douglas H. werner

Advanced Inverse-Design Methodologies for Electromagnetic and Optical Metantennas

Advances in design and manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing, nanofabrication) are enabling the ability to realize transformative structures that achieve electromagnetic functionalities not possible with conventional devices. Some of the most interesting structures being developed are based on metamaterials comprised of sub-wavelength unit cells intelligently patterned to locally manipulate an electromagnetic wavefront in a desired fashion. Recent advances in metamaterials technology have facilitated a plethora of RF/optical devices with an unprecedented ability to manipulate and control the behavior of electromagnetic waves. One of the most impactful applications of metamaterials has been in the field of antenna theory and design, where their disruptive properties have been exploited either to improve existing antennas in some important way (e.g., reduce size and/or weight, increase bandwidth, improve radiation efficiency, enable added functionalities, etc.) or to create completely new antennas with desirable properties not previously available. Such metamaterial-enabled antennas have come to be known as ‘metantennas’, which have found applications across the entire electromagnetic spectrum (i.e., RF, mmWave, THz, IR, visible). The burgeoning field of metantennas has prompted an ever-increasing demand for more sophisticated design tools which can be utilized to customize the electromagnetic properties of metamaterial systems for a wide variety of targeted antenna applications. Examples of such tools include transformation electromagnetics as well as advanced multi-scale and multi-physics modeling techniques. In addition, practical metantenna system design requires powerful single- and multi-objective global optimization methods (e.g., genetic algorithms, particle swarm, covariance matrix adaptation evolutionary strategy, clonal section algorithms, wind driven optimization, lazy ant colony optimization, etc.), which transcend the current capabilities and limitations of commercially available software packages. These tools enable an unparalleled design flexibility for complex electromagnetic and optical metantenna systems with increased functionality and/or significant size, weight and power (SWaP) reduction. The presentation will begin by providing a brief discussion of the most recent developments in the forward solvers and inverse design tools. Following this, several examples will be presented that showcase the successful application of these tools to the creation of transformative RF and optical metantennas

Douglas H. Werner received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and the M.A. degree in mathematics from The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), University Park, PA, in 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1986, respectively. He holds the John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair Professorship in The Pennsylvania State University Department of Electrical Engineering. He is the director of the Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Lab (CEARL: http://cearl.ee.psu.edu/) as well as a faculty member of the Materials Research Institute (MRI: https://www.mri.psu.edu/) at Penn State. Prof. Werner was presented with the 1993 Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Best Paper Award and was also the recipient of a 1993 International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award. In 1994, Prof. Werner received the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory Outstanding Publication Award. He was a co-author of a paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation which received the 2006 R. W. P. King Award. He received the inaugural IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Edward E. Altshuler Prize Paper Award and the Harold A. Wheeler Applications Prize Paper Award in 2011 and 2014 respectively. In 2018, he received the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. He also received the 2015 ACES Technical Achievement Award, the 2019 ACES Computational Electromagnetics Award, and the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society 2019 Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE, IET, OPTICA, SPIE, ACES, and the PIER Electromagnetics Academy. He is also a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and URSI. Prof. Werner holds 20 patents, has published over 950 technical papers and proceedings articles, and is the author of 7 books and 35 book chapters. He is also the Editor for the IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Wave Theory & Applications.