Compact and low-frequency broadband microwave metamaterial absorber based on meander wire structure loaded resistors

In this paper, a compact and low-frequency broadband microwave metamaterial absorber (MMA) based on meander wire structure loaded with lumped resistor has been proposed and investigated numerically and experimentally. Compared with the single meander wire structure, the bandwidth and absorption level of the proposed MMA loaded with lumped resistors can be improved extremely. The retrieved equivalent constitutive parameters and simulated electric and magnetic fields distributions have been demonstrated to illustrate the mechanism underlying observed absorption. The simulated results exhibit that the proposed MMA can keep a good stability in a wide angular range for both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) waves under normal and oblique incidence. Further simulated results indicate that the performance of the MMA can be adjusted by changing parameters of unit-cell structure and lumped resistors. Finally, we have fabricated a modified MMA sample practically, composing of meander wire structure loaded with lumped resistors, FR-4(loss), foam and continuous metal film. The modified MMA yields absorbance of over 85% from 1.84 GHz to 5.96 GHz in the experiment, and the relative bandwidth is about 105.6%, which is agreement reasonable with simulation. (C) 2020 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.