Oxford-based CAD firm Vector Fields has released RF design tools for antennas incorporating metamaterials - structures with negative refractive index.
"Metamaterials can provide a means to enhance the performance and size of wireless components, for example by making antennas multi-functional, and reducing the size and cost of front-end filtering," said Vector. "Practical design tools will help RF designers exploit the properties of metamaterials."
The software has come out of AMULET (advanced materials for ubiquitous leading-edge electromagnetic technologies) a three-year £3.4m R&D project led by ERA Technology, with the National Physical Laboratory, Queen Mary University of London and Vector Fields.
£1.9m of the cash came from the Government’s Technology Strategy Board.
AMULET is researching artificial materials and their application in the design and manufacture of broadband, multifunctional, adaptive and conformal antennas for aerospace systems.
Metamaterials are not homogeneous. Instead they are 2D or 3D structures, generally combining insulators and conductive loops.
"Antennas are a major application for metamaterials," said Vector. "A typical example might be to use metamaterials to tailor the effective impedance of a substrate or ground plane, to improve an antenna’s radiation pattern and efficiency."
The structures could also add for example band pass filters into 2D PCB structures, said Vector. "Phase shifting is another function that is easily achieved by metamaterials."
Vector’s role in AMULET is providing antenna developers with design tools, and it is these tools that are now being spun-off commercially. "The first phase is currently being released to the market in a version of the high-frequency electromagnetic design tool Concerto," said Vector. "One of the key problems addressed by this is efficient and fast simulation, which is handled by exploiting the periodic nature of passive metamaterial structures to minimise the computations required."
The research programme will go on to explore active metamaterials. "If the metamaterial structure is made active, then even more gains could be made, such as creating an antenna and filtering front end that could operate across multiple frequency bands," said Vector which aim to roll active tools in as the project progresses.