Efficient design of electrically small antenna using metamaterials for wireless applications

In this paper, a simple and efficient approach is presented for the design of a compact CPW fed slot antenna loaded with complementary split ring resonators (CSRRs) and metamaterial (MTM) slab. It has been shown that the fundamental resonant frequency of the conventional slot antenna can be lowered considerably by loading CSRRs and an MTM slab. The MTM slab consists of an array of 1 × 3 single-sided periodic structure of split ring resonator unit cells. The CSRRs are incorporated on both sides of the rectangular slot and the MTM slab is placed below the dielectric substrate of the antenna to achieve miniaturization. About 56.7% miniaturization is attained for the proposed CSRRs and MTM slab loaded antenna in comparison to the conventional antenna. It is also observed that the minimal effect on the co-polarization and cross-polarization is obtained in the case of proposed antenna. The overall antenna size is 0.23 λ0 × 0.23 λ0 × 0.009 λ0, where λ0 is the free space wavelength. In this proposed antenna a high radiation efficiency of about 84.2% is obtained. Owing to the high efficiency and compact size, the proposed antenna will find broad applications in the field of wireless communication.