Microwave Metasurface-based Lens Antennas for 5G and Beyond

Lens antennas have long been used at millimeter-wave bands and above because of their excellent power focusing performance, aperture sharing, and simple feeding structures. However, the conventional high-gain dielectric lens at microwave bands usually are too bulky. With the development of metasurfaces, the lens design has been replaced by single or multiple layered planar structures such as patterned PCB boards. This paper first briefs the mechanism of metasurfaces in the design of a planar lens. Then microwave lens antennas recently developed by our team from National University of Singapore are summarized to show the progress in this field. After that, one design for 5G NR (the fifth-generation new radio) demonstrates the feasibility of metasurface-based lens in multibeam antenna design. The progress of microwave metasurface lens antennas shows us the huge potential of metamaterial-based antennas (metantennas in short) in advanced wireless systems.