Ultra-wide band (UWB) artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) metamaterials for electrically thin antennas and arrays

An artificial magnetic conductor “AMC”, comprising:

• a bottom at least partially conductive ground plane for reflecting incident electromagnetic radiation from said ground plane, and blocking electrodynamic radiation from flowing past the AMC on the ground plane side of the AMC,
• a middle layer above the conductive ground plane and comprising one or more layers of one or more materials with electrical properties wherein said middle layer and the electrical properties thereof establishes a phase difference or time delay between said incident electromagnetic radiation and said reflected electromagnetic radiation from the said ground plane;
• a top layer comprising a plurality of first unit cells arranged in an array wherein each first unit cell of the plurality of first unit cells includes at least one wide-band dipole antenna wherein the wide-band dipole antenna further includes at least partially conductive elements;
• and
• wherein the feed points of each said wide-band dipole antenna are left open, whereby the conductive ground plane, the middle layer and the top layer collectively have a high impedance that passively reflects incident in-band electromagnetic energy over a very wide-band width a substantially in the polarization plane of the very wide band dipole antenna with a reflection phase of approximately zero degrees across the bandwidth.