Gain improvement of a microstrip patch antenna using metamaterial superstrate with the zero refractive index

In this paper, a high-gain antenna based on zeroindex metamaterial (MTMs) is presented. An averaging effect over the metamaterial structure yields an effective permittivity that approaches zero at 10.2GHz, which results in a metamaterial with zero index of refraction. A comparison between the conventional patch antenna and the new metamaterial patch antenna is given. The results show that both the gain and directivity of the antenna are effectively improved based on the MTM superstrate.