Antenna-Less Wireless: A Marriage Between Antenna and Microwave Engineering

Abstract

For many decades, antenna and microwave engineering have been adjacent yet fairly separate disciplines. Both have experienced such a high degree of specialization and sophistication that experts in one area would rarely dispute the expertise of someone in the other. While microwave engineers have largely focused on taming the radio waves through all sorts of active (amplifiers, oscillators, active tuners, etc.) and passive (filters, couplers, splitters, etc.) devices, antenna engineers have been exploring new and creative ways to free the waves through increasingly complex fractal-based and related antenna geometries. However this divide may radically change with the introduction of “antenna-less” technology, a technology which makes antenna design much more similar to filter design than to conventional antenna engineering.