DNG Metamaterial-Based Superstrate for Performance Enhancement of Compact Size Wideband Patch Antenna.

Recently, electromagnetic metamaterials are of great interest to researchers because of their unusual electromagnetic properties. The proposed work presents a metamaterial as a superstrate for enhancing the performance parameters of a conventional patch antenna. The metamaterial unit cell is examined using classical waveguide theory to confirm its metamaterial properties such as permittivity and permeability at the resonant frequency. The proposed meta-structure comprises of a 5 × 5 array of circular-shaped split ring resonators backed with wire strips and placed above an inset-fed rectangular patch antenna that resonates at 9.96 GHz. The metamaterial superstrate improves the gain, impedance bandwidth, and radiation efficiency by 2.4 dBi, 770 MHz, and 18.4%, respectively and simultaneously reduces reflection coefficient by 5 dB. Several benefits such as compact size, simpler structure, low profile, and low cost have been obtained from this design. EM simulation of the proposed composite structure has been carried out with the help of the HFSS EM simulator and measurement has been done for validation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]