Gain Improvement Of Microstrip Array Antenna By Metamaterial Superstrate

In this paper, a microstrip patch array antenna integrated with a two layers metamaterial superstrate is presented. The Metamaterial Superstrate Antenna plays a major role in improving the gain of the antenna. The metamaterial unit cell, which has a near-zero refractive index, is arranged in a ۳ × ۲۴ periodic array created a superstrate metamaterial plane. Two of these superstrate planes, with ۳ mm distance, are located ۱۹ mm above the ۸ × ۱ array antenna. The integration improved the gain to ۱۸.۴ dBi compared to only ۱۶.۴ dBi gain of the array antenna itself at the operating frequency of ۱۰.۲ GHz. Besides that, the proposed antenna managed to improve the directivity, and slightly efficiency. All the simulations are done by using CST Software and the effective parameters of the unit cell of MTM are achieved with programming in a M-file of Matlab.

Keywords:

microstrip , array antenna , gain , metamaterial , superstrate