IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2012

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Low Cost and Broadband Dual-Polarization

Metamaterial Lens for Directivity Enhancement
Jeremiah P. Turpin, Student Member, IEEE, Qi Wu, Douglas H. Werner, Fellow, IEEE, Bonnie Martin,
Matt Bray, Member, IEEE, and Erik Lier, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractMetamaterials have been used in many different

configurations to enhance the radiation properties of antennas.
However, the vast majority of these metamaterial applications
only consider linearly polarized antennas. This paper discusses the
theory, design, implementation, and measurements of a far-field
collimating lens for use with a circularly-polarized crossed-dipole
antenna constructed from a 3D-volumetric metamaterial slab.
Zero-index materials (ZIM) and low-index materials (LIM) cause
the magnitude and phase of the radiated field across the face of the
lens to be distributed uniformly, increasing the broadside gain over
the feed antenna alone. Full-wave simulations were used in design
of the lens, and a prototype metamaterial lens (meta-lens) was
constructed and measured to verify the theoretical predictions.
The meta-lens was found to increase the measured directivity of a
crossed-dipole feed antenna by more than 6 dB, in good agreement
with numerical simulations.
Index TermsAntennas, metamaterials, microwave lenses, splitring resonators.

I. INTRODUCTION

VER the past decade, metamaterials have attracted

tremendous attention in both the physics and engineering communities due to their unique electromagnetic (EM)
properties and unprecedented applications at microwave, infrared and optical frequencies [1], [2]. The ability to control the
effective material parameters, described by the relative permittivity and permeability, provides a degree of control over wave
propagation in such media that is not possible with naturally
occurring materials. As a result, metamaterials have become
very useful in developing new and potentially transformative
RF and optical devices as well as improving the performance
of traditional devices. One example of the benefits of metamaterial devices over conventional designs is the flat focusing
lens formed from negative index metamaterials, which allows
subwavelength features to be resolved and imaged through enhancement of the evanescent fields [3]. For other applications,
metamaterial unit cells may be designed to have specific polarization and spatial distribution characteristics. The controlled
anisotropy and inhomogeneity of metamaterials have been
indispensable for the implementation of various transformation
Manuscript received December 12, 2011; revised July 04, 2012; accepted August 08, 2012. Date of publication August 17, 2012; date of current version
November 29, 2012. This work was supported by the Lockheed Martin University Research Initiative (URI) program.
J. P. Turpin, Q. Wu, and D. H. Werner are with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
USA (e-mail: dhw@psu.edu).
B. Martin, M. Bray, and E. Lier are with Lockheed Martin Commercial Space
Systems, Newtown, PA USA.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2214013

optics (TO) devices, such as the invisibility cloak, that are

capable of guiding light to follow a specified trajectory [4].
Many of the recent advances in metamaterials and TO have
been applied to the design of antennas, with specific examples
showing significant improvement to bandwidth, directivity, radiation characteristics, and polarization efficiency [5][10]. The
gain of an antenna over an isotropic source is a key metric
for the comparison and design of communication systems. The
maximum possible gain of a non-volumetric antenna is determined by the size of the aperture. It has been shown that a host
medium with a near-zero refractive index realized as a metallic
wire mesh can enhance the radiation directivity of a monopole
antenna embedded within the slab [11][13]. In particular, directive emission was observed with anisotropic metamaterials
whose permittivity or permeability tensor has only one component that approaches zero [14][18], providing a way to achieve
matched wave impedance between the metamaterial and the surrounding media for efficient emission.
Directive antennas have also been demonstrated through
the coordinate transformation approach [19], [20]. Although
the TO technique allows for design of lenses with a variety
of properties, the resulting material requirements are usually
challenging to achieve with practical metamaterials and may
also result in limited operating bandwidth. For instance, most
TO devices require design and implementation of anisotropic
and inhomogeneous metamaterials with a high degree of accuracy. It is, however, interesting to note that ZIMs and LIMs are
needed for the implementation of most TO designs. Some TO
designs can even be simplified and realized using homogeneous
and anisotropic ZIMs or LIMs with comparable device performance [4]. Therefore, we consider here the EM properties of
anisotropic ZIMs/LIMs and their application as thin lenses for
the purpose of antenna directivity enhancement. In contrast to
bulk ZIMs with embedded radiation elements, which are often
composed of thick and multiple layer structures, a thin ZIM lens
can spread and collimate the energy from a low-directivity feed
antenna and increase the effective aperture size of the system.
It can also fit within a smaller volume than would be required
for a more traditional dish antenna for example. Most of the
metamaterial and TO lens designs reported to date affect single
linearly polarized waves as only one of the material parameters are engineered [17], [21]. By combining the electric and
magnetic constitutive elements in a volumetric metamaterial
unit cell, the collimating lens studied here produces directive
radiation with dual polarizations.
Other types of engineered materials have also been employed
for directive antenna designs; for instance, highly directive radiation has been demonstrated using electromagnetic band-gap

0018-926X/$31.00 2012 IEEE

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axis ( axis) of the uniaxial medium. As a result, the dispersion

relations for TE and TM polarized wave propagation inside this
medium can be described as (2),

(2a)
(2b)

Fig. 1. Metalens and crossed-dipole feed structure.

(EBG) superstrate and EBG-based Fabry-Perot cavities [22],

[23]. However, these systems normally exhibit a trade-off
between achievable directivity and operating bandwidth which
limits their applications. The LIMs employed here maintain
a low value in both effective permittivity and permeability
throughout the resonance tails, giving rise to highly directive
radiation over a broad bandwidth.
This paper describes the development of a collimating lens
using low-index (LIM) metamaterials. The collimating lens, a
thin square slab of uniaxial low-index metamaterial, is used in
conjunction with a circularly-polarized crossed-dipole antenna
situated above a metallic ground plane. Both magnetic and electric low-index properties are required to support far-field collimation of circularly-polarized radiation. As illustrated in Fig. 1,
a circularly-polarized crossed-dipole antenna is placed between
the lens and a ground plane to create a unidirectional high-gain
aperture antenna. We describe the lens design process with assumptions of homogeneous materials, the selection of a metamaterial to approximate the homogenous structure, and the fabrication and measurement of a prototype device for comparison
with the predicted results.

where
is the free space wave number. The dispersion relations are useful for determining the wave vector inside the
metamaterial, since the tangential component of the wave vector
will be conserved at the interface.
In order to evaluate the collimating performance, the transmission and reflection characteristics of the meta-lens under
plane wave illumination are studied. Based on the wave propagation vectors derived above, we can compute the fundamental
transmission and reflection coefficients at the interface between
the metamaterial and surrounding medium. For TE polarized
waves obliquely incident upon the slab, the transmission and
reflection coefficients ( and ) can be found by using (3)
(3a)
(3b)
In (3),
is the normal component of the wave vector in
free space, which is related to the incident angle
by
. Similarly, we can calculate the coefficients ( and
) at the back surface of the meta-lens as
(4a)
(4b)

II. METAMATERIAL BEAM COLLIMATION

A. Uniaxial Metamaterial Slab
Recognizing the low-index requirement along the direction of
wave propagation in several TO collimating lens designs [19],
we first examine flat lenses based on anisotropic LIMs. The proposed meta-lens structure is composed of a uniaxial medium
whose effective permittivity and permeability tensors have the
form given in (1)

(1a)

(1b)
The material parameters for the fields along the optical axis (
and ) are different from those for fields along the transverse
axes (
and
). The meta-lens
is constructed so that its interfaces are normal to the optical

Consequently, by taking into account the multiple reflections

occurring at the front and back surfaces of the meta-lens, we
find the transfer function as given in (5)

(5)
Since the transfer function relates the electric fields at the front
and back surfaces of the metamaterial slab, it will be used to
characterize the EM properties of such a meta-lens.
As LIMs are needed for the construction of collimating
lenses, the transfer functions of several low-index uniaxial
metamaterial slabs are investigated in Fig. 2(a). In all the cases,
the transverse components of the permittivity and permeability
tensors ( and
) are unity and the thickness of the slab is
. The transfer functions for different material parameters
are shown by the red, blue and black curves in Fig. 2. We
observe that the low-index meta-lens behaves as a low-pass

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will cause reflections for normally incident waves and is undesired for a lens application. The second example shown by
the blue curve is an isotropic metamaterial with low refractive
index and matched permittivity and permeability. Due to the
matched impedance, it exhibits high transmission for waves at
near-normal incidence. However, it has poorer stopband roll-off
performance compared to the anisotropic meta-lens shown by
the black curve. Furthermore, it is more difficult to implement
an isotropic metamaterial with matched permittivity and permeability than an anisotropic metamaterial where only one component of the material tensor must be controlled.
From the analysis of the behavior of the various low-index
meta-lenses, it is apparent that the one with the uniaxial lowindex properties in Fig. 2(f) exhibits superior collimation performance compared to other candidates. As shown in the following
sections, electric and magnetic metamaterials with anisotropic
properties can indeed be realized using various subwavelength
resonators.
The uniaxial low-index lens with matched permittivity and
permeability also satisfies the requirements for dual-polarization operation. The normal components of the permittivity and
permeability tensors are both approximately zero and have
nearly equivalent dispersion curves near the operational frequency to ensure that the effective refractive index is the same
for off-normal TE and TM. A magnetic-only or dielectric-only
design functions properly only for a single polarization and
does not produce a circularly symmetric pattern. Note that the
material must be isotropic but not necessarily matched in the
tangential direction to ensure dual-polarization capability.
B. Metamaterial Design

Fig. 2. (a) Transfer functions of a slab of uniaxial low index metamaterial

for TE polarized waves. The transverse permittivity and permeability tensor
and
) are all unity and the component of the permecomponents (
is 0.5, 0.2 and 0.1 for the red, blue and black curves, respectively.
ability
(b) Transfer functions of a slab of metamaterial with different combinations
of low-index material parameters for TE polarized waves. Near-field E-field
patterns for (c) no metalens with diverging wavefronts, (d) isotropic low-mu
slab with phase distortion in the center of the beam, (e) collimated beam from
isotropic low-index slab, and (f) flat phase fronts from uniaxial low-index materials.

spatial filter for plane wave components with different transverse wave vectors. The angular passband region becomes
narrower as
approaches zero. As a result, waves propagating
through such a meta-lens will be concentrated into a narrow
cone with collimated propagation normal to the surface of the
meta-lens. This effect can be used to enhance the directivity of
an antenna that is placed underneath the meta-lens.
Besides the anisotropic low-index meta-lens, transfer functions of other types of LIMs are compared in Fig. 2(b). The
first example is an isotropic magnetic metamaterial with permeability less than one but permittivity equal to one. The transfer
function of this lens is shown by the red curve and it exhibits
a dip for
close to zero due the impedance mismatch. This

The design of a matched uniaxial magneto-electric metamaterial can be broken into two separate problems; one for a metamaterial with near-zero -directed permeability and the other for
a near-zero -directed permittivity. Combining the two components will then produce a metamaterial that can be tuned to have
matched and uniaxial effective parameters as required for construction of the collimating meta-lens. In the microwave regime,
printed-circuit board (PCB) fabrication is the best solution for
metamaterial construction, where metallic structures are implemented as planar PCB traces on one or both sides of a dielectric
substrate.
Negative index or left-handed metamaterials (NIMs) from the
literature are a source of potential structures that may also possess LIM properties. While NIMs operate in the resonance region where the permittivity and permeability are simultaneously
negative, a ZIM/LIM implementation will function in the highfrequency tail near the zero-crossing of the resonance, where
the absorption losses are low with greater achievable bandwidth.
This approach was used to design the meta-liner presented in [6]
to achieve octave bandwidth and negligible loss, as well as for
the design of a broadband TO multi-beam focusing lens [21].
1) Split-Ring Resonator: Split Ring Resonators (SRRs)
have been employed extensively in the literature to manipulate
the magnetic properties of metamaterial devices [24], with
several variants in common use ([4], [24][27]) displayed in
Fig. 3(a)(c). A modified split-ring resonator was chosen for

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Fig. 5. Representative VELD z-oriented permittivity dispersion curve. Note

the near-zero values near 8 GHz.
Fig. 3. Existing unit cell designs (a) Pendry SRR (b) Square SRR (c) Shurig
SRR (d) Complementary SRR (e) Single-gap ELC (f) Dual-gap ELC.

Fig. 4. DSRR z-oriented permeability dispersion curve. Note the near-zero

low-loss response from 7 GHz to 12 GHz.

the implementation of a low-index magnetic material. A second

split was added to the existing SRR design in Fig. 3(c) to shift
the frequency response and eliminate the bianisotropic effects
of asymmetric loops [28], which is of critical importance for
dual-polarization applications. The geometry of the dual-split
ring resonator (DSRR) with its tunable dimensions is illustrated
in Fig. 6(a). Two of the modified resonators are placed at the
top and bottom of the unit cell with the bottom resonator rotated
by 90 degrees relative to the upper to promote a symmetric
response.
The performance of the ideal SRR array was evaluated by
modeling a single unit cell in HFSS with periodic boundary conditions to obtain the plane-wave scattering coefficients. The effective permittivity and permeability parameters for the material were extracted from the simulation results according to the
method described by Smith et al. [27], [29]. Three simulations,
with wave incidence along each axis, were required to obtain
a full diagonally-anisotropic characterization of the metamaterial. The extracted material parameters from the DSRR array
are shown in Fig. 4; note the resonance in
that creates a
ZIM/LIM condition at
GHz.
2) Electric Metamaterials: There is no one electric-field-coupled resonator that is an analog of the SRR
in flexibility of application and effectiveness. The Complementary SRR (CSRR) [31] shown in Fig. 3(d) can be effective in
some circumstances where application of the Babinet principle
specifies a complimentary electric resonance from an aperture
in the same shape as the magnetic SRR molecule. The CSRR
is not useful for transmissive devices, however, and relies upon
significant magneto-electric coupling for operation, which is
detrimental in applications involving dual-polarization devices.

The Electric LC Resonators (ELC) [25], [31] illustrated in

Fig. 3(e)(f) are more useful and similar to the SRR in operation due to the LC resonances between the capacitive gaps and
the two inductive loops. However, the ELC must be electrically
larger compared to its SRR counterpart to produce a response
comparable in amplitude and bandwidth. For the production
of a matched magneto-electric metamaterial, a more suitable
electric metamaterial molecule is required.
3) Volumetric End-Loaded Dipole: With CSRR and ELC elements deemed unsuitable for use as wideband low-index metamaterial components, we next turn our attention to considering
modifications of a wire mesh metamaterial. Wire mesh media
consisting of lengths of wire with small capacitive gaps have
been used for the development of negative index materials [26],
but meshes have several undesirable qualities. Wire mesh media
must be distributed over an electrically large region for bulk material properties to be considered valid, and suffer from breakdown of effective parameters at the boundaries of the material. Both of these problems may be alleviated by truncating
the wire elements and appending sinuous end-loading arms to
create self-resonant unit cells. This is similar to the well-known
method of shortening dipole antennas while maintaining resonant behavior through the introduction of controlled impedance
to the ends of a truncated dipole, i.e., creating an end-loaded
dipole. Using end-loaded dipole elements as the unit cells creates a more compact structure with a resonant Lorenz-Drude response instead of the Drude-like response of the wire mesh. In
addition, the existence of the arms increases the electric field
coupling strength of the resonator and allows the number of
arms and the spacing between arms to be used as optimization parameters for adjustment of the operational frequency. The
end-loaded dipole (ELD) illustrated in Fig. 6(b) is electrically
active for electric fields tangential to the surface and oriented
parallel to the dipole, so the dipole should be -oriented with
the traces in either the
or
planes. Combining four
vertical (planar) ELD elements as shown in Fig. 6(c) creates a
3D volumetric ELD (VELD) unit cell for producing a uniaxial
-oriented permittivity with appropriate structure adjustment.
The ELD is a chiral device with 180 rotational symmetry, but
copying the unit cell through rotation to cover each of the four
walls to create a racemic configuration mitigates the chiral effects in a bulk lens. The same modeling method is used for simulation of the VELD metamaterial as was discussed for the SRR
array; Fig. 5 displays the extracted effective material parameters
and dimensions of the VELD array.

TURPIN et al.: LOW COST AND BROADBAND DUAL-POLARIZATION METAMATERIAL LENS FOR DIRECTIVITY ENHANCEMENT

Fig. 6. For a metamaterial designed to operate at 8 GHz (a) Split ring resonator,
(b)
with
End-loaded dipole structure, with
6 arms (c) Volumetric ELD (VELD) structure (d) Combined magneto-electric
SRR-VELD unit cell geometry (e) Photo of fabricated metamaterial unit cells.

4) Combined Metamaterial: The combined cubic metamaterial unit cell, consisting of two DSRR elements and four ELD
structures arranged as a VELD, is illustrated in Fig. 6(d). The
unit cells were tuned to achieve roughly simultaneous zerocrossings in both permittivity and permeability near 8 GHz for
a low-index operational band from approximately 8 to 9 GHz.
Adjacent unit cells are separated by a thin dielectric substrate.
The effective material parameters of the unit cells were computed using the same effective material extraction algorithms
[28], [30] to yield the curves in Fig. 7. The resulting material
is uniaxial for both permittivity and permeability in the desired
range from 89 GHz, although the desired tangential permittivity goal of
was not met. This is due to the
interaction of the tangential E-field with the metal strips in the
DSRR and ELD elements which increases the overall electric
polarizability of the structure with resonant Lorenz-Drude behavior. Simulations of the lens composed of a homogeneous
slab with the dispersive material parameters shown in Fig. 7
demonstrated that the desired collimating effect was achieved
even with nonunity tangential permittivity components.

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Fig. 7. Anisotropic permittivity and permeability of the combined magnetoelectric SRR-VELD metamaterial, with (a) normal permittivity, (b), normal permeability, (c) tangential permittivity, and (d) tangential permeability.

III. DESIGN AND SIMULATIONS

To demonstrate the collimation effects of the meta-lens, we
consider a crossed dipole antenna placed over a perfectly conducting ground plane. When fed with a 90 degree phase offset,
the antenna generates circularly polarized radiation. As shown
in Fig. 1, a thin meta-lens made of uniaxial low index metamaterial is placed above the crossed dipole to improve the broadside directivity. The lens was chosen for convenience to be
60 mm square, with cubic unit cells between
and
over the band of interest. This configuration has the potential to
achieve high-gain for a linearly polarized as well as circularly
polarized antenna with low-profile compared to, for example,
more classical antennas such as Yagi or helical antennas. Simulations in Ansoft HFSS of the dipoles elevated approximately
above the ground plane show a peak broadside gain of 7.5
dB with
dB cross-polarized radiation relative to copolar
peak gain. The addition of the lens is expected to increase the
gain by approximately 6 dB.
Since the radiated fields from the crossed dipoles contain both
TE and TM waves, the meta-lens must possess low values for

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both and
in order to produce collimated beams in both the
and planes. A balanced response to both dipoles is obtained
by using matched material parameters
to produce the desired circularly-polarized radiation.
The meta-lens is placed above the crossed dipoles with a ground
plane underneath. In order to prevent energy leakage from the
sides of the lens, metal strips were placed around its outer edges.
These metal strips mimic the graded material parameters present
in some TO lens designs [16] and help to guide the waves to
propagate forward and radiate in the desired direction.
The full metamaterial and dielectric structure of the lens was
modeled in HFSS. Excessive memory requirements prevented
simulations of the complete lens, but the use of symmetry
boundary conditions allowed the simulation domain to be
reduced to one quadrant of the lens. This lens quadrant was fed
by a single dipole due to the symmetry conditions, which could
be rotated to show equivalent behavior for both polarizations.
The simulations of the full metamaterial structure matched
homogeneous slab results with material parameters derived
from the extracted permittivity and permeability of the periodic
unit cell simulations.

Fig. 8. Photographs of the completed prototype (a) Split-Ring Resonator panel

with alignment holes for the ELD strips. (b) Final lens prototype and a single
strip of ELDs.

IV. PROTOTYPE FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENTS

Based on the metamaterial design methodology presented
above, a prototype meta-lens was selected and fabricated using
PCB construction techniques. As illustrated by the photographs
of the prototype in Figs. 6(e) and 8, the lens was constructed
of strips of vertical ELD elements printed on both sides of a
Rogers substrate combined in a wine-crate structure for rigidity
and simplicity of assembly. In addition, large square panels
of DSRR elements were added to the top and bottom of the
lens. Notches cut in the ELD strips allowed them to fit together
tightly for the creation of a square grid with oppositely-oriented
strips assembled at right-angles. To ensure accurate placement
of the SRR panel, an array of holes was drilled to correspond
to pegs located on the top and bottom of the ELD strips. The
exterior transverse edges of the lens were secured with small
quantities of epoxy, but no adhesive was used inside the lens
structure to prevent changes to the metamaterial behavior. The
metal features were printed on 20 mil Rogers 4003 dielectric
substrate.
A 19.6 mm dipole antenna was constructed and trimmed for
resonance at 7 GHz in free space with the use of a coaxial tapered balun. A coaxial taper balun is a broadband impedance
transformer that converts an unbalanced coaxial feed into a balanced twinlead transmission line [32]. A 20 mm linear taper
was cut into the shielding of an 0.085 semi-rigid 50 cable
to create the balun. One half of the dipole was formed from the
center conductor of the coax, and the remains of the shielding
was soldered to an additional length of center conductor to produce the other half of the dipole. The presence of the balun significantly improves the impedance match and available bandwidth of the dipole-lens combination, illustrated in Fig. 9. However, losses in the antenna feed are indicated by the nonzero lowfrequency measured reflection coefficient, which should tend
towards 0 dB in the low-frequency limit due to the cut-off of
the cavity. Thus, although the measurements show a 10% bandwidth of less than 10 dB return loss, the efficiency of the an-

Fig. 9. Reflection coefficient of the dipole alone compared to measurements of

the lens and antenna fed with an impedance-matching cylindrical-taper balun.
The presence of the balun is responsible for greatly improved return loss in the
measured prototype lens compared to the simulated predictions, maintaining the
wide bandwidth of the solo dipole.

tenna as measured is reduced. The lower efficiency is due to the

feeding and matching network, which could be redesigned to
remove the source of losses. Photographs of the completed prototype and the detailed metamaterial structures are provided in
Fig. 8.
The gain and effective aperture bandwidth are illustrated in
Fig. 10. The gain above an isotropic source in Fig. 10(a) shows
significant improvement over the dipole alone across the measurement band from 6 to 8 GHz, with the best performance from
6.75 to 7.75 GHz yielding 15% useful bandwidth. The measured
aperture efficiency in Fig. 10(c) (ignoring the feed and return
losses), calculated for the 60 mm square lens aperture, is greater
than 80% over the same 6.75 to 7.75 GHz range and greater
than 90% between 6.875 and 7.125 GHz. The high aperture efficiency is due to the uniform phase and amplitude distribution
created by the ZIM lens.

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Fig. 10. Peak gain relative to an isotropic source of the meta-lens antenna
system for both polarizations. The antenna shows significant gain improvements over the dipole alone. (b) The peak relative cross pol of the system is low,
with reasonable agreement between simulations and measurements. (c) Effective aperture efficiency of the meta-lens system for both polarizations, assuming
the energy is radiated from the 60 mm square lens aperture and ignoring return
and feed losses.

The frequency shift between the extracted material parameters and the band of good radiation patterns of the lens can be
explained by several factors. It is not unexpected to see some
frequency shift of the effective material parameters due to the
use of a finite slab of the metamaterial compared to an infinitely
periodic structure. Also, simulations have showed that lenses
with near-zero negative permittivity and permittivity demonstrate the same collimating effect as the small positive values.
The combination of the shift in effective parameters for a finite
lens and the centering of the antenna band at the zerofrequency give rise to the modified operation band. Note that the
radiation pattern of the lens remains good at higher frequencies
when the cavity size underneath the lens is adjusted.
The measured antenna performance agrees well with the simulated predictions. The results in Figs. 11 and 12 show measured and simulated linearly-polarized E- and H-plane radiation
patterns of a fixed linear dipole antenna for two orientations of
the lens (0 and 90 ) to demonstrate polarization independence.
The radiation patterns from the two lens orientations show minimal differences, indicating that the lens performs equally well
for both incident linear polarizations and is thus suitable for use

Fig. 11. (a) Simulated E-plane, (b) measured E-plane, (c) simulated H-plane,
and measured H-plane radiation pattern cuts for both 0 and 90 lens rotation at
6.875 GHz. The measured and simulated patterns show good agreement with a
small decrease in measured directivity compared to simulations, and the patterns
are identical in the main beam for both rotations of the lens, showing good dualpolarization performance.

as designed for circularly-polarized systems. Measured and simulated radiation patterns are provided for both polarizations at
two frequencies, 6.875 GHz in Fig. 11 and 7.5 GHz in Fig. 12;
these patterns are representative of performance and simulation/measurement agreement over the entire band. The antenna
has a pattern and impedance bandwidth of over 0.7 GHz (i.e.,
over 10% bandwidth). The minor disagreements between the
measured and simulated patterns are due to small discrepancies
in the manufacturing process.
V. CONCLUSION
We have presented a design for a dual-polarization collimating meta-lens and successfully demonstrated operation of
a prototype that confirms the simulated performance over a
% pattern bandwidth. An improved balun design will be

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compares well to reflector antennas in terms of mass and

volume, since increasing the gain and effective aperture size
with the lens allows the use of smaller, lighter feed antennas
while maintaining good radiation characteristics. The meta-lens
design is also competitive when compared to antenna arrays in
performance, and requires only a single feed without extensive
power division, impedance-matching, and phase-matching networks. In full production, the meta-lens would be inexpensive
and demonstrate low-loss operation compared to traditional
array beamforming systems. The success of the prototype design encourages future work in developing lens and feed pairs
with wider impedance bandwidth or improved metamaterials
that demonstrate multi-band operation.

REFERENCES

Fig. 12. (a) Simulated E-plane, (b) measured E-plane, (c) simulated H-plane,
and measured H-plane radiation pattern cuts for both 0 and 90 lens rotation
at 7.5 GHz. The patterns are very similar in the main beam for both rotations of
the lens, showing good dual-polarization performance. The measured patterns
exhibit some gain drop-off compared to the simulations.

necessary in future work to reduce the excess losses in the

structure and demonstrate improved impedance bandwidth
over the
% demonstrated here. By using a metamaterial
slab with equal uniaxial permittivity and permeability, the
lens can be used with linearly polarized dipole or circularly
polarized crossed-dipole antenna feeds. The metamaterial slab
was created using magnetic SRR and electric VELD unit cells
combined to produce the desired matched magneto-electric
response. The metamaterial lens was constructed using PCB
technology and the radiation characteristics were measured in
an anechoic chamber; the measured radiation patterns showed
good agreement with simulated design data for the lens. The
low-index lens design is compact and light due to the PCB
assembly, making it suitable for space and aerospace applications. In the space and aerospace arenas, the meta-lens antenna

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Jeremiah P. Turpin received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Grove City College, Grove
City, Pennsylvania in 2009, and the M.S. degree in
electrical engineering from The Pennsylvania State
University (Penn State), University Park, in 2011.
He is currently a graduate research assistant in the
Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, where
he has been investigating Transformation Optics designs for antenna applications, and developing metamaterials for implementation of TO devices. His other research experience includes a summer research program for undergraduates at The Pennsylvania State
University, where he explored using interdigital capacitors for characterizing
high-permittivity thin films.
Qi Wu received the B.S. degree in microelectronics
from Peking University, China, in 2003, and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2005 and 2008,
respectively.
He is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering, the Pennsylvania
State University. From 2005 to 2008, he was a
Research Assistant at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. From 2009 to 2010, he was a Postdoctoral
Researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include
metamaterials, photonic crystals, plasmonics, nano-photonics, and antennas.

5725

Douglas H. Werner (F05) received the B.S., M.S.,

and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and the
M.A. degree in mathematics from The Pennsylvania
State University (Penn State), University Park, in
1983, 1985, 1989, and 1986, respectively.
He is the John L. and Genevieve H. McCain
Chair Professor in the Pennsylvania State University Department of Electrical Engineering.
He is the director of the Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Lab (CEARL)
http://cearl.ee.psu.edu/ as well as a member of the
Communications and Space Sciences Lab (CSSL). He is also a faculty member
of the Materials Research Institute (MRI) at Penn State. His research interests
include theoretical and computational electromagnetics with applications to
antenna theory and design, phased arrays, microwave devices, wireless and
personal communication systems, wearable and e-textile antennas, conformal
antennas, frequency selective surfaces, electromagnetic wave interactions with
complex media, metamaterials, electromagnetic bandgap materials, zero and
negative index materials, fractal and knot electrodynamics, tiling theory, neural
networks, genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization. He holds seven
patents, has published over 500 technical papers and proceedings articles and
is the author of eight book chapters with four additional chapters currently in
preparation. He edited a book entitled Frontiers in Electromagnetics (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000). He has also contributed a chapter for a book
entitled Electromagnetic Optimization by Genetic Algorithms (New York:
Wiley Interscience, 1999) as well as for the book entitled Soft Computing in
Communications (New York: Springer, 2004). He has recently coauthored a
new book entitled Genetic Algorithms in Electromagnetics (Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley/IEEE, 2007). He has also contributed an invited chapter on Fractal
Antennas for the new edition of the popular Antenna Engineering Handbook
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007) as well as a chapter on Ultra-Wideband
Antenna Arrays for a book entitled Frontiers in Antennas: Next Generation
Design and Engineering (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011).
Dr. Werner is a Fellow of the IEEE, the IET (formerly IEE), the ACES, and
is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), URSI Commissions
B and G, the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), Eta
Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi. He was presented with the 1993 Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Best Paper Award and
was also the recipient of a 1993 International Union of Radio Science (URSI)
Young Scientist Award. In 1994, he received the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory Outstanding Publication Award. He was a
coauthor (with one of his graduate students) of a paper published in the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION which received the 2006 R.
W. P. King Award. In 2011, he received the inaugural IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Edward E. Altshuler Prize Paper Award. He has also received
several Letters of Commendation from the Pennsylvania State University Department of Electrical Engineering for outstanding teaching and research. He is
a former Associate Editor of Radio Science and an Editor of the IEEE Antennas
and Propagation Magazine. He was the recipient of a College of Engineering
PSES Outstanding Research Award and Outstanding Teaching Award in March
2000 and March 2002 respectively. He was also presented with an IEEE Central
Pennsylvania Section Millennium Medal. In March 2009, he received the PSES
Premier Research Award.

Bonnie Martin received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from the College of New Jersey,
Trenton, in 1988 and the M.S. degree in mechanical
engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in
1996.
In 1988, she joined the engineering staff of General
Electric Aerospace Company, Astro Space Division,
East Windsor, NJ. From 1988 to 1991 she worked
as a Design Engineer, designing high reliability electronics for space missions. Since 1996 she has been
with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (formerly RCA and GE Aerospace) as a Senior Staff Engineer. She has experience
designing and qualifying high reliability electronic hardware for space environments, with a particular focus on R&D, Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
advancement, and affordable product transition from research and development
to space flight. Recent research topics of interest include Active Phased Array
systems for space and implementation of metamaterials for Cost, Size, Weight,
and Power (C-SWAP) reduction. Ms. Martin has authored and coauthored several conference papers, technology proposals, and technical reports. She is the
primary inventor of several Lockheed Martin Trade Secrets and currently has
four patent applications in process.

5726

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2012

Matthew G. Bray (S96M05) received the B.E.E.

degree (with honors) in electrical engineering from
the University of Delaware, Newark, in 2000, and
the M.Sc. and Doctorate of Philosophy degrees from
the Pennsylvania State University, University Park,
in 2001 and 2005, respectively.
He is currently with Lockheed Martin Commercial Space System, Newtown, PA. His research interests include metamaterials, bi-anisotropic media,
nanowires, memristors, and the finite difference time
domain method. He is also interested in fast optimization techniques and efficient modeling methods.
Dr. Bray is a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, the IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society, and the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. He has recently served as Chair and Vice-Chair of the Central
Pennsylvania Section of the IEEE.

Erik Lier (F05) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees

in electrical engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway,
in 1976 and 1982, respectively.
In 1977 he joined the faculty as a scientific assistant. From 1978 to 1990, he was a Research Scientist at the Electronics Laboratory at the same University, where he carried out national and international
projects (European Space Agency/ESA, INTELSAT,
INMARSAT) in the area of microwave antennas, direct broadcasting satellite (DBS) technology, digital

beamforming networks and phased array antennas. He was a co-inventor of the

concept soft and hard EM surfaces. In 1989, he spent one year as a scholar
at UCLA. Since 1990, he has been with Lockheed Martin Commercial Space
Systems (former RCA and GE Aerospace) as a Principal Antenna Engineer and
Technical Fellow. He has been involved in the design of various satellite antenna components and systems, and has been a Technical Consultant and Reviewer on various satellite programs. He was instrumental in bringing shaped
reflector technology to the company in 1992, resulting in winning ASIASAT-2.
He lead the antenna element development that was a discriminator for winning
GPS IIRM and later GPS III satellite programs. His main research interest is
in active phased array antennas, and since 1993 he has been a main contributor
and leader in the development of this technology within the company. He has
been involved in phased array antenna system trades and has been leading the
development of array antenna hardware as well as software for array analysis,
synthesis and calibration. In 2008 he initiated and has since been heading up
the internal metamaterials research collaboration effort within LM, and is also
engaged in extensive collaboration effort with universities. He has authored and
coauthored more than 100 journal and conference papers and holds 21 patents
with multiple patents pending. He is currently authoring a chapter, Soft and
Hard Horn Antennas in the Reflector Antenna Handbook (Artech House).
Dr. Lier is a Fellow of the IEEE, IET and is a Lockheed Martin Technical
Fellow. He received the 1993 GE technical excellence award and the LM Space
Systems Company Publications award in 2010 and 2011.