An Active Metasurface Cloak to Control the Scattering of a Conductive 3D Cylindrical Target

Abstract

This work details the initial design of an active scattering cancellation cloak designed to hide a 3D target. Such a development is important, from a practical sense, as this method of electromagnetic cloaking has only been validated on either 2D or quasi-2D objects. The presented device is composed of an array of whip dipoles enveloping a 3D, conductive, cylindrical target. By configuring the input weights of these antennas, the array can radiate a field capable of cancelling any scattering which would arise when the target is illuminated by impinging electromagnetic waves. Initial performance evaluation is conducted in which the cloak is used to reduce the scattering of the target/cloak assembly when illuminated by a ridged horn antenna at 1.2 GHz. Overall, cloaking is found to be successfully achieved almost over the entire scan range with the greatest scattering suppression occurring within the shadow region formed behind the target.