Dispersion engineered metamaterial-based transmission line for conformal surface application

In this paper, a novel conformal metamaterial-based transmission line (TL) is introduced and the effect of conformation is investigated. The presented structure is a 25 unit-cell composite right/left-handed (CRLH) TL that is conformed on a cylindrical object with a radius of 20.0 cm. The effect of conformation on this CRLH TL is investigated for two situations: slow-wave mode operation and fast-wave mode operation. It is shown that conformation has insignificant effect on the structurepsilas performance in terms of S-parameters when the structure is operating in the slow-wave region. Conversely, when the CRLH TL is operating in the fast-wave region conformation will result in significant performance changes. These changes occur in terms of the leaky-wave radiation characteristics of the structure. In the later case, dispersion engineering is employed to modify the conformal structure such that it provides comparable performance to the planar version in terms of radiation characteristics.