ENRICA MARTINI

Modulated Metasurface Antennas: Models, Design Procedures and Practical Realizations

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Metasurfaces (MTSs) have emerged in the last decade as a promising platform for next generation planar electromagnetic devices, thanks to their unique field manipulation capability. In particular, modulated metasurface antennas represent a versatile class of radiating structures in which the locally periodic modulation of an MTS is used to convert a bound surface wave into a radiating leaky wave. In the microwave and millimeter wave range this solution is characterized by low-profile, lightweight, simple feeding structure and low-cost manufacturing, since MTSs can be realized in PCB technology by printing electrically small patches over a dielectric slab. The design of metasurfaces can be effectively done in terms of homogenized boundary conditions of impedance type by acting on the impedance pattern it is possible to obtain a unique control of the phase, amplitude and polarization of the aperture field, thus, molding the radiation pattern with a single point excitation. The talk will provide an overview of this technology, starting from the description of the fundamental physical mechanisms, outlining analytical and numerical models and design procedures and presenting the most advanced designs and recent realization, including very high gain pencil beam antennas, antennas with low side lobes or shaped pattern and beam scanning antennas. The expected future developments will be also discussed.

Enrica Martini received the Laurea degree (cum laude) in telecommunication engineering from the University of Florence, Italy, in 1998. From 1998 to 1999 she worked at the University of Florence under a one-year research grant from the Alenia Aerospazio Company, Rome, Italy. In 2002, she received the PhD degree in informatics and telecommunications from the University of Florence and the Ph.D. degree in electronics from the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, under joint supervision. In 2002, she was appointed Research Associate at the University of Siena, Italy. In 2005, she received the Hans Christian Ørsted Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, and she joined the Electromagnetic Systems Section of the Ørsted•DTU Department until 2007. From 2007 to 2017 she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Siena, Italy. In 2012, she co-founded the start-up Wave Up Srl, Siena, Italy, of which she was the CEO from 2016 to 2018. From 2019 to 2021 she was an assistant professor at the University of Siena, Italy. She is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Information Engineering and Mathematics, University of Siena, Siena, Italy Dr. Martini coordinated tasks of various research projects funded by national and international governmental institutions, as well as by industry. Her research interests include metasurfaces and metamaterial characterization, metasurface-based antennas and microwave devices, electromagnetic scattering, antenna measurements and tropospheric propagation. Dr. Martini was a co-recipient of the 2016 Schelkunoff Transactions Prize Paper Award, of the Best Paper Award in Antenna Design and Applications at the 11th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in 2017, of the Best Poster Award at the Metamaterials Congress in 2019 and of the Best Paper Award in Electromagnetics at the 15th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in 2021.