AN ELECTRICALLY SMALL SICRR METAMATERIAL-INSPIRED DUAL-BAND ANTENNA FOR WLAN AND WIMAX APPLICATIONS

This study presents the design of an electrically small metamaterial antenna with dual-band characteristics for WLAN and WiMAX applications with coplanar ground. The proposed antenna consists of stepped-impedance closed ring resonator (SICRR) and a small rectangular patch which is designed by etching a split ring resonator (SRR) from a rectangular patch which is turn fed through main feed. Such metamaterial composite exhibits dual-band behavior with first band operating at 2.45 GHz with an impedance bandwidth (vertical bar S-11 vertical bar< 210 dB) of 8.16% while second band is resonant at 3.37 GHz having an impedance bandwidth of 23.74% respectively. The proposed antenna is designed specifically to operate at WLAN (2.5 GHz) and WiMAX (3.5 GHz) and shows compact nature with a radiating element size of 0.16 lambda(o) x 0.097 lambda(o) x 0.013 lambda(o). Equivalent circuit of proposed antenna has also been modeled which is in good agreement with the antenna behavior. The proposed structure shows end fire radiation pattern in Hplane and omni-directional radiation pattern in E-plane at all operating frequencies with low cross polarization levels. The prototype has been fabricated and experimentally tested to validate the simulation results which are in good agreement with the measured results. The antenna is suitable for use in Bluetooth, WLAN and WiMAX. (C) 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.