Gain Enhancement of 3-D Printed Wideband Cavity Antenna for WLAN

This paper presents a 3-D printed wideband cavity antenna with enhanced gain operating at the 5.8 GHz Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) frequency. The bandwidth of the cavity antenna is 1 GHz resulting from the slots created at the upper side of the antenna structure. The bandwidth of the cavity antenna with metasurface is 5.07 GHz - 6.08 GHz indicating that there is no change in the total antenna bandwidth post the metasurface placement inside the cavity. The metasurface enhances the antenna gain by 2.4 dB at 5.8 GHz. Through the flexibility provided by 3-D printing, the metasurface layer can be attached to the cavity structure giving the design much-needed robustness and strength. It proves the feasibility of using 3D printing technology in antenna design.