Shielding properties of a wire-medium screen

The shielding performance of a planar metamaterial wire-medium (WM) screen under plane-wave illumination is studied. The screen consists of a finite number of periodic layers of thin conducting cylinders embedded in a dielectric matrix; in the low-frequency limit and for waves with the electric field polarized along the wire direction, such a screen can be modeled as a homogeneous slab with a plasma-like dispersive permittivity. In particular, well below the plasma frequency, the effective relative permittivity is negative and very large in absolute value, giving rise to high values of the shielding effectiveness. A comparison with a conventional planar metal screen is reported, showing how the proposed structure can be designed to be advantageous in terms of low density and weight saving. In order to be effective against arbitrarily polarized waves, the original structure is modified, adding a second WM screen with wires orthogonally oriented with respect to the first one. Numerical results are provided that illustrate the validity of the homogenized model in predicting field levels both near to and far from the screen and show the shielding performance attainable with the proposed metamaterial screen in both single- and double-layer configurations at normal incidence. © 2008 IEEE.