Construction and measurements of a prototype near-zero index reconfigurable metamaterial antenna

A design for an arbitrarily reconfigurable metamaterial lens antenna is presented that makes use of a spatially-tunable uniaxial near-zero-permeability metamaterial. By combining the shape-based radiation pattern control of uniaxial ZIM lenses and a metamaterial that switches from near-zero-index to near-free-space properties, a cylindrical (or approximately-cylindrical) metamaterial slab may be used to generate and dynamically steer beams. A static, proof-of-concept lens has been constructed and a fully-reconfigurable dynamic lens is under construction to demonstrate the operation of the metamaterial-enabled antenna. Measured results from the prototypes will be presented at the conference.