Design and Practical Implementation of a Metasurface‐based Bow‐Tie Antenna with Resonance Frequency Memory Effect

Abstract Metasurfaces, with their unique unit cell structures and flexible arrangements, exhibit excellent capabilities in regulating the characteristics of electromagnetic waves. A metasurface structure featuring a bow‐tie arrangement of unit cells is proposed. When the number of unit cells in a 5 × 5 array is reduced from 25 to 11 (a 56% reduction), the original surface wave resonance frequency stays unchanged, and an extra resonance frequency for a 3 × 3 array emerges, defined as the surface wave memory effect. This effect offers a new way for broadband antenna design. Using this effect, the proposed metasurface can generate two surface wave resonance frequencies, which significantly increases the impedance and axial ratio bandwidths of the antenna. A polarization reconfigurable radiation source is designed for the proposed metasurface. The antenna has dimensions of 44 × 44 × 3.048 mm, with a unit cell size of 8.8 × 8.8 mm. A prototype is fabricated and measured to verify the design. The results show that the antenna achieves an overlap bandwidth of 28.1% between the −10 dB impedance and 3‐dB axial ratio in left‐hand circular polarization mode, while in right‐hand circular polarization mode, the overlap bandwidth reaches 30.5%. Within the operating frequency range, the gain exceeds 7 dBi, peaking at 8.1 dBi at 5.4 GHz.