An improved broadband method for the evaluation of effective parameters of slab metamaterials

An improved broadband method for determining complex effective refractive index, dielectric and magnetic constants of an arbitrary passive metamaterial has been proposed. Evaluation of the effective parameters is realized using the reflection–transmission SS-parameters obtained by simulation or experimental measurements and analytically evaluated interface reflection coefficient of the slab.Comparison of precision of the presented method with the Nicolson–Ross techniques [Nicolson AM, Ross GF. Measurement of the intrinsic properties of materials by time-domain techniques. IEEE Trans Instrum Meas 1970;TM-19(4):377–82; Ghodgaonkar DK, Varadan VV, Varadan VK. Free-space measurement of complex permittivity and complex permeability of magnetic materials at microwave frequencies. IEEE Trans Instrum Meas 1990;39(2):387–94] has been made using the simulations for different configurations of rod metamaterials. Some discussion concerning the sensitivity of the effective parameters of metamaterials for the accuracy of the frequency dependent SS-parameters is also presented in this paper.