Polarization insensitive symmetrical structured double negative (DNG) metamaterial absorber for Ku-band sensing applications

Metamaterial absorber (MMA) is now attracting significant interest due to its attractive applications, such as thermal detection, sound absorption, detection for explosive, military radar, wavelength detector, underwater sound absorption, and various sensor applications that are the vital part of the internet of things. This article proposes a modified square split ring resonator MMA for Ku-band sensing application, where the metamaterial structure is designed on FR-4 substrate material with a dielectric constant of 4.3 and loss tangent of 0.025. Perfect absorption is realized at 14.62 GHz and 16.30 GHz frequency bands, where peak absorption is about 99.99% for both frequency bands. The proposed structure shows 70% of the average absorption bandwidth of 420 MHz (14.42–14.84 GHz) and 480 MHz (16.06–16.54 GHz). The metamaterial property of the proposed structure is investigated for transverse electromagnetic mode (TEM) and achieved negative permittivity, permeability, and refractive index property for each absorption frequency band at 0°, 45°, and 90° polarization angles. Interference theory is also investigated to verify the absorption properties. Moreover, the permittivity sensor application is investigated to verify the sensor performance of the proposed structure. Finally, a comparison with recent works is performed, which shows that the proposed MMA can be a good candidate for Ku-band perfect absorber and sensing applications.