A Miniaturized Dual-Band Short-Ended ZOR Antenna with Backed Ground Plane for Improved Bandwidth and Radiation Efficiency

Abstract

This paper presents a miniaturized planar dual-band short-ended metamaterial antenna with the backed ground plane to improve antenna bandwidths and radiation characteristics. The proposed dual-band metamaterial (MTM) antenna has been made up of the composite right- or left-handed transmission line (CRLH-TL) concept. Here, the backed ground plane has been employed to generate an extra coupling capacitance (CC), which shifts the ZOR frequency in the lower band while also improving ZOR matching and increasing the impedance bandwidth of the higher-order mode. In this proposed MTM antenna, interdigital capacitance (IDC) has been used in place of a simple series gap, which shifts the higher-order impedance bandwidth into a lower frequency band for second-band Wi-MAX applications (3.3–3.7 GHz). The proposed antenna offers a short-ended MTM, and hence the ZOR frequency is controlled by a series of LC lumped parameters. The proposed antenna offers dual-band behavior with measured −10 dB impedance bandwidths of 5.55% and 41.57% at centered frequencies of 2.70 GHz and 4.33 GHz, respectively. The overall electrical size of the designed antenna is 0.225λ0 × 0.144λ0 × 0.0144λ0 at ZOR (f0 = 2.70 GHz), where λ0 is the free space wavelength; therefore, it is applicable for different Wi-MAX application bands (2.5–2.7 GHz/3.3–3.8 GHz). Furthermore, the proposed dual-band MTM antenna provides compactness, low loss, stable gain, and radiation efficiency, and also offers omnidirectional radiation patterns in the E-plane and dipolar type radiation patterns in the H-plane, respectively.