Analysis and Implementation of Metamaterial-Inspired Microstrip Antenna for Wireless Applications

In this paper, a novel metamaterial-inspired microstrip antenna for wireless applications is proposed. The proposed design consists of a radiating path on top and a uniformly distributed split ring-shaped metamaterial structure on the ground. The presented antenna of 50´38 mm with a thickness of 1.6 mm is printed on FR 4 substrate and resonates at 1.80 GHz. The design was fabricated and the measured results were found to be in accordance with the simulations. The goal is accomplished by loading uniformly distributed split ring-shaped metamaterial structures on the ground plane of this antenna. The results of the experiments show that using the metamaterial structure on the ground plane improved gain from 4.34 to 7.3 dB, efficiency from 5.94 to 7.8 dB compared to the conventional patch antenna. This introduction in the ground plane exhibits return loss up to –38 dB and modified the gain and directivity to 7.3 and 7.8 dB respectively. The presented antenna has 45 MHz bandwidth. The presented design is proven by simulated surface current, S parameter, VSWR, radiation pattern. We have also investigated the effect of substrate permittivity, split width, and inter-element spacing in a split ring-shaped metamaterial structure on return loss. This directive antenna is designed for the applications of wireless local area networks and other Internet of things-based applications.