A Directive Patch Antenna with a Metamaterial

Cover
Fangming Zhu1, Qingchun Lin2 and Jun Hu2
1 Department of Electrical Engineering
Hangzhou Teachers College
Hangzhou 310036, P. R. China
2 Center of Optical and Electromagnetic Research
Zhejiang University
Yu-Quan, Hangzhou 310027, P. R. China

Abstract- A directive patch antenna with a metamaterial cover

is proposed in this paper. Numerical results for the input return
loss, radiation pattern, and directivity of such an antenna are
presented. A comparison between the conventional patch
antenna and the new metamaterial patch antenna is given. The
results show that the directivity of the metamaterial patch
antenna is significantly improved.

I. INTRODUCTION
Metamaterials which exhibit unique properties not
existing for natural materials have attracted great interest in
the last years [1][6]. Metamaterials are also called
left-handed materials (LHM) in particular, in which the
vectors E, H and k form a left-handed system. Since the idea
proposed by Victor Veselago in 1968 [7], the availability of
such a material is taken up nowadays and extended .
A metamaterial structure composed of copper grids with
square lattice was given by Stefan Enoch et al. for directive
emission [8]. It was shown that the electromagnetic waves
in the media can be congregated in a narrow rectangle area
properly. When applied to a monopole antenna, this
structure can greatly improve the directivity of the antenna.
In this paper we present a new design of a patch antenna
system, in which a metamaterial structure is introduced as
the cover of the antenna. The metamaterial structure is
similar to [8]. The input return loss, radiation pattern, and
directivity of such a patch antenna are computed by the
full-wave simulations (Ansoft HFSS 9.0), combined with the
boundary treatment of the perfectly matched layer (PML)
[9].

II. DESIGN AND RESULTS

The schematic of the new patch antenna system is shown in
Fig. 1. The cover is made up of two metamaterial layers.
The metamaterial is composed of copper grids with a square
lattice whose period is equal to 35.4 mm (in the x-axis and
y-axis directions), and the edge of the square holes of the

0-7803-9433-X/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE.

Fig. 1. Schematic of the metamaterial patch antenna.

copper grids is 30.22 mm. The grids spacing in the z-axis

direction is 43 mm. With these parameters, when the working
frequency is at about 2.585 GHz, the Electromagnetic
waves can only propagate along a small solid angle around
the z-axis in the media by our simulations. So the working
frequency of the conventional patch antenna is selected
at 2.585 GHz. The dielectric constant of the substrate is r =
2.2. The patch of the antenna is rectangular with 45.9 mm
width and 36.8 mm length, and the thickness of the substrate is
2mm. Each metamaterial layer consists of 99 units (see Fig.
1), so the size of the substrate and the cover is
318.6 mm 318.6 mm . The distance between the substrate
and the first layer is chosen to be 43 mm, which is the same as
the one between the two layers.
The input return loss (S11) for the metamaterial patch
antenna and the conventional patch antenna are shown in Fig.
2. The figure indicates that the working frequency of the patch
antenna shifts slightly to 2.57 GHz in the presence of the
metamaterial cover. The radiation patterns, distribution of
poynting vector and the directivities are compared at the
working frequency of each type of the antennas.
Fig. 3 is the distribution of poynting vector in the E-plane
(x-z plane) for the cases of (a) the conventional patch antenna

APMC2005 Proceedings

Fig. 2. Input return loss (S11) for the conventional patch antenna and the
metamaterial patch antenna.

and (b) the metamaterial patch antenna. From this figure we

can see clearly that the directions of the poynting vector point
close to z-axis when electromagnetic waves propagate through
the metamaterial cover.
This demonstrates that the
metamaterial has an congregation effect on the radiation of the
electromagnetic waves, which is analogous to the focus effect
of convex lens on the propagation of light waves.
The metamaterial can not only congregate the radiation
remarkably when electromagnetic waves propagate through
the two layers, but also can make the waves radiate more
consistently. Fig. 4 is the distribution of the maganetic field on
the surface of the cover for the cases of (a) the first layer and (b)
the second layer from the substrate upward. The figure
obviously shows that the distribution of the maganetic field of
the second layer is more congregated to z-axis and more
regular than that of the first layer.
Fig. 5 shows the radiation patterns for the conventional
patch antenna and the metamaterial patch antenna on (a) the
E-plane and (b) the H-plane. It is shown that there is a 10 dB
improvement at the direction forward in the E-plane. And the
beam becomes more convergent. Almost the same results can
be obtained from the H-plane. The metamaterial cover can
increase the directivity from 7.7 dB (of the conventional patch
antenna) to 16.84 dB. Theoretically the aperture antennas
maximal directivity is Dmax = 4 A 0 2 . Since the area of the
aperture is A = 318.6 mm 318.6 mm , and = c0 f0 = 116.7 mm ,
so one has Dmax = 19.72 dB. The directivity of the designed
patch antenna with the metamaterial cover is very close to the
maximum directivity (19.72 dB) physically possible for this
size of antenna.

b
Fig. 3. Distribution of poynting vector in the E-plane. (x-z plane.)
(a) the conventional patch antenna. (b) the metamaterial patch antenna.

III. CONCLUSION
A new patch antenna with a metamaterial cover has been
designed. The input return loss, distribution of Poynting
vector, radiation pattern, and directivity of such an antenna
were studied. The numerical results showed that the
directivity of the patch antenna was significantly improved.
The new metamaterial patch antenna can increase the
directivity up to 16.84 dB, which is very close to the maximum
directivity (19.72 dB) physically possible for this size of
antenna.
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a
a

b
Fig. 4. Distribution of the maganetic field on the surface of the metamaterial cover.
(a) the first layer. (b) the second layer. (from the substrate upward.)

b
Fig. 5. Radiation patterns for the conventional patch antenna and the
metamaterial patch antenna. (a) the E-plane. (b) the H-plane.