Absorption Characteristics of Tunable AMC-based Wave Absorber using Varactor Diode

In this paper, the absorption characteristics of tunable electromagnetics (EM) wave absorber developed using artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) is investigated by incorporating varactor diode into the structure. The proposed wave absorber configured by 5×5 cells of AMC structure is designed on an FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate with the thickness of 1.6 mm. Each cell which is composed of a square patch has the dimension of 20.8 mm × 20.8 mm, hence the total dimension of AMC-based wave absorber is 104 mm × 104 mm. To gain a tunable frequency response with the optimum absorptivity, a varactor diode with varied DC bias voltage is incorporated midway along the square patch in parallel to the incident wave. The equivalent circuit of varactor diode is used to characterize the performance of proposed tunable AMC-based wave absorber. Prior characterizing the effect of varactor diode incorporation, parametric studies upon the characteristic of AMC-based wave absorber is investigated by incorporating some passive elements such as resistor and capacitor. The characterization results show that the frequency response of tunable AMC-based wave absorber can be tuned from the frequency of 1.55 GHz to 2.51 GHz which corresponds to the DC bias voltages variation of varactor diode from 10V to 0V.