Characterization of the novel anisotropic uniplanar compact photonic band-gap ground plane (UC-PBG-GP)

Abstract

A parametric characterization of the recently discovered anisotropic UC-PBG-GP is proposed. Simulated and measured transmission parameters are shown for several anisotropic PBGs with different numbers of unit cells. The results reveal two fundamental properties of the structure: First, its working range can be tuned by varying the number of cells in the propagation direction (PD), that is the overall length of the step-impedance slots; Second, in the attenuation direction (AD), the number unit cells can be reduced to two or three without degradation of the performances, which leads to a very compact size of the order of /spl lambda//2/spl times//spl lambda//7. In all the cases, the existence of a working range with good transmission in the PD and broad/deep gap with sharp cutoff in the AD is demonstrated.