Reconfigurable Metamaterial Antenna based an Electromagnetic Ground Plane Defects for Modern Wireless Communication Devices

Abstract

In this paper, a design of a microstrip antenna based on metamaterial (MTM) and electromagnetic band gap (EBG) arrays. The patch is structured from 5×3 MTM array to enhance the antenna bandwidth gain product. The individual unit cell is structured as a split ring (SRR) with a T-resonator. The ground plane is defected with an EBG to suppress the surface waves diffraction from the substrate edges. The antenna is printed on a Roger substrate with permittivity of 10.2 and 1 mm thickness. It is found that the proposed antenna provides a frequency resonance around 2.45 GHz and 3.5 GHz with another band between 4.6 GHz to 5.6 GHz which are very suitable for Wi-Fi and 5G networks. Nevertheless, the antenna gain is found to vary from 3.5 dBi to less than 6 dBi. The antenna size is reduced enough to λ/5 of the guided wavelength to fit an area of 12 mm×20 mm. The proposed antenna performance is controlled with two PIN diodes for reconfiguration process. The antenna frequency resonance bands are found to be well controlled by stopping the current motion at the particular band. The antenna is fabricated and tested experimentally. Finally, the simulated results are compared to those obtained from measurements to provide an excellent agreement to each other with error of less than 3%.