Anisotropic metamaterial realization of a flat gain-enhancing lens for antenna applications

A metamaterial design is presented that implements a far-field collimating lens for microwave antenna gain enhancement applications. Using a combination of dual-split ring resonators and end-loaded dipole meta-molecules, the bulk properties are shown to be a good approximation of a low-index uniaxial material with a z-oriented optical axis for both permittivity and permeability between 8 and 9 GHz. Full-wave simulations demonstrate that a large-area lens comprised of the designed unit cell and fed by a crossed-dipole successfully acts as a collimating lens with 6dB gain improvement over the same antenna without the meta-lens.