2 Year

In this work, a metaradome based on a fakir's bed of nails is designed and tested in order to suppress the blind directions of a 100-element antenna array. The antenna is a microstrip array designed to operate in X-band. The fakir's bed metamaterial-like was first approximated using analytical formulas before a full-wave numerical optimization. Experimental results are exposed and confronted to numerical results. They show a significant reduction of the blind spot subsequent to the metaradome addition.

In this article, a stripline planar transmission line loaded with complementary split ring resonators (CSRRs), in order to obtain a frequency selective behavior. Due to the quasi-static resonance frequency of the CSRR elements, given by the excitation by normal incident E-field, a rejected frequency band can be observed. Simulation as well as measurement results reveal the possibility to apply this type of configuration for the implementation of devices in stripline technology.

Combining an electromagnetic band-gap structure (EBG) and squared split-ring resonators (SSRRs) in a planar microstrip line circuit, negative values of electric permittivity and magnetic permeability can be obtained. This phenomenon arises thanks to the negative permeability of the SSRR particles when they operate in the vicinity of their quasi-static resonance frequency, and the negative permittivity due to the behavior of the EBG structure within the rejected frequency band. Therefore, a novel approach is presented in this article to synthesize a left-handed media in microstrip technology. Full wave simulation results as well as measurement results from a fabricated prototype confirm the left-handed behavior of the interaction.

This paper presents two metamaterial-inspired solutions to mitigate the scan blindness effects in a phased array antenna. In the first solution, portions of a bed of nails are introduced in the radome to prevent the excitation of surface waves. In the second solution, a superstrate metasurface is designed to synthesize a permittivity tensor optimized to achieve a wide angle impedance matching. In both approaches, the numerical simulations are successfully compared with measurements of a phased array antenna prototype with 100 elements. The wire medium-based solution reveals an effective way for reducing the blind-spot in a wide bandwidth, while the metaradome has been found less suitable for the same purpose.

The practice of sports has been steadily evolving, taking advantage of different technological tools to improve different aspects such as individual/collective training, support in match development or enhancement of audience experience. In this work, an in-house implemented monitoring system for golf training and competition is developed, composed of a set of distributed end devices, gateways and routers, connected to a web-based platform for data analysis, extraction and visualization. Extensive wireless channel analysis has been performed, by means of deterministic 3D radio channel estimations and radio frequency measurements, to provide coverage/capacity estimations for the specific use case of golf courses. The monitoring system has been fully designed considering communication as well as energy constraints, including wireless power transfer (WPT) capabilities in order to provide flexible node deployment. System validation has been performed in a real golf course, validating en...