A Prismatic Conformal Metasurface for Radar Cross-Sectional Reduction

A prismatic conformal metasurface, based on optimized multielement phase cancellation, is proposed for wideband radar cross-sectional (RCS) reduction. The metasurface is composed of 35 lattices located in seven zones of a prismatic structure. The lattices in different zones are simulated under corresponding incident angles and taken into account the difference of wave path caused by the bending of the conformal structure. The interactions between multiple backscattered waves produced by the lattices are manipulated and optimized simultaneously by the hybrid array pattern synthesis and particle swarm optimization to achieve wideband destructive interference. The proposed metasurface can realize a 10 dB reduction in backscattered RCS under normal incidence for HH polarization from 9.6 to 10.6 GHz and 11.7 to 17.7 GHz with the fractional bandwidths of 9.9% and 40.8%, respectively. The theoretical analysis, simulated, and measured results are in a good agreement. The proposed approach verifies the innovation and effectiveness in achieving wideband RCS reduction for conformal metasurface.