Open Access
Analysis of antenna transient radiation
(2011) Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Gómez Laso, Miguel Ángel; Yarovoy, Alexander; Caratelli, Diego; Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales y de Telecomunicación; Telekomunikazio eta Industria Ingeniarien Goi Mailako Eskola Teknikoa; Delft University of Technology (Holanda); Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
Recently a new formalism has been developed for modeling time domain radiation processes in complex antennas. Using this formalism the radiated electromagnetic field can be expressed in terms of non uniform spherical wave contributions relevant to the resonant phenomena occurring in the structure. The developed algorithm consists of a dedicated two-step vector fitting procedure. Firstly, the spherical harmonic expansion of the time-domain equivalent electric and magnetic currents is performed. Then, by using the Singularity-Expansion-Method (SEM), the time-variant spherical harmonic expansion coefficients are represented in terms of dumped exponential terms. In this way, by using the incomplete modified spherical Bessel functions, an analytical description of the transient wave radiation phenomena is achieved. In this study several canonical radiating structures such as dipole, bow-tie and loop antennas, have been analyzed using the afore-mentioned formalism in order to gain a physical insight into the natural resonant processes occurring in the antenna and find a relation with the relevant geometrical characteristics.
Open Access
Metamaterials and extraordinary transmission structures applied to microwave, millimeter and terahertz waves devices
(2017) Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
Los metamateriales aparecen en los primeros años del siglo XXI como materiales artificiales que presentan un comportamiento electromagnético de alguna manera exótico. Al mismo tiempo, se descubre un nuevo fenómeno denominado transmisión extraordinaria. Ambas disciplinas conllevaron a una revisión profunda del electromagnetismo básico aunando dos comunidades científicas que últimamente permanecían desligadas, las microondas y la óptica. Además, tanto los metamateriales como la transmisión extraordinaria fueron explotados para desarrollar nuevos dispositivos para un amplio abanico de aplicaciones tales como seguridad, comunicaciones o espectroscopía. En esta Tesis se investiga el uso de dispositivos inspirados en estructuras metamaterial y el fenómeno de transmisión extraordinaria operando a frecuencias de microondas, ondas milimétricas y terahercios. El contenido de la Tesis se puede dividir en tres partes diferenciadas que se relacionan con cada uno de los rangos frecuenciales estudiados, es decir, microondas, ondas milimétricas y terahercios. La primera parte de la Tesis está dedicada a investigar cómo los metamateriales pueden mejorar las prestaciones de un sistema de antenas para aplicaciones radar en el rango de las microondas. La segunda parte trata de forma teórica y experimental diferentes estructuras periódicas bidimensionales que trabajan en el rango de las ondas milimétricas con el fin de estudiar los límites entre el fenómeno de transmisión extraordinaria y regímenes ordinarios, diseñar dispositivos unidireccionales y sintonizables y metasuperficies con una respuesta angular no convencional. Finalmente, la tercera parte de la Tesis, hace extensible el uso de estructuras periódicas bidimensionales para aplicaciones de sensado a frecuencias de terahercio.
Open Access
Blind spot mitigation in phased array antenna using metamaterials
(IEEE, 2014) Crépin, Thomas; Martel, Cédric; Gabard, Benjamin; Boust, Fabrice; Martinaud, Jean-Paul; Dousset, Thierry; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Loecker, Claudius; Bertuch, Thomas; Marcotegui Iturmendi, José Antonio; Maci, Stefano; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
In this work, a metaradome based on a fakir’s bed of nails is designed and tested in order to suppress the blind directions of a 100-element antenna array. The antenna is a microstrip array designed to operate in X-band. The fakir’s bed metamaterial-like was first approximated using analytical formulas before a full-wave numerical optimization. Experimental results are exposed and confronted to numerical results. They show a significant reduction of the blind spot subsequent to the metaradome addition.
Open Access
Nonbianisotropic complementary split ring resonators as angular selective metasurfaces
(Optical Society of America, 2017) Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica
In this work, a metasurface with unconventional angular performance and composed by a nonbianisotropic complementary split ring resonator (NB-CSRR) is analyzed numerically and experimentally. A numerical study comparing the performance with the original complementary split ring resonator is conducted, showing very interesting transmission properties, such as complete filtering under normal incidence and high transmission peaks at oblique incidence for the NB-CSRR metasurface. A bilayered NB-CSRR prototype working at millimeter waves with a total thickness of 100 μm (0.1 times the operation wavelength) is fabricated and tested with a good agreement between simulation results and experiments. Very exciting applications based on the presented structure, such as advanced angular selectivity devices with great rejection levels at normal incidence and angular sensing devices, can be envisaged.
Open Access
Wideband backscattering reduction at terahertz using compound reflection grating
(Optical Society of America, 2017) Orazbayev, Bakhtiyar; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
Backscattering reduction is usually achieved by using either absorbers or diffractions gratings at the expense of a narrow bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a different strategy based on a metallic compound reflection grating (CRG). We demonstrate that this structure allows a strong and broadband (fractional bandwidth, FBW ≈57%) backscattering reduction in the terahertz (THz) range by efficiently transferring the incident energy to the diffracted modes. The design is analyzed in terms of equivalent circuit and numerical simulations and the results are corroborated by a manufactured prototype operating at 0.35 THz.
Open Access
Hedgehog subwavelength hole arrays: control over the THz enhanced transmission
(Institute of Physics Publishing, 2013) Navarro Cía, Miguel; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa; Gobierno de Navarra / Nafarroako Gobernua: 055/01/11
By backing or sandwiching a holey metal layer with or between isotropic dielectric slabs, additional peaks of transmission within the long-wavelength regime arise as a result of the induced transverse magnetic (TM) or transverse electric (TE) grounded dielectric modes. A similar control of the complex surface wave modes, and thus of the extraordinary transmission (ET) peaks, is demonstrated here via anisotropic slabs in the form of a fakir's bed of nails. However, it is shown that those ET peaks formed from TE modes are suppressed because of the inherent dispersion characteristics of the free-standing grounded pins. This allows the red-shifting of the ET for the polarization parallel to the larger in-plane period of the hole array, but unlike the dielectric isotropic slab configuration, the orthogonal polarization remains inhibited.
Open Access
Labyrinth metasurface absorber for ultra-high-sensitivity terahertz thin film sensing
(Wiley, 2018) Jáuregui López, Irati; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Urrutia Azcona, Aitor; Kuznetsov, Sergei A.; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
In this work, a labyrinth metasurface sensor operating at the low‐frequency edge of the THz band is presented. Its intricate shape leads to a high electric field confinement on the surface of the structure, resulting in ultrasensitive performance, able to detect samples of the order of tens of nanometers at a wavelength of the order of millimeters (i.e., five orders of magnitude larger). The sensing capabilities of the labyrinth metasurface are evaluated numerically and experimentally by covering the metallic face with tin dioxide (SnO2) thin films with thicknesses ranging from 24 to 345 nm. A redshift of the resonant frequency is observed as the analyte thickness increases, until reaching a thickness of 20 μm, where the response saturates. A maximum sensitivity of more than 800 and a figure of merit near 4500 nm−1 are achieved, allowing discriminating differences in the SnO2 thickness of less than 25 nm, and improving previous works by a factor of 35. This result can open a new paradigm of ultrasensitive devices based on intricate metageometries overcoming the limitations of classical metasurface sensor designs based on periodic metaatoms.
Open Access
THz sensing with anomalous extraordinary optical transmission hole arrays
(MDPI, 2018) Jáuregui López, Irati; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Kuznetsov, Sergei A.; Nikolaev, Nazar A.; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa, Elektronikoaren eta Telekomunikazio Ingeniaritzaren; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y de Comunicación
Subwavelength hole array (HA) metasurfaces support the so-called extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) resonance that has already been exploited for sensing. In this work, we demonstrate the superior performance of a different resonant regime of HA metasurfaces called anomalous EOT, by doing a thorough numerical and experimental study of its ability in thin-film label-free sensing applications in the terahertz (THz) band. A comprehensive analysis using both the regular and anomalous EOT resonances is done by depositing thin layers of dielectric analyte slabs of different thicknesses on the structures in different scenarios. We carry out a detailed comparison and demonstrate that the best sensing performance is achieved when the structure operates in the anomalous EOT resonance and the analyte is deposited on the non-patterned side of the metasurface, improving by a factor between 2 and 3 the results of the EOT resonance in any of the considered scenarios. This can be explained by the comparatively narrower linewidth of the anomalous EOT resonance. The results presented expand the reach of subwavelength HAs for sensing applications by considering the anomalous EOT regime that is usually overlooked in the literature.
Open Access
Annular apertures in metallic screens as extraordinary transmission and frequency selective surface structures
(IEEE, 2017) Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Navarro Cía, Miguel; Rodríguez Berral, Raúl; Mesa, Francisco; Medina, Francisco; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica; Ingeniaritza Elektrikoa eta Elektronikoa
A 2-D periodic array of annular apertures (or ring slots) is studied using an accurate circuit model. The model accounts for distributed and dynamic effects associated with the excitation of high-order modes operating above or below cutoff but not far from their cutoff frequencies. This paper allows to ascertain the substantial differences of the underlying physics when this structure operates as a classical frequency selective surface or in the extraordinary-transmission (ET) regime. A discussion of two different designs working at each regime is provided by means of the equivalent circuit approach (ECA), full wave simulation results, and experimental characterization. The agreement between the equivalent circuit calculation applied here and the simulation and experimental results is very good in all the considered cases. This validates the ECA as an efficient minimal-order model and a low computational-cost design tool for frequency selective surfaces and ET-based devices. Additional scenarios such as oblique incidence and parametric studies of the structural geometry are also considered.
Open Access
Mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIR) for simultaneous determination of fat and protein content in meat of several animal species
(Springer, 2017) Lozano Saiz, María; Rodríguez Ulibarri, Pablo; Echeverría Morrás, Jesús; Beruete Díaz, Miguel; Sorolla Ayza, Mario; Beriain Apesteguía, María José; Institute of Smart Cities - ISC; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD; Institute for Advanced Materials and Mathematics - INAMAT2
The aim of this research was to study the application of MIR spectroscopy as an alternative to conventional methods to determine fat and protein content. Samples of the main species used to produce meat products were analyzed, showing all of them absorption bands at similar wavenumbers though with different intensity. Correlation analysis of absorption intensities showed that bands around 2925, 2854, and 1746 cm−1 are associated with fat content, whereas bands around 3288, 1657, and 1542 cm−1 are associated with proteins. During the validation process, prediction models of fat and protein content were successfully obtained withR2 0.9173 and 0.7534, respectively. Finally, a good result (R2 =0.8829) was obtained on the estimation of the lipid content when the information at only one wavenumber was used.