Rotationally Tunable Frequency Selective Surfaces for Large Areas via Linkage Mechanisms
Journal
2017 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation & USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting
Date Issued
2017
Author(s)
Yih-Dar Chen
Abstract
In the past decades, frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) have been widely used for providing desired frequency responses in microwave and optical frequencies. Various tuning techniques have been investigated to switch or continuously tune the frequency responses based on the needs in certain circumstances. However, it's still challenging to alter each unit of the FSS synchronously which results in slight differences in terms of phase and magnitude of the frequency response of each unit. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop a large-area mechanically tunable FSS by uniformly controlling the frequency response of each unit cell. In this research, we propose a rocker-linkage based rotational FSS and its frequency response can be tuned synchronously. Each unit cell is composed of a square loop and several of them are attached to a rotating cylindrical connecting link in a row. They are connected by rocker linkages forming the whole structure. By actuating the driving link via a linear actuator or motor, each unit cell rotates synchronously and changes its frequency response simultaneously. A prototype with a dimension of 14 by 14 unit cells was designed, fabricated, and examined with field tests. It was demonstrated that the resonant frequency of the stop-band shifted to the high frequency with a maximum value of 0.9 GHz (14% in terms of fractional bandwidth). Since the proposed linkage-based rotational FSSs do not require any electronic components, it has a higher microwave-power-handling capability compared to the commonly-used electronic tunable FSSs.
SDGs
Description
UCSD, USA
Type
conference paper