A compact super wideband antenna with stable and improved radiation using super wideband frequency selective surface

Abstract

A small bulb shaped planar super wideband (SWB) antenna with the dimension of 35 × 30 × 0.8 mm3 operating over 2.8–40 GHz (14.28:1) spectrum is proposed. The antenna offers a fractional bandwidth of 173.8%, bandwidth dimension ratio (BDR) of 1904, measured peak gain of 5.5 dBi and radiation efficiency of 80%. The proposed antenna is unified to an unique SWB frequency selective surface (FSS), having unit cell size equal to 0.114λL × 0.114λL × 0.008λL (λL is the wavelength at 3.1 GHz). The FSS operates in 3.05 to 35.92 GHz spectrum (168.7%) with transmission level S21 ≤ -10 dB and reflection S11 near 0 dB for TE and TM modes of polarization with adequate angular stability. The linearly decreasing S11 phase of FSS makes it appropriate for radiation improvement of the bulb shaped antenna in the broadside direction by placing the antenna at the top of FSS with an optimal air gap of 19 mm. The SWB ‘antenna-FSS’ exhibits wideband response over 3–36.2 GHz (169.4%) spectrum, including commercial ultra-wideband (3.1–10.6 GHz), ISM bands (5.725–5.875 GHz & 24–24.25 GHz), WiMAX (3.3–3.7 GHz), IEEE 802.11 WLAN bands, S-C-X-Ku-Ka bands, and 5G NR (n77, n78, n79, n257, n258, n261) bandwidth with stable and adequate gain of 5.2–7.16 dBi and an acceptable radiation efficiency.