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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TAP.2020.2967310, IEEE
Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION
Design and Analysis of Wideband Low-Scattering Endfire
Antenna Using Moth Tail-Inspired Metamaterial Absorber and
Surface Waveguide
You-Feng Cheng, Xiao Ding, Lin Peng, Ju Feng, and Cheng Liao
Abstract—This paper presents a wideband endfire antenna co-designed
with broadband low-scattering characteristics. The wideband reflection and
endfire radiation attribute the success to the supported dual-resonance
surface waves, and the broadband low scattering owes to the combination of
a metamaterial absorber (MA) absorption and an incident penetration of a
frequency selective surface (FSS). Based on the transmission line model, a
surface waveguide (SWG) which can support dual-resonance surface waves
is adopted and analyzed to realize the wideband reflection response (4.95
~ 6.83 GHz) and endfire radiation. Also, the SWG can be seen as an FSS for
the normal incidence. In addition, a wideband MA, which is inspired by the
luna moth's escape from bat attack, is designed and integrated with the
SWG to realize low back radar cross section (RCS) in the frequency range
from 0.5 to 12.5 GHz. The reflection, radiation and scattering performance
are validated by the full-wave simulation and experimental verification.
Index Terms—Frequency selective surface (FSS), moth tail-inspired
metamaterial absorber (MA), radar cross section (RCS), surface wave
I. INTRODUCTION
Planar printed antennas/arrays have been widely used in military and
civil applications due to their low-profile, high-gain and easy-to-be-
integrated characteristics. Except of their radiation performance, low-
RCS planar antennas and arrays also have drawn many researchers’
attention. Generally, the scattering of an antenna mainly comes from
two parts, viz., the antenna-mode and structural-mode scattering [1-3].
The former one can be reduced with a good impedance match, while
the latter one must be suppressed by additional special solutions. In
summary, there are three solutions are suggested to realize designs of
the low-RCS antennas in literature. The first one is to convert the
income energy into heats, such as radar absorbing material-loading,
lumped and distributed loading, and metamaterial absorber (MA)-
loading techniques [4-9]. The drawback of this method is that it may
lead to a decrease in the antenna radiation properties, such as low
antenna gains and high sidelobe levels. field in the observation
direction to other directions. The most commonly used methods are
the active and passive cancellation technologies [10-13]. A
checkerboard surface composed of two improved Jerusalem cross
cells, which have a 180° (±30°) reflection phase difference over a
frequency band from 9.1 to 25.8 GHz, was proposed in [13]. By
arranging the proposed surface around a planar antenna, it can obtain
an X-, Ku- and K-band low-RCS design with the antenna reflection
and radiation almost unchanged. However, enlarged apertures are
Manuscript received XX XX, 2019. This work was supported in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 61731005, 61771407,
61801405 and 61901398), in part by the Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio
and Information Processing, Ministry of Education (Guilin University of
Electronic Technology, Grant CRKL190202) and in part by the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant A0920502051904-64).
Y. F. Cheng, J. Feng and C Liao are with the Institute of Electromagnetics,
Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), Chengdu 610031, China (e-mail:
juvencheng@swjtu.edu.cn, fengju-fj@.swjtu.edu.cn, c.liao@swjtu.edu.cn).
X. Ding, is with the Institute of applied physics, University of Electronic
Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail:
xding@uestc.edu.cn).
L. Peng is with the Key Laboratory of Wireless Wideband Communication
and Signal Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology (GUET),
Guilin, 541004, China (penglin@guet.edu.cn)
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1
often required when these methods are employed, especially for planar
array designs. The incident waves can also pass through the planar
antenna directly and thus the RCS is suppressed. To this end, the
frequency selective surface (FSS)-based design was introduced as
another efficient method [14-16]. By replacing the ground plane with
a suitable FSS structure, the out-of-band RCS can be reduced and in-
band radiation characteristics are retained. Nevertheless, in terms of
this solution, there is a conflict between the in-band RCS reduction
and the in-band antenna radiation. Recently, in order to further
improve the RCS-reduction bandwidth, novel designs which combine
some of the above solutions are presented [17-20]. Besides, bionic
methods are introduced into low-RCS designs recently. [21] designed
an ultrawideband (UWB) antenna which is inspired by the insect
tentacle. The designed antenna can both retain good radiation
performance and exhibit UWB RCS reduction. However, the RCS
reduction should be further enhanced in the antenna operation band.
Planar endfire antennas have shown outstanding performance in
some long-distance wireless applications. Since they are widely used
in a phased array, it is meaningful to focus on the RCS reduction of
planar endfire antennas. Unfortunately, there are only few published
reports which investigated this topic. In [22], a low-RCS bilateral
Vivaldi antenna using the half-mode substrate integrated waveguide
(SIW) was proposed. The in-band monostatic RCS of the antenna can
be reduced to as much as 24 dB without degradation of radiation
performance. However, the RCS-reduction bandwidth of this design
needs to be broadened. Therefore, the realization of a planar endfire
antenna with broadband RCS reduction is a strong challenge in the
area of microstrip antennas. [23] presented an ultrathin microwave-
absorbing material-loaded Vivaldi antenna with UWB and low-RCS
properties. The measured results show the antenna is able to operate
from 0.8 to 15.5 GHz and has the reduced RCS from 2 to 18 GHz.
Nevertheless, the RCS-reduction frequency band cannot cover the
antenna operation band. Besides, the RCS reduction of this design still
should be further enhanced.
In this paper, based on a stacked hybrid structure that is composed of
a surface waveguide (SWG) and a MA, a wideband low-scattering
planar endfire antenna is presented. On one hand, the SWG can
support trapped surface waves and thus the endfire radiation is
realized. On the other hand, for the normally incident waves, the SWG
exhibits as an FSS with low-pass and band-pass characteristics. By
integrating the transmission of the SWG and absorption of the MA,
the in-band and out-band back scattering of the antenna can be reduced
simultaneously. Finally, the proposed antenna is simulated, fabricated
and measured, and the measured results of the fabricated prototype
validate that a low-scattering feature in the frequency range from 0.5
to 12.5 GHz can be realized.
II. A NTENNA D ESIGN AND A NALYSIS
A. Antenna Geometry
The antenna geometry composed of three parts (the SWG, exciting
strips and moth tail-inspired MA) is illustrated in Fig. 1. In the SWG,
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Layer 3 patch Vias

PEC H H
H
E E E

H3
k k k
Substrate 3
z y z y
z z y z y
H0

Layer 1 Layer 2 x x
x Air x x

H2
Substrate 2 βx
H1

Substrate 1
L0
Layer 0 Shorting and feeding pin PEC PMC PEC PMC PEC PMC PEC
Periodic Boundray
(a) (a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig. 2. Simulation models of the SWG/FSS, MA and stacked unit cells. (a)
L0
When the SWG works as a waveguide. (b) When the SWG works as an FSS.
(c) MA with a metal ground. (d) MA-FSS stacked structure.

Y0 8
Dc Dp

Frequency (GHz)
6
W0

Lp

Ygu Ys
y 4
x TM Mode
Yd
Ysub Ysub 2 TE Mode
βz ɛr Light line
0
(b) Ygl 0 20 40 60 80
L0
Phase shift (degree)
(a) (b)
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit model for analyzing the propagation constant and the
calculated propagation constant. (a) Equivalent circuit model. (b) Calculated
Wd Dst
Feeding probe propagation constant

Substrates 1, 2 and 3 have the relative permittivity of 2.94, 2.2 and

W0

Ds
Lp
Lst

Ld

4.4 and the thickness of H1, H2 and H3, respectively. The optimized
Shorting via parameters are: L0 = 90mm, Ld = 17.5mm, Lst = 20.5mm, Lp = 3.2mm,
Wst Lt = 9.5mm, Ls = 0.5mm, W0 = 54mm, Wd = Wst = 4.5mm, Wt = Ws=
y
x 0.5mm, Dc = 6mm, Dp = 4.5mm, Ds = 1.2mm, Dt = 18mm, Dst = 12mm,
H0 = 7.5mm, H1 = 3mm, H2 = 0.508mm, H3 = 1mm, and R0 = 150Ω.
(c)
B. Reflection and Radiation Performance
L0
On one hand, the lower part of the proposed antenna can be seen as
an SWG, dual-resonance surface waves can be supported. The excited
Ws
Ds

Resistor(R0) surface waves radiate at the right edge of the SWG, and thus dual
resonances and the endfire radiation are generated. The surface-wave
Dt analysis can be given as the following three steps.
W0

Ls The launcher (exciting strip) is horizontally aligned and then

Ws

Ds

Ls
y transmission line model is utilized to analyze the SWG. Fig. 2(a)
x presents the simulation model of the SWG unit cell, and Fig. 3(a) plots
(d)
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna. (a) Side view. (b) SWG (Layer 1).
(c) Printed exciting strips (Layer 2). (d) Moth tail-inspired MA (Layer 3).
15 × 9 square patches (each patch has a length of Lp) are periodically
printed on each side of Substrate 1 with a inter distance of Lc as shown
in Fig. 1 (b). Substrate 2 is placed upon the SWG. Four strips shown
in Fig. 1 (c) are printed on Substrate 2 to excite surface waves in the
SWG. The rightmost strip is fed by a coaxial probe and a shorting pin
and the others are parasitic ones. Note that the left two strips with a
length of Lst is a little longer than that (Ld) of the right two, and they
all have a width of Wd. An MA composed of dual moth tail shaped
patches is loaded upon the exciting strips. There is an air gap with a
thickness of H0 between the MA and strips. As shown in Fig. 1(d),
each dual-moth tail-shaped patch mounted on Substrate 3 consists of
a slots-etched square patch and four tail strips, and four resistors with
a resistance of R0 are inserted in each patch.
dovetail with the SWG to excite only TE-mode surface waves. The
the equivalent circuit model for analyzing the propagation constant (βx)
of the TE surface wave along the SWG. The surface admittance (Ys)
of the SWG is a parallel connection of the upper grid admittance (Ygu)
of the upper patch array and the surface admittance (Yd) which is a
serial connection of the surface admittance (Ysub) of the substrate and
the lower rid admittance (Ygl) of the lower patch array. Therefore, it
can be obtained that [24]
Ys = Ygu + Yd, Yd = 1/(2/Ysub + 1/Ygl) (1)
Besides, the surface admittance for TE surface wave propagation
along the SWG can be written as [25]
Ys = j√(βx)2 -(k0 )2 /(ωμ0 ) (2)
where ω is the angular frequency, k0 and μ0 are the wave number and
permeability in free space, respectively. It is found from (2) that a
larger surface capacitance leads to a larger propagation constant of the
TE surface wave.

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Transmission band Absorption band

Reflction of the FSS

Tansmission of the FSS

Reflction of the MA

f1 f2 f3
Fig. 4. Ideal transmission and reflection of each part of the proposed antenna.
0
S-parameters (dB)

-15 (a)

-30 S of the FSS S of the FSS

11 21

-45 S of the metal ground-backed MA

11
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Frequency (GHz)
(a)
0
S-parameters (dB)

-15
S of the stacked structure
11
-30
S of the stacked structure
21
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
(b)
Fig. 5. Simulated results of the unit cells shown in Fig. 3. (a) FSS and metal
ground-backed MA. (b) Stacked FSS-backed MA.
Thereafter the propagation constant of the SWG is calculated and
depicted in Fig. 4. According to [26] which firstly develops the
transmission line model for analyzing the TE surface wave resonances
of the guiding structure, the total length of the SWG equals to an
integer multiple of a resonant length for the TE waves that travel along
the surface. Thus, the frequency of the surface-wave resonance of the
antenna is determined by
βxnDc = 2mπ (3)
where m is a natural number, and n is the number of SWG unit cells
along surface-wave propagation direction. For the proposed antenna
with n = 15, he resonant frequencies are calculated to be 5.1 and 7.1
GHz. Thus, the dual-resonance reflection performance is realized.
In terms of the endfire radiation, the array factor of the radiation of
the surface waves excited by the active and its leftmost parasitic strips
can be calculated as
F ( ) = 1+ | I 2 / I1 | e j ( +Dst cos  ) (4)
where I 1 and I2 are the excited surface-wave currents and δ is the phase
lag between the two currents. The inter-strip distance (Dst) is about 1/8
guide wavelength (means δ is about 90°) and quarter free-space
wavelength. This indicates that the proposed antenna can achieve
endfire radiation, which is similar to the operation principle of Yagi
antennas. Besides, additional two longer parasitic strips are printed
with the same distance to improve the radiation performance.
C. Scattering Performance
On the other hand, the SWG can also work as an FSS structure. By
combining the transmission function of the FSS and the absorption of
(b)
Fig. 6. Fabricated prototype of the proposed antenna. (a) Array components
before assembly. (b) Assembled structure.
the MA, it is expected that broadband low-scattering performance of
the proposed antenna can be realized. The ideal transmission and
12 14 reflection coefficients are represented in Fig. 4. Within the frequency
range from 0 to f1 and f2 to f3, the stacked structure is transparent for
the incident EM waves. Besides, the FSS behaves as a ground plane
of the MA from f1 to f2, and thus the stacked structure absorbs
impinging waves as a wideband high-impedance surface absorber.
Therefore, low back scattering of the proposed antenna from 0 to f3
can be integrated.
Firstly, the simulation model of the SWG unit cell is depicted in Fig.
2(b) and its S-parameters under normal incidence of TE and TM
polarizations are shown in Fig. 5(a). It can be seen that its reflection
coefficients are all higher than -5 dB with the frequency band of 3.9 ~
9.4 GHz, while the transmission coefficients are greater than -1 dB
from 0 to 2.8 GHz and from 10.3 to 13.1 GHz.
Then, a wideband MA inspired by the luna moth's escape from bat
attack is designed and simulated as shown in Fig. 2(c) [27]. The
proposed MA backed by a metal ground with a distance of H0 is able
to imitate the long spatulate tails of luna moths and transform incident
wave energy into heats of the embedded resistances. Fig. 5(a) plots the
reflection coefficients of the MA. There is little reflection in the
frequency band from 3.5 to 11.3 GHz, and its coefficient (S11) is less
than -10 dB.
At last, the metal ground of the MA shown in Fig. 2(c) is replaced
by the adopted FSS. The simulation model of the stacked FSS-backed
MA is illustrated in Fig. 2(d). Based on the simulated results of the
FSS and ground-backed MA, it is predicted that the income energy
can directly pass through the stacked structure in the frequency range
of 0 ~ 2.8 GHz and 11.3 ~ 13.1 GHz, and from 3.9 to 9.4 GHz, the
FSS can be seen as the ground of the MA, and thus the income energy
can be absorbed. Besides, in the other frequency band, the hybrid
stacked structure is able to partly absorb the EM energy and get part
of them penetrate through. Simulated results of the stacked structure
are shown in Fig. 5(b). It can be found that its transmission coefficient
is higher than -1 dB from 0 to 1 GHz and from 11.6 to 12.9 GHz. In

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0 0 with MA(CO) 0

Reflection coefficients (dB)

with MA(XP)
315 0dBi 45 315 0dBi 45
-5 xoy plane
-10dBi -10dBi
-10
-20dBi -20dBi
-15 270 -30dBi xoz plane 90 270 -30dBi 90

-20 Sim.-Proposed Mea.-Proposed

Sim.-Reference Mea.-Reference
-25
4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5 225 135 225 135
Frequency (GHz) without MA(CO)
180 without MA(XP) 180
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured reflection coefficients of the antenna.
(a)
0 with MA(CO) 0
0 Sim.(CO) 0
0dBi 0dBi with MA(XP)
Sim.(XP) 315 0dBi 45 315 0dBi 45
315 45 Mea.(CO) 315 45 xoy plane
-10dBi Mea.(XP) -10dBi -10dBi -10dBi
xoy plane
-20dBi -20dBi -20dBi -20dBi

270 -30dBi xoz plane 90 270 -30dBi 90

270 -30dBi xoz plane 90 270 -30dBi 90

225 135 225 135

225 135 225 135 without MA(CO)
180 without MA(XP) 180
180 180
(b)
(a) Fig. 9. Radiation patterns of the antennas with and without the MA. (a) @5.2
0 Sim.(CO) 0 GHz. (b) @6.3 GHz.
0dBi 0dBi
Sim.(XP)
315 45 Mea.(CO) 315 xoy plane 45 10
-10dBi Mea.(XP) -10dBi Fig. 8. Simulated and measured reflection coefficients
Simulated Measured
of the antenna.
Realized gain (dBi)
-20dBi -20dBi

270 -30dBi xoz plane 90 270 -30dBi 90 5

225 Sim.(CO) Sim.(XP) 135

225 135
Mea.(CO)
180
180
(b)
Fig. 8. Normalized antenna radiation patterns. (a) @5.2 GHz. (b) @6.3 GHz.
addition, its reflection coefficient reveals that the absorption band is
5.9 ~ 12.9 GHz. Back scattering in other frequency bands can also be
reduced by partly absorbed and partly penetrating through the stacked
structure.
III. V ALIDATION OF A NTENNA P ERFORMANCE
In order to validate the antenna performance, a prototype shown in
Fig. 6 is fabricated and measured. The active strip is fed by a coaxial
cable and a shorting via. An AV3618 Vector Network Analyzer
is used to measure the reflection feature of the proposed antenna,
while the radiation and scattering performance are measured in an
anechoic chamber.
A. Reflection Performance
Firstly, the reflection properties are investigated, as shown in Fig. 7.
From the measured results, it can be seen that the proposed antenna
has dual resonances at about 5.2 and 6.3 GHz which are close to the
surface-wave resonant frequencies analyzed and calculated in
Section II-B. The measured bandwidth for S11 ≤ -10 dB is about 1.83
GHz (31.1% relative to the center frequency), extending from 4.95 to
6.83 GHz. It can be concluded that the dual-resonance operation
principle can broaden the impedance bandwidth of the proposed
endfire antenna.
B. Radiation Performance
Mea.(XP) 0
4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured frequency response of the realized gain.
Secondly, the radiation performance of the antenna is studied.
During the measurement, the proposed antenna is utilized as the
transmitter and a wideband horn antenna is adopted as the receiver.
According to the above surface waves-based analysis, it can be
expected that the endfire radiation with other good performance would
be realized.
Fig. 8 shows the simulated and measured radiation patterns at 5.2
and 6.3 GHz. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones.
It can be observed that the proposed antenna is able to produce a main
beam in the endfire (positive x) direction, as predicted in the above.
Besides, the proposed antenna possesses low cross-polarized radiation
(lower than -15 dB) and low back radiation.
Fig. 9 illustrates the radiation patterns of the antennas with and
without the MA. Since the antenna generates the endfire radiation and
the MA is loaded upon the antenna, it is can be indicated that the
loaded MA has little impacts on the antenna radiation performance.
This conclusion is validated in Fig. 9 from which the radiation patterns
of the MA-loaded antenna are almost the same with those of the
antenna without the loaded MA in the main-lobe area.
The measured and simulated realized gains in the operation band is
illustrated in Fig. 10. It can be observed that the proposed antenna
exhibits stable gain from 5.06 to 6.25 dBi in the endfire direction
within its bandwidth. Since an FR4 substrate with its loss tangent of
0.025 is used for the MA design, it is hard to get a high realized gain.
C. Scattering Performance

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TABLE I
COMPARISON BETWEEN THE PROPOSED ANTENNA AND SOME OTHER LOW-RCS DESIGNS

Reflection RCS-reduction In-band/out-band Impacts on Antenna

References RCS-reduction techniques
bandwidth bandwidth RCS reduction radiation size
0.6-dB enlarged
[7] MA absorption 3.5% 4.7% in-band
decrease
[8] MA absorption 6.9% 80% both 6.5-dB increase unchanged
0.6-dB enlarged
[9] MA absorption 21.1% 97.7% both
decrease
[12] Reflection cancelation 6.4% 36.7% both 2-dB increase enlarged
0.3-dB unchanged
[14] Incident penetration ~2% ~53.5% out-band
decrease
[17] MA absorption 10% 54.5% both 7-dB increase unchanged
MA absorption + Incident 0.5-dB unchanged
This work 31.1% 184.6% both
penetration decrease

20 20 Fig. 11 plots the simulated and measured results of the antenna RCS
Simulated RCS of the proposed antenna
Monostatic RCS (dBsm)

10 reduction. Note that only the measured results from 4 to 12 GHz are

RCS reduction (dB)

Simulated RCS of the reference antenna
0 10
Simulated RCS reduction shown due to the limitation of experimental conditions. It can be
-10 Measured RCS reduction indicated that the antenna has a significant monostatic RCS reduction
0
-20 from 0.5 to 12.5 GHz for both TE and TM polarizations. Measured
-30 -10 results validate the wideband low-scattering performance of the
-40 proposed bandwidth-enhanced endfire antenna.
-50 -20 In order to illustrate more special advantages of this work, the
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 proposed wideband low-scattering endfire antenna is compared with
Frequency (GHz)
various recently reported low-RCS designs. As listed in Table I, the
(a) design in [7], whose reflection and RCS-reduction bandwidths are
20 20 both narrow due to the antenna and MA structures, firstly uses the MA
Simulated RCS of the proposed antenna
Monostatic RCS (dBsm)

10 absorption to suppress the antenna RCS. This loaded MA can only

RCS reduction (dB)

Simulated RCS of the reference antenna

0 Simulated RCS reduction 10 reduce the in-band RCS and has a 0.6-dB decrease in the antenna
-10 Measured RCS reduction radiation gain. Compared with the design in [7], the antenna presented
% (3)

-20
-30
-40
-50
0 2 4 6 8 10
Frequency (GHz)
(b)
Fig. 11. Simulated and measured monostatic RCS and RCS reduction of the
proposed antenna. (a) TE Polarization. (b) TM polarization.
Finally, the scattering performance of the proposed antenna is
investigated. In the simulation, since the RCS of the antenna reduced
at 0 Hz is of non-sense, the starting frequency is chosen as 0.5 GHz.
In the measurement setup, two wideband horn antennas with their
bandwidth of 4 ~ 12 GHz are adopted as transmitter and receiver,
respectively. The antenna under test on a rotation equipment is
illuminated by the incident waves from the transmitter and scatters
electromagnetic waves to the receiver. Besides, in order to validate the
low-scattering performance of the proposed antenna, a reference
printed dipole antenna with the same size and a complete metal ground
and without the MA is used for comparison. Reflection coefficients of
the reference antenna is also shown in Fig. 7.
According to [28] and [29], the antenna RCS can be calculated as
 dBsm = S 21 − S 21
0
+  dBsm
0
(5)
where σ0dBsm denotes the theoretical value of the RCS of a standard
reference ball, S21 and S021 are the transmission coefficients between
the two horn antennas when an antenna under test and the standard
reference ball are tested, respectively. Based on the above equation,
the RCS reduction of the proposed and reference antennas can be
expressed as the difference between the transmission coefficients
when the antenna under test and the reference antenna are measured
 Re = S 21AUT − S 21RA (6)
0
in [8] has a significant improvement of the RCS-reduction bandwidth.
-10
Besides, the designed antenna contains a partially reflecting surface
(PRS), which can be used to improve the antenna gain and adopted as
-20 the ground of the MA. Note that, the MA has no impacts on the
12 14 antenna gain. [9] proposed an antenna with an even wider RCS-
reduction bandwidth. Besides, the antenna reflection bandwidth is also
greatly wider than those in [7] and [8]. However, there is a 0.6-dB
decrease in the realized gain in comparison with their reference
antennas. Similarly, the design in [17] can realize a wideband RCS
reduction due to the MA absorption and a gain enhancement due to
the PRS. The main contribution of this work is that the reflection
bandwidth is further broadened by the frequency-reconfiguration
technique. The antenna in [12] uses a checkerboard-shaped artificial
magnetic conductor (AMC) structure to obtain the reflection
cancelation and thus the RCS reduction. In addition, the AMC
structure can also enhance the antenna gain. Nevertheless, both the
reflection and RCS-reduction bandwidths should be further broadened.
Besides, the antenna aperture is greatly enlarged due to the loaded
AMC structure. In [14], an FSS-based design with an out-band RCS
reduction is designed. This design has the narrowest reflection
bandwidth. The proposed antenna in this paper adopts both the MA
absorption and incident penetration to realize the low-RCS design. As
a result, this work has the widest reflection and RCS-reduction
bandwidths. Besides, the MA has only about 0.5-dB decrease on the
radiation gain and the FSS has a benefit in the endfire radiation
because it can also work as an SWG radiation because it can also work
as an SWG.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a wideband low-scattering endfire antenna. On
one hand, the operation principles of the wide impedance bandwidth
and wideband endfire radiation is analyzed by using surface-wave and

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Transactions on Antennas and Propagation

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION 6

transmission line model theories. The propagation constant of the TE [19] Y. Zhuang, G. Wang, Q. Zhang, and C. Zhou, “Low-scattering tri-band
metasurface using combination of diffusion, absorption and cancellation,”
surface waves is investigated and then the surface-wave resonance of
IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 17306–17312, 2018.
the proposed antenna is calculated. Calculated results agree well with [20] A. Y. Modi, C. A. Balanis, C. R. Birtcher, and H. N. Shaman, “New class
the simulated and measured ones. On the other hand, broadband low of RCS-reduction metasurfaces based on scattering cancellation using
back scattering is obtained by adopting an FSS-moth tail-inspired MA array theory,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 298–
308, Jan. 2019.
stacked structure. A fabricated prototype of the proposed antenna is
[21] W. Jiang, Y. Liu, S. X. Gong, and T. Hong, “Application of bionics in
measured, and the measured results validate the reflection, radiation antenna radar cross section reduction,” IEEE Antennas Wireless. Propag.
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[22] Y. Jia, Y. Liu, Y. Hao, and S. Gong, “Vivaldi antenna with reduced RCS
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