Numerical and experimental investigation of basic properties of wire medium‐based shortened horn antennas

Recent numerical study predicted a phenomenon of gain increase of a shortened horn antenna by embedding a wire medium‐based slab. Here, we report an experimental verification of this idea by the development of two shortened horn antennas that operate in 10 GHz band: the horn with embedded single‐wire ENZ slab and the horn with embedded double‐wire ENZ slab. These two horn antennas had lengths of 52% and 33% of the length of the optimal horn, respectively. Measured gain was found to be very similar to the gain of the full‐length optimal horn (within 0.1 dB), but in a narrow band (5–12%). In addition, we present numerical results that show that a Drude model is a good starting point for the initial design of a shortened horn, while the required antenna characteristics should be achieved by an additional numerical optimization. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51: 2748–2753, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24736