Improvement in efficiency bandwidth product of UHF antenna on truncated ground plane

In this paper a low-cost printed High Impedance Surface (HIS) is presented for applications below 500 MHz. The HIS uses printed distributed inductance components to increase the effective sheet inductance and lower the electromagnetic band gap resonance frequency. This enabled a resonance unit cell size of λ/30 × λ/30 × λ/550. A 6×8 cell (18×24cm) PCB was constructed and simulated. Surface wave propagation measurements established dual TM/TE surface modes around 340 MHz with a band gap of 1% between them. Radiation pattern measurements of a PIFA integrated with the small HIS ground plane were compared with an identical PIFA on similar sized metal ground plane and demonstrated a higher radiation efficiency bandwidth product.