Design of Beam Steering Patch Arrays Using Self-Phased Metasurface Pixels

In this paper, we present a new design concept of microstrip patch antenna arrays that have analog beam steering without using phase shifters external to the array elements. This can be achieved by combining traditional probe-fed microstrip patch antenna arrays with anisotropic Huygens metasurfaces. A metasurface pixel is fed by a microstrip patch, forming the phased-array element. The phase shifts between antenna elements are obtained by the Huygens' metasurface pixel. Three layers of a metallic mesh are separated by two dielectric substrates to form the Huygens metasurface pixel, which has an overall thickness of about one third the operating wavelength. A proposed phased array is designed and simulated. The radiation pattern is shown to be able to steer the beam from minus 20 degrees to plus 20 degrees in analog fashion. This novel technique can greatly reduce the cost of a phased-array system, especially in 5G massive MIMO system.