Journal of Engineering Science and Technology

Vol. 13, No. 1 (2018) 048 - 057

© School of Engineering, Taylor’s University

DETERMINATION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC PARAMETERS

OF A NEW METASURFACE COMPRISING OF SQUARE LOOP

ANAMIKA SETHI*, RAJNI

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,

Shaheed Bhagat Singh State Technical Campus, Ferozepur, Punjab, India
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Abstract
In the present work, the reflection and transmission coefficients of new
metasurface consisting of square loop structures have been analyzed to
determine the electromagnetic parameters. In order to analyze the metasurface,
a block of 3X3 cells has been placed centrally in a waveguide with a well
defined boundary conditions and excitations which is a representative of infinite
number of unit cells. The simulation results show that the effective permittivity
and effective permeability of metasurface are negative simultaneously in the
desired frequency range. The negative refractive index is confirmed by the
overlapped region of negative effective permittivity and effective permeability.
Keywords: Metasurface, Square Loop, Negative permittivity, Negative permeability.

1. Introduction
Metamaterials (MTM) are exotic smart materials that exhibit the properties that
are not available naturally. They are designed by uniting numerous components
composed of different materials and are arranged repeatedly at smaller
wavelengths. These materials formulate their properties from these newly
designed structures and not from their constituents [1]. The MTMs are new
materials that demonstrate unnatural qualitative response functions. These
materials exhibit negative permeability ( 𝜇) and negative permittivity (𝜀) and
can be classified into four categories relative to permeability and permittivity:
Double negative (DNG) medium, Epsilon negative (ENG) medium, Mu
negative (MNG) medium and Double positive (DPS) medium. Double negative
mediums are the mediums in which the material has the permittivity and
permeability less than zero simultaneously. Such mediums are also termed as
Left Handed Mediums (LHM) [2].
48
 Determination of Electromagnetic Parameters of a New Metasurface . . . . 49

Nomenclatures

C Side of inner square, mm

c Speed of light in free space, m/s
d Thickness of substrate, mm
G Gap between two square loops, mm
ko Wave number in free space
L Side of outer square, mm
S11 S-Parameter for reflection
S21 S-Parameter for transmission

Greek Symbols
𝜀 Permittivity
𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 Effective permittivity
𝜇 Permeability
𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓 Effective permeability
𝜔 Angular frequency

Abbreviations
DNG Double Negative
DPS Double Positive
DR Direct-Retrieval
EM Electromagnetic
ENG Epsilon negative
FEM Finite Element Method
HFSS High Frequency Structure Simulator
Img Imaginary Part
LHM Left Handed Medium
MATLAB Matrix Laboratory
MNG Mu negative
M-NRI Metamaterial Negative Refractive Index
MTM Metamaterials
NRW Nicolson-Ross-Weir
PEC Perfect Electric Conductor
PMC Perfect Magnetic Conductor
Re Real part
SRR Split Ring Resonators
TR Transmission Reflection
TW Thin-Wire
Metamaterials is a generous category of fabricated materials that may be
constructed to manipulate electromagnetic (EM) features of host medium in
accordance with the requirements of the system [3, 4]. Due to their extraordinary
features, these materials have attracted a lot of researchers to use them in the field
of miniaturization of antennas [5], with enhanced directivity [6], controlled beam-
width and beam scanning [7].
Veselago, in 1968 [8], made a notable invention by introducing the first DNG
medium which simultaneously exhibited negative values of permittivity and

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50 A. Sethi and Rajni

permeability. But this invention of artificial materials was merely a theoretical

assumption and three decades later, Pendry et al. acknowledged his work by
proposing thin-wire (TW) periodical structure that exhibited negative effective
permittivity [9]. It was also indicated in [10] that an array of split ring resonators
(SRR) can be used to achieve negative magnetic permeability. The DNG mediums
provide numerous exceptional EM properties such as negative refractive index
which was confirmed experimentally by Pendry and Smith [11-13], and vigorous
optical movements [14-17]. Various researchers proposed different shapes of SRR
like edge-coupled SRR [18], spiral resonators [19] and triangular-SRR [20].
Comprehensive attempts have been made to get simultaneous negative permittivity
and permeability in microwave, terahertz, infrared and visible frequency ranges [21-
24]. Metamaterials with negative refractive index has various applications such as
M-NRI (Metamaterial- Negative Refractive Index) for antennas, superlens, wireless
power transfer and biomedical applications [25-26].
The permittivity and magnetic permeability are the basic characteristic
quantities that govern the advancement of electromagnetic waves in matter being
the only parameters of a substance that appear in the dispersion equation [8]. The
measurement of these complex parameters is not required only for scientific but
also for industrial applications [27]. The extraction of these parameters is one of
the necessary functions for characterizing the metamaterial and because of the
increasing importance of metamaterial; the extraction of its effective parameters
has acquired quite much consideration by the researchers.
Metasurface is the surface equivalent of the three-dimensional metamaterial
and can be extended by the arrangement of small scatterers or holes in a two-
dimensional pattern at a surface. Various approaches for efficient extraction of
parameters of metasurfaces including Transmission-Reflection (TR) method,
Direct-Retrieval (DR) Method, Nicolson-Ross-Weir (NRW) method etc., have
been used [28-30] in past. In this paper a new Left handed metasurface structure
of square loop cells is modeled and simulated using Finite Element Method
(FEM) based Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software to
prove the negative refractive index of the material.
This paper is organized in five sections. Section 1 discusses the introduction
and previously done work. Section 2 describes the proposed design of LHM
structure. Section 3 presents simulation methodology of LHM cells with suitable
boundary conditions and excitations. Section 4 presents the numerically analyzed
results and discussions. Section 5 gives the conclusion of the paper.

2. Proposed Design of LHM Structure

The proposed left handed metasurface structure consisting of 3×3 square loops is
depicted in Fig. 1(a), whereas the geometry and dimensions of a single unit cell is
shown in Fig. 1(b). Table 1 enlists the geometrical dimensions of square loop unit
cell. The proposed structure is designed on a Rogers RO4350 substrate with
permittivity 3.66, dielectric loss tangent 0.004 and a thickness of 1.524 mm.
The unit cell is a square loop and has each outer side equal to 6 mm and the
side of the inner cut is 2 mm. The square loop metasurface is designed on one side
of the substrate and ground plane on the other side.

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 Determination of Electromagnetic Parameters of a New Metasurface . . . . 51

Fig. 1. Geometry of (a) 3×3 cell structure, (b) Unit cell.

Table 1. Dimensions of LHM unit cell structure.

Parameter Unit (mm)
1. Side of outer square (L) 6
2. Side of inner square (C) 2
3. Gap between two square loops (G) 0.35

3. Simulation Methodology of LHM in Waveguide

The proposed metasurface unit cell is simulated with HFSS by putting it in a
waveguide as illustrated in Fig. 2. The perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) and
perfect electric conductor (PEC) are applied as boundary conditions on
waveguide. The two wave ports are assigned along each of the substrate line on
the x-faces from -x to x direction as shown in Fig. 2.
The S-Parameters, i.e., Reflection coefficient, S11 and Transmission coefficient,
S21 are obtained from the above arrangement. Then these values are exported to
Microsoft excel and Nicolson-Ross-Weir (NRW) approach is applied to retrieve
𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓 and 𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 [31-32] and MATLAB code is written to implement Eqs. (1) to (4).

Fig. 2. Boundary conditions of the proposed LHM structure.

𝑉1 = 𝑆21 + 𝑆11 (1)

𝑉2 = 𝑆21 − 𝑆11 (2)

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52 A. Sethi and Rajni

2 1−𝑉2
𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓 = (3)
𝑗𝑘∘ 𝑑 1+𝑉2

2 1−𝑉1
𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 = (4)
𝑗𝑘∘ 𝑑 1+𝑉1

Here, S11 is the S-Parameter for reflection and S21 is the S-Parameters for
transmission through the structure respectively, d is the thickness of the substrate,
𝑘∘ is wave number in free space (𝑘∘ = 𝜔⁄𝑐 ), 𝜔 is the angular frequency and c is
the speed of light in free space, c=3×108 m/s. By putting the value of V1 and V2 in
Eqs. (3) and (4), 𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓 and 𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 can be obtained.

4. Results and Discussions

A full wave simulation of the proposed LHM unit cell in a waveguide is
performed with EM solver. The model is executed to verify its features after
applying appropriate boundary conditions and excitations. The transmission and
reflection parameters are plotted in order to validate the performance of the
proposed metasurface.

4.1. Transmission and reflection parameters

Reflection coefficient can be represented as the fraction of the complex amplitude
of the reflected wave and the transmitted wave. The transmission coefficient can
be represented as the fraction of the amplitude of the complex transmitted wave
and incident wave at a point of discontinuity in the transmission line. Figure 3
illustrates the reflection coefficient, S11 and the transmission coefficient, S21 of the
proposed LHM structure with respect to frequency. It can be observed from the
plot that there is a strong reflection at 38.0965 dB below 0 dB at 4.8632 GHz.
This reveals that the proposed LHM structure resonates at 4.8632 GHz.

Fig. 3. Reflection coefficient (S11) and transmission coefficient (S21).

Reflection and transmission coefficients are in the form of a complex ratio.

So, in order to evaluate the negative characteristics of permittivity and
permeability of the proposed square loop structure, this complex ratio is split into

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 Determination of Electromagnetic Parameters of a New Metasurface . . . . 53

real and imaginary parts. Real (Re) and Imaginary (Img) parts of S11 and S21 are
depicted in Figs. 4 and 5 respectively.

Fig. 4. Real and Imaginary parts of S11.

Fig. 5 Real and Imaginary parts of S21.

The magnitude of any coefficient depicts the combined amplitude of the real
and imaginary parts whereas the phase of any coefficient depicts the combined
relative proportion of real and imaginary parts. The magnitude and phase of the
S11 of the proposed LHM with respect to frequency are depicted in Fig. 6. The
magnitude of the reflection coefficient should be between 0 and 1. The magnitude
and phase of S21 of the LHM structure are revealed by Fig. 7.
Metasurfaces possess negative 𝜇 and 𝜀 and thus have negative refractive
index, i.e., the reversal of snell’s law. Due to this negative refractive index, the
group and phase velocities of electromagnetic wave appear in opposite direction,
i.e., the direction of propagation is reversed with respect to the energy flow
direction. This interesting property of metasurface is validated by the reversal of
phase of reflection and transmission coefficient at particular frequencies.

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54 A. Sethi and Rajni

Fig. 6. Magnitude and Phase of Reflection coefficient (S11).

Fig. 7. Magnitude and Phase of Transmission coefficient (S21).

4.2. Effective permeability and Effective permittivity

Figures 8(a) and 8(b) depict the real and imaginary parts of permeability and
permittivity respectively. For evaluating effective permittivity and effective
permeability, a MATLAB code is generated. The values of S11 and S21 are then
exported to MATLAB. Finally, Eqs. (3) and (4) are implemented and 𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓 and
𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 are calculated so as to verify the properties of metasurface.
The metamaterial theory states that the condition of negative real part of 𝜇𝑒𝑓𝑓
and 𝜀𝑒𝑓𝑓 for the proposed LHM design. It can be observed from the plots that the
values of permittivity and permeability are below zero for the proposed structure.
Figure 8(c) depicts the real part of permeability and permittivity respectively. The
negative real part of permeability lies between 2.5-5.144 GHz, whereas the real
part of permittivity lies between 2.5 GHz to 4.9524 GHz. Figure 8(c) depicts that
the proposed LHM design exhibit simultaneous negative permittivity and
permeability in the range of 2.5 GHz to 4.9524 GHz. Hence the proposed LHM
structure exhibits negative refraction in 2.5 GHz to 4.9524 GHz frequency range.

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 Determination of Electromagnetic Parameters of a New Metasurface . . . . 55

Fig. 8(a). Real and Imaginary parts of permeability.

Fig. 8(b). Real and Imaginary parts of permittivity.

Fig. 8(c). Real parts of Permeability and permittivity.

5. Conclusions
The properties of metasurface are confirmed by using S11 and S21 of the proposed
LHM structure of square loop cells. The structure shows simultaneous negative
permittivity and negative permeability in the range of 2.5-4.9524 GHz. Negative
index of refraction is also observed in this frequency range. Proposed square loop
structure is a form of a tuned circuit consisting of inductance and capacitance and as

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56 A. Sethi and Rajni

a result it has a resonant frequency. This is the frequency where the capacitive and
inductive reactance cancels each other out. Here, the proposed square loop structure
resonates at 4.86 GHz, which lies in the region of negative refractive index. This
work can be extended and used periodically as a superstrate for microstrip patch
antenna or circular patch antenna to achieve improved performance characteristics.

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Journal of Engineering Science and Technology January 2018, Vol. 13(1)