A wideband gain enhancement and RCS reduction patch antenna using improved loading method

The simultaneous improvement of radiating and scattering performance of an antenna is normally considered as a contradiction. In this paper, wideband gain enhancement and radar cross section (RCS) reduction are both achieved for a conventional patch antenna by loading metamaterial in an improved way. Through a detailed investigation of loading manners, the proposed patch antenna with both improved RCS and gain is proposed and experimentally validated. Both simulated and measured results show that, compared to the original antenna, the gain of the proposed antenna is enhanced almost over the whole operation band, and the wideband (in-band and out-of-band) RCS reduction is achieved concurrently.