Non-Foster element, bandwidth enhanced, metamaterial-inspired electrically small antennas

Abstract

Broad bandwidth metamaterial-inspired antennas have been designed and characterized numerically. Rather than introducing an external matching network that requires both resistance and reactance matching, our systems rely on internal non-Foster elements that are designed to vary the performance of their near-field resonant parasitic (NFRP) elements. Hence, by augmenting their narrow bandwidth counter-parts with internal non-Foster elements, the resulting electrically small antennas remain nearly completely matched to a 50 Ω source without any matching network and exhibit high radiation efficiencies over their FBW10dB bandwidths. These instantaneous bandwidths are nearly two orders of magnitude larger than those provided by their passive counterparts.