Phase Shaping In The Infrared By Planar Quasi-periodic Surfaces Comprised Of Sub-wavelength Elements

Reflectarrays are passive quasi-periodic sub-wavelength antenna arrays designed for discrete reflected phase manipulation at each individual antenna element making up the array. By spatially varying the phase response of the antenna array, reflectarrays allow a planar surface to impress a non-planar phasefront upon re-radiation. Such devices have become commonplace at radio frequencies. In this dissertation, they are demonstrated in the infrared for the first time--at frequencies as high as 194 THz. Relevant aspects of computational electromagnetic modeling are explored, to yield design procedures optimized for these high frequencies. Modeling is also utilized to demonstrate the phase response of a generalized metallic patch resonator in terms of its dependence on element dimensions, surrounding materials, angle of incidence, and frequency. The impact of realistic dispersion of the real and imaginary parts of the metallic permittivity on the magnitude and bandwidth of the resonance behavior is thoroughly investigated. Several single-phase reflectarrays are fabricated and measurement techniques are developed for evaluating these surfaces. In all of these cases, there is excellent agreement between the computational model results and the measured device characteristics. With accurate modeling and measurement, it is possible to proceed to explore some specific device architectures appropriate for focusing reflectarrays, including binary-phase and phase-incremental approaches. Image quality aspects of these focusing reflectarrays are considered from geometrical and chromatic-aberration perspectives. The dissertation concludes by briefly considering two additional analogous devices--the transmitarray for tailoring transmissive phase response, and the emitarray for angular control of thermally emitted radiation

Effects of Spatial Dispersion on Reflection from Mushroom-type Artificial Impedance Surfaces

Several recent works have emphasized the role of spatial dispersion in wire media, and demonstrated that arrays of parallel metallic wires may behave very differently from a uniaxial local material with negative permittivity. Here, we investigate using local and non-local homogenization methods the effect of spatial dispersion on reflection from the mushroom structure introduced by Sievenpiper. The objective of the paper is to clarify the role of spatial dispersion in the mushroom structure and demonstrate that under some conditions it is suppressed. The metamaterial substrate, or metasurface, is modeled as a wire medium covered with an impedance surface. Surprisingly, it is found that in such configuration the effects of spatial dispersion may be nearly suppressed when the slab is electrically thin, and that the wire medium can be modeled very accurately using a local model. This result paves the way for the design of artificial surfaces that exploit the plasmonic-type response of the wire medium slab.Comment: submitted for publication, under revie

Impedance Transformers

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Size reduction of microstrip antennas using left-handed materials realized by complementary split-ring resonators

Recently, metamaterials (MTMs) engineered to have negative values of permittivity and permeability, resulting in a left-handed system, have provided a new frontier for microwave circuits and antennas with possibilities to overcome limitations of the right-handed system. Microwave circuit components such as waveguides, couplers, power dividers and filters, constructed on left-handed materials, have demonstrated properties of backward coupling, phase compensation, reduced sizes, and propagation of evanescent modes. However, there is very limited work to date, on the microstrip antennas with metamaterials. Microstrip antenna is widely used for its low-profile, simplicity of feed and compatibility with planar microstrip circuitry. As the trend towards miniaturization of electronic circuitry continues, antennas remain as the bulkiest part of wireless devices. There are three primary objectives to the present work: 1. Explore the possibility of miniaturizing microstrip patch antennas using left-handed materials through phase-compensation 2. Achieve negative permittivity using Complementary Split-Ring Resonators (CSRR) 3. Implement CSRR in the ground plane of a rectangular patch antenna, and validate through simulation and measurement A rectangular patch antenna with a combined DPS-DNG substrate has been analyzed with the cavity model, from which the condition for mode propagation has been derived. Criteria for ‘electrically small’ patch, using phase-compensation have been developed and propagating modes that satisfy these criteria have been obtained. With an objective to design practically realizable antennas, amongst several available LHM structures, the Complementary Split Ring Resonators (CSRR) has been chosen, primarily for the ease of implementation in the ground plane. CSRRs are periodic structures which alter the bulk effective permittivity of a host medium in which they are embedded. The effective permittivity becomes negative in a certain frequency band defined as a ‘stop-band’. In the present work the frequency response of the CSRR and the ‘stop-band’ has been determined using a full wave solver, from which, effective permittivity of the composite with CSRRs has been obtained by parameter extraction. Finally, several combinations of patch and CSRR in the ground plane have been designed and constructed in the X-band frequency range. Measurements of input characteristics and directivity have been validated through simulation by Ansoft Designer and HFSS. It has been observed that the best designs are achieved when the ‘stop-band’ of the CSRR corresponds to the desired resonant frequency of the antenna. Under these conditions, a size reduction of up to fifty percent has been achieved and it is noted that the back lobe is negligible and the directivity is comparable to that of a right-handed microstrip antenna

Metasurface-based wideband MIMO antenna for 5G millimeter-wave systems

This paper presents a metasurface based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with a wideband operation for millimeter-wave 5G communication systems. The antenna system consists of four elements placed with a 90 degree shift in order to achieve a compact MIMO system while a 2× 2 non-uniform metasurface (total four elements) is placed at the back of the MIMO configuration to improve the radiation characteristics of it. The overall size of the MIMO antenna is 24× 24 mm2 while the operational bandwidth of the proposed antenna system ranges from 23.5-29.4 GHz. The peak gain achieved by the proposed MIMO antenna is almost 7dB which is further improved up to 10.44 dB by employing a 2× 2 metasurface. The total efficiency is also observed more than 80% across the operating band. Apart from this, the MIMO performance metrics such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), and channel capacity loss (CCL) are analyzed which demonstrate good characteristics. All the simulations of the proposed design are carried out in computer simulation technology (CST) software, and measured results reveal good agreement with the simulated one which make it a potential contender for the upcoming 5G communication systems.This work was supported in part by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant Agreement No 801538, and in part by the the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (MCIU/AEI/FEDER,UE) under Grant RTI2018-095499-B-C31

Metasurface-Based Wideband MIMO Antenna for 5G Millimeter-Wave Systems

This paper presents a metasurface based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with a wideband operation for millimeter-wave 5G communication systems. The antenna system consists of four elements placed with a 90 degree shift in order to achieve a compact MIMO system while a 2 x 2 non-uniform metasurface (total four elements) is placed at the back of the MIMO configuration to improve the radiation characteristics of it. The overall size of the MIMO antenna is 24 x 24 mm(2) while the operational bandwidth of the proposed antenna system ranges from 23.5-29.4 GHz. The peak gain achieved by the proposed MIMO antenna is almost 7dB which is further improved up to 10.44 dB by employing a 2 x 2 metasurface. The total efficiency is also observed more than 80% across the operating band. Apart from this, the MIMO performance metrics such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), diversity gain (DG), and channel capacity loss (CCL) are analyzed which demonstrate good characteristics. All the simulations of the proposed design are carried out in computer simulation technology (CST) software, and measured results reveal good agreement with the simulated one which make it a potential contender for the upcoming 5G communication systems

Wide Band Embedded Slot Antennas for Biomedical, Harsh Environment, and Rescue Applications

For many designers, embedded antenna design is a very challenging task when designing embedded systems. Designing Antennas to given set of specifications is typically tailored to efficiently radiate the energy to free space with a certain radiation pattern and operating frequency range, but its design becomes even harder when embedded in multi-layer environment, being conformal to a surface, or matched to a wide range of loads (environments). In an effort to clarify the design process, we took a closer look at the key considerations for designing an embedded antenna. The design could be geared towards wireless/mobile platforms, wearable antennas, or body area network. Our group at UT has been involved in developing portable and embedded systems for multi-band operation for cell phones or laptops. The design of these antennas addressed single band/narrowband to multiband/wideband operation and provided over 7 bands within the cellular bands (850 MHz to 2 GHz). Typically the challenge is: many applications require ultra wide band operation, or operate at low frequency. Low frequency operation is very challenging if size is a constraint, and there is a need for demonstrating positive antenna gain

Analysis and Synthesis of Magnetically Negative (MNG) Material using Softcomputing Techniques

Unique properties of Metamaterial are widely used in Electromagnetic Engineering, and the metamaterial has gained significant attention to be a major research area. Some of its recent research areas are carpet cloaking and metasurface design. The unique properties of these materials include simultaneous negative electromagnetic property, i.e., both permeability and permittivity are negative, because of which a negative refractive index is generated.Thus there are three primary classes of metamaterials. When only the permittivity is negative, the material is called ENG (Electrical Negative). Similarly material with only negative permeability is known as MNG (Magnetic Negative). Further when both are negative the material is regarded as DNG (Double Negative). Out of these three, the analysis and synthesis of MNG is very complicated and difficult. Therefore, the focus in this work is only on MNG, and the word "metamaterial" refers to MNG unless otherwise mentioned specifically. These type of materials don’t occur in nature and hence manufactured by making array of small unit cells of specific structure(s) made up of conductors. Although the concept of the existence of negative refractive index was proposed in the 1960s by Veselago, it took around 40 years to be verified practically when smith et al. did the experiment in 2001. They used an array of unit cell structures as Split-Ring-Resonators (SRR) and thin wires to verify the concept. Thereafter researchers are working to develop different forms of metamaterial unit cells and for which metamaterial is still an open area of research. However, while designing a metamaterial unit cell, absence of an empirical formula makes the model analysis and synthesis difficult. Although with the help of EM simulation tools this is possible, it usually is too difficult, time consuming and costly. Due to this researchers are motivated to look for alternative methods. In this work, some techniques to develop CAD models are presented based on soft computing techniques for metamaterial analysis and synthesis. Use of different soft computing techniques in the field of microwave engineering is documented in the literature. However, unconventional unit cell structures are difficult to analysis because of unavailability of predefined mathematical formulas and equivalent analysis. This can be done by the complex Modified Nicolson-Ross-Weir (NRW) method with the support of EM simulation tools which are expensive. Frequency dependency of metamaterial characteristics for any kind of unit cell structure follows a similar pattern which is obtained from Lorentz model. The basic idea in this work, which develops CAD Models for metamaterial unit cell of unconventional structures is based on the assumption that each type of unit cell can be mapped to an equivalent SRR structure, for which empirical formula is available. This is done by implementing the concept of Space Mapping technique or surrogate based modeling. Most important contribution of the work is the development of Space Mapped CAD model for analysis of an Ω atom. The developed model is validated with a Deformed-Ω atom, which is developed by integrating the concept of Space Mapping (SM) and Artificial Neural Network. Thereafter, the work progresses with proposing CAD models for synthesis of SRR. The objective is to find the design parameters of SRR for a desired material characteristic and frequency. With the availability of only a complex non-linear analysis formula, the synthesis becomes a reverse engineering problem, which is difficult to process. Three different models are proposed to solve the problem. The first approach is use of Inverse Artificial Neural Network concept, which uses a trained neural network (IANN) to perform output-to-input mapping. The developed CAD model using this approach includes integration of three concepts: IANN, Prior Knowledge Input-Difference (PKI-D) and SM. Although the model is capable of synthesizing a metamaterial unit cell, still it has some disadvantages. To overcome the disadvantages (such as lower convergence rate, lower accuracy and complex programming), use of Evolutionary Algorithms (Genetic Algorithm and Differential Evolution) is proposed. While developing CAD model based on EA, the methodology is first tested by synthesizing Rectangular Microstrip Antenna (RMPA) and then using the same concept, an SRR is synthesized. A comparison shows DE based model to be more efficient than IANN and GA based models in terms of convergence speed, accuracy and robustness