24
14, 2015
Realization of Thin and Broadband Magnetic Radar
Absorption Materials With the Help of Resistor FSS
Jie Zhou, Shaowei Bie, Dong Wan, Haibing Xu, Yongshun Xu, and Jianjun Jiang
Abstract—In this letter, a kind of composite radar absorption
material consisting of gradient and spiral square resistor fre-
quency selective surface (FSS) and magnetic sheets is designed
by HFSS. The use of resistor FSS makes a significant increase of
operating bandwidth compared to single magnetic radar absorp-
tion materials (mRAMs). Under the condition of normal incident
electromagnetic wave, it has remarkable absorptive performance
with the reflectivity below 10 dB with a thin thickness of 2 mm
in the range of 6–18 GHz. In addition, the composite mRAMs
exhibits high angular stability when the incident angle ranges
from 0 to 30 . In order to illustrate the importance of resistors,
a comparative experiment of structure with nonresistor FSS is
made. Experimental results are compared to numerical simula-
tions. They are in agreement with each other.
Index Terms—Frequency selective surface (FSS), magnetic
radar absorption materials (mRAMs).
I. INTRODUCTION
R ADAR absorption materials (RAMs) and coatings have
been widely used in stealth technology since World
War II. Recently, RAMs are used to cope with the electromag-
netic pollution problem in our life. With the ever-increasing
application development of electronic equipment, a series of
problems, such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) and
electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), have emerged. EMI can
cause disturbances on the precision apparatus. Meanwhile,
the electromagnetic radiation is also potentially hazardous to
biological systems. Therefore, numerous research works have
been done to pursue a high-performance absorber to solve the
electromagnetic pollution problem. Traditionally, radar absorp-
tion materials are fabricated by mechanically milling method;
they are very thin and flexible. However, due to the high density
of the carbonyl iron and ferrite, these RAMs usually suffer
from a high weight. Meanwhile, their bandwidth is also quite
narrow. For example, our group has synthesized RAMs filled
with carbonyl iron and MnO (MnO weight fraction is 30%),
which exhibits an operating bandwidth of only 3.5 GHz at a
level of below 10 dB of the reflection coefficient with the
Manuscript received July 03, 2014; accepted August 13, 2014. Date of pub-
lication August 19, 2014; date of current version January 27, 2015. This work
was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province, China,
under Grant No. ZRY0124 and the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grant No. 61172003.
The authors are with the School of Optical and Electronic Information,
Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
(e-mail: bieshaowei@hust.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2349533
1536-1225 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
thickness of 2 mm [2]. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the
absorption bandwidth of RAMs and decrease their weight.
Compared to traditional radar absorption materials, fre-
quency selective surface (FSS) can greatly reduce the weight.
FSS consists of 2-D periodic arrays of metallic elements,
which has been widely researched in antenna applications and
RAMs. However, its absorbing bandwidth needs to be further
improved. Recently, a new type of FSS, which is loaded with a
series of lumped elements such as resistors, capacitors, induc-
tors, and diodes between or in the unit cells, is more attractive
in the design of a microwave absorber. Our group researched
the FSS loaded with different resistors between cells. The
absorption performance remarkably increased owing to the
ohm loss of resistors compared to the FSS without resistors.
However, it still has a narrow broadband reflectivity response
below 10 dB and a big thickness of 3.7 mm [3].
Based on the above consideration, people began to research
the combination of FSS and RAM in order to develop composite
radar absorption materials with great absorptive performance,
thinness, light weight, and broad band at the same time. Then,
much research was devoted to the combination of FSS and
magnetic RAMS (mRAMs). Generally, an FSS is embedded
between two mRAMs [4], [5]. Meanwhile, some researchers
focused on dielectric RAMs [6]. However, the operating band-
width of composite structure was only 2–3 GHz wider than
corresponding dielectric RAMs. Sun et al. suggested that it
was advisable to choose magnetic RAMs [5]. They designed
single-layer FSS embedded magnetic RAMs, which not only
had a broadband of 15 GHz (3–18 GHz) with reflectivity below
10 dB, but also was quite lightweight. However, its thickness
reaches to 5 mm, which is thicker than actually needed.
In this letter, spiral square resistor FSS that is rarely re-
searched as FSS is designed. Moreover, there is no relative
report about the combination of spiral square FSS and tradi-
tional magnetic radar absorption materials. FSS is embedded
between two pieces of mRAMs. It has a thickness of 2 mm
with 12 GHz over the frequency range from 6–18 GHz, which
is much thinner and more broadband than the combination of
FSS and dielectric slab [3].
II. DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the structure diagram of the composite mRAMs.
The composite mRAMs are composed of one FSS layer and two
mRAMs layers. Obviously, the FSS is sandwiched between two
mRAMs.
mRAMs have the following compositions: 70 wt.% EW,
29.6 wt.% silicon, and 0.4 wt.% vulcanizing agent. The mixture
was placed in a press form and cured for 7 min at a temperature
ZHOU et al.: REALIZATION OF THIN AND BROADBAND MAGNETIC RADAR ABSORPTION MATERIALS
Fig. 1. Structure diagram of the composite mRAMs.
Fig. 2. Electromagnetic characteristics of mRAMs.
Fig. 3. (a) Original resistor FSS cell and (b) HFSS optimization model.
of 170 . Its electromagnetic characteristics are measured by
-parameters through coaxial measurement [7], as shown in
Fig. 2. The studies [8] and [9] show that the spiral square FSS
has a perfect transparent performance in -band frequency
region and multiple resonance in - and Ku-band. However,
we add resistors in the FSS, and the original size is shown in
Fig. 3(a). For convenience, we term E- and E- as the
direction of electric field loading on the composite mRAMs,
which are parallel to - and -axis, respectively. To optimize
the composite mRAMs, the variables , , , , , ,
and are set. The electromagnetic parameters of mRAM are
imported into the material library for defining mRAM. The
HFSS optimization model is shown in Fig. 3(b). The composite
mRAMs are optimized by Quasi Newton of HFSS. The specific
optimization results are presented in Table I. Then, we calculate
the reflectivity of composite mRAMs at normal and oblique
incidence of TE and TM polarized waves, as shown in Fig. 4.
25
As the angle of incidence increases, the reflectivity of both
TE-polarization and TM-polarization decreases slightly, which
means the composite mRAMs exhibit high angular stability
when the incident angle ranges from 0 to 30 .
Fig. 5 is the photograph of the composite mRAMs. The first
and third layers are mRAMs. The second layer is resistor FSS
with a total thickness of 0.6 mm, which consists of FR4 poly-
imide and resistors. Both of the FSS and mRAMs share the
same size of cm . In the measurements, they are
fully overlapped and glued together. The composite mRAMs are
measured under vertical incident wave in a microwave anechoic
chamber, which mainly contains a vector network analyzer Agi-
lent 8720ES, two linear polarized horn antennas, and a metal test
bench [10]. To increase the accuracy of measurement, we adopt
the technology of subtracting the background level in the cal-
culation and turning on the time domain of the vector network
analyzer in the measurement. One antenna transmits TEM wave
in the range of 2–18 GHz onto the sample, and the other receives
the reflected wave. The reflectivity is calculated by -parame-
ters obtained from measurement.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 6 shows the reflectivity of mRAMs and the composite
mRAMs with nonresistor FSS and resistor FSS at the frequency
range of 2–18 GHz. The RAMs have an operating bandwidth
of 4.7 GHz from 9 to 13.7 GHz with the reflectivity below
10 dB. The operating frequency band of composite mRAMs
with nonresistor FSS is 8.4–16 GHz at E- . Therefore, the
operating bandwidth increases to 7.6 GHz after incorporating
nonresistor FSS. Furthermore, the corresponding bandwidth
reaches to 12 GHz with the help of resistor FSS from 6–18 GHz
at E- , which is double more than RAMs. Moreover, it has
a strong absorption peak at 7.5 GHz compared to composite
mRAMs with nonresistor FSS. Therefore, the resistors play a
vital role in both bandwidth and absorption intensity. At E- ,
the corresponding bandwidth of the composite mRAMs with
nonresistor is 6.2 GHz at the range from 9.3 to 10.2 GHz and
11.7 to 17 GHz. However, the composite mRAMs with resistor
still have an operating bandwidth of 12.3 GHz from 5.7 to
18 GHz, which confirms the importance of resistors in ab-
sorption once again. Meanwhile, many resonance frequencies
appear at the band of 6.8–18 GHz, which coincides with the
study [8], [9].
To demonstrate the importance of the resistors, the composite
mRAMs with nonresistor FSS and resistor FSS are simulated
with the solution frequency of 7 GHz. Fig. 7(a) and (b) denotes
the surface current density of composite mRAMs with nonre-
sistor FSS and resistor FSS at E- , respectively. At E- ,
the corresponding surface current density of composite mRAMs
with nonresistor FSS and resistor FSS are Fig. 7(c) and (d). Ob-
viously, the induced current increases dramatically after adding
resistors. The induced current is consumed by flowing through
the resistors. Therefore, the existence of resistors can greatly
improve the absorptive performance.
Fig. 8 shows the experimental and simulation results of the
composite mRAMs with resistor FSS. The experimental results
are slightly different from the simulations. The edge diffraction
of the structure may lead to the difference. The reflectivity is
26 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 14, 2015

Fig. 4. Modeled reflectivity of composite mRAMs at oblique incidence of (a) TE and (b) TM polarized waves.

Fig. 5. Photograph of the composite mRAMs.

Fig. 7. Surface current density of composite mRAMs with nonresistor FSS and
resistor FSS. (a) Nonresistor FSS at E- . (b) Resistor FSS at E- . (c) Nonre-
sistor FSS at E- . (d) Resistor FSS at E- .

Fig. 6. Reflectivity of mRAMs and the composite mRAMs with nonresistor

FSS and resistor FSS.

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF COMPOSITE MRAMS

Fig. 8. Reflectivity of measurement and simulation of the composite mRAMs

computed under the condition of infinite periodic structure in
simulation. While in the experiment, the samples are measured
with the size of cm . The influence bringing from
nonuniform size may be a good explanation of the slight differ-
ence between them. However, it should be confirmed by further
work.
with resistor FSS.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a kind of composite radar absorption materials
consisting of gradient and spiral square resistor FSS and mag-
netic sheets is designed. It is stable with the respect to the angle
ZHOU et al.: REALIZATION OF THIN AND BROADBAND MAGNETIC RADAR ABSORPTION MATERIALS
of incidence of TEM wave. The operating bandwidth with the
reflectivity below 10 dB of the composite mRAMs is double
more than that of no FSS. Besides, it is only 2 mm thickness.
We present the loss mechanism of resistor FSS and demonstrate
the importance of resistors by means of surface current density.
The experimental results agree well with simulation. With the
help of resistor FSS, the composite mRAMs realize the goal of
thinness and bandwidth. The resistor thickness can be further
optimized by the substitution for resistor film.
REFERENCES
[1] Y. B. Feng, T. Qiu, C. Y. Shen, and X. Y. Li, “Electromagnetic and ab-
sorption properties of carbonyl iron/rubber radar absorbing materials,”
IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 363–368, Mar. 2006.
[2] W. Q. Zhang, S. W. Bie, H. C. Chen, Y. Lu, and J. J. Jiang, “Electro-
magnetic and microwave absorption properties of carbonyl iron/MnO2
composite,” J. Magn. Magn. Mater., vol. 358–359, pp. 1–4, 2014.
[3] Q. Chen et al., “Thin and broadband electromagnetic absorber design
using resistors and capacitors loaded frequency selective surface,” J.
Electromagn. Waves. Appl., vol. 26, pp. 2102–2111, Nov. 2012.
27
[4] Y. N. Kazantsev and A. V. Lopatin, “Broadening of operating fre-
quency band of magnetic-type radio absorbers by FSS incorporation,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 1227–1235, Apr.
2010.
[5] L. Sun, H. Cheng, Y. Zhou, and J. Wang, “Design of a lightweight
magnetic radar absorber embedded with resistive FSS,” IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag. Letters, vol. 11, pp. 675–678, 2012.
[6] V. A. Babayan, Y. N. Kazantsev, A. V. Lopatin, V. P. Mal’tsev,
and N. E. Kazantseva, “Extension of the operating frequency range
of a dielectric radio absorber with the help of frequency-selective
surfaces,” J. Commun. Technol. Electron., vol. 56, pp. 1357–1362,
2011.
[7] “Standard test method for measuring relative complex permittivity and
relative magnetic permeability of solid materials at microwave fre-
quencies using coaxial air line1,” ASTM D5568-08, 2012.
[8] K. Delihacioğlu, S. Uckun, and T. Ege, “Scattering characteristics of
one- and two-turn square spiral FSSs on chiral slab,” J. Optoelectron.
Adv. Mater., vol. 9, pp. 2676–2680, Sep. 2007.
[9] K. Delihacioğlu, S. Uckun, and T. Ege, “Frequency selective surfaces
comprised of periodic arrays of two-turn square spiral shaped conduc-
tors,” Int. J. Electron. Commun., vol. 61, pp. 182–185, 2007.
[10] Recommended practice for radio-frequency (RF) absorber evaluation
in the range of 30 MHz to 5 GHz, IEEE Standard 1128, 1998.