Broadband Polarization-Insensitive Tunable Frequency Selective Surface for Wideband Shielding

In this paper, a low-profile broadband frequency selective surface (FSS) is presented for wideband shielding. The FSS consists of periodic patterns of circular loops connected among themselves through varactor diodes, which exhibit tunable operation. The novelty of the proposed design lies in its wideband tuning, where the bandstop response can be varied from 0.54 to 2.50 GHz under the reverse bias voltage, thereby exhibiting a tunable range of 363%. Moreover, the structure exhibits a wide 1.28 GHz stopband (fractional bandwidth of 152%), which is maximum as compared to other wideband FSSs. Additionally, the design is polarization-insensitive and angularly stable for both TE and TM polarizations. A prototype of the proposed structure has been fabricated where the varactor diodes are biased through a novel biasing technique. The sample is measured using parallel-plate waveguide setup as well as the free-space technique, where the measured results show good agreement with the simulated responses.