An optically transparent metamaterial absorber (MMA) operated in the C-band (4–8 GHz) is optimally designed based on the second-order cross fractal structure. The experimental results show that the reflection loss of the proposed MMA is lower than −10 dB from 3.98 GHz to 8.68 GHz. Two overlapped resonances located at 4.77 GHz and 7.33 GHz, respectively, are caused by the second-order cross fractal structure. Distributions of surface current, electromagnetic field and power loss density are investigated to illustrate the absorptive charac...