Design and implementation of multi-band reflectarray metasurface for 5G millimeter wave coverage enhancement

Abstract

A compact low-profile multi-band millimeter-wave (mm-wave) reflectarray metasurface design is presented for coverage enhancement in 5G and beyond cellular communication. The proposed single-layer metasurface exhibits a stable reflection response under oblique incidence angles of up to 60 $_{}^{\circ }$ at 24 and 38 GHz, and transmission response at 30 GHz, effectively covering the desired 5G mm-wave frequency bands. The proposed reflectarray metasurface is polarization insensitive and performs equally well under TE and TM polarized incident waves due to the symmetric pattern. In addition, the low profile of the proposed metasurface makes it appropriate for conformal applications. In comparison to the state-of-the-art, the proposed reflectarray metasurface unit cell design is not only compact (3.3 $\times$ 3.3 mm $_{}^2$ ) but also offers two reflections and one transmission band based on a single-layer structure. It is easy to reconfigure the proposed metasurface unit cell for any other frequency band by adjusting a few design parameters. To validate the concept of coverage enhancement, a 32 $\times$ x32 unit-cell prototype of the proposed reflectarray metasurface is fabricated and measured under different scenarios. The experimental results demonstrate that a promising signal enhancement of 20-25 dB is obtained over the entire 5G mm-wave n258, n259, and n260 frequency bands. The proposed reflectarray metasurface has a high potential for application in mm-wave 5G networks to improve coverage in dead zones or to overcome obstacles that prevent direct communication linkages.

Keywords: 5G; Coverage enhancement; Intelligent reflecting surface; Millimeter-wave; Reflectarray metasurface.