Artificial Magnetic Conductor With Electric Walls and Its Application to Small Antenna Functional on Metal Surfaces

To acquire a wide variety of data for the realization of the Internet of things (IoT), sensor modules need to be installed in various environments. However, the installable location of the modules is limited by the presence of surrounding metal objects, since the antenna performance is degraded on metal surfaces. This research focuses on the use of artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) as a small antenna that maintains its performance on metal. The characteristics of AMC consisting of few cells were determined, and the size was able to be reduced by introducing a pair of electric walls. It was also shown that with this design, the AMC itself may function as an antenna by feeding power to its patch directly. As a result, a small antenna whose performance is not degraded on metal was obtained.