High-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface
Technical Field
The invention relates to the technical field of artificial electromagnetic materials, in particular to a high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface.
Background
The novel artificial electromagnetic surface, also known as a super surface, can control the parameters of amplitude, phase, polarization, wave beam, orbital angular momentum and the like of electromagnetic waves by designing the unit characteristics and spatial arrangement of the surface, realizes the functions of deflection, focusing, wave absorption and the like of electromagnetic energy, and can be used in the fields of antennas, imaging and the like. By introducing an adjustable technology, an adjustable super surface capable of controlling various parameters of electromagnetic waves in real time can be designed. The control signal of the traditional adjustable super surface is static or is changed at a very low frequency, so that the adjustable super surface is a linear device and can only adjust and control some linear characteristics of electromagnetic waves, such as amplitude, phase, polarization and the like.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to provide a high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface which can efficiently convert the frequency of an electromagnetic wave in a free space.
To solve the above technical problem, the present invention provides a high efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface, comprising: the n basic units are arranged periodically and controlled by the signal generated by the same control circuit.
Preferably, the basic unit comprises a top layer structure, a dielectric substrate and a bottom layer structure; the top layer structure comprises metal patterns, a variable capacitance diode, a patch capacitor and a feed grid, wherein the variable capacitance diode and the patch capacitor are respectively bridged between different metal patterns, and the feed grid is connected to one side of the metal patterns and used for loading control signals to two ends of the variable capacitance diode; the bottom layer structure comprises a metal back plate; the three-layer structure is connected through a plurality of rows of metal through holes.
Preferably, the analog voltage generated by the control circuit is loaded to two ends of a varactor on the basic unit through a feed network, so as to change the equivalent capacitance of the varactor, and further change the electromagnetic characteristics of the unit, specifically, at a specified frequency point, the backward reflection phase of the electromagnetic wave changes by more than 2.5 pi, and the reflection amplitude fluctuation is less than 3.5 dB.
Preferably, when the time domain super surface is irradiated by the electromagnetic wave, the reflection characteristic of the time domain super surface is dynamically changed at a high speed, so that the electromagnetic wave generates a new frequency component, and a control waveform which enables the reflection phase of the super surface to be continuously and linearly changed is designed by measuring the mapping relation between the control voltage and the reflection phase and amplitude of the super surface, so that the energy ratio of the electromagnetic wave at a certain new frequency is greatly improved, and the high-efficiency frequency conversion is realized.
The invention has the beneficial effects that: (1) the invention has simple principle, and can realize the frequency conversion of the electromagnetic waves only by changing the frequency and the waveform of the control signal; (2) the invention uses a plurality of basic units to form an array, and is controlled by the same signal, thereby reducing the interference to the unit reflection coefficient caused by different boundaries, and simultaneously reducing the design complexity of a feed network; (3) compared with the traditional design, the basic unit of the invention has the characteristics of large phase shift range, low transmission loss and the like, thereby having ultrahigh conversion efficiency and excellent interference harmonic suppression capability.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a time domain super surface of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the calculation results of the harmonic waves of each order of the reflected wave under the condition of different slopes p of the time domain super-surface reflection coefficient phase waveform of the present invention.
FIG. 3(a) is a schematic diagram of the basic unit of the time domain super surface of the present invention.
FIG. 3(b) is a schematic diagram of the basic unit of the time domain super surface of the present invention.
FIG. 3(c) is a diagram showing simulation results of the variation of the reflection coefficient amplitude of the time domain super-surface elementary unit with the control voltage.
FIG. 3(d) is a diagram illustrating simulation results of phase variation of reflection coefficients of the time domain super-surface basic unit with control voltage according to the present invention.
FIG. 4(a) is a time domain super-surface object diagram of the present invention.
FIG. 4(b) is a schematic diagram of the results of the amplitude and phase test of the reflection coefficient of the time domain super-surface under different control voltages.
Fig. 4(c) is a schematic diagram of the amplitude normalization result of the measured reflected wave +1 order harmonic when the time domain super surface of the present invention is loaded with control signals corresponding to different slopes p and fixed periods.
FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating the spectrum distribution of reflected waves in different control signal periods T when the phase change slope p of the reflection coefficient is fixed for the time domain super surface of the present invention.
Detailed Description
As shown in figure 1, the high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface is formed by periodically arranging the same basic units, and a plurality of basic units form an array through a feed network, which is similar to a plane reflection array. The reflection coefficient can be regulated and controlled in real time through an external control signal. Therefore, when the super surface is irradiated by the electromagnetic wave, real-time control of each characteristic parameter of the reflected wave can be realized.
The principle of the invention lies in that the phase of the reflection coefficient of the basic unit is changed in a linear cycle with a certain slope by using an external control signal, and the cycle is T. At this time, when the incident electromagnetic wave has a single tone frequency fcDuring the process, the electromagnetic wave reflected by the super surface is changed into a mixing signal with the frequency of the incident wave as the center and the reciprocal of the period of the control signal as the interval of the harmonic frequency. Under the condition of different slopes p, the calculation result of the amplitude-phase distribution of each order of harmonic wave of the reflected wave is shown in fig. 2, and it can be seen from the result that when p is 2k pi/T, only the k-th order harmonic wave will exist in the reflected wave, and the frequency is fc+ k/T, conversion efficiency 100%. According to the principle, the invention can realize the frequency fcIs converted into a frequency fcAnd the electromagnetic wave of + k/T, and the energy utilization efficiency is as high as 100%.
In order to realize high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion, the time domain super-surface basic unit is required to have the characteristics of low loss and full phase coverage of reflection coefficient. The basic unit structure designed by the invention is shown in fig. 3(a) and 3(b), and is mainly divided into three layers: upper surface structure, medium base plate and lower surface structure. The upper surface structure consists of a plurality of metal rectangular strips with different thicknesses and a variable capacitance diode/patch capacitor connected in bridge; the intermediate medium substrate is made of F4B and has a thickness of 5 mm; the lower surface structure is a whole metal back plate. In addition, each basic unit also comprises two rows of metal through holes penetrating through the upper surface and the lower surface. By optimizing the period of the basic unit, the size of the metal rectangular strip and the thickness of the medium, the basic unit finally satisfies the low loss characteristic in amplitude and has a large phase variation range in a specified frequency band, and the result is shown in fig. 3(c) and 3 (d): FIG. 3(c) is a graph of simulation results of unit reflection amplitude varying with control voltage; FIG. 3(d) is a graph showing the simulation result of the cell reflection phase varying with the control voltage. From whichIt can be seen that at 4.25GHz, the fundamental cell reflection amplitude fluctuates within 3dB, and the reflection phase varies by more than 2.78 pi. The final optimized basic unit size is: px=24mm,Py=12mm,H=5mm,N=6.9mm,L=5.6mm,g=0.7mm,d=1.2mm,t=1.5mm,Φ=0.4mm。
Fig. 4(a) is a diagram showing a high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface object proposed by the present invention, and the diagram further includes a feed horn antenna and a bracket. The invention contains 8 × 16 basic units and can be controlled by the same control signal. In the present invention, the basic cell reflection coefficient needs to be changed by controlling the voltage, and thus the reflection phase
Corresponding to the control voltage V. When incident wave f
cThe results of the amplitude and phase test of the reflection coefficient under different control voltages V are shown in fig. 4(b) when the time domain super-surface is normally incident at 4.25GHz, and it can be seen from the results that, in the process of the control voltages from 0V to 21V, the reflection amplitude of the super-surface basic unit fluctuates less than 3.5dB, and the phase varies over 2.5 pi.
From the result of fig. 4(b), the control signal waveform required for linearly changing the phase of the reflection coefficient of the basic unit can be reversely deduced. When the period T of the control signal is 10 μ s, the control signals corresponding to different slopes p are applied to the super-surface, and the amplitude of the +1 th harmonic of the reflected wave is measured, the normalization result is shown in fig. 4(c), and the dotted line in the graph is the simulation calculation result. It can be seen that when the slope p is 2 pi/T, the amplitude of the +1 th harmonic of the reflected wave will reach a maximum of 0.9424, i.e., 88.81% energy conversion efficiency.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the spectrum distribution of the reflected wave in different periods T of the control signal when the phase change slope p of the super-surface reflection coefficient is fixed. When the conversion frequency is +1 order harmonic, p is 2 pi/T; when the conversion frequency is-1 order harmonic, p is-2 pi/T. The results of the frequency conversion efficiency and the maximum interference harmonic rejection ratio for different control signal periods T are summarized in table 1. The result shows that the invention not only has high conversion efficiency for the frequency conversion of the electromagnetic wave, but also has excellent interference harmonic suppression capability.
TABLE 1 frequency conversion efficiency and maximum interference harmonic rejection ratio of time domain super surface under different control signal periods T
General results table
The electromagnetic wave frequency conversion by the invention can be divided into four steps:
(1) determining the required switching frequency f1With operating frequency fcDifference δ f ═ f1-fc;
(2) Taking the reciprocal of the frequency difference mode as a control signal period T which is 1/mod (delta f);
(3) when f is1<fcIf so, taking the slope p as-2 pi/T, and otherwise, taking the slope p as 2 pi/T;
(4) and loading a control signal generated by the control circuit to the time domain super surface to complete the frequency conversion of the electromagnetic wave.
According to the invention, the control signal of the super-surface is dynamically changed at a high speed, and an additional degree of freedom is provided in the time dimension, so that the time domain super-surface becomes a nonlinear device on the premise of not using a nonlinear material, and electromagnetic waves can generate new frequency components, thereby realizing high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion.
The high-efficiency electromagnetic wave frequency conversion time domain super surface provided by the invention enables the super surface to have a reflection coefficient with linear phase change by utilizing a control signal, and realizes high-efficiency frequency conversion and excellent interference harmonic suppression. The invention has simple principle, low cost and easy realization, which has great application value in the fields of communication, stealth and imaging.