Design of a wideband and reconfigurable polarization converter using a manipulable metasurface

In this paper, a wideband and reconfigurable polarization converter (RPC) is proposed and realized that combines the concept of a polarization converter with micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) techniques. The unit cell of the proposed RPC consists of an L-shaped metallic patch printed on a metal-backed substrate and a metallic via. A MEMS switch is integrated in the surface of the cell. By controlling the working state of the switch, the polarization of the reflected wave can be manipulated dynamically. The experimental and measured results show that, when the switch is ON, it could rotate the linear polarized (LP) incident wave to its orthogonal polarization after reflection from 7.93 GHz to 12.42 GHz. While when the switch is OFF, it could rotate the LP wave to reflected circular polarization wave from 8.07 GHz to 10.77 GHz. The proposed RPC only use one switch each unit but realize double important performance, which may have potential applications for polarization controllable devices.