New Concept Conformal Antennas Utilizing Metamaterial and Transformation Optics

In this letter, we show by theoretical analysis and computer simulation that conformal antennas can be designed using metamaterial with inhomogeneous constitutive parameters by applying the electromagnetic coordinate transformation approach, which is the technique used to realize electromagnetic invisibility. We demonstrate that, a source of arbitrary shape and position in the free space can be replaced by an properly designed metamaterial coating with current distributed on the inner surface and would not be detected by outer observers, because the emission of the source can be controlled at will in this way. As examples, we design two conformal antennas by transforming a simple dipole antenna and a standard array antenna separately to illustrate the possible applications of this kind of transformation.Ph.D. Programs Foundation of MEC (No. 20070335120)United States. Dept. of the Air Force (Air Force Contract F19628-00-C-0002)United States. Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-01-1-0713)China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 20060390331)Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (China) (NCET-07-0750)Chinese National Science Foundation (Grants 60531020 and 60671003