The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

A compact representation is given of the electric- and magnetic-type dyadic Green's functions for plane-stratified, multilayered, uniaxial media based on the transmission-line network analog along the aids normal to the stratification. Furthermore, mixed-potential integral equations are derived within the framework of this transmission-line formalism for arbitrarily shaped, conducting or penetrable objects embedded in the multilayered medium. The development emphasizes laterally unbounded environments, but an extension to the case of a medium enclosed by a rectangular shield is also included.

/pdf/multilayered-media-green-s-functions-in-integral-equation-icv3t901yt.pdf

Multilayered media Green's functions in integral equation formulations

Antennas implanted in a human body are largely applicable to hyperthermia and biotelemetry. To make practical use of antennas inside a human body, resonance characteristics of the implanted antennas and their radiation signature outside the body must be evaluated through numerical analysis and measurement setup. Most importantly, the antenna must be designed with an in-depth consideration given to its surrounding environment. In this paper, the spherical dyadic Green's function (DGF) expansions and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) code are applied to analyze the electromagnetic characteristics of dipole antennas and low-profile patch antennas implanted in the human head and body. All studies to characterize and design the implanted antennas are performed at the biomedical frequency band of 402-405 MHz. By comparing the results from two numerical methodologies, the accuracy of the spherical DGF application for a dipole antenna at the center of the head is evaluated. We also consider how much impact a shoulder has on the performance of the dipole inside the head using FDTD. For the ease of the design of implanted low-profile antennas, simplified planar geometries based on a real human body are proposed. Two types of low-profile antennas, i.e., a spiral microstrip antenna and a planar inverted-F antenna, with superstrate dielectric layers are initially designed for medical devices implanted in the chest of the human body using FDTD simulations. The radiation performances of the designed low-profile antennas are estimated in terms of radiation patterns, radiation efficiency, and specific absorption rate. Maximum available power calculated to characterize the performance of a communication link between the designed antennas and an exterior antenna show how sensitive receivers are required to build a reliable telemetry link.

Implanted antennas inside a human body: simulations, designs, and characterizations

This paper describes a modification of the vector fitting (VF) procedure for rational function approximation of frequency-domain responses. The modification greatly improves the ability of VF to relocate poles to better positions, thereby improving its convergence performance and reducing the importance of the initial pole set specification. This is achieved by replacing the high-frequency asymptotic requirement of the VF scaling function with a more relaxed condition. Calculated results demonstrate a major improvement of performance when fitting responses that are contaminated with noise. The procedure is also shown to be advantageous for wideband modeling of transmission lines, network equivalents, and transformers.

/pdf/improving-the-pole-relocating-properties-of-vector-fitting-sg0iujb00m.pdf

Improving the pole relocating properties of vector fitting

The solution of electromagnetic scattering by a homogeneous prolate (or oblate) spheroidal particle with an arbitrary size and refractive index is obtained for any angle of incidence by solving Maxwell's equations under given boundary conditions. The method used is that of separating the vector wave equations in the spheroidal coordinates and expanding them in terms of the spheroidal wavefunctions. The unknown coefficients for the expansion are determined by a system of equations derived from the boundary conditions regarding the continuity of tangential components of the electric and magnetic vectors across the surface of the spheroid. The solutions both in the prolate and oblate spheroidal coordinate systems result in a same form, and the equations for the oblate spheroidal system can be obtained from those for the prolate one by replacing the prolate spheroidal wavefunctions with the oblate ones and vice versa. For an oblique incidence, the polarized incident wave is resolved into two components, the TM mode for which the magnetic vector vibrates perpendicularly to the incident plane and the TE mode for which the electric vector vibrates perpendicularly to this plane. For the incidence along the rotation axis the resultant equations are given in the form similar to the one for a sphere given by the Mie theory. The physical parameters involved are the following five quantities: the size parameter defined by the product of the semifocal distance of the spheroid and the propagation constant of the incident wave, the eccentricity, the refractive index of the spheroid relative to the surrounding medium, the incident angle between the direction of the incident wave and the rotation axis, and the angles that specify the direction of the scattered wave.

Light Scattering by a Spheroidal Particle

In this communication, a dual-polarized aperture-coupled microstrip patch antenna with a broad-bandwidth high-isolation low cross-polarization levels, and low-backward radiation levels is designed and its features are presented. For broad bandwidth and easy integration with active circuits, it uses the aperture-coupled stacked patches. The corner feeding of square microstrip patches is applied and the coupling aperture is the H-shaped aperture. The theoretical analysis is based on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. A dual-polarized antenna is designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured return loss exhibits an impedance bandwidth of over 24.4% and the isolation is better than 30 dB over the bandwidth. The cross-polarization levels in both E and H planes are better than -23 dB. The front-to-back ratio of the antenna radiation pattern is better than 22 dB. Both theoretical and experimental results for S parameters and radiation patterns are presented and discussed.

A broad-band dual-polarized microstrip patch antenna with aperture coupling

A broad bandwidth and high gain rectangular patch antenna was specifically designed in this paper using planar-patterned metamaterial concepts. Based on an ordinary patch antenna, the antenna has isolated triangle gaps and crossed strip-line gaps etched on the metal patch and ground plane, respectively. Demonstrated to have left-handed characteristics, the patterned metal patch and finite ground plane form a coupled capacitive-inductive circuit of negative index metamaterial. It is shown to have great impact on the antenna performance enhancement in terms of the bandwidth significantly broadened from a few hundred megahertz to a few gigahertz, and also in terms of high efficiency, low loss, and low voltage standing wave ratio. Experimental data show a reasonably good agreement between the simulation and measured results. This antenna has strong radiation in the horizontal direction for some specific applications within the entire band.

/pdf/a-broadband-and-high-gain-metamaterial-microstrip-antenna-5drz20moav.pdf

A broadband and high-gain metamaterial microstrip antenna

A spectral-domain dyadic Green's function constructed for defining the electromagnetic fields in spherically multilayered media is considered by assuming that distribution and location of current sources are arbitrary. The scattering dyadic Green's function in each layer is constructed in terms of the spherical vector wave functions by applying the method of scattering superposition. The coefficients of the scattering dyadic Green's functions, based on the coupling recurrence equations satisfied by the coefficient matrix, are derived and expressed in terms of the equivalent reflection and transmission coefficients. The general solution has been applied to specific geometries, e,g., two-, three- and four-layered media that are frequently employed to model the practical problems, and the coefficients of the scattering dyadic Green's functions are presented. >

Electromagnetic dyadic Green's function in spherically multilayered media

A new dual-polarized slot-coupled microstrip patch antenna is presented, which can achieve high-isolation, low cross-polarization levels, a wide bandwidth, and low backward radiation levels. The coupling slot is an H-shaped slot. For wide bandwidth and easy integration with active circuits, it uses slot-coupled stacked microstrip patches. The theoretical analysis is based on the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. First, a parametric study on the input impedance of the antenna with a single input port is presented. Based on the results, a dual-polarized microstrip antenna is designed, fabricated, and then measured. The measured return loss exhibits an impedance bandwidth of over 20.9% and the isolation between two polarization ports is better than 36 dB over the bandwidth. The cross-polarization levels in both E and H planes are better than 22 dB. The front-to-back ratio of the antenna radiation pattern is better than 21 dB. Both theoretical and experimental results of return loss, isolation, and radiation patterns are presented and discussed.

Dual-polarized slot-coupled planar antenna with wide bandwidth

To improve the performance of microstrip antenna array, a matching-in-step (MIS) configuration of microstrip series-fed taper array is designed. Compared to the traditional one, the novel antenna array has a better VSWR characteristic. The design procedure of the MIS antenna array is discussed in detail, and some valuable results are acquired. Numerical results are obtained and a very good agreement is observed between experimental and simulated results of such arrays.

Le-Wei Li

Papers

A broad-band dual-polarized microstrip patch antenna with aperture coupling

A broadband and high-gain metamaterial microstrip antenna

Electromagnetic dyadic Green's function in spherically multilayered media

Dual-polarized slot-coupled planar antenna with wide bandwidth

A Novel Series-Fed Taper Antenna Array Design