A Varactor-Tunable High Impedance Surface With a Resistive-Lumped-Element Biasing Grid

A high impedance surface consisting of metallic square patches electrically connected through vias to the ground plane beneath them is made tunable. Tunability is achieved by connecting adjacent patches with varactor diodes thus altering the capacitance between the patches and hence the surface's resonance frequency. The varactor diodes are biased with the aid of a resistive grid. The grid is made resistive using surface mount resistors. Using an approximate equivalent circuit the effect of the varactor diode resistance is investigated for normal plane wave incidence. It is shown that at resonance, a small varactor resistance may lead to a significant absorption. The potential use of a waveguide simulator to characterize approximately the performance of the proposed metamaterial structure is investigated.