2021 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques in Wireless Communications (MTTW)
Design of a Frequency Selective Surface Based on a
Notched Semi-Overlapped Square patches
Mert KARAHAN
Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Gazi University
Maltepe, Ankara, Turkey
mertkarahan@outlook.com
Abstract— In this study, a square fractal frequency selective
surface with a single-band bandstop filter feature is presented.
The proposed structure is formed by placing conductive squares
on the surface of the dielectric substrate symmetrically in four
directions in the form of X. The semi-overlapping and notch
method is used on the conductors’ sides to reduce the resonance
frequency of the structure. The performance of the design is
simulated using CST Microwave Studio in terms of resonance
frequency reduction and angular stability. The proposed FSS
has stable performance as a band-stop filter at oblique angle
variations between 0˚ to 75˚ in the TE- and TM-mode in the
operating frequency range of 10 to 12 GHz.
Keywords— frequency selective surface; angular stability,
oblique incidence; band-stop filter
I. INTRODUCTION
Frequency selective surfaces (FSS) are also generally
defined as periodic structures consisting of conductive patches
or aperture elements designed to reflect, transmit or absorb
EM waves [1]. The frequency response of the FSS varies
depending on the material structure, shape, and design of the
unit element that forms the FSS. When the frequency of the
incident plane wave and the resonant frequency of the FSS
structure match, all or part of the incident wave is transmitted
to the other side of the surface or reflected from the surface.
Therefore, FSSs are described as the best spatial filters that
can transmit or stop electromagnetic (EM) waves at specific
incident angles, polarization types, and/or frequencies [2].
Particularly due to their great potential for military
applications studies on frequency selective surfaces, whose
development ranges from simple geometries to complex
designs, have increased extensively in recent years. From past
to present FSSs are used in many useful and different
applications in a wide range from telecommunication systems
to optical systems. In the microwave and optical frequency
regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, applications such as
antennas, radomes, microwave ovens, radio-frequency
identification (RFID) systems, radio frequency absorbers,
electromagnetic (EM) shielding systems against wireless
communication systems, and metamaterials are among the
most important uses of FSS. [3]. In the light of current
developments and studies, many progressive and future-
oriented pieces of research about FSSs are ongoing.
In recent years, it has been understood that the use of
limited frequency bands with various communication
/modulation techniques to ensure uninterrupted voice and data
communication cannot prevent electromagnetic interference.
This situation increases the importance of electromagnetic
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Ertugrul AKSOY
Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering, Gazi University
Maltepe, Ankara, Turkey
ertugrulaksoy@gazi.edu.tr
shielding (EMS). EMS can be called EM isolation of a system
with a certain method in order to reduce the effect of unwanted
EM waves. The method used in EMS is directly related to the
function of the electronic system to be protected. If the system
does not need a wireless connection with the outside world
and needs to be completely isolated from EM waves coming
from outside, conductive materials such as metal will provide
protection to these systems in the Faraday Cage principle due
to their high reflectivity. However, when there is a need for
both EM shielding and wireless communication in a certain
frequency range, the use of frequency absorber or selective
materials for EMS comes to the fore. One of the methods
(materials) used for this situation is Frequency Selective
Surfaces (FSS) [2].
The issue of reducing the dimension of an electronic
system or improving its performance without changing its
dimensions has always been popular. It is important to ensure
this situation without deteriorating the angular stability in
FSSs. Some of the methods used in the literature for
miniaturization or reducing the resonance frequency are as
follows; convoluted loop elements [4, 5], array elements with
interwoven geometry [6, 7], meandered elements [8, 9],
Fractal based elements [10, 11], 2.5 dimensional elements
[12]–[14], using resonant surfaces coupled by a nonresonant
inductive layer [15]. In almost all of these methods, the length
of the conductive FSS element has been tried to be increased
in order to reduce the resonance frequency and/or
miniaturization.
In this paper, a frequency selective surface based on a
notched semi-overlapped square patches has been presented.
The conductive square elements are placed on the dielectric
substrate material in an X-shape symmetrical form in four
directions. The designed FSS resonates at 11.1 GHz in TE-
and TM-modes for an incoming wave at normal incidence
angle (θ=0˚). The bandwidth of the structure is 3.83 GHz and
the resonance depth is -48.6 dB. To reduce the resonance
frequency without changing the dimension of the structure,
the conductive elements are partially placed on top of each
other, and notches are made on the sides of the conductive
elements. While the resonance frequency of the proposed FSS
structure is reduced, it remains angularly stable up to 75˚
incidence angle for both TE- and TM- modes.
Moreover, the organization of the study is as follows: In
Section II, the design steps and parameter details of the
proposed FSS unit-cell structure are addressed. In Section III,
The S-parameter graphs and parameter analyzes obtained
from the simulation results of the proposed structure are
139
presented and finally, the conclusions are given in the last placed on front side of 0.3 mm height dielectric substrate with
section. constitutive parameters of εr=3 and tan δ=0.003 (i.e. Arlon
AD300). Parameter ld refers to the total length of the dielectric
II. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED FSS STRUCTURE substrate material; ly, both the distance between the two
The proposed design is carried out in three steps. Firstly, notches and the width of the notch; lz, the length of the notch.
in order to create a symmetrical FSS structure, conductive The total area of all proposed FSSs shown in Fig. 1 is 8 x 8
square patches (CSP) of length lk are placed along their mm2.
diagonals at equal distances to all four directions, similar to TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF FSS ELEMENT
the letter X. Each conductive square patch is arranged in such
a way that it contacts the adjacent structure from the edge end. ld ln lk lx ly lz
Parameter
Square Fractal FSS (SF-FSS) designed in the first step is
mm
depicted in Fig. 1(a).
Value 8 1.3 1.025 0.275 0.15 0.2

III. RESULT ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The proposed FSS is simulated with CST Microwave
Studio. All simulations are performed using Floquet port
excitations and unit cell boundary conditions in the 6-22 GHz
frequency range. Under these conditions the SF-FSS designed
in the first step resonates at 13.3 GHz in TE- and TM- modes
for an incoming wave at normal incidence angle (θ=0˚). The
bandwidth of the structure is 3.38 GHz and the resonance
depth is -47.5 dB. The resonance frequency (fr) of SOSF-FSS,
obtained by partial overlapping of CPSs, is 13.08 GHz,
bandwidth is 5.08 GHz and transmission coefficient is -53 dB.
(a) (b)
In the final design (NSOSF-FSS), with the addition of notches
to the structure, fr is formed at 11.1 GHz. As can be seen in
detail in Fig. 2(b), the fr of the proposed structure decreases by
2.2 GHz in three steps. The bandwidth of the structure
becomes 3.83 GHz. In other words, NSOSF-FSS is to filter
the frequency band in the 9.17 - 13 GHz range, while allowing
the remaining band in the 6-22 GHz frequency range to pass.

(c)
Fig. 1. Design steps of the proposed FSS unit-cell; (a) square fractal FSS
(SF-FSS), (b) semi-overlapped square fractal FSS (SOSF-FSS), (c) notched
semi-overlapped square fractal FSS (NSOSF-FSS) and unit conductive
square element of NSOSF-FSS (a)

In the second step, the CSPs are joined from their corners,
with small square sections of lx length overlapping. Thus, the
edge length of each CSP is increased to ln (lk + lx) without
increasing the size of the FSS unit-cell (ld x ld), and also the
total amount of conductive area on the dielectric surface of the
proposed structure is increased. semi-overlapped square
fractal FSS (SOSF-FSS) is shown in Fig. 1(b).
In the last step, three each notches, whose details are given
in Fig. 1(c), are made on four sides of the CSP to increase
conductive square’s side lengths. Equally spaced these
notches are in ly x lz dimensions. The notched semi-overlapped (b)
square fractal FSS (NSOSF-FSS) structure shown in Fig. 1(c) Fig. 2. Transmission coefficient of the all proposed FSSs in TE and TM
consists of a total of 15 improved CSP. mode at θ=0˚, (a) SF-FSS to SOSF-FSS, (b) SOSF-FSS to NSOSF-FSS
Parameter values of all proposed FSSs are given in Table
I. Conductive structure of FSS are made of copper (σ = 5.8
×107 S/m) each having thickness of 0.035 mm. They are

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 In FSSs, it is expected that the inductive value increase as
the conductor length increases, and the resonance frequency
of the structure decrease as well [16]. To increase the
conductor length in the proposed structure, the side length of
each square conductor (CSP) is increased from 1.025 mm (lk)
to 1.3 mm (ln) first. However, the CPSs are placed partially
overlapping so as not to change the total area of unit cell (ld x
ld). Therefore, the total conductor length is not increased at the
desired level and the fr is only reduced to 0.2 GHz as can be
seen in Fig. 2(a).
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Surface current distribution (A/m) on the unitcell of (a) SF-FSS at
12.3 GHz ,(b) NSOSF-FSS at 11.1 GHz
Examining Fig. 3(a), it is clear that the surface currents
form on the incident wave-induced SF-FSS are concentrated
at the corners of and proceed along the edges of the CSP. In
the third step, notches are made on four sides of the CSP. The
new corners formed by the notches ensure the incoming wave
to scatter from these points and it causes that the surface
current concentrate on these notches more than before as can
be seen in Fig. 3(b). Moreover, thanks to the notches, the
conductor length is increased from 1.3 mm (ln) to 2.5 mm
(2lx+6lz+5ly) and the resonance frequency of the proposed
structure decreases by 2.2 GHz.
The parameter lz and ly is examine to analyze the effect of the
created notches on the resonance frequency of the NSOSF-
FSS. The S-parameter graph of the proposed structure with lz
parameter values ranging from 0.05 to 0.25 mm is given in
Fig. 4 (a). It is clearly seen that as the lz value increases, the
resonance frequency and depth (transmission coefficient) of
the proposed structure decrease, but there is no considerable
change in the bandwidth. When lz=0.05 mm fr decreases to
12.61 GHz; lz=0.25 mm, fr decreases by 2.5 GHz and becomes
10,6 GHz (compare to the SOSF-FSS). In the last case (lz=0.25
mm), although the amount of decrease in the resonance
frequency seems very large, deterioration occurs in the
angular stability of the proposed structure.
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(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. S-parameter graph showing the effect of (a) lz and (b) ly parameter
on the NSOSF-FSS in TE mode at θ=0˚
The S-parameter graph of the proposed structure with ly
parameter values ranging from 0.05 to 0.15 mm is given in
Fig. 4(b). Resonance frequencies and transmission
coefficients obtained as a result of three different values are
12.2 GHz, -47.7 dB (0.05mm); 11.7 GHz is -49.2 dB (0.1mm)
and 11.1 GHz is -48.6 dB (0.15mm) respectively. Just like the
lz parameter, an expected decrease in the resonance frequency
of the proposed structure is observed as the value of the ly
parameter increases. When ly is less than 0.5 mm, the NSOSF-
FSS structure transforms into the SOSF-FSS structure. While
the ly is greater than 1.5 mm, since the conductive square
patches in the proposed structure will separate from each
other, the characteristic features of the structure are
completely lost.
The response of the FSS surface to the incoming wave
with an oblique angle varies significantly with the increase in
the angle of the wave (θ) with the surface normal, compared
to wave at normal incidence angle (θ=0˚). The performance of
NSOSF-FSS against TE- and TM-polarized wave whose
incidence angle varies between 0˚ and 75˚ is given in Fig. 5. It
is observed from Fig. 5(a) that fr of the proposed structure does
not change significantly in TE-mode, but an undesirable
resonance occurs at 8.5 GHz. This undesirable resonance
(UR) increases as the angle of incidence of the EM wave
increases. For example, when θ is 30˚, the bandwidth od UR
is 0.125 GHz and the resonance depth of UR is -16.25 dB.
When θ rises to 75˚, the bandwidth increases to 0.67 GHz and
the resonance depth becomes -30 dB. However, since the
resonance frequency of NSOSF-FSS (11.1 GHz) is still within
the bandwidth of the structure, it is understood that the
proposed structure maintains the band-stop filter
characteristic.

(a)
(b)
Fig. 5. Transmission Coefficient of the NSOSF-FSS structure with
different angle of incidence in (a) TE-mode (b) TM-mode
In TM- mode, it is seen that the resonance frequency shifts
with the increase in θ, and the bandwidth at −10 dB also
narrows in the given circumstance. At θ =75˚, the resonance
frequency of NSOSF-FSS increases to 11.25 GHz with 1.3%
distortion, while its bandwidth becomes 2.53 GHz with 39%
decrease. As a result, it can be said that NSOSF-FSS has an
angular stable structure up to 75˚ incidence angle for both TE-
and TM- modes since it does not lose its band-stop filter
characteristics in the operating frequency range of 10 GHz to
12 GHz.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this study, a single band and angular stable band-stop
FSS structure has been presented. Square patches are used as
conductive element in the proposed design. In order to reduce
the resonance frequency of the structure, conductive square
patches are partially overlapped and sides of conductive
elements are notched. The resonance frequency of the
proposed structure is reduced from 13.3 GHz to 11.1 GHz
with the methods used. The bandwidth of the NSOSF-FSS
becomes 3.83 GHz. In other words, it is to filter the frequency
band in the 9.17 - 13 GHz range, while allowing the remaining
band in the 6-22 GHz frequency range to pass. The oblique
incidence performance of proposed structure exhibits a stable
transmission response up to 75˚ for both TE- and TM-
polarization in the operating frequency range of 10 GHz to 12
GHz. Moreover, analysis results show that the structure can
be covered on the surface of satellite systems in order to
reduce the interference effect caused by X-band satellite
communication systems.
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