Design of Planar Artificial Magnetic Conductor for Bandwidth and Gain Enhancement of Ku-Band Patch Antenna

This paper presents a planar antenna embedded with an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) surface for <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\text{Ku}{-}$</tex> band satellite applications. Two different AMCs, referred to as AMC1 and AMC2, operating at two different frequencies are implemented in a checkerboard fashion to realize high gain and wideband operation. Each of the AMCs is designed with a <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$2 \times 2$</tex> array of unit cells with a dimension of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$24 ~\text{mm} \times 24 ~\text{mm}$</tex> and has an overall footprint of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$72 ~\text{mm} \times 72 ~\text{mm}$</tex>. The simulation results reveal that the designed antenna shows bandwidths of 1.16 GHz and 2.56 GHz without and with AMC, respectively, in the Ku-band spectrum. The proposed design is validated by developing a prototype and conducting measurements. The measured results offered an impedance bandwidth of 15.1-17.2 GHz and a peak gain of 7.4 dB. Due to its large bandwidth and high gain response, the presented design may be a potential candidate for Ku-band satellite applications including broadband internet services and high data transmission.