A Mode Matching Method for Efficient Evaluation of Short Backfire Antennas Loaded with Anisotropic Impedance Surfaces

In this paper, a semi-analytical mode matching method (MMM) for short backfire antennas (SBFAs) loaded with anisotropic impedance surfaces (AISs) is presented. To validate our method, the electromagnetic characteristics of a SBFA loaded with AISs obtained using the MMM is compared to those calculated by a commercial full-wave solver, showing a strong agreement. The proposed method requires computational resources a few orders of magnitude smaller than commercial solvers. The superior performance demonstrates the method can be used in forward design and optimization of AIS-loaded SBFAs.