Transmission characteristics of wave modes in a rectangular waveguide filled with anisotropic metamaterial

In this paper, transmission characteristics of wave modes in a rectangular waveguide filled with lossless anisotropic metamaterial are theoretically investigated. The wave equation and dispersion relations for TE and TM modes in the waveguide are obtained and analyzed. It is shown that the negative constitutive parameters of the filling anisotropic metamaterial can be used to control the wave magnitude and the phase velocity direction in the waveguide over the entire frequency domain, both below and above the cutoff frequency. Particularly, not only backward waves, but also forward waves can propagate below the cutoff frequency in the waveguide. Furthermore, a typical example is calculated to demonstrate transmission characteristics of waves inside the waveguide. Numerical results are obtained in the paper and compared with theoretical predictions: a good agreement is found.