Design of an ITO Based CNT Coated Transparent Nano Patch Antenna Assisted by Characteristic Mode Analysis

An Indium-doped Tin Oxide (ITO) based optically transparent nano-antenna is presented in this paper. E-shaped patch is used to resonate at 0.76 THz. Despite of high fractional bandwidth, the radiation efficiency as well as gain of the ITO based antennas are low due to high resistivity and low conductivity of ITO thin films. To overcome this limitation, carbon nano tube (CNT) is used as cover over radiating patch of the proposed antenna. As a result, due to high conductivity of CNT, along with gain and efficiency, the fractional bandwidth of the proposed antenna is also increased. Characteristic mode analysis (CMA) is carried out to provide more insightful physical characteristics of the proposed antenna. It helps to understand the structural optimization and to determine the operating frequency. Moreover, a copper based non-transparent E-shaped patch antenna, resonated at 0.76 THz is also designed to compare with the proposed antenna. The proposed antenna has fractional bandwidth of 21% which is much better than conventional patch antenna and some previous transparent antennas. A peak gain of 4.9 dBi is obtained at 0.76 THz with good radiation performance. The designed antenna is suitable for satellite communication because of its broad bandwidth, reasonable radiation efficiency, sufficient gain, light weight and compactness.