Accurate Characterization and Design Guidelines of Glide-Symmetric Holey EBG

The dispersion characteristics of a glide-symmetric holey periodic surface are investigated, with special emphasis on a detailed study of its stopbands. The unit cell is modeled as a multiport network associated with multiple modes at each of the lattice boundaries. Enforcing the periodic conditions, the real and imaginary parts of the wavenumbers of the Floquet modes are calculated through an eigenproblem posed in terms of the generalized multimodal transfer matrix, which is computed from the scattering parameters obtained with a full-wave simulator. This procedure allows us to take into account the higher order modal couplings between adjacent unit cells that are crucial for accurate dispersion analysis. The resulting simulation-assisted approach provides both a convenient computational tool and a very fruitful physical insight that reveals the existence of complex modes, the convergence of opposite-parity modes, and the anisotropy in both passband and stopband. This approach enables a precise calculation of the attenuation constant, which is not possible with conventional techniques as the eigenmode solvers of commercial software. Based on this approach, an extensive parametric study is carried out, rigorously establishing a set of critical criteria for the use of such a periodic surface as an electromagnetic bandgap structure in gap waveguide technology. Moreover, the analysis of the directional properties of the structure is applied to further suppress the leakage.