Abstract
Nearly two decades of intense study have passed since the term metamaterials was first introduced in 1999. In spite of their great promise, however, metamaterials have been slow to find their way into practical devices, and examples of real-world applications remain rare. In this paper, an Advanced Short Backfire Antenna (A-SBFA), augmented with anisotropic metamaterial surfaces (metasurfaces), has been designed to achieve a very high aperture efficiency across two frequency bands. This performance is unprecedented for an antenna that has seen widespread use, but few design changes over its more than 50 year existence. The reduced weight, compact design, hexagonal aperture, high dual-band efficiency, high cross-polarization isolation, as well as low multipaction and passive intermodulation (PIM) risk make the A-SBFA ideal for spaceborne applications. This transformative design demonstrates how practical metamaterials, when applied to conventional antenna technology, can provide significant performance enhancements.
Highlights
Two decades of intense study have passed since the term metamaterials was first introduced in 1999
We have found that the maximum aperture efficiency achievable at a single frequency for a hexagonal short backfire antenna (SBFA) is below 75%, and the highest average aperture efficiency simultaneously achievable at two frequencies is around 68%
A model of the metamaterial-enabled ASBFA is shown in Fig. 1, where detailed dimensions can be found in Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 1
Summary
Two decades of intense study have passed since the term metamaterials was first introduced in 1999. A circular aperture offers less packaging efficiency when used in antenna arrays, and the addition of a dielectric slab within the cavity significantly increases weight, severely limiting this antenna’s suitability for satellite-based applications.
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