Design of a Novel Rectangular Patch Antenna with Planar Metamaterial Patterned Substrate

In this paper, we present a novel microstrip patch antenna specifically designed using planar metamaterial patterned substrate. It is developed based on an ordinary patch antenna, and isolated triangle gaps and crossed strip-line gaps are etched on the metal patch and ground plane respectively. This patterned substrate was demonstrated in literature to have left-handed characteristics. In this way, the wave propagating along the patch is strongly enhanced, and the working band is also significantly broadened from a few hundred MHz to a few GHz. Numerical simulation results show that this new patch antenna possesses several desirable characteristics, for instance, high efficiency, low loss and low VSWR. Also, practical experimental data show a good agreement between the simulation and measured results. It is also found that by using this antenna, most energy is radiated in the horizontal direction for specifical applications within the whole working band, while the vertical radiation being suppressed, which overthrow the characteristic of conventional patch antenna.