Broadband planar Luneburg lens based on complementary metamaterials

Qiang Cheng, Hui Feng Ma, and Tie Jun Cui

Citation: Applied Physics Letters 95, 181901 (2009); doi: 10.1063/1.3257375

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3257375
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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 95, 181901 共2009兲

Broadband planar Luneburg lens based on complementary metamaterials

Qiang Cheng,a兲 Hui Feng Ma, and Tie Jun Cuia兲
Department of Radio Engineering, Center for Computational Electromagnetics and the State Key
Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, People’s Republic of China
共Received 6 August 2009; accepted 8 October 2009; published online 2 November 2009兲
A two-dimensional broadband low-loss Luneburg lens has been designed based on the
complementary metamaterials. The complementary I-shaped unit has been chosen as the basic cell
due to its high resonant frequency, whose effective constitutive parameters are nearly constants at
low frequencies. Numerical simulations are performed to determine the relationship between the
unit geometry and the refraction index. The experimental sample has been fabricated and tested in
a two-dimensional near-field microwave scanning apparatus, where the experiment and simulation
results agree very well. Good focusing ability has been shown from the measured field distributions
of the designed planar Luneburg lens. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.
关doi:10.1063/1.3257375兴

Metamaterials-artificial materials composed of periodic
subwavelength structures with electric or magnetic responses
have peculiar abilities to control the behaviors of the
electromagnetic waves, which lead to great potential appli-
cations like negative index lens and microwave cloaks.1–3
Up to now the two following kinds of metamaterials have
been proposed: bulky metamaterials and complementary
metamaterials. The latter are made of two-dimensional 共2D兲
waveguided units, which can also exhibit electric or mag-
netic responses under the excitation of external transverse
electromagnetic modes, as can be easily understood from the
Babinet’s theory.4
In this letter we focus our attentions on the design of 2D
Luneburg lens based on the complementary metamaterials.
As is well known, the 2D Luneberg lens is a cylindrical lens
with a gradient of decreasing refractive index radially out
from its center, which can focus the incident plane waves at
the back of the lens and is widely used in satellite commu-
nications as transmitting or receiving antennas. We have fab-
ricated the lens and tested it in a 2D near-field microwave
scanning apparatus. The experimental result agrees very well
with the simulation result, which shows that the lens has
excellent focusing ability in the X band.
For Luneberg lens, every point on the surface can serve
as the focal point for the incident plane waves on the other
side of the lens. Usually the refraction index for the compos-
ing material varies from one to 冑2, depending on the corre-
sponding spatial position, n = 冑2 − 共r / R兲2 共0 ⱕ r ⱕ R兲, where
R is the radius of the lens and r is the distance from any point
to the lens center. Here we would like to realize such a 2D
Luneburg lens using the complementary metamaterials.
The complementary I-shaped unit cell has been adapted
as the composing materials for the desired lens, as we can
see in Fig. 1. The thin yellow layers stand for metallic plates
and the green layer stands for the substrate. The bulky
I-shaped units has been widely used in the design of
metamaterial devices such as the gradient refraction index
band and low-loss, which is due to the extremely high reso-
nant frequency. From Fig. 1, we should note that the two bars
of the complementary I-shaped unit must be parallel to the
wave vector of the incident wave, where the conducting cur-
rents on the top and bottom metallic layers and the displace-
ment current between the two layers form a closed loop,
producing magnetic polarizability in the direction of incident
magnetic field. In order to get the effective constitutive pa-
rameters, a standard retrieval procedure should be taken,
which has been discussed in detail in Ref. 7 and the simula-
tion details could also be found in Refs. 8 and 9. The com-
mercial electromagnetic software, CST Microwave Studio,
has been used to simulate the reflection and transmission
properties for the structure shown in Fig. 1.
For the dimensions of the unit illustrated in the inset of
Fig. 1, we choose t = 0.3 mm, p = 3.333 mm, m = 1.5 mm,
s = 1.65 mm, and the height between the top and bottom me-
tallic layers is set to be 1 mm. The effective permittivity and
permeability has been plotted in Figs. 2共a兲 and 2共b兲, where
we can see clearly that the constitutive parameters vary
slowly as the frequency changes. Actually the resonant fre-
quency of the complementary I-shaped structure is close to
30 GHz, so at lower frequencies, both the permittivity and
the permeability are nearly constant in a broad frequency
band and the material loss is extremely small. These proper-
ties are very helpful for designing electromagnetic devices
based on metamaterials. Note that the wave impedance ␩
= 冑␮ / ⑀ is close to 1.068, indicating that this material can
provide excellent impedance match to the air and greatly
reduce the reflection of incident waves. In order to evaluate
the anisotropy for the complementary I-shaped unit, the re-
E k s

lens and the carpet cloak.5,6 The complementary I-shaped

m
units have similar properties to the bulky units like broad- H t p

p
a兲
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic ad-
dresses: qiangcheng@emfield.org and tjcui@seu.edu.cn. FIG. 1. 共Color online兲 The complementary I-shaped metamaterial.

0003-6951/2009/95共18兲/181901/3/$25.00
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 181901-2 Cheng, Ma, and Cui
FIG. 4. 共Color online兲 Experimental setup for the 2D Luneburg lens based
on complementary I-shaped metamaterials. 共inset兲 the fabricated sample of
the Luneburg lens.
FIG. 2. 共Color online兲 Retrieved permittivity and permeability for
complementary I-shaped metamaterial unit, with t = 0.3 mm, p = 3.333 mm,
m = 1.5 mm, and s = 1.65 mm.
trieved parameters for the same unit in Fig. 1 have been
shown in Figs. 2共c兲 and 2共d兲 when it is rotated by 90°. In this
two cases both the permittivity and the permittivity vary
slowly and close to unity, which ensures that the behavior of
the designed lens is close to that of the theoretical model
mentioned above.
We can adjust the dimensions of the unit to obtain the
gradually-varied refraction index that the Luneburg lens
needed. Here we choose m 共see Fig. 1兲 as a variable and s
= 1.1 m. The other dimensions of the unit have been kept
unchanged. The parameter m has been swept from 0.3 to
2.6 mm, where the retrieved refraction index has been inter-
polated and shown in Fig. 3. The possible value for the re-
fraction index ranges from 1 to 1.8, which is sufficient to
meet the requirement of the Luneburg lens 共1 ⱕ n ⱕ 冑2兲. The
lens has a cylindrical symmetry, where the refraction index is
required to be equal at each circle with the same radius.
However, due to the square profile of the metamaterial unit,
we have to make discretization in the whole circular region
FIG. 3. 共Color online兲 Interpolation curve for the refraction index of the
complementary
This article I-shaped
is copyrighted metamaterials.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 181901 共2009兲
and arrange the unit cells properly according to the require-
ment of the refraction index.
The sample has been fabricated and tested in a 2D near-
field microwave scanning apparatus 共2D mapper兲, as shown
in Fig. 4. The diameter of lens is chosen to be 10 cm with the
periodicity of each unit 3.333 mm. The 2D mapper is actu-
ally a planar waveguide, in which the dominant TEM mode
can be regarded as plane waves for the devices under test
inside the waveguide. The bottom plate are attached to the
computer-controlled motors and can scan an area 20 cm
⫻ 20 cm. The distance between the top and bottom plate is
13 mm, but the desired height for the complementary
I-shaped metamaterial is 1 mm. In order to overcome this
difficulty, we have etched the I-shaped patterns on the copper
cladding of a F4b board 共h = 0.25 mm, ⑀r = 2.65, and tan ␦
= 0.001兲 and placed a styrofoam 共11.75 mm兲 below the sub-
strate, so that the top plate of the waveguide and the copper
cladding of the substrate forms the thin channel for the de-
sired complementary metamaterials. In Fig. 4, except a ring
of absorbing materials with saw-toothed pattern placed at the
edge of the bottom plate, a straight channel has also been
constructed by putting absorbing materials on the left and
right side to generate the plane waves needed in the experi-
ment. Due to the great impedance mismatch between the 2D
mapper and the waveguide channel for complementary
metamaterials, two metallic ramps have been used before
and after the sample to help the incident waves passing
through the metamaterial region without great reflections.
We have made full-wave numerical simulations by
COMSOL to observe the electric field distributions at 10 GHz
around the Luneburg lens, as shown in Fig. 5. The plane
waves are incident from the right and converge at a point on
the opposite side of the lens, where the circle represents the
position of the lens. The measured results have been pre-
sented in Fig. 6, where the electric field distributions inside
the 2D mapper at 9, 10, 11, and 12 GHz are given, respec-
tively. The center of the fabricated lens is located at
x = 170 mm and y = 0 mm. By comparing Figs. 5 and 6共b兲, it
is clear that the experiment and simulation results have very
good agreement. The focusing point is quite obvious located
at x = 120 mm and y = 0 mm shown in Fig. 6共b兲, where the
center of the lens is fixed at x = 170 mm and y = 0 mm. From
Figs. 6共a兲–6共d兲, we observe that the focusing point is always
located at the same position, showing excellent focusing
ability of the Luneburg lens. The lens has exhibit broadband
andtolow-loss
the terms properties as expected, due to the nearly
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 181901-3 Cheng, Ma, and Cui
FIG. 5. 共Color online兲 Distribution of the simulated electric fields for
Luneburg lens at 10 GHz.
sionless properties of the unit cells at the working frequen-
cies.
From Fig. 6, the transmitted plane waves on the left of
lens have been split into several beams, which is possibly
due to the wave deflection at the interface between the
FIG. 6. 共Color online兲 Distribution of the electric fields inside the 2D map-
per for Luneburg lens, 共a兲 f = 9 GHz, 共b兲 f = 10 GHz, 共c兲 f = 11 GHz, and
共d兲 f = 12 GHz.
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 181901 共2009兲
sample and the rear ramp. Since the height of the gap be-
tween the sample and top surface of the 2D mapper cannot
be controlled accurately in the experiment, the effective pa-
rameters of the designed elements may vary a little bit,
which will cause the deleterious effect on the field distribu-
tions around the lens. Therefore, the bandwidth of the lens is
limited both by the gap distance and the dispersion of the
material units. From Fig. 6, at f = 12 GHz, there is obvious
distortion for the wavefront of the outgoing waves, which is
caused by the two effects mentioned above. However, the
focusing phenomenon has been clearly verified through the
current experiment.
In conclusions, we have designed a planar Luneburg lens
based on the complementary I-shaped metamaterials. Due to
the high resonant frequencies, the metamaterial units are
nearly dispersionless at low frequencies, whose permittivity
and permeability change slowly like constants. The relation-
ship between the unit dimensions and the effective refraction
index has been determined through numerical simulations.
The fabricated sample has been tested in the 2D near-field
microwave scanning apparatus. The measured results show
good agreement with the simulated results.
This work was supported in part by a Major Project of
the National Science Foundation of China 共Fundamental
Theories and Key Technologies of Metamaterials兲, in part by
the National Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos.
60901011, 60871016, 60671015, 60601002, and 60621002,
in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Prov-
ince under Grant No. BK2008031, in part by the National
Basic Research Program 共973兲 of China under Grant No.
2004CB719802, and in part by the 111 Project under Grant
No. 111-2-05.
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