Metamaterial Based Microwave Components with Enhanced Features and Miniaturized Dimensions

In this contribution, we present the latest developments of our research group in the field of metarnaterials. The focus of this work is on the joint employment of metamaterials and regu lar materia ls to enhance the performances of traditional microwave components. Physical insights will be given, as well as useful design formulas for severa l different transmissive and radiating components. The effectiveness of such designs, obtained through the employment of simple and reliable theoretical models, is, then, confirmed through full-wave numerical simulations performed with available commercial software. The numerical simulations usually take into account most of the practical implementation issues: losses, dispersion, real-li fe inclusions, feeding techniques (in the case of antennas), etc. Another important issue here pointed out is the reduction of the dimensions of resonant components, such as patch antennas, leaky wave antennas, absorbers, waveguides. etc. below the diffraction limit. We show how metamaterials may enable this possibility and we present some usefu l sub-wavelength layouts