Dispersion Engineered Passive Matching Loads to Extend the Bandwidth of Electrically Small Antennas

The need for antennas that are at the same time broadband and electrically small has always been one of the open challenges in the area of antenna design and engineering, and it has recently become of tantalizing importance, given the growth of wireless communications and the demand for sophisticated electronic devices typically packing tens of antennas with different functionalities and frequencies of operation. Here we propose a research program to conceive, design and realize dispersion engineered matching loads capable of extending the bandwidth-efficiency product of electrically small antennas well beyond the Chu’s lower bound for a single-resonant passive, linear, time-invariant antenna. In this program, we have been building on recent breakthroughs in antenna design, leveraging the fact that proper dispersion engineering of the matching load, and of its loss, can enhance the bandwidth of electrically small inductive or capacitive antennas beyond what is possible using conventional approaches in a simple and compact platform without the need for active power-hungry elements or nonlinearities. In Phase I of this project, we have set the basis to successfully implement such broadband electrically small antennas, by demonstrating with simulations and initial proof-of-concept measurements that it is possible to optimize dispersive lossy matching networks to significantly broaden the bandwidth of a single-resonant passive antenna, even to the point of going beyond Chu’s limit. The goal of Phase II will be to translate these initial successes into practical devices, and demonstrating that it is possible to realize passive, dispersion engineered matching networks for electrically small antennas that significantly reduce the Q-energy of the antenna, and hence broaden its bandwidth both in terms of impedance matching and radiation features, without distorting the signal or the radiation pattern. We will focus on configurations of interest for commercial and defense applications, aiming at demonstrating operations beyond the Chu’s lower bound within practically viable and commercially appealing antenna setups.