Anisotropic zero index material: A method of reducing the footprint of vivaldi antennas in the UHF range

Abstract

In this work, an anisotropic zero index material is designed for use in Vivaldi antennas. The metasurface structures are placed within the aperture of a Vivaldi antenna to improve the directivity and gain of the emitted radiation. The range of operation is in the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) range, between 300MHz and 3GHz. Two approaches are presented: a type of resonant metallic metamaterial that belongs to the larger class of anisotropic zero index metamaterials and a non-resonant material. A technique for lowering the dimensions of the resonant metamaterial unit cell is presented and applied. The work presented consists of simulation results obtained with HFSS modelling software from ANSYS.