EDI CON Online: Metamaterials for Electronic Scanning Wideband Antennas and Stealth/Cloaking

Metamaterials have gained much interest in recent years because they offer the potential to provide low cost electronic scanning antennas and to provide target stealth. Target cloaking has been demonstrated at microwave frequencies over a narrow bandwidth using metamaterials. Cloaking has been demonstrated over a 50% bandwidth at L-band using fractal metamaterials. 

For Communication Antennas: Using Ku-band antennas which use metamaterial resonators in a very novel way to realize electronic steering potentially at low cost, one company has transmitted to satellites and back while other companies have developed metamaterial arrays for radar. The Army Research Laboratory funded the development of a metamaterial 250 to 505 MHz low profile antenna with a λ/20 thickness for replacement of the very visible tall whip antennas on HMMWVs thus providing greater survivability. Complementing this, a conventional tightly coupled dipole antenna (TCDA) has been developed which provides a 20:1 bandwidth with a λ/40 thickness. The two together could be employed in escort jammer aircraft like the USA Next Generation Jammer on the EA-1G Growler covering the band from VHF to Ku-band. They could serve as conformal or low profile antennas on the aircraft. 

Other Applications: Metamaterials have been used in cell phones to provide antennas that are 5X smaller (1/10th λ) having 700 MHz to 2.7 GHz bandwidth. Under Army funding isolation equivalent to 1 m separation  has been achieved for antennas with 2.5 cm separation has been achieved allowing simultaneous transmission and reception on a small relay. It has the potential for use in phased array for wide angle impedance matching (WAIM) by placing metamaterial between the radiating elements to reduce mutual coupling. Using metamaterial one can focus 6X beyond diffraction limit at 0.38 μm (Moore’s Law marches on); 40X diffraction limit, λ/80, at 375 MHz demonstrated.

Presenter Bio:
Dr. Eli Brookner is one of the most well-know radar experts in the industry. Brookner has a MEE & Dr. Sc. Columbia Un. ’55 &’62; BEE CCNY, ’53 and worked at Raytheon from 1962-2014 as a Principal Engineering Fellow. He worked on radars for air traffic control, military defense, space & navigation: on ASDE-X, ASTOR RADARSAT II, AGBR, major Space Based Radar programs, NAVSPASUR, COBRA DANE, PAVE PAWS, MSR, COBRA JUDY Replacement, THAAD, SIVAM, SPY-3, Patriot, BMEWS, UEWR, SRP, Pathfinder, Upgrade for >70 ARSRs, AMDR, Space Fence, 3DELRR. Before Raytheon: Columbia Un Electronics Research Lab. [now RRI], Nicolet, & Rome AF Lab. Awards: IEEE 2006 Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technology & Application; IEEE ’03 Warren White Award; Radio Club of America (RCA) Armstrong Medal 2017; 2017 IEEE AESS Outstanding Organizational Leadership Award; Journal of Franklin Inst. Premium Award for 1966 best paper; IEEE Wheeler Prize for Best Applications Paper, 1998. Fellow: IEEE, AIAA, & MSS. 4 books: Tracking and Kalman Filtering Made Easy, Wiley, 1998; Practical Phased Array Antenna Systems (1991), Aspects of Modern Radar (1988), and Radar Technology (1977), Artech. >10,000 attended courses in 25 countries. Banquet & keynote speaker 13 times. >230 publications. >100 invited. 6 papers in Books of Reprints. 10 patents, several webinars on phased arrays and MIMO (for one 760 registered from 61 countries), 735 registered for his Boston IEEE 1972 Radar Lecture Series which was taped and shown around the world.