Dynamic control of reflection from a metasurface with distinct modulating mechanisms

Abstract

Dynamic control of the reflection from an object is much of importance in microwave engineering. In the past the tunable absorbers are usually employed to realize this goal and have been widely discussed. In this work, we propose a metasurface to offer a more flexible solution to dynamically control the reflection property. The proposed metasurface can be independently modulated by three distinct physical mechanisms. Apart from the absorption mechanism as the conventional tunable absorbers, the reflectivity of the proposed metasurface can be dynamically controlled by modulating the phase distribution profiles in the space as well as the time domains. Such flexibly dynamic reflection controlling ability is demonstrated by a series of experimental measurements. Results indicate that the tuning level of the reflectivity is more than 10 dB in a broad frequency band for the three distinct mechanisms. The proposal may find promising application in various fields, such as wireless communications and the stealth technology.