METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE LENS

Abstract

A metamaterial waveguide structure is disclosed. In some approaches the metamaterial waveguide structure is compressed along an optical axis using transformation optics techniques. An example is a Rotman lens that is compressed by 27 percent along the optical axis while maintaining the beam steering range, gain and side lobe amplitudes over a broad frequency range. In some approaches the metamaterial waveguide structure includes a plurality of complementary metamaterial elements patterned on a conducting surface of the waveguide.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD

The application discloses apparatus and methods that relate to metamaterials for waveguide lenses such as Rotman lenses.

SUMMARY

A metamaterial waveguide structure is disclosed. In some approaches the metamaterial waveguide structure is compressed along an optical axis using transformation optics techniques, providing a compressed structure such as a compressed Rotman lens. The metamaterial waveguide structure may include a plurality of complementary metamaterial elements patterned on a conducting surface of the waveguide.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1( a) depicts an exemplary untransformed Rotman lens outline.

FIG. 1( b) depicts an exemplary transformed Rotman lens outline corresponding to a coordinate transformation of the untransformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(a). The transformed region is indicated by the shaded rectangle.

FIG. 1( c) depicts a density plot of permeability in the y-direction (μ_y) for the exemplary transformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(b).

FIG. 1( d) depicts a outline of a fabricated lens corresponding to the exemplary transformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(b), with output transmission lines 1-10 and an exemplary arrangement of C-dipole elements corresponding to the permeability distribution of FIG. 1(c).

FIG. 2( a) depicts an exemplary unit cell (inset) for a complementary dipole (“C-dipole”) patterned on a parallel plate transmission line, along with a plot of the real and imaginary retrieved permeability corresponding for this exemplary unit cell as a function of the C-dipole length.

FIG. 2( b) depicts the real and imaginary retrieved permeability corresponding to the exemplary unit cell of FIG. 2(a) as a function of frequency for a C-dipole length of 3 mm, for a TE wave traveling perpendicular to the long dimension of the C-dipole.

FIG. 2( c) depicts the real and imaginary retrieved permeability corresponding to the exemplary unit cell of FIG. 2(a) as a function of frequency for a C-dipole length of 3 mm, for a TE wave traveling parallel to the long dimension of the C-dipole.

FIG. 3( a) depicts phase distributions across the output antennas for three nominal focusing directions, for uncompressed, compressed, and control lenses. The uncompressed lens corresponds to the untransformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(a); the compressed lens corresponds to the transformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(b); the control lens corresponds to the transformed Rotman lens outline of FIG. 1(b) but omits the transformed region.

FIG. 3( b) depicts a fabricated lens corresponding to the exemplary transformed Rotman lens outline of FIGS. 1(b) and 1(d).

FIGS. 4( a) depicts the far-field radiation pattern for the exemplary uncompressed, compressed, and control lenses (as in FIG. 3(a)), for a nominal focusing direction of 0°.

FIG. 4( b) depicts the far-field radiation pattern for the exemplary uncompressed, compressed, and control lenses (as in FIG. 3(a)), for a nominal focusing direction of 15°.

FIG. 4( c) depicts the far-field radiation pattern for the exemplary uncompressed, compressed, and control lenses (as in FIG. 3(a)), for a nominal focusing direction of 30°.

REFERENCES

• [1] S. Weiss A. Zaghloul, O. Kilic and E. D. Adler. Realization of Rotman's concepts of beamformer lenses and artificial dielectric materials. IEEE International Conference on Microwaves, Communications, Antennas and Electronics Systems, page 1, 2009.
• [2] N. Kundtz D. Roberts and D. R. Smith. Optical lens compression via transformation optics. Optics Express, 17:16535, 2009.
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• [14] P. Sharma P. Singhal and R. Gupta. Rotman lens with equal height of array and feed contours. Proc. Of SPIE, 51:2048, 2003.
• [15] H. Feng Q. Cheng and T. J. Cui. Broadband planar luneburg lens based on complementary metamaterials. Physical Review Letters, 95:1, 2009.
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof. In the drawings, similar symbols typically identify similar components, unless context dictates otherwise. The illustrative embodiments described in the detailed description, drawings, and claims are not meant to be limiting. Other embodiments may be utilized, and other changes may be made, without departing from the spirit or scope of the subject matter presented here.

Microwave lenses are of continuing interest as beam-forming and other quasi-optical elements for imaging and communication applications. The Rotman lens is commonly used in wide-angle, beam-forming applications since its inherent two-dimensional geometry makes it low profile and amenable to printed circuit board fabrication [1, 11, 14, 16]. The Rotman lens generally consists of a parallel plate transmission line with a set of input ports and a set of output ports. Each of the output ports feeds a transmission line (e.g. a microstrip or coaxial waveguide) with a prescribed electrical length that, in turn, feeds an antenna. The relative positions of the input and output ports and the electrical lengths of each output feed are determined by the Rotman lens equations. The solution of these equations is such that when a single input feed is excited, the phase distribution across the antennas produces a collimated beam traveling in the direction determined by the position of the excited port [16]. In order to emulate a substantially reflectionless open boundary around the periphery of the planar lens, the parallel plate region between the input and output ports may be terminated with impedance matched dummy ports. The positions of the dummy ports are not prescribed by the Rotman lens equations and in some approaches these dummy ports are configured in a manner that reduces reflections back into the lens [11, 13].

Implemented using transmission line techniques, the Rotman lens can be extremely thin—e.g., for a circuit board implementation, roughly the thickness of the circuit board substrate. For many applications, however, it may be desirable to further reduce the size of the lens by compressing the structure along the in-plane directions. Such a compression can be achieved by applying the techniques associated with Transformation Optics (TO) [7, 9, 12]. TO provides a means to alter the geometry of an optical or quasi-optical device while, in principle, maintaining substantially the performance and wave properties of the original geometry. Coordinate transformations that achieve the desired design are applied to arrive at a set of spatially varying constitutive parameters; the resulting specified medium then is used to implement the transformation [2]. The permittivity and permeability tensors for a transformed device typically vary spatially and are anisotropic. Though TO designs may be difficult to achieve in general with conventional materials, metamaterials provide the means to implement complex TO media. Some exemplary transformation optical approaches have been described in Pendry et al, “Electromagnetic cloaking method,” U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0024792; Pendry et al, “Electromagnetic compression apparatus, methods, and systems,” U.S. Pat. No. 7,733,289; and Bowers et al, “Focusing and sensing apparatus, methods, and systems,” U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0296237; each of which is herein incorporated by reference.

In previous work, the patterning of substrates to form an effective gradient index region within a Rotman lens has been applied as a means of improving overall performance [5, 17]. The introduction of a lattice of air holes in the circuit board material with varying density, for example, results in an isotropic, graded index that can be used to improve the focusing properties of the lens. Such modifications were shown to reduce the power entering the dummy ports, lowering the overall insertion loss of the device and improving the gain at more extreme scan angles [17]. The modified Rotman designs that employ graded index materials make use of multiple fabrication steps to create the necessary material distributions in the substrate material of the transmission line structures The exemplary TO design considered here, like these prior examples, makes use of a graded medium to enable the size reduction of the lens; however, the effective medium has an anisotropic, magnetic response, which does not require a patterned dielectric substrate and is achievable even in approaches where there is no substrate (e.g. in non-PCB implementations wherein the parallel plate transmission line has two conducting surfaces separated by vacuum or air). In the exemplary TO design, properties of the original Rotman lens are carried over to the size-reduced version, so that no additional lens equations or optimization is needed to achieve the compressed design. An optimized design can be transformed to reduce its size while maintaining its performance. The complementary electric dipole metamaterials used to achieve the effective magnetic response in the exemplary TO design are voids patterned into one of the metal layers of a transmission line structure, and these void patterns may be fabricated (for example) in the same step as the Rotman transmission line structure itself, e.g. using only a single layer circuit board.

In the exemplary approach presented here, a compressed Rotman lens is designed using Transformation Optics (TO). While TO has been used to create exotic electromagnetic media such as “invisibility” cloaks, it has also been applied to modify or improve the operation of more conventional optical devices, such as lenses [3, 4, 8-10, 12]. TO can also be used to decrease the profile of an optical device by applying a coordinate transformation that compresses the space in which the optical device is embedded [2]. For example, a transformation can be chosen that distorts virtual space, described by unprimed coordinates (x, y, z)=(x₁, x₂, x₃), into a desired physical space, described by primed coordinates (x′, y′, z′)=(x₁′, x₂′, x₃′). Physical space represents the actual location and geometry of the device when implemented, through which waves will behave as though propagating in the virtual space. A transformation can be implemented by varying the permittivity ∈′ and permeability μ′ tensors throughout the physical space in a manner determined by

$\begin{array}{cc}{\varepsilon }_{i^{\prime }j^{\prime }}={\mu }_{i^{\prime }j^{\prime }}\frac{A_i^{i^{\prime }}{\underset{\underset{\_}{\_}}{A}}_j^{j^{\prime }}}{\det \left(A\right)}& \left(1\right)\end{array}$

where A is the Jacobian of the transformation and where A_iⁱ′=dx_i′/dx_h.

Arbitrary transformations result in spatial variations in both the permeability and permittivity tensors of a device, usually with independent spatial variations in each of the elements. Since an infinite number of possible transformations over some region will lead to identical input and output fields, there is a great amount of freedom in selecting transformations that produce more readily realized constitutive parameters. In addition, in the short wavelength limit where the spatial variations in the material parameters are small over the length scale of a wavelength, the ray optics approximation becomes valid and only the index of refraction is important in describing wave propagation. Thus an eikonal approximation can be made in which only the index of refraction prescribed by the transformation is maintained and the impedance is ignored.2 For example, for transverse electric (TE) polarization and propagation in the plane perpendicular to the z-axis, the relevant indices are

n _x=√{square root over (μ_y∈_z)}

n _y=√{square root over (μ_x∈_z)}.  (2)

We can then define:

∈_z′=1

μ_y′=μ_y∈_z

μ_z′=μ_x∈_z  (3)

such that the indices are maintained but only the permeability in the plane of propagation need be controlled. This is the case relevant to a Rotman lens because propagation in the parallel plate region of the lens is TE and in-plane. It is important to note that when the eikonal approximation for a transformation is employed, the structure may not be inherently impedance matched. Thus, even though the transformation is valid in the ray optics regime, scattering may occur at the boundaries of the transformed region. In some approaches this scattering can be alleviated by choice of transformation; certain transformations will more gradually transition from the input and output ports, producing less overall scattering.

To reduce the overall size of the exemplary compressed Rotman lens, we transform the space within the parallel plate region of the Rotman lens. The exemplary transformation is contained entirely within the boundaries of the lens so that the input and output contours are the same as obtained from the Rotman lens equations but shifted towards one another by an amount determined by the transformation.

The exemplary transformation implemented here is parabolic in the coordinate along the optical axis of the lens and compresses space along the optical axis (x-axis) of the Rotman lens. The transformation is achieved in such a manner that the constitutive parameters approach their free space values at the boundaries of the transformed region. The exemplary transformation is given by

$\begin{array}{cc}\frac{x^{\prime }}{x}\left(x\right)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(1-c\right){\left(\left(\frac{2x-l_1-l_2}{l_1-l_2}\right)\right)}^2+c,& l_1<x<l_2\\ 1,& x\le l_1\mathrm{or}x\ge l_2\end{array}& \left(4\right)\end{array}$

where c∈[0,1] is a free parameter that controls the degree of compression. l₁ and l₂ are the boundaries of the transformation in virtual, untransformed, space. The degree of compression is constrained by the realizable material parameters, with larger compressions requiring larger material parameters.

This expression can be integrated to determine the coordinate map,

$\begin{array}{cc}{x}^{\prime }\left(x\right)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\left(1-c\right)}{6{\left(l_1-l_2\right)}^2}{\left(2x-l_1-l_2\right)}^3+\mathrm{cx}+x_0,& l_1<x<l_2\\ l_1^{\prime }(\begin{array}{cc}x& l_1)+-,\end{array}& x\le l_1\\ l_2^{\prime }+\left(x-l_2\right),& x\ge l_2\end{array}& \left(5\right)\end{array}$

where x₀ is a constant that determines the translation of the transformed region. This transformation and the transformed Rotman lens outline are shown in FIGS. 1(a)-(b).

The transformation of Eqn. (5) implies a set of constitutive tensor elements that satisfy ∈_z(x)=μ_y(x) 1/μ_x(=x). In order to simplify the fabrication of the lens, an eikonal approximation of the form given in Eqn. (3) may be used. The approximated material parameters are then, ∈_z′=μ_x′, 1, =μ_y′, μ_y². In this approach, only the permeability in the y-direction, perpendicular to the optical axis and in the plane of the parallel plates, needs to be controlled. In many material systems, controlling the permeability can be difficult, especially if broad-band and low-loss behavior is desired. In the exemplary design presented here, we resolve this difficulty by taking advantage of the transmission line geometry of the Rotman lens and use complementary metamaterials to achieve the desired permeability.

Complementary metamaterials are planar metamaterials or metasurfaces, where the metal and dielectric comprising the material unit cell have been exchanged as compared with bulk metamaterials. Various complementary metamaterials are described in Smith et al, “Metamaterials for surfaces and waveguides,” U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2010/0156573, which is herein incorporated by reference.

An example of a complementary metamaterial unit cell is depicted in FIG. 2, which shows (as inset of FIG. 2(a)) the unit cell for a complementary electric dipole (C-Dipole) as a slot cut into a metal sheet. By the Babinet principle, these structures exhibit the dual material response to their bulk counterparts; so, the C-dipole gives rise to an effective magnetic response, allowing for the control of permeability. Furthermore, since the C-Dipoles are non-resonant, their magnetic response can have a broad frequency bandwidth, be anisotropic, and exhibit low-loss. FIG. 2 shows the effective permeability, retrieved from simulations, of the C-dipole structure used in the exemplary fabricated lens (the unit cell used in the fabricated lens was 300 μm wide patterned in 17 μm thick copper on a 200 μm FR4 substrate). The permittivity for all frequencies and propagation directions is equal to the substrate permittivity. The maximum achievable permeability is limited by the maximum length of the of the C-dipole, which is in turn constrained by the operating wavelength such that an effective medium approximation is valid, and by the minimum feature size that is consistent with the fabrication technique. Increasing the C-dipole area density (e.g. by using a lithographic technique that supports smaller features) can increase the range of attainable permeabilities. In some approaches the range of attainable permeabilities may be increased by disposing a magnetic material (such as a ferrite) adjacent to the complementary metamaterial elements (e.g. within apertures defining the complementary metamaterial elements).

The eikonal approximation is useful in some approaches because it simplifies the material parameters and the device fabrication. It may however introduce reflections that would be not exist were the full material parameters corresponding to the exact transformation implemented. By choosing a transformation for which the gradient smoothly goes to one at the boundaries of the transformed region, in this case a parabolic transformation, these reflections are substantially diminished. Furthermore, in the example presented here, the transformation is truncated in the y-direction (see the shaded rectangle in FIG. 1(a)). To reduce reflections from a truncation boundary, the permeability is linearly graded in the y-direction from the value at the boundary of the transformation to unity. This does not correspond to a true transformation of the field in these regions, and the phase entering the dummy ports is modified as compared to the untransformed lens.

The exemplary uncompressed lens was designed for 10 GHz operation using the Rotman lens equations with angular range a of ±30° and focal length, F, of 0.1 meter. Five input ports and ten output ports were used. The nominal focusing directions for the input ports were −30°, −15°, 0°, +15°, and +30°. The free parameter g in the Rotman design equations was set to value of 1+α²/2, where α=30°, as recommended by Rotman and Turner.16 The dummy port positions were determined by placing them along the lines tangent to the extremes of the input and output contours. The exemplary compressed lens was then obtained from this design by shifting the input and output boundaries toward each other according to Eqn. (5), where c=0.41 was chosen such that our maximum permeability was equal to our maximum achievable (the degree of compression could be increased by using a lithographic technique that supports smaller features). This shift of the boundaries corresponded to a 27% decrease in the length of the Rotman lens along the optical axis. The dummy port positions for the transformed lens were determined in the same manner as for the untransformed lens. The region between l₁ and l₂ was then patterned with C-dipoles to achieve the anisotropic index corresponding to Eqn. (4) and Eqn. (3) by interpolating FIG. 2 for the appropriate length of the C-dipole. A control lens was also designed such that the boundaries of the lens were identical to the compressed lens but the material parameters required to implement the transformation were omitted.

FIG. 3 shows the analytical phase distribution across the output ports for the exemplary uncompressed, compressed and control lens. While the ideal phase distribution is not exactly preserved through the transformation, it is much closer to the ideal phase distribution than the control phase distribution. The control lens shows a shift in the phase slope, which corresponds to a shift in the propagation direction, as well as a deviation from linearity, which corresponds to defocusing of the beam.

The uncompressed, compressed, and control lenses were fabricated on 0.2 mm FR4 using standard circuit board fabrication techniques. An Agilent E8364B PNA Series network analyzer was used to measure the multi-port scattering matrix from which the output phase distribution, far-field pattern, and loss characteristics were calculated. The far-field radiation pattern, as depicted in FIG. 4, was calculated by assuming the output ports of the lenses feeds an array of matched perfect line sources.

As expected from the analytic phase distributions, the control lens shows both a wider beam and a divergence from the nominal focusing direction. The transformed lens, on the other hand, substantially preserves the width and direction of the uncompressed beam, though some mismatch in the side lobes is seen. The beam full-width-at-half-max (FWHM) for the uncompressed and compressed lenses is 17°_FBHM for all nominal focusing directions while the control lens FWHM is 19°_FBHM for the 0° nominal focusing direction and 20°_FBHM for the 15° and 30° nominal focusing directions. While the true focusing directions for the uncompressed and compressed lenses are exactly equal to the nominal directions, the control lens shows deviation with increasing nominal direction. The deviation from the nominal focusing direction for the control lens is 0°, 5°, and 10° for the 0°, 15°, and 30° nominal directions, respectively. This is summarized in the following table:

TABLE 1
FWHM/(θactual − θnominal) for each lens and
for each nominal focusing direction.
	Focusing direction	0°nominal	15°nominal	30°nominal
	Uncompressed	17°/0°	17°/0°	17°/0°
	Compressed	17°/0°	17°/0°	17°/0°
	Control	19°/0°	20°/5°	20°/10°

The variation in the side lobes is caused by reflections at the boundaries of the transformation region due to the eikonal approximation and truncation of the transformation in the y-direction. The transformed lens shows a larger average return loss (P_incident/P_reflected) of 5.674 dB compared to 6.484 dB for the untransformed lens, and a radiative loss (P_incident/P_radiated) due to the C-dipoles of 9.01 dB. The increased return loss is due to reflections introduced by the eikonal approximation. These losses both contribute to an average insertion loss of 1.448 dB.

While the preceding example has presented a compressed version of a Rotman lens, the approaches described herein may be used to axially compress other structures, such as non-Rotman bootlace-type lenses, planar Luneberg lenses, or other waveguide lenses.

While the preceding example has presented a particular coordinate transformation (i.e. a parabolic compression along the optical axis), the choice of coordinate transformation is not unique and other embodiments may employ other coordinate transformations. For example, other embodiments may provide a coordinate transformation that extends into the ports regions of the parallel plate waveguide, or that flattens the curvature of the input port region and/or the output port region (e.g. to allow a further diminishing of the spatial extent of the parallel plate waveguide along the optical axis), or that provides a further compression along a direction perpendicular to the optical axis, or any combination thereof. Other embodiments may provide an adjustable coordinate transformation (this may be implemented, for example, using metamaterial elements that are adjustable to provide correspondingly adjustable effective medium parameters, e.g. as described in Smith et al, “Metamaterials for surfaces and waveguides,” previously cited). An adjustable coordinate transformation could be used, for example, to provide fine steering of the output beam, by providing an apparent location of an input port intermediate two actual input port locations.

Moreover, in some approaches, the effective medium provided in the parallel plate waveguide need not correspond to a pure coordinate transformation. For example, the effective medium may provide a coordinate transformation region that is truncated to some extent (e.g. at the left and right edges of the shaded rectangle in FIG. 1(b)), preceded and/or succeed by an impedance matching layer (IML) (e.g. as described in Smith et al, “Metamaterials for surfaces and waveguides,” previously cited), etc. As another example, the effective medium could provide additional index gradients to steer power away from dummy ports to reduce the insertion loss and to correct the aberrations seen at the off-focus ports.

While the preceding example has used an eikonal approach to reduce the number of effective constitutive parameters to one (the permeability in the y-direction, μ_y), other embodiments need not rely on this eikonal approach. As shown in Smith et al, “Metamaterials for surfaces and waveguides,” previously cited, an arrangement of complementary M-type elements (such as “CSRR” elements) can provide an effective permittivity ∈_z, and an arrangement of complementary E-type elements (such as “CELC” elements) can provide effective permeabilities μ_x and μ_y (or along any two directions parallel to the parallel plate waveguide). Alternatively or additionally, gradients of the permittivity ∈_z can be achieved by patterning a substrate dielectric within the parallel plate waveguide (e.g. with a varying density of air holes).

All of the above U.S. patents, U.S. patent application publications, U.S. patent applications, foreign patents, foreign patent applications and non-patent publications referred to in this specification and/or listed in any Application Data Sheet, are incorporated herein by reference, to the extent not inconsistent herewith.

One skilled in the art will recognize that the herein described components (e.g., steps), devices, and objects and the discussion accompanying them are used as examples for the sake of conceptual clarity and that various configuration modifications are within the skill of those in the art. Consequently, as used herein, the specific exemplars set forth and the accompanying discussion are intended to be representative of their more general classes. In general, use of any specific exemplar herein is also intended to be representative of its class, and the non-inclusion of such specific components (e.g., steps), devices, and objects herein should not be taken as indicating that limitation is desired.

With respect to the use of substantially any plural and/or singular terms herein, those having skill in the art can translate from the plural to the singular and/or from the singular to the plural as is appropriate to the context and/or application. The various singular/plural permutations are not expressly set forth herein for sake of clarity.

While particular aspects of the present subject matter described herein have been shown and described, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that, based upon the teachings herein, changes and modifications may be made without departing from the subject matter described herein and its broader aspects and, therefore, the appended claims are to encompass within their scope all such changes and modifications as are within the true spirit and scope of the subject matter described herein. Furthermore, it is to be understood that the invention is defined by the appended claims. It will be understood by those within the art that, in general, terms used herein, and especially in the appended claims (e.g., bodies of the appended claims) are generally intended as “open” terms (e.g., the term “including” should be interpreted as “including but not limited to,” the term “having” should be interpreted as “having at least,” the term “includes” should be interpreted as “includes but is not limited to,” etc.). It will be further understood by those within the art that if a specific number of an introduced claim recitation is intended, such an intent will be explicitly recited in the claim, and in the absence of such recitation no such intent is present. For example, as an aid to understanding, the following appended claims may contain usage of the introductory phrases “at least one” and “one or more” to introduce claim recitations. However, the use of such phrases should not be construed to imply that the introduction of a claim recitation by the indefinite articles “a” or “an” limits any particular claim containing such introduced claim recitation to inventions containing only one such recitation, even when the same claim includes the introductory phrases “one or more” or “at least one” and indefinite articles such as “a” or “an” (e.g., “a” and/or “an” should typically be interpreted to mean “at least one” or “one or more”); the same holds true for the use of definite articles used to introduce claim recitations. In addition, even if a specific number of an introduced claim recitation is explicitly recited, those skilled in the art will recognize that such recitation should typically be interpreted to mean at least the recited number (e.g., the bare recitation of “two recitations,” without other modifiers, typically means at least two recitations, or two or more recitations). Furthermore, in those instances where a convention analogous to “at least one of A, B, and C, etc.” is used, in general such a construction is intended in the sense one having skill in the art would understand the convention (e.g., “a system having at least one of A, B, and C” would include but not be limited to systems that have A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, and/or A, B, and C together, etc.). In those instances where a convention analogous to “at least one of A, B, or C, etc.” is used, in general such a construction is intended in the sense one having skill in the art would understand the convention (e.g., “a system having at least one of A, B, or C” would include but not be limited to systems that have A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, and/or A, B, and C together, etc.). It will be further understood by those within the art that virtually any disjunctive word and/or phrase presenting two or more alternative terms, whether in the description, claims, or drawings, should be understood to contemplate the possibilities of including one of the terms, either of the terms, or both terms. For example, the phrase “A or B” will be understood to include the possibilities of “A” or “B” or “A and B.”

With respect to the appended claims, those skilled in the art will appreciate that recited operations therein may generally be performed in any order. Examples of such alternate orderings may include overlapping, interleaved, interrupted, reordered, incremental, preparatory, supplemental, simultaneous, reverse, or other variant orderings, unless context dictates otherwise. With respect to context, even terms like “responsive to,” “related to,” or other past-tense adjectives are generally not intended to exclude such variants, unless context dictates otherwise.

While various aspects and embodiments have been disclosed herein, other aspects and embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The various aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are for purposes of illustration and are not intended to be limiting, with the true scope and spirit being indicated by the following claims.

Claims

1. An apparatus, comprising: a parallel plate waveguide having an input port region, an output port region, and a plurality of subwavelength apertures within one or more conducting surfaces of the parallel plate waveguide, the plurality of subwavelength apertures providing a respective plurality of individual electromagnetic responses;where the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses provides a substantially increased optical distance between the input port region and the output port region.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the substantially increased optical distance is an optical distance substantially greater than a physical distance between the input port region and the output port region times a refractive index of a substrate of the parallel plate waveguide.

3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the substantially increased optical distance corresponds to a substantially decreased physical distance between the input port region and the output port region.

4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the input port region and the output port region define an optical axis of the apparatus, and the substantially increased optical distance is an optical distance along the optical axis.

5. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses provides an effective permeability in a direction parallel to the parallel plate waveguide and perpendicular to the optical axis.

6. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses provides an effective permeability in a direction parallel to the parallel plate waveguide and parallel to the optical axis.

7. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses provides an effective permittivity in a direction perpendicular to the parallel plate waveguide.

8. The apparatus of claim 4, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses provides an effective refractive index for wave propagation parallel to the optical axis substantially greater than an effective refractive index for wave propagation perpendicular to the optical axis.

9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the output port region includes a plurality of output ports, and further comprising: a plurality of transmission lines respectively coupled to the plurality of output ports and configured to feed a respective plurality of antennas.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the input port region includes a plurality of input ports, and wherein the parallel plate waveguide is configured to produce a substantially collimated output beam from the plurality of antennas responsive to exciting an input port selected from the plurality of input ports, the substantially collimated output beam having a beam direction that is a function of the selected input port.

11. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the respective plurality of antennas is a respective plurality of patch antennas.

12. The apparatus of claim 9, further comprising: a plurality of electromagnetic emitters respectively coupled to the plurality of input ports.

13. The apparatus of claim 9, further comprising: a plurality of electromagnetic receivers respectively coupled to the plurality of input ports.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses includes a plurality of adjustable individual electromagnetic responses.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the adjustable individual electromagnetic responses are adjustable response to one or more external inputs.

16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the one or more external inputs includes one or more voltage inputs.

17. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the plurality of individual electromagnetic responses includes a plurality of adjustable individual electromagnetic responses that are adjustable responsive to one or more external inputs, and the beam direction is an adjustable beam direction that is a function of the selected input port and the one or more external inputs.

18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the adjustable beam direction is adjustable to provide a beam direction in between unadjusted beam directions corresponding to the selected input port and an adjacent input port.

19. A method, comprising: delivering an electromagnetic wave to a first port region of a parallel plate waveguide; andcompressing the electromagnetic wave as it propagates within the parallel plate waveguide from the first port region to a second port region by a coupling of the electromagnetic wave to a plurality of subwavelength apertures in a conducting surface of the parallel plate waveguide;where the compressing includes compressing along an axis joining the first port region and the second port region.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising: receiving the compressed electromagnetic wave at a plurality of ports within the second port region;propagating the received electromagnetic wave along a plurality of transmission lines respectively coupled to the plurality of ports to feed a respectively plurality of antennas; andradiating a substantially collimated beam from the plurality of antennas responsive to the feeding;where the substantially collimated output beam has a beam direction that is a function of a location of the delivering.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein: the first port region includes a discrete plurality of input ports;the delivering includes delivering the electromagnetic wave to an input port selected from the discrete plurality of input ports; andthe substantially collimated output beam has a beam direction that is a function of the selected input port.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprising: adjusting the beam direction by adjusting the coupling to provide an apparent location of the delivering different than an actual location of the delivering, where the apparent location is in between the selected input port and an adjacent input port.

23. The method of claim 19, further comprising: receiving electromagnetic energy at a plurality of antennas that feed a respective plurality of transmission lines; andpropagating the received electromagnetic energy along the plurality of transmission lines to provide the delivered electromagnetic wave to the first port region;where a map of intensity of the compressed electromagnetic wave within the second port region as a function of location within the second port region corresponds to an angular radiation pattern of the received electromagnetic energy.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the second port region includes a discrete plurality of output ports, and the method further comprises: adjusting the coupling to provide an apparent location of an output port in between actual locations of adjacent output ports in the discrete plurality of output ports.

25. A method, comprising: identifying a coordinate transformation that reduces the axial spatial extent of a waveguide lens;determining electromagnetic medium parameters that correspond to the identified coordinate transformation; anddetermining respective physical parameters for a plurality of apertures positionable in one or more conducting surfaces of the waveguide lens to provide effective electromagnetic medium parameters that substantially correspond to the determined electromagnetic medium parameters.

26. The method of claim 25, further comprising: fabricating the waveguide lens with the plurality of apertures in the one or more conducting surfaces.

27. The method of claim 26, where the fabricating is fabricating by a printed circuit board process.

28. The method of claim 25, wherein the determining respective physical parameters includes determining according to one of a regression analysis and a lookup table.

29. The method of claim 25, wherein the determining of respective physical parameters includes determining geometrical parameters for the plurality of apertures.

30. The method of claim 25, wherein the determining of respective physical parameters includes determining resonant frequencies for the plurality of apertures.

31. The method of claim 25, wherein the waveguide lens is a Rotman lens.