Testing ideas of small ENG/ENZ-based antennas using plasma

The dimension of 2D or 3D ENG/ENZ metamaterial unit cell can hardly be smaller than one tenth of a wavelength at the present state of the art. This drawback does not allow experimental investigation of several recently proposed ideas of subwavelength ENG/ENZ-based antennas. Here, it is argued that the “mock experiments” based on very well known and matured plasma technology might be useful for testing of these new ideas. The commonly used low-temperature isotropic plasma technologies are briefly reviewed and the basic electromagnetic parameters are identified. As a specific example of proposed approach, the design of the “mock experiment” based on a short monopole antenna surrounded by a thin plasma shell that behaves as ENG/ENZ material, is presented.