Full-wave analytical methods for the electromagnetic characterization of metamaterial waveguides

This paper addresses the generalization of some well-known analytical methods to the characterization of the guided-wave propagation in metamaterial waveguides. The effective index method, the transverse resonance method and the least squares boundary residual method are soundly compared. These analytical methods, which require appropriate adaptation when applied to metamaterial waveguides, exhibit new interesting features. The numerical comparison between the approximate effective index method and the accurate mode-matching technique show that the former method can also find good accuracy in certain circumstances.