with a polarization reconfigurable tripole antenna.