2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference

[AMEREM]

BROADBAND CLOAKING OF ANTENNA STRUTS USING TRANSMISSION-LINE NETWORKS

Francis Siaka1, Jean-Jacques Laurin1, Sadegh Farzaneh Koodiani1, Yves Demers2 and P. deMaagt3 1 Poly-Grames Research Center, cole Polytechnique de Montral, Montreal, Qc, Canada 2 MDA Space Missions, Montreal, Qc, Canada, 3ESA/ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Abstract In this paper, a broadband cloak designed for an application as an antenna strut is presented. The cloak is using Transmission-Line Networks concept introduced in [1-2]. In these papers, cloaking was demonstrated for wide incident angle range. Here, we want to reduce scattering from a strut located in the aperture of a reflector antenna. In this case, the wave field is dominated by rays propagating in directions perpendicular to the focal plane. Therefore, in this paper we modify and optimize the Transmission-Line Network for a specific angle of incidence (broadside). Simulation and experimental results are presented and they both verify that the cloak works well. The scattering parameters (transmission and reflection coefficients) and the RCS of the cloaked object are compared with that of uncloaked object and free space for simulation. For experimentation, we only show scattering parameters. It is shown that although the cloak does not have the same characteristics as free space, it brings a considerable improvement over the uncloaked object case over a broad frequency range.
Keywords : Cloak, Transmission-line network, strut, antenna

Fig. 1. Unit cell of the cloak viewed from the top (a) for the case presented in [1] and (b) for the case presented in this paper. The black part in this figure represents the metallic object to be cloaked and the orange part is the transmission line network.

I.

INTRODUCTION

There has been an increased interest in the cloaking of objects in the microwave range in recent years. Several methods were developed to cloak an object from electromagnetic fields such as in [1]-[7]. In 2006, Pendry et al. reported that a wave impinging on a proper metamaterial object guides around the object so that the object becomes invisible [3]. In [4]-[7], some cloak realizations based on this property of metamaterials are presented. However, the metamaterials-based cloaks offer a narrow bandwidth. Recently, Alitalo et al. presented a way of cloaking an object from electromagnetic fields using a Transmission-Line Network. The principle is to insert a Transmission-Line Network within the object so that the electromagnetic waves would be guided through it by the transmission lines. The results presented in [1-2] with this method are proving this concept and show that such cloaking is feasible over a wide frequency band (e.g. 4 7 GHz). Taking into account that our objective is to reduce scattering from a strut located in the aperture of a reflector antenna, the wave field can be approximately represented by rays mostly propagating in the direction perpendicular to the focal plane. Therefore, we are

proposing that it would be possible to optimize the cloaking effect for this specific angle of incidence (broadside) to reach our objective. In this paper, we present a broadband cloak composed of a periodic network of transmission lines. The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the operation of the cloak is explained. In Section 3, the scattering parameters and radar cross section (RCS) of the proposed structure obtained by simulation using HFSS are presented. Prototypes of the structures were constructed and the test results (only scattering parameters) are given in Section 4. Section 5, gives conclusions and remarks. II. OPERATION OF THE CLOAK The operation principle of the cloak presented in this paper is the same as the one discussed in [1-2]. The object to cloak is assumed to be ran through by a network of transmission lines. In order to pass the wave through the cloak and have small reflections, the cloak should be matched to free space. To achieve this goal, the transmission lines are extended at both sides of the cloak, such that both ends of the cloak operate as antennas (see Fig. 1). In [1-2], the cloak is designed to work for a wide incident angle range. However, in the case of a strut located some distance away from a parabolic reflector, the wave field is dominated by rays propagating perpendicularly to the focal plane. It is therefore possible to tailor and optimize the cloaking effect for a specific angle of incidence, e.g. broadside. The difference between the two cloaks can be seen in Fig. 1. We can see that in case (a) the wave can propagates through the transmission line network in x- and y- direction

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2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]

whereas in case (b), the network is made for broadband cloaking that is quite right for strut application. III. SIMULATIONS RESULTS In this section, the simulation results of the cloak obtained using HFSS are presented. The cloak is composed of twodimensional transmission-line networks placed on top of each other and inserted in-between the objects to cloak (see Fig. 2). The electric field is parallel to the z-axis and propagation is in the x-direction. The same dimensions used in [6] are used in this work. To quantify the effect of the cloak, the S-parameters and the RCS of the cloaked and uncloaked objects placed in free space are simulated. The model is finite in the x- and the y-directions, but infinite in the z-direction. We simulate just one cell in the z-direction and we make it infinite using zperiodic boundary conditions in HFSS. The cloak is also simulated and experimentally tested using two 2D horn antennas, one as the incident wave source, and the other as the receiver to collect the fields transferred through the cloak. A. Scattering Parameters The simulations are performed over the 5-7 GHz band. Fig. 3 shows the reflection and the transmission coefficient of the cloaked and uncloaked object, and the case when there is free space between the horn antennas. Also, we are showing the transmission coefficient for the case where the cloaked object is infinite in y- and z- direction and it is illuminated with a uniform plane wave. In Fig. 3(a), we can see that S11 for the cloaked object is lower than the uncloaked one. There is an average difference of 10dB between the two cases. We also can see in Fig. 3(a) that S11 for the cloaked object is much improved in the 5.96.6 GHz range. At other frequencies, the benefit of cloaking is not as obvious in the reflection plot due to the reflections already occurring without object (free space), possibly due to mismatch in the horn antenna. It can be seen in Fig. 3(b) that S21 for the cloaked object is much higher than for uncloaked object. There is always more than 10dB improvement in S21 and there is around 27 dB of improvement at around 5.8 GHz. In addition, it can be seen in Fig. 3(b) that S21 for free space case is greater than that of the cloaked object case by around 2-3 dB. Even if the case of the cloaked object is not as transparent as free space, there is nevertheless a significant improvement compared to the uncloaked object. We can also see that we have a very low level of insertion loss (S21 0) when the cloak is infinite in the y direction, indicating that scattering in the finite width cloaked object is possibly due to diffraction on the edges. This can be verified by plotting the total fields around a finite strut (see Fig. 4(a)), which is clearly showing shadowing near the cloak edges. Fig. 4 shows the wave propagation of the total E

Fig. 2. HFSS model of the cloak with the object to cloak (black color) inside.
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field around the cloaked and the uncloaked object. The incident wave has an amplitude of 1 V/m and it propagates in the x direction. We can clearly see from Fig. 4(a) that fields propagates through the object, while in Fig. 4(b),

2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]

two cases. In the case of transmission showed in Fig. 5(b), the RCS of the cloaked object is also lower than the uncloaked case (5 dB of difference). This decrease of the RCS tells us that the adding of the transmission-line network on the object improves the propagation of the electromagnetic waves through the object. IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS In this section, the measurement results of a real twodimensional model of the cloak are presented. We have tried to fabricate the cloak structure to be similar to the simulated structure as much as possible. Similar to the simulation results, the cloaked object, the uncloaked object, and the free space case are studied. In Fig. 6, we present the reflection and the transmission coefficient of the three different cases studied. Comparing Fig. 3 and 6, it can be seen that the measurement and simulation results for the free-space case are similar. There are more fluctuations in measurement results for the cloaked object and uncloaked object cases than in the simulation results. In Fig. 6(a), it can be seen that the measured S11 for the cloaked object is no more close to the one obtained in the case of the free space, as it was in the simulation. Nevertheless, we still can see the decrease of the reflection in the cloaked object case compared to the uncloaked object case. The measured S21 for uncloaked case is greater than the simulated S21 (This could be caused by some imperfections in fabrication). Although the measured S21 for the uncloaked case has increased compared to simulations, it is always less than that of the cloaked object. The difference between two cases changes from around 10dB to 25 dB. Therefore, measurements results verify that the cloaking method makes a significant improvement in the invisibility of the object. V. CONCLUSION A broadband two-dimensional cloak has been studied in this paper. Simulation and experimental results are presented. They both verify that the cloak improves the transmission through the object. The transmission coefficient is improved by around 10dB over the band when the object is located inside the cloak. The cloak presents around 2-5 dB loss compared to free space over most of the studied frequency band. The results presented on this paper suggest that this method of cloaking could considerably reduce losses caused by strut scattering. Cloaking performance for other shapes of objects will be presented at the conference but were omitted here due to lack of space.

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(b) Fig. 4. Wave propagation of the total field E over the (a) cloaked object (b) uncloaked object

shadowing can be observed in the front and back of the object. In both cases, it can be noticed that strong scattering occurs at the front corners. B. RCS Results Here, the RCS results of the simulation of the cloak are presented. The structure is the same than the one presented in the previous section. The cloaked and the uncloaked object cases are studied. In Fig. 5, we present the RCS results for the reflection (=0) and for the transmission (=180) of the three different cases studied. In Fig. 5(a), it can be seen that the RCS in the case of reflection for the cloaked object is lower than the uncloaked one. There is approximately 15dB of difference between the

2010 14th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics [ANTEM] and the American Electromagnetics Conference [AMEREM]

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REFERENCES
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P. Alitalo, O. Luukkonen, L. Jylha, J. Venermo, and S. A. Tretyakov, Transmission-line networks cloaking objects from electromagnetic fields, IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propaga., vol. 56, pp. 416-424, Feb. 2008. Alitalo, P.; Luukkonen, O.; Bongard, F.; Zurcher, J.-F.; Mosig, J.R.; Tretyakov, S.A., "Broadband cloaking of selected objects in the microwave regime with a volumetric cloak comprising layered networks of transmission lines," Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2009. APSURSI '09. IEEE , vol., no., pp.1-4, 1-5 June 2009 J.B. Pendry, D. Schurig, and D.R. smith, Controlling electromagnetic fields, Science, vol.312, pp.1780-1782, Jun. 2006. A. Noor and Z. Hu, Cloaking of metallic sub-wavelength objects by plasmonic metamaterial shell in quasistatic limit, Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, IET, vol. 3, pp. 40-46, Feb. 2009. T. Hu, N. I. Landy, K. Fan, A. C. Strikwerda, W. J. Padilla, R. D. Averitt, and Z. Xin, Flexible terahertz metamaterials: towards a terahertz metamaterial invisible cloak, in Electron Devices Meeting, 2008. IEDM 2008. IEEE International, pp. 1-4, Dec. 2008. M. Zhong Lei and C. Tie Jun, "Design of transparent cloaks with optical transformation," in Metamaterials, International Workshop on, pp. 137-139, Dec. 2008. R. M. Lerner, The Lamont Cranston effect, Harry Potter's cloak, and other forms of invisibility, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, vol. 20, pp. 3-7, Mar. 2005.

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