ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the principle of electronically controllable photonic bandgap materials and some examples of applications of this metamaterial to active antennas for telecoms. It presents an example of controllable negative refraction metamaterial with some applications for antennas. The chapter explains the concept of the controllability of a photonic or an electromagnetic bandgap material. The concept of controllability appears with the comparison of the behavior of several complementary passive metallic bidimensional photonic bandgap. D. F. Sievenpiper has proposed an interesting type of metamaterial suitable for antenna applications under the name of “high impedance surface”. This type of metamaterial has been used in several types of antenna applications, particularly in directive antennas and in reflect-arrays. The chapter deals with the modeling and the characterization of an active frequency reconfigurable subwavelength metamaterial-based cavity antenna. It concludes with the perspectives of future applications of the type of metamaterials.
