Analysis of gain enhancement in antenna arrays covered with metamaterial superstrates using transmission line modeling

Reciprocity theorem in conjunction with transmission line analogy and the cavity model is employed to develop a very fast analytical solution for the radiation fields of microstrip antenna arrays covered with magneto-dielectric superstrates. The superstrate is designed using broadside coupled split ring resonator (SRR) inclusions and is placed at approximately one-tenth of a wavelength apart from a 4×1 microstrip patch array operating at 2.2 GHz. Good agreement is obtained between the proposed analytical formulation and full-wave numerical simulations. The proposed formulation requires only 2.5 % of the time acquired by full-wave analysis. A gain increase of about 3.5 dB is achieved after covering the antenna array with the engineered magnetic superstrate.