Near field excitation of artificial dielectric layers: Field distributions and electrical properties

This study discusses the exploitation of artificial dielectric layers (ADL) for the design of high frequency integrated antennas. ADL are realized by means of periodic metallic stratifications in a standard dielectric substrate like silicon. Their main objective is to augment the dielectric constant of the host dielectric materials, over wide frequency ranges. In this paper near field excitation of artificial dielectrics layers of finite width and thickness are addressed. Moreover, the properties of the interaction between sources and the ADL loaded slabs as well as the fields in the ADL regions have been characterized. This work clearly highlights significant increase in front to back ratio as an advantage of printing antennas in presence of ADL loaded slabs, which does not need to be traded off with diminished surface wave efficiency.