Spoof Surface Plasmon Polariton Antenna With Dual-Band Endfire Gain and Flexible Small Frequency Ratio

Abstract

A spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) antenna with dual-band endfire gain and small frequency ratio (FR) is presented. It uses an asymmetric structure to support two independent surface waves with different nonlinear phase constants. Due to the different phases of the superposed <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$E$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -field at the terminal of the proposed structure, dual-band endfire gains and endfire radiation null are achieved. The odd- and even-mode feedings, providing additional phase differences, are also investigated. Three prototypes, with FRs of 1.06, 1.11, and 1.5, are designed, simulated, and measured, respectively. All results validate the mechanism and demonstrate that the FR of the proposed antenna can be achieved easily in the range of 1.06–1.5 by choosing different unit cells and feeding modes. Moreover, the measured endfire out-of-band gain suppression, over 17 dB, presents a good directional interference inhibition. This small-FR endfire antenna shows a broad prospect for band coverage and directional noise inhibition with very close operating frequencies.