High Performance Microstrip Patch Antenna Using High Refractive Index Metamaterial

A metamaterial that is formed by symmetrically etching square metal patches on both sides of a dielectric plate is proposed to realize high refractive index in the frequency range from 4 to 8 GHz. The designed metamaterial is loaded on the microstrip patch antenna as a superstrate to improve the radiation performance of antenna. The measured result show that the impedance bandwidth of S
₁₁
<; -10 dB is 690 MHz with relative bandwidth of 12.4%. The maximum gain of the proposed antenna is 13dB at 5.6 GHz. At the same time, the profile of the metamaterial loaded antenna is only 0.19λ (λ is the free space wavelength referring to the antenna central frequency).