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A High Gain Antenna With An Optimized Metamaterial Inspired Superstrate
A High Gain Antenna With An Optimized Metamaterial Inspired Superstrate
Neff =
1 Im ln S21
+ 2m
k0 deff 1 0 S11 R01 upper limit of the integral is usually chosen to be a reasonably large
value in practice [12].
0iRe ln 1 0 SS2111 R01 ; Fig. 2 shows the modeling of the structure in CST Microwave Studio.
Due to periodicity, one unit cell with perfect electric conducting and
m = 0; 1; 2 . . . (2) perfect magnetic conducting boundary conditions in the x- and the
y -directions is sufficient to calculate the scattering parameters below
where deff is the thickness of the virtual homogeneous slab, which the frequencies where diffraction occurs. The structure is terminated in
replaces the real geometry, k0 is the free space wave impedance, and perfectly matched absorbers in the z -direction. The scattering param-
R01 = (Zeff 0 1)=(Zeff + 1). eters are calculated over the frequency range of 0–20 GHz, therefore
It shall be noted here that the real part of the complex refractive the refractive index neff can be accurately calculated in the 10 GHz
index in (2) has multiple solutions. However, due to the uniqueness of frequency region with the extraction algorithm. The phase of the S -pa-
the material parameters, just one solution can have physical meaning. rameters is de-embedded to the surface of the structure in the negative
In [12], the uniqueness of the refractive index is enforced with the z -direction, and to 1.6 mm above the surface in the positive z -direc-
Kramers-Kronig [13] relations. The real part of the effective refractive tion. This is to account for a reasonable separation between multiple
index neff can be extracted from the corresponding imaginary part layers of the structure when they are used as superstrates in antenna
eff without ambiguity applications.
The values of geometry parameters obtained from the optimization
( ) = 1 + 2 P ( )
1
!eff ! procedure for the zero-index metamaterial unit cell are summarized in
neff !0 d!
0 0
! 2 ! 02
(3) Table I.
The simulation results of the S -parameters are further validated by
where P is the principal value of the improper integral. Since it is not measurements. Fig. 3 shows the measurement setup for S11 and S21
possible to know the value of eff over the complete spectrum, the of the metamaterial superstrate under normal incidence. The fabricated
6020 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 4. The simulated and measured magnitude of S parameters of the meta- Fig. 6. The extracted relative permittivity and permeability of the metamaterial
material unit cell with respect to the frequency. superstrate with respect to the frequency using the effective medium theory.
j
ABS
S11 j 0 j
focus the beam towards the broadside direction. It is observed in the
11 j
figure that the metamaterial unit cell with one, two, and three layers
CAL
arg(S11 ) = arg(S11 ) arg(S11PEC ) ;
0
0 0 (4) all have a considerably wide bandwidth. Particularly, the three-layer
PEC
CAL = S21 S21 0
j j 0 stacking structure has the widest operating frequency range from 9.45
S21 V OID PEC
S21 j S21 j 0 j j GHz to 10.7 GHz, which yields a bandwidth of 12.5%.
CAL
arg(S21 ) = arg(S21 ) arg(S21V OID );
0
0 (5)
III. HIGH GAIN ANTENNA DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT USING
where S11 and S21 are the original measured S -parameters, and the
0 0 ZERO-INDEX SUPERSTRATE
superscripts V OID , P EC , and ABS denote for S -parameters used The metamaterial structure presented in the last section is employed
for calibration with a void hole, a PEC reflector and an absorber, re- as a superstrate for a patch antenna operating at 10 GHz to enhance
spectively. Moreover, the measured time-domain field is windowed to the antenna gain of the broadside. Fig. 8(a) shows the side view of the
alleviate the error caused by the multi-path effect due to the measure- constructed antenna along with the metamaterial superstrate. The su-
ment setup. perstrate consists of three layers, each layer having 7 by 7 unit cells
Figs. 4 and 5 show the simulated and measured scattering parameters in both x- and y -directions as shown in Fig. 1(b). To each of these di-
S11 and S21 . The magnitude of the simulated S -parameters matches rections, additional rim space on the superstrates with 10 mm width is
very well with the measurement. The discrepancy observed between reserved for supporting purpose. Different superstrate layers are sepa-
the simulated and measured phase is mainly induced by the alignment rated with air gaps of h2 = 1:6 mm. FR4 materials with "r = 4:2 are
of the measurement setup. added between layers and along the extra rim space to offer a solid sup-
Fig. 6 presents the calculated effective relative electric permittivity port. The superstrate is fixed above the antenna using four plastic bolts
and relative magnetic permeability of the metamaterial extracted from at the corners. The spacing from the radiation source to the bottom in-
the simulated S parameters. It is shown that around a fairly wide range terface of the superstrate is h1 = 23 mm. At this distance the near-field
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2012 6021
TABLE II
DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE UNIT CELLS OF THE SUBSTRATE AFTER
OPTIMIZATION
Fig. 8. (a) The side view of the patch antenna along with the metamaterial
superstrate; (b) the top view of the patch antenna. Fig. 9. The fabricated patch antenna with optimized zero-index metamaterial
superstrates.
coupling between the superstrate and the patch antenna is not signif-
icant. Therefore, the characteristics of the original patch antenna, i.e.,
resonant frequency and bandwidth, are practically unaffected by the
presence of the superstrate.
The symmetric patch antenna used as a radiation source is printed
onto a 62 mm 2 62 mm Rogers 4003 substrate with thickness of 0.8
mm and relative permittivity "r = 3:55, which is identical to that of
the superstrate layers. The center of the patch is aligned with the center
of the substrate. The patch and the superstrate are positioned in such a
way that the longest strip of the metamaterial unit cell and the electric
field created by the patch are aligned in the same direction.
To validate the beam-focusing ability of the metamaterial superstrate
within the working frequency range, three different patch antennas are
simulated, each resonating at 9.6 GHz, 10 GHz, and 10.6 GHz, re- Fig. 10. The simulated S with respect to frequency at the input of three meta-
spectively. All the patches are fed by a microstrip line with 1.6 mm material antennas, working at 9.6 GHz, 10 GHz, and 10.6 GHz, respectively, and
width, corresponding to an input impedance of 50
. The feed and the measured S of the fabricated metamaterial antenna working at 10.6 GHz.
the patch are connected with a quarter-wavelength line with a length
d1 = 4:2 mm and a width of 0.2 mm for impedance matching. The 10 the parameter c in a unit cell which is a and b cells away from the cen-
dB return-loss bandwidth is 3% and the gain at the resonance is 5 dBi tral one in the x- and the y -directions (e.g., c12 denotes for the unit cells
for all three antennas. 1 cell away from the center in the x-direction and 2 cells away from the
To implement the aforementioned metamaterial superstrate for center in the y -direction), and co denotes for the parameter c in the ar-
broadside antenna gain enhancement, it is important to notice that the rays of cells along the rim of the superstrate. It can be observed that the
effective material parameters extracted in Figs. 6 and 7 are subject to parameters in cells at the corner of the rim deviates most significantly
normal incident waves. For most of the unit cells on the superstrate from the initial values, due to the existence of strong oblique waves.
except the central ones, an oblique wave from the radiation source is To validate the result of the simulations, the proposed antenna
impinged onto the cell. In this case, the effective material parameter resonating at 10.6 GHz and the superstrate were fabricated according
may differ from what is extracted using the assumption of normal to the optimized design parameters in Table II and assembled. Fig. 9
incidence. To account for this problem, a second optimization is shows the fabricated antenna structure, whose S11 as well as the
performed with respect to each unit cell of the superstrate to maximize realized gain and radiation patterns are measured.
the broadside gain of the antenna. Fig. 10 shows the simulated jS11 j for three optimized metamaterial
The design parameter space of the optimization is selected by a sensi- antennas working at 9.6 GHz, 10 GHz, and 10.6 GHz, as well as the
tivity analysis. It is determined that for each unit cell, the most sensitive measured S11 of the fabricated metamaterial antenna working at 10.6
geometric parameter on the effective refractive index is the parameter GHz. It is observed that the simulated resonance for the 10.6 GHz an-
c in Table I. Therefore, the optimized parameter space includes c in tenna matches the measurement very well. In Fig. 11, it is shown that
each unit cell of the superstrate. The values of the geometry parame- for antennas with all three resonances, the broadside gain of the meta-
ters presented in Table I are used for each unit cell as the initial values material antenna is significantly increased at their respective resonance.
of the optimization procedure and the broadside gain of the antenna at For the antenna working at 10.6 GHz, the simulation matches the mea-
10 GHz is set as the target function to be maximized. The built-in op- surement very well.
timizer of CST is used for the optimization process. The optimized metamaterial antenna works at 10 GHz as a simulated
Table II shows the design parameters of the unit cell after optimiza- broadside gain of 12.8 dBi, 7.8 dBi higher from the original patch an-
tion for the 10.6 GHz antenna, as an example. The subscript cab denotes tenna. For the metamaterial antenna working at 10.6 GHz, the gain is
6022 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2012
Fig. 11. The realized broadside gain with respect to frequency of three meta- IV. CONCLUSIONS
material antennas, working at 9.6 GHz, 10 GHz, and 10.6 GHz, compared to
their respective reference patch antennas, and the measured gain of the meta- We have proposed a low refractive index metamaterial inspired struc-
material antenna working at 10.6 GHz. ture as a superstrate for antenna gain enhancement. Both simulations
and measurements have shown that the effective refractive index of the
metamaterial under normal incidence is close to zero over a frequency
range from 9.45 GHz to 10.7 GHz. To validate the superstrate, High-di-
rectivity antennas consisting of a patch antenna and three layers of
the metamaterial superstrate working within this frequency range have
been simulated and fabricated. The superstrate has been optimized to
take into consideration the oblique incidence from the radiation source.
The simulated and measured results have shown significant gain en-
hancement within the working frequency range of the superstrate. Es-
pecially, the metamaterial antenna working at 10 GHz has a 7.8 dBi
and gain enhancement at broadside compared to the original patch an-
tenna, which is 80% of the radiation of a perfect radiating surface with
the same area.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are thankful to Dr. A. Khurrum Rashid for his contribu-
tion in measurements.
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Gmax = 4
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