Improved design of CELC meta-resonators for bandwidth improvement and miniaturization of patch antenna

Abstract

For metamaterial resonators, the essential figure of merit is its effective medium ratio (EMR), which is defined as the ratio of the resonant wavelength and lattice constant. In this paper, an altered topology of the electric-inductive–capacitive (ELC) metamaterial with an improved EMR is proposed. The proposed structure shrinks the electrical footprint of the conventional ELC resonator by accommodating additional inductance by meandering the arms of the resonator and fitting interdigital capacitors in the capacitive gap. The metamaterial properties of the proposed structure are investigated by parameter extraction, and analytical formulations are carried out for finding its resonant frequency. The proposed metamaterial structure is employed for performance enhancement and miniaturization of a standard patch antenna. A 3 × 4 array of the modified complementary resonators is etched in the ground plane of a patch antenna. A significant 293% improvement in bandwidth, with a miniaturization factor (unloaded frequency/loaded frequency) of 1.33 is achieved. The entire antenna resides in a small area of 37.5 mm × 37.5 mm. The design is substantiated both by simulation and experimental results, which complement each other. The presented design can be used for Mobile WiMAX (2.5–2.69 GHz) applications.