A novel composite right/left-handed unit cell and potential antenna applications

A novel CRLH TL unit cell topology has been proposed and analyzed. This structure has the advantage of exhibiting a larger group velocity and a less dispersive characteristic impedance than the conventional CRLH TL. These performances have been confirmed by full-wave simulation results on a possible implementation of this structure in parallel stripline technology. Potential applications of the novel proposed unit cell in well-known CRLH TL based antennas have been highlighted. In particular, the larger group velocity of the proposed structure may lead to a reduction of the beam squinting when used in leaky-wave antennas or in phase shifter for series-fed arrays.Potential improvements of well-known antenna systems based on CRLH TLs by using the novel proposed unit cell are discussed.