ABSTRACT
Antennas that are electrically small, efficient, and have significant bandwidth would fulfill many of emerging wireless technology requirements, especially in the areas of communications and sensor networks. This chapter summarizes some of the developments of metamaterial-based and metamaterial-inspired efficient electrically small antennas. It presents an analytical model for an infinitesimal electric dipole antenna-multilayered metamaterial-based spherical shell system, which was developed and combined with a hybrid optimization method to maximize the far-field radiation performance. The chapter describes the design details, radiation characteristics, and measurement results of the electric-based planar versions of these metamaterial-inspired antenna designs. There are several important quantities that describe the power efficiency of an antenna system. The two-dimentional electric-based EZ antenna designs have been achieved at a variety of frequencies. The dispersion characteristics of the metamaterials were included in the analytical models; they significantly impact the bandwidth properties of the resulting radiating systems.
