Conformal Programmable Metasurface With Amplitude and Phase Control for Dynamic RCS Reduction

A conformal programmable metasurface (CPM) is presented for dynamic broadband RCS reduction based on the absorption and phase cancellation. By regulating the states of the PIN diode, the CPM unit achieves a reflection phase difference of 180°±37° from 5.6 GHz to 13.2 GHz. The design enables independent control of absorptivity, as well as simultaneous regulation of absorption rate and phase. For demonstration, a 20×20 CPM array was fabricated, and six coding states were experimentally measured. Simulation and experiment results confirm a significant reduction of scattering. By switching coding sequences, including absorption encoding and five phase-encodings, the CPM achieves RCS reduction of at least 10 dB from 5.85 GHz to 13.2 GHz, corresponding to a relative bandwidth of 77.1%. The CPM device was fabricated using flexible PCB technology. The CPM can conform to cylindrical surfaces with large radii of curvature, offering an active dynamic stealth solution with multiple coding states for complex application scenarios in future distributed radar systems.