Non-effective medium composite right/left handed transmission lines-design and applications

We present a method to design composite right/left handed transmission lines (CRLH-TLs) that exhibit a continuous phase shift around a given frequency of 0deg degree phase shift and optimal matching within a large bandwidth. The developments are based on a Bloch wave formulation on general CRLH-TL unit cell circuits. The design method is exact based on these circuits and is therefore valid both for effective or non-effective medium CRLH-TLs, which are shown to be also relevant realizations of CRLH-TLs. In particular, the benefits of the method are demonstrated in the case of different applications such as integrated phase shifters, leaky-wave antennas and low-impedance transmission lines.