Metasurfing: Addressing waves on metasurfaces for realizing antennas and microwave devices

Metasurfaces constitute a class of thin metamaterials, which are used from microwave to optical regime to improve the performance of antennas, microwave, and optical devices. Here we propose the use of variable-impedance metasurfaces for transforming surface or guided waves into a different configuration of wavefield with desired properties. We will shortly refer to this metasurface-driven wavefield transformation as “Metasurfing”. Metasurfing can be obtained by an appropriate synthesis of spatially inhomogeneous (maybe anisotropic) surface impedance that allows a local modification of the dispersion equation and (at constant operating frequency) of the local wavevector. The general effect of a metasurface modulation can be very similar to those obtained in solid (volumetric) inhomogeneous metamaterial as predicted by the Transformation Optics, namely to re-addressing the propagation path of an incident wave; however, significant technological simplicity is gained.