METAMATERIAL DESIGN AND ITS

APPLICATION FOR ANTENNAS

Sen YAN

Supervisor:
Prof. dr. ir. Guy A. E. vandenbosch

Members of the Examination Committee:

Prof. dr. ir. Paul Sas (Chair)
Dissertation presented in
Prof. dr. ir. Georges Gielen
partial fulfilment of the
Prof. dr. ir. Dominique M. M.-P. Schreurs
requirements for the degree
Prof. dr. ir. A. B. (Bart) Smolders
of PhD in Engineering
(TU Eindhoven)
Ir. Walter L. De Raedt (IMEC)

May 2015
© 2015 KU Leuven, Science, Engineering & Technology
Uitgegeven in eigen beheer, Sen YAN, Sint-Lambertusstraat 33, Heverlee

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Foreword

Time is like a fleeting show. Four years of PhD research may be the most
important period in my life. The result of the PhD is not only several
academic papers, but most importantly, the way how I am thinking and
acting in the academic field, which will definitely change my career in the
future.
This PhD work cannot be finished without the contribution of many
people. I would like to express my best gratitude to my mentors, colleagues,
friends, and my family.
Firstly, I owe an endless gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Guy
Vandenbosch for the opportunity of joining the TELEMIC group. I learnt a
lot of things from him, not only the academic knowledge, but also the way of
research. This will be precious wealth in all my future academic life. Our
communication is always flexible and efficient. That is the main reason why
we can achieve so many productions. He also friendly supported me a lot in
my daily life which I am truly appreciated.
Besides, I am eternally grateful to my PhD committee and jury, Prof.
Dominique Schreurs, Prof. Georges Gielen, Prof. Bart Smolders, Prof. Paul
Sas and Ir. Walter Raedt. They gave me a lot of suggestions and comments
that help improve the thesis a lot. I also wish to express my sincere
appreciation to all the professors in our group, Prof. Bart Nauwelaers, Prof.
Emmanuel Van Lil, Prof. Sofie Pollin. They gave me a lot of guides in my
study.
My deep thanks also go to Dr. Ping Jack Soh. We discussed our work
together and struck some sparks of novel idea in 2013. With his help, I can
introduce my technology in the field of wearable antennas, and our
cooperation obtained a wide-ranging influence in this academic field. Many
thanks to Dr. Vladimir Volski, Dr Xuezhi Zheng, Dr. Marco Mercuri, and Dr.
Alexander Svezhentsev. They provide great help in my research, including
basic theory, fabrication, and measurement. Thanks to our best assistant Ann
Deforce. She always patiently and kindly gave us endless help. I also want to

i
express my thanks all our colleagues in TELEMIC group, Enas Gustavo, Ilja,
Hadi, Saeed, Zhanna, Costanza, Rudy, Tomislav and etc.
I also would like to thank my Chinese friends, Ma Zhongkun, Peng Bo,
Wang Lingyu, Xu Hantao, Liu Song, Xiao Dongping, Pan ning, Kong
Linghui, Wang Jiachen, Bao Junchen, Wang Qingju, Huang Xiaolin, Yang
bohan, Zhang Xueru, Wen Lianggong, Zhang Yang, Cheng Jiqiu, Zhu Peng,
for their companies and help during the four years; and Chinese basketball
team for those wonderful weekends.
I would like to address special thanks to China Scholarship Council (CSC)
for the financial support of my study in Belgium.
Finally, I devote my deep love and gratitude to my family. My merciful
parents gave their unconditional love to me and exerted their best to support
my study. Thanks to my wife Yuanyuan. You gave up your job and came to
accompany me. Your love and understanding encourages me to finish this
work. I will hold you and cherish you forever.

Sen Yan
May 2015
Heverlee, Belgium

ii
Abstract

Metamaterials have received increasing attention due to their unique

electromagnetic properties. Various types of metamaterial have been
proposed with different characteristics, e.g. negative refractive index, huge
chirality, magnetic conductivity, etc. These unusual properties play an
important role in modern antenna design, which can provide better
performance, more functions, and more flexibility.
The main target of this PhD is to deeply study the characteristics of
metamaterials, and to use that to improve the performance of microwave
antennas. Three types of metamaterial are proposed, i.e. the coated dielectric
sphere-based metamaterial with a wide negative refractive index band, the
encapsulating metamolecule with high quality factor, and the planar coupled
resonators with huge chirality. Different physical parameters are studied for
these topologies with both numerical and measured results, and the working
mechanisms behind these phenomena are explained by studying current and
field distributions. Some potential applications of these structures are also
discussed. Then, several antennas based on metamaterials are designed,
including dual-band textile patch antennas based on the linear composite
right/left-handed transmission line, radial patch antennas operating at zeroth-
order mode and negative modes, and low profile antennas loaded with an
artificial magnetic conductor plane. All the antennas are designed using
simulations and verified through experiments. Their performances improve
compared with conventional antennas.

iii
Samenvatting

Metamaterialen krijgen recentelijk heel wat aandacht vanwege hun unieke

elektromagnetische eigenschappen. Verschillende soorten metamaterialen
met verschillende eigenschappen worden in de literatuur voorgesteld, bvb.
negatieve brekingsindex, grote chiraliteit, magnetische geleidbaarheid, etc.
Deze ongebruikelijke eigenschappen kunnen een belangrijke rol spelen in
moderne antennes. Ze kunnen de prestaties verhogen, en zorgen voor meer
functionaliteit en flexibiliteit.
De belangrijkste doelstelling van dit doctoraat is het fundamenteel
bestuderen van de kenmerken van metamaterialen, en deze gebruiken om de
prestaties van antennes te verbeteren. Drie soorten metamateriaal worden
voorgesteld: een 3D versie op basis van gecoate diëlektrische bollen, hetgeen
een brede band oplevert waar de brekingsindex negatief is, en 2D versies op
basis van ingekapselde metamolecules met een hoge kwaliteitsfactor, en op
basis van vlakke gecombineerde resonatoren, met een enorme chiraliteit als
gevolg. Verschillende fysische parameters worden bestudeerd voor deze
topologieën via zowel numerieke als gemeten resultaten, en de
werkingsmechanismen achter deze verschijnselen worden verklaard via het
bestuderen van de veldverdelingen. Potentiële toepassingen voor deze
structuren worden ook besproken. In een tweede deel van de thesis worden
meerdere antennes ontworpen op basis van metamaterialen: dual-band
textiel-patch-antennes op basis van de lineaire samengestelde rechts /
linkshandige transmissielijn, radiale patch-antennes werkend in een
combinatie van nulde-orde mode en negatieve modes, en "low profile"
antennes voorzien van een kunstmatige magnetische geleider. Alle antennes
worden ontworpen met behulp van simulaties en geverifieerd door middel
van experimenten. Het wordt duidelijk aangetoond dat de prestaties
verbeteren in vergelijking met conventionele antennes.

iv
Contents

Foreword ..........................................................................................i
Abstract ....................................................................................... iii
Samenvatting ......................................................................................iv
Contents .........................................................................................v
List of Acronyms ................................................................................ix

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................1

1.1 Background and Motivation 2
1.2 Review of Metamaterials 3
1.3 Metamaterials in Antenna design 6
1.4 Objectives and Contents of this Thesis 8

Chapter 2 DIELECTRIC COATED SPHERE BASED

METAMATERIALS WITH WIDE
NEGATIVE REFRACTIVE INDEX BAND ............11
2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 Array of nude spheres 13
2.2.1 Change of ε1 of the spheres 16
2.2.2 Change of r1 of the spheres 16
2.2.3 Change of s between the spheres 18
2.3 Array of Coated Spheres 18
2.3.1 Change of r1 of the spheres 19
2.3.2 Change ε2 of the spheres 20
2.3.3 Change s between the spheres 21
2.4 Validation and application 22
2.4.1 Effective parameter retrieval from S parameters 22
2.4.2 Nude spheres 25
2.4.3 Coated spheres 26
2.5 Conclusion 30

v
Chapter 3 PLANAR CHIRAL METAMATERIALS
BASED ON BILAYERED RESONATORS .............31
3.1 Introduction 32
3.2 Circular Polarizer Based on Chiral Twisted Double Split-
Ring Resonator 33
3.2.1 Topology and theoretical description 33
3.2.2 Simulated and measured results 35
3.2.3 Physical explanation 39
3.3 Chiral Structure based on Bilayered Displaced U Pair 41
3.3.1 Topology and theoretical description 41
3.3.2 Simulated and measured results 42
3.3.3 Physical explanation 45
3.3.4 Tunable chirality 47
3.4 Conclusion 49

Chapter 4 AN ENCAPSULATING META-

MOLECULE: U RESONATOR
CONTAINING SPIRAL LINE ..................................51
4.1 Introduction 52
4.2 Simulated and measured results 53
4.3 Parameter study 56
4.4 Conclusion 59

Chapter 5 TEXTILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNA

BASED ON COMPOSITE RIGHT/LEFT-
HANDED TRANSMISSION LINE ...........................61
5.1 Introduction 62
5.1.1 Wearable antennas 62
5.1.2 Composite Right/Left-Handed Transmission Line 63
5.2 Wearable dual-band CRLH waveguide textile antenna 65
5.2.1 Antenna topology and materials 66
5.2.2 Antenna Performance in Free Space 66
5.2.3 Antenna Performance on human body 70
5.3 Compact All-Textile Dual-band Antenna Loaded with
Metamaterial Inspired Structure 74
5.3.1 Antenna Topology and Materials 75
5.3.2 Antenna Performance in Free Space 75
5.3.3 Antenna performance on human body 78
5.4 Conclusion 81

vi
Chapter 6 RADIAL PATCH ANTENNAS BASED ON
COMPOSITE RIGHT/LEFT-HANDED
TRANSMISSION LINE .............................................83
6.1 Introduction 84
6.2 Circuit Model of Radial CRLH TL 85
6.3 Zeroth-Order Resonant Circular Patch Antenna Based on
Periodic Structures 87
6.3.1 Basic Structure of ZOR Antenna 87
6.3.2 Miniaturized ZOR Antenna 90
6.3.3 High Directivity ZOR Antenna 94
6.4 Meta-loaded Circular Sector Patch Antenna 97
6.4.1 Circular Patch Antenna 97
6.4.2 Circular Sector Patch Antenna 98
6.4.3 Semicircular Patch with Matching Network 100
6.4.4 Dual-band Semicircular Patch Antenna 103
6.5 Conclusion 106

Chapter 7 LOW PROFILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNA

BASED ON ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC
CONDUCTOR PLANE ............................................107
7.1 Introduction 108
7.2 Low-Profile Dual-Band Textile Antenna with Artificial
Magnetic Conductor Plane 110
7.2.1 Characteristics of AMC plane 110
7.2.2 Antenna on AMC Plane 111
7.2.3 Performance on Body 112
7.3 A low profile dual-band antenna loaded with artificial
magnetic conductor for indoor radar systems 116
7.3.1 A fall-detection radar and telemetry system 117
7.3.2 AMC structure 121
7.3.3 AMC-loaded patch antenna 121
7.3.4 Antenna cross-coupling 125
7.3.5 Radar experimental results 127
7.4 Conclusion 129

Chapter 8 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK...........................131

8.1 Conclusions 131
8.2 Outlook and Future research 133

vii
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...........................................................................135
PUBLICATIONS.............................................................................149

viii
List of Acronyms

AMC Artificial Magnetic Conductor

BW Bandwidth
CM Chiral Media
CMM Chiral Metamaterial
CP Circular Polarization
CPW Coplanar Waveguide
CRLH Composite Right/Left-Handed
CST MWS Computer Simulation Technology Microwave
Studio
DNG Double Negative
DPS Double Positive
DSRR Double Split-Ring Resonators
EBG Electromagnetic Band Gap
EIT Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
ENG Epsilon Negative
ESA Electrically Small Antenna
FBR Front-to-Back Ratio
FEM Finite Element Method
FOM Figure of Merit
FS Free Space
FSS Frequency Selective Surface
GA Global Alignment
GSTCs Generalized Sheet Transition Conditions
HFSS High Frequency Structural Simulator
IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transformer
LCP Left Circular Polarization
LHM Left-Handed Media
LS-SVM Least Squares Support Vector Machines
MEMS Micro Electronic Mechanical System
MIMO Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output
ML Microstrip Line

ix
MM Metamaterial
NRI Negative Refractive Index
PCB Printed Circuit Board
PEC Perfect Electrical Conductor
PIFA Planar Inverted-F Antenna
PMC Perfect Magnetic Conductor
RCP Right Circular Polarization
rms root mean square
SAR Specific Absorption Rate
SFCW Stepped-Frequency Continuous Wave
SIW Substrate Integrated Waveguide
SMT Surface Mount Technology
SNG Single Negative
SRR Split Ring Resonator
TL Transmission Line
TM Transverse magnetic
UWB Ultra-Wideband
VSWR Voltage Standing Wave Ratio
WBAN Wireless Body Area Network
WLAN Wireless Local Area Network
ZOR Zeroth Order Resonance
ZRI Zero Refractive Index

x
Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

“Material: The matter from which a thing is or can be made.”

——Oxford Dictionaries.

In this chapter, the research background and motivation will be introduced.

Then the state of the art is reviewed in the fields of metamaterials and their
application in antenna design. Next the main objective of the PhD project is
discussed together with an overview of this thesis.

1
1.1 BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
The study and research on materials can be traced back to the first humans,
several thousand years ago. Hundreds of handbooks have been published,
listing diverse properties of materials under different physical circumstances.
Engineers can select the proper category of materials for their specific
applications. However, it is in the nature of people to never be satisfied with
the present situation. They are constantly looking for new materials with
novel properties, even properties “not created by God”.
A metamaterial is a kind of artificial synthetic composite material with a
specific structure, which exhibits properties not found in natural materials. [1]
In the narrow sense, a metamaterial is mostly designed based on a periodic
structure aiming at novel electromagnetic properties, e.g. negative
permittivity or permeability, zero refractive index, and huge chirality [2, 3].
As in natural materials, the properties of metamaterials are decided by their
components and their arrangements. In order to obtain specific properties,
the components should be designed with specific patterns, yielding resonant
structures. The components, sometimes called meta-atoms or metamolecules,
are periodically arranged in one, two, or three dimensions. They can be
coupled with each other which considerably modifies the properties of the
metamaterial.
The first concepts of negative refraction and double negative materials
were proposed by Mandelstam and Veselage in 1945 [4] and 1967 [5],
respectively. The first experiment that verified the feasibility of negative
refraction was realized by Smith and Pendry in 2000 [6, 7]. Although great
progress has been made in this field in the new century [2, 3, 8-12], a unique,
clear and accurate definition of the general concept “metamaterial” is still a
matter of debate. However, there are several generally accepted features for
a metamaterial. The most important of all is that it is required that the
dimensions of the unit cells, and thus the periodicity of the metamaterial, are
much smaller than the operating wavelength. This ensures that one obtains a
quasi-homogeneous material [2, 3]. This is a clear difference with some
other periodic structures, e.g. photo crystals, scattering arrays,
electromagnetic bandgap topologies, etc.
Metamaterials have been widely used in the design of microwave devices
and antennas. A huge number of new devices and antennas have been
fabricated with novel performances. These will be reviewed in the next two
sections. However, due to the fast development of flexible portable devices

2
such as mobile phones, laptops, wearable devices, etc., antennas with
different tunable functions, based on variable structures, are still in urgent
demand. This is the motivation of this PhD project. We aim at designing
several novel metamaterials, and use them to further improve the
performance of antennas. This will give more design freedom and a better
performance for wireless communication systems.

1.2 REVIEW OF METAMATERIALS

As a hot research topic in the recent 15 years, metamaterials have achieved
great successes in the fields of both science and engineering. Variable
metamaterials have been designed from radio frequencies up to optical
frequencies, and different functions have been realized, e.g. negative
refractive index (NRI), huge chirality, anisotropy and bianisotropy [2, 3]. As
an interdisciplinary topic, metamaterials can be classified into different
categories based on different criteria. From an operating frequency point of
view, they can be classified as microwave metamaterials, terahertz
metamaterials, and photonic metamaterials. From a spatial arrangement
point of view, there are 1D metamaterials, 2D metamaterials, and 3D
metamaterials. From a material point of view, there are metallic and
dielectric metamaterials. In this work we will concentrate on the
electromagnetic properties, and introduce several important types of
metamaterials in the microwave frequency range.

1. Veselago media
Veselago media were the first type of metamaterial proposed [4, 5].
Depending on the real part of the permittivity and permeability
metamaterials can be classified as given in Fig. 1-1 [3, 13]. The upper right
corner contains the normal materials, which have both a positive permittivity
and a positive permeability. DPS stands for “double positive”. In contrast,
the lower left corner contains the DNG media, which have both a negative
permittivity and a negative permeability. This type of metamaterials is
sometimes called left-handed media (LHM) or negative refractive index
(NRI) media [8]. A lot of interesting phenomena can be observed in them:
anomalous refraction [6, 14], reversed Doppler shift [15, 16], inverse
Cherenkov radiation [17, 18], opposite group velocity and phase velocity [19,
20], etc..
In the upper left and lower right corners, there are two kinds of
metamaterial with only the permittivity or the permeability negative. They

3
are called single negative (SNG) media. The materials with near zero
permittivity and permeability are located around the x-axis and y-axis,
respectively. In the centre, the zero refraction index (ZRI) materials can be
found.

2. High impedance plane

A high impedance plane is a kind of 2D metamaterial, sometimes called
metasurface. The plane consists of a periodic structure of resonant unit cells.
When an electromagnetic wave impinges on the surface, the phase of the
reflected wave will be tuned by these resonators. Based on this phase several
types can be distinguished, see Fig. 1-2 [21-23].
When the reflection phase approaches 180°, the plane starts to behave like
a perfect electric conductor (PEC). When the reflection phase approaches 0°,
the plane starts to behave as a perfect magnetic conductor (PMC), or an
artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) [22-24]. In other situations, the phase
of the reflection wave is advanced or delayed with respect to the incident
wave. In this case, we distinguish capacitance planes and inductance planes,
respectively [25, 26]. It is important to point out that by choosing the
resonators and tuning their dimensions, the reflection wave can be fully
controlled at specific frequencies.
Another important type of metasurface is the absorber plane [27, 28]. In
this case the materials of the unit cells are lossy. In the limit, the incident
wave is absorbed totally, and no wave at all is reflected.

Fig. 1-1 The nomenclature of metamaterials, based on the values of the real parts of their
permittivity and permeability. [3, 13] DPS: double positive media, ENG: ε negative media,
MNG: µ negative media, DNG: double negative media, ENZ: ε near zero media, MNZ: µ near
zero media, ZIM: zero index media.

4
Fig. 1-2 The nomenclature of a high impedance plane.

Fig. 1-3 The function of chiral media.

3. Chiral media
The term chiral describes an object, especially a molecule, which has or
produces a non-superimposable mirror image of itself [29]. This property
changes the polarization of an incident electromagnetic wave. In natural
materials chirality is usually weak and only at some special frequencies.
However, huge chirality can be designed with metamaterials at arbitrary
frequencies. Indeed, by choosing a metamolecule with an asymmetric pattern
in 3D space, a chiral metamaterial is easily realized. This metamaterial can
be a 3D bulk medium as well as a 2D plane with only one layer of
metamolecules. Media like that have been realized in a frequency range from

5
radio frequencies up to optical frequencies. This property can be used in
polarizers (Fig. 1-3), polarized filters, and polarized splitters. [30-34]

4. Other metamaterials
There are a lot of metamaterial types with novel characteristics other than
the ones mentioned above, e.g. high anisotropy [35, 36], large nonlinearity
[37, 38], huge dispersion [10], etc.. All of these features have their special
applications in different fields. In the next section, several important
applications in antenna design will be introduced.

1.3 METAMATERIALS IN ANTENNA DESIGN

One of the most important applications of metamaterials is antenna design.
Due to the unusual properties of metamaterials, we can achieve antennas
with novel characteristics which cannot be realized with traditional materials.
In this section, several types of metamaterial loaded antennas will be
reviewed.

1. Electrically small antennas based on zeroth resonant mode

In mobile communication systems, electrically small antennas (ESA) are
desired. Modern integrated circuit technology has the ability to miniature
circuits to a very small size. However, in a traditional design, the
performance of the antenna is related with its size. The antenna usually has
dimensions in the order of the operating wavelength. This sets boundaries
for the size of the whole system. [39-42]
A ZIM medium, whose refractive index is near zero, shows an operating
wavelength that is infinite at an arbitrary designed frequency. This
phenomenon is named zeroth resonant mode. Since the wave number in this
antenna is zero, in theory, the physical size of the antenna can be made
independent of its working frequency. Because the operating wavelength is
infinite, the field distribution and the radiation pattern are different from the
normal ones. [43-46]

2. Dual-band and multi-band antennas

Normal dual-band antennas are realized with different resonant structures,
or different resonant modes in one structure. The main disadvantage of this
technique is that the field distributions in these structures can hardly be the
same in both bands. This means that the radiation patterns in the operating
bands are different. [47-51] Since metamaterials can support a negative

6
refractive index, the resonant modes can be selected as a symmetric pair, i.e.
so-called negative and positive modes. The field distributions of these two
modes can be very similar, and thus also the radiation patterns. [52-54]
Negative and positive modes can be designed together with a zeroth-order
mode. This yields a multi-band antenna with a specific pattern for each mode.
An extra advantage of a metamaterial-loaded multi-band antenna is the fact
that its size is usually smaller than in a traditional design, where the size is
decided by the lowest operating frequency. [52, 55]

3. Low Profile planar reflectors

In an electric dipole antenna positioned parallel on top of a PEC plane, the
distance between the dipole antenna and the reflector should be
approximately a quarter wavelength. Indeed, since the reflective phase at the
PEC plane is 180°, the radiation of the image of the electric dipole will start
to cancel the radiation of the dipole itself if it is located closer to the reflector.
[39]
However, if the reflector is a PMC plane, the reflective phase is zero, and
the image of the electric dipole will enhance the radiation when the dipole is
located near the PMC plane. This technique allows designing low profile
reflectors for electric dipole antennas. [21-23, 56-63]
Conversely, magnetic dipoles, in practice realized by slots or apertures in
a ground plate, are also not suitable for placement near any PEC plane
because of the generation of parallel plate modes between the two metal
planes, which considerably distorts the characteristics. [64] An AMC plane
can help to suppress any parallel plate modes. Also in this case, low profile
structures become feasible. [64-66]

4. Antenna lenses and polarizers

Dielectric lenses can be used to improve the directivity and gain of an
antenna. However, the cost to fabricate a 3D lens is large. Further, the
location of the lens should be carefully chosen in relation with the phase
centre of the antenna. A metamaterial lens can be formed by a flat 2D
structure. Their manufacturing cost is much lower. They can even be
integrated with the planar antenna structure to reduce the profile and size of
the antenna system. [67, 68]
A polarizer can be based on a chiral medium which has the capability to
transform a linearly polarized wave into a circularly polarized wave. This
opens a way to design circularly polarized antennas based on existing
linearly polarized antennas. [69-71]

7
5. Other antennas and structures involving metamaterials
There are a lot of other types of antennas and structures involving
metamaterials, e.g. leaky wave antennas [72-75], magnetodielectric
microstrip antennas [76, 77], ultra-wideband (UWB) antennas with notched
bands [78, 79], metamaterial based isolators [80, 81], series power divider
[82], dual-band splitters [83] and delay lines [84], etc.. All of these designs
have a relatively better performance than the corresponding conventional
designs.

1.4 OBJECTIVES AND CONTENTS OF THIS THESIS

The main objective of this PhD project was twofold: 1. to design dedicated
new types of metamaterials, and 2. to use metamaterials to further improve
the performance of antennas.
In the first part, from Chapter 2 to Chapter 4, the concept of metamaterials
is studied in order to acquire a deep physical understanding of their
behaviour, and several novel metamaterial structures are proposed. First, a
volumetric meta-metamaterial is studied in Chapter 2. It involves a
technology to increase the NRI bandwidth by using coated dielectric spheres.
The parameters of this structure, i.e. the thickness and the permittivity of the
core and the coating, are studied in detail. The optimum negative
permeability band can be increased 60 % compared to nude spheres without
coating. A combination of the new topology with wires is used to reach an
NRI bandwidth of about 23 %. To the knowledge of the authors, to date this
is one of the highest bandwidths reported in literature.
Next, in Chapter 3, a planar chiral metasurface is studied. This
metamaterial has potential applications in the design of circularly polarized
antennas. We use two methods to break the symmetric pattern of the
structures to obtain the chirality. One is based on a twisted pair of resonators
and the other is based on a displaced pair of resonators. The chirality of each
structure is analyzed in both simulations and experiments. An application of
this chiral metamaterial is the circular polarizer, which is realized and
evaluated. Besides, we investigate the possibility to build a tunable chiral
metasurface.
The concept of a metamolecule is discussed in Chapter 4. A metamolucule
consists of two different meta-atoms. Both the behaviour of the single meta-
atoms and the coupling between them are analyzed. This helps to design a
metamaterial with complex properties. The structure studied here can be
used as a sensitive sensor.

8
 In the second part of this thesis, we discuss three types of metamaterial-
based antennas. Chapter 5 proposes a dual-band textile antenna based on a 1-
dimensional type of metamaterial, i.e. a linear array of composite right/left-
handed transmission line cells (CRLH TL). Although the antenna topology
itself has been studied a lot, we are the first group to design and fabricate a
textile version of this antenna type. Two antennas are realized for dual-band
WLAN wearable applications. The dual-band antennas are operated in the
symmetric modes and maintain a similar broadside radiation pattern in the
two bands. The main features of these designs are the flexibility, easy
fabrication, low rear radiation, and low specific absorption ratio (SAR).
The radial CRLH TL is studied in Chapter 6. An innovative circuit model
of the radial CRLH TL is proposed to analyze this type of metamaterial.
Several types of antennas loaded with this kind of metamaterial are
presented. It is shown that when a circular patch antenna works at ZOR
mode, the resonant frequency of the antenna is independent of its physical
size, which can be used to design an electrically small antenna, or a large
aperture antenna. It is demonstrated that a sector patch antenna can also
support the same ZOR mode as the full circular patch. This topology is much
easier to integrate with a matching network to achieve a larger bandwidth.
Moreover, the sector patch can operate in multi-frequency bands, and all the
bands have a quasi omni-directional radiation pattern.
The third type of antennas studied concerns low profile antennas based on
metasurfaces. By locating a slot dipole etched patch on top of an AMC plane,
two operating bands are achieved with wide band, low profile, low rear
radiation pattern, and high radiation efficiency. The antenna works as a patch
antenna in the lower band, and as a slot dipole with PMC reflector in the
upper band. The functionality of the metasurfaces is analyzed and two
designs are realized based on this topology, one can be used for wearable
systems, and the other one can be used for indoor radar systems.
Finally, the thesis is concluded and a view of possible future research is
outlined.

9
Chapter 2

DIELECTRIC COATED SPHERE BASED

METAMATERIALS WITH WIDE

NEGATIVE REFRACTIVE INDEX BAND

方程段 2 部分 1

A new metamaterial topology is proposed, based on dielectric coated spheres.

The effect of the coating is an increased negative permittivity and
permeability bandwidth compared with the non-coated spheres. The
influence of the dimensional parameters is analyzed, and the relation of each
of them with the bandwidth is studied. The theoretical results are confirmed
by full wave simulations using CST MWS. A combination of the new
topology with wires is used to reach an NRI bandwidth of about 23 %. To
the knowledge of the authors, to date this is one of the highest bandwidths
reported in literature.
This chapter is based on the following publication:
[1] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Increasing the NRI bandwidth
of dielectric sphere-based metamaterials by coating." Progress In
Electromagnetics Research 132 (2012): 1-23.

11
2.1 INTRODUCTION
A large class of MMs displays a negative refractive index (NRI), i.e. their
permittivity and permeability are negative simultaneously. As early as 1968
[5], Veselago theoretically investigated NRI MMs, and predicated some
strange electromagnetic effects in these media. After that, MMs disappeared
from literature for about 30 years, until Pendry used an array of split ring
resonators (SRR) and metallic wires to build a real medium that exhibits the
NRI properties in the microwave band [6]. After that, the interest in this field
resurged. Huge numbers of scientists studied similar structures, like the
double SRR [7], single SRR [85], omega-shaped structures [86], S-shaped
[87] and U-shaped structures [88], and spiral resonators [5, 89]. Though all
of these have different metallic structures and performances, the basic
principle is nearly the same. The unit cell resonates at a certain frequency,
whose wavelength is much larger than the size of the cell. Both theory and
experiments have shown that the result is significant. However, a series of
inherent defects are exhibited, like anisotropy, conductor loss, narrow
bandwidth, and also a difficult fabrication in the optical band.
Another route based on Mie resonances of dielectric particles was
proposed to solve the above problems. R. Gans and H. Happel were the first
ones to investigate a dielectric sphere array more than 100 years ago [90].
Within the context of metamaterials, in 2003, C.L. Holloway and E.F.
Kuester pointed out that small spheres with large permittivity and
permeability could give an effective negative permittivity and negative
permeability [91]. They used Lewin’s formula [92]to calculate the effective
properties of the mixture. After that in 2004, O. G. Vendik and M.S.
Gashinova [93] used spheres with only large permittivity but different sizes
to realize the NRI. The authors claimed that this is much easier to fabricate
in practice. In 2006, L. Jylhä and I. Kolmakov [94] established a theoretical
model using the Clausius-Mossotti relation [95], which is more accurate than
Lewin’s model. M. S. Wheeler (2006) [14] and L.I. Basilio (2012) [96]
simplified things and used spheres of the same size only to realize NRI. E.F.
Kuester [97] obtained an NRI bandwidth of ca. 10 % by using layered
dielectric spheres while considering realistic losses. Experiments on single
sphere structures were performed only by L. Peng (2007) [98], Q. Zhao
(2008) [99], X. Cai (2008) [100], and T. Lepetit (2009) [101]. Several kinds
of all-dielectric MMs were fabricated and tested to verify the NRI
characteristics. L. Y. Liu derived an effective circuit model for this structure
in 2011 [102]. This model is more intuitive and gives an analytical

12
dependency on the electromagnetic and geometrical parameters of the
composite. V. Yannopapas (2005) [103] and A. Garcia-Etxarri (2011) [104]
used the dielectric sphere structure to obtain the NRI phenomenon at
terahertz and infrared frequencies, respectively.
All-dielectric MMs certainly have no conductor losses, and are quasi-
isotropic due to inherent symmetries. However, their bandwidth is still a
difficult problem. A higher packing density can give a stronger coupling,
which means more bandwidth (A. Ahmadi 2007 [105] and I. B. Vendik 2009
[106]). The highest packing density is limited by the size of the particles and
the space between them.
In order to extend the NRI bandwidth considerably, in this chapter, an
alternative method is proposed and theoretically investigated. The technique
involves changing the particles themselves by coating them. Coating the
spheres generates more degrees of freedom to control the resonance. After
this introduction, in the second section, the existing model for all-dielectric
single spheres is used, to the knowledge of the authors for the first time, to
study the negative permittivity and permeability bandwidth in terms of the
topological parameters of the structure. After that, in a third section, the
topology with coated spheres is introduced. The theoretical model for this
topology is constructed, and verified with CST simulations. Results for
coated spheres are compared with results for nude spheres. It is proven that
coating allows to considerably increase either the negative permeability or
negative permittivity bandwidth. Note that in sections 2.2 and 2.3, the main
goal is to study separately the negative permittivity and negative
permeability bands of the coated sphere structure, i.e. center frequency and
bandwidth of these (possibly different) bands. The actual realization of a
wide band NRI metamaterial is reported in the fourth and last section, where
an array of wires is added, yielding a structure of both coated spheres and
wires. The NRI bandwidth reached there is ca. 23 %.

2.2 ARRAY OF NUDE SPHERES

Consider a structure consisting of a lattice of dielectric particles. If the radius
of the particles is much smaller than the wavelength in the mixture, the
mixture can be seen as a homogeneous material. Its effective properties can
be obtained from the generalized Clausius-Mossotti relations [94] near the
first two Mie resonance modes
ε eff − ε b Nα
= (2.1)
ε eff 2ε b
+ 3

13
 µeff − µb Nβ
= (2.2)
µeff + 2µb 3
where, εeff and µeff are the effective permittivity and permeability of the
matrix. εb and µb are the permittivity and permeability of the background
host material. α and β are the electric and magnetic polarizability of the
particles, N is the number of spheres per unit volume. α and β are related to
the scattering coefficients a1 and b1 of the first lowest electric and magnetic
dipole modes [95].
6π jb
α= 3 1 (2.3)
k0
6π ja
β= 3 1 (2.4)
k0
So we get
3
2 ( k0 r ) + 6 jf v a1
ε eff = ε b 3
(2.5)
2 ( k0 r ) − 3 jf v a1
3
2 ( k0 r ) + 6 jf v b1
µeff = µb 3
(2.6)
2 ( k0 r ) − 3 jf v b1
3
4 4π  r 
where f v = π Nr 3 =   is the volume fraction. r is the radius of the
3 3 s
spheres and s is the distance between the sphere centers. For a certain array,
once the scattering coefficients are calculated, the effective parameters are
obtained from (2.5) and (2.6).
An array of “nude” spheres is shown in Fig. 2-1. The permittivity of the
spheres is ε1 and their radius is r1. From Mie-scattering theory, the scattering
coefficients are expressed as [107]
n ψ ( n x )ψ ′ ( x ) − ψ m ( x1 )ψ m′ ( n1 x1 )
am = 1 m 1 1 m 1 (2.7)
n1ψ m ( n1 x1 ) ξ m′ ( x1 ) − ξ m ( x1 )ψ m′ ( n1 x1 )

Fig. 2-1. Array of spheres

14
 ψ m ( n1 x1 )ψ m′ ( x1 ) − n1ψ m ( x1 )ψ m′ ( n1 x1 )
bm = (2.8)
ψ m ( n1 x1 ) ξ m′ ( x1 ) − n1ξ m ( x1 )ψ m′ ( n2 x1 )
where n1 = ε1 µ1 , x1 = k0 r1 , k0 = ω / c is the wave vector in vacuum.
ψ m ( z ) = zjm ( z ) and ξ m ( z ) = zhm(1) ( z ) are the m-th order Riccati-Bessel
functions. The prime indicates a differentiation. Inserting(2.7) and(2.8) into
(2.5) And (2.6), the Clausius-Mosotti model is obtained [94].
In this section, we will firstly prove that the Lewin model, established in
1947 [92], is identical to a simplified version of the Clausius-Mosotti model
for the nude sphere. If r1 ≪ λ ε b µb , where λ is the wavelength in vacuum,
the first two scattering coefficients can be simplified [107]
2 3/ 2 µb − µ p
a1 = i ( k02ε b µb ) r13 (2.9)
3 2 µb + µ p
2 2 3/ 2 εb − ε p
b1 = i
3
( k0 ε b µb ) r13
2ε b + ε p
(2.10)

ε p µp 2 ( sin θ − θ cosθ )
= = 2 = F (θ ) (2.11)
ε1 µ1 (θ − 1) sin θ + θ cos θ
where θ = kr1 ε1 µ1 , so the effective permittivity and permeability are easy
to express as
  ε p + 2ε1 
ε eff = ε b 1 + 3 f  − fv  

(2.12)

  ε p − ε1 
  µ + µε1 
µeff = µb  1 + 3 f  p − fv   (2.13)
  µ −µ 
  p 1 

4 µ Eq.(2.5) 4
ε Eq.(2.6)
µ Eq.(2.12)
2 2
ε Eq.(2.13)
µeff

εeff

0 0

-2 -2

0 2 4 6
f / GHz
Fig. 2-2. Effective parameters of an array of nude spheres (s = 20 mm, r1 = 5 mm, ε1 = 150)

15
These formulas are identical to the Maxwell-Garnett formulas obtained in a
totally different way with the Lewin’s model.
An example is calculated to compare the Lewin’s model and the Clausius-
Mossotti model. It is assumed that the background material and the spheres
have the properties εb=1, µb=1, ε1=150 and µ1=1, respectively. The radius of
the spheres is r1 = 5 mm and the distance between them is s = 20 mm. Fig.
2-2 shows the results. It can be seen that Lewin’s model is very accurate.
The two curves nearly coincide. The bands of negative permittivity and
permeability appear alternately at the resonant frequencies. The lowest
resonant frequency corresponds to a negative permeability, showing a much
wider band than the negative permittivity band displayed by the second
resonant frequency.
Further in the paper the center frequencies and relative bandwidths for the
resonances are defined as: ωcenter = (ωup+ωlow)/2 and ωRBW = (ωup-ωlow)/2ωcenter.
ωup and ωdown stand for the boundaries of the negative band as shown in Fig.
2-2. The following section discusses the relationships of ωcenter and ωRBW with
ε1, r1 and s.

2.2.1 Change of ε1 of the spheres

Fig. 2-3 exhibits the characteristics of the negative band with ε1. When ε1 is
very small, there is no negative band. Above a certain value, the negative
band appears. The center frequency of the resonance falls down as ε1
increases, since the electric size of the spheres becomes larger.
Considering the bandwidth, the negative permeability and permittivity
bands show different phenomena. For the negative permeability, the
resonance becomes strong when ε1 rises, so the band extends until it reaches
a steady value. For the negative permittivity, the band increases sharply at
first, also because the resonance becomes strong, but goes down
immediately after it reaches its maximum. The reason is that the resonance,
generating the negative component in the permittivity, cannot keep up with
the average permittivity of the mixture, which is also increasing.

2.2.2 Change of r1 of the spheres

In Fig. 2-4, ωcenter goes down as r1 increases, while ωRBW grows caused by
the coupling between the spheres. When r1 is too small compared to s, the
negative band will not appear. For different ε1, the negative µeff band is
almost identical, while the negative εeff band is very different. Note that the
topologies with r1 approaching 10 mm are not suitable in practice, since they

16
correspond to cases where the spheres almost touch each other. In this case,
also note that the strong coupling between the particles may induce a strange
resonance, as described in [106]. A very narrow extra NRI band is obtained.

ω RBW r1=7.5mm 25 ω center r1=7.5mm

2
ω RBW r1=5mm 20 ω center r1=5mm
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz
ω RBW r1=2.5mm 15 ω center r1=2.5mm 1

ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
10
5
6 0
5 0 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 100 200 300 400 500 0 100 200 300 400 500
ε1 ε1

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-3. The change of the negative band with ε1 (s = 20 mm)

6
ωRBW ε1=200 25 ωcenter ε1=200
20 4
ωRBW ε1=100 ωcenter ε1=100
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz

15
ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
ωRBW ε1=50 10 ωcenter ε1=50 2
5
6
5 0 5 0
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 2 4 5 6 8 10 0 2 4 5 6 8 10
r1 / mm r1 / mm

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-4. The change of the negative band with r1 (s = 20 mm)

25 6
ωRBW ε1=200 20 ωcenter ε1=200
4
ωRBW ε1=100 15 ωcenter ε1=100
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz
ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %

ωRBW ε1=50 10 ωcenter ε1=50 2

5
0 6 0
4 5
3 4
2 3
10 15 20 25 30 10 15 20 25 30
s / mm s / mm

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-5. The change of the negative band with s (r1 = 5 mm)

17
2.2.3 Change of s between the spheres
With changing the distance s, ωcenter seems to keep its value. The center
frequency is mainly caused by the structure of the particle itself, while the
bandwidth is influenced by the embedding of the particle in an array
configuration. Indeed, it can be seen that when s is too large, the resonance
of this single particle cannot generate the negative aspect any more over the
whole unit cell and the negative band disappears.
Generally speaking, the center frequency ωcenter is mainly related to the
size and permittivity of the spheres, while the bandwidth ωRBW is related to
the spacing in the array. Usually, foam with εb = 1 is chosen as the host
medium, so only three parameters, s, r1, and ε1, can be adjusted in order to
design the MMs for the nude spheres.

2.3 ARRAY OF COATED SPHERES

In this section an array of coated spheres, as shown in Fig. 2-6, is studied.
There are five parameters in this topology: the two permittivities, the radii of
the core and the coating, and the spacing in the array. We will show that if
the five parameters are chosen properly, the bandwidth of the negative band
is increased remarkably.
The core of the particle has the radius r1 and permittivity ε1 and the
coating has an outer radius r2 and permittivity ε2. The scattering coefficients
of the coated spheres are [107]
ψ m ( x2 ) ψ m′ ( n2 x2 ) − Am χ m′ ( n2 x2 )  − n2ψ m′ ( x2 ) ψ m ( n2 x2 ) − Am χ m ( n2 x2 ) 
am =
ξ m ( x2 ) ψ m′ ( n2 x2 ) − Am χ m′ ( n2 x2 )  − n2ξ m′ ( x2 ) ψ m ( n2 x2 ) − Am χ m ( n2 x2 ) 
(2.14)

ε1 , µ1
ε 2 , µ2
ε b , µb

Fig. 2-6. Array of coated spheres

18
 n2ψ m ( x2 ) ψ m′ ( n2 x2 ) − Bm χ m′ ( n2 x2 )  −ψ m′ ( x2 ) ψ m ( n2 x2 ) − Bm χ m ( n2 x2 ) 
bm =
n2ξ m ( x2 ) ψ m′ ( n2 x2 ) − Bm χ m′ ( n2 x2 )  − ξ m′ ( x2 ) ψ m ( n2 x2 ) − Bm χ m ( n2 x2 ) 
(2.15)
n ψ ( n x )ψ ′ ( n x ) − n1ψ m′ ( n2 x1 )ψ m ( n1 x1 )
Am = 2 m 2 1 m 1 1 (2.16)
n2 χ m ( n2 x1 )ψ m′ ( n1 x1 ) − n1 χ m′ ( n2 x1 )ψ m ( n1 x1 )
n2ψ m ( n1 x1 )ψ m′ ( n2 x1 ) − n1ψ m ( n2 x1 )ψ m′ ( n1 x1 )
Bm = (2.17)
n2 χ m′ ( n2 x1 )ψ m ( n1 x1 ) − n1ψ m′ ( n1 x1 ) χ m ( n2 x1 )
where n1 = ε1 µ1 , n2 = ε 2 µ 2 , x1 = k0 r1 , x2 = k0 r2 . ψ m ( z ) = zjm ( z ) ,
ξ m ( z ) = zhm(1) ( z ) and χ m ( z ) = − zym ( z ) are the m-th order Riccati-Bessel
functions. The am and bm are clearly different compared to the nude spheres.
As for the nude spheres, the effective parameters of the coated spheres are
obtained by inserting (2.14) and (2.15) into (2.5) and (2.6).
Note that in case that r1 ≪ λ ε b µb and r2 ≪ λ ε b µb , a line of
reasoning can be followed similar as in the case of a nude sphere to derive
simplified formulas for the scattering coefficients. These can be used in (2.5)
and (2.6) to yield a model similar as the Maxwell-Garnett model for the nude
sphere. Full details can be found in [97]. See also [108] and [109], from
which it can be seen that indeed the same results are obtained.

2.3.1 Change of r1 of the spheres

The outer radius of the coated spheres is kept at 5 mm, but the ratio of inter
and outer radius (r1/r2) is changed. The distance s is kept at 20 mm The core
permittivity ε1 is assumed 200, and the coated permittivity ε2 is larger than ε1
in Fig. 2-7 and smaller than ε1 in Fig. 2-8. For ε2 > ε1, ωcenter starts lower for
both permeability and permittivity, compared with nude spheres. As the
coating become thinner, ωcenter grows gradually until we get the nude
situation. But the bandwidth of permeability and permittivity varies
differently. ωRBW of µeff firstly goes up smoothly. After a maximum
corresponding with a thin coating of about 1mm, it goes down again. It is
remarkable that the coated situation can give a larger ωRBW than a single
layer sphere with ε2 or ε1. This shows that coated spheres indeed have the
capability to enlarge the bandwidth of negative µeff.
When the permittivity of the coating is lower than the core permittivity (ε2
< ε1), the situation is opposite. The ωcenter becomes higher and the ωRBW of µeff
has a minimum value. Considering the ωRBW of εeff, the negative band is
larger than for the nude sphere with the purely core permittivity ε1. But it

19
does not show a notable improvement compared to the nude sphere with the
coating permittivity ε2 (for example, ε2 =100, ε1 = 200).

2.3.2 Change ε2 of the spheres

In this section a different ε2 is considered, while the core permittivity ε1
remains 200. In Fig. 2-7, ε2 is greater than ε1. The higher ε2 is responsible for
the lower resonant frequency of both µeff and εeff. The bandwidth of µeff
becomes larger as ε2 grows. For a coating layer with suitable thickness (ε2 =
1600, r1/r2 = 0.92), the bandwidth reaches a maximum of 4.3%, nearly 50%
above the original one of 2.9 %. Unfortunately, the bandwidth of εeff is lower
than the original.
In Fig. 2-8, ε2 is less than ε1. It can be seen in the figure that there is no
negative band when ε2 is too small and r1 is too thin. With this kind of
coating, ωcenter of both µeff and εeff is higher. The variation of the bandwidth
show opposite trends compared to Fig. 2-7.

ω RBW ε2=1600 5 ω center ε2=1600 0.2

ω RBW ε2=800 ω center ε2=800
ω RBW ε2=400 ω center ε2=400
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz

4 0.1
ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
3
2 3 0
1.5 2
1
0.5 2 1
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
r1/r2 r1/r2

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-7 The change of negative band with r1 (s = 20mm, r2 = 5mm, ε1 = 200, ε2 > ε1)

ω RBW ε2=100 ω center ε2=100

ω RBW ε2=50 ω center ε2=50
ω RBW ε2=25 ω center ε2=25
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz

3 0.3
ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %

2
1 6 0.2
5
4 0 5
0.1
3 4
2 3 0
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
r1/r2 r1/r2
(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity
Fig. 2-8. The change of negative band with r1 (s = 20 mm, r2 = 5 mm, ε1 = 200, ε2 < ε1)

20
 3 4 0.2
4
2.5 3.5 3.5
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz
3

ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
2 ωcenter 2.5 ωcenter
3 0.1
1.5 ωRBW 2 ωRBW
1.5
1 2.5
1
0.5
0.5 0 2 0
0 500 1000 1500 0 500 1000 1500
ε2 ε2
(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity
Fig. 2-9. The change of the negative band with ε2 (s = 20 mm, r1 = 4 mm, r2 = 5 mm, ε1 = 200)

In Fig. 2-9, r1 is kept at 4 mm. Analyzed as a function of ε2, ωRBW of µeff

first increases rapidly and then “saturates”. ωRBW of εeff first sharply grows
and then gradually decreases to a very low value.

2.3.3 Change s between the spheres

In this section the distance s is changed, aiming at realizing a much wider
negative parameter band, see Fig. 2-10. and Fig. 2-11. The distance between
the coated spheres is chosen 12 mm, 15 mm, and 20 mm, respectively. It has
to be emphasized that Fig. 2-10. and Fig. 2-11. are the key figures of the
paper. They present the negative bands for a constant size (radius 5 mm) of
the embedded particle. A higher coating permittivity ε2 (= 1600) is chosen to
increase the negative permeability band and a lower permittivity ε2 (= 25) is
chosen to increase the negative permittivity band. Like in the case of the
nude sphere ωcenter does not change with s, because ωcenter is in practice only
depending on the particle itself. However, ωRBW grows continuously when
the particles are put closer together since in that case the coupling between
them is enhanced. It is clearly seen that a proper thickness of the coating can
generate a much larger NRI bandwidth compared to cases where only a
single permittivity is used. When only 25 is used as permittivity, there is no
negative permittivity band for s = 15 mm and 20 mm. (the utmost left point
in the Fig. 2-11 (b)). When only 200 is used, the maximum negative
permittivity BW is 0.7 % for s = 12 mm. For a coating of about 3.5 mm, the
negative permittivity BW can be boosted up to 3.2 %. Similarly, when we
use a proper coating with permittivity 1600 (which is the highest practical
value appearing in references), the negative permeability band can reach 22
%, see Fig. 2-10. (a). This is a really wide band for most applications.

21
 2.5 3
ω RBW s=20mm 25 ω center s=20mm
0.6
ω RBW s=15mm ω center s=15mm
2 20 2.5
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz
ω RBW s=12mm ω center s=12mm

ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
15 0.4
2
1.5
10
1.5 0.2
1 5

0 1 0
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
r1/r2 r1/r2

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-10. The change of the negative band with r1 and s (r2=5mm, ε1=200, ε2=1600)

15
ω RBW s=20mm ω center s=20mm
ω RBW s=15mm 12 8 ω center s=15mm
3
ωcenter / GHz

ωcenter / GHz

ω RBW s=12mm ω center s=12mm

6
ωRBW / %

ωRBW / %
9
5 6 2
6
4
1
3 4
3
0 0
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1
r1/r2 r1/r2

(a) Effective permeability (b) Effective permittivity

Fig. 2-11. The change of the negative band with r1 and s (r2=5mm, ε1=200, ε2=25)

2.4 VALIDATION AND APPLICATION

2.4.1 Effective parameter retrieval from S parameters
In order to verify the results of our model, several structures have been
simulated with the frequency solver available in the commercial software
CST Microwave Studio.
We mentioned before that the band of the negative permittivity is much
narrower than the band of the negative permeability, see for example Fig.
2-3 and Fig. 2-5. Even the coated spheres can only provide a very narrow
band with negative permittivity (Fig. 2-11 (b)). That has a strong direct
effect on the total bandwidth where a negative index n is obtained. But in
microwave frequency bands, a negative permittivity can be easily obtained
by an array of metallic wires ([110, 111]). If the radius of the wire is a and
the spacing between them is s, the effective permittivity can be expressed as

22
Fig. 2-12 The topology of the CST model.

1
ε eff = 1 − 2 2
(2.18)
1 s  ω  s  jωε 0  s 
2

  ln   +
2  2  c 2  2a  σ  2a 
where ω is the circular frequency and c is the wave velocity in vacuum. In
the topologies considered below, the dielectric spheres only provide the
negative permeability at their first resonant frequency, and the array of
metallic wires produces the negative permittivity.
Impedance z and refractive index n are widely used when characterizing
electromagnetic materials. They can be related to ε and µ through ε = n/z and
µ = n*z. Usually, z and n are first retrieved from the simulation (in this work
we use the technique of [112]), and then ε and µ are calculated.
This procedure is worked out as follows. In CST Microwave Studio, a
waveguide with periodic boundaries is built to simulate infinite space, as
shown in Fig. 2-12. A short section of vacuum waveguide is added at each
end of the sample to ensure extinction of the higher order modes. We set one
port at each side of this waveguide and obtain the S-matrix by simulation.
This S-matrix is calculated back to the reference planes, also depicted in Fig.
12. This means that the results are actually obtained with respect to the
reference planes, which are set at a unit cell boundary.
The number of unit cells actually simulated is based on the following line
of reasoning. Since the periodic boundaries ensure periodicity in the
transversal directions, transversally we can take one unit cell only. We have
simulated different lengths of the 1D metamaterial sample. The result is that
the retrieved values for permittivity and permeability are almost independent
of the number of unit cells along the length, except for the artificial
resonances due to the extraction procedure itself, as discussed in [113]. This
is illustrated in Fig. 2-13. This means that using a single unit cell already
provides accurate results.

23
 30
Smith's method (1 unit)
25 Smith's method (5 units)
GSTCs method
20 formula (2.6)
15
real(µ)

10

-5

-10
1.5 2 2.5
f / GHz
Fig. 2-13 Comparison of different methods. (s = 12 mm, r1 = 5 mm, ε1 = 200, a = 0.5 mm)

In [114] it is stated that the problem of the boundary effects can be solved
by using the original extraction technique in combination with a proper
choice of the reference planes. However, in the same paper it is mentioned:
“… to eventually conclude empirically that the first effective boundary of a
symmetric one-dimensional metamaterial coincides with the first unit-cell
boundary and the second effective boundary coincides with the last unit-cell
boundary”. This confirms that our choice of the reference planes is correct.
If necessary, the technique of [113, 115] can be used to remove the
remaining small surface effects. However, this will not change the main
conclusions of this paper. This is illustrated in Fig. 2-13, where the method
used in this paper (Smith’s method, 1 unit) is compared to a case where
multiple unit cells are considered (Smith’s method, 5 units), and with the
generalized sheet transition conditions method (GSTCs method) of [113]. As
can be seen, the three methods almost completely coincide in the negative
permeability region.
The S parameters are related to n and z by (see)

S11 =
( )
Γ 1 − e j 2 nk0 d
(2.19)
1 − Γ 2 e j 2 nk0 d

S21 =
(1 − Γ 2 ) e jnk0d (2.20)
1 − Γ 2 e j 2 nk0 d
2π 2π f z −1
with k0 = = and Γ = . d is the length of the waveguide. This
λ0 c z +1
can be easily transformed into

24
 2

z=±
(1 + S11 ) − S212 (2.21)
2
(1 − S11 ) − S212
1  1  2π m
n=±
k0 d
cos  (1 − S112 + S 212 )  + (2.22)
 2 S21  k0 d
Pay attention, for passive materials, Real (z) and Imag (n) must be greater
than zero. m is an integer related to the branch of index Real(n). For a thin
thickness sample, m can be equalled to zero, while under other conditions, m
has to be obtained from the continuity of n. More details on this retrieval
method can be found in [114, 116].

2.4.2 Nude spheres

In the topological model, the waveguide contains one unit element. Fig. 2-14
shows all corresponding results. Fig. 2-14 (a) and (b) displays the S
parameters obtained by CST in three situations, only metallic wires, only
nude spheres, and using them together. Fig. 2-14 (c) and (d) reveal the
parameters retrieved by using (2.21) and (2.22), compared with our model
(using (2.6) and (2.18)). The metallic wires show a wide stop band for the
whole simulation frequency range caused by the negative permittivity, while
the configuration with nude spheres has an obvious stop band around its first
resonant frequency 2.171 GHz, corresponding to the negative permeability.
A combination of metallic wires and dielectric spheres can provide double
negative parameters, so a pass band appears as expected. This pass band
corresponds to a NRI bandwidth of 14.1 %. This cannot be improved
significantly by increasing the permittivity of the spheres, as shown by the
permeability results in Fig. 2-3 (a). On top, we simulated the NRI bandwidth
for a structure with wires and for ε1 = 1600). The result is only 13.8 %.
The agreement between the permeabilitiy obtained from the CST
simulation and from our model is excellent for the array of nude spheres.
However, the resonant frequency shifts 0.01 GHz towards higher frequencies
for the combination of metallic wires and nude spheres. This means that the
metallic wires can influence the permeability a little bit.
The permittivity retrieved for the combination of metallic wires and nude
spheres shows little difference with the results obtained from our model. For
the CST simulation the permittivity is a little bit perturbed at the first
magnetic resonance. This is not obtained from our model. However, this
difference is little compared with the much larger influence of the metallic
wires.

25
 10
0
0
ABS(S11) / dB

-20 -10

real(ε)
-20
-40
wires
wires -30 nude spheres
-60 nude spheres wires and nude spheres
-40
wires and nude spheres formula (18)
-80 -50
1.5 2 2.5 1.5 2 2.5
f / GHz f / GHz

(a) S11 from CST (b) S12 from CST

wires
15 10
nude spheres
wires and nude spheres 0
10
formula (6)
-10
5
real(µ)

real(ε)

-20
0 wires
-30 nude spheres
-5 wires and nude spheres
-40
formula (18)
-10 -50
1.5 2 2.5 1.5 2 2.5
f / GHz f / GHz

(c) Permeability (d) Permittivity

Fig. 2-14. Topology of nude spheres.(s = 12 mm, r1 = 5 mm, ε1 = 200, a = 0.5 mm)

2.4.3 Coated spheres

Also for the coated spheres, our formulas and the CST results agree well, as
shown in Fig. 2-15. This proves the correctness of our model for the
topology of coated spheres. Little difference still appears for the structure
mixing the metallic wires and spheres together, as mentioned for the nude
spheres. It is clearly shown that the new technique allows to increase the
NRI bandwidth. It is now 23 % around a frequency of 1.34 GHz, which is an
obvious improvement of 64 % compared to the nude spheres of the last
section (ωRBW = 14 %). Moreover, if we put the spheres more densely
together, the relative band could even be further increased by using the
mutual coupling, as shown in Fig. 2-5.

26
 0 0

ABS(S12) / dB
ABS(S11) / dB

-20 -20

-40 -40

wires wires
-60 -60
coated spheres coated spheres
wires and coated spheres wires and coated spheres
-80 -80
0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
f / GHz f / GHz

(a) S11 from CST (b) S12 from CST

wires
15 10
coated spheres
wires and coated spheres 0
10 formula (2.6)
-10
5
real(µ)

real(ε)

-20
0 wires
-30
coated spheres
-5 -40 wires and coated spheres
formula (2.18)
-10 -50
0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
f / GHz f / GHz

(c) Permeability (d) Permittivity

Fig. 2-15 Topology of coated spheres. (s = 12 mm, r1 = 5 mm, r2 = 4.6 mm, ε1 = 200, ε2 =
1600, a = 0.5 mm)

In Fig. 2-16, the amplitude of the electric displacement vector ε E on the

center line of the waveguide at resonance is shown for three different cases:
nudes spheres for ε = 200 and for ε = 1600 , and coated spheres. No wires
are present. The physical parameters of the spheres are the same as in Fig.
2-14 and Fig. 2-15. It is clearly seen that in the case of the coated spheres,
inside the coating this vector (and thus the polarization current) is much
larger than within the core spheres. This explains the possible strong effect
on the scattering of the incident field, which in its turn explains the effect on
the bandwidth, see (2.6).

27
 5
x 10
10
nude spheres ε=200
8 nude spheres ε=1600
coated spheres
2 6
D / C/m

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
z / mm
Fig. 2-16. Comparison of the electric displacement vector within the spheres. Wires are not
present and the physical parameters of these spheres are the same as in Fig. 2-14 and Fig. 2-15.

15
CST time domain
CST fre. domain
10
HFSS
formula (2.6)
5
real(µ)

-5

-10
0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8
f / GHz
Fig. 2-17. Comparison of different solvers for the topology of wires and coated spheres. (s =
12 mm, r1 = 5 mm, r2 = 4.6 mm, ε1 = 200, ε2 = 1600, a = 0.5 mm).

In order to verify the results above-mentioned, based on the

recommendation given in [117], the results of the frequency solver within
CST are compared with the time-domain solver within CST and with HFSS.
The results are given in Fig. 2-17. They indicate that the three different
solvers agree extremely well. The CST time domain solver practically
coincides with the CST frequency domain solver. The HFSS result shows a
frequency shift of only 10 MHz (0.8 %).
In order to assess the effect of realistic losses, the topology was also
analyzed for ε1 = 200 (1 – j0.001), ε2 = 1600 (1 – j0.003), and σ = 5.8 × 107 S
for the metallic wires, respectively. The CST results yield an attenuation

28
constant (defined as in [97]) of α = 1.12 dB/λ at 1.35 GHz. This is a really
low value very competitive with the values found in the overview table I in
[97].
Finally, in TABLE 2-I we compare several kinds of NRI metamaterials
described in literature. It can be clearly seen that the topology with coated
spheres and wires has the second highest bandwidth of all the structures. The
metallic crosses structure of [118] yields the widest band. It can be expected
however that this structure is extremely sensitive to small deviations in the
gap distances between the crosses, an issue not considered in [118]. The
bandwidth in the last column is defined as the bandwidth where the real part
of both permittivity and permeability are negative simultaneously.
Nude sphere metamaterials have been fabricated and verified in a few
experiments [98-100]. The practical realization of coated spheres however is
a huge challenge for researchers active in this field. One of the main reasons
is that in the microwave frequency band, the high permittivity dielectrics
involved are usually very fragile and extremely difficult to process
mechanically. In the terahertz and optical frequency bands, it may be
feasible to realize coated structures by using thin film technology.

TABLE 2-I
COMPARISON OF SEVERAL KINDS OF NRI METAMATERIALS

Ref. TECHNOLOGY CENTER FREQ. [GHZ] NRI BW [%]

[6] SRRs and wires 10.5 9
[86] Ω-like metallic patterns 12.6 9.5
3
[88] U-like metallic patterns 85 x 10 5.9
[118] Metallic Crosses 11.5 56.7
[93] Dielectric spheres 67.1 0.3
[94] Dielectric spheres 10.1 1
[99] Dielectric cubes and wires 8.6 3.7
[100] Dielectric spheres and wires 6 11.7
[101] Dielectric rods 10.8 3.7
[96] Degenerate dielectric spheres 16.5 6
3
[14] Micron-scale coated spheres 3.6 x 10 9.8
This paper Coated dielectric spheres and wires 1.34 23

29
2.5 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, a specific case of a dielectric metamaterial is discussed. It
involves spheres that are coated in order to extend the NRI bandwidth. By
using suitable coating materials with optimal permittivity and thickness, the
NRI bandwidth can be increased 60 % compared with nude spheres with no
coating. In order to obtain these results, an upgraded theoretical model is
used and compared with general purpose commercial software. The
agreement is excellent. The theoretical model provides an intuitive link
between the physical size and the electromagnetic parameters, which can be
used to design this kind of all-dielectric MMs.

30
Chapter 3

PLANAR CHIRAL METAMATERIALS

BASED ON BILAYERED RESONATORS

方程段 3 部分 1

In this chapter bilayered chiral metamaterials are studied. To obtain the

asymmetric pattern in the structures, two types of bilayered structures are
proposed. One is based on a twisted pair of resonators, and the other is based
on a displaced pair of resonators. Prototypes are fabricated in the microwave
frequency band. Simulated and measured results agree well and show
significant chirality. The electric fields and currents on the structures are
analyzed to illustrate the phenomenon. Because of the simple topologies,
these structures can be easily used in polarizers and polarized filters.
This chapter is based on the following three publications:
[1] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Chiral structure based on bilayered
displaced U pair." EPL (Europhysics Letters) 103.1 (2013): 18002.
[2] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Compact circular polarizer based on
chiral twisted double split-ring resonator." Applied Physics Letters 102.10
(2013): 103503.
[3] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Circular polarizer Based on chiral
twisted structure." EMC Europe 2013 Symposium, Brugge, Belgium, Sep.
2013.

31
3.1 INTRODUCTION
Chirality is a basic phenomenon in electromagnetism and it has been
observed and analyzed for over a hundred years [119]. A lot of structures
show chirality, from chiral molecules to spiral coils. Chiral media (CM) have
the ability to rotate the plane of polarization of the incident wave to the right
or left depending on the handedness of the objects. This brings different
resonances for different circularly polarized (CP) incident waves. As for
their unique characteristics, e.g., asymmetric transmission, optical activity,
and circular dichroism, CMs have a lot of applications in optical and
microwave devices. Unfortunately, CMs in nature can only provide weak
chirality at some special frequencies. However, several kinds of artificial
CM structures, or named chiral metamaterials (CMMs), have been proposed.
Their unit cells are designed carefully to form different resonances for
incident circularly polarized waves, and thus can generate strong chirality.
Since chirality requires an asymmetric pattern, a straightforward idea is to
compose CMMs with helices or spiral coils in 3-D space [30]. As this 3-D
structure is not easy to fabricate, quasi-planar structures are proposed to
realize a similar function [120, 121]. Recently, many researchers focus on
bilayered planar structures without vertical metallic connections. Examples
are structures based on the conjugated gammadion, the rotating rosette, the
twisted cross, the U-shaped SRR, etc.[122-127]. In these structures, the
strong chirality is caused by the coupling between the twisted structures on
the different layers, without direct metallic connection. These CMMs have
been proven to exhibit huge optical activity and circular dichroism from the
microwave frequency band to the optical spectrum. Moreover, a single-layer
metallic structure can also support chirality when the electromagnetic wave
incidents obliquely [128, 129]. Several tunable CMMs have been designed
containing active devices in the chiral structure.[130, 131]
Devices based on CMs have also received attention. Several kinds of
polarization filters and polarizers for linear and circular polarization have
been designed. [30-33, 132] Another application is chiral metamaterials
(CMMs), that can show a negative refractive index (NRI) band, without the
need to have both permittivity and permeability negative simultaneously, as
in the case of traditional NRI metamaterials (MMs). [6, 133] This idea has
been realized by several groups already. [134-137]
In the next section of this chapter, a type of compact chiral structure,
based on twisted double split-ring resonators (DSRR), is used as a circular

32
polarizer in the microwave frequency band. The circularly polarized wave
can be obtained from a linearly polarized incident wave after it travels
through the structure. The difference in level between the transmitted waves
with left-circular polarization (LCP) and right-circular polarization (RCP)
can reach more than 30 dB near the resonant frequency of the material.
Compared with other kinds of CMs, the unit cell of the structure is extremely
small in all three dimensions. This is very advantageous when this structure
has to be integrated with other small devices like electrical small antennas or
small sensors.
Then another type of bilayered chiral structure is introduced. The
displacement is used to break the symmetry of the pattern and generates the
chirality, instead of rotation. Both optical activity and circular dichroism are
observed for circularly polarized waves. The amplitude and phase
differences for the transmission coefficients of the circularly polarized waves
can reach more than 12 dB and 40° at about 13.4 GHz, respectively. Since
the chirality of the bilayered structure can be easily controlled by moving the
position of one of the two layers, such a topology is very helpful in the
design of tunable CMMs.

3.2 CIRCULAR POLARIZER BASED ON CHIRAL

TWISTED DOUBLE SPLIT-RING RESONATOR
A compact circular polarizer is presented, which is based on a twisted double
split-ring resonator (DSRR). The bottom DSRR is rotated 90° with respect to
the top one. When the structure is illuminated by a normally incident linearly
polarized wave, the two linear components of the transmitted wave have
nearly equal amplitudes and 90° (-90°) phase difference around the resonant
frequency. This means that the transmitted wave with left-handed circular
polarization is much larger (smaller) than the one with right-handed circular
polarization. The electric fields and currents on the structure are analyzed to
illustrate this phenomenon. The size of each unit cell in this structure is
extremely small compared with the wavelength in all three dimensions. Both
simulations and measurements verify our design at microwave frequencies.

3.2.1 Topology and theoretical description

The unit cell topology of the proposed circular polarizer is shown in Fig. 3-1.
Each cell is composed of a pair of stacked DSRRs. The DSRRs in the two
layers are coaxial but mutually twisted by 90°. All geometric parameters are

33
defined in Fig. 3-1 (b). This unit cell can be repeated to create a layer that
can function as a polarizer.
Assuming that the incident and transmitted wave are E i = Exi ɵx + E yi ɵy and

E t = E xt ɵx + E yt ɵy , the linear transmission matrix Tll is

 Ext   Exi   Txx Txy   Exi 
 t  = Tll 
 E i   Tyx Tyy   E i 
= (3.1)
 Ey   y   y 
The circularly polarized transmitted waves can be expressed as
 E+t   Ext + jE yt   Exi 
=
 t  t  
t 
= T cl  i 
 
(3.2)
 E−   E x − jE y   Ey 
 T+ x T+ y  1  Txx + iTyx Txy + iTyy 
Tcl =  =   (3.3)
 T− x T− y  2  Txx − iTyx Txy − iTyy 
where the subscripts + and - represent the left-handed and right-handed
polarized waves, respectively. The constant 1 2 is a result of power
normalization. The elements in this linear-circular transmission matrix
involve the ability of a structure to transform a linearly polarized incident
wave into a circular transmitted wave. For a circular polarizer, the goal is
that one CP wave is much larger (smaller) than the other one, e.g. T+ x ≫ T− x
or T+ x ≪ T− x .

Fig. 3-1. (a) The unit cell topology of the circular polarizer. (b) Parameters of the unit cell: (c)
Photo of the prototype fabricated (a zoomed in unit cell is shown): p = 3.5 mm, r1 = 1.65 mm,
g = 0.2 mm, w = 0.3 mm.

34
 A prototype was fully designed, fabricated, and measured. The DSRRs are
etched on the two sides of an FR4 board (εr = 3.5, tan δ = 0.025) with
thickness 0.8 mm. The sample is composed of 50 × 50 unit cells, making the
total size of the PCB equal to 17.5 cm × 17.5 cm. A photo of the sample is
given in Fig. 3-1 (c).
The radii of the DSRRs in combination with the size of the gaps control
the operating frequencies of the polarizer. The thickness of the substrate is
the key parameter in the coupling between the pair of DSRRs. If the
thickness is zero, no chirality will occur, since the structure is symmetric in
the transmitted direction. However, if the thickness is too large, the coupling
between the two DSRRs is too small, each of the layers (and consequently
also the whole structure) shows achirality. Here, the thickness 0.8 mm is
carefully selected from the set of available standard substrate thicknesses.
The structure is modeled and simulated with the frequency domain solver
within CST Microwave Studio, which is based on the finite element method
(FEM). The unit cell boundaries and Floquet ports are used in the model.
The measured results are obtained by a vector network analyzer (Agilent
8510C) in a transmission measurement set-up using two standard gain horn
antennas (Narda microwave-east standard gain horn 640). Since multiple
reflections occur between the two horns, “raw” measurement data show an
oscillating behavior. A data processing procedure similar as in[138] is used
to remove these oscillations. It implements a kind of low-pass filter.

3.2.2 Simulated and measured results

The transmission coefficients for linear polarization are given in Fig. 3-2.
After data processing, the simulated and measured results agree very well in
the operating frequency band. Due to the lack of fourfold symmetry, the
cross transmission coefficients are different for an incident wave with x-
polarization and one with y-polarization (Txy ≠ Tyx). For a normally incident
wave with x-polarization, the transmitted waves for the two linear
polarizations nearly have the same amplitudes and a +90° (-90°) phase
difference at about 8.8 GHz (10.3 GHz), which means that a nearly pure
circular polarization wave is formed. On the other hand, for an incident wave
with y-polarization, also a resonance is obtained at the same frequency, but
its cross-polarization transmission is much lower than the co-polarization
(Txy < Tyy), see Fig. 3-2 (b). So the transmitted wave will display an elliptic
polarization.
Fig. 3-3 (a) and (b) shows the linear-circular transmission coefficients of
the basic single layer DSRR (top layer) and the final bilayered structure. It
35
can be clearly seen that the single layer structure yields the same
transmission for the two CP waves. However, the bilayered twisted DSRR
shows large differences in the CP transmitted waves. This is put in full
evidence in Fig. 3-3 (c) and (d), where the ratio between the two CP
transmitted wave amplitudes is shown. For an x-polarized incident wave, the
difference between the transmitted waves with different CP can reach a level
of more than 30 dB. The curve includes two peaks in the operating band. At
8.8 GHz, the LCP wave dominates the transmitted wave and at 10.3 GHz,
the RCP wave is the main component. In the center of the band, the
amplitudes of LCP and RCP are nearly the same, which indicates linear-
polarization, see also Fig. 3-4 (c). For an y-polarized incident wave, the
difference only reaches 15 dB, since the transmitted wave with y-
polarization is always much larger than the one with x-polarization, see Fig.
3-2 (b).

Fig. 3-2. Linear transmission coefficients: (a) and (c) x-polarized incident wave, (b) and (d) y-
polarized incident wave.

36
 In general, the transmitted wave can be described as an elliptically
polarized wave. For an elliptically polarized wave the polarization azimuth
and ellipticity are defined as [139].
θ = arg ( E+ ) − arg ( E− )  / 2 (3.4)
2 2
E+ − E− 1 E − E−
η = arctan = arcsin + 2 2
(3.5)
E+ + E− 2 E+ + E−
respectively. θ represents the angle between the major axis of the ellips and
the x-axis. η describes the polarization of the wave. For a pure circularly
polarized wave η equals 45°, and for a pure linearly polarized wave η = 0°.
When η is larger than zero, the wave is left-handed, otherwise it is right-
handed.

Fig. 3-3. Top: simulated linear-circular transmission coefficients: (a) single layer DSRR, (b)
double layered DSRR with 90° twisted angle. Bottom: simulated and measured difference
between the transmitted LCP and RCP waves: (c) x-polarized incident wave, (d) y-polarized
incident wave.

37
Fig. 3-4. (a) Polarization azimuth, (b) Ellipticity of transmitted wave for x-polarized and y-
polarized incidence, respectively, (c) Several polarization states of transmitted wave for x-
polarized incidence (waves are coming out of the paper).

These two parameters are shown in Fig. 3-4 (a) and (b) for x-polarization
and y-polarization incidence, respectively. Several polarization states for x-
polarized incidence are plotted in Fig. 3-4 (c). Incident and transmitted wave
have the same linear polarization at low frequencies (8 GHz). Near the
resonant frequency, the transmitted wave becomes left-handed elliptical, and
its major axis rotates with respect to x-axis. At 8.8 GHz the wave becomes
left-handed circular. After that, the wave continues rotating and stays left-
handed elliptical up to 9.78 GHz, where a linear polarization is formed with
an angle of 145° with respect to the x-axis. After that, the transmitted wave
becomes right-handed elliptical. At 10.3 GHz, it is right-handed circular, and
then, it becomes gradually linearly polarized.
We also fabricated a sample with no twisted angle between the two layers
(the gaps have the same relative position in the top and bottom DSRR). The
simulated and measured results both show that the LCP and RCP transmitted
waves have the same amplitudes and phases, since the structure does not
have any chirality.

38
 An extra noticeable advantage of this structure is its compact size. At 8.8
GHz the size of the unit cell is only λ0/9.74 × λ0/9.74 × λ0/42.6. That is not
only extremely thin in the z direction, but also very small in the transverse
directions. The small size of the unit cell is very advantageous in a lot of
applications where the polarizer needs to be integrated with other compact
devices, like electrically small antennas and small sensors.

3.2.3 Physical explanation

In each DSRR, two modes are possible. One is the dipole (current) mode,
see Fig. 3-5 (a). This occurs when the excitation (electric field) is along the
direction C connecting the two gaps. The presence of the gaps has no direct
effect on this mode, since it does not interrupt the current flow. Also, this
mode does not show a resonance, as can be seen from the straight line
response in Fig. 3-3 (a). The other mode is the “gapped” loop current mode,
further called the gapped mode. This occurs when the excitation is along the
direction normal to C. “Gapped” means that this mode can actually be seen
as a fixed superposition of a dipole mode normal to C, and a “full” loop
mode (or a magnetic dipole, involving a current flowing along the full loop),
see Fig. 3-5 (b). The currents of these two exactly cancel at the position of
the gaps. The gapped mode is thus only possible thanks to the presence of
the gaps. This mode does show a resonance around 9.4 GHz, see Fig. 3-3.
Due to the 90° spatial rotation of the two DSRRs, the dipole current mode of
one couples to the gapped mode of the other.
An x-polarized normally incident wave excites the gapped mode in the top
DSSR and the dipole mode in the bottom DSSR. The top gapped mode can
be decomposed into its dipole and full loop constituents. The dipole part
couples to the dipole mode at the bottom, but more importantly, the full loop
part couples to the full loop mode (and thus automatically to the gapped
mode) at the bottom. The latter is actually the inductive coupling between
two overlapping full loops. Gapped modes are thus excited in both DSSRs.
The transmission behavior can be explained based on the resonance around
9.4 GHz for the single DSSR in Fig. 3-3 (b). The stacking results in a
splitting of the basic resonance in two, one with a parallel and the other with
an anti-parallel character. [140, 141]When the frequency changes the relative
amplitudes and phases of these two modes also change. The phases are such
that at 8.78 GHz LHCP and at 10.3 GHz RHCP is obtained. The resulting
charge and current distributions at these two frequencies are given in Fig.
3-6. For both resonant frequencies, clearly only gapped modes are observed.
In the top layer, the phases of the current and charge are quasi the same at
39
the two frequencies. In the bottom layer however, there is a clear 180° phase
difference between the two frequencies. The current flow is indeed parallel
at the lower frequency and anti-parallel at the higher frequency. This
explains different transmitted circular polarizations.

Fig. 3-5. z-component of the electric field distribution (directly related to surface charge),
depicted in color, and surface current flow, depicted with arrows, (a) dipole mode,(b) “full”
loop mode.

Fig. 3-6. z-component of the electric field distribution (which is directly related to surface
charges) near the resonant frequencies. The arrows indicate the directions of the surface
current flow. (a) on bottom layer at 8.8 GHz, (b) on top layer at 8.8 GHz, (c) on bottom layer
at 10.3 GHz, (d) on top layer at 10.3 GHz.

40
3.3 CHIRAL STRUCTURE BASED ON BILAYERED
DISPLACED U PAIR
A type of bilayered chiral structure is introduced. Whereas common
bilayered chiral structures are based on rotation, our design is based on the
displacement between two U topologies on different layers. This
displacement breaks the symmetry of the pattern and generates the chirality.
Prototypes are fabricated in the microwave frequency band. Simulated and
measured results agree well. Both optical activity and circular dichroism are
observed for circularly polarized waves. The amplitude and phase
differences for the transmission coefficients of the circularly polarized waves
can reach more than 12 dB and 40° at about 13.4 GHz, respectively. Since
the chirality of the bilayered structure can be easily controlled by moving the
position of one of the two layers, this topology can be used in the designing
of tunable chiral metamaterials.

3.3.1 Topology and theoretical description

The unit cell of the proposed structure is shown in Fig. 3-7 (a). Each cell is
composed of a pair of stacked U-shapes. The U structures in the two layers
have displacements in both x and y direction (∆x and ∆y). The unit cell
parameters are defined in Fig. 3-7 (b).
The structure is modeled and simulated with the frequency domain solver
in CST Microwave Studio, which is based on the finite element method
(FEM). Unit cell boundaries and Floquet ports are used in the model. The
measured results are obtained by a vector network analyzer (Agilent 8510C)
in a transmission measurement set-up using two standard gain horn antennas
(Narda microwave-east standard gain horn 639).
Assuming that the incident and transmitted wave are
 E ix ɵx
E i =  i  e jkz (3.6)
 E ɵy 
 y 
and
 E tx ɵx 
E t =  t  e jkz (3.7)
 E ɵy 
 y 
they are related by the linear transmission matrix Tl as
 Ext   Exi   Txx Txy   Exi 
 t  = Tl
 E i   Tyx Tyy   E i 
= (3.8)
E
 y   y     y

41
The transmission matrix for circularly polarized waves can be expressed as
T T+− 
Tc =  ++ 
 T−+ T−− 
(3.9)
1  (Txx + Tyy ) + i (Txy − Tyx ) (Txx − Tyy ) − i(Txy + Tyx ) 
=  
2  (Txx − Tyy ) + i (Txy + Tyx ) (Txx + Tyy ) − i (Txy − Tyx ) 
where the subscripts + and - represent the right-handed polarized (RCP) and
left-handed polarized (LCP) waves, respectively.

3.3.2 Simulated and measured results

In the prototype, the U structures are etched on the two sides of an FR4
board (εr = 3.8, tan δ = 0.025) with thickness 0.8 mm. The sample is
composed of 30 × 35 unit cells, making the total size of the PCB equal to 15
cm × 17.5 cm. A photo of the sample is given in Fig. 3-7 (c).
Since the U-shape shows symmetry along the x-axis, only position
shifting in y-direction cannot break the symmetry, and thus does not
introduce chirality. So a shift in the x-direction is firstly analyzed. ∆x is
chosen 1.55 mm. The resulting transmission coefficients of the LCP and
RCP waves are given in Fig. 3-8 (a). Around 13.8 GHz the difference
between them can clearly be seen. The amplitude and phase differences are
characterized by ∆ and δ, respectively.

Fig. 3-7 (a) The unit cell topology of the bilayered chiral structure. (b) Parameters of the unit
cell. (c) Photo of the prototype fabricated (a zoomed in unit cell is shown): h = 0.8 mm, p = 5
mm, a = 3 mm, w = 0.5 mm.

42
Fig. 3-8. Transmission coefficients of the structure (a), (b) and (c), ∆x = 1.55 mm, ∆y = 0 mm;
(d), (e) and (f), ∆x = 2 mm, ∆y = 2.5 mm.

∆ = T+ + T−−
(3.10)
δ = arg (T++ ) − arg (T−− )
(3.11)
Fig. 3-8 (b) and (c) show these two parameters in the operating frequency
band. The difference between the two CP waves can reach 4.8 dB and 17° in
amplitude and phase, respectively.
A sample with only position shifting in y direction (∆x = 0) was also
analyzed. The simulated results show that the LCP and RCP transmitted
waves have the same amplitudes and phases, since the structure does not
have the necessary asymmetry.
If the two U resonators on the different layers have a displacement in both
x and y direction, a much more significant effect can be observed. In Fig. 3-8
(b), ∆x = 2 mm and ∆y = 2.5 mm. It is seen that the amplitude and phase
differences reach values of 12 dB and 43° near 13.4 GHz, respectively,
which is much larger than for the structure with displacement in x direction
43
only. This is caused by the more significant asymmetric pattern in the
structure. Considering that the thickness of the sample is only 0.8 mm, such
chirality is remarkable.
The effective parameters of the structure in Fig. 3-8 (d) are calculated
based on the retrieval method. [134] The results show that the effective
refractive index can reach about 0.15 at 13.5 GHz for the RCP wave, which
is much lower than for the LCP wave. So the presented bilayered structure
can be used as a zero-index metamaterial. Its chirality is not enough to
support negative index. This can be reached for example with the twisted
bilayered structure. [134, 142]
In principle, the same method can be used in other frequency bands to
generate chirality, the Tera-Hertz band, even the IR and the optical band,
because the break of the symmetry by displacement is the essential reason of
the chirality. However, at these high frequencies, the larger losses in the
metals may have a reducing effect on the results. An example is given in Fig.
3-9. The permittivity of the gold is described by a Drude model with plasma
frequency ωpl = 1.37×1016 s-1, and damping constant ωc = 4.08×1013 s-1.
The refractive index of the substrate PC 403 nPC403 = 1.55. [141] A
significant difference is obtained between the LCP and RCP wave in this
simulated result, of the same order of magnitude as at microwave
frequencies (Fig. 3-8 (d)).

Fig. 3-9. Performance of the displaced U pair topology at THz frequencies. The physical
parameters are p = 400 nm, a = 230 nm, w = 90 nm, h = 50 nm, the thickness of the gold is t =
50 nm. ), ∆x = 150 nm, ∆y = 200 nm.

44
Fig. 3-10. Electric current modes on the square and U structures, the color represents the z-
component of the electric field distribution (directly related to surface charge), the arrow
indicates surface current flow.

3.3.3 Physical explanation

In general the constitutive relations can be expressed as
D  E   χ EE χ EH   E 
B  = Χ H  =  χ   (3.12)
     HE χ HH   H 
For materials without chirality, only the diagonal entries in the matrix X are
not zero (χEE ≠ 0, χHH ≠ 0, χEH = χHE = 0). This means that the electric field
(E) cannot cause a magnetic flux (B), and vice versa, the magnetic field (H)
cannot induce an electric displacement field (D). However, for a CM, the χEH
and χHE are no longer zero. Electric field and magnetic field can induce each
other. This coupling is one way of explaining chirality.
In a complete and isolated square, there are three main electric current
modes, the pure dipole modes in x- and y-direction, and the full loop mode
(see Fig. 3-10 left). In the U shape, the pure dipole mode in y-direction is
slightly distorted due to the fact that the upper edge of the square is missing.
The result is the “modified” dipole current mode (see Fig. 3-10, right top).
This mode essentially still generates y-directed electric fields, just as the
pure dipole mode in y-direction. The pure dipole mode in x-direction is

45
considerably altered. The fact that the upper edge of the square is missing
gives rise to a “mixed” current mode, which is a combination of the original
pure dipole mode and a full loop mode, in such a way that the current in the
missing edge is annihilated (see Fig. 3-10, right bottom). In other words, it is
a superposition of an electrical dipole moment p in x-direction, and a
magnetic dipole moment µ perpendicular to the loop in z-direction.[141] The
electric dipole moment p generates x-directed electric fields. The magnetic
dipole moment µ generates z-directed magnetic fields and a rotational
electric field in the xy-plane.
The “modified” dipole mode is excited when the incident electric field is
along the y-direction, which is the direction along the legs of the U shape. In
the operating frequency band, this mode does not show a resonance. The
“mixed” current mode occurs when the exciting electric field is along the
base of the U shape (in x-direction). This mode does resonate at about 13.4
GHz. From symmetry considerations, it is clear that none of the two current
modes described for the U structure can generate chirality.
In general, the stacking introduces capacitive coupling between the U’s of
the top and bottom layer. Capacitive coupling means the formation of dipole
charge distributions. The nature of the capacitive coupling is, and thus the
dipoles are, totally depending on the relative positioning of the stacked U’s,
and thus on the displacement between the layers. This capacitive coupling
introduces a deformation of the charge distributions, and thus current modes,
in this way breaking the symmetry. The formation of these dipolar charge
distributions in the U’s in the two layers is the main cause of chirality. This
is clearly illustrated in Fig. 3-11, where the charges on the U’s are depicted
for the case ∆x = 2 mm, ∆y = 2.5 mm and for an incident field in x-direction.
For the bottom layer (Fig. 3-11 (b) and (d) at the right), only the “mixed”
current mode can be seen, generating the corresponding dipole charge
distribution (with phase 90°). Note that a current distribution has a phase
shift of 90° with respect to its charge distribution. However, for the top layer
(Fig. 3-11 (a) and (c) at the left) not only a smaller “mixed” current mode
with phase 90° is seen. Where the tips of a U of the bottom layer approach
the bottom of a U of the top layer, an extra asymmetric dipolar charge
distribution is formed, due to capacitive coupling. The corresponding current
thus shows a net y-directed dipole moment with phase 0°, see pa in Fig. 3-11
(c). This means that an incident x-directed electric field is generating an
outgoing y-directed field component. According to (7), together with proper
phase relations between the transmission coefficients, this is a prerequisite to
generate chirality.

46
Fig. 3-11. Charge distribution in the bilayered U structures for the case ∆x = 2 mm, ∆y = 2.5
mm: a) top layer at phase 0°, b) bottom layer at phase 0°, c) top layer at phase 90°, d) bottom
layer at phase 90°.

3.3.4 Tunable chirality

Another advantage of this kind of chiral structure is its tunability. Several
kinds of tunable CMMs have been designed already. They may even contain
active devices.[130, 131] The most common one is based on silicon. The
conductivity of a silicon substrate can be controlled by a laser, which
modifies the transmission characteristics of the structure. Since this method
requires a controllable substrate and a laser source, it is only available in the
THz frequency band. In the microwave or optical band, it is less
straightforward to change the properties of the substrate. Another tunable
CMM based on rotation of the two layers is presented in.[143] The control
can be performed by a Micro Electronic Mechanical System (MEMS).
However, the huge disadvantage of this technique is that the rotation of the
two layers with respect to each other inherently breaks the periodicity of the
structure. This makes it extremely difficult to analyze and adds thus
considerable challenges in the design of such structures. The chiral structure
proposed in this paper is based on the displacement of total layers which
respect to each other. This keeps the periodicity of the whole structure and
makes the design much easier.

47
 In Fig. 3-12 the displacement of the two layers is changing. The physical
parameters of the structure are the same as in Fig. 3-7. In Fig. 3-12 (a), the
displacement in y direction is kept ∆y = 2.5 mm, and ∆x is changing from 0
mm to 2.5 mm. When ∆x is zero, ∆ is also zero due to the symmetry of the
structure itself. Then ∆ grows with ∆x up to ∆x = 2.0 mm where a peak
value is observed in the curve. This phenomenon is caused by the ascending
asymmetry induced by the displacement in the bi-layered structure. After
this maximum, ∆ drops down sharply to zero at ∆x = 2.5 mm (half the
period) where the structure shows an asymmetric pattern. If ∆x is negative (a
shift in the other direction), the amplitude of ∆ remains but its sign changes.

Fig. 3-12. The amplitude difference for different displacements. (a) ∆y = 2.5 mm, (b) ∆x = 1.5
mm.

48
 In Fig. 3-12 (b), ∆x is kept 1.5 mm. Since the U shape resonator is
asymmetric in y direction, ∆ shows small differences for positive and
negative ∆y. The peak of ∆ shifts much less compared to the previous case,
but the amplitude of the shift ∆ is of the same order of magnitude.
By changing the displacement in the bilayered structure both in x and y
direction, the peak frequency and max (∆) are tunable over a large range. It
has to be emphasized that this is a simple method to design chirality in
CMMs.
The four-U structure of [142] can be treated as four displaced U pairs with
different orientations. This structure needs a twist between the different
layers, with as a result a very strong chirality, larger than for the presented
structure. However, in our topology chirality is reached only by the
displacement. The displacement, and thus the chirality, is then very easy to
tune. This is much more difficult in case of the four-U structure, since in
practice its rotations cannot be changed in a straightforward way.

3.4 CONCLUSION
Two kinds of chiral structures are studied in this chapter. One is based on the
bi-layered twisted DSRRs and the other one is based on a pair of displaced
U-shape resonators. Both of them break the pattern symmetry and show
huge chirality. The unit cell of these structures is not only extremely thin in
the longitudinal direction, but also very small in the transverse directions.
Prototypes are fabricated and measured. The numerical and measured results
agree well. The physical working mechanisms behind these phenomena
observed are also explained, based on the current and charge distributions in
the structures. In real applications, the first design can be used as a polarizer
which can convert a linearly polarized wave into a pure circularly polarized
wave. The second one can be used in tunable CMMs whose chirality can be
easily controlled by a mechanical displacement between the two layers. A
circular patch antenna with this technology designed for GPS applications is
presented in a master thesis supervised by the author [144].

49
Chapter 4

AN ENCAPSULATING META-

MOLECULE: U RESONATOR

CONTAINING SPIRAL LINE

方程段 4 部分 1

A new kind of planar metamaterial is investigated. It consists of meta-

molecules where a first resonator encapsulates a second resonator. The near-
field coupling between these resonators is the dominating effect determining
the characteristics of the material and is discussed in detail at a physical level.
The technique of encapsulating allows both to miniaturize the unit cell,
which is advantageous with respect to making the material homogeneous,
and to invoke strong coupling, which is advantageous for tuning the material.
This chapter is based on the following publication:
[1] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "An encapsulating meta-
molecule: U resonator containing spiral line", Japanese Journal of Applied
Physics (JJAP), 53. 11 (2014) 110306.

51
4.1 INTRODUCTION
A MM usually consists of periodic deep subwavelength resonators, called
meta-atoms, that are carefully designed in order to get unique functionalities
at specific frequencies. Some basic meta-atoms are the split ring resonator
(SRR) [7, 145], the U shape resonator [88, 146], the spiral roll [7, 147], the
dielectric sphere [98, 133], etc.. They provide properties like negative
refractive index (NRI) [6, 121], huge chirality [34, 120, 121, 148],
asymmetric transmission [149, 150], and even large nonlinear properties [37,
38]. Similar to natural materials, several meta-atoms can be combined into a
meta-molecule. The properties of a meta-molecule are not the mere sum of
the properties of each meta-atom, since there may exist a strong interaction
between them. Exploiting this coupling forms a new route in MM design that
may provide very interesting new properties. [141, 151]
The interaction between two elementary meta-resonators is studied by
several groups. In general, due to the electromagnetic coupling between
meta-atoms, the resonances of a meta-molecule will differ from to the ones
of the constituting atoms. [141, 152, 153] A common phenomena is that the
resonance splits into two resonances, one with a “parallel current” nature and
one with an “anti-parallel current” nature. [153] In general, when a planar
wave is incident on a planar screen consisting of such meta-molecules, a
narrow transmission band can be found in the center between these two
hybrid resonances [141]. This transmission window usually has a high
quality factor and a sharp dispersion. Both these phenomena have a lot of
applications in engineering. In the microwave frequency band, sharp
resonances are used in filters [32, 33, 154], artificial delay lines [154], or
polarizers. [30, 34]In the optical spectrum, they can be used in sensitive
sensors. [155, 156]
In this chapter, we investigate a new type of meta-molecule introduced
recently: the encapsulating meta-molecule [157]. This structure consists of a
first resonator encapsulating a second resonator, in this way forming a
compact unit cell. The typical dimension of the meta-molecule is smaller
than one sixth wavelength. Due to the near-field interaction between the two
resonators, a hybridization of the resonances is obtained, splitting the
spectrum, with a narrow transmission window in the wide stop band. A U
shape element acts as the first resonator and a spiral line acts as the second
one. In contrast to [157], the meta-molecule shows strong polarization
dependence. Different distances between the two resonators, including the

52
important case of overlapping topologies, and the corresponding coupling
are studied. It is proven that the concept of overlapping yields very
promising results. Not only the distance between the atoms, but also the
period of the unit cell is shown to seriously influence the coupling. The
working mechanism is explained at a physical coupling level, based on the
current modes that occur in the structure, and not just at a circuit equivalent
level. The near-field distribution is inspected for each situation in order to
verify the physical mechanisms behind this phenomenon. To the knowledge
of the authors, the concept of encapsulation within a single unit cell is quite
new and has not been studied in detail. This endows this design with
potentials in highly integrated devices, like electrically small antennas or
small sensors.
The proposed structure is etched on an FR4 printed circuit board (PCB)
(relative permittivity εr = 3.8, thickness 0.8 mm). The meta-molecule is
composed of a U shape resonator and a spiral line. The physical parameters
of the unit cell are shown in Fig. 4-1. The structure is simulated with the
frequency domain solver in the commercial software CST MWS. Periodic
boundaries and Floquet ports are used in the model.
The reflection and transmission coefficients for x- and y-polarized
incident plane waves in case of the single U resonator, the single spiral line,
and the meta-molecule, respectively, are plotted in Fig. 4-2, top. The
component of the electric field normal to the structure Ez, which is related to
the charge distribution in the structure, is depicted at several frequencies in
Fig. 4-2, bottom.

4.2 SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS

When the incident wave is parallel to the legs of the isolated U (x-direction),
no resonance can be found in the operating frequency band (below 15 GHz).
However, when the incident wave is perpendicular to the legs of the U (y-
direction) a wide resonance can be observed around 9.155 GHz. The Ez
distribution (Fig. 4-2 (d)) shows a looped current mode at this resonant
frequency. Since the current on the U clearly realizes a superposition of an
electric dipole moment in y-direction and a magnetic dipole moment in z-
direction [11,20], the structure is strongly coupled with the y-directed
incident wave. The efficient radiation of this U resonator makes the Q factor
low, resulting in a wide stop band.
In the isolated spiral line, a resonance can be seen at 9.035 GHz for the x-
directed incident wave. The Ez distribution in Fig. 4-2 (e) reveals that this

53
mode is the current loop mode of the spiral line. Also for the y-directed
incident wave, a very small dip can be observed. The Ez distribution (not
shown) shows a similar pattern as the former one, but its intensity is much
weaker. This difference is caused by the orientation of the gap in the spiral
line, which is in x direction. The current loop mode is the dark mode under a
y-direction incident wave for this spiral line.

Fig. 4-1. The unit cell topology of the meta-molecule (dimensions in mm). The U shape
resonator and spiral line are concentric.

Fig. 4-2. Top: the transmission and reflection coefficients of the U resonator, the single spiral
line, and the meta-molecule are shown in (a), (b) and (c), respectively. Bottom: the Ez
distribution in the U resonator for y-polarization at 9.155 GHz. (d), in the single spiral line for
x-polarization at 9.035 GHz (e), in the meta-molecule for y-polarization at 8.57 GHz (f) and
9.38 GHz (g). The arrow indicates the direction of the surface current flow.

54
 Next, the U shape and the spiral line are brought together to form a meta-
molecule. The two resonators are placed concentrically. Their orientation is
shown in Fig. 1. The transmission and reflection coefficients of the structure
are shown in Fig. 4-2 (c). For the x-directed incident wave, the results are
similar to the U resonator, except for a little perturbation at about 8.93 GHz
caused by the spiral line. For the y-directed incident wave, from the results
for the isolated structures we know that the U shape resonator is excited
directly, and that the spiral line is hardly directly excited. In the meta-
molecule, the physical working mechanism is as follows. The U shape
resonator is excited firstly, yielding a loop current on the U shape, and thus a
magnetic dipole moment in z-direction. This magnetic dipole moment
excites the spiral line. Due to this near-field interaction between the two
resonators, the spectrum splits into two peaks, representing a symmetric
mode, and an antisymmetric mode. [141, 152] Fig. 4-2 (f) and (g) illustrates
these modes. The parallel current at the lower frequency and the antiparallel
current at the higher frequency can be clearly seen in these two figures. The
narrow transmission window appearing in the center between these two
frequencies is an electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) [151, 155].
This phenomenon will be discussed in detail in the next section.

Fig. 4-3. (a) Schematic diagram of the displacement of the spiral line. (b) and (c) The
transmission and reflection coefficients of the meta-molecule for y-polarization. (d), (e), (f),
and (g) Ez distribution for the displacements -0.6, 0, 0.6, and 0.9 mm, respectively, at 8.975
GHz.

55
4.3 PARAMETER STUDY
In a meta-molecule the near-field interaction between the two resonators is
the cause of the splitting of the resonance. Obviously, the distance between
the two meta-atoms will influence the strength of this coupling and thus has
to be studied.
Consider a displacement of the spiral line ∆x, see Fig. 4-3. When ∆x is
positive the spiral line is moving towards the U resonator, and the coupling
between them increases. Conversely, for a negative ∆x the spiral line is
moving away from the U resonator, which will reduce the coupling. Fig. 4-3
(b) and (c) compare four situations, ∆x = -0.6 mm, 0 mm 0.6 mm, and 0.9
mm. The incident wave is y-polarized. The split of the spectrum becomes
clearer and wider as the coupling increases. Meanwhile, the transmission
window is becoming wider and higher. Fig. 4-3 (d)-(f) illustrates the Ez
distribution at the peak of the transmission window. It can be seen that,
relatively, the major part of the energy is stored around the spiral line when
the coupling is strong, see for example ∆x = 0.6 mm in Fig. 4-3 (f). The U
shape stores only little energy and hardly influences the transmission. Since
the spiral line is nearly dark under the y-directed incident wave, it can hardly
couple with the electromagnetic wave directly. So the total meta-molecule
also only slightly couples with the incident wave, which means that is almost
transparent for the y-directed incident wave (Fig. 4-3 (b) shows that the
transmission coefficient can reach about 0.7 at this point).
When ∆x = 0.9 mm, which means that the arms of the spiral line and the
U resonator overlap, the split of the resonance results in resonant frequencies
considerably further apart compared with the other situations. The peak of
the transmission coefficient reaches 0.87 in between them. The reason is the
direct conductive contact, which implies a quasi zero distance, and thus also
corresponds to a high inherent magnetic coupling, thus the phenomenon is
more explicit [153]. At the lower hybridized resonance, the currents on the
two overlapping arms are parallel. The result is that the lower resonant
frequency shows a redshift. At the higher resonance, the anti-parallel
currents on the two resonators totally cancel each other, and the position of
the resonance shows a noticeable blueshift. In the center transmission
window, the energy distribution will be more concentrated to the spiral line.
Since the spiral line is weakly coupled with the incident wave, the
transmission shows a much higher and wider bandwidth.
A prototype with ∆x = 0.9 mm was fabricated and measured. The sample
is composed of 35×50 unit cells, making the total size of the board equal to

56
17.5 cm × 25 cm. Fig. 4-4 (a) shows both measured and simulated results.
The measured results are obtained by a vector network analyzer (Agilent
8510C) in a transmission measurement set-up using two standard gain horn
antennas (Narda microwave-east standard gain horn 640). A good agreement
is observed except for a little frequency shift. This could be caused by the
tolerances on the dielectric constant of the substrate.
The refractive index neff is retrieved from the S-parameters [112] for this
planar MM. Fig. 4-4 (b) shows the results, together with the figure of merit
(FOM = |Re neff| / |Im neff|). A sharp dip in the real part of the effective
refractive index is observed at about 8.9 GHz. This is due to the strong
variation of the effective permeability around this resonant frequency. At the
minimum the real part of neff is about 1, which is much lower than for the
background FR4 board (εr = 3.8). A high FOM, corresponding to a low
imaginary part of the effective refractive index, is observed at 9.23 GHz. A
low refractive index can be used to design zero-index resonators for lens and
antennas [45, 67].
It should be pointed out that the performance of a metamaterial is
influenced by the size of its unit cell. In our structure, it is obvious that two
neighboring U shape resonators (a left and a right one) will generate
opposite magnetic fields at the positions of the corresponding spiral lines at
the left and right, see Fig. 4-5 (c). The inductive effect is partially canceled
and thus the current on the spiral line is reduced. Relatively, more energy
will be focused around the U resonator, and the corresponding mode will
couple with the incident wave and make the transmission become lower. If
the period of the unit cell increases, the influence of the neighboring unit
cells will be reduced. The transmission window will show a trend to increase,
both in amplitude and bandwidth.

Fig. 4-4. (a) Measured results; (b) The refractive index and figure of merit.

57
Fig. 4-5. The simulated transmission coefficients for different sizes of the unit cell for ∆x = 0
mm (a) and 0.9 mm (b); (c) the coupling effect between two neighboring meta-molecules.

Fig. 4-5 (a) and (b) shows results for different sizes of the unit cell for ∆x
= 0 mm (left) and 0.9 mm (right), respectively. For the ∆x = 0 mm situation,
a significant diminution of the transmission window is indeed shown as the
period is decreasing from 10 mm to 5 mm. The lower limit of 5 mm is
directly related to the physical size of the conducting structure. The upper
limit of 10 mm is related to the mutual coupling. For periods larger than 10
mm, the coupling is weak enough and no significant difference can be
observed any more. For the ∆x = 0.9 mm situation, the transmission only
displays a slight decline. The reason is that the current distribution is
concentrated on the center spiral line, see Fig. 4-3 (g). The U resonator does
not seem to be excited since it does not carry any significant current. It is
thus unable to contribute to any serious inductive coupling between unit cells.
This means that the interference between the two resonances inside the unit
cell (which creates the peak in the middle) is much less influenced by the
mutual coupling between unit cells. This effect could be helpful in the design
of miniaturized meta-molecules.

58
4.4 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we present a new topology for a meta-molecule composed of
a U shape resonator with an embedded spiral line inside. We demonstrate the
coupling effect between these two resonators. The transmission spectrum
splits due to the near-field interaction and two hybridized modes are formed,
a symmetric and an antisymmetric one. A narrow transmission window is
observed in the wide stop band. The relation between near-field interaction
and the distance between the two resonators and the size of the unit cell is
studied, leading to physical mechanisms explaining the phenomena observed.
Although the structure in this letter is designed for ca. 10 GHz, it can also be
realized at THz frequencies. This new topology may find its applications in
the design of frequency selective surface (FSS) with high quality and small
sensitive sensors. A refractive index based sensor based on this topology has
been proposed in [157].

59
Chapter 5

TEXTILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNA

BASED ON COMPOSITE RIGHT/LEFT-

HANDED TRANSMISSION LINE

In this chapter, two types of textile patch antennas loaded with metamaterial
structures are proposed for WLAN / WBAN applications. The concept of
composite right/left-handed transmission line (CRLH TL) is introduced in
the textile antenna. The occurring symmetric resonances cause the similar
field distributions and radiation patterns in the two operating bands. Since
the antennas are based on the microstrip patch topology, they feature a low
backward radiation and low specific absorption rate (SAR) value. The
antennas are fabricated fully using textile materials, and show flexible
character and robust performance.
This chapter is based on the following four publications:
[1] S. Yan, P.J. Soh and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "A wearable dual-band
composite right/left-handed (CRLH) waveguide textile antenna for WLAN
applications", Electronics Letters, 50. 6 (2014): 424-426.
[2] S. Yan, P.J. Soh and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Made to Worn",
Electronics Letters, 50. 6 (2014): 420.
[3] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Compact All-textile Dual-
band Antenna Loaded with Metamaterial Inspired Structure", IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propag. Lett., doi: 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2370254.
[4] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Performance on the
Human Body of a Dual-Band Textile Antenna loaded with Metamaterials",
European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, Lisbon, Portugal, April
2015.

61
5.1 INTRODUCTION
5.1.1 Wearable antennas
Over the past decade and in many sectors of society, wearable devices have
attracted more and more attention. Wearable electronic systems are very
attractive for e.g. continuous medical monitoring, emergency rescue services,
physical training, care for children and the elderly, etc.. As a consequence,
the concept of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) has become a more
widespread research topic. As a critical component of these systems, the
wearable antenna plays a key role for the wireless communication with other
devices on or off the body. However, the design flowchart for wearable
antennas is quite different compared to the traditional ones. First, the
electromagnetic coupling between the human body and the antenna will
influence the performance of the antenna, but also poses questions related to
potential health risks in case of long term irradiation of the human body.
Secondly, different deformations, e.g. bending, crumpling, and wrinkling,
need to be considered in the antenna design, especially if textile materials are
used for the antenna. Next, although the properties of wearable materials are
not necessarily stable when the body and clothes environment changes, the
functions of the antennas should be robust under these conditions. Moreover,
low profile, light weight, user comfort, mechanical robustness, low cost, and
fabrication simplicity are essential characteristics for wearable antennas.
Considering the isolation between the antenna and human body, a piece of
metal plane is usually required to shield one from the other. This leads to
two types of wearable antennas. One is the patch or cavity antenna, and the
other one is the reflective antenna. [65, 158, 159] In this chapter, we will
discuss the former. The latter will be studied in section 7.2.
The microstrip patch antenna topology is a good candidate for wearable
devices, since it is usually low profile and easy to fabricate. The large
ground layer under the patch reduces the coupling between the human body
and antenna, and enhances forward radiation. Several textile antennas based
on the patch topology have been previously proposed and investigated on
body [160-162]. When a dual-band function is needed, the patch antenna
may be loaded using slots, lumped components, parasitic patches, or be
stacked [39, 40, 42]. The first two methods will change the current
distribution on the patch resulting in radiation distortion. The side radiation
may then induce high coupling with the human body. Parasitic patches may
significantly increase antenna size whereas stacked patches result in
62
fabrication complexity when using textile materials. Recently, another
technology, i.e. substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) antennas [163-165]
was also proposed for wearable applications. Despite obtaining good
efficiencies and low body-coupling over a wide bandwidth, it also suffers
from pattern distortion in dual-band operation. Indeed, the essence of SIW
antennas is still a cavity antenna as the microstrip patch antenna.

5.1.2 Composite Right/Left-Handed Transmission Line

Recently, the use of CRLH-TL [45] has been introduced, yielding a new way
for designing miniaturized antennas [73]. In essence, a CRLH-TL is a kind
of metamaterial (MM). Unlike volumetric metamaterials made of resonant
structures [6, 133], a CRLH TL is a kind of planar non-resonant TL, which is
easily fabricated on printed circuit board (PCB) with etching technology. By
loading the host TL with series inductances and shunt capacitances, the
propagation constant (β) can be made positive, zero, or even negative. The
unique dispersion relation can be easily used to design several kinds of patch
antennas for special applications.
The concept of the ZOR antenna was first presented in 2003 by C. Caloz
and T. Itoh [44, 166]. Rectangular patches integrating mushroom structures
have been analyzed in detail by C-J. Lee and A. Lai in 2006 and 2007 [167,
168]. The input impedances and radiation characteristics were obtained for
different unit cells. The dispersion diagram in CRLH structures has also
been analyzed with other methods. [52, 169] Several kinds of dual-band
antennas based on CRLH TL have been designed based on different resonant
modes [52, 170, 171]. However, to the knowledge of the authors, the textile
antenna version has never been studied before.
Using microstrip line (ML) technology to implement a CRLH TL, the left
handed inductor (LL) and capacitor (CL) can be realized by surface mount
technology (SMT) chip components or distributed components, while the
right handed inductor (LR) and capacitor (CR) are induced by the host TL
itself. Since the SMT elements are lossy and take only discrete values, they
are not suitable for adjusting the phase shift accurately compared with the
distributed components. However, components based on printed planar
technology are also not ideal. It is usually hard to obtain a balance between
the size of the components and the values of the parameters. Several
topologies already have been proposed to solve this issue [172], like shorted
stub inductors, meander-line inductors, virtual ground capacitors, interdigital
capacitors, and mushroom structures.

63
Fig. 5-1 Circuit model of CRLH TL. [43, 44]

Fig. 5-2. Typical dispersion relation of the CRLH TL. The resonant frequencies of a
open/short CRLH TL resonator are plotted with dots. [43, 44]

The dispersion characteristics of a CRLH TL shown in Fig. 5-1 can be

obtained using the Bloch-Floquet periodic boundary condition
1  ZY 
β (ω ) = cos −1 1 +  (5.1)
p  2 
Since the electrical length of the unit cell (p) is much smaller than the
wavelength, a Taylor approximation can be applied and we get
1 L C 
β (ω ) = s (ω ) ω 2 LR CR + − R + R  ,
2
(5.2)
ω LL CL  LL CL 
where s (ω) is the sign function decided by the frequency.[45]
Consider a section of CRLH TL with open or short boundary. The resonance
will occurs under the condition
nπ
βn = , n = 0, ±1, ±2,⋯ ± N − 1 (5.3)
Np
where N is the number of unit cells. These resonant frequencies are labelled
in Fig. 5-2. Among these resonances, we are more interested in two points.
One is the zeroth order resonance (ZOR) and the other is the first negative
resonance (n = -1). At the ZOR mode, the effective wavelength is infinite
and its resonant frequency is independent with the physical dimension. The
antenna can be designed much smaller than half a wavelength in order to

64
reach a compact size, or much larger than half a wavelength in order to reach
high directivity. Unlike the traditional patch antenna, the open-ended ZOR
antenna usually has an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the patch plane,
also called monopolar radiation pattern. This kind of pattern radiation pattern
is undesirable for wearable antennas, and it will be discussed in section 6.3
in detail.
In this chapter, we will firstly study the first negative resonance. Since a
pair of symmetric resonant modes (± n) has similar field distributions, they
will have similar radiation patterns at these two resonant frequencies. Since
the dispersion relation of the CRLH TL can be easily controlled by tuning
the effective circuit parameters in the unit cell, the frequencies of the two
symmetric modes can be designed for different applications.
The radiation pattern of the wearable antennas should be directed
outwards from the users’ body to avoid dielectric coupling and ensure
minimal absorption by the body, so the n = ±1 modes will be used to get the
radiation pattern similar as for the normal microstrip patch antenna. In this
chapter, two types of textile antennas will be proposed based on SIW and
microstrip line topologies, respectively. The SIW antenna will have a wider
bandwidth, but a larger size also compared to the microstrip patch. So the
SIW antenna is more suitable for locating on the user’s chest and back, and
the microstrip patch is competitive when the antenna needs to put on the leg,
arm or wrist. The performances of the antennas are studied both in free space
and on body. The deformations of the antenna and SAR values are also
considered.

5.2 WEARABLE DUAL-BAND CRLH WAVEGUIDE

TEXTILE ANTENNA

A dual-band textile antenna based on the CRLH planar waveguide structure

[173] is proposed for WLAN / WBAN applications. This planar waveguide
structure is capable of providing a “negative permittivity” below its cut-off
frequency. Meanwhile, a meander slot loading in the patch is used to
generate a negative permeability around its resonant frequency. The CRLH
model enables the generation of similar near-field distributions and
analogous radiation patterns for two modes, traditionally called the positive
and the negative mode, which is desirable for wearable antennas. To our best
knowledge, this antenna is also the first CRLH waveguide antenna produced
fully using textile, except for its feeding connector.

65
5.2.1 Antenna topology and materials
The antenna topology is presented in Fig. 5-3. A 3 mm thick felt substrate is
used [174] (with a relative dielectric constant of 1.3, and a loss tangent of
0.044), and a 0.17 mm thick ShieldIt Super conductive textile from
LessEMF Inc. [175] (with a conductivity of 1.18×105 S/m) forms the ground
plane, radiating components, and the two shorting walls of the planar
waveguide. The attachment of ShieldIt to the felt substrate is performed by
heating the adhesive available on the reverse plane of the ShieldIt. An SMA
connector feeds [176] the planar waveguide from its rear, avoiding any
radiation pattern distortion that would be caused by microstrip or co-planar
waveguide feeds. The feed position mainly determines the antenna's input
impedance. Other physical parameters are labelled in Fig. 5-3 (a) and the
fabricated prototype is shown in Fig. 5-3 (b).

5.2.2 Antenna Performance in Free Space

The commercial full-wave electromagnetic simulator CST Microwave
Studio [177] is used in the design. The simulated and measured reflection
coefficients are shown in Fig. 5-4 (a). Three significant bands can be
observed, corresponding to the first negative mode (n = -1), infinite
wavelength mode (n = 0), and the first positive mode (n = +1), respectively.
In our design, modes n = -1 and n = +1 are adopted for WLAN as they
generate radiation patterns similar to a classical microstrip patch antenna,
with minimal backward radiation.

Fig. 5-3 Antenna topology. (a). Physical dimensions in mm, (b). Fabricated antenna prototype.

66
 The simulated result agrees well with the measured curve when the
antenna is placed in free space. The n = +1 mode shows a larger frequency
bandwidth compared to the simulated one. The reasons are the larger relative
inaccuracy by which the dielectric loss of the felt is known and the relatively
larger inaccuracies due to the manual fabrication procedure employed. The
latter may be improved by dimensioning using machine or laser cutting.
Note the very small differences in Fig. 5-4 (a) when the antenna is measured
on a volunteer’s chest and back, respectively, compared to free space.
The measured radiation patterns shown in Fig. 5-4 (b)-(e) agree well with
the simulated ones. Consistent with our previous predictions, microstrip-like
radiation patterns are featured in both the low and the higher bands, along
with very low cross polarizations and backward radiations. A summary of
the antenna performance, including its gain, is presented in TABLE 5-I.
To better understand the two antenna operating modes, simulated electric
field distributions (at z equal to half the substrate height) for the n = ±1
modes are presented in Fig. 5-5 (a) and (b), respectively. In both modes, a
standard wave is seen along the direction of the wave propagation in the
waveguide. The equivalent magnetic currents generated by the electric fields
at the edges of the waveguide are parallel to each other, thus contributing as
dominant radiators. In contrast, the mode n = 0 exhibits anti-parallel
equivalent magnetic current sources, see Fig. 5-5 (c). The radiation of the
two opposite magnetic current sources will be cancelled in the front direction
of the antenna, causing very low radiation efficiency. This is in contrast to
metamaterial-loaded patches, whose infinite wavelength mode n = 0
typically generates a monopole-like radiation pattern. [73]

TABLE 5-I
COMPARISON OF SIMULATED AND MEASURED PERFORMANCE.
Freq. S11 BW Greal.
Mode
(GHz) (dB) (MHz) (dB)

Sim. 2.495 -23.6 95 -1.37

n = -1 mode
Mea. 2.425 -12.4 68 -1.40

Sim. 5.452 -13.4 410 4.68

n = +1 mode
Mea. 5.470 -24.3 755 5.20

67
Fig. 5-4 (a) Reflection coefficient. Radiation patterns: (b) in x-z plane in the first band (n = -
1), (c) in y-z plane in the first band (n = -1), (d) in x-z plane in the third band (n = +1), and (e)
in y-z plane in the third band (n = +1). Simulated cross polarized patterns in b and d are lower
than -40 dB in all directions.

68
Fig. 5-5 Z-component of the electric field at half the substrate height. (a) negative mode n = -
1, (b) positive mode n = +1, (c) infinite wavelength mode n = 0.
150

150

5
5
5

Fig. 5-6 Models of the antenna on top of different human tissue configurations.

69
5.2.3 Antenna Performance on human body
The influence of the human body should be considered in the initial stage of
the design of a wearable antenna. In general, this may require huge
calculation times and memory. However, since the proposed antenna
contains a considerable ground plane under the patch, the coupling between
the human body and the antenna is significantly reduced, and consequently
the human body will not change the performance of the antenna a lot.
Therefore, in these cases the design road map first optimizes the antenna in
free space, and then checks its performance on a human body model. If the
performance is not satisfactory, the topology of the antenna is modified and
a new optimum is searched for.
Two types of human tissue structures are considered in this study, i.e., a
planar and a bent structure. The former is used to mimic the chest or back of
the human body. It consists of three layers: a 3 mm thick skin layer, a 7 mm
thick fat layer and a 60 mm thick muscle layer. The total size of the human
tissue is 150 × 150 mm2, see Fig. 5-6 (a). Meanwhile, the bent tissue imitates
the human forearm. Its radius is 40 mm and consists of 4 layers: a 2 mm
thick skin layer, a 5 mm thick fat layer, a 20 mm thick muscle layer, and a
13 mm thick bone core. The length of the tissue is 150 mm, see Fig. 5-6 (b)
and (c). The properties of the human tissues are listed in Fig. 5-7. Both tissue
models have been validated in [159, 178].
In each bending configuration, the antenna is placed 5 mm away from the
human body, which emulates the typical thickness of clothes. Fig. 5-7
illustrates the reflection coefficients of the antenna. It is clear that the
impedance matching is not sensitive to bending. The performance in the
lower band is quite stable, as only a 1.4 % frequency shift is observed for
both bending situations. This is mainly caused by the loading of the
capacitive slot, which changes only slightly when the patch is bent. For the
upper band, the two types of bending result in different behaviors. For
bending along the x-axis (bending 1), the resonant frequency and bandwidth
are very similar as in the case of the planar structure. On the other hand, the
bandwidth is observed to improve under y-axis bending (bending 2), mainly
due to the bending of the radiation slot in this direction. Since the antenna is
totally shielded by the rear ground, there is a minimal influence of the
human tissue on the impedance matching, resulting in stable resonant
frequencies and bandwidths when worn on a human body.
The radiation patterns of the antenna in free space and on the human body
are illustrated in Fig. 5-8 and Fig. 5-9, respectively. In general, the radiation

70
pattern is quite stable. Bending will ultimately change the shape and spacing
of the two radiation slots, thus slightly decreasing both the directivity and
gain. It can also be noticed that when the antenna is operated near human
tissue, the radiation efficiency decreases due to the losses caused by power
absorption in the tissues. However, its directivity may marginally increase
since the tissues are a form of lossy conductors, which mimic an increase of
the size of the antenna ground. These two factors complement each other,
ensuring a stable antenna gain when worn on body.

Fig. 5-7 Reflection coefficients of the antenna in different situations.

TABLE 5-II
PROPERTIES OF HUMAN TISSUES

tissues skin fat muscle bone

density (kg/m3) 1100 910 1041 1850

2.45 GHz 38.05 5.302 53.08 11.42

ε’
5.5 GHz 35.68 5.004 49.66 9.617

2.45 GHz 10.73 0.775 12.89 2.931

ε”
5.5GHz 11.82 1.032 16.99 3.882

thickness planar 3 7 60 /
(mm) 2 5 20 13
bending

71
Fig. 5-8 Radiation pattern in free space, (a) x-z plane at 2.45 GHz, (b) y-z plane at 2.45 GHz,
(c) x-z plane at 5.45 GHz, (d) y-z plane at 5.45 GHz.

Fig. 5-9 Radiation pattern on human tissue, (a) x-z plane at 2.45 GHz, (b) y-z plane at 2.45
GHz, (c) x-z plane at 5.45 GHz, (d) y-z plane at 5.45 GHz.

72
 The SAR value is calculated based on the IEEE C95.1 standard and
averaged over 10 g of biological tissue. The input power to the antenna is 0.5
W (rms). Since the ground plane shields the human body from the radiation
from the antenna, the estimated SAR values are far below the European
threshold of 2 W/kg at all frequencies. The main performance of the antenna
with different configurations are summarized in TABLE 5-III.
A prototype of the antenna was measured on a volunteer’s body, see Fig.
5-10. The antenna was located on different parts of the body: the chest, the
back, and the arm. It is clearly shown that, since the ground plane shields the
antenna, major coupling between the antenna and the human body is avoided,
and all results are very similar, even under bending conditions. For the chest
and back, the S11 almost does not change compared to the result in free space,
since the antenna keeps the planar configuration. When the antenna is
bended around the arm, a little difference is observed, as predicted by the
simulations, especially for the bending 2 situation. The bandwidth of the
antenna increases a little bit in the upper band.

TABLE 5-III
COMPARISION OF THE ANTENNA IN DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS

Freq. BW a Dir. Greal. ηradi. SAR

(GHz) (MHz) (dB) (dB) (%) (W/kg)

Planar 2.491 132 4.997 -2.307 19.5 /

free
Bend1 2.456 117 5.070 -2.072 19.4 /
N=-1 space
mode Bend2 2.456 126 4.053 -1.437 28.3 /
(2.45 Planar 2.484 131 6.124 -1.568 17.6 0.068
GHz) tissue
Bend1 2.456 123 5.220 -2.361 17.5 0.046
model
Bend2 2.456 138 4.860 -1.090 25.5 0.163

Planar 5.466 405 7.261 4.836 60.4 /

free
Bend1 5.459 373 6.094 3.765 62.3 /
N=+1 space
mode Bend2 5.529 522 6.065 4.106 65.7 /
(5.5 Planar 5.424 385 7.529 4.745 56.1 0.176
GHz) tissue
Bend1 5.410 359 6.307 3.774 59.9 0.106
model
Bend2 5.487 498 6.899 4.656 61.5 0.220
a.
Bandwidth is defined as the -10 dB bandwidt

73
Fig. 5-10 Measured reflection coefficients of the antenna worn on a human body.

Fig. 5-11 Antenna topology. (a) Dimensions in mm. The width of all slots is 0.5 mm, the
thickness of the metal layer is 0.17 mm, and the diameter of the metallic vias is 0.52 mm. (b)
The fabricated antenna prototype.

5.3 COMPACT ALL-TEXTILE DUAL-BAND

ANTENNA LOADED WITH METAMATERIAL
INSPIRED STRUCTURE
A dual-band, wearable metamaterial-loaded antenna is proposed for 2.4/5.2
GHz WLAN applications. [179] The loading is with a composite right/left-
handed transmission line (CRLH-TL) metamaterial, resulting in a significant

74
miniaturization down to λ0/6×λ0/6×λ0/20. Similar radiation patterns are
obtained by simultaneously exciting the first-order positive (n=+1) and
negative (n=-1) modes. The antenna features a low backward radiation in
both bands, which is highly desirable in minimizing electromagnetic
coupling to the body. The antenna is fabricated fully using textiles except for
the connector and is evaluated in free space and on body, under both planar
and bent conditions. Besides a good agreement between simulations and
measurements, results indicate that the proposed topology is reasonably
immune to body coupling and robust with respect to mechanical changes.
The specific absorption rate (SAR) level is numerically investigated to
determine the on-body safety level.

5.3.1 Antenna Topology and Materials

The proposed antenna topology consists of a rectangular ring with 19 x 20
mm2 outer dimensions, centered on a 50 x 50 mm2 substrate. Two
mushroom-like structures with overall dimensions of 10.5 x 13.5 mm2 are
introduced into the slot area at the center of the rectangular ring to form the
CRLH-TL structure. These structures are designed on a 6 mm-thick felt
substrate [180], with a relative permittivity (εr) and loss tangent (tan δ) of 1.3
and 0.044, respectively. A probe is positioned on the rectangular ring to feed
the antenna. The antenna topology is shown in Fig. 5-11 (a). A 0.17 mm
thick conductive textile, ShieldIt Super from LessEMF Inc. [175] is used to
fabricate the metallic layers. Its estimated conductivity is 1.18 × 105 S/m.
The vias are fabricated using cylindrical wires of 0.52 mm diameter. [181]
To ensure proper galvanic contact from the via-ends to the patch and ground
plane, high-frequency conductive epoxy is used. [182] The standard 50 Ω
SMA connector [176], which is used here for evaluation purposes, can be
easily replaced by a compact mini-coaxial connector which does not affect
antenna conformality. A circuit model of this antenna is analyzed and
presented in [52]. Numerical simulations were performed using CST
Microwave Studio [177], while fabrication was performed using simple
dimensioning tools. The fabricated antenna prototype is displayed in Fig.
5-11 (b).

5.3.2 Antenna Performance in Free Space

The reflection coefficient of the antenna was measured with a vector
network analyzer (Agilent 8510C). The result agrees well with simulations,
see Fig. 5-12. Two resonances are observed at 2.45GHz and 5.15 GHz,

75
corresponding to the first order of the negative mode (n = -1) and positive
mode (n = +1). The antenna operates throughout the 2.4 GHz band (2.4 -
2.485 GHz) with at least S11 < -8.5 dB, and throughout the 5.2 GHz band
(5.15 – 5.35 GHz) with at least S11 < -13 dB. At the lower frequency, the
patch shows a significant miniaturization down to λ0/6×λ0/6×λ0/20. The
electric field distributions for these two modes are presented in Fig. 5-13.
Outside the center region both modes feature a field distribution very similar
as on a conventional half-wavelength patch antenna. This already partially
explains the similar radiation pattern. Another important observation is the
non-excitation of the zeroth order mode of the patch, the mode generating a
quasi-monopolar pattern (see the slight dip in the middle of Fig. 5-12). If
necessary, this mode can be obtained by adjusting the aspect ratio of the
mushroom structure and the patch.

-5

-10
S11 (dB)

-15

-20

-25 sim.
mea.
-30
2 3 4 5 6
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 5-12 Simulated and measured reflection coefficients.

Fig. 5-13 Simulated z-component of electric field distribution at: (a) 2.45 GHz, (b) 5.2 GHz.

76
 The antenna radiation patterns were measured in an anechoic chamber,
and compared against simulations in Fig. 5-14. The antenna shows patterns
similar to a conventional patch antenna in both operating bands. A higher
cross polarization level is observed at oblique angles, and is caused by the
fact that the feeding probe has a non-negligible length, especially at the
higher frequency. This probe will radiate power as a monopole antenna and
form the oblique cross polarization. TABLE 5-IV summarizes the
performance of the antenna in both bands.

Fig. 5-14 Simulated and measured radiation patterns in the (a) lower band in x-z plane, (b)
upper band in x-z plane, (c) lower band in y-z plane, (d) upper band in y-z plane.

TABLE 5-IV
COMPARISON OF SIMULATED AND MEASURED PERFORMANCE.
Freq. S11 BW* ηrad Greal.
(GHz) (dB) (MHz) (%) (dB)
Sim. 2.450 -25.9 135 17 -3.5
Lower band
Mea. 2.447 -24.6 130 / -3.8
Sim. 5.140 -22.6 583 75 6.6
Upper band
Mea. 5.112 -22.2 698 / 6.2
*
The bandwidth is defined as the band where the reflection coefficient is below -6 dB, for the
lower band, and -10 dB for the upper band.

77
 The sensitivity of the design is also studied. The lower band is mainly
influenced by the via radius and the size of the inner patch, whereas the
upper band can be tuned using the outer patch dimension. To guarantee
bandwidth coverage for the two WLAN bands, the tolerance of the outer
patch should be better than ± 0.5 mm, while the inner slot tolerance should
be better than ± 0.2 mm.
The Q factor is calculated for this antenna, and that is far away from the
Chu-Harrington fundamental limit. Two reasons may be responsible for that.
The first one is the loss of the textile material, which is significantly higher
than normal. The second one is that the antenna is optimized for dual-band
operation. It must balance the performance in both bands. Actually, several
papers have reported that metamaterials can help antennas to go to the Chu-
limit, e.g. [183, 184]. We also proposed a metamaterial based antenna with
normal substrate, which shows a better Q factor than the textile antennas
[185].

5.3.3 Antenna performance on human body

1. Antenna under Bending
Since the antenna is designed to be worn on a user's arm or leg, it is
necessary to evaluate its performance under deformations such as bending.
The level of antenna deformation is dependent on the bending radius, and
this is determined not only by the fact whether it is an arm or a leg, but
actually even the exact placement on the limb in question Thus, several
bending radii were selected to emulate the randomness of the bending radius
of an on-body placement. Fig. 5-15 illustrates the simulated results for
antennas placed in proximity of a cylindrically-shaped human tissue model.
The cylindrical topology is 150 mm long and consists of three layers: a 2
mm-thick skin layer, a 5 mm-thick fat layer and a muscle core layer [159].
The antenna is centered on this model and located 5 mm away from the
tissue surface. As seen in Fig. 5-15 (a), the antenna resonant frequencies are
observed to be quite stable. As the bending radius is decreased (indicating
further antenna bending), both the lower and higher mode consistently shift
up to higher frequencies. However, the level of shifting is almost
insignificant: 1.6 % and 1.4 % in the lower and upper band, respectively,
when the bending radius is reduced from infinity (planar situation) to 20 mm.
The fabricated antenna prototype was then measured when worn by a
human volunteer (176 cm in height and 65 kg in weight). Evaluations were
performed on several on-body locations, i.e. the chest, the upper arm and the
forearm. The results are shown in Fig. 5-15 (b). Compared to the antenna
78
performance in free space, the slightly larger bandwidth at the upper band is
due to the additional losses as a consequence of the proximity of the human
body. Consistent with simulations, the antenna resonant frequency also
moves upwards with smaller radii. Nonetheless, bandwidths in both bands
are constantly sufficient to enable WLAN operation.

(a) 0

-10
S11 (dB)

planar
-20 r = 60 mm
r = 40 mm
r = 20 mm
-30
2 3 4 5 6
Frequency (GHz)

(b) 0

-10
S11 (dB)

FS planar
-20 on chest
on upper arm
on forearm
-30
2 3 4 5 6
Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 5-15 (a) Simulated antenna bent on cylinders with different radii. (b) Measured antenna
located on different parts of the human body. (FS: free space)

2. SAR Validation
The SAR level of an on body antenna must be validated in the design stage
to ensure conformance to safety regulations. SAR is a measure of power
absorbed per unit mass in a human body tissue. It is normally spatially
averaged over a certain amount of exposed biological tissue. SAR is
calculated using the root mean square (rms) of the electric field strength
inside the human body, the conductivity, and the mass density of the tissue.
Due to the equipment scarcity and costs involved in experimentally
evaluating SAR, numerical evaluation is generally preferred as the means of
validation. Moreover, such simulations have been shown to agree well with
measurements for textile antennas [186]. The numerical SAR investigation
in this work has been performed using CST Microwave Studio, with the
antenna located on different parts of a Hugo human body model. [187] These
locations are chosen specifically to enable antenna evaluation under different

79
bending radii. The antenna is bent with a bending radius of 20 mm, 40 mm,
60 mm and 80 mm when placed on the forearm, upper arm, thigh, and chest,
respectively, see Fig. 5-16 (e). These bent antennas are placed at 5 mm from
the outermost skin layer to mimic the spacing created by air gaps. The input
power to the antenna for SAR calculations in this work is set at 0.5 W (rms),
and their values were calculated based on the IEEE C95.1 standard, averaged
over 10 g of biological tissue. Due to the large problem size (about 50 to 70
million mesh cells), calculations were performed using a workstation with
Intel Xeon processors, 48 GB of RAM and an NVIDIA Quadro FX 580
graphic unit. The simulation results are shown in Fig. 5-16 and TABLE 5-V.

Fig. 5-16 SAR simulation setup and results when placed on the: (a) forearm, (b) upper arm, (c)
thigh, (d) chest, (e) antenna locations on the truncated Hugo model.

80
 TABLE 5-V
COMPARISON OF SIMULATED SARS ON THE HUGO MODEL
location SAR at 2.45 GHz (W/kg) SAR at 5.2 GHz (W/kg)
Forearm 0.37 0.69
Upper arm 0.012 0.15
Thigh 0.0066 0.21
Chest 0.012 0.25

Generally, the SAR values at 5.2 GHz are higher than at 2.4 GHz for the
same bending radius. This is due to the intrinsic properties of the body
phantom itself, where conductivity of the same tissue increases with
frequency, resulting in the higher SAR. Bending with a radius larger than 40
mm results in very similar SAR values. This suggests that the antenna is
robust in both bands regardless of the level of deformation. Most importantly,
all evaluated SAR values are far below the regulated European threshold of
2 W/kg averaged over 10 g of tissue.

5.4 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, antennas based on the linear CRLH TL are studied. After a
review of the theory of CRLH TL, we designed two kinds of textile antennas
using this concept. One is with wider bandwidth and suitable to be located
on chest or back. The other one has a more compact size and is prefered to
be worn on arm, leg, or wrist. Since the symmetric modes are used to obtain
the two operating bands, both of the antennas have similar field distributions
and radiation patterns in the two bands. The antennas also feature a high
FBR and extremely low SAR values. The overall structures are fully
fabricated using textiles except for an SMA connector for evaluation
purposes. The two antennas are also calculated on a human body model, and
show robust performance for different bending radii.

81
Chapter 6

RADIAL PATCH ANTENNAS BASED ON

COMPOSITE RIGHT/LEFT-HANDED

TRANSMISSION LINE

In this chapter, the radial CRLH TL is studied. The circuit model of the
radial transmission line loaded with metamaterials is conceived for the first
time. Two kinds of antennas are designed, i.e. the circular patch antenna and
the sector patch antenna. The proposed full circular patch works at ZOR
mode, and its resonant frequency is independent of its physical dimensions.
Two prototypes are built, one with an electrical small size and one with an
electrical large size, respectively. The sector patch antenna can support a
similar ZOR mode without significant performance degradation compared to
the full circular patch. A matching network can be easily introduced to
enhance the impedance bandwidth. Apart from the ZOR characteristics, this
sector topology can also support a quasi-monopolar pattern at multiple
modes.
This chapter is based on the following three publications:
[1] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Zeroth-order Resonant Circular
Patch Antenna Based on Periodic Structures", IET Microwaves, Antennas &
Propagation, 8. 15 (2014): 1432-1439.
[2] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, "Circuit Model of Circular Antenna
Loaded with Composite Right/Left-Handed Transmission Line", The 8th
European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, The Hague, The
Netherlands, Apr. 2014.
[3] S. Yan, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Meta-loaded Circular Sector Patch
Antenna", IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, under review.

83
Fig. 6-1. Generalized transmission line model of conventional circular patch antenna. (a)
configuration, (b) equivalent circuit, (c) equivalent circuit by replacing the radial TL by a Π
network.

6.1 INTRODUCTION
Flexible portable devices like mobile phones, laptops, etc. have changed our
daily lives. The requirement of compact size and light weight is a huge
challenge for these applications. Since traditional antennas have a size in the
order of the operation wavelength, a lot of effort has been done to overcome
this constraint [40-42] leading to the planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA), the
meander transmission line antenna, and the loaded microstrip antenna.
Recently，the CRLH TL has shown great potential in the design of variable
patch antennas. The linear topology has been discussed in Chapter 5. In this
chapter, the radial topology will be studied.
Various methods can be used to analyze a conventional circular patch
antenna [39, 188, 189], including the generalized transmission line model,
the cavity model, and the integral equation model. For patches loaded with a
CRLH TL, a dedicated transmission line model is naturally the most suited.
A conventional circular patch can be modeled as two sections of radial TL
[190, 191]. These radial TLs can be replaced by a T or Π network, as seen in
Fig. 6-1. Since the mutual admittances modeling the mutual coupling
between the two radial TLs are small, they can be neglected in order to
simplify the model.
Several circular patch antennas based on metamaterials have been
designed. Some studies have been published that load the antenna with an
epsilon negative (ENG) layer , and a ring antenna with circular polarization
84
has been realized by folding a rectangular CRLH TL patch antenna [192].
However, to the knowledge of the authors, the circular patch antenna loaded
with a CRLH TL, corresponding to a double negative (DNG) structure, has
never been studied before. In this chapter, the circuit model of the radial
CRLH TL will be firstly formed. And then the full circular patch and sector
patch antennas will be studied. Several prototypes are designed and
measured.

6.2 CIRCUIT MODEL OF RADIAL CRLH TL

For the circular patch antenna loaded with a CRLH TL, each cell of the TL
is modeled as a T network, so the model is similar to the equivalent circuit of
the linear CRLH TL in Fig. 5-1 . Fig. 6-2 (a) depicts an example of a circular
patch loaded with three CRLH TL cells. This is a typical mushroom type
CRLH TL, where the slots between the rings provide the series capacitances
and the metallic pins provide the shunt inductances. However, in contrast to
the linear CRLH TL, the equivalent circuit of each cell in the circular CRLH
TL is not the same. In order to obtain a quasi-homogeneous metamaterial
topology, the density of the metallic pins has to be quasi-constant over the
surface. In a radial structure, this means that the number of pins has to grow
as the radius of the cell increases. If each cell has the same width
r r r r
r1 = 2 = 3 = 4 = ⋯ u (6.1)
2 3 4 u
where u is the total number of cells, the number of pins pu in each cell should
increase proportionally to the area of the cells
r12 r22 − r12 r32 − r22 r42 − r32 r 2 − ru2−1
= = = =⋯= u (6.2)
p1 p2 p3 p4 pu
Inserting (6.1) into (6.2) yields
p p p pu
p1 = 2 = 3 = 4 = ⋯ = (6.3)
3 5 7 2u − 1
The pins are positioned in the geometric centers of the cells
ru2 + ru2−1
rpu = (6.4)
2
Under these conditions, and assuming that the ratio of the slot width to the
ring width is small enough, the equivalent components of each cell can be
related as follows

85
Fig. 6-2. Transmission line model of circular patch antenna based on CRLH TL. (a)
configuration, (b) equivalent circuit.

Fig. 6-3. Transmission line model of ENG MM based circular patch antenna. (a)
configuration, (b) equivalent circuit.

CR 2 CR 3 CR 4 C
CR1 = = = = ⋯ = Ru (6.5)
3 5 7 2u − 1
LL1 = 3LL 2 = 5LL 3 = 7 LL 7 = ⋯ = ( 2u − 1) LLu (6.6)
CL 2 C L 3 CL 4 C
CL1 = = = = ⋯ = Lu (6.7)
2 3 4 u
LR1 = 3LR 2 = 5 LR 3 = 7 LR 4 = ⋯( 2u − 1) LRu (6.8)

86
CR models the capacitive coupling between a metal ring and the ground. It is
proportional to the area and, since their width is constant, thus to the length
of the corresponding metal ring. CL models the capacitive coupling between
the metal rings, and is proportional to the length of the corresponding slot
between them. LL models the inductance of the pins and, since they are in
parallel, is proportional to the inverse of the number of metal pins. LR models
the inductive effect linked to the radial currents flowing on the rings between
the slots. Observed at the center radii of the rings, such a current is
approximately proportional to the inverse of this center radius because the
effective wavelength of the current flowing on the structure tends to infinity.
The radiation resistor can be equally calculated based on the radiation
produced by a magnetic current flowing in the circular slot at the edge of the
patch. The width of this slot is taken the same as the thickness of the
substrate. Note the series inductance Lf at the left due to the feeding probe
and the capacitor Cf at the right due to the fringing fields at the edge of the
patch. All the parameters can thus be calculated as lumped components
[193].
As the open-ended ZOR mode is only related to the shunt components, the
circular open circuit patch antenna only loaded with inductances (shunt pins)
can also support this ZOR mode, as shown in. Since the inductor-loaded
structure is linked to an epsilon negative characteristic [10] from a
metamaterial point of view, further in this paper, we call this antenna the
ENG MM based ZOR antenna. However, as shown in the next section, the
ENG MM cannot support the other negative modes, as a CRLH TL does,
which requires the effective permittivity and permeability to be
simultaneously negative.
In this chapter, only TM0n0 modes, yielding a monopolar radiation pattern,
are analyzed. Describing the field distribution under the circular patch with
Bessel functions, the center of the circular patch corresponds to an open
point (value ≠ 0) if m = 0 (TM0n0) and to a short point (value = 0) if m ≠ 0
(TMmn0). In the rest of the paper, all the patches are fed in their center to
suppress the modes m ≠ 0.

6.3 ZEROTH-ORDER RESONANT CIRCULAR

PATCH ANTENNA BASED ON PERIODIC
STRUCTURES
6.3.1 Basic Structure of ZOR Antenna

87
In this section, a three unit cell basic ZOR antenna is calculated to validate
our circuit model. The substrate is chosen as Rogers RO3003 (εr = 3.0) with
height 1.524 mm. The width of the unit cell rings is 20 mm, including the
copper and gap, and the gaps between the rings are 0.3 mm. The number of
pins in the inner ring (the first unit cell) is p1 = 4 and the radius of the pins is
0.25 mm.

Fig. 6-4. (a) Transmission line model. (b) Transmission coefficient of the transmission line
model. (c) Reflection coefficient of the circular patch antennas based on CRLH TL and ENG
MM.

88
 The basic structures studied first consist of three rings, with and without
gaps, see Fig. 6-2 and Fig. 6-3, respectively. The equivalent circuits of these
two antennas are also shown. As mentioned before, the circuit parameters
can be calculated separately. The approximate values calculated with the
empirical equations of [193] are as follows, LL1 = 134 pH, CR1 = 21.9 pF, CL1
= 5.3 pF and LR1 = 235 pH. The radiation resistance is 26 Ω at 2.2 GHz. The
transmission results based on the TL model (considering a port 2 instead of a
resistance Rrad at the right end, see Fig. 6-4 (a)) are shown in Fig. 6-4 (b),
where the reference impedance is 50 Ω at both ports. It can be clearly seen
that there are three obvious resonances for the structure based on the CRLH
TL, representing the modes n = -2, n= -1 and n=0. However, for the structure
based on ENG MM, only the mode n = 0 can be found. Fig. 6-4 (c) depicts
the calculated results based on the circuit model and CST MWS,
respectively, for the antennas. The full wave simulations show the same
resonances as predicted by the circuit model. Only a little frequency shift is
observable for the n = -1 mode, probably a consequence of the slight
inaccuracy due to the empirical equations. The z-component of the electric
field distributions is displayed in Fig. 6-5. The electric field distributions of
the modes n = -1 and -2 are similar with n = 1 and 2 in conventional circular
patch. At n = 0 mode, the electric field is nearly not changed under the patch,
in both azimuthal direction and radial direction.

Fig. 6-5. Distributions of z component of electric field. (a) TM0(-2)0 of CRLH TL antenna, (b)
TM0(-1)0 of CRLH TL antenna, (c) TM000 of CRLH TL antenna, (d) TM000 of ENG MM
antenna

89
 Comparing the circuit model for the equivalent radial CRLH TL used in
this paper and a traditional linear CRLH TL, it can be clearly seen that they
are considerably different. In the linear TL model, the circuit equivalent is
based on a uniform unit cell, so ideal periodic boundary conditions can be
adopted. The resonant frequency of the open boundary ZOR mode is totally
depending on LL and CR. However, for a radial TL, although the effective
permittivity and permeability of each unit cell is the same and thus the
metamaterial is homogeneous, as can be clearly seen in formulas (6.5)-(6.8)
the circuit parameters are changing from unit cell to unit cell. So a simple
calculation of each unit cell is not enough to obtain the total performance of
the antenna, but a complete analysis has to be performed with the circuit
network (as in Fig. 6-2 and Fig. 6-3).
Here we mainly discuss the ZOR mode. Since the proposed antenna is
open-ended, the resonant frequency is totally depending on the shunt
components (CR and LL). Obviously, as the number of cells increases, the
product of the values of these shunt components stays constant, i.e. (CRuLLu =
(2u-1)CR1 LL1/(2u-1) = CR1LL1. The result is that the resonant frequency of the
ZOR mode will not change significantly. In each cell, CR is controlled by the
area of the corresponding ring, and LL is related to the number and diameter
of the vias. In this way the ZOR mode can be easily controlled, e.g.
increasing the width of the cells or reducing the radius of the vias will shift
the resonant frequency to lower values. Since other modes relate to the
number of cells or the radius of the patch, controlling their resonant
frequencies is much more complex.
As we mentioned before, the number of unit cells will not affect the
resonant frequency of the ZOR mode. However, enlarging the aperture may
improve the directivity of the antenna. In the next two sections, two antennas
working under ZOR mode conditions will be designed based on a different
number of unit cells. One is using a single unit cell to obtain a compact size.
The other is based on four unit cells and reaches a much higher directivity.
The physical parameters, e.g., the patch radius, the number of pins, and the
numbers of unit cells remain the same unless specified otherwise.

6.3.2 Miniaturized ZOR Antenna

Since the resonant frequency of the ZOR TM000 mode is totally determined
by the shunt components, a large value of LL and CR yields a low resonant
frequency. In mushroom structures, CR is provided by sections of the patch
and ground plane, so its value is completely determined by the patch size.
This is not helpful for miniaturizing the antenna. LL is provided by the pins
90
under the patch. Obviously a small pin cannot give a large inductance [189,
194]. In several papers about rectangular ZOR patch antennas [195, 196],
slots are introduced in the ground to enlarge the shunt inductance. Here the
same idea is used for the circular patch antenna.
Since the pins related to the left-handed inductances are in parallel with
each other, their number should be chosen as small as possible in order to
lower the resonant frequency. Here four pins are used in the design. Only
one unit cell ring is used and the patch radius is fixed to 10 mm, as shown in
Fig. 6-6. A spiral slot with width 0.2 mm is put under each pin. The center of
each spiral is coincident with its pin, and the spiral polar equation is r = 0.1
θ for 5π<θ<θm, with variable θm in order to get different spiral slot lengths.
The feeding pin is added in the center of the patch directly. Table 6-I
displays the results of the simulations with CST. While prolonging the
length of the slot from 0 to 1.5 turns, the resonant frequency falls from 4.412
GHz to 2.179 GHz, which is caused by the increase of LL. However, the
radiation efficiency falls enormously from -0.56 dB to -10.08 dB. So, as
could be expected, the price to pay for a small size is very low radiation
efficiency.

Fig. 6-6. Configuration of miniaturized ZOR antenna. (a) top view, (b) bottom view, (c) and
(d) photo. In (a) a zoomed in feeding region is shown.

91
 TABLE 6-I
CHANGING THE LENGTH OF THE SPIRAL SLOT.

Length of spiral slot f0 Zin=Rin+jXin Rad. eff. Directivity

(turns) (GHz) (Ω) (dB) (dB)

0 4.412 347+j115 -0.56 2.68

0.5 4.233 408+j102 -0.81 2.67

0.75 3.942 469+j93.1 -1.28 2.26

1 3.413 644+j57.1 -2.80 1.29

1.25 2.683 984+j17.4 -6.69 1.02

1.5 2.179 1140-j10.1 -10.08 1.19

Another problem is that for long spiral slots the input resistance becomes
very high, hindering impedance matching. A simple solution is to put a slot
around the feeding point. The capacitive coupling over the slot can reduce
the input resistance of the antenna. The radius of this slot can be optimized
to get the smallest possible return loss. As an example, a circular patch with
this type of feeding is shown in In order to keep the radiation efficiency
acceptable, the length of the spiral slots in the ground is chosen one turn long.
The inner radius of the feeding slot is 1.1 mm and its width is 0.3 mm. Fig.
6-7 (a) compares the return losses of the directly fed antenna and the slot fed
antenna. With the introduction of the feeding slot, the working frequency
decreases slightly, and S11 is reduced to -24 dB and -15 dB in the simulation
and measurement, respectively. Fig. 6-7 (b) shows that this antenna has a
monopolar pattern with no power radiated in the forward direction. This is
different compared to the conventional patch antenna working in the TM010
mode. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones. The only
difference is in the back radiation, which is caused by the presence of the
feeding coaxial cable.
We wish to emphasize that an additional numerical study showed that the
performance of the antenna is not strongly related with the size of the ground.
A considerable frequency shift appears only when the ground is too small,
which may be caused by the fringing effect at the edges of the ground. Even
when the ground is reduced to 25mm x 25mm, the resonance centered at
3.39 GHz still has a bandwidth of 14 MHz. Note that a small ground allows
to keep the design compact.

92
Fig. 6-7. Simulation results of antenna in Fig. 7. (a) return loss, (b) radiation pattern in x-y
plane, (c) radiation pattern in x-z plane. The simulated cross polar component is negligible.
The measured one is mainly due to the feeding structure, since the ground plane is only ca.
0.55 λ0 × 0.55 λ0.

TABLE 6-II
COMPARISON OF CONVENTIONAL PATCH AND ENG MM PATCH ANTENNA IN FIG. 6-6.

r d/λ0 f0 BW ηrad. ηtot. Dir. Greal.

(mm) (GHz) (MHz) (dB) (dB) (dB) (dB)

Conventional
30 0.68 Sim. 3.403 46 -0.41 -0.42 4.57 4.15
(TM010)

ENG MM Sim. 3.366 20 -3.07 -3.14 1.24 -1.90

patch 10 0.22
(TM000) Mea. 3.309 34 / -2.68 1.58 -1.1

93
 Table 6-II compares this miniaturized ZOR patch antenna with a
conventional circular patch antenna operating at 3.35 GHz (TM010 mode with
monopolar radiation pattern). The radius of the patch falls from 30 mm to 10
mm in our design, which yields a reduction in used area of 89 %. Even
compared to the circular patch antenna loaded with metamaterial [197, 198],
this design shows a significant reduction in size. The price to pay is the drop
in radiation efficiency (from -0.42 dB to -3.14 dB in the simulation), and the
narrower bandwidth. The measured directivity is calculated from the half
power beamwidth [39], and the total efficiency is measured by the Wheeler
cap method [199]. The measured results show a slightly higher bandwidth,
efficiency, and gain compared with the simulated results. This may be
caused by the parasitic capacitance induced by sealing the SMA connector.
The extra capacitance partially neutralizes the inductance of the antenna
itself.
In [198], a CRLH ZOR antenna is proposed, which comprises a circular
patch coupled to a circular ring mushroom structure. This can be recognized
as a patch partly loaded with metamaterial. Although this antenna also can
be considered as a low-profile monopole when operating at the ZOR mode,
and featuring a size reduction when operating at the -1st mode, the circuit
model developed there is only usable to design this very specific topology.
Our circuit model, developed for the circular patch antenna fully loaded with
metamaterial, is usable for different numbers of rings (or unit cells) and
different “component” densities within a unit cell. This section IV shows the
antenna with only one unit cell, which has an even smaller size than the
antenna in [198]. In section V, another design with four unit cells, yielding a
high gain, will be introduced.

6.3.3 High Directivity ZOR Antenna

As mentioned previously, by increasing the number of unit cells, the
directivity is enhanced [200] for both the CRLH TL based antenna and the
ENG MM based antenna.
In Fig. 6-8 an antenna based on the CRLH TL structure is presented,
containing four unit cells of identical width 10 mm. With four unit cells, the
input resistance is not very high and the input reactance almost equals the
resistance. The use of slot feeding like in the previous section can induce a
large capacitance and thus counteract the input reactance, while
simultaneously reducing the input resistance. Here, a split ring slot type of
feeding is used, as shown in Fig. 6-8. The slot can cancel the input reactance,

94
while the small “gap” in the slot does not considerably affect the input
resistance.
After optimizing the radius of the slot in order to obtain the lowest
reflection, the inner radius of the slot is 4.5 mm, the width of the slot is 0.3
mm, and the width of the split is 0.5 mm. Fig. 6-9 (a) shows the return loss
of the antenna in Fig. 6-8. It can be seen that the return loss of the antenna
fed with the split slot topology decreases significantly compared with the
original design. However, the measured result shows a noticeable frequency
shift in the lower frequency range. After carefully examining the sample, it
was found that the reason is that the metallic wires used as vias are narrower
than the diameters of the holes on the PCB, due to the fact that the soldering
tin cannot fill the gaps between the wires and holes completely. The
diameter of the vias directly determines the shunt left-handed inductance
(LL), and also the resonant frequency of the ZOR mode, see Fig. 6-2 and Fig.
6-3. Using the real diameter of the wires in the simulation, i.e. 0.35 mm, the
results agree much better, as shown in Fig. 6-9 (b).
Fig. 6-9 (c) and (d) yield the radiation patterns of the antenna. Since a
finite ground plane is used, the maximum angle is not accurate at 90° in the
x-z plane. But the zeros are still located at θ = 0° and 180°, as expected for a
monopolar radiation pattern. Table 6-III gives a comparison between the
conventional circular patch (TM010) and the patch loaded with the periodic
structures (TM000). The radius of the loaded patch is 40 mm, yielding
operation at 4.62 GHz. The conventional patch operating at the same
frequency has a radius of 22.2 mm. Since the active aperture is increased in
our design, the directivity increases from 5.31 dB to 7.42 dB (simulation)
and 7.9 dB (measurement). Although the radiation efficiencies fall down a
little, the improvement of the realized gain is still about 1.8 dB.

Fig. 6-8. Configuration of high directivity ZOR antenna, (a) top view, (b) photo. In (a) the
zoomed in feeding region is shown.

95
 The ENG MM based antenna can also be used to provide a high
directivity for the TM000 mode. However, it will not show the negative
modes, see Fig. 6-4.
In [63] at first sight a similar configuration is used. The goal there is to
increase the gain of a simple patch antenna and a so-called cylindrical
electromagnetic crystal substrate is positioned at the perimeter of the patch
in the center. The electromagnetic band gap structure obtained reduces the
surface wave, in this way improving the gain. The radiation pattern of that
antenna is similar to the one of the traditional patch antenna. It has to be
emphasized that the working principle of our design is totally different. It
uses the whole periodic topology as radiating structure, and the resonant
mode is totally different. The increase of the gain is caused by the increase
of the antenna area, and the radiation pattern resembles the one of a
monopole antenna.

Fig. 6-9. Simulation and measurement results of antenna loaded with four CRLH TL unit cells.
(a) return loss (diameter of metallic wires is 0.5 mm in simulation), (b) return loss (diameter
of metallic wires is 0.35 mm in simulation), (c) radiation pattern in x-y plane, (d) radiation
pattern in x-z plane.

96
 TABLE 6-III
COMPARISON OF CONVENTIONAL PATCH AND PATCH WITH PERIODIC STRUCTURE IN FIG. 6-8.

r d/λ0 f0 BW ηrad. ηtot. Dir. Greal.

(mm) (GHz) (MHz) (dB) (dB) (dB) (dB)

Conventional
22.2 0.68 Sim. 4.62 100 -0.24 -0.26 5.31 5.05
(TM010)

CRLH TL Sim. 4.62 126 -0.53 -0.64 7.42 6.77

patch 40 1.23
(TM000) Mea. 4.62 57 / -1.1 7.9 6.8

6.4 META-LOADED CIRCULAR SECTOR PATCH

ANTENNA
A circular sector patch antenna loaded with a periodic metamaterial topology
is presented. Several shapes of the circular sector patch are analyzed and the
input impedances and radiation patterns are compared. The topology reveals
a nearly constant resonant frequency at zeroth-order resonance (ZOR) while
the radiation performance approaches the one of the ZOR full circular patch
antenna. Compared with rectangular and circular patch antennas, the sector
patch offers more tuning possibilities. A matching network can be easily
introduced to enhance the impedance bandwidth. Apart from the ZOR
characteristics, this topology can also support a quasi-monopolar pattern at
multiple modes. A semicircular patch operating at 4.1 GHz together with an
impedance matching network and a dual-band semicircular patch antenna are
fabricated and measured.

6.4.1 Circular Patch Antenna

A typical mushroom CRLH-TL circular patch antenna topology shown in
Fig. 6-10 (a) has been discussed in section 6.3. The CRLH-TL can be
recognized as a double negative metamaterial, which can form negative
modes. An alternative, the inductor loaded structure (without slots between
the unit cells) is displayed in Fig. 6-10 (b), which is in essence a kind of
epsilon negative metamaterial and can only support ZOR mode and the
positive modes. Both the CRLH-TL and inductor loaded structure can be
analyzed based on the concept of a radial transmission line topology. A
circuit model already has been proposed in section 6.2.

97
Fig. 6-10. Topology of circular patch antenna with meta-loading. (a) CRLH-TL loaded
structure, (b) Inductor loaded structure.

Fig. 6-11. Several circular sector patch antenna types. (a) a quarter sector (90°), (b)
semicircular sector (180°), (c) double quarter sector (each sector is 90°), (d) three quarter
sector (270°).

6.4.2 Circular Sector Patch Antenna

For a circular patch antenna operating in ZOR mode, the electric field under
the patch is nearly constant in both the azimuthal and the radial direction. It
is reasonable to assume that just a sector of the circular patch can also
support the same ZOR mode as the circular patch.

98
 TABLE 6-IV
CHANGING THE WIDTH OF THE UNIT CELL

f0 Zin=Rin+jXin Rad. eff. Dir.

Shape
(GHz) (Ω) (dB) (dB)
Fig. 6-11 (a) 4.135 104.4+j51.3 -0.51 7.1
Fig. 6-11 (b) 4.262 74.1+j82.4 -0.44 7.2
CRLH-TL Fig. 6-11 (c) 4.115 98.2+j79.8 -0.84 7.1
Fig. 6-11 (d) 4.34 66.4+j93.1 -0.54 6.6
Fig. 6-10 (a) 4.495 46.8+j102.3 -0.44 5.4
Fig. 6-11 (a) 4.085 268.7+j160.9 -0.50 6.67

Inductor Fig. 6-11 (b) 4.232 89.2+j122.6 -0.44 7.03

loaded Fig. 6-11 (c) 4.13 170.2+j119.2 -0.84 7.2
*
structures Fig. 6-11 (d) 4.3 56.2+j115.1 -0.55 6.6
Fig. 6-10 (b) 4.435 22.9+j115.2 -0.52 5.6
*
The shapes of the circular sector patches loaded with the inductor loaded structures
are almost the same as in Fig. 6-11, but without slots, as depicted in Fig. 6-10 (b).

In the following, we will analyze the circular sector patch antennas shown
in Fig. 6-11. The substrate used is Rogers RO 4003 (εr = 3.55, tan δ = 0.0027)
with thickness 1.524 mm, and the width of each unit cell is 10 mm (r1 = r2/2
= r3/3). The width of the gap between the copper rings is 0.3 mm, and the
number of the pins in the unit cells is given in Fig. 6-11. The diameter of the
pins is 0.5 mm. The antennas are fed by a probe in the center of the circle. In
all structures, the size of the substrate and the ground is 120 × 120 mm2, and
the center points of all the sectors are located in the center of the substrate.
The minimum distance from the patch to the edge of the substrate is 30 mm,
which is larger than a half wavelength at the operating frequency.
CST MWS was used to perform a numerical analysis of all sector patch
antennas in Fig. 6-11, working in the ZOR mode. TABLE 6-IV compares the
resonant frequencies, input impedances, radiation efficiencies, and
directivities.
First of all, it is important to note that, although there is a large variation
in antenna size, all resonant frequencies are nearly the same. The maximum
difference is about 10 %, both for the CRLH and inductor loaded antennas.
This characteristic of the ZOR antenna gives engineers quite some freedom
to choose the shape of the antenna in a dedicated way for a specific compact
system. The efficiency of the antennas remains at a high level even with

99
decreasing size. The directivities are higher than the one for the full circle.
This is due to the fact that the radiation patterns become asymmetric, which
is caused by the loss of the circular symmetry of the patch itself. The highest
directivities are found for the (b) and (c) structures. The only parameter
changing a lot is the input impedance. This means that special feeding
methods, including an impedance matching, are needed.
It was also clearly observed that the effect of other physical parameters
(e.g. the number of unit cells, the width of the unit cells, the number of pins,
etc.) on the antenna characteristics is similar as in case of the whole circular
patch antenna. We refer to the previous sections 6.2 and 6.3 for a discussion
on this.

6.4.3 Semicircular Patch with Matching Network

Since the impedances of the antennas in Fig. 6-11 are very different and far
from 50 Ω, an impedance matching network has to be used in order to feed
power efficiently. In sections 6.2, coaxial cable feeding from the back of the
antenna is used, with a slot near the feeding point for impedance matching.
In this section a microstrip feeding line is used. It can provide more
bandwidth than the coaxial feeding.
Fig. 6-12 (a) shows the details of the feeding network used. An interdigital
capacitor and an additional transmission line provide the matching. For
different circular sectors, different values for the capacitor have to be used.
This can be reached by changing the number, width, spacing and length of
the fingers, and the width and length of the transmission line. A genetic
algorithm is used to optimize this matching network in order to obtain the
smallest possible return loss. A semicircular sector patch is used to illustrate
the topology. The optimium dimensions are discribed in Fig. 6-12 (a) and
TABLE 6-V. A prototype was fabricated and is shown in Fig. 6-12 (b).
The simulated and measured reflection coefficients are displayed in Fig.
6-12 (c). The order of a mode can be uniquely determined based on the field
distribution. A significant ZOR resonance can be observed. However, the
measured result (4.109 GHz) shows a noticeable shift to lower frequencies
compared to the original simulations. The reason is that the metallic wires
used as vias are narrower than the diameters of the holes in the PCB, and
that the soldering tin cannot fill the gaps between wires and holes completely.
Using the real diameter of the wires in the simulation, i.e. 0.45 mm, the
result agrees much better, as shown in Fig. 6-12 (c). Meanwhile, a small
resonance can also be observed around 3.462 GHz, which corresponds to the
n = -1 mode. The n = -2 mode can hardly be seen due to mismatching.
100
 (a) (b)

-5

-10
S11 (dB)

-15

-20 sim.(d = 0.5 mm)

pin
-25 sim.(d = 0.45 mm)
pin
mea.
-30
2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Frequency (GHz)
(c)
Fig. 6-12 Semicircular sector patch antenna with matching network. (a) topology, (b)
fabricated prototype, (c) reflection coefficient.

TABLE 6-V
THE PARAMETERS OF THE FEEDING NETWORK (UNIT: MM)

Wp Lp Wt Lt Wf Wg Lc Wb Lb
3.45 20 6.8 18 0.4 0.3 4.5 4.6 0.5

The simulated z component of the electric field (Ez) is shown for the n = -
1 and the ZOR mode in Fig. 6-13. For the n = -1 mode (3.462 GHz), Ez has a
standing wave behavior in the radial direction from the center of the patch to
the edge. For the n = 0 mode (4.110 GHz), the field distribution is totally
different. The electric field is nearly constant under the patch, in both
azimuthal and radial direction, which is characteristic for the ZOR mode.

101
Fig. 6-13 Distribution of z component of the electric field. (a) 3.462 GHz, (b) 4.110 GHz.

Fig. 6-14 Radiation patterns of the semicircular patch antenna at 4.11 GHz. (a) y-z plane (θ =
90°), (b) x-z plane (φ = 0°), (c) x-y plane (φ = 90°). The coordinate system is defined as in Fig.
6-12 (a). (solid (red) line: simulated θ component, dashdot (magenta) line: measured θ
component, dashed (black) line: simulated φ component, dotted (blue) line: measured φ
component.)

The radiation pattern of the ZOR mode is shown in Fig. 6-14. The
measured results agree well with the simulated ones. The only difference is
the back radiation, which is caused by the presence of the feeding coaxial
cable in the measurement set-up. The semicircular sector patch also shows a
quasi-monopolar pattern in the x-y plane. The omnidirctionality is not as
good as for the circular patch. On the z-axis, the θ component of the electric
field is zero, as in the case of a monopole. The maximum radiation level is
observed at about θ = 40° and φ = 90°. Several other important parameters of
the antenna are given in

TABLE 6-VI. The cross polarization in the y-z plane is mainly due to the
feeding lines.

102
 TABLE 6-VI
SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS

Freq. S11 BW Dir. Greal. ηtot

(GHz) (dB) (MHz) (dB) (dB) (%)

Simulated 4.110 -28 91 6.34 5.65 85

Measured 4.109 -57 114 / 5.82 82

Fig. 6-15 (a) Model of the multi-band semicircular patch, (b) the resonant frequencies.

6.4.4 Dual-band Semicircular Patch Antenna

It has been shown in Fig. 6-12 that the CRLH-TL antenna can support a
dual-band behavior. However, two issues need to be studied: one is the
tuning of the frequency ratio; the other is the impedance matching. Here,
interdigital capacitors are introduced to replace the series slot capacitors, see
Fig. 6-15 (a). By changing the number, length and width of the fingers, the
left-handed capacitor (CL) can be easily adjusted to control the tuning of the

103
frequency ratio. Fig. 6-15 (b) shows the resonant frequency for different
lengths of the capacitor fingers. The radius of the whole patch (R) is fixed at
40 mm. As the ratio of Sl and r1 is increasing, the resonant frequency of the
ZOR mode only slightly decreases, since it is not related to the left-handed
capacitors (CL). However, the resonant frequencies of the other two
(negative) modes are decreasing, as CL becomes larger. By tuning the shape
of the patch (sl/r1), the frequency ratio of the modes can be easily adjusted.
After obtaining the required frequency ratio, the double stub tuning
method can be used to form a matching network. An example is displayed in
Fig. 6-16 (a) and (b), in which r1 and sl is 10 mm and 5 mm, respectively.
The dimensions of the double stub matching network are optimized to obtain
the minimum return loss at the n = -1 mode and the ZOR mode. The
measured results are in Fig. 6-16 (c). A high qualitative agreement is
observed. The slight frequency shifts are easily explained by the tolerances
on the material parameters and the fabrication dimensions.

Fig. 6-16 Dual-band semicircular patch antenna with matching network. (a) topology, (b)
fabricated prototype, (c) measured and simulated S11.

104
Fig. 6-17. Radiation patterns of the semicircular patch antenna. (a) y-z,(b) x-z, (c) x-y plane at
2.08 GHz, (d) y-z,(e) x-z, (f) x-y plane at 2.38 GHz, (g) y-z,(h) x-z, (i) x-y plane at 3.03 GHz.
The coordinate system is defined as in Fig. 6-16 (a). (solid (red) line: simulated θ component,
dashdot (magenta) line: measured θ component, dashed (black) line: simulated φ component,
dotted (blue) line: measured φ component.)

The pattern of the antenna is measured in an anechoic chamber and is

shown in Fig. 6-17. Note that the antenna displays a monopolar pattern at
each resonant frequency. This is very attractive in many communication
systems. The performance of the antenna is given in TABLE 6-VII. Since
the efficiency at n = -2 mode is very low, the antenna is proposed to operate
at n = -1 mode and ZOR mode. The n = +1 mode is also matched at 3.37
GHz. It is possible to tune this mode to a desired frequency, but this is not
considered in this design.
105
 TABLE 6-VII
SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS

Freq. S11 BW Dir. Greal. ηtot

(GHz) (dB) (MHz) (dB) (dB) (%)
Sim. 2.080 -25.6 8 6.1 -1.5 22
n = -2
Mea. 2.105 -23.0 10 / -1.8 27
Sim. 2.380 -12.9 17 6.5 4.9 67
n = -1
Mea. 2.394 -14.7 21 / 5.1 64
Sim. 3.088 -43.5 35 6.6 5.2 74
n=0
Mea. 3.033 -16.7 32 / 5.8 75

6.5 CONCLUSION
In this chapter，the radial CRLH TL structure is studied. We first formed
the circuit model of this kind of periodic structure, and then proposed several
types of antenna based on it.
Since the resonant frequency of a ZOR mode is independent of the total
physical size of the loaded patch, the antenna can be designed at arbitrary
frequency with arbitrary size. A compact circular patch antenna with only 11
% of the size of the conventional patch antenna is designed. The cost of the
miniaturization is a low radiation efficiency. A relatively large circular patch
is also designed yielding a high directivity. A 70 % growth of the antenna
radius gives a 2 dB increase of the directivity.
The sector patches can also support the ZOR mode. The reduction of the
aperture will not bring a significant decline of the radiation performance, but
the topology can be fed by an impedance matching network easily, which
yields a wider bandwidth than for the circular patch. Besides, the multi-band
sector patch antenna is also designed based on the ZOR mode and negative
mode. The feature of this multi-band antenna is that it shows a quasi-
monopolar pattern at all working frequencies.

106
Chapter 7

LOW PROFILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNA

BASED ON ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC

CONDUCTOR PLANE

方程段 7 部分 1
The low profile antenna based on an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC)
plane will be studied in this chapter. Its dual-band operation is enabled by a
rectangular patch in the 2.4 GHz band and a patch-etched slot dipole in the
higher band. Since the AMC approaches a perfect magnetic conductor (PMC)
in the higher band, the slot dipole can be located close to the ground. This
enables a low profile structure, while simultaneously maintaining a large
bandwidth and a high front-to-back ratio (FBR). Two antennas are designed
for different applications, i.e. a wearable antenna and an antenna for a fall
detection radar system.
This chapter is based on the following two publications:
[1] S. Yan, P. Soh, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch. "Low-profile dual-band
textile antenna with artificial magnetic conductor plane", IEEE Transactions
on Antennas and Propagation, 62. 12 (2014): 6487-6490.
[2] S. Yan, P. Soh, M. Mercuri, D. Schreurs, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch.
"A low profile dual-band antenna loaded with artificial magnetic conductor
for indoor radar systems", IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation, 2015 DOI:
10.1049/iet-rsn.2014.0202.
[3] P.J. Soh, S. Yan and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "SAR MITIGATION OF
TEXTILE ANTENNA VIA AN ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC CONDUCTOR
(AMC) PLANE", URSI Atlantic Radio Science Conference 2015 (AT-
RASC 2015), Gran Ganaria, Canary Islands, May 2015, accepted.

107
7.1 INTRODUCTION
In Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, we discussed the patch antenna loaded with a
CRLH TL. This kind of antennas can be designed with various planar shapes
and sizes, and also operating in dual- or multi-bands. However, the
bandwidth of a patch antenna is inherently narrow. A conventional
microstrip patch antenna typically produces 3 to 5% of bandwidth. That is
far away from the requirements in some applications, e.g. the 5 GHz band
for WLAN applications and radar systems.
A dipole/monopole antenna can easily achieve a much wider bandwidth
compared to the conventional simple patch antenna，but the omnidirectional
pattern should be amended for some applications where a broadside
radiation pattern is required. A planar metallic plane is usually used as the
reflector for the dipole/monopole antenna. However, a certain distance
should be kept between the dipole/monopole and the metal reflector [39,
201]. If the electric dipole/monopole is placed too close to the reflector, the
anti-phase property of the mirrored current image will significantly reduce
the radiation resistance. This will result in a significant mismatch and
extremely low radiation efficiency. Conversely, a magnetic dipole/monopole
antenna or slot dipole can be placed close to a perfect electric plane (PEC)
without radiation impedance reduction. However, a parallel plate mode can
be excited in between the antenna layer and the PEC plane. This mode will
cause energy leakage and radiation pattern distortion, besides limiting
antenna bandwidth.
An artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane is a kind of two-
dimensional metasurface. It has been widely used already in the design of
planar antennas [21, 22]. Since the PMC/AMC forms an in-phase mirror
current for the dipole/monopole antenna, the radiation resistance will nearly
be doubled compared to the situation in free space, and the antenna can
maintain a high efficiency across a wide frequency band [22, 23, 56, 57, 62,
202, 203]. For the magnetic (slot) dipole antenna, the AMC plane functions
as an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure which makes it possible to
suppress any parallel plate modes and in this way avoid leaky radiation [64].
Several popular AMC structures, including mushroom topologies, square
patch arrays, Jerusalem crosses, etc., have been demonstrated in literature
via the design of several low profile AMC-based antennas for wideband or
dual-band operation [64]. In order to generate dual-band AMC structures,
different resonators are usually introduced [24, 60, 158], or the higher modes

108
of more complex resonators are used [58, 203]. Both methods result in a
reduction of the AMC bandwidth and also perplex the design diaphragm and
fabrication processes.
In this chapter, a new type of dual-band antenna based on the AMC
structure is proposed. A slot dipole antenna is etched on a microstrip patch
antenna. The AMC works as a PEC ground plane in the lower band for the
microstrip patch antenna. In the upper band, the AMC approaches a perfect
magnetic conductor (PMC), allowing an efficiently-radiating magnetic
dipole without exciting the parallel plate mode in between the antenna plane
and the ground plane [64]. To our best knowledge, this is the first antenna to
utilize such concept. Compared with other designs, the proposed antenna is
advantageous in two aspects. Firstly, the AMC layer is very simple. Since
only a single resonance is required, the unit cell can be designed either using
square or rectangular patches. This simplifies the fabrication using textile
materials and the manual fabrication procedure. Secondly, the wide
bandwidth in the upper band enables the AMC to easily cover the very wide
upper band for some applications, e.g. the whole WLAN 5 GHz band or the
wide band necessary in some radar systems. Although the patch topology
limits the bandwidth at the lower frequency, the antenna still meets the
requirements for normal WLAN communication in the 2.4 GHz band.

Fig. 7-1 Topology (a) and reflection coefficient (b) of the AMC plane.

109
7.2 LOW-PROFILE DUAL-BAND TEXTILE
ANTENNA WITH ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC
CONDUCTOR PLANE
A dual-band textile antenna loaded with an artificial magnetic conductor
(AMC) plane is proposed for WLAN applications. Its dual-band operation is
enabled by a rectangular patch in the 2.4 GHz band and a patch-etched slot
dipole in the 5 GHz band. The proposed antenna is fully fabricated using
textiles except for a feeding connector used for testing purposes and a via.
Simulations and experiments agree well and validate that this low profile
antenna operates with a good reflection coefficient, a high front-to-back ratio
(FBR), and a low SAR value within the desired bands.

7.2.1 Characteristics of AMC plane

Various types of AMC plane have been studied in literature, . In this design,
the square patch structure is chosen due to its ease in obtaining a large
bandwidth [58], besides its fabrication simplicity when using textile
materials. The topology of a single AMC unit cell is shown in Fig. 7-1 (a).
The dielectric constant and loss tangent of the 1.5 mm thick felt substrate are
1.2 and 0.044 [204], respectively. ShieldIt Super conductive textile from
LessEMF Inc. [175, 205], with an estimated conductivity of 1.18 × 105 S/m
is used to form the metallic layers. The complete AMC plane consists of a
periodic square patch structure on the top layer, a layer of substrate and a
layer of ground at the reverse side. Each square patch is 18.2 mm in size and
the period is 20 mm. Another layer of substrate is placed on top to separate
the AMC plane from the antenna. CST MMS [177] is used to simulate the
structure, using unit cell boundaries and Floquet ports to mimic the infinite
planar periodicity. Fig. 7-1 (b) depicts the reflection coefficient (S11) of the
AMC with a plane wave incident from the normal direction. It can be clearly
seen that the reflected wave is nearly in anti-phase at 2.45 GHz, where it is
supposed to behave as a PEC. On the contrary, the phase of the reflected
wave is about 0o in the 5 GHz band, which exhibits a PMC-like
characteristic. The operating bandwidth of the proposed AMC plane, defined
by the phase of the reflected wave lying between 0o ± 90o, is from 5.04 GHz
to 5.935 GHz. It is clear from the calculations that this proposed structure is
capable of operating within the desired WLAN bands.

110
Fig. 7-2 Topology of the proposed antenna. (a) 3-D view, (d) side view, (c) top view, (d)
fabricated prototype

7.2.2 Antenna on AMC Plane

The overall topology of the antenna is illustrated in Fig. 7-2. A coaxially-fed,
rectangular patch antenna functions as a 2.45 GHz radiator. Due to the PEC-
like behavior of the AMC plane in this band, the antenna performs similarly
as a conventional microstrip patch antenna. Next, two slots in y-direction are
introduced onto the rectangular patch. The rectangular dipole is chosen since
it is easy to fabricate manually with simple tools. Note that different slot
widths and lengths are selected to enable a wide impedance bandwidth. A
coplanar waveguide (CPW) line which is about a quarter wavelength at 5.5
GHz is used to connect these two slots. The CPW line is connected with the
structure's ground by a via, between the patch and the CPW strip. Since the
slots cause perturbations of the current distribution on the patch in the lower
2.45 GHz band, the size of the patch has to be adjusted upon the integration
of the slots. The antenna is optimized using the genetic algorithm in CST
MWS with the aim of obtaining the best S11 in both frequency bands. The
final dimensions of the proposed antenna are given in Fig. 7-2 (c).

111
 The fabricated antenna prototype is shown in Fig. 7-2 (d). A comparison
between simulated and measured S11 is shown in Fig. 7-3 (a). In the lower
band, the maximum S11 is -16.2 dB (simulated) and -8.3 dB (measured),
whereas this is -11.7 dB (simulated) and -12.5 dB (measured) in the upper
band. Note that the slot dipole enables a much wider bandwidth than a
simple microstrip patch antenna. Little disagreement between the simulated
and measured curves is observed. This may be caused by the uncertainty
concerning the textile substrate properties and the mechanical inaccuracies
caused by the manual fabrication procedure with simple tools. Note that
using machine dimensioning or laser cutting does not necessary lead to
better results in practice, due to the unavoidable deformations of the antenna
during practical operation. The most important is that the antenna
performance still fulfills the requirements for WLAN communication.
A noticeable point is that the lower band splits into two resonances. This
is related to the coupling between the large patch and the center CPW patch.
At the first resonance, the currents on these two patches are in phase while at
the second resonance they are out of phase. More details about mode
coupling can be found in [151]. The S11 dip around 4 GHz represents the
second mode (TM20) of the patch.
The measured radiation patterns at 2.45 GHz and 5.2 GHz are shown in
Fig. 7-3 (b)-(e). The FBR is higher than 12 dB in both bands. The high cross
polarization in y-z plane is mainly caused by the CPW line which is
perpendicular to the radiated slot, but that is not a concern in WLAN
communication systems. The realized gain of the antenna is about 2.5 dB at
2.45 GHz, and between 0 to 4 dB in the higher band. The total efficiency is
above 40 % throughout the whole operating band. This value is typical for
textile antennas fabricated using this type of materials [206].

7.2.3 Performance on Body

The fabricated antenna prototype is measured on the chest of a male
volunteer, who weighs 90 kg and is 178 cm in height. The result of this
evaluation performed in an anechoic chamber is also shown in Fig. 7-3 (a).
Due to the effectiveness of the ground plane, the S11 is only slightly affected
by the coupling between the human body and the antenna. The maximum S11
is -9.8 dB and -8.4 dB in the lower and upper band, respectively.
Thanks to the large area available on the human chest and back, it is
possible to enlarge the ground plane in order to further reduce the backward
radiation. If this additional ground layer is a thin conductive textile layer,
this may not affect the antenna conformability or the users' comfort.
112
Simulations for ground planes up to 200 × 200 mm2 show that the S11 is
nearly not affected while the back radiation is further reduced by a value
between 5 and 10 dB, see Fig. 7-4.

Fig. 7-3 Measured results of the antenna, (a) reflection coefficient, radiation pattern at 2.45
GHz in x-z plane (b) and y-z plane (c), radiation pattern at 5.2 GHz in x-z plane (d) and y-z
plane (e). Solid (red) line: co-polarization, dashed (blue) line: cross-polarization.

113
Fig. 7-4 Simulated results for several ground sizes.

Fig. 7-5 SAR distributions at different frequencies. (a) 2.45 GHz, (b) 5.2 GHz, (c) 5.8 GHz.

The large ground is also expected to significantly reduce the SAR value.
To analyze the contribution of the metasurface placed between the antenna
and the human body, a series of SAR simulations was performed using a
simplified human model in CST MWS. This model is defined behind the
antenna, at 10 mm distance from the antenna ground layer in order to
emulate practical antenna to skin distances in clothing. This distance is also
larger than λ/4 at the lower operating frequency of 2.4 GHz, ensuring a
proper distance from the edges of the combined antenna / metasurface. The
model combines a 3 mm thick layer of skin, a 7 mm thick layer of fat, and a
60 mm thick muscle layer. This model has been validated in [178]. The input
power to the antenna for SAR calculations in this work is set at 0.5 W (rms).
SAR values were calculated based on the IEEE C95.1 standard and averaged
over 10 g of biological tissue. The SAR distributions in both bands are
displayed in Fig. 7-5. The calculated results are summarized in TABLE 7-I.
Intuitively, measuring SAR at the exact same position using a common
114
antenna will result in higher SAR with increasing frequency. This is due to
the conductivity of the human tissues, which increases with frequency [207].
However, in this case, it is clear from the simulated SAR values that the
AMC is functioning well as a PMC at the higher frequencies. The SAR
values observed in the 5 GHz band are lower compared to the 2.4 GHz band.
Using an enlarged 200 x 200 m2 ground plane, see TABLE 7-I, the SAR
values were reduced with a factor of more than 10.
The antenna was also simulated when bent over a cylinder along the two
main axes and for different radii. For the cylinder oriented along the x-axis,
no significant S11 changes are observed. This is due to the direction of
bending, which is parallel to the current on the patch, in this way not
affecting the current distribution considerably. Conversely, the antenna S11
changes are more profound when it is bent along the y-axis, see Fig. 7-6. In
the lower band, the resonant frequency shifts upwards as the radius of the
cylinder is decreased. Nonetheless, even when bent the -10 dB operational
bandwidth still covers the whole 2.4 GHz WLAN band. Meanwhile, the
antenna operation in the upper band remains quasi unchanged. Only a slight
S11 degradation can be seen at 5.85 GHz (with S11 = -9.32 dB).

TABLE 7-I
SIMULATED SAR

Freq. Antenna with Antenna with

(GHz) 100x100 mm2 200x200 mm2

2.45 0.0464 0.00424

5.2 0.0232 0.00130
5.8 0.0300 0.00168

Fig. 7-6 Simulated reflection coefficients for bent topology.

115
 TABLE 7-II
COMPARISON OF SEVERAL TEXTILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNAS
CRLH-TL CRLH Shorted Patch & Magneto
pach SIW SIW dipole on -electric
antenna antenna antenna AMC dipole
References [179] [54] [208] [65] [209]
2
Patch size (mm ) 20 x 19 42 x 32 42 x 32 47 x 45 63 x 52
2
Ground size (mm ) 50 x 50 82 x 72 102 x 92 100 x 100 100 x 100
Thickness (mm) 6.35 3.35 3.35 6.525 6.525

BW (MHz) 135 95 163 412 539

Lower ηrad (%) 17 20 55 40 50

band
(2.4 Gain (dB) -3.5 -1.4 3.2 2.5 4.7
GHz) FBR (dB) 10 10 15 15 20
SAR (W/kg) 0.012 0.068 0.056 0.046 0.044
BW (MHz) 583 410 716 1046 1593

Upper ηrad (%) 75 60 61 55 60

band
Gain (dB) 6.6 4.7 5.8 4 3.5
(5-6
GHz) FBR (dB) 15 10 18 20 20
SAR (W/kg) 0.25 0.176 0.067 0.03 0.026

7.2.4 Comparison of several textile dual-band antennas

In Chapter 5, two dual-band textile patch antenna types were designed based
on CRLH TL structures. In this chapter, two more textile antenna types were
proposed. In TABLE 7-III, the performances of all these antennas are
compared. The results in the table are calculated in free space for the planar
topology.
The two antennas based on CRLH TL have the most compact size, but the
price to pay is the limited bandwidth and the low radiation efficiency,
especially in the lower frequency band. The reason is that the resonances in
the structure yield large current densities in the lossy metallic vias or vertical
walls, and the corresponding ohmic losses, significantly reducing the
efficiency. Besides, the small grounds yield a relatively low FBR and high
SAR values. Ref [208] proposed a kind of cavity antenna based on SIW
technology. Its bandwidth and efficiency are improved compared to the two
antennas discussed just above, but its radiation pattern shows a high level of

116
cross polarization. The antenna in [209] is a type of complementary dipole.
This antenna and the antenna in this chapter (patch and dipole in
combination with an AMC plane) have significantly larger sizes, but they
support the largest bandwidth.
In general, a trade-off has to be made between the size and the
performance of the antenna. The selection of a specific type should be based
on the real application, involving the location of the antenna on the human
body, and the bandwidth and gain required by the communication system.

7.3 A LOW PROFILE DUAL-BAND ANTENNA

LOADED WITH ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC
CONDUCTOR FOR INDOOR RADAR SYSTEMS

A dual-band antenna is designed for a fall-detection radar and telemetry

system. The radar is designed based on the Stepped Frequency Continuous
Wave (SFCW) concept, which requires Ultra Wideband (UWB) operation,
low inter-element coupling and a directive radiation pattern with low
backlobe throughout its operating frequency band. The telemetry system
uses the 2.45 GHz band to enable signal transmission/reception in an indoor
environment and the 6–7.5 GHz band for radar sensing part. A main dual-
band radiator with a slotted patch is used as the basis for the antenna design:
the patch resonates at 2.45 GHz whereas the antenna slot enables a wide
band operation for the radar system. This enables small (3.12 mm) structure
thickness, while simultaneously maintaining a large bandwidth and a high
front-to-back ratio (FBR). Numerical and experimental results show a good
agreement and indicate a satisfactory antenna performance in terms of
reflection coefficient and radiation pattern in the desired frequency bands.
The antenna was also integrated into the radar system and tested in a real
environment on three subjects at fixed distances. A fall-detection up to 6
meter was achieved.

7.3.1 A fall-detection radar and telemetry system

The elderly population (older than 65 years) numbered 500 million in 2006
worldwide. This is expected to double up to about 1 billion by 2030 [210].
While this number represents a socio-economic and medical advancement
triumph over diseases, it also poses a serious challenge to the healthcare
systems globally. The increase of age-related chronic diseases, such as
congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis,

117
osteoporosis, and dementia also translates into a shortage of healthcare
personnel, rising healthcare costs in tandem with the healthcare demands
[211]. As privacy preference mainly motivates the elderly's wish to stay
longer at home, an integrated home monitoring system is one of the most
practical solutions.
Such system tracks an individual's activities on a continuous basis, feeding
relevant information back to medical professionals and automatically alerts
when an emergency occurs. It prevents delays in the deployment of
emergency medical services in the event of accidents, which often result in
serious physical and psychological consequences, permanent disabilities or
even fatalities. During an emergency, conventional systems with a worn
emergency press button are rendered useless in the event that an individual is
already unconscious. Other monitoring based systems using video cameras,
floor vibrations, or acoustic sensors, thus far are still unfavorable. In fact,
video camera systems still present problems in case of low light
environments, field of view, and the amount of data to be processed is very
high. In addition, privacy is also a concern. Floor vibration and acoustic
sensors are limited due to enviromental interference and background noise.
Moreover, they present limitations in detecting soft falls, which is when the
subject collides with an object (table, carpet, chair, etc).
The solution proposed in our previous work [212] uses a home-integrated
radar system. It potentially overcomes above mentioned limitations via the
deployment of several sensors, which are to be integrated in a wireless
network. The home-monitoring radar system operates from 6 to 7.5 GHz
based on the Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave (SFCW) concept for
localization and speed detection using the Doppler principle. Moreover, it
also requires operation at 2.4 GHz for telemetry. Besides operational
requirements, the antenna also needs to be physically compact and low
profile. This section is focusing on the antenna design of this system, with
the aim of improving its front to back ratio (FBR) and further
miniaturization of the antennas compared to [213]. Besides, it must radiate
directionally within the frequency band of the radar, which will enable
maximum transmitted power to the monitored user, and a maximum
reflected power received by the receiving antenna during radar operation.
Such antenna does not exist off-the-shelf and has to be custom-designed for
this system.
It should be specified that a monostatic structure, that integrates a single
antenna as transmitter and receiver simultaneously, will result in a more
compact solution. Although it does not experience the cross talk, the poor

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isolation between transmitter and receiver and the possible mismatch
between the antenna and its feed line introduces a strong reflection that
overwhelms the reflected signal. This unwanted reflection can be easily
reduced in the case of a pure CW radar by an adequate passive microwave
design. However, it cannot be reduced below a practical value (i.e., -30 dB
as demonstrated in [212]) in ultra-wideband applications, where SFCW or
FMCW are involved. It should be also noted that, in pulse radar, the
undesired reflection can be avoided by time gating. However, this solution
requires high-speed ADCs and high level processors, which is not preferable
in low-cost in-door applications.
As mentioned earlier, the health monitoring system used in this work is
based on an SFCW radar described by the authors in [212]. It consists of a
sensor, combining both radar and wireless communications features, and a
base station for offline data processing (Fig. 7-7). The sensor consists of a
Quadrature SFCW radar, a Zigbee module, and a microcontroller, while the
base station, consisting of a Zigbee module, a microcontroller, and a laptop,
is used to determine offline the target's absolute distance and to distinguish a
fall event from normal movements.

Fig. 7-7 Simplified block diagram of the indoor radar and health monitoring system [212].

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 The SFCW radar transmits N = 40 CW pulses, called burst, whose
frequencies are increased from pulse to pulse by a fixed frequency increment
∆f = 25 MHz. Each pulse is T = 100 µs long, while the total band N·∆f is 1
GHz positioned in the UWB band between 6 and 7 GHz. This solution
allows having an unambiguous range of 6 m with a resolution of 15 cm. A
transmitted power of 0 dBm is sent to the antenna. More details on the
system architecture are available from [214].
In order to determine the target’s absolute distance, the entire burst is
received and processed by combining the resulting IQ baseband signals to
produce complex samples. The target’s range profile can then be determined
applying the Inverse Fast Fourier Transformer (IFFT) [215]. For the fall
detection purpose, a movement classification based on a Least Squares
Support Vector Machines (LS-SVM) framework combined with Global
Alignment (GA) kernel [214] is applied to discriminate fall events from
other activities, such as random walking, sitting down, standing up, and no
movements. This technique, aiming at evaluating the changes in speed
experienced during a fall or a normal movement, consists of two stages of
data analysis, namely the training phase and the testing phase. In the training
phase, speed activities experienced during on the one hand falling, and on
the other hand daily activities (e.g., walking, sitting down, and standing up)
are used to built a model that groups those signals into two main classes; fall
events and normal movements. The testing phase is then used to validate the
classification model considering activities which have not been used to train
the model. Both phases use a digitized speed signal as input. The target’s
speed can be determined considering only one frequency among the 40 CW
pulses from the SFCW waveform, utilizing the Doppler concept. In this
work, the frequency 6.5 GHz has been chosen to realize a CW Doppler radar.
A detailed description of the data processing techniques for fall detection
and tagless localization purposes are well beyond the scope of this work.
More details are provided in [214, 215].

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Fig. 7-8 (a) Topology, and (b) reflection coefficient of the AMC structure.

7.3.2 AMC structure

To maintain fabrication simplicity, a simple square patch array with out
vias is chosen as the basis of the AMC. Vias across layers, which add to
fabrication complexity and are avoided [25]. The topology of the AMC
structure is shown in Fig. 7-8 (a). The substrate chosen is Rogers RO4003 (εr
= 3.55, tan δ = 0.027), each with a thickness of 1.524 mm. Another layer of
substrate with the same thickness is used on top to separate the antenna and
the AMC structure. Fig. 7-8 (b) displays the reflection for this structure for
an incident plane wave simulated using CST Microwave Studio. Unit cell
boundaries and Floquet ports are used in the simulation. It can be seen that
the reflective phase is nearly 180o around 2.45 GHz, which confirms the
functioning as a normal conducting plane. The reflective phase of the AMC
changes to zero at 6.75 GHz, which is necessary to function as a PMC. The
upper bandwidth defined as 0o ± 90o is from 5.8 GHz to 7.5 GHz.

7.3.3 AMC-loaded patch antenna

Since the AMC plane is working as a PEC plane around 2.45 GHz, the
design process for the patch antenna is quite straightforward. An 8 × 8 array
is used in the finite AMC design. The patch is located in the center of the
AMC plane and a coaxial connector is used to feed the patch from the rear
side of the AMC. The width and length of the patch are nearly half a
wavelength. However, considering that the AMC slightly influences the
substrate permittivity and permeability, the size of the patch had to be
optimized.

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Fig. 7-9 Antenna topology. (a) Antenna layout and cross section with physical dimensions in
mm, (b) Fabricated antenna prototype, left: top metal layer with a patch antenna and a slot
dipole; right: intermediate metal layer showing the square AMC plane.

Next, a bowtie slot is embedded within the patch, as shown in Fig. 7-9.
This idea was initiated by the fact that a bowtie dipole provides a wider
bandwidth than a simple dipole antenna. The bowtie slot is parallel to the
radiating edges of the patch in order to match polarization. The slot antenna
is fed by a CPW line, which is optimized in order to obtain proper

122
impedance matching. Since the slot changes the current distribution on the
patch, the size of the patch and the position of the feeding probe have to be
chosen with care. The genetic algorithm optimizer in CST MWS is used to
obtain the best reflection coefficient in both frequency bands.
Fig. 7-10 gives the simulated and measured reflection coefficient of this
antenna. Simulation shows a -10 dB bandwidth from 2.4 GHz to 2.85 GHz,
whereas measurements yield a minimum -6 dB reflection coefficient (S11)
within the same operating frequency band. A second patch resonance also
exists at about 5.2 GHz. However, since in this case the main beam is not
directed broadside, this frequency band is not suitable for use in our radar
system. In the upper band, the slot bowtie antenna functions as the major
radiator. The simulated and measured frequency bandwidths are from 5.8
GHz to 8.9 GHz and from 5.95 GHz to 9.1 GHz, respectively. The minor
frequency shift is caused by a small air gap in between the two substrates.
Simulations showed that this level of shift is obtained for an air gap of 0.07
to 0.08 mm, which is very feasible in the fabricated structure.
It is also interesting to evaluate the practical functionality of the AMC.
This is performed by calculating the proposed antenna with and without the
AMC layer, see Fig. 7-10 (red dashed line). This validation clearly indicates
that the patch antenna is immune for the influence of the AMC structure. It
confirms the AMC functionality as a PEC plane in the 2.45 GHz band.
Conversely, the AMC improves the impedance matching significantly in the
upper frequency band when functioning as a PMC plane.

Fig. 7-10 Measured and simulated reflection coefficient (S11) of the antenna, the zoomed
around 2.5 GHz is shown.

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Fig. 7-11 Radiation pattern of the antenna. a. radiation pattern at 2.45 GHz; b. radiation
pattern at 6.5 GHz; c. radiation pattern at 7.0 GHz; d. radiation pattern at 7.5 GHz. black solid
line: simulated co-polarized, red dashed line: measured co-polarized, blue dashdot line with
circular markers: simulated cross-polarized, magenta dotted line with square markers:
measured cross-polarized. (In x-z plane, the simulated cross polarized levels are below -30 dB)

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Fig. 7-12 Realized gain and total efficiency of the antenna.

Fig. 7-11 shows the radiation patterns of the antenna. Since around 2.45
GHz the operating mechanism is similar to the one of a conventional patch
antenna, the radiation pattern exhibits a good 15 dB FBR at 2.45 GHz. Since
the current on the patch surface is distorted by the slot dipole and CPW lines,
the efficiency of the patch mode is a little lower than the conventional patch
antenna. Nonetheless, the totally efficiency of 72 % at 2.45 GHz is still
acceptable for WLAN operation. Moreover, FBRs of more than 11 dB are
produced by the slot dipole throughout the whole AMC operating bandwidth,
see Fig. 7-8 (b), due to the latter's effectiveness as a reflector. Note that
although the antenna's simulated total efficiency is nearly 90% throughout
the whole band (see Fig. 7-12), its radiation pattern is incapable of
maintaining a consistent forward main beam when operating outside the
AMC bandwidth [56, 57]. This is evident from Fig. 7-11 (d), where
sidelobes that are larger than the main lobe occur. A simultaneous
degradation of the antenna’s realized gain from 5 dB to 0 dB also confirms
this behavior. The higher measured cross polarization in x-z plane is
believed to be due to the feeding cables placed perpendicularly to the
antenna during evaluation. With these observations, it is concluded that the
suitable frequency band for this antenna for application in the radar system is
from 6 GHz to 7.5 GHz.

7.3.4 Antenna cross-coupling

Since two antennas are needed for radar transmission and reception, cross-
coupling can overwhelm an already weak reflected signal [213]. A simple
method to reduce such cross-coupling is to increase the element spacing
125
between the two antennas, besides implementing vertical walls, as used in
our previous investigation [213]. However, using any of the two techniques
used will result in either a larger area and/or thickness requirements for
deployment of the radar system. Thus a tradeoff must be found. Fig. 7-13
presents the measured cross-coupling between two antennas. The distance
between the antennas is varied from 10 cm to 20 cm, representing
wavelengths of between 2.25 λ and 4.5 λ. (with λ the free space wavelength
at the center frequency 6.75 GHz). When a 10 cm distance between the
centers of the antennas is set, less than -25 dB of cross-coupling exists
within the radar frequency band. This is significantly reduced to lower than -
38 dB when the spacing is increased to 20 cm. Since a cross-coupling lower
than -25 dB is estimated to be sufficient for a 5 m detection, as will be
presented in section 6, the 10 cm spacing has been chosen for the practical
radar system implementation. Note that this distance is the center-to-center
spacing between the antennas, which means that the antenna edges are only
4.4 cm apart. Compared to our previous work in [213], a 4 cm edge-to-edge
antenna spacing was used, besides the need to implement a metallic vertical
wall to reduce cross-coupling between the two antennas. The antenna
spacing used in the previous work is comparable to the current
implementation, with the added advantages of a larger detection distance,
better resolution and a compact (thinner) antenna size with the use of the
proposed antenna. The total performance of the antenna is compared to the
bowtie monopole antenna of [213] in TABLE 7-III.

Fig. 7-13 Measured cross-coupling between two antennas with different distances: 10 cm, 15
cm and 20 cm.

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 TABLE 7-III
COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA TO THE BOWTIE MONOPOLE ANTENNA IN [213]

Proposed antenna Antenna in [213]

3
Size (mm ) 56×56×3.12 42×36×32
Low Freq. Band (GHz) 2.395-2.485 2.22-2.48
High Freq. Band (GHz) 5.78-8.89 5.8-6.77
Gain (dB) 2.45 GHz 5.05 5.7
Gain (dB) 6-7 GHz >7.0 >7.2
FBR (dB) 2.45 GHz 15 0
FBR (dB) 6-7 GHz >11 >7.5
Cross coupling (dB) without metallic wall <-25 <-25 (with wall)

Fig. 7-14 Photo of the radar system set-up

7.3.5 Radar experimental results

The system set-up is shown in Fig. 7-14. Similar to the previous work,
experimental validations have been conducted in a 4 x 6 m2 corridor on three
human volunteers with the sensor fixed to the wall at 1.25 m of height.
Furniture and metal shelves were deliberately left to be present in the
environment to test the system under real circumstances. In this evaluation,
the three subjects are similar in their heights (1.75 m) and weighs between
65 kg and 90 kg. Only one subject was present in the corridor at a time
during evaluations, and was allowed to move without any constraints. Since
a series of sensors are planned to be deployed within a room, only frontal
falls were considered and invoked at different absolute distances away from
the radar antennas. Two big pillows have been used to avoid injuries.

1. Fall Detection
The classification model has been generated using 80 activities of one person,
who did not contribute to the testing phase. More precisely, 25 of these

127
activities are random walking activities, 30 signals were acquired during
sitting down and standing up repetitions with the target located at different
distances and orientations from the antenna, and finally 25 frontal falls were
acquired with the target falling at different positions in the corridor.
The model has been tested on 120 signals acquired from three different
persons under test who had not contributed to the training phase. In
particular, 60 activities were fall events invoked at four distances, from 3 m
to 6 m, with a distance step of 1 m, and 60 were walking movements. Each
subject performed 5 frontal falls for each position. The corresponding
experimental results are presented in TABLE 7-IV. The experimental
evaluations indicate that the radar sensor with the dual-band antenna is able
to successfully detect a high rate of fall events even at far distances away
from the antennas, without reporting any false positives.

TABLE 7-IV
SUCCESS RATE IN FALL DETECTION AND FALSE POSITIVES

% Fall Detection Success Rate % False Positives

Distance Target 1 Target 2 Target 3
3m 100 100 100
4m 100 100 100 0
5m 100 80 100
6m 100 80 80

Fig. 7-15 Range profile of a target at about 5.5 m away from the antennas before (a) and after
(b) applying data processing.

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2. Tagless localization
Fig. 7-15 shows the range profile of a person at about 5.5 m away from the
antennas. This range profile shows the signal reflection from the
objects/persons within the radar detection range on the x-axis. The
magnitude of the signal reflected by the target after processing using FFT is
shown on the y-axis. Fig. 7-15 (a) shows that the target’s peak is totally
overwhelmed by the undesired reflections originating from the clutter and
the antenna’s cross-coupling. However, upon applying the data processing
technique described in [215], the target’s peak can be clearly detected, as
shown in Fig. 7-15 (b). Since the radar range resolution is 15 cm, the
maximum error in localization is about 7.5 cm.
It should be noted that the increased target detection distance results from
the significantly reduced cross-coupling and signal backscattering from the
antennas. In fact, in indoor remote radar sensing applications, the signal-to-
clutter ratio is the factor that typically limits the performance of radar
systems. Thus, as was measured in section 5, the new antennas' cross-
coupling and backscattering is confirmed to have improved these ratios,
enabling better radar system capabilities and more desirable hardware
characteristics.

7.4 CONCLUSION
A type of low profile dual-band antenna is proposed based on the AMC
plane. This novel structure combines a patch antenna and a slot dipole to
enable its dual-band property, whereas the AMC is used to effectively
suppress back radiation and, consequently, electromagnetic coupling with
the objects behind the antenna. The simplicity of the topology used enables
its realization using flexible textile materials and a simple manual fabrication
procedure. Both simulations and measurements performed in free space and
on body indicated a satisfactory performance in terms of bandwidth and
radiation properties for dual-band WBAN/WLAN applications. Another
prototype is designed for an indoor radar and telemetry system. Features like
low-profile, high FBR, wide band, antenna isolation of less than – 25 dB are
obtained with a 10 cm centre-to-centre antenna spacing within the radar
operating band. The antennas were integrated into an indoor radar system
before being practically evaluated on three human volunteers performing
frontal falls and normal movements at different distances away from the
setup. Proper radar operation in detecting falls of up to 6 m with at least 80
% success rate and 7.5 cm distance resolution in a real indoor environment
was obtained.
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Chapter 8

CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK

8.1 CONCLUSIONS
The main target of this PhD was to deeply study the characteristics of
metamaterials, and to use them to improve the performance of microwave
antennas. The research performed can be subdivided into two parts, one is
pure metamaterial design, and the other is antenna design.
The first part of this research mainly focused on the design of the
metamaterial itself. This included three topics: wideband negative refractive
index (NRI) metamaterials, planar chiral metasurfaces, and complex meta-
molecules.
The volumetric NRI metamaterial is the most popular type of
metamaterial, but the narrow NRI bandwidth limits its application in the
design of microwave antennas and devices. A coating method has been
proposed to increase the NRI bandwidth for metamaterials composed by
dielectric spheres. By using suitable coating materials with optimal
permittivity and thickness, the NRI bandwidth can be increased 60%
compared with nude spheres (without coating). This kind of dielectric sphere
metamaterial has no conductor losses and is quasi isotropic due to inherent
symmetries, which is not only desirable in the microwave frequency band,
but also at optical frequencies.
Another group of metamaterials is chiral media, which generate a large
chirality that can hardly be obtained with natural materials. Two types of
planar chiral structures have been studied: one is based on a twisted pair of
resonators and the other is based on a displaced pair or resonators.
Prototypes were fabricated and measured in the microwave frequency band.
The chiral phenomenon is physically explained based on the field
distributions in the structures. Since these designs have a totally planar

131
topology, it is easy to fabricate and integrate them with other devices.
Applications as polarizers and tunable metamaterials have been discussed.
To obtain novel properties for metamaterials, it is necessary to design
dedicated unit cells for metamaterials, also called metamolucules. A new
kind of planar metamaterial was investigated, which consists of meta-
molecules where a first resonator encapsulates a second resonator. The near-
field coupling between these resonators is the dominating effect determining
the characteristics of the material. This coupling has been discussed in detail
at a physical level. The technique of encapsulating allows both to
miniaturize the unit cell, which is advantageous with respect to making the
material homogeneous, and to invoke strong coupling, which is
advantageous for tuning the material and have wide application in the field
of compact sensors.
The second part of this PhD project has been the design of antennas
loaded with metamaterials. This part can further be subdivided into three
subparts: dual-band textile patch antennas, radial patch antennas loaded with
CRLH TL, and low profile antennas based on an AMC plane.
To the best knowledge of the author, in this work metamaterals have been
introduced in wearable antenna design for the first time. Dual-band patch
antennas have been proposed based on linear composite right/left-handed
transmission lines (CRLH TL). The symmetric modes of the CRLH TL are
used in the design, and produce similar field distributions and radiation
patterns in the two operating bands. The antennas show high front-to-back
ratio (FBR) and low specific absorption rate (SAR) values, which is quite
suitable for textile materials. A final prototype has been designed that shows
flexible characteristics and a robust performance.
A radial CRLH TL has different characteristics compared to a linear one.
The circuit model for this kind of structures has been conceived in this PhD
for the first time. This has been used in the design of circular and sector
patch antennas operating at zeroth order resonance (ZOR) mode. Since the
resonant frequency of this mode is independent of its physical size, it can be
used to design electrically small antennas with a compact size, or electrically
large antennas with a high directivity. A matching network has also been
considered, which may provide a wider operating band than simple probe
feeding. Similar as in the case of the linear CRLH TL, the radial CRLH TL
can also be used to design dual-band or multi-band antennas. A noticeable
advantage is that the radiation patterns in all the bands are omni-directional
in the horizontal plane. This is desirable in a lot of wireless communication

132
systems. Several prototypes have been fabricated. Measured results agree
well with numerical results.
Low profile antennas based on an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC)
plane can provide a wider bandwidth than simple patch antennas. A patch-
etched slot dipole antenna with AMC ground plane has been designed. In the
lower band, the AMC operates as a normal perfect electric conductor (PEC)
ground for the patch antenna, while in the upper band, the behavior of the
AMC plane is like a perfect magnetic conductor (PMC) plane, which can be
used as the reflector for the slot dipole antenna. Since the unit cell of the
AMC plane is a simple square patch, the antenna is easy to design and
optimize. It is also suitable to be fabricated from textile materials. One
textile antenna has been designed and fabricated, featuring a high FBR and
low SAR value in a wide band. Another antenna prototype has been
designed for a fall-detection radar and telemetry system. Both the antenna
and the system show a very good performance.

8.2 OUTLOOK AND FUTURE RESEARCH

The research in metamaterials is an interdisciplinary field which
involves a lot of subjects, e.g. physics and chemistry, material technology,
computational electromagnetics, and application in devices. Metamaterials
have attracted huge attention and obtained remarkable successes in all these
fields. Here, we only point out several potential directions that can be
investigated in the field of antenna design.
1. Metamaterial based antennas for wearable applications.
Wearable electronic systems are very attractive for e.g. continuous
medical monitoring, emergency rescue services, physical training, care
for children and the elderly, etc. As a consequence, the concept of
Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) has become a more
widespread research topic. As a critical component of these systems,
the wearable antenna plays a key role for the wireless communication
with other devices on or off the body. However, the design flowchart
for wearable antennas is quite different compared to the traditional ones
because of the special material properties and various operating
environments of the wearable antennas. The antennas are desired to
have robust performances under slight deformation and large
fabrication tolerances. The coupling between the antennas and the
human body will influence the performance of the antenna. The human
health risk under long exposure conditions to the radiation involved
should also be considered in the design. Based on our initial study,
metamaterials have shown great advantages and potential in the field of

133
wearable antennas.
2. Implanted antenna design. Implanted antennas and devices
have abundant medical applications. However, the operating
environment is totally different from the “normal” environment for
antennas. The human body causes noticeable radiation loss for the
necessarily compact antennas. Obviously, implanted antennas may
benefit from the features of metamaterials, which may provide a
sufficient miniaturization while keeping a reasonable radiation level.
Besides, reconfigurable antennas may be realized by using tuneable
metamaterials. They could keep their operating frequency constant in
varying surroundings with different physical parameters.
3. Antenna design for next generation wireless communication
systems. This new generation is typically assigned new frequency
bands and a wider spectrum per frequency channel. The application of
millimeter wave communication needs antennas operating in the 60
GHz band or the 90 GHz band. Besides, multiple-input and multiple-
output (MIMO) technology requires antenna diversity. Metamaterials
allow an antenna with a more flexible shape and size, while being
independent of the operating frequency. They can also help to improve
the isolation from neighboring antennas in a diversity array, so to
improve the MIMO performance.
4. Chip antenna design. When operating in the millimeter wave
frequency band, the chip antenna may become more popular, since
printed circuit board (PCB) technology cannot provide a sufficiently
low dimensional tolerance, which may invoke a too high insertion loss
from the circuit to the antenna. The design of chip antennas needs to
comply with the basic rules of chip technology, with given substrate
thicknesses and the special vertical connection technology. The main
challenge in chip antenna design is the low thickness of the substrates,
which will limit the bandwidth and radiation efficiency of the antennas.
The technology studied in this PhD can be used to yield a wider
bandwidth with a lower profile for these thin substrates. Chip antennas
in combination with external structures, like lenses, reflectors, or
especially superstrates based on metasurfaces are also a possibility,
possibly providing more functionality. The topologies as described
Chapters 5 and 6 could form a basis for that.

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148
PUBLICATIONS

International papers
[1] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Increasing the NRI bandwidth of dielectric sphere-
based metamaterials by coating." Progress In Electromagnetics Research 132 (2012): 1-
23.

[2] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Chiral structure based on bilayered displaced U
pair." EPL (Europhysics Letters) 103.1 (2013): 18002.

[3] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Compact circular polarizer based on chiral twisted
double split-ring resonator." Applied Physics Letters 102.10 (2013): 103503.

[4] S. Yan, P.J. Soh and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "A wearable dual-band composite right/left-
handed (CRLH) waveguide textile antenna for WLAN applications", Electronics Letters,
50. 6 (2014): 424-426.

[5] S. Yan, P.J. Soh and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Made to Worn", Electronics Letters, 50. 6
(2014): 420.

[6] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Zeroth-order Resonant Circular Patch Antenna
Based on Periodic Structures", IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, 8. 15 (2014):
1432-1439.

[7] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "An encapsulating meta-molecule: U resonator

containing spiral line", Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP), 53. 11 (2014)
110306.

[8] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, M. Mercuri, D.M.M.–P. Schreurs, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "A low
profile dual-band antenna loaded with artificial magnetic conductor for indoor radar
systems", IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation, 9. 2 (2015): 184 – 190.

[9] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Low-profile dual-band textile antenna with
artificial magnetic conductor plane", IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation,
62. 12 (2014): 6487-6490.

[10] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "A Fully Planar Near-field Resonant Parasitic
Antenna", Progress In Electromagnetics Research C (PIER C), 54 (2014): 163-169.

149
[11] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Compact All-textile Dual-band Antenna
Loaded with Metamaterial Inspired Structure", IEEE Antennas and Wireless
Propagation Letters, 2015 DOI: 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2370254.

[12] Y. Svezhentsev, P.J. Soh, S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch, "Green's Functions for
Probe-fed Arbitrary-Shaped Cylindrical Microstrip Antennas", IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, 63.3 (2015): 993-1003.

Papers and abstracts at international conferences

[1] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Circular polarizer Based on chiral twisted structure."
EMC Europe 2013 Symposium, Brugge, Belgium, Sep. 2013.

[2] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch, "Circuit Model of Circular Antenna Loaded with
Composite Right/Left-Handed Transmission Line", European Conference on Antennas
and Propagation, The Hague, The Netherlands, Apr. 2014.

[3] X. Zheng, S. Yan, N. Verellen, V. Volskiy, P. Van Dorpe, G. A. E. Vandenbosh, and V.

V. Moshchalkov, "An N-Port Network Model for Nanoantennas", European Conference
on Antennas and Propagation, The Hague, The Netherlands, Apr. 2014.

[4] Y. Svezhentsev, V. Volskiy, P.J. Soh, S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch,

"Omnidirectional Conformal Antenna Array Based on E-Shaped Patches", European
Conference on Antennas and Propagation, The Hague, The Netherlands, April 2014.

[5] Y. Svezhentsev, P.J. Soh, S. Yan, V. Volskiy, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch,

"Omnidirectional Horizontally-Polarized Cylindrical Microstrip Antenna with Two
Parasitic Patches", IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and
USNC-URSI national Radio Science Meeting, Mephis, Tennessee, USA, July 2014.

[6] N. Thi Hien, E. Janssens, P. Lievens, S. Yan, G.A.E. Vandenbosch and V.D. Lam,
"Simulation and experimental evidence for broadband negative refractive index
metamaterials based on hybridization effect", 7th International Workshop on Advanced
Materials Science and Nanotechnology, IWAMSN 2014, Ha Long City, Vietnam, Nov.
2014.

[7] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Performance on the Human Body of a
Dual-Band Textile Antenna loaded with Metamaterials", European Conference on
Antennas and Propagation, Lisbon, Portugal, April 2015, accepted.

[8] Y. Svezhentsev, S. Yan, V. Volskiy, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Omnidirectional

Cylindrical Microstrip Antennas with Horizontally-Polarized Radiation", European
Microwave Week 2015, Paris, France, Sep. 2015, accepted.

150
[9] P.J. Soh, S. Yan and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "SAR MITIGATION OF TEXTILE
ANTENNA VIA AN ARTIFICIAL MAGNETIC CONDUCTOR (AMC) PLANE",
URSI Atlantic Radio Science Conference 2015 (AT-RASC 2015), Gran Ganaria, Canary
Islands, May 2015, accepted.

Manuscripts under review

[1] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Wearable Dual-Band Magneto-Electric
Dipole Antenna for WBAN/WLAN Applications", IEEE Transactions on Antennas and
Propagation, minor revision.

[2] S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Dual-Band Textile MIMO Antenna Based
on Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Technology", IEEE Transactions on Antennas
and Propagation, major revision.

[3] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Meta-loaded Circular Sector Patch Antenna ", IET
Microwave, Antennas & Propagation, submitted 09 Jan. 2015.

[4] L. A. Yimdjo Poffelie, P.J. Soh, S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "A High Fidelity All-
Textile UWB Antenna with Low SAR for WBAN Applications", IEEE Transactions on
Antennas and Propagation, major revision.

[5] Y. Svezhentsev, V. Volskiy, S. Yan, P.J. Soh, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch.

"Omnidirectional Wide-Band E-Shaped Cylindrical Patch Antennas", IEEE Transactions
on Antennas and Propagation, major revision.

[6] S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Radiation Pattern Reconfigurable Wearable Antenna
Based on Metamaterial Structure", IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation,
submitted 26 April 2015.

[7] Y. Svezhentsev, V. Volskiy, S. Yan, and G.A.E. Vandenbosch. "Omnidirectional Wide-

band E-shaped Cylindrical Patch Antenna with Horizontal Polarisation", IET Electronics
Letters, submitted 6 May 2015.

151