Generalising the Yagi-Uda Antenna: Designing Disordered Metamaterials to Manipulate Antenna Radiation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel framework inspired by the Yagi-Uda antenna, using disordered metamaterials to manipulate radiation patterns for advanced microwave communication systems.

Contribution

It develops a coupled dipole approximation-based method for designing and experimentally testing disordered scattering structures to control antenna radiation.

Findings

Efficient numerical modeling of large scattering systems.

Successful experimental validation of designed structures.

Enhanced control over antenna radiation patterns.

Abstract

Next generation microwave communications systems face several challenges, particularly from congested communications frequencies and complex propagation environments. Taking inspiration from the Yagi-Uda antenna, we present, and experimentally test, a framework based on the coupled dipole approximation for designing structures composed of a single simple emitter with a passive disordered scattering structure of rods that is optimised to provide a desired radiation pattern. Our numerical method provides an efficient way to model, and then design and test, otherwise inaccessibly large scattering systems.