Metamaterials and metasurfaces for UHF antennas

A common method to reduce size and improve antenna performance is by dielectric loading with a high-permittivity material. Ideally, the values of both the permittivity and permeability should be chosen to optimize antenna performance (A. Buerkle and K. Sarabandi, IEEE Trans. on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 53, no. 11, pp. 3436–3442, Nov. 2005). The main problem has been producing low-loss materials with the required electrical characteristics. Recent advances in metamaterials now make it possible to design inexpensive low-loss materials with arbitrarily chosen constitutive parameters.