In this article, we present a simple, low-cost solution for the gain enhancement of a conventional pyramidal horn antenna using additive manufacturing. A flat, metamaterial lens consisting of three-layer metallic grid wire is implemented at the aperture of the horn. The lens is separated into two regions; namely epsilon-positive and epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) regions. The structure of the ENZ region is constructed accounting the variation of relative permittivity in the metamaterial. By the phase compensation property imparted by the metamaterial lens, more focused beams are obtained. The simulated and measured results clearly demonstrate that the metamaterial lens enhances the gain over an ultra-wide frequency band (10–18 GHz) compared to the conventional horn with the same physical size. A simple fabrication process using a 3D printer is introduced, and has been successfully applied. This result represents a remarkable achievement in this field, and may enable a comprehensive solution for satellite and radar systems as a high gain, compact, light-weighted, broadband radiator.

A novel online antenna array calibration method is presented in this paper for estimating direction-of-arrival (DOA) in the case of uncorrelated and coherent signals with unknown gain-phase errors. Conventional calibration methods mainly consider incoherent signals for uniform linear arrays with gain-phase errors. The proposed method has better performance not only for uncorrelated signals but also for coherent signals. First, an on-grid sparse technique based on the covariance fitting criteria is reformulated aiming at gain-phase errors to obtain DOA and the corresponding source power, which is robust to coherent sources. Second, the gain-phase errors are estimated in the case of uncorrelated and coherent signals via introducing an exchange matrix as the pre-processing of a covariance matrix and then decomposing the eigenvalues of the covariance matrix. Those parameters estimate values converge to the real values by an alternate iteration process. The proposed method does not require the presence of calibration sources and previous calibration information unlike offline ways. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method which outperforms the traditional approaches.

This paper provides an overview of theory, design, simulation, and fabrication of novel spatial harmonic magnetrons (SHMs). An approximate analysis which provides the guidelines for the design and predicts the important characteristics of these devices will be presented. This analysis shows that the metamaterial loaded SHMs can start generating power with very small cathode current densities which is very important for designing THz sources based on SHMs. A design example with the operation frequency of 43 GHz together with the design procedure, PIC simulations, and measurement results will be examined.

A wideband and high-efficiency polarization conversion metasurface (PCM) is proposed and applied to reduce radar cross section (RCS). The proposed PCM unit is composed of two oblique asymmetry triangle split rings, which generate multiple plasmon resonances. Simulated and measured results demonstrate that it achieves polarization conversion over 90% from 9.24 to 17.64 GHz. Besides square checkerboard, the proposed PCM units and mirror units are arranged in triangle checkerboard. The mechanisms of both checkerboard PCMs are analyzed based on standard array theory, including the relationship between RCS reduction value and polarization conversion ratio value. The derived formulas provide a guideline to design checkerboard structure based on PCM. Simulated results demonstrate that both checkerboard PCMs achieve over 62% relative bandwidth of 10 dB RCS reduction under normal incidence with respect to the equal-sized metallic plate, which also means that the triangle one could be an alternative solution to reduce RCS. To verify the analyzed and simulated results, the fabricated sample and measured results of both checkerboard PCMs are presented. Good agreements are achieved between measurements, simulations and numerical analysis.

In this paper, a slow-wave transmission line implemented in coplanar waveguide technology, based on simultaneous inductive and capacitive loading, is presented for the first time. The shunt capacitors are achieved by periodically etching transverse strips in the back substrate side, connected to the central strip through metallic vias. The series inductors are implemented by etching rectangular slots in the ground plane. The effect of these reactive elements is an enhancement of the effective shunt capacitance and series inductance of the line, leading to a significant reduction of the phase velocity (slow-wave effect). Consequently, the guided wavelength is also reduced, and these lines can be applied to the miniaturization of microwave components. Moreover, due to periodicity, these artificial lines exhibit stop bands (Bragg effect) useful for spurious or harmonic suppression. A compact harmonic suppressed power splitter, based on a slow wave 35.35 Ω impedance inverter, has been designed and fabricated in order to demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach. The length of the inverter is 48% the length of the conventional counterpart, and measured power splitting at the first (3f0) and second (5f0) harmonic frequencies is rejected more than 49 and 23 dB, respectively.

This paper presents a procedure for the design of tensorial metasurface antennas radiating polarized beams through aperture field synthesis. The aperture field is generated using the surface wave to leaky wave conversion resulting from metasurface modulation. The design procedure of the feeder is presented with a description of the geometrical parameters affecting the antenna matching. Numerical solutions for single beam and multi-beam metasurface antennas working respectively, at 12.25 and 20 GHz are presented. In addition, a metasurface prototype working at 12.25 GHz is manufactured and measured.

By using a metasurface (MS) structure, a linearly polarized wave is converted to circularly polarized waves. Both right- and left-handed circular polarizations (RHCPs and LHCP) are obtained by a simple configuration in the proposed structure which consists of 16 unit cells arranged in a 4 × 4 layout. Each unit cell contains five horizontal and parallel strips embedded in a rectangular frame in which a single diagonal strip is placed from one corner to the opposed one. It is shown that the orientation of the diagonal line determines the handedness of the converted signal to be either LHCP or RHCP. In order to show the working conditions of the MS structure, scattering parameters are found for both co-polarized and cross-polarized responses. Axial ratio, an indicator for polarization conversion, is then obtained by dividing cross-polar response to co-polar response to demonstrate the transformation. The structure works for horizontally and vertically polarized linear waves in a wide band frequency range which is approximately 510 MHz. Since the suggested MS model is composed of a simple geometry for polarization conversion, it can be easily adjusted in any desired frequency bands for a variety of applications from the defence industry to medical, education, or communication areas.

A novel transmission-line model is used for the analysis of planar structures, including wire-medium (WM) slabs with vertically aligned wires. The network formalism allows for an effective determination of the relevant spectral Green's functions, of the modal dispersion equation via transverse resonance, as well as of the far-field radiation pattern produced by simple sources via reciprocity, as opposed to the more cumbersome field-matching approach. Numerical results, validated also against state-of-the-art simulation software, confirm the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach. In particular, modal and radiation features are presented for a class of leaky-wave antennas based on planar WM loaded configurations covered by partially reflecting screens, for which leaky unimodal regimes are achieved by minimizing spurious radiation from the quasi-transverse electromagnetic (TEM) mode.

The gain properties of an axially slotted cylinder coated with two lossless layers and embedded in a certain lossless background medium have been investigated analytically. The effects of different types of coating layers, i.e. dielectric, magnetic, and Single Negative materials upon the gain characteristics of an axial slot have been discussed. It is observed that if inner layer is either of dielectric or magnetic type and outer layer is an Epsilon Negative type having its relative permittivity of negative one and slotted cylinder is embedded in the free space then the gain has directive pattern. It is also studied that if both layers are dielectric or magnetic types and embedded in a Mu Negative medium then its gain pattern becomes more directive with the maximum gain in the forward direction.

This work focuses on the circuit modeling and full-wave analysis behavior of circular split ring resonator (SRR). We investigate an equivalent circuit model that allows calculating the resonant frequency from the geometric parameters. Equivalent LC parameters of inductance and capacitance are derived using conformal mapping and constitutive equations. Lumped element equivalent circuit models of resonator are investigated highlighting the behavior of inductance and capacitance. In order to validate our proposed analytical LC model, a comparison of theoretical and simulation results has been performed and a good agreement is achieved with a maximum error of 4.23% and a minimum error of 0.52%, which supports the validity of the equivalent model.

In this work, a voltage tunable interdigital capacitor loaded with liquid crystal (LC) is investigated and its application for a composite right/left-handed leaky-wave antenna (LWA) is demonstrated. The tuning capability of the varactor is confirmed by simulation and measurement. A material tunability of 25% of the used LC yields a measured varactor tunability of 9%. Based on this, a tunable LWA with a beam scanning of 14 degrees at 26.7 GHz is implemented and measured.

An engineered novel tunable dual-band metamaterial antenna based on stacked split ring resonator (SRR) array is presented. The μ-negative SRR array present at two sublayers of stacked microstrip patch antenna substrate adds tuning capability to the antenna with marginal trade-off between antenna gain and cross-polarization. If the size of resonator element is considerably smaller than resonance wavelength, ideally lesser than λ/10, the resonator would support the resonating mode of antenna. Compact SRR array embedded in radiator facilitate the antenna tuning to intended allocated spectrum of L5- and S-band frequencies without modifying external dimensions of patch antenna, which in turn helps the satellite payload design. The variations in SRR array dimensions and inter-element spacing are subsequently utilized to maintain the antenna gain and voltage-standing wave ratio. The proposed design of inset fed antenna, matched at 50 Ω, was validated by experimental results and it is suitable for global positioning satellite applications.

In this paper, a substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) H-plane horn antenna has been designed for X-band applications. Metamaterial is incorporated for performance enhancement of the designed antenna. Capacitively loaded loop is used as the unit cell of metamaterial for achieving negative values of relative permittivity and relative permeability. A half-mode SIW H-plane horn antenna is also proposed in this paper which reduces the size of the antenna without much effect on its performance. Metamaterial is integrated on the half-mode horn as well for improvement in gain and radiation pattern. The antennas are fabricated and tested. Excellent agreement between the measured and simulated results was obtained.

In this work, a liquid crystal based tunable composite right/left-handed transmission line for future leaky wave antennas working at the Ka-band is presented. The tuning of the liquid crystal is achieved by means of magnetic and electric biasing. For this purpose, different prototypes are fabricated for each biasing technique and their dispersive characteristics compared. Electric tunability is achieved by implementing highly resistive bias lines in the unit cell layout. Both techniques yield similar tuning capabilities at the operation frequency of 27GHz whereas the electric one has the advantage of being easily integratable in the layout.

Several types of multiplexers based on isolation circuits have been introduced and investigated. Combining method of two filtering circuits (CMTC) is one way to make multiplexers based on isolation circuits. This method fits well for designing contiguous channel triplexers. A triplexer based on CMTC consists of a conventional transmission line (TL) connected to a diplexer and a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) TL connected to a filter. The triplexer based on CMTC has two significant advantages. One is that it is not necessary to modify the design of a stand-alone filter and diplexer and there is freedom in the choice of filtering circuits. In addition, a designer does not need to perform three-dimensional full-wave optimization, because of a simple and straightforward design concept. In this paper, a triplexer prototype having 1, 1.125, and 1.25 GHz center frequencies, is designed and fabricated. The measured results show good agreement with the simulation results.

The implementation and application of single-layer fully-planar extended-composite right-/left-handed transmission lines (E-CRLH TLs) in substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) technology are presented. The multiband CRLH behavior of these artificial lines is explained by considering the lumped element equivalent circuit model. The potential of these lines for dual-band and quad-band applications is demonstrated by designing and fabricating a quad-band Y-junction power divider and two dual-band band-pass filters. The main relevant advantage of SIW-based E-CRLH TLs over other E-CRLH lines is fabrication simplicity, since only a single metal layer must be etched and lumped elements are avoided. The fabricated prototypes exhibit very reasonable performance. It is remarkable that for dual-band band-pass filters, standard Chebyshev responses can be obtained to a very good approximation.