A Broadband and High-Gain Metamaterial Microstrip Antenna

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Resultant Direct and Indirect Publications
Resulted in from the supported Projects: AOARD-07-4024 and AOARD-09-4069, the fol-
lowing research papers were published:
• Le-Wei Li, Ya-Nan Li, Tat-Soon, Yeo, Juan R. Mosig and Olivier J.F. Martin, “A
Broadband and High-gain Metamaterial Microstrip Antenna,” Applied Physics Letters,
vol.96, no. 6, 164101, April 2010


Background Introduction
A microstrip patch antenna [1, 2] represents one of the most commonly utilized printed
antennas in practice. It enjoys its advantages of low profile, simple structure, low cost,
and omnidirectional radiation patterns [1, 2]. A narrow bandwidth is, however, the main
drawback of the microstrip patch antennas. Some approaches have been therefore developed
for bandwidth enhancement [3–6]. Among those common ones, one is to increase the height
of the dielectric substrate while the other is to decrease the substrate dielectric constant.
Certainly, the latter will induce the matching circuits to be impractical due to excessively
wide lines designed.


Proposed Structure of Single-Element Antenna and
Metamaterial System
A conventional microstrip patch antenna is usually mounted on a substrate and backed
by a conducting ground plane. In the present investigation, as shown in Fig. 1, a planar
left-handed material pattern on the rectangular patch antenna mounted on the substrate is
designed to enhance its horizontal radiation as well as to broaden its working bandwidth via
its coupling with the conducting ground backed to the substrate and patterned in a different
way. On the upper patch, the periodic gaps are designed in the form of isolated micro-
triangles; while on the bottom ground plane, as shown in Fig