ACS-fed Electrically Small Metamaterial Inspired Dual Polarized Antenna Enabled with Staircase Radiating Strips for UMTS/WiMAX/WLAN Applications

This work exploits the design and development of an electrically small and low profile metamaterial (MTM) based triple band antenna for the use in modern wireless application systems. The antenna basically consists of an asymmetrically co-planar strip on which the composite right /left -handed transmission line is loaded. Due to the MTM behaviour, the intended antenna obtains a smaller size of 0.10λ
₀
×0.14λ
₀
×0.008λ
₀
at the zeroth order resonance frequency of 2.15 GHz with an overall physical dimension of 14× 20× 1.27 mm
³
. The antenna exhibits triple band behaviour at 2.15 GHz (2.12-2.17 GHz), 3.2 (2.98-3.49) GHz and 6 GHz (5.2-6.90 GHz) with a percentage bandwidth of 2.32%, 15.93% and 28.09% for the three frequencies respectively with an axial ratio bandwidth of 5.6% from (6.24-6.6 GHz) are observed at the third band. The intended antenna exhibits a simulated gain of 2.2 dBi, 2.1 dBi and 4.59 dBi at the three centre frequencies and radiation efficiency of 89%, 90% and 93% is obtained for the three bands respectively. An area reduction of approximately 29% is observed in comparison with a conventional antenna. Due to the excellent bandwidth and radiation characteristics with good level of compactness, the antenna is suitable for working in 2.2 GHz UMTS, 3.6/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN, and 3.3/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX applications.