High‐gain omnidirectional patch antenna for conformal application based on near‐zero‐index metamaterials

Abstract

Achieving a high-gain omnidirectional patch antenna with low profile is a challenging task. On the basis of improving antennas by metamaterials, a broadband near-zero-index metamaterial (NZIM) is designed to enhance the horizontal gain of the omnidirectional patch antenna. The zero-index metamaterial is loaded on the substrate of three antennas with different working bands (4.99-5.50 GHz). The results show that the horizontal gain of antennas is enhanced by more than 0.6 dB at various frequencies. The roundness of antennas is also optimised. Therefore, using NZIM can increase the horizontal gain with a low profile (λ/30) structure size. The low profile, high-gain omnidirectional patch antenna has great potential in the conformal field.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Analysis and Design of Sub-6 Beam Steerable Antenna Array Using Meta-material Loaded Vivaldi Elements.

“…Also, by providing a high-refractive-index effect, the metamaterial is intended to replace dielectric lenses for gain enhancement [10]. So, the NZIM units use the same thickness of dielectric material to be introduced within the front of a Vivaldi antenna [11,12]. The NZIM metamaterial is used in essential applications such as producing unwanted impedance mismatch in the desired system [13].…”