Additive Manufacturing of Smart Antennas and Frequency Selective Surfaces

This thesis presents the development and the additive manufacturing of smart antennas and frequency selective surfaces (FSS) for microwave, millimetre wave, and low-Terahertz applications. Numerous fabrications techniques such as etching, low-cost inkjet-printing, Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) and Aerosol Jet Printing are employed to fabricate the antennas and FSS. Firstly, frequency reconfigurable antennas with close-coupled biasing technique are developed using double-sided etching on a thin mylar substrate for smart current and voltage sensing applications. The frequency tunable antenna also acts as a novel current sensing antenna in a smart sensing system that can sense the alternating current passing through a wire. The design is followed by introducing a low-cost inkjet-printed industry ready solution for frequency reconfigurable antennas where a single antenna aperture solution is utilised to demonstrate frequency reconfigurability in both switching and tuning configurations. Development of Frequency Selective Surfaces using low-cost printing machine is demonstrated in which FSS structures are inkjet-printed as wallpaper posters for Radio Frequency (RF) shielding and signal enhancements for 4G and 5G applications. A novel approach for fully 3D printing an FSS structure is also demonstrated using a low-cost open-source printer, which was modified to print the filament and the conductive inks simultaneously. Widespread investigation of industry-grade Aerosol Jet printing is utilised for additive manufacturing of bandstop and bandpass FSS designs for RF shielding and signal filtering. The bandstop designs are developed for microwave and millimetre-wave applications. The bandpass slot FSS designs are developed for millimetre wave and low-Terahertz applications for futuristic Beyond 5G and 6G systems.