Reconfigurable Waveguides Using Glide-Symmetric Bed of Nails: Design of an All-Metal Switch at Millimetre-Wave Band

A reconfigurable millimeter-wave artificial waveguide using glide-symmetric pin-like contact-less metasurfaces is proposed in order to enable low loss and high-power-handling capability in switching operations. Thanks to the remarkable behaviour of glide symmetry, the meta-structures are used both as wide-band EBG material to confine the field in the guide and as low-dispersive guiding medium filling the guide itself. The reconfigurability is achieved by adjusting the displacement between the metasurfaces. A higher displacement enables propagation within the waveguide and a lower displacement suppresses it. A two-state reconfigurability is therefore designed, allowing the device to act as an on-off switch in the V-band. In particular, a dispersion analysis highlights the potential of such technology to achieve switching operating over a 55-66 GHz frequency range. A complete design including matching mechanism and WR15 feeding is also described and shown to exhibit a $S_{11}