Self-biased Tri-state Power-Multiplexed Digital Metasurface Operating at Microwave Frequencies

Abstract

Exploiting of nonlinearity has opened doors into undiscovered areas for achieving multiplexed performances in recent years. Although efforts have been made to obtain diverse nonlinear architectures at visible frequencies, the room is still free for incorporating non-linearity into the design of microwave metasurfaces. In this paper, a passive dual-band power intensity-dependent metasurface is presented. Here, power-multiplexing performance is achieved by embedding PIN-diodes in the coding particles. The proposed digital metasurface has three operational states: 1) it acts as a normal reflector at low power intensities whereas provides a dual-band nonlinear response upon illuminating by high-power incidences where 2) it perfectly absorbs the radiations at f1=6.7 GHz and 3) re-distributes the scattered beams by arranging the meta-atoms with a certain coding pattern at f2=9.37 GHz. The nonlinear performance of the designed tri-state coding elements has been characterized by using the scattering parameters captured in the full-wave simulations where the accurate models of the nonlinear diodes are involved. The emergence of microwave self-biased metasurfaces with smart re-actions upon illuminating by incidences of different power levels, revealing great opportunities for designing smart windows, smart camouflage coating surfaces and so on.