Ultra-wideband Antenna with Metamaterial and Periodic Structure

In this article a compact ultra-wideband (UWB) microstrip antenna basing on the planar patterned array metamaterial concept has been presented. This latter consists of loading the ordinary rectangular microstrip antenna on its metallic parts with periodic shaped patterns. The antenna is 27.48 x 31.74 x 0.787 mm(3) dimensions. The antenna patch is etched out simply with an array of crosses, and the ground plane consists of small square patches separated by slots and loaded with slits on their angles. The substrate of the antenna is Rogers RT 5880 with epsilon(r) - 2.2 and 0.787 mm thickness. This antenna after being designed, simulated and fabricated, showed enhancement in bandwidth. The measured bandwidth at the -10 dB return loss is 13.985 GHz, ranging from 4.389 GHz to 17.581 GHz, which represents 120% fractional bandwidth.