Modern Physics Letters B

1750274 (12 pages)

c World Scientific Publishing Company
DOI: 10.1142/S0217984917502748

Design of a wide band metasurface as a linear

to circular polarization converter

Olcay Altintas∗ , Emin Unal∗ , Oguzhan Akgol∗ , Muharrem Karaaslan∗ ,

by UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND on 09/15/17. For personal use only.

Faruk Karadag† and Cumali Sabah‡,§,¶

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∗ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,

Iskenderun Technical University, Iskenderun, Hatay 31200, Turkey

† Department of Physics, Cukurova University, Saricam, Adana 01330, Turkey
‡ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,

Middle East Technical University-Northern Cyprus Campus (METU-NCC ),

Kalkanli, Guzelyurt, TRNC/Mersin 10, Turkey
§ Kalkanli Technology Valley (KALTEV ),

Middle East Technical University-Northern Cyprus Campus (METU-NCC ),

Kalkanli, Guzelyurt, TRNC/Mersin 10, Turkey
¶ sabah@metu.edu.tr

Received 3 May 2017

Revised 23 June 2017
Accepted 3 July 2017
Published 8 September 2017

In this paper, we present a wide band metasurface (MS) polarization converter which
converts a linearly polarized signal to a right-handed or left-handed circularly polar-
ized signal both numerically and experimentally. The unit cell of MS has three nested
rectangular resonators which have two metallic patches at its crossed corners. The sim-
ulated and measured results are achieved by a commercial full wave EM simulator and
a vector network analyzer with two horn antennas in microwave frequency regime. The
S-parameters are obtained for co-polarized and cross-polarized responses and axial ratio
is evaluated by the division of these two responses. The axial ratio is kept below 3 dB
for efficient polarization converting activity. Correspondingly, axial ratio bandwidth of
800 MHz is obtained. The proposed MS can easily be fabricated and integrated into
many desired applications by proper configurations depending on the application area
and frequencies. The proposed MS has potential such as polarization converter with
0.75 efficiency in WiMAX frequency band, PMC-like treatment with a phase reflection
around 0◦ and reflection coefficient nearly unity at some frequency points. Beside this,
the three nested rectangle MSs also provide opportunities to design low profile antennas
with conversion characteristics.

Keywords: Metasurface; polarization conversion; axial ratio; axial ratio bandwidth.

¶ Corresponding author.

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1. Introduction
As the name stands, metamaterials (MTMs) literally refer to the materials with
unusual electromagnetic behaviors not readily available for conventional materials.
MTMs have numerous extraordinary features like negative reflection coefficients,
perfect lenses, super-resolution images, polarization rotation, source imaging, ab-
sorption, etc.6–10 Metamaterials are composed of periodically arranged electrically
small structures designed to obtain desired features. Today’s MTM studies have
inspired from Veselago’s theoretical work on substances with negative ε and µ si-
multaneously.1 Scientific community did not pay much attention on this work since
it seemed impossible to put this type of structures into practice. However, after
almost 30 years, Pendry et al. and Smith et al. realized these periodic unusual
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structures for the first time.2–4 They used split ring resonators for obtaining neg-
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ative permeability and thin wires for achieving negative permittivity. In this way,
the first double negative (DNG) material was realized. After that, the interest on
the metamaterials has increased exponentially in the scientific community and be-
cause of the newly discovered applications of MTMs, this interest will probably
keep growing in the future.11–16
There are several types of MTMs, one of them is referred to metasurfaces (MSs)
or single-layer MTMs that are two-dimensional version of MTMs. MSs have the
ability to control and change the direction of an electromagnetic (EM) wave freely
which is the main goal of this study. For many potential and important applications,
MSs can be used instead of MTMs due to their advantages. MSs occupy less phys-
ical space comparing with full three-dimensional MTMs which can be considered
as another tool for antenna minimization. For the same reason, using MSs leads to
less lossy structures with higher efficiencies. In the past few years, studies about the
potential application of MSs increased in the scientific area.5 MSs have been stud-
ied to be used in many application areas in a wide frequency range from microwave
to optical frequency region including controllable lids or ground planes, polariza-
tion controllers, resonators, perfect absorbers, structures enhancing return losses,
etc.17–24 It is promising to replace known micro- and nano-electromagnetic struc-
ture by full controlling the incident waves.25 Besides, MS structures are also called
metafilms which manipulate EM waves to provide focusing, beam shaping/steering
and imaging. These properties can be used for many areas such as versatile behav-
ior, nano-photonic and three-dimensional holography applications.26,27
In this study, polarization conversion from linear to circular is achieved by using
an MS structure. Particularly, in antenna industry, one needs to design another an-
tenna or transmitter using circularly polarized waves which will take additional time
and effort. In addition, you have to have separate antennas for each polarization
which is quite a problem if you have strict space limitations. By using our simple and
configurable design, a linearly polarized antenna can simply turn into a circularly
polarized antenna without requiring any extra space or another antenna. Although
the proposed device is statically designed, the reconfigurable design is possible and

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 Design of a wide band MS as a linear to circular polarization converter

it can be achieved by connecting lumped circuit elements on the designed struc-

ture. The structure can be used for any mounted antenna with a simple adjustment
on the structure depending on the working frequency of that particular antenna.
The designed structure can also be integrated into many other application areas
where polarization conversion is needed. The model consists of nested rectangular
resonators offering approximately 600 MHz bandwidth at around 4.80–5.40 GHz.
Frequency range is located in C-band which is primarily used by communication
satellites. In places where the stability of the signal reception is important and
when the source polarization or location is unknown, circularly polarized antennas
are used so the proposed structure will be a good candidate to be used on existing
linearly polarized antennas without changing the antenna itself.
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In our study, we numerically and experimentally designed and tested an MS-

based polarization converter with a wide band and high efficiency. In order to show
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the conversion property, the axial ratio (AR) of the structure is calculated by di-
viding cross and co-polar responses. The proposed model has a wide bandwidth
comparing to the polarization converters in literature and contains a simple geom-
etry that can be adjusted in any desired frequency range.

2. Design of the MS Polarization Converter

It is well known that circularly polarized wave has two perpendicular components:
vertical and horizontal electric field ones. One of them is the main component which
represents the electrical field of incident wave and the other one is side component
which is created by main component due to electrical interaction of the main wave.
This interaction is the main reason of the polarization conversion from linear to
circular. The diagonal section of the unit cell between vertical and horizontal lines
creates 90◦ phase difference and creates newly formed perpendicular component
of the circularly polarized wave with respect to main component. Therefore, the
configuration of the proposed structure should have vertical, horizontal and diag-
onal sections as the designed structure. The unit cell of the polarization converter
consists of three nested rectangle resonators which have two metallic patches at its
crossed corners. MS converter is designed by using planar fabrication technology
as shown in Fig. 1. The proposed MS structure is composed of 16 unit cells as
shown in Fig. 1(a). The MS polarization converter is referred to left-handed po-
larization converter (LHPC) which converts linearly polarized (LP) signal to the
left-handed circularly polarized one as shown in Fig. 1(a). Likewise, it is referred
to a right-handed polarization converter (RHPC) which converts LP incident sig-
nal into right-handed circularly polarized one as shown in Fig. 1(b). The unit cell
dimensions of MS polarization converter are shown as an inset in Fig. 1(c). RHCP
or LHCP signals are obtained from the incident linearly polarized waves, when the
electric field component of it is in x- or y-directions, respectively as illustrated in
Fig. 1(d).

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Fig. 1. (Color online) Perspective of (a) the linear to circular LHPC, (b) the linear to circular
RHPC, (c) unit cell dimensions and (d) schematics of the MS polarization converter.
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Table 1. Dimensions of MS polarization converter (mm).

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Lx Ly x y w gp
68.096 70.640 15.824 16.460 0.960 1.523

Periodically designed metallic resonators are constructed on Flame–Roger

RT5870 dielectric substrate with a thickness, loss tangent and relative permittivity
of 1.575, 0.012 and 2.33 mm, respectively.

3. Numerical Study of MS
The aim of the study is to obtain circularly polarized signals from linearly polarized
signals. This phenomenon can be investigated by examining AR which can be simply
written as
AR(dB) = Mag(20 log(AR(ω)) , (1)
where AR(ω) represents
T (ω)(cross-polar)
AR(ω) = (2)
T (ω)(co-polar)
and
T (ω) = |S12 | . (3)
The numerical study of the proposed structure is realized by a full-wave commercial
3D EM solver with floquet port modes. The ports are arranged in co-polar and
cross-polar form to observe magnitude of transmission T (ω) values. AR is then
calculated by the division of cross-polar transmission values to co-polar ones. AR
(dB) is kept below 3 dB to obtain efficient polarization conversion, and the operation
frequency range of the MS polarization converter is determined by AR < 3 dB.
Numerical studies on unit cell dimensions are achieved by taking these situations
into consideration. Therefore, effect of unit cell width (x), unit cell height (y), strip
thickness (w) and the metallic patch size (gp) on axial ratio are examined in detail.
The results are shown in Figs. 2 and 3.

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Fig. 2. (Color online) Effects of (a) unit cell width and (b) unit cell height on AR.

Fig. 3. (Color online) Effect of (a) strip thickness and (b) metallic patches size on AR.

Unit cell width and height play a very important role, because small changes on
these parameters will cause fundamental changes at the operating frequency range
and axial ratio of MS converter as shown in Fig. 2. As the dimension of unit cell
width (x) increases, the frequency at which the AR approaches zero shifts downward

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and the bandwidth increases. In this case, the axial ratio deteriorates quickly but
it is still smaller than 2 dB for 16.224 mm. On the other hand, as the dimension of
unit cell width (x) decreases, the frequency at which the AR approaches zero shifts
upward and the bandwidth decreases. The AR bandwidth (ARBW) of the proposed
MS is shown in Fig. 2(a). In the case when the parametric changes on dimension
of unit cell height (y) create a backing action on AR and on ARBW in reference
to unit cell width as shown in Fig. 2(b). In addition, the effect of unit cell width is
greater than the unit cell height on ARBW due to the fact that E-field component
is in the horizontal direction in cross-polar form. After all, the best values of x and
y are determined as 15.824 mm and 16.460 mm, respectively.
The effects of strip thickness (w) and metallic patch size (gp) on AR are also
by UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND on 09/15/17. For personal use only.

examined carefully and plotted in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b), and the best numerical
values of w and gp are obtained as 0.96 mm and 1.523 mm, respectively. When
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both size increase or decrease gradually, no notable change is observed on AR

and ARBW. The AR tends to shift upward when the dimension of strip thickness
increases, while the bandwidth remains approximately constant. Apart from these,
dimensional changes of these two parameters play an important role at operating
frequency. Changing the dimensions of the structure causes the resonance frequency
to be shifted which makes it possible to adjust the model in any desired frequency
range in which we want to use linear to circular polarization rotation. Thus, the
dimension of strip thickness or metallic patch size of MS structure can be resized
for many desirable application areas.
When the simulation results are examined, there are two dip points at about the
frequencies of 4.80 GHz and 5.40 GHz. It means that the proposed MS has a very
good polarization conversion activity between these frequencies. In addition, the
frequency band at which AR < 3 dB is about 1 between 4.50 GHz and 5.50 GHz.
The electric field distributions of the MS polarization converter are determined
by different incident angles as shown in Fig. 4. At 0◦ and 180◦ phase angles, incident
electric field pointing in the vertical direction creates a strong electric field in the
horizontal gaps of MS unit cell. This situation is caused by the cross-polar form of
antennas. It demonstrates that the MS provides conversion of vertical E-field into
horizontal E-field. Oppositely, at 90◦ and 270◦ phase angles, horizontal incident
E-fields are emitted from vertical gaps of MS unit cell due to the co-polar form of
antennas. Therefore, the circularly polarized signals arise from the signals linearly
polarized both vertically and horizontally which are emitted between horizontal
and vertical gaps of MS structures, respectively.
The simulated reflection phase of the proposed MS is also investigated as shown
in Fig. 5. The reflection phase of MS is between −380◦ and −320◦ for the effective
axial ratio in the frequency range 4.80–5.40 GHz (as shown in Fig. 3). This reflection
phase range can be converted as 20◦ to −40◦ with respect to −360◦ . In that case,
the reflection phase is around 0◦ . Hence, it can be concluded that, the proposed
structure is a real type of MS. Beside this, the suggested MS can be applied as
artificially designed perfect magnetic conductor surface. In addition, the structure

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 Design of a wide band MS as a linear to circular polarization converter
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Fig. 4. (Color online) E-field distribution of the proposed MS structure (a) 0◦ , (b) 90◦ , (c) 180◦
and (d) 270◦ .

Fig. 5. (Color online) Simulated reflection phase and magnitude graph of the proposed MS
converter.

cannot only be used as a polarization converter, it can also be used for a low profile
antenna design.

4. Experimental Study of MS
The experimental performance of the proposed MS polarization converter is also
examined by using a periodic array consisting of 8 × 8 unit cells. The MS sample
shown in Fig. 6(a) is fabricated by using LPKF E33 Protomat PCB plotter. The

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(a) (b)
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Fig. 6. (a) Fabricated MS structure sample and (b) experimental setup.

experimental setup consisting of Rohde and Schwarz ZVL vector network analyzer
(VNA) and two microwave horn antennas is shown in Fig. 6(b). In order to obtain
accurate measurement, MS should be placed in the far field region. It is known that
far field radial distance can be calculated by using the largest antenna dimension
and the working frequency. In our case, the largest antenna dimeter is 8 mm and
the maximum working frequency for our model is about 5.50 GHz. There is a direct
relationship between the frequency and the minimum radial distance for the far field,
thus the maximum frequency point should be taken into account for calculating the
distance between the antenna and the MS structure. Far field can be calculated as
FarField ≥ 2D2 /λ where D is the largest antenna diameter and λ is the wavelength.
From the formula, far field region starts after 23.46 mm. That is why the distance
between the MS and the antenna is chosen as 24 mm which is plenty enough to work
in the far field region. Before the measurements, VNA is calibrated by using free
space measurement without MS structure. The S-parameters are then measured for
co-polar and cross-polar responses of the horn antennas. If the orientations of both
antennas are in the same direction, co-polar response will be measured. However,
if one antenna is kept constant while the other is rotated 90◦ , cross-polar response
will be measured. The magnitude of the transmission for co-polar and cross-polar
responses are calculated by using Eq. (3) and plotted as a function of frequency
as shown in Figs. 7(a) and 7(b). Then, AR is calculated by dividing cross-polar
measurement by co-polar measurement using Eq. (2).
Numerical and experimental results related with transmission magnitude are
compared with each other in 4.50 GHz and 5.50 GHz frequency range for co-polar
and cross-polar responses. Figures 7(a) and 7(b) show the comparison results corre-
sponding to co-polar and cross-polar responses, respectively. As shown in Fig. 7(a),
the simulation results are in a very good agreement with the measured results for co-
polar response. The value of the transmission is about 0.5 at 4.70 GHz and 5.35 GHz.
On the other hand, a shift resulting from manufacturing and measurement

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Fig. 7. Comparison of measurement and simulation results (a) co-polar transmission, (b) cross-
polar transmission and (c) AR.

errors is observed between the measurement and simulation results. However, the
simulation results still agree well with the measured results for cross-polar response
at 4.75 GHz and 5.45 GHz frequency range and the value of transmission is about
0.5. The comparison of the measurement and simulation results of the AR (dB) can
also be seen in Fig. 7(c). The measured values of AR have two dip points showing
perfect AR at around 4.70 GHz and 4.80 GHz and between these two frequencies
AR < 3 dB. The ARBW is approximately 800 MHz from 4.60 GHz to 5.40 GHz
and AR is less than 3 dB. It means that the proposed MS structure efficiently
converts linearly polarized signals into circularly polarized signals within this fre-
quency range. According to the measurement/simulation results and the similarity

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Fig. 8. Relation between linearly polarized and circularly polarized transmission coefficients for
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the linearly polarized incident wave.

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between them, the proposed MS structure has high transmission efficiency up to

75% in the frequency range 4.50–5.50 GHz. This efficiency can be evaluated by
the ratio between total transmission and input power. As mentioned before, MS
structures are efficient in case of AR under 3 dB. Both results demonstrate that
the proposed MS-based polarization converter can convert each of x- or y-polarized
wave to circularly polarized wave in the frequency band of 4.50–5.50 GHz with a
conversion efficiency up to 75%.
The total transmission efficiency is also as important as AR. Hence, the co-
polar (Tx ) and cross-polar transmission (Ty ) values are compared with transmitted
circularly polarized transmitted wave (Fig. 8). As can be concluded from Fig. 8,
the linear to CP transmitted wave ratio is quietly high in the frequency range. The
circular polarization transmission value is obtained from the equation of
TCP = Tx ± iTy . (4)
The polarization conversion activity is observed in operating frequency range or
ARBW as illustrated in Fig. 8.

5. Conclusion
In this study, a wide band MS polarization converter is designed and analyzed
to transform linearly polarized signals into right-handed or left-handed circularly
polarized signals both numerically and experimentally. Simulated and measured
results are compared with each other and the results are shown to be in a good
agreement. A perfect AR value is obtained according to the results of numerical
study at 4.80 GHz and 5.40 GHz and the ARBW is approximately 1 GHz. On
the other hand, according to the results of measurement, the ARBW is approxi-
mately 800 MHz. The differences between the numerical and experimental results
come from the measurement errors and manufacturing defects. Since circularly po-
larized signals are not affected directly from weather conditions, the proposed MS
can be used efficiently in many application areas, such as weather radars, some

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 Design of a wide band MS as a linear to circular polarization converter

communication radars and airport surveillance radars, etc. The simulated and mea-
sured AR values are less than 3 dB between the frequency range 4.6–5.4 GHz and
4.5–5.5 GHz, respectively. The AR values below 3 dB are sufficient for high polariza-
tion conversion between linear to circular polarizations. 3 dB AR value denotes 50%
incident wave power stay with same polarization direction and remain part (50%)
is transformed to equivalent perpendicular component with respect to linearly po-
larized incident wave. Hence, the incident power is divided equal and perpendicular
components. So the performance of the proposed structure is sufficiently high in the
mentioned frequency range. In addition, The MS structure can be easily fabricated
and integrated with other systems. It is also possible to convert statically designed
configuration to reconfigurable device format by connecting lumped elements to
by UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND on 09/15/17. For personal use only.

proper place on the structure for many desired applications and frequency range.
As a conclusion, the novelty of the study is to present a wide bandwidth MS in
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WiMAX frequency range to convert linear signal to circular one with 0.75 trans-
mission efficiency, to have potential as a PMC surface which can be easily adapted
to basic antennas with nearly unity reflection at some frequency point. It can also
be used to design low profile antennas.

Acknowledgment
We would like to thank the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey
(TUBITAK 114E295) for the financial support.

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