3D-Printed Correction Surfaces for Gain Enhancement of Metamaterial Lenses

This paper proposes a gain enhancement method for metamaterial lenses. The method is based on local phase difference compensation between all the rays that illuminate every single unit cell of the metamaterial lens. This local phase compensation within one unit cell is realized by adding an additional fully dielectric structure with a required geometry, so that all the rays that illuminate the lens unit cell are in phase after passing through the added structure. All added compensation structures make up a correction surface for the lens. The idea of metamaterial lenses with the correction surfaces has been validated in simulations and measurements of the metamaterial lens with and without the correction surface in K band. The measured gain enhancement resulting from the use of correction surface is up to 1.3 dB.