Miniaturized Broadband Slot-Coupled Antenna With Metamaterial Loading

A metamaterial-based broadband and high gain antenna is proposed and analysed in this paper. The proposed antenna is mainly made up of a 4×4 mushroom-cells array. We use a microstrip line through a rectangular slot cut on the ground plane to feed the antenna. Then, we use the transmission-line model to explain the resonant principle of the proposed antenna. With the parameters optimization, the dielectric-filled mushroom antenna is with a ground plane of 60×60mm and a low profile of 0.05λ0 (λ0 is the operating wavelength in free space). The simulated impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 30.2% (4.33-5.88 GHz). Moreover, the antenna can achieve a high gain variation (7.1-9.8 dBi) and good cross-polarization levels.