Engineered Meta-Substrates for RF/Wireless Systems

SPEAKER: Dr. Hossein Mosallaei
Assistant Research Scientist
The University of Michigan

ABSTRACT:
In a sense, every material can be considered as a composite, even if the individual ingredients consist of atoms and molecules. The main objective in defining the permittivity and permeability for a medium is to present the homogeneous view of the electromagnetic properties of structure. Therefore, it is not surprising if one properly replaces the atoms of the original concept with the structures in larger scale to achieve the composite media, called Meta-Materials, with new electromagnetic functionality.

Meta-Materials are novel engineered periodic composites of dielectric, magnetic, and metallic structures exhibiting superior properties that are: a) not observed in the constituent materials; and b) not readily observed in the nature. The objective of meta-material development is to fill the enormous voids that exist in the currently available design space. The focus in this talk is to present the novel applications of meta-materials as the substrate for planar antennas in order to miniaturize the size and provide enhanced radiation characteristics. The meta-substrates are constructed from (1) magneto-dielectric, (2) embedded-circuit, and (3) reactive impedance surface (RIS) structures. The physical concepts of the proposed meta-substrates and their unique impacts on the future RF/wireless microsystems are highlighted.

BIO:
Hossein Mosallaei has been an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan since December 2001. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2001. His research interests include applied electromagnetics, antenna wireless systems, novel meta-materials, smart artificial surfaces, bioelectromagnetics, computational EM, and genetic algorithm optimization method. Dr. Mosallaei has made pioneer research contributions in the multidisciplinary area of meta-materials. He has organized several special sessions in AP-S/URSI conferences. He has been also a plenary session speaker in various national and international symposia. He was evaluated as an IEEE senior member in September 2002. Dr. Mosallaei is the holder of two U.S. pending patents. He was the recipient of 2002 Raj Mittra Travel Grant award; 2003 (with his student), 2001, and 2000 IEEE student awards; and 2001 URSI Young Scientist award.