RCS reduction and gain enhancement of SRR inspired circularly polarized slot antenna using metasurface

In this work, a novel Circularly Polarized (CP) slot antenna is proposed for low RCS and high gain applications. The proposed antenna is designed in two phases. Initially, a metasurface is designed, which is composed of two similar artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) unit cells arranged orthogonally in chessboard-like configuration for broadband RCS reduction. Then, the CP slot antenna is designed by placing dual SRR on the backside of the slot for impedance matching and to achieve circular polarization. Detailed analysis is conducted to investigate the performance of metasurface loaded CP slot antenna. The proposed antenna shows 10 dB RCS reduction over the bandwidth of 41.3% at boresight direction compared to CP slot antenna. The maximum in-band and out-of-band RCS reduction achieved is 24 dB and 20 dB, respectively. The maximum gain of the antenna is also increased by 2.7 dB as a result of parasitic radiation of the metasurface and an improvement in overall performance of the antenna is observed by the employment of metasurface. Measured results of the fabricated prototype are in good agreement with the simulated results.