This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2776978, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
Low-RCS Monopolar Patch Antenna Based on
Dual-ring Metamaterial Absorber
Junyi Ren, Shuxi Gong, Member, IEEE and Wen Jiang, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this letter, a novel ring-type layout of
metamaterial absorber (MA) is investigated for the first time.
Three-layer MA unit cell is duplicated along the ring lattices to
obtain the proposed dual-ring MA structure, which possesses
desirable electromagnetic wave absorbing characteristics. A
center-fed circular patch antenna (CPA) coupled with the
dual-ring MA is presented to produce a monopole like radiation
pattern and reduce the in-band radar cross section (RCS). MA
array acts as an absorber and a radiator simultaneously in this
integrated antenna. Both the simulated and measured results
demonstrate that compared with the circular patch antenna with
an annular ring, the in-band RCS of the proposed antenna is
dramatically reduced without degradation of antenna radiation
performance.
Index Terms—metamaterial absorber (MA), circular patch
antenna (CPA), monopole, radar cross section (RCS).
I. INTRODUCTION
W ith the rapid development of stealth technology,
research on radar cross section (RCS) reduction has
become a hot topic in recent years, especially in the field of
antenna. As a part of the communication systems, antenna can
not only transmit the electromagnetic wave but also be a special
scattering source contributing to the overall RCS signature. A
great number of solutions for antenna’s RCS reduction have
been reported in literature, such as reshaping the antenna and
adopting the metamaterials. In [1], frequency selective surfaces
(FSS) is utilized as a PEC ground plane of antenna array,
guaranteeing the desired in-band radiation characteristics while
transmitting the out-of-band signature to reduce the scattered
energy. Electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures are placed
around the patch antenna to reduce the in-band RCS due to high
impedance property [2]. Based on the principle of passive
phase cancellation, the chessboard configuration which is
composed of two different types of artificial magnetic
conductors (AMC) can redirect the backscattering energy away
from the boresight direction to obtain a remarkable RCS
reduction over wide band [3-5]. In 2008, Landy successfully
This work was supported by National Basic Research Program of China-973
program 2015CB857100, National Natural Science Foundation of China (no.
61401327, 61471278, 61601350), the Foundation of Chinese Academy of
Space Technology (CAST 2015-11), and Natural Science Basic Research Plan
in Shaanxi Province of China (no. 2015JQ6217).
The authors are with the National Key Laboratory of Antennas and
Microwave Technology, and the Collaborative Innovation Center of
Information Sensing and Understanding, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071,
China (e-mail: jw13@vip.qq.com).
1536-1225 (c) 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
designed a perfect metamaterial absorber with nearly-unity
absorptivity, which can absorb both the incident electric and
magnetic field almost completely [6]. Due to its excellent
absorbing property, metamaterial absorber (MA) aroused great
interest among the researchers in RCS reduction [7-9]. In [9],
the MA structures are printed around a microstrip patch antenna
to reduce the in-band RCS while maintain the good radiation
performances. However, the methods described above share a
common disadvantage that a large space is needed to position
the periodic structures. Furthermore, antennas and
metamaterials always work independently in order to guarantee
the radiation performances. To our knowledge, the concept of
designing an integrated antenna that combines the radiator and
the MA into a whole structure has not been reported.
In this letter, a low-RCS monopolar patch antenna based on
the dual-ring MA is proposed. Three-layer MA unit cell is
designed because of its wide absorbing band and simple
structure. Compared with the conventional Cartesian layout of
MA, the novel ring-type layout has similar absorption property
and is geometrically more suitable for circular patch. The MA
can not only absorb electromagnetic wave effectively, but also
work as a radiating element here. The simulated and measured
results show that the proposed antenna can obtain a monopole
like radiation pattern over the whole bandwidth and reduce the
in-band RCS significantly. The letter is organized as follows.
Section II presents design procedure of dual-ring MA. In
Section III, the radiation and scattering performances of the
circular patch antenna coupled with the dual-ring MA are
discussed with respect to the reference antenna by both
simulation and measurement. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in
Section IV.
II. DESIGN OF THE DUAL-RING MA
This section discusses the design procedure of the ring-type
MA. First, a simple three-layer MA unit cell is presented to
obtain a wide absorption bandwidth which can overlap the
operation bandwidth of the proposed antenna. Then, the MA
cell is arranged into a dual-ring structure, and the absorptivity
characterization of the ring MA is investigated.
A. Three-layer MA unit cell
As depicted in Fig. 1(a), the unit cell of three-layer MA is a
symmetrical structure composed of three metal loops and a
metal ground. The MA cell is designed on the FR4 substrate
with a relative permittivity of 4.4. Two adjacent metal sheets
are separated by the dielectric substrate with the thickness of
0.5mm. The metal is copper with a conductivity of 5.8×107 S/m.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2776978, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. Geometry of (a) three-layer MA unit cell and (b) single-ring MA
structure. The parameters are: h=1.5mm, p=8.8mm, g1=1.0mm, w1=1.0mm,
l1=7.8mm, g2=1.2mm, w2=1.2mm, l2=7.2mm, g3=1.2mm, w3=1.0mm,
l3=7.6mm.
By appropriately choosing the parameters of different square
loops, three resonant frequencies close to each other can be
achieved to produce a wide absorption bandwidth [8]. Floquet
port and periodic boundary conditions are applied to simulate
the infinite periodic array. Since the ground plane is printed
with the copper completely, the transmission is total zero. The
absorptivity can be calculated as
A  1  R  1  S11
2
(1)
B. Design of the single-ring MA
According to the method described in [10, 11], absorptivity
characterization of the novel ring-type MA structure is
investigated in this paper. Fig. 1(b) shows that the single-ring
MA is a cylindrical structure composed of a MA array arranged
along ring lattices. Three-layer MA unit cell in Fig. 1(a) is
employed in this structure, whereas the loops have been bended
into the fan-shaped patterns which can match the rotational
symmetry of the ring design. The coaxial waveguide method is
used to simulate the normal incidence of cylindrical TEM wave
with  -oriented polarization ( Eradial ) and  -oriented
polarization ( Econcentric ). Boundary conditions are applied on the
inner and outer surfaces of the coaxial waveguide. PEC
boundary conditions are applied to both the surfaces to obtain a
radial polarization, whereas PMC conditions are applied to
obtain a concentric polarization.
For conventional Cartesian layout, one unit cell can be
duplicated periodically along the x and y directions to obtain a
complete structure exhibiting the same characteristic as single
unit cell simulation. However, design of the ring MA is more
complex. The number N of cells along  -axis is finite and has
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Absorptivity results of four single-ring MA structures (N=6, 8, 10 and
14) for (a) radial and (b) concentric polarization.
1536-1225 (c) 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
2
an influence on the dimensions lm and gm (lm is the arc length of
curved loop taken in the middle of li , and gm is the gap along lm)
for a given inner radius rinner. According to Fig. 1(b), the
relationship between rinner and N can be expressed by:
l  gi 1
rinner  R  i , 2 R   lm  g m (2)
2 N
Where R is the radius from the center to lm. In addition, the
absorptivity results for radial and concentric polarizations of
the ring MA depend on the size of the curved cell. In this
structure, the dimensions of MA along  and  directions keep
unchanged (li = lm, and gi = gm).
Four single-ring MAs with the different number of cells
(N=6, 8, 10 and 14) are designed and simulated. Fig. 3 shows
the absorptivity results of the Cartesian and the ring MA
structures. We observed that all the absorptivity curves of the
different ring MAs have three distinct absorption peaks as well
as the Cartesian one. However, for radial polarization, when the
number N increases, the first resonant peak moves to the lower
frequency. One source of discrepancies between ring and
Cartesian absorptivity is due to the curvature’s effect inherent
to the ring structure. The radius of the ring structure depends on
the number N and so does the curvature. While mapping a
Cartesian MA into a ring one without any parameter
optimizations will cause some frequency shifts.
C. Design of the dual-ring MA
In order to integrate with the proposed circular patch antenna,
the dual-ring MA is presented in Fig. 3. Two single-ring MA
structures (inner and outer) should be designed individually to
ensure that they all exhibit the same absorptivity. Since the
inner radius of each ring is different, the number of cells
constituting each ring is also different. For the inner ring, the
number of elements is chosen to be 14. According to (2), the
inner radius is equal to 15.2mm, very close to the radius of the
circular patch (14.5mm). Then, the radius of the outer ring is
fixed by the inner one. Using the same principle above, the
number of elements for the outer ring is chosen to be 20. The
dimensions of the two rings are the same. Finally, all the single
rings are combined into a complete dual-ring MA structure. Fig.
4(a) shows the absorptivity curves of the dual-ring and each
single-ring MA for both radial and concentric polarizations. As
expected, three ring MA structures have similar absorption
properties. For the dual-ring MA, there are three distinct
absorption peaks at approximately 5.10 GHz, 5.65 GHz, and
6.0 GHz with the full-width at half maxima (FWHM) of 1.2
Fig. 3. Geometry of the dual-ring MA (Top view of Layer-i)
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2776978, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
3

TABLE I
OPTIMIZED DIMENSIONS OF DUAL-RING MA (UNIT : MM)
Parameter li1 wi1 gi1 li2 wi2 gi2
Layer-3 7.8 1.2 1.0 7.8 1.3 1.0
Layer-2 7.6 1.2 1.2 7.6 1.0 1.2
Layer-1 7.8 1.2 1.0 7.8 1.1 1.0

(a) (b)
Fig. 4. (a) Simulations of the absorptivity of dual-ring and each single-ring MA,
and (b) comparison of RCS reductions of dual-ring MA and 6  6 array.

GHz for both polarizations. Several extra absorption peaks

Fig. 6. Photographs of the proposed and the reference antenna.
exist due to the mutual coupling between the two rings.
To validate the scattering property of previous design,
simulated monostatic RCS reduction results of the proposed
dual-ring MA and an array composed of 6  6 unit cells under
normal incidence are depicted in Fig. 4(b). For ring MA, a
circular metal plane with same size is chosen as the reference
one. For the 6×6 array, the reference is a square plane. The
monostatic RCS of the dual-ring MA can be reduced by more
than 3 dB from 5.12 GHz to 6.23 GHz, while the RCS reduction (a) (b)
values at three peaks are all greater than 18dB. What’s more, Fig. 7. (a) Reflection coefficients and (b) efficiencies of the proposed and the
the RCS reduction curves of conventional 6  6 array and reference antenna.

dual-ring structure are almost identical. The results above

demonstrate that the proposed dual-ring layout of MA can
absorb the incident wave effectively.

III. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

The geometry of the proposed antenna is depicted in Fig. 5.
The circular patch is fabricated on an FR4 circular substrate
with a thickness h of 1.5 mm (about 0.029  ). A coaxial probe
(a) (b)
with an SMA connector is placed at the center of the patch to
feed. The dual-ring MA in Fig. 3 is concentrically printed
around the circular patch to produce a monopole like radiation
pattern and realize the in-band RCS reduction. A big innovation
of this integrated antenna is that MA can act as an absorber and
a radiator simultaneously. Meanwhile, the ring layout can
provide a more flexible design for circular patch and a smaller
overall area compared with conventional Cartesian layout. In
order to balance the radiation and scattering performances of
the proposed antenna, the dimensions of the dual-ring MA are (c) (d)
optimized and listed in Table I. A center-fed circular patch
antenna (CPA) with a coupled annular ring [12] is selected as
Fig. 8. Elevation radiation patterns of the proposed and the reference antenna at:
(a) 5.60 GHz and (c) 6.10 GHz. Azimuth radiation patterns at: (b) 5.60 GHz and
(d) 6.10 GHz.

the reference one in this letter. The photographs of the proposed

Fig. 5. Geometry of a circular patch antenna coupled with the dual-ring MA.
The parameters are: Rp=14.5mm, h=1.5mm, d=0.5mm, Rg =45mm.
and the reference antenna are depicted in Fig. 6. Both antennas
are simulated using Ansoft HFSS 14.0 and measured in a
microwave anechoic chamber.
A comparison of the reflection coefficients of the proposed
and the reference antenna is given in Fig. 7(a). It is observed
that the simulated bandwidth (S11<-10dB) for two antennas is
approximately from 5.41 GHz to 6.25 GHz, with a fractional
bandwidth of 14.6%. The simulated and measured results are in
good agreement. However, the reflection coefficient for only

1536-1225 (c) 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2776978, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
CPA is high, meaning poor impedance match. The whole
dual-ring MA structure can be seen as a radiating element here.
As depicted in Fig. 7(b), the proposed antenna has a lower
radiation efficiency than the reference antenna in the operating
frequency. Since the proposed antenna is an integrated structure
composed of the radiator and the absorber, some radiation
energy will be also absorbed.
As shown in Fig. 8, both the proposed and reference antenna
can excite monopole like radiation patterns over the whole
bandwidth. The similar results between the two antennas are
obtained. Fig. 8(a) and (c) show the elevation radiation patterns
in xoz -plane at 5.60 GHz and 6.10 GHz. It is observed that the
measured results of the proposed antenna for co-polarization
agree well with the simulated ones, whereas the measured
results for cross polarization are larger. The measured cross
polarization is about 20 dB below the co-polarization level. Fig.
8(b) and (d) show the azimuth radiation patterns in xoy -plane.
An omnidirectional radiation pattern is obtained. The measured
cross polarization of the proposed antenna is about 23 dB below
the co-polarization level.
The simulated and measured monostatic RCS results for the
proposed and the reference antenna under normal incidence
with x-polarization are shown in Fig. 9. We can see that the
RCS of the reference antenna has a deep dip at 6.15 GHz due to
its antenna mode scattering. The simulated results indicate that
the monostatic RCS is reduced obviously ranging from 5.25
GHz to 6.25 GHz by loading the absorber, which covers the
antenna’s working band. The RCS reduction peaks are 5.6 dB
at 5.54 GHz, 9.5 dB at 5.96 GHz, and 3.2 dB at 6.15 GHz,
respectively. Although there are differences between the
simulated and measured results which are attributed to the
fabrication and test tolerance, the expected in-band RCS
reduction is obtained. What’s more, the RCS curve of the
proposed antenna is very similar to that of the dual-ring MA
only, which means most of the incident wave energy is
absorbed by the MA. The similar results can be found for other
polarizations because the antenna structure is symmetrical.
Limited by the test condition, only simulation is implemented
to investigate the bi-static RCS for antennas at 5.96 GHz. The
simulated bi-static RCS results as a function of angle in (-90°,
+90°) at two orthogonal plane are shown in Fig. 10. We can see
that the RCS has been reduced greatly in angular ranges of
30 in the xoz -plane and 37 in the yoz -plane. These
results prove that the CPA with dual-ring MA has low in-band
RCS performance.
Fig. 9. Comparison of the monostatic RCS of the proposed and the reference
antenna.
1536-1225 (c) 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
4
(a) (b)
Fig. 10. Simulated bi-static RCS of the proposed and the reference antenna at
5.96 GHz (a) xoz-plane and (b) yoz -plane.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, we introduce the procedure to design a novel
ring-type layout of MA. The proposed dual-ring MA structure
can absorb the electromagnetic wave effectively. A center-fed
circular patch antenna coupled with the dual-ring MA is then
simulated and measured. The antenna can produce a monopole
like radiation pattern. Meanwhile, the in-band RCS can be
reduced significantly. The dual-ring MA can act as a radiator
and an absorber simultaneously in this design. The method has
a good potential for antenna stealth technology.
REFERENCES
[1] S. Genovesi, F. Costa and A. Monorchio, "Low-Profile Array With
Reduced Radar Cross Section by Using Hybrid Frequency Selective
Surfaces," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no. 5, pp. 2327-2335,
May 2012.
[2] J. Zhang, J. Wang, M. Chen and Z. Zhang, "RCS Reduction of Patch
Array Antenna by Electromagnetic Band-Gap Structure," IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Lett, vol. 11, no. , pp. 1048-1051, 2012.
[3] J. C. Iriarte Galarregui, A. Tellechea Pereda, J. L. M. de Falcón, I. Ederra,
R. Gonzalo and P. de Maagt, "Broadband Radar Cross-Section Reduction
Using AMC Technology," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 12,
pp. 6136-6143, Dec. 2013.
[4] Y. Liu, Y. Hao, K. Li and S. Gong, "Radar Cross Section Reduction of a
Microstrip Antenna Based on Polarization Conversion Metamaterial,"
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett, vol. 15, no. , pp. 80-83, 2016.
[5] Y. Liu, K. Li, Y. Jia, Y. Hao, S. Gong and Y. J. Guo, "Wideband RCS
Reduction of a Slot Array Antenna Using Polarization Conversion
Metasurfaces," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 326-331,
Jan. 2016.
[6] N. I. Landy，S. Sajuyigbe, J. J. Mock，D. R. Smith，W. J. Padilla, “A
perfect metamaterial absorber,” Phys. Rev. Lett, vol.100, pp.207402,2008.
[7] T. Liu, X. Cao, J. Gao, Q. Zheng, W. Li and H. Yang, "RCS Reduction of
Waveguide Slot Antenna With Metamaterial Absorber," IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 1479-1484, March 2013
[8] S. J. Li, J. Gao, X. Y. Cao, Y. Zhao, Z. Zhang and H. X. Liu, "Loading
metamaterial perfect absorber method for in-band radar cross section
reduction based on the surface current distribution of array antennas," IET
Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 399-406, 4 13 2015.
[9] Y. Liu and X. Zhao, "Perfect Absorber Metamaterial for Designing
Low-RCS Patch Antenna," IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett, vol. 13,
no. , pp. 1473-1476, 2014.
[10] J. Sarrazin, A. C. Lepage and X. Begaud, "Circular High-Impedance
Surfaces Characterization," IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett, vol. 11,
no. , pp. 260-263, 2012.
[11] M. A. Amiri, C. A. Balanis and C. R. Birtcher, "Analysis, Design, and
Measurements of Circularly Symmetric High-Impedance Surfaces for
Loop Antenna Applications," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 64, no.
2, pp. 618-629, Feb. 2016.
[12] A. Al-Zoubi, F. Yang and A. Kishk, "A Broadband Center-Fed Circular
Patch-Ring Antenna With a Monopole Like Radiation Pattern," IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 789-792, March 2009.