Beam-Scanning Curved Smart Electromagnetic Skins for Outdoor Scenarios

Curved passive Smart Electromagnetic Skins (SESs), integrated into a streetlight or traffic light pole, have already been introduced as suitable devices to improve the coverage performance of a communication network without increasing its complexity. Despite their several advantages, they were supposed to be designed to provide fixed coverage. Here, an innovative design technique is proposed, through which it is possible to change the pointing direction of the smart skin simply by its mechanical rotation around the pole on which it is mounted. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the developed approach and the feasibility of a smart skin that provides reconfigurability over an angular range of approximately 60° while maintaining high simplicity and reduced cost.