Synthetic aperture gaussian beam measurement system for wideband characterization of RF materials and metamaterials

We described a novel wideband material characterization method to accurately measure dielectric permittivities, and transmission characteristics of periodic metamaterials. The measurement system is based on a virtual transmitting aperture synthesized to produce a spot-focused Gaussian beam on the sample under test. This minimizes edge diffractions from the sample and allows for much more accurate characterization of the transmission coefficients using finite size samples. Unlike the fixed FSMM, there is no need to redesign the lenses for each frequency band. For our case the presence of the lens is virtually synthesized to reproduce the Gaussian beam.