Bloch Analysis of Artificial Lines and Surfaces Exhibiting Glide Symmetry

Glide-symmetric structures have recently emerged as a smart choice to design planar lenses and electromagnetic bandgap materials. We discuss here the conditions under which a glide-symmetric structure is equivalent to a nonglide-symmetric structure with a reduced period. To this aim, we propose an analysis method based on network theory to efficiently derive the dispersive behavior of these periodic structures. Both phase and attenuation constants can be determined, with potential applications to both guiding and radiating structures. Retaining higher order modal interactions among cells helps to derive the dispersive behavior of periodic structures more accurately. Furthermore, we take advantage of the higher symmetry of these structures to decrease the computational cost by considering only one half or one-quarter of a unit cell instead of the entire cell. We study one and 2-D glide-symmetric structures and confirm the validity of our analysis with comparisons from commercial software.