Design and characterization of metamaterial antenna for mobile handset applications

Abstract

A metamaterial antenna with slots is investigated in this doctoral work for a new type of antenna for mobile application, which provides wide bandwidth, miniature size and high gain. This antenna exhibits handedness, left-handedness and right-handedness in the resonant frequency with good radiation characteristics with Composite Right/Left Handed Transmission line (CRLH TL) Split Ring Resonator (SRR) and PATCH as its central elements. The conventional microstrip antennas have a conducting patch printed on a grounded dielectric substrate and operate as resonant cavity elements. This operation, however, leads inherently to narrow impedance bandwidth, which is a barrier for microstrip antennas to be used for wireless communications. Hence, they are generally used for multi- standard wireless communication systems as they do not offer multi-band performance. Antennas for next generation wireless communication systems are required to exhibit resonance in multiple bands that are not harmonically related in order to accommodate multiple wireless standards within the same device. Additionally, they are required to have a compact form-factor and relatively high radiation efficiency.