Impedance Bandwidth and Gain Improvement of Patch Array Antenna

In this paper, a novel method for improving the impedance bandwidth and gain of a low-cost microstrip patch array antenna is introduced. The proposed method is based on realizing annular ring patch, artificial magnetic conductors (AMCs), and complimentary split ring resonators (CSRRs). The proposed antenna array is realized on a multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB) laminate. A 100x100 and a 3x3 arrays are designed based on our proposed unit cell, and compared with the conventional microstrip patch arrays to examine the validity of our proposed approach. The center frequency was chosen as 29 GHz to accommodate current mm-wave 5G applications. The proposed antenna array is a suitable candidate for the 5/6G wireless communications, internet of things (IoT), and vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications due to its wide band and relatively high gain.