Design of a Dual Band SNG Metamaterial Based Antenna for LTE 46/WLAN and Ka-Band Applications

Muhammad Asif,Muhammad Ibrar,Saad Hassan Kiani,Francisco Falcone,Jalal Khan,Mujeeb Abdullah,Mohammad Alibakhshikenari,Daniyal Ali Sehrai,Ernesto Limiti

doi:10.1109/access.2021.3077844

Abstract

The non-existing properties of the metamaterial surfaces can be utilized to improve the antenna radiation characteristics. In this article, a design and performance analysis of a Single Negative (SNG) metamaterial based antenna is imparted for LTE 46/WLAN and Ka-band (like in satellite communication for the receiving side) applications. The unit cell of the metamaterial surface exhibits negative permittivity and positive permeability; yielding a high magnitude positive refractive index, is used to improve and analyze the performance of the proposed monopole antenna element. The proposed SNG based antenna covers a -10 dB bandwidth from 5.35-5.69 GHz (LTE 46/WLAN) and 17.81-20.67 GHz (Ka-band). The total size of the proposed antenna element is 20.2×28.4 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> while a 2×3 SNG metamaterial surface is used at the back of the antenna element which improves the gain from 4.52 dB to 9.13 dB for the desired Ka band and 1.17 to 5.04 dB for the LTE 46/WLAN band. Furthermore, for the LTE 46/WLAN frequency band, the impedance matching also gets better, resulting in the return loss improvement from -11 dB to -32.4 dB. Moreover, the radiation efficiency is also improved by more than 10 % for the Ka band after employing the SNG metamaterial surface. The measured results fall in good agreement with the simulated one and make the proposed SNG metamaterial based antenna design competent for the LTE 46/WLAN and Ka-band (like in satellite communication for the receiving side) applications.

Highlights

T HE periodic structures holding a property of negative permittivity and permeability, creating a negative refractive index or a high magnitude positive refractive index have been able to attract the attention of the researcher due to their non-existing properties in the natural materials; named metamaterials [1]-[3]
As the Single Negative (SNG) metamaterial is that one with the epsilon negative or mu negative, while the metamaterial with the epsilon and mu, both negative is called a double negative (DNG) and when both are positive, so it is named as double positive (DPS)
Each type of the metamaterial has a specific effect on the performance of an antenna in terms of gain, efficiency, polarization and many more, when it comes in the close proximity of it as a ground plane, reflector and superstrate etc., [5]-[7]

Summary

INTRODUCTION

T HE periodic structures holding a property of negative permittivity and permeability, creating a negative refractive index or a high magnitude positive refractive index have been able to attract the attention of the researcher due to their non-existing properties in the natural materials; named metamaterials [1]-[3]. Metamaterials are capable to focus the refracted electromagnetic waves in a specific direction due to their nonexisting features in the natural materials like DNG, DPS and SNG [12] They can be utilized for the monopole antennas to improve the performance in terms of gain, bandwidth, directivity and for the miniaturization purpose. Reference [16] presents an antenna with a monopole configuration operating at the lower portion of the spectrum i.e., 2.7 GHz. The gain achieved by the authors at the desired frequency band is 3.71 dB which is enhanced by 2.75 dB further after incorporating a metamaterial absorber. The use of SNG metamaterial gives and improvement of 1.5 dB in the gain Likewise, another type of metamaterials i.e., electromagnetic band gap (EBG) is used for the antenna operating at 3.163.36 GHz frequency band [19].

GEOMETRY AND DESIGN PROCEDURE

Findings

CONCLUSION