Abstract: Absorbing honeycomb, which has the characteristics of lightweight, load-bearing, and microwave absorbing, is widely used in radar absorbing structure design. But it has shortcoming in low-frequency absorption performance. In this paper, a metamaterial with strong electromagnetic wave absorption performance was designed using square open resonant ring (SSRR) units. The metamaterial was applied to modify the electromagnetic performance of an absorbing honeycomb, and realized significant improvement on broadband microwave absorption performance. First, the SSRR unit was designed. The variation of electromagnetic scattering characteristics with the shape parameters of the SSRR unit was studied. The influence of the four main design parameters, including the thickness of the dielectric layer, the width of the square ring, the opening width of the square ring and the length of the square ring, on the absorption performance of the metamaterial was explored through simulation. The change rules of the electromagnetic absorption peak with the shape of the square split ring resonator unit were analyzed. A scheme with strong narrow-band absorbing ability was proposed. Then, a design method for metamaterial absorbing honeycomb was proposed by combining the SSRR metamaterial with the absorbing honeycomb. Research shows that compared with the absorbing honeycomb, the reflection loss of the metamaterial absorbing honeycomb is improved by 4.4 dB in 1-10 GHz on average. The absorption performance of the absorbing honeycomb has been significantly enhanced.