Design and Development of Metamaterial Based Microwave Components

Abstract

newline Planar technology has gained a lot of popularity since its inception due to various advantages newlineit offered to the scientific world such as, light weight, compact size, ease of fabrication and newlineintegration, suitability of mass production and compatibility with planar solid state devices. newlineHowever they also have certain drawbacks in terms of bandwidth, further miniaturization, newlinegain, efficiency, etc. newlineMetamataterials are introduced in the late 60s by a Russian physicist Victor Veselago [1], newlinewhich were further investigated by Pendry et. al. [2] and are an active area of research these newlinedays. Metamaterials are the artificially engineered structures that offer extraordinary electromagnetic newlineproperties not found in nature such as epsilon negative media (ENG), mu negative newlinemedia (MNG), double negative media (DNG), photonic band gap structures etc. They consist newlineof multiple unit cells whose dimensions are much smaller than l0/4, where l0 is the wavelength newlinecorresponding to the highest frequency of operation, to achieve homogenization. It was newlinediscovered that these materials alter the behaviour of electromagnetic waves in an unconventional newlineway leading to important phenomenon such as, reversal of Snells Law, Doppler effect newlineand Vavilov-Cerenkov radiation. newlineDue to the extraordinary behaviour of metamaterials they are used to improve the properties newlineof various planar devices and components which are discussed earlier. They can be used newlineto improve antenna s gain, directivity, bandwidth and size, filter s size, roll off, out of band newlinerejection levels and bandwidth. They are used for multiple frequency operation. They are newlinealso being used for the development of super lenses, ultrathin perfect absorbers, cloaks, high newlinesensitivity and high resolution sensors, phase compensator etc. The main focus of this thesis newlineis on metamaterial based antennas, filters and absorbers.