Proceedings of the 49th European Microwave Conference

Non-periodic Metasurface Beam Splitter for Dual

Polarizations
Cheng Tao#1 , Tatsuo Itoh#2
# Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
1 [email protected] 2 [email protected]

Abstract — In this work, we propose a microwave beam

splitter based on non-periodic metasurface. This metasurface
can scatter the oblique TE and TM incidence wave into two
beams with equal power. The surface is first discretized into
basic elements characterized by phase response. The scattered
pattern is constructed by 2D array model with optimized element
phases. The TE/TM beam splitting patterns are verified by both
full wave simulation and measurement at 10 GHz. This design
requires easy and low cost fabrication, and can be readily scaled
to higher frequencies like THz and optics. (a)
Keywords — metasurface, beam splitter, TE/TM polarization

I. I NTRODUCTION
A beam splitter is a passive device that can split incoming
electromagnetic wave into multiple beams. It is widely used
in optical devices including interferometers and spectrometers,
where the wave is separated into beams with a certain power
ratio or separated by its frequency spectrum. Although beam
splitter can also find its applications in lower frequency such (b)
as wireless power transfer, research in microwave regime Fig. 1. (a) FSS type beam splitter. (b) Non-periodic metasurface type beam
splitter. (solid arrow: incidence wave; dashed arrow: splitted beams)
has seldom been reported. This is due to the methods
used in optics are usually based on frustrated total internal
refraction, semi-transmitted mirror or birefringence property of requires single layer fabrication, it has no control over the
the material and most of these will have difficulty in scaling angles of the beams; i.e., the transmitted beam is always in
down the frequency. the same direction of incidence beam and the reflective beam
A multi-beam reflector with low loss and hight gain has is always at the specular direction.
been achieved in [1]. The multiple reflected beams rely on In this work, we will present a beam splitter based on 2D
the beam scan by mechanically tilting the reflectarray and non-periodic metasurface [5], [6]. For given oblique incidence
thus cannot exit simultaneously. Besides, the fabrication is plane wave, the metasurface can scatter the wave into two
hard to be scaled to THz or optical frequency. Recently, beams at arbitrary designated angles with equal power (or
with the development of metamaterial and metasurface, people potentially in a designated ratio) as shown in Fig. 1(b). To
have more powerful tools to manipulate the propagation design such metasurface, the whole surface is first discretized
of electromagnetic waves in a wide frequency range. A into many subwavelength elements with equal center to center
metamaterial based beam splitter has been demonstrated at space. Each element will be characterized by its magnitude and
around 7 GHz [2]. It uses metal strips and dielectric to phase of reflection coefficient under TE/TM oblique incidence.
construct a 3D fishnet structure which presents a near-zero By properly designing and choosing elements with close to
refractive index. However, this design will have a bulky profile unity reflection magnitude, the scattered pattern with two
and thus will not be easy to fabricate compared to planar splitting beams can be obtained and optimized based on array
structures. A transmissive type metasurface with an arbitrary model. In this study, we intentionally set the scattered beams
polarization splitting angle has been investigated in X-band at retroreflection direction and normal direction with equal
[3]. This structure uses a tri-layer metasurface and again will peak power. An arbitrary board will tend to scatter the beam
increase the cost and difficulty in fabrication. A frequency into specular direction, whereas this metasurface will suppress
selective surface (FSS) type beam splitter has been proposed this intrinsic specular reflection to a very low level. The beam
in [4], which can split an incoming incident wave into a splitting pattern is verified by both full wave simulation and
transmitted signal (beam) and a reference signal (beam) with measurement at 10 GHz. This method has advantages of easy
equal power shown in Fig. 1(a). Though this method only fabrication and low computation cost. Potentially, it enables

978-2-87487-055-2 © 2019 EuMA 670 1– 3 Oct 2019, Paris, France

one to independently control the magnitude of peak power of splitting pattern, we need to add constraints to the elements
each beam or change the angles of the beams. Also, the whole and apply genetic algorithm to optimize ψpq of each location.
design can be conveniently scaled to higher frequencies. A practical cost function can be set as:
II. T HEORY AND M ETHODOLOGY
max{ |P attern(θr )|2 , 1.5|P attern(θr )|2 }
Fig. 2 shows the schematic of this non-periodic −25◦ <θr <−5◦ ,+5◦ <θr <+20◦ +20◦ <θr <+40◦
metasurface beam splitter. We assume the incidence wave F =
max{|P attern(θr )|2 } · max{|P attern(θr )|2 }
impinges on the board from angle θi = −30◦ , in φ = 0◦ −35◦ <θr <−25◦ −5◦ <θr <+5◦
plane, indicated by the blue solid arrow. For TE wave, electric (2)
field is polarized along y-axis; for TM wave, electric field is Similarly, the cost function for TM incidence wave can
polarized in xz-plane perpendicular to propagation direction. be defined with the elements’ TM phase response. In the
The scattered pattern is also evaluated in φ = 0◦ plane with optimization process, the cost functions will be minimized. The
regard to reflection angle θr . The entire surface is segmented denominator represents the peak values of two desired beams
into subwavelength basic elements with equal center to center at retroreflection direction (−35◦ < θr < −25◦ ) and normal
space d. A cluster of 4-by-4 neighboring elements form a direction (−5◦ < θr < +5◦ ). This part will be enhanced.
group cell and elements inside the group cell are set to be The nominator finds the possible side lobes of other angles
identical to each other. This configuration will make sure that and tries to minimize their peak values. The endfire scattering
boundary of each element can be approximated as periodic is ignored since intrinsically little power will be scattered into
boundary condition, so that the element phase response we large endfire angles. Also note that additional weight is applied
extract from the simulation is as accurate as possible. Different to the specular angles (+20◦ < θr < +40◦ ) to suppress the
group cells are distributed in non-periodic fashion across the scattering from that direction.
board to achieve the desired beam splitting pattern. III. D ESIGN OF BASIC E LEMENT
The design of basic element plays a crucial part in this
non-periodic beam splitter. The magnitude response should be
close to unity under oblique incidence so that only phase is
considered in the model. Also, such configuration is supposed
to provide a wide phase range to support the optimization of
the pattern. The fabrication should be as easy as possible with
little error to eliminate swing of phase response that may cause
the interruption of the pattern. In view of all these conditions,
one feasible element configuration is square patch on top of
grounded substrate. Fig. 3 shows the schematic of such a basic
element.

Fig. 2. Schematic of non-periodic metasurface beam splitter.

The scattering pattern is theoretically constructed by the

2D array model. Take TE incidence wave as an example. First,
when the wave impinges on the surface, there will be different
excitation phase on each element due to the wave front. Then
we assume TE phase response of element (p, q) is ψpq , where p
denotes the element position in x-dimension (physical position
as pd, p = 1, · · · , N ) and q denotes the element position in
y-dimension (physical position as qd, q = 1, · · · , M ). The
scattering pattern can be represented by superposition of the
initial excitation phase and phase response of each element:
N
X M
X
P attern(θr ) = [ejkpdsin(θi ) ejkpdsin(θr ) ejψpq ] (1)
p=1 q=1
Fig. 3. Schematic of basic element.
In this equation, k is the wave number in free space, and
kpdsin(θi ) is the excitation phase related with the location A piece of square copper patch with dimension of w is
of element. This is a general scattered pattern equation for all placed on a copper backed Rogers 6010 board with dielectric
possible phase response. In order to achieve the desired beam constant of 10.2 and loss tangent 0.002. The thickness of

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substrate is 1.91mm. To extract the phase response of this Fig. 5 shows a sample of such optimized non-periodic
basic element, periodic boundary condition (PBC) is applied metasurface. Orange color represents the top metallization and
to the four sides. Size of this basic element is d = 2mm. purple represents the substrate. Each group cell contains 4 × 4
Floquet port is put on the top of the basic element to identical elements of 2mm each in size. The entire board
capture the reflection coefficient for both TE and TM oblique consists of 225 optimized group cells (3600 basic elements)
incidence. Fig. 4 shows the phase of reflection coefficient in total. In addition, areas close to the board edge is set to be
for TE/TM polarized wave at 10 GHz. As the patch size blank to reduce possible edge effect and ensure the accuracy
changes from 0.2mm to 2mm, the phase response for TE of element phase.
and TM range between +100◦ to −180◦ . One extreme case Fig. 6 shows the theoretical pattern calculated by the array
will be the top layer with no metal (d = 0), which will give model with elements phase at 10 GHz. Both TE and TM
+180◦ phase response, as the wave will impinge through the patterns are normalized to their maximum beam power at all
dielectric onto the PEC ground directly. In addition, those reflective angles (−90◦ < θr < +90◦ ). For both cases, there
reflection coefficients are very close to 1 (all larger than 0.99) are clearly two beams located around −30◦ (retroreflection
in magnitude, and this will guarantee the element can be direction) and 0◦ (normal direction). In theoretical patterns,
characterized solely by its phase response in the 2D array scattering at endfire direction (θr > +70◦ ) is elevated to
model. This set of phase response will then become available around -5 dB, since we set no constrain in the large angle
elements in the optimization database, where proper elements scattering. However, this endfire scattering is not prominent
will be assigned for every location on the surface by genetic by nature, so it is expected to be lower than reality. Other side
algorithm according to the cost function (2). lobes, especially those in the specular direction are suppressed
under -8 dB.

Fig. 6. Theoretical TE/TM scattered patterns under −30◦ oblique incidence.

Fig. 4. TE/TM phase response of reflection coefficient of the basic element Fig. 7 shows the simulation patterns in HFSS of the
under −30◦ oblique incidence. non-periodic metasurface beam splitter at 10 GHz. Both
TE/TM patterns follow the same trend as in Fig. 6 with two
IV. T HEORETICAL AND S IMULATION R ESULT main beams at 0◦ and −30◦ .The scattering in large angles
In the light of those available elements at 10 GHz, we is kept at a relatively low level as predicted. For TE pattern,
can obtain the scattered pattern of 30◦ incidence wave with −30◦ beam is 1.4dB lower than the 0◦ beam, and the side
equation (1) and use (2) to find optimized TE/TM phase values lobe near the specular direction rises to -4dB. For TM pattern,
ψpq at different locations. The phases will then be mapped to −30◦ beam is 1.1dB higher than 0◦ beam, and other side lobes
the patches with corresponding dimension according to the remain below -5dB.
curves in Fig. 4.

Fig. 7. Simulated TE/TM scattered patterns under −30◦ oblique incidence.

These small discrepancies between the theoretical results

Fig. 5. Optimized non-periodic metasurface beam splitter. and simulation emerge mainly because of the simplified array

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model, in which each element is characterized by its phase. also be readily used in other frequency regimes such as THz
In fact, there exists slight swing of reflection magnitude from and optics.
0.99 to 1 among all the elements. When using 3600 elements,
R EFERENCES
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the receiver from −60◦ to +60◦ . Time gating technique is
used to eliminate unwanted port reflection. Both TE and TM
measured patterns show good matching with simulation pattern
and theoretical pattern. Two main beams can be clearly found
at retroreflection direction (−30◦ ) and normal direction (0◦ ).
For TE pattern, the beam at retroreflection angle is broadened
compared to simulation result and large angle scattering
(around −55◦ ) is elevated. Side lobe near the specular direction
are kept below -4dB. For TM pattern, the measured side lobes
are all below -5dB, though the normal direction beam shifts
several degrees toward the negative angles, as a result of the
fabrication error or the inaccuracy of the dielectric constant
of the board. This measurement verifies that main features of
beam splitter is achieved by non-periodic metasurface.

Fig. 8. Measured TE/TM scattered patterns.

VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a microwave beam splitter for TE and
TM wave is proposed. The design is based on non-periodic
metasurface and the beam splitting pattern is obtained by
2D array model with optimized element phase. Full wave
simulation and measurement results are presented with great
match with theoretical pattern. This beam splitter design can

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