Design of Metamaterial-Loaded Rectangular Patch Antenna for Satellite Communication Applications

In the modern era, metamaterials are gaining enormous interest of researchers due to their peculiar electromagnetic properties. In this proposed work, a novel square Minkowski fractal-shaped metamaterial (MTM) array is designed as a superstrate of rectangular patch antenna with defected ground structure. This proposed MTM superstrate, placed at optimum height of 15mm from the designed rectangular patch antenna, enhances the gain of antenna in wireless transmission for satellite communications. The simulation results indicate that the gain of antenna increases from 6.0 to 8.9dB after loading it with 6x3x1 MTM array as a superstrate, which is of significant value for the whole wireless transmission system. Analytical and design results are obtained using 3D electromagnetic simulator termed as HFSS version 15.0. The left-handed metamaterial characteristics of the novel square Minkowski fractal-shaped unit cells are verified using S-parameter retrieval method in MATLAB R2014a. The exemplary prototype of proposed fractal metamaterial-loaded patch antenna is fabricated to confirm the experimental results. It is observed that reasonable agreement is achieved between the simulated and measured results.