Advances on multi-scale MbD synthesis of WAIMs for advanced phased arrays

The most recent advances on the synthesis of wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM) devices for next-generation phased arrays are discussed. Towards this end, the WAIM design problem is formulated within the Material-by-Design (MbD) framework with the objective of minimizing the antenna input reflections caused by mutual coupling (MC) effects arising at the antenna aperture when steering the main beam in a wide angular region. Accordingly, the degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) are represented by the constituent materials of the synthesized structure and/or the micro-scale geometrical descriptors of the considered unit cells. Selected illustrative results will be shown in order to assess the effectiveness and the potentialities of leading-edge MbD solutions for the design of reliable and easy-to-implement WAIMs.