New development around omnidirectional electromagnetic band gap antennas

The omnidirectional electromagnetic band gap (EBG) antenna has already been presented (Freytag, L. et al., 2004 URSI EMTS Int. Symposium on EM Theory, vol.1, p.600, 2004; 2004 IEEE AP-S Int. Symp. vol.1, p.815, 2004). It is composed of a metallic center core surrounded by concentric dielectric tubes. The performance of this new type of EBG antenna is very interesting, with high gain and low side lobes. The gain variations in the azimuth plane are also very low. This antenna is suited to base stations of wireless networks in order to cover large cells with only one antenna. The paper presents the performance that can be obtained with this type of antenna in terms of gain and radiation bandwidth versus EBG materials used. We also give a method to improve the performance; the results obtained with a prototype are presented.