Metasurface Concept for mm-Wave Wideband Circularly Polarized Horns Design

A novel millimeter-wave (mm-wave) wideband circularly polarized (CP) horn antenna using iris polarizer is reported. By introducing the metasurface concept, the electrical contact problem at the mm-wave band for waveguide-separated components of high-performance CP horn antenna is eliminated. The influence of air gaps on polarizer and whole horn antenna loaded and unloaded metasurface is analyzed and explained. According to simulation, small air gaps of the metal-to-metal contacting plane would not harm the horn performance after loading the metasurface, which means the proposed method can achieve a better tolerance of manufacturing and assembly errors and is more suitable for high-frequency CP horn design. For validation, the proposed horn antenna has been fabricated and its performance is evaluated. The measurement results are in good agreement with the simulation results. The experimental results of 37.8% bandwidth from 75 to 110 GHz for both the axial ratio (AR) <; 3 dB and |S
₁₁
| <; -13 dB are achieved.