Simulation Study of Ultra Compact Polarization
Independent Dual-Band Metamaterial Absorber
Manpreet Kaur and Hari Shankar Singh
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology
Patiala-147 004, Punjab, India
preetsmanu94@gmail.com and harishankar1990@gmail.com
Abstract—In this paper, a dual-band ultra-thin compact
polarization independent metamaterial absorber is proposed.
The proposed absorber consists of two resonating structures i.e. a
swastika-shaped and a square ring-shaped. The swastika shaped
structure is enclosed within a square ring. The size and thickness
of the unit cell are 6 × 6 mm2 and 0.015λ (where λ is the lowest
resonating frequency), respectively. The combination of two
resonating structures provides peak absorbance at 5.65GHz and
10.91GHz with maximum absorptivity 98.8% and 99.5%,
respectively. The application platform of the reposed absorber
lies in C and X band. The surface current distributions at
5.65GHz and 10.91GHz have been studied for a better insight of
the absorption peaks. The simulation study confirms that the
proposed absorber stable over wide angle under TE and TM
polarization. Moreover, the proposed unit cell provides
polarization insensitivity due to fourfold symmetric geometry.
Keywords— dual-band, polarization insensitive, C-band, and
X-band.
I. INTRODUCTION
Metamaterials are the artificial materials which are
composed by the combination of metals and dielectrics.
Metamaterials exhibit the physical properties like negative
refractive index, negative permeability and negative
permittivity [1] which are not present in the ordinary materials.
The metamaterial, being an unnatural structure has gained
attentiveness in various applications like antenna [2], cloaking
[3], absorbers [4] and many more as it consists of various
distinctive properties. Absorbers are a type of metamaterial
practiced to eliminate stray or undesirable radiation that could
intervene in the working of system. In past few years,
metamaterial absorbers due to their various advantages over
standard absorbers such as perfect absorption, compact size,
and ultra-thin thickness have been used as a substitute for the
conventional absorbers. Several metamaterial absorbers have
been developed and studied which are made of different
attributes, such as single band [5], dual-band [6], the triple
band [7], and quad-band [8]. Numerous works have been done
on dual-band metamaterial based microwave absorber. In view
of this, Li et al. [9], presented the measurement of a dual-band
metamaterial absorber with absorptivity of over 97% and 99%
at 11.15 GHz and 16.01 GHz respectively. The size of the
absorber is larger compared to recent trends. Further, Jamilan
et al. fabricated a dual-band absorber over FR4 substrate of
thickness 1.5mm with peak absorbance at 5.6 GHz and 6 GHz
[10]. In [11], Ramya et al. designed single-layer dual-band
metamaterial absorber over 10 × 10 mm2 substrates of
thickness 1mm. Furthermore, Kaur et al. in [12], a dual-band
polarization insensitive metamaterial based microwave
absorber is formulated over big size substrate of dimension
27.4 × 27.4mm2 and the thicker substrate. However, the need
for an absorber nearly perfect absorptivity (close to unity),
ultra-thin, low profile and the low-cost substrate is still scope
of study which needs to be explored.
In this paper, a compact ultrathin metamaterial absorber is
proposed for C-band and X-band applications. The proposed
structure provides 98.8% absorption at 5.65 GHz and 99.5%
absorption at 10.91 GHz for transverse electric (TE) mode and
transverse magnetic (TM) mode. The structure is also studied
for transverse electric (TE) mode and transverse magnetic
(TM) mode at different incident angles. Moreover, due to
symmetrical geometry, the proposed unit cell provides
polarization insensitivity. In Section II, structure and design are
discussed, Section III demonstrated results and conclusion is
drawn in Section IV.
II. CONFIGURATION AND DESIGN OF DUAL-B AND ABSORBER
A. Absorber Configuration
The proposed absorber is designed on the low-cost FR4
substrate of dielectric constant 4.4 and loss tangent (tan δ)
=0.025. The absorber is a sandwich of two metallic layers
separated by a dielectric substrate of thickness 0.8mm. The
configuration of the design absorber is shown in Fig. 1. The top
layer consists of the metallic resonating structure while the
bottom layer is completely laminated with copper. The
proposed absorber consists of two resonating geometries i.e.
swastika shaped structure enclosed within a square ring. The
thickness of all copper geometry (patch and ground) is
0.035mm. The optimized shape parameters are listed in Table
I. The numerical simulation of the proposed absorber is
accomplished using the finite integration technique based
computer simulation microwave studio (CST MWS) by
applying Floquet periodic boundary conditions.
TABLE I. DESGIN PARAMETERS OF ABSORBER
Parameters Size (mm) Parameters Size (mm)
a 6 W2 0.25
b 5.6 l1 1.9
W1 0.1 l2 3
d 1
 However, the absorptivity A (ω) of the structure is given by
Eq. (1),

( ) = 1−| ( )| − | ( )| (1)

where, ( ) and ( ) are the ratios of the transmitted and

reflected power to the incident power, respectively. The
transferral of the electromagnetic wave is blocked by the
complete copper ground, therefore, | ( )| = 0. Hence,
(a)
equation of absorptivity can be written using Eq. (2);
Absorber-A Absorber-B
( ) =1−| ( )| (2) Proposed Absorber

B. Design of Absorber 1
The design progress of the proposed absorber is shown in 0.9
Fig. 2. There are three steps are considered to obtain the fine 0.8
configuration of the absorber as shown in Fig. 2(a) and 0.7
absorptivity curve relative to each configuration is shown in

Absorption
Fig. 2(b). From, Fig. 2(b), it is noted that the swastika-shaped 0.6
geometry is mainly responsible for higher resonance centered 0.5
at 10.91GHz while square shape ring is resonating at 5.65GHz. 0.4
Finally, the combined structure of swastika-shaped and square
ring-shaped provides dual absorbance at 5.65GHz and 0.3
10.91GHz. The resonating behavior of the swastika-shaped and 0.2
square ring shape geometries at 10.91GHz and 5.65GHz are 0.1
also confirmed by surface current distribution as shown in Fig. 0
3. It is perceived that at 5.65GHz, the maximum current
concentrated at the outer ring while at 10.91 GHz, the 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
maximum current concentrated at swastika shaped structure. Frequency (GHz)
Therefore, two independent structures provide dual absorbance (b)
nature of the proposed structure. Moreover, the mutual Fig.2. (a) Evolution of the proposed absorber and (b) Variation of absorptivity
coupling between these two structures provides better due to various configurations.
impedance matching which results in enhancement of the
absorbance with peak absorptivity of 98.8% and 99.5% at
5.65GHz and 10.91GHz, respectively.

Fig.3. Surface current distribution at 5.65 GHz and 10.91 GHz.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Fig.1. Detailed dimensions of the proposed absorber.
All the simulations have been accomplished using CST
MWS [13]. Normal angle and oblique angles of incidence are
measured to study the polarization sensitivity of the design.
The analysis is carried out by varying the polarization angle
keeping the incident angle constant as shown in Fig. 4. It is
observed that the absorption curves are overlapped each other
when the polarization angle varies from 0o to 60o. Therefore,
no variation at different polarization angles making it
polarization insensitive in nature this is mainly due to the
fourfold symmetric structure. Furthermore, it is also observed
that proposed absorber provides the same absorptivity for both
modes i.e. transverse electric (TE) mode and transverse
magnetic (TM) as shown in Fig. 5.
 00 100
00 100 200 300
200 300 400 500
400 500 600
600 1
1 0.9
0.9 0.8
0.8 0.7

Absorption
0.7 0.6
Absorption

0.6 0.5
0.5 0.4
0.4 0.3
0.3 0.2
0.2 0.1
0
0.1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Frequency (GHz)
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Frequency (GHz)
(a)
Fig.4. Variation of absorptivity with polarization angle (ϕ).

TE TM
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Absorption

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3 00 100
200 300
0.2
400 500
0.1 600
0 1
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 0.9
Frequency (GHz) 0.8
0.7
Absorption

Fig.5. TE and TM absorptivity curve. 0.6

0.5
Further, the variation of absorption with different incident 0.4
angle is shown in Fig. 6. Fig. 6(a) shows the variation of 0.3
absorptivity by changing the direction of magnetic field and 0.2
wave vector by an angle θ and keeping the direction of electric 0.1
field constant. Fig. 6(b) shows the variation of absorptivity by 0
changing the direction of electric field and wave vector by an 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
angle θ and keeping the direction of magnetic field constant. It Frequency (GHz)
is interestingly noticed that the slight variation in the (b)
absorption peaks along with small side peaks are occurred as
when we are changing the incident angle from normal to Fig.6 (a) Variation of absorptivity with an incident angle (θ) for TE polarized
oblique. The same phenomenon happened in TE and TM wave and (b). Variation of absorptivity with an incident angle (θ) for TM
polarized incident angle variation. polarized wave.
 IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a dual-band metamaterial absorber has been
discussed in detail. The simulation results validate the
polarization insensitivity of the proposed structure. The unit
cell dimensions of all the absorber structures are optimized to
get better absorption. The simulation results show absorption
frequency at 5.65 GHz and 10.91 GHz with a peak absorptivity
of 98.8% and 99.5% respectively. The compact, ultrathin,
polarization insensitive proposed absorber can be a good
candidate for C-band and X-band application.
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