Degenerate Band Edge Crystals and Periodic Assemblies for High Gain Antennas

Periodic arrangements of metallo-dielectric structures have been shown to exhibit novel phenomena that can be exploited for microwaves. Among them, regular band edge (RBE) structures are known for their high Q properties, and left handed materials lead to much smaller phase shifters and couplers. More recently, a new class of periodic arrangements, referred to as magnetic photonic crystals (MPCs) and degenerate band edge crystals (DBEs) have been shown to significantly improve matching of the incoming fields and support slow wave phenomena (frozen modes) leading to very large wave fields within the crystal over a relatively wide bandwidth. Thus, they can be used for much greater sensitivity antennas. In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate for the first time the support of such phenomena using a newly designed crystal from very low cost materials. We demonstrate that the purported slow wave and high amplitude phenomena can be observed using on periodic cells with a finite aperture. These experiments are corroborated with numerical data, making the utilization of these new class crystals for high gain and narrow beam scanning antennas a practical possibility.