Nonreciprocal transmission enabled by time modulation of penetrable metasurface assisted by surface waves

Abstract

This study introduces a novel approach to achieving nonreciprocal transmission by implementing time modulation to the bianisotropic metasurface. For the first time, we present the analytical solution of the excitation of anti-symmetric surface waves on penetrable metasurfaces depending on the excitation direction. Exploiting this finding, we numerically demonstrate asymmetric control of the transmission coefficient under a fast-time scale by employing solely time modulation. This approach lowers the complexity of the modulation scheme and implementation encountered in the space-time modulation technique. We develop and simulate a 3D unit cell model in the microwave domain, which forms a surface cavity that incorporates time-varying capacitors. The impedance transfer matrix method and harmonic balance numerical solutions are applied to the retrieved equivalent circuit for the numerical simulations. The results reveal optimized phase-coherent and incoherent nonreciprocal transmission at the significant isolation level ( >= 40 dB) for forward and backward transmissions. We discuss the consistency and discrepancies between numerical methods and consider the impact of the losses and nonlinearity on the metastructure performance. (c) 2024 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license