EMERGING METAMATERIAL ANTENNAS AND THEIR

ADVANTAGES OVER CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES

C. Caloz
École Polytechnique, Montréal, Québec, H3T 1J4, Canada. Email: christophe.caloz@polymtl.ca

Abstract: Some of the most significant composite right/left-handed (CRLH) antennas are reviewed and a few recent
innovations in their continuity are presented. The advantages over conventional solutions are emphasized.

INTRODUCTION
Over recent years, novel composite right/left-handed (CRLH) metamaterial concepts [1] have led
to a wealth of practical antennas with unprecedented features, including structures that were leaky-
wave or resonant, passive or active, operated as antennas or as reflectors, providing fixed-direction or
scanned beam, exhibiting fixed-shaped or variable-shaped beam, employing space waves or surface
waves, with CRLH used as the radiating elements or feeding networks.
This paper reviews some of the most significant of these antennas and presents a few recent
innovations in their continuity.
A BRIEF REVIEW
The references of relevance to this section are available in [1].
LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNAS: FAN-BEAM BACKFIRE-TO-ENDFIRE SCANNING
Conventional leaky-wave antennas have been known for many decades. However, despite their
useful high-directivity properties, they have met little success in commercial products because of their
limited scanning capabilities, and in particular their incapability to provide true broadside radiation.
CRLH transmission line structures exhibit a dispersion characteristic which completely crosses across
the fast-wave frequency range from the negative to the positive air lines, thereby allowing, for the
first time in 2002, complete backfire-to-endfire frequency scanning, including broadside when the
traditional spectral gap is closed up by balancing the series and shunt resonances of the structure.
Such an antenna operates on a unique and fundamental mode; it is therefore efficiently fed by a
simple conventional transmission line. It may also be scanned electronically by the use of variable
capacitances or inductances. Compared to the alternative conventional discrete array antenna, it
requires neither a cumbersome and lossy feeding network nor expensive phase shifters. The flexibility
of this CRLH leaky-wave antenna was exploited in several agile reflecto-directive systems. With the
use of non-uniformly biased varactors, it was also demonstrated to achieve beam shaping in addition
to beam scanning. Finally, CRLH leaky-wave antennas were employed as phase-conjugating meta-
interfaces for negative refraction effect, either in active (using mixers) or passive (using a non-uniform
phase profile) forms.
RESONANT ANTENNAS: MULTI-BAND AND ZEROTH ORDER RADIATION
Being effective (average lattice constant
λg ) structures, CRLH metamaterials are “seen” by
electromagnetic waves as continuous media. Therefore, they can be straightforwardly open-ended or
short-ended to build resonators and resonant antennas, while preserving the exotic CRLH properties:
1) the resonance frequencies depend only on the reactive loadings of the unit cell and not on the
physical length, which provides additional degrees of design freedom compared to conventional
resonant antennas; 2) each resonant mode on the RH (+) branch has a counterpart with identical

EMTS 2007 International URSI Commission B - Electromagnetic Theory Symposium • July 26-28, 2007 • Ottawa, ON, Canada
field distribution and impedance on the LH (−) branch, i.e. resonant CRLH antennas are intrinsically
dual-band; 3) of particular interest is the so called zeroth order resonance (ZOR) mode, which occurs
at the transition frequency between the LH and RH bands and corresponds to a perfectly uniform wave
(λg = ∞) across the structure; this mode either provides higher directivity (due to higher effective
aperture) and possibly higher efficiency (due to lesser current crowding) than a conventional resonant
antenna of same physical size, or smaller size compared to a conventional resonant antenna of same
gain. Resonant CRLH antennas have been demonstrated in various multi-band and multi-polarization,
linear and ring configurations, exhibiting all different advantages over conventional solutions.
RECENT INNOVATIONS
A few recent innovations are now described, in reference to the figure shown below.
(a) FEEDING NETWORKS
The CRLH ∞ − λg (uniform) transition frequency operation is unique in many respects. It is
useful not only in the applications described above but in several other ones. One example is the
uniform power divider series feeding network, presented by several groups, which allows taping out
energy from the backbone CRLH series transmission line at any arbitrary locations along it due
to the perfect phase and magnitude balance due to the uniformity of the wave. This series feeding
avoids a complex corporate network without requiring inter-element meanders to prevent grating
lobes. However, as mentioned in the first section, an open CRLH structure always leaks out energy,
which clearly represents a parasitic effect in a guided-wave component. Therefore, a novel boxed
substrate integrated CRLH stripline structure, exhibiting a Q comparable to that of a conventional
microstrip, was introduced in [2] for series feeding networks and other applications. Alternative
dispersion-engineered CRLH implementations were also propsed to mitigate the problem of beam
squinting, in particular for SAR applications [3].
(b) ENHANCED-DIRECTIVITY RADIATORS
CRLH resonant antennas, in addition to the benefits discussed in the first section, may also
be designed to provide extremely high directivity and gain, either in non-zero or ZOR modes,
compared to conventional resonant antennas (single element for a fair comparison as no feeding
network is required in what follows). This is due to the purely-LC dependence of the resonance
frequencies, which allows extending unlimitedly the physical size of the antenna with only slight
frequency (adjustable) shifts in non-zero modes and, even better, no frequency shift in the ZOR
mode. Efficiencies comparable to those of a conventional patch antenna with naturally much higher
directivities (due to larger size) and thereby much higher gain were achieved [4].
(c) ACTIVE STRUCTURES
In the line of the directivity enhancement discussed in the previous paragraph, it is also possible
to integrate active devices (amplifiers) along the structure as signal regenerators to compensate
for the radiation-leakage loss and thereby provide an unlimited a 3-dB slope directivity increase
per octave length [5]. Even more interestingly, amplification may be used as an aperture sampling
mechanism allowing (by virtue of the Fourier transformation aperture-radiation principle) to perform
very flexible beam shaping (e.g. uniform aperture for maximum directivity or binomial distribution
for minimum slidelobe level) [5]. In future, continuous (per-unit-length) distributed amplifying
structures may be developed to provide highest resolution sampling for super-fine shaping. But
due to the smoothing Fourier-integration effect of radiation, even a rough approximation of the ideal
aperture yields surprisingly good results. These concepts would be extremely difficult to implement in

EMTS 2007 International URSI Commission B - Electromagnetic Theory Symposium • July 26-28, 2007 • Ottawa, ON, Canada
conventional arrays, as the number of elements (and subsequent feeding network complexity) would
increase prohibitively with resolution. Both beam-shaping and beam-scanning maybe performed
simultaneously and controlled by appropriate electronics in a digitally controlled fashion.
(d) PENCIL-BEAM FULL-SPACE SCANNING
Several CRLH strategies have been proposed for full-space pencil-beam scanning. Perhaps the
most economical and most efficient is the one presented in [6]. This configuration uses a (boxed
non-radiative) CRLH uniform series feeding network to an array of CRLH leaky-wave antennas.
Frequency-elevation and phase-azimuth scanning are performed by local oscillators and phase shifters
located in each branch, respectively.
(e) SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED ARTIFICIAL DIELECTRIC SURFACE-WAVE LENSING
Finally, the availability of novel substrate integrated artificial dielectrics (SIAD) [7] with arbitrary
positive, negative and less than one constitutive parameters has made possible novel quasi-optical
planar solutions, such as enhancement of endfire-antenna gains via optically-perfect NRI parabolic
lenses.

Fig. 1. Recent CRLH antenna concepts and structures.

R EFERENCES
[1] C. Caloz and T. Itoh, Electromagnetic Metamaterials, Transmission Line Theory and Microwave Applications, Wiley & IEEE Press, 2005.
[2] N. Yang, C. Caloz, H. V. Nguyen, S. Abielmona, and K. Wu, “Non-radiative CRLH boxed stripline structure with high Q performances”, in Proc.
International Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory (EMTS), Ottawa, ON, Canada, July 2007.
[3] C. Caloz, S. Abielmona, H. V. Nguyen, and A. Rennings, “Dual composite right/left-handed (D-CRLH) leaky-wave antenna with low beam
squinting and tunable group velocity”, Phys.Stat. Solidi (b), vol. 244 no. 4, pp. 1219–1226, 2007.
[4] A. Rennings, T. Liebig, S. Otto, C. Caloz, and I. Wolff, “Highly directive resonator antennas based on composite right/left-handed (CRLH)
transmission lines”, in Proc. 2nd International ITG Conference on Antennas (INICA), Munich, Germany, March 2007.
[5] F. P. Casares-Miranda, C. Camacho-Pealosa, and C. Caloz, “High-gain active composite right/left-handed leaky-wave antenna,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propagat., vol. 54, no. 8, pp. 2292–2300, Aug. 2006.
[6] H. V. Nguyen, S. Abielmona, A. Rennings, and C. Caloz, “Pencil-beam 2D scanning leaky-wave antenna,” in Proc. International Symposium on
Signals, Systems and Electronics (ISSSE), Montreal, QC, Canada, July 2007. to be published.
[7] H. V. Nguyen, J. Gauthier, J. M. Fernandez, M. Sierra-Castañer, and C. Caloz, “Metallic wire substrate (MWS) for miniaturization in planar
microwave applications,” in Proc. Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC), Yokohama, Japan, Dec. 2006.

EMTS 2007 International URSI Commission B - Electromagnetic Theory Symposium • July 26-28, 2007 • Ottawa, ON, Canada