Design of Metamaterial Absorber using Eight-Resistive-Arm Cell for Simultaneous Broadband and Wide-Incidence-Angle Absorption

In this paper, a broadband metamaterial (MM) absorber is presented for X-band applications. A novel eight-resistive-arm (ERA) cell is proposed as an MM unit cell to achieve both broadband absorption and wide incidence angles. The proposed ERA cell is designed using equivalent circuit model and full-wave analysis in order to achieve an absorption ratio higher than 90% in the range of 8.2–13.4 GHz. The experimental results indicate that the absorptivity was greater than 90% in the range of 8–13 GHz for all polarization angles under normal incidence. Under oblique incidence, the measured absorptivity was greater than 90% in the range of 8.2–12.2 GHz up to 60° and in the range of 9.2–12 GHz up to 65° in the transverse electric (TE) mode. In the transverse magnetic (TM) mode, the measured absorptivity was higher than 90% in the range of 9.5–12.4 GHz when the incidence angle was varied from 0° to 60° and remaining a 90% absorption bandwidth in the range of 10–12 GHz up to 65°. Compared to other broadband MM absorbers, the proposed MM absorber exhibited the widest incidence angles in both TE and TM modes.