Design and Validation of Reflective Electromagnetic Surfaces with Switching Capability for K-Band Polarizer Applications

This paper presents the design of Reflective Electromagnetic Surfaces (RES) that function as switching polarizers in K-band frequency spectrum. The RES is designed to operate at the frequency range of 16 GHz to 25.5 GHz with the capability of switching from a regular reflector to a polarizer that converts linearly polarized incoming waves into circularly polarized reflected waves. Observations of the co-polarization and cross-polarization reflection coefficients, axial ratio, and surface current distribution on the simulated RES confirm both regular non-polarizer reflector and polarizer functionality. Validation is performed by measuring realized RES samples, consisting of 30×30 unit cells, in both on-state and off-state conditions. The measurement results show co-polarization and cross-polarization magnitudes similar to the simulations. The magnitude of measured cross-polarization reflection coefficient is 5 dB lower than the simulation, indicating the need of better material usage in RES realization for loss reduction.