Nicholas Ventresca
Pronouns: he/him/his
Research Mentor(s): Jordan Budhu
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / Engineering
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 5 – 3:40pm – 4:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Nicholas Ventresca, Jordan Budhu, Anthony Grbic
Presenter: 35
Abstract
Electromagnetic metasurfaces are artificial materials that have been designed to interact with electromagnetic waves in ways not possible in nature. Although, to achieve this, many barriers in design and realization of these metasurfaces must be overcome. One current method for designing such metasurfaces involve using the Method of Moments, a technique to solve integral equations derived from Maxwell’s equations, in order to determine the current densities required at each point along the metasurface that will generate the desired scattered field. From this, complex-valued sheet impedances at each point can be calculated from the associated boundary condition. This design is then made realizable by discretizing and optimizing these sheet impedances to be purely reactive, which allows each unit cell’s sheet reactance to be represented by a specific printed circuit geometry. The collection of unit cells together creates an aperiodic array of printed circuit elements, or, as a whole, a patterned metallic cladding that can then be fabricated through common circuit board etching techniques. In this project, the metasurface is placed in a specially designed measurement apparatus. It consists of a clamp to hold the metasurface inside a parallel plate waveguide of perfect electrical conducting (PEC) sheets that flare out in front of the metasurface to create a flared waveguide antenna that matches the propagating mode to free space, and hence prevents interference from reflections. A probe is then placed in front of the metasurface to measure the near field radiation, and thus the far field pattern, to confirm it with the expected results from simulation in order to validate this design approach.
Engineering, Interdisciplinary
