A series-fed metamaterial microstrip antenna array of broadband and high-gain

Abstract

A two-element series-fed metamaterial rectangular microstrip array of broadband and high-gain is proposed, designed, and fabricated. Arranging metamaterial patches to a series-fed array shown is demonstrated to have significant improvement of the antenna performance in terms of bandwidth broadening and gain enhancement. The array also inherits the high efficiency and low loss advantages of the metamaterial antenna working in microwave and RF frequencies. In the configuration consideration and gain characteristics analysis of the metamaterial antenna, the microstrip feedline connecting the patches is off-centered unlike an ordinary series-fed array. The design procedure is discussed in detail in the paper. The array is fabricated and experimental data are collected, where a good agreement between the simulated and measured results is obtained. As compared to the shunt-fed array, the proposed feeding network is significantly simplified so that the array dimension can be effectively reduced.