Further Investigation of The Feasibility of Using EBG Structure-Based Microstrip Antenna for Gain Enhancement

This paper discusses the feasibility of metamaterial-based rectangular microstrip antenna for gain and aperture efficiency enhancement. To improve the proposed antenna gain, a 3×3 array based on Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) metamaterials is implemented as a single planar array covering the radiating patch antenna. The proposed antenna is mounted on a FR4 substrate backed with a fully copper ground plane, and the radiating patch antenna is excited via SMA connector. The antenna is designed to operate at 5.8 GHz to match the WLAN and WiMAX applications. The microstrip antenna is loaded with Semi-H shaped unit cells of EBG structures. The antenna performance before and after adding the EBG structure is investigated in terms of reflection coefficient ($11), radiation pattern, bandwidth, aperture efficiency, and boresight gain. The antenna based on EBG structure is provided boresight gain enhancement from 1.8 dBi to 11.4 dBi for the frequency of interest. Since the introduction of the EBG structure with the conventional square patch antenna the proposed antenna has been achieved another achievement by enhancing the aperture efficiency from 3.2% to 29.6% and increase the bandwidth by 85 MHz and improving the Half Power Beam Width (HPBW) from 112° to 34° and 136° to 66° along the elevation (θ) and azimuth directions (φ), respectively