Equivalent Circuit Models for Waveguide-Fed, Resonant, Metamaterial Elements

Abstract

We propose an approach to extracting equivalent circuit models for waveguide-fed, resonant metamaterial elements, such as the complementary, electric inductive-capacitive element (cELC). From the scattering parameters of a single waveguide-fed cELC, effective electric and magnetic polarizabilities can be determined that can be expressed in terms of equivalent lumped element circuit components. The circuit model provides considerable insight into the electromagnetic scattering properties of cELCs as a function of their geometric parameters and imparts intuition useful for element optimization. We find that planar, inherently resonant, waveguide-fed elements exhibit a set of common properties that place constraints on their coupling, maximum radiation, and other key scattering parameters. In addition, unlike simple slots and other non-resonant irises, resonant elements introduce an effective transformer to the equivalent circuit that accounts for the field enhancement occurring in such elements at resonance. We introduce a general and robust method to determine the effective circuit parameters by fitting to the extracted polarizability, extending the approach to resonant metamaterial elements integrated with physical lumped circuit components, such as packaged capacitors or varactors. We find excellent agreement between the analytical predictions and full-wave simulations, such that with one or two full-wave simulations the properties of the cELC can be determined for any externally added lumped elements. This approach can be leveraged to dramatically increase the efficiency of metasurface aperture design, especially when libraries of element responses are required.