A compact single‐layer reflective metasurface for high‐efficiency polarisation conversion applications in C and X bands

The authors design and experimentally analyse an anisotropic metasurface for the simultaneous conversions of linear cross and circular polarisations in the C and partial X bands. The proposed compact structure utilises a dual‐cut square‐ring resonator and a square patch on an FR4 substrate above a ground plane. The full‐wave simulations exhibit over 92% efficiency in cross‐conversion over a fractional bandwidth (BW) of 52.3%. The proposed metasurface efficiently converts linear to circular polarisation in two different bands, achieving left‐hand circularly polarised and right‐hand circularly polarised efficiencies exceeding 93% and 89%, respectively. The compact unit‐cell with dimension 0.22λ × 0.22λ attains stable polarisation transformation efficiency rates exceeding 80% up to 40° incident angles. The design is adaptable for efficient wide BW across both lower and higher (millimetre‐wave) frequencies through scaling. A prototype of the proposed polarisation converter (PC) was realised and validated effectively in measurements, aligning well with simulations. This PC features a novel and simple structure with multifunctional wideband operation, stable incident angle output, polarisation insensitivity, and scalability, making it an efficient front‐end for various radio frequency applications, including polarisation control and polarisation transformers.