A Reflected Phase-Regulated Metasurface Assisted by a Position-Aware Transformer Network

This article proposes a novel reflected phase-regulated metasurface (RPMS) integrated with a position-aware encoder-only transformer (PEformer). The RPMS employs geometrically tunable stub-loaded reflector units to control the phase of reflected wave without altering its amplitude. This facilitates the effective coupling suppression under stringent height constraints while preserving the matching condition. The operating principle of RPMS is elucidated through the theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. In parallel, the PEformer leverages the position attention and multihead self-attention (MHSA) mechanisms to effectively capture structural correlations and accurately predict optimal design parameters from target electromagnetic (EM) responses. To validate the proposed approach, a compact wideband stacked patch antenna prototype with only 2-mm edge-to-edge spacing is selected as a verification case and fabricated. Measurement results demonstrate that the RPMS achieves up to 29 dB of isolation improvement and a 17% decoupling bandwidth, with negligible degradation in the impedance matching, gain, and radiation patterns. Additional performance metrics, including envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), and total active reflection coefficient (TARC), confirm the enhanced diversity performance and minimal efficiency loss. Combining clear physical insights with a simple and scalable optimization framework, the proposed RPMS offers a promising pathway for implementing broadband, low-profile coupling suppression not only in antenna systems but also in a broad range of densely integrated microwave devices.

Duke Scholars

Author William T. Joines Pierre R. Lamond Department of Electrical and Computer Engin ...