| The art of miniaturization has become vital to a number of industries. The term miniaturization is most synonymous with semiconductor technology. However, it has become increasingly important for antennas to undergo substantial size reductions as well, given the need to match the shrinking sizes of wireless devices. The Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems (WIMS) seeks such an antenna. This antenna must be compatible with a sensor whose volume occupies a single cubic centimeter, and the antenna's volume must not exceed that of the sensor. In addition, this antenna is to operate in L-band (1–2 GHz).; The most common miniaturization technique is the selection of a material with a high relative permitivity, ϵr. The largest dimension of the antenna can roughly be reduced by the square root of ϵr . However, increasing ϵr results in decreased efficiency and bandwidth. The use of a material that is magnetic for miniaturization is a fairly old idea, but due to advances in material engineering, it is beginning to gain a new popularity. This thesis investigates the usefulness of such a technique by way of computational electromagnetics. The expectation is that increasing the permeability of the substrate will reduce the necessary size of a loaded antenna without detrimental effects to the antenna's bandwidth or radiation properties and patterns. |
