Optimization of passive metamaterial design with high effective medium ratio for wireless communications

Abstract

This research work investigates the impact of a novel square-shaped metamaterial structure for wireless communications. Hence, the focus of this work was to produce a compact metamaterial inspired design by constructing on a 15 × 15 mm2 sized substrate material known as Epoxy Resin Fiber (FR-4). The trial and error method was used at this stage to construct the metamaterial structure. Overall, eight distinct square-shaped (SDS) metamaterial structures were designed on the 1.6 mm thick FR-4 material. Furthermore, the electromagnetic properties of the metamaterial were discovered by adopting Computer Simulation Technology Microwave Studio (CST) software. A frequency range between 0 and 6 GHz was adopted for this numerical simulation method. Several key parametric analyses were explored in this research work to gain an optimised metamaterial design structure for the proposed application field. From numerical simulations, the proposed unit cell SDS metamaterial exhibited quadruple resonance frequencies accurately at 1.260, 1.980 (at L-band), 4.128, and 5.256 (at C-band) GHz. Simultaneously, for validation purposes, the comparison of measurement and simulation data indicates that only the 1.980 GHz resonance frequency was raised by 0.085 GHz. Meanwhile, the rest of the resonance frequencies were decreased by 0.085, 0.067, and 0.014 GHz, respectively. The simulation results were further validated by utilising different software known as High-frequency Structure Simulator software (HFSS). Both simulation results showed slight differences, and the comparison was highly acceptable. Furthermore, the proposed SDS metamaterial exhibits left-handed behaviour at the first, third, and fourth resonance frequencies. On the other hand, the peculiarity of the proposed metamaterial is that the design possesses a higher and better effective medium ratio of 15.873 for the first resonance frequency. In conclusion, the proposed SDS metamaterial met the goals of this study and can be employed in wireless communication systems.