Multifunctional Spoof Plasmonic Transmission Line with Dynamically Switchable Modes

Abstract

A multifunctional transmission line (TL) based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) is proposed for dynamical switching features among bandpass, band‐stop, and dual‐band phase shifting functionalities. Different operating modes can be controlled in real‐time by changing the states of the Positive Intrinsic Negative (PIN) diodes synchronously. The dispersion properties of the spoof plasmonic unit cell and transmission characteristics of the tunable PIN‐diodes‐loaded spoof plasmonic TL are investigated to highlight the basic theory and method. A prototype of the proposed TL composed of five cascaded unit cells is fabricated and tested for proof‐of‐concept validation. In the ON state of the PIN diodes, the measured −3 dB transmission frequency bandwidth ranges from 3 to 8.1 GHz for the bandpass characteristic. In the OFF state, the measured −10 dB rejection band spans from 3.7 to 5.6 GHz for the bandstop characteristic. When the diodes are switched between ON and OFF states, the measured dual‐band phase shifts vary from 192° to 203° and 248° to 292° in the 3.1–3.4 GHz and 6.1–9.4 GHz frequency bands, respectively. The validated switchable features of the TL pave the way for applications of tunable SSPPs in large‐scale integrated circuits and smart wireless communication systems.