IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

Research Article

ISSN 1751-8725
Identical performance from distinct Received on 28th October 2015
Revised on 5th May 2016
conventional electromagnetic bandgap Accepted on 13th May 2016
doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2015.0697
structures www.ietdl.org

S.M. Shakil Hassan 1 ✉, Md. Nurunnabi Mollah 2

1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Eastern University, Dhanmondi,
Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh
2
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Khulna, Bangladesh
✉ E-mail: shakil.bq@gmail.com

Abstract: A versatile investigation has been accomplished on the performances of circular, square, triangular and
hexagonal electromagnetic bandgap structures (EBGSs). The authors have observed that different EBGSs having an
identical etching area perform identically. Therefore, a new definition of the filling factor (FF) has been proposed that
yields an identical value of FF and identical performance for various electromagnetic bandgap shapes. After that, a
rigorous investigation is carried out to find the optimum value of FF. Ring EBGS; furthermore, is presented as an
effective means to improve overall performance. A detail characterisation of these designs is presented in this study,
which is missing in the open literature. After meticulously analysing the behaviour of annular ring and square ring
patterns, an equation of transforming a ring pattern to its equivalent solid shape (i.e. circular or square) has been
established in terms of effective FF. It is observed that ring EBGS and corresponding solid shape fulfil the conviction of
identical performance too.

1 Introduction
Electromagnetic bandgap structures (EBGSs) are periodic patterns
etched at the beneath of a microstrip transmission line (T-line) to
prohibit the propagation of electromagnetic waves at certain
microwave or millimetre wave frequencies [1–3]. Due to such
distinguished band rejection property and ease of fabrication
offered by EBGSs, they have found many potential applications in
microwave engineering. These structures are being extensively
used in the planner microwave active and passive devices such as
in patch antennas to suppress the surface waves [4] and to
suppress harmonics in bandpass filter [5]. Periodic bandgap
structures, firstly, were introduced as photonic bandgap (PBG)
structures and have found satisfactory use in optical field [4–6];
but EBGSs of different shapes are now being used popularly in
amplifiers, phased array antennas, waveguide, band-stop and
low-pass filters [7–11]. Owing to such a wide field of applications,
EBGSs have achieved prospective research interest around the
world.
EBGSs at the ground plane, basically, cause slow wave inside the
electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) materials that reject certain
frequencies depending on the period, lattice structure, and shape of
EBG elements. In this paper, they are classified into two distinct
types based on shapes – firstly, conventional EBGS; and secondly,
advanced EBGS. Conventional EBG pattern refers to the regular
shapes found in geometry and provides single designing variable
(e.g. circular and square shapes) [12, 13]. Advanced EBGS, in
contrast, offers too many controlling parameters; for example –
dumbbell shape EBGS (widely known as defected ground
structure [14–16]), fork-like shape [17]. Annular ring EBGS [18],
in addition, has to be elucidated since it is not a regular
geometrical shape and it has two controlling variables. Detailed
analysis of annular ring EBGS does not exist in the open literature
so far.
In the open literature, so many designs and shapes of EBG
elements have been studied by researchers over the period (e.g.
circular, square, triangular, annular ring etc.); but all of them have
considered those shapes as an individual pattern in terms of their
performance. However, in this paper, we have discussed that all of
them show the identical property if they are of the same size.
Hence, despite characterising them differently we have proposed a
generalised standard to design and study. The novelty of this paper
is confined in several sections: providing the universal definition
of filling factor (FF) for all conventional patterns mentioned
earlier; introducing and explaining two differently aligned
triangular and hexagonal EBGS; providing a rigorous discussion
on ring EBGS in general and correcting a few prior assumption to
study the shape and proposing novel square ring EBGS; linking
and finding analogy of the ring EBGS with conventional shapes
and proving their obedience and disobedience to the identical
performance concept. Performances of hexagonal, square and
equilateral triangular EBG patterns have been studied as
conventional shapes and those are compared with the performance
of circular EBGS. To describe the nature of the annular ring and
square ring EBG patterns, the concept of the etching ratio (ER)
has been introduced which was demonstrated by aspect ratio (AR)
earlier in [18]. After providing the generalised definition of ER, a
relation between ER and AR has been developed. Moreover, an
expression of calculating effective FF (EFF) has been proposed in
which it is possible to design a solid shape of EBGS that shows
similar performance to the corresponding ring EBGS. Annular and
square ring EBGSs have been added to the family of conventional
EBG pattern with satisfactory illustration. We, therefore, redefined
FF universally for all conventional patterns. Ring EBGS, however,
has been put forward for getting better performance.
2 Theories of conventional EBGS
Circular EBGS is the most common conventional pattern shown in
Fig. 1a. It has versatile use and its many features and designs for
getting improved performance have been declared in [18–20]. It
was the fundamental pattern during the development of theories in
the early stage of EBG assisted microwave filter designing
technique. The primary design parameters to achieve desired
stopband characteristic of circular EBG pattern are the period (i.e.
inter element spacing, a) and the size of the EBGS (i.e. radius, r).
The centre frequency is determined by the period and the insertion

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Fig. 1 EBGSs assisted microstrip T-lines and S-parameter performance
a Circular
b Square
c S21 parameter of circular and two square EBGSs (b = 2.65 mm and b = 4.70 mm) that
show limitation of traditional definition of FF
loss (IL) level is closely associated with the size of the circle and the
number of EBG patterns used. The expression to calculate the period
for a given f0 is found from Bragg’s condition [8].
To compute the size of the circular EBGS it is important to know
about another essential parameter called filling factor. Determination
of the optimum size is essential to obtain appreciable performance.
FF is defined as the volumetric ratio of one EBG element to a unit
cell [12]. However, for circular EBGS FF is expressed as r/a,
where r is the radius of the circular EBGS and a is the period of
EBGSs [12]. FF is important to determine the radius of the circle –
ripple height (RH) and IL (IL or S21) level merely depend on the
size and the number of EBGSs. For square shape EBGS in [13],
FF had been expressed as b/a, where b is the arm of the square shape.
In this investigation, a dielectric substance with relative dielectric
constant, ɛr = 2.45 and thickness, h = 31 mil (0.7874 mm) is used to
realise all the designs; hence, the effective dielectric constant and the
width of the standard 50 Ω transmission line are ɛe = 2.068 and
w = 2.264 mm, respectively. Filters with circular and square
EBGSs in the ground plane below the microstrip T-line is shown
in Fig. 1, where seven EBGSs are used with the period, a = 10.5 mm
to achieve f0 at 10 GHz. Size of circular EBGS is r = 2.625 mm
that makes an etching area (A) = 21.65 mm2 and FF = 0.25, since
0.25 had been reported as the optimum value of FF in [12]. Now
considering FF = 0.25 for square EBGS, we have b = 2.625 mm
(using FF = b/a); thus etching area of EBGS becomes only 6.89 mm2
that does not result palpable stopband and IL level because of the
insufficient etching area shown in Fig. 1c. Therefore, in Fig. 1c,
the performance of square EBGS with the same area (i.e. b =
4.653 mm, FF = 0.45) is compared, where much congruent result
is observed.
Triangular and hexagonal EBGSs, however, need expressions to
calculate FF for each. Using the method of inspection, FF of
triangular and hexagonal EBGSs might be considered as c/a and
d/a, respectively, here c and d are arm length of triangle and
hexagon, respectively; thus the values of FF would become 0.67
for triangular EBGS and 0.28 for hexagonal EBGS having etching
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area 21.65 mm2. FF, therefore, requires a generalised definition,
which will provide identical values for different EBG patterns
when etching areas are identical; since it is observed that the
performance merely depend on the etching area of EBGSs.
3 Proposed generalised definition of FF
In this section, a generalised definition of the FF has been proposed
in terms of etching area that provides identical values for all sorts of
conventional EBGS. The proposed definition of FF is the ratio of an
etching area of an EBG element (i.e. area of EBGS) to the area of a
unit cell


Area of an EBGS AEBG
FF =
 (1)
Area of a unit cell ACell
where a unit cell is defined as a square area at the bottom of the
T-line having the arm length of a (i.e. Acell = a 2), and AEBG is
etching or occupied area by an EBGS. We have defined FF in
terms of area instead of the volume, since the thickness of a
particular substrate has the same effect for all kinds of EBG
pattern and copper coating at the surface is very thin. Moreover,
wave propagation through the T-line gets disturbed depending on
the size and shape of EBG elements and on the period, a, instead
of the volume. Equation (1), moreover, provides identical values
of FF for different EBG patterns having identical area and a.
Different types of conventional EBGSs with the proposed formula
of FF and its maximum value are specified in Fig. 2.
4 Different conventional EBGS
Conventional pattern, generally, refers to the regular shapes available
in the basic geometry (e.g. circular, square, triangular etc.). Precisely,
they have a single variable in sketching the shape; thus offer a single
parameter in modifying the performance. The parameters of circular
and square shapes, for example are radius (r) and arm length (b),
respectively.
4.1 Various conventional EBGSs assisted designs
The performances of circular, equilateral triangular, square and
hexagonal EBG shapes (shown in Fig. 2) on the ground plane of
the T-line are inspected. Every design, in this section, has the
design parameters (e.g. specifications of T-line) akin to that of
circular EBGS assisted design described earlier and the values of
FF are obtained from the proposed formula stated in (1). Basically,
the structure parameters are chosen to have FF = 0.20 (nearly 0.25
according to old method) and the number of resonators is seven in
all designs which is an arbitrary choice to get just an appreciable
performance from the designs – effect of number of EBGSs is
rigorously studied in [21], where it is shown that increased number
of EBG patterns at the ground plan happens wider rejection band
and higher IL (i.e. deeper rejection band). Moreover, the size
of the EBGS (i.e. FF) is a vital factor as well – if the size is
bigger, the IL will be higher too. Therefore, the designers have to
choose the size and number of EBGS rationally. In the later
discussion, we have determined the optimum value of FF.
Besides, there are two different types of alignments available for
triangular shape and hexagonal shape namely horizontal (H ) and
vertical (V ) alignments shown in Fig. 2, hence the alignment is
denoted with ‘H’ and ‘V’ within the first bracket. Designing
circular and square shapes are easy with provided geometrical
facilities in the software, but triangular and hexagonal shapes are
designed by using the feature of circular EBGS for 3 points and 6
points, respectively, instead of 16 or more points of a circular
pattern. Therefore to determine a particular size (i.e. arm of the
triangle and hexagon) calculating the radius of circumcircle is the
only option for both. In Fig. 2, we have established relations with
the well-defined geometrical relations of circumcircle of these two
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016
Fig. 2 Different conventional EBGSs and proposed formulas of FF
Max. is the abbreviation of maximum
Rc and Rd are the radius of the circumcircle of triangle and hexagon, respectively

shapes. However, the horizontal and vertical alignments are
particularly done by rotating the pattern by angle.
4.2 Performances of various conventional EBG patterns
Performances have been found to be similar to identical FF; but a
little shifting of centre frequency is observed, which is negligibly
small. Besides, optimum values of FF for various f0 are proposed
in this section.
4.2.1 Identical performance from identical etching area:
Table 1 emphasises that performances of various conventional
EBGSs with similar FF are very similar with a slight shift of the
centre frequency. From Fig. 3, it is observed that the curves of IL
parameter (i.e. S21) of different designs are very congruent.
Performances of circular, hexagonal (H ) and hexagonal (V ) have
overlaid each other. Other shapes, however, have shown negligible
deviation in S21 and centre frequency – despite that all the EBG
patterns have performed identically having identical FF (i.e. area).
4.2.2 Anticipated optimum FF: In Table 2, performances of
square shape EBGS assisted designs are investigated for numerous
values of f0 to determine the optimum value of FF. From Table 2
and Fig. 4, we have observed that the higher the FF the larger the
etching area and the larger the etching area the higher the IL level,
stopband width and RH, hence a trade-off is required to choose
the optimum value. From Table 2, however, the anticipated
optimum values of FF are 0.15, 0.20 and 0.25 for centre

Table 1 Performance of various EBGSs for different values of FF

FF EBG patterns −20 dB SBW, GHz f0, GHz S21 at f0, −dB −3dB fc, GHz −10 dB PBW, GHz Max. RH, −dB

0.10 circular 0.00 10.58 18.56 8.77 8.64 1.17

square 0.00 10.47 18.85 8.65 8.44 1.21
triangle (H) 0.00 10.34 19.97 8.52 8.42 1.33
triangle (V) 0.00 10.38 20.00 8.54 8.45 1.33
hexagon (H) 0.00 10.56 19.37 8.70 8.56 1.24
hexagon (V) 0.00 10.56 19.36 8.70 8.55 1.25
0.20 circular 4.40 10.67 36.42 7.87 7.76 3.05
square 4.40 10.42 37.40 7.64 7.50 3.20
triangle (H) 4.43 10.38 37.30 7.60 7.51 3.10
triangle (V) 4.45 10.25 38.30 7.55 7.50 3.22
hexagon (H) 4.43 10.65 36.64 7.85 7.85 3.10
hexagon (V) 4.43 10.61 36.77 7.84 7.94 3.15
0.30 circular 5.70 10.75 40.00 7.54 6.60 4.30
square 5.70 10.44 41.00 7.24 6.30 4.60
triangle (H) 5.65 10.42 38.73 7.26 6.30 4.53
triangle (V) 5.52 10.17 39.53 7.05 7.07 5.06
hexagon (H) 5.76 10.77 39.71 7.53 6.60 4.60
hexagon (V) 5.75 10.70 40.10 7.30 6.70 4.96
0.40 circular 6.20 10.80 38.00 7.30 6.68 6.07
square 6.25 10.40 39.27 7.00 6.30 5.86
triangle (H) 6.34 10.56 35.06 7.02 6.36 6.10
triangle (V) 5.67 09.90 36.25 6.80 6.80 6.67
hexagon (H) 6.22 10.80 37.60 7.30 6.66 6.00
hexagon (V) 6.22 10.70 38.12 7.30 5.42 5.80

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Fig. 3 S21 performances of different conventional EBG structures assisted
microstrip T-lines having etching area identical and FF = 0.20

Table 2 Performance of square EBGS for different FFs at various f0

Expected FF −20 dB S21 at −3 dB −10 dB Max. RH
f0, GHz SBW, f0, fc, PBW, RH, after
GHz −dB GHz GHz −dB SBW,
−dB

6.0 0.05 0.00 15.15 5.32 4.70 1.32 2.40

0.10 2.15 33.54 4.80 4.17 2.73 5.50
0.15 3.05 45.97 4.20 4.04 3.63 8.42
0.20 3.62 49.32 4.30 4.35 3.60 10.75
0.25 4.01 48.67 3.88 3.76 2.06 11.16
0.30 4.28 47.87 3.92 3.16 3.73 13.40
0.35 4.46 46.10 4.02 3.20 4.64 16.18
0.40 4.56 44.65 3.60 3.15 3.03 18.40
10.0 0.05 0.00 03.63 9.83 9.15 0.36 1.16
0.10 0.00 17.64 8.65 8.44 1.21 3.55
0.15 3.25 29.56 8.08 7.04 2.31 6.07
0.20 4.40 37.20 7.64 6.80 3.20 8.00
0.25 5.17 40.87 7.34 6.66 4.13 10.10
0.30 5.70 41.41 7.24 6.30 4.60 11.70
0.35 6.02 40.80 7.04 6.43 5.50 13.50
0.40 6.25 39.72 7.00 6.30 5.86 16.24 Fig. 4 For square EBG structure
14.0 0.05 0.00 02.14 14.34 13.60 0.17 0.34
0.10 0.00 11.30 13.00 12.60 0.42 1.73 a FF against maximum stopband and cutoff frequency
0.15 1.56 21.17 12.17 11.94 1.02 3.43 b FF against IL level and maximum RH
0.20 3.70 29.56 11.57 11.45 1.85 5.50
0.25 5.15 36.65 11.10 11.00 2.74 7.50
0.30 6.05 41.40 10.80 09.50 3.55 9.15
0.35 6.72 45.06 10.53 09.36 4.17 10.74
0.40 7.13 47.77 10.33 10.37 5.06 12.00

frequencies 6, 10 and 14 GHz, respectively. The optimum value of

FF is not fixed; rather it depends on the f0 for which the filter is
being designed and the choice of the designer. It is observed that
for lower f0 the optimum FF is smaller and for higher f0 the value
is higher.
In essence, since identical performance is observed for identical
FF; hence, proposed formula is generalised for all sorts of
conventional EBG patterns. The proposed definition is verified for
Fig. 5 Ring EBGS at the ground plane of microstrip T-line
numerous designing frequencies in Table 2.
a Annular ring
b Square ring

5 Special conventional EBGS: ring EBG pattern

Two types of ring EBG patterns are investigated in this section –
annular ring and square ring shown in Fig. 5. Annular ring EBGS
was introduced in previous researches [15, 22], but square ring EBGS
is being introduced for the first time as a new shape. Ring EBG
patterns, actually, offer two variables – dimension denoting variable
of the outer circumference and that of the inner circumference (e.g.
radius of the outer circumference and radius of the inner
circumference for annular ring EBGS). The performance of ring
patterns depends on both parameters. However, while investigating
the performances, we have kept similar specifications of T-line, a and
number of resonators in designing the microstrip circuit.
(i) Annular ring pattern: Annular ring patterned EBGS has been
described with inner radius (ri), outer radius (ro) and AR [15]. AR
is defined as the ratio of ri to ro; where 0 < AR < 1. However, it
can be depicted by the diameter of the outer and inner circular
circumferences (i.e. do and di, respectively) instead their radiuses,
shown in Fig. 5a.

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(ii) Square ring pattern: Square ring EBG pattern is one of the novel
patterns in this paper that is depicted in Fig. 5b with the inner arm
length (bi), outer arm length (bo). It is observed that square ring
EBGS offers the same features that are provided by the annular
ring EBGS. AR, therefore, can be defined as the ratio of bi to bo.
Unlike annular ring EBGS, designing the square ring pattern is
more complicated due to not having any built in options to design
it. Therefore, to design this shape we had to use the option of
designing rectangular geometry since the square ring is a
composite of four rectangles – we had to calculate with, length
and the offset values in placing those rectangles to constitute the
ring shape of desired size.
Since, there are two different types of ring EBG patterns;
therefore, it is necessary to establish generalised theories that can
explain the facts and features of both ring EBGSs.
5.1 Universal theory of ring EBG patterns
In this paper, we have explained the behaviours of ring EBGS in
terms of ER, which is formally defined as the ratio of genuine
etched area to the area occupied by the EBG element
Genuine etching area of a ring EBGS
ER =
 , (2)
Area occupied by the EBGS AEBG
Fig. 6 For annular ring and circular EBGSs having EFF corresponding to the ER of those annular ring EBGSs
a ER against maximum stopband and cutoff frequency
b ER against IL level and maximum RH
c Comparison of stopband performance
d Comparison of IL level at 10 GHz
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where genuine etching area can be achieved by the difference of the
area occupied by the outer and the inner circumferences (i.e.
pro2 − pri2 and b2o − b2i for the annular ring and square ring
EBGSs, respectively). From the proposal in (2), therefore, we derive
 2
xi
ER = 1 − , (3)
xo
where xi and xo are the parameters that determine the area of inner
and outer circumferences respectively; precisely, xi = ri, bi and xo =
ro, bo. Therefore, AR can be expressed as
xi
AR = . (4)
xo
Characterising ring EBGS with ER instead AR is more appreciable
since the maximum value of ER is 1 (when xi = 0) means that
there is full etching (i.e. 100% etching) and the minimum value is
0 (when xi = xo) indicates that there is no actual etching; which is
opposite to AR and is more relative to inform the status of its etching.
5.2 Performance of ring EBG patterns
Ring EBGS greatly modifies s-parameter performances in terms of
IL level, maximum ripple height and stopband width depending
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Fig. 7 Comparison of S-parameter performances
a Annular ring and square ring EBGSs
b Annular ring EBGS of 0.5 ER and a circular EBGS having same solid etching
upon ER; exactly in a manner of dependency with FF. Fig. 6a
illustrates that both stopband width and cutoff frequency increase
with the increase in ER; same thing happens in the case of IL
level in –dB axis and maximum RH is shown in Fig. 6b. Hence, it
is noticeable that if ER approaches to 1, then performances of ring
EBGS approach to that of the solid (i.e. conventional) EBGS
formed by the outer circumference. Therefore, choosing a proper
outer circumference is very important. Since, AEBG is determined
by the area of the outer circumference; hence FF could also be
calculated by using (1).
During the investigation depicted in Figs. 6c and d, we have
chosen the area of outer circumference is 21.757 mm2 that results
0.2 FF using (1); but the performance does not only depend on the
Table 3 Identical performance of various EBGSs
EBG shape −20 dB stopband, GHz f0, GHz
annular ting (0.8 ER) 4.31 10.73
square ring (0.8 ER) 4.40 10.50
circular EBGS (1 ER, 0.2 FF) 4.40 10.75
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FF, rather for a given FF it is influenced by ER to a great extent.
Moreover, an EFF might be determined from the original FF and
ER of ring EBGS that can relate the ring EBGS with a solid
EBGS. The proposed expression of EFF is


EFF = FF × ERFF . (5)
Figs. 6c and d show that annular ring EBGS of different ER and
circular EBGS of corresponding EFF obtained using (5) result
almost similar stopband width (SBW) and IL level, respectively.
However, it is seen from Fig. 6 that ER ≤ 0.04 results no
stopband; in fact, implementing ring EBGS with too little ER is
hardly realisable.
5.2.1 Agreement to the identical performance concept:
We have designed an annular ring EBGS and a square ring EBGS
with AEBG of 21.757 mm2 and ER of 0.8. The s-parameter
performances are presented in Fig. 7; where, it is seen that
s-parameter performances of both annular ring and square ring
EBGSs of identical ER are closely overlapped onto each other and
the values of SBW, IL level, and RH are approximately identical
shown in Table 3. However, the values are also similar to the
earlier discussed circular EBGS compared in the table. Since,
almost identical performance observed for ring EBG patterns with
75–100% etching (i.e. for very small inner circle) in Fig. 6.
5.2.2 Improvement of the performance: Ring EBGS,
however, disobey same etching area concept in two ways. Firstly,
when ER becomes smaller than 0.75, stopband width, IL level,
RH and other values differ remarkably though AEBG remains same
and thus FF is identical according to (1) for ring EBGS having
different ER. Secondly, values can never be same while they are
compared with solid conventional EBGS (i.g. circular or square
EBGS) having exactly identical actual etching. Fig. 7b shows the
dissimilarity between circular ring EBGS of ER 0.5 (AEBG is
similar to that mentioned earlier) and a circular EBGS of etching
area 10.88 mm2 which is the actual etching of the annular ring
EBGS. However, quite improved performances are observed when
0.4 < ER < 0.7. This improvement is clearly visible in Fig. 8. In
the figure, we have compared s-parameter performances of a
circular EBGS of 0.35 FF (radius is 3.481 mm) and a ring EBGS
with 0.4 ER taking the radius of the outer circumference is 3.481
mm too. It is observed that ring shapes have followed the EBGS
with 100% etching by the performance pattern (marked by
rounded rectangle and ellipse in Fig. 8), but a quite noticeable
improvement in performance is observed in terms of passband
ripples.
Since, ring patterns follow the outer shape in performance; hence,
it is one of the added advantages of ring EBG patterns. Therefore, it
is most righteous to elect ring patterns for low frequency
implementation where the size of EBG structure should be larger
for designing smaller prototype with the less number of elements;
because larger size of the EBGS introduces larger ripples that
degrade the performance.
6 Validation of simulated result
S-parameter performances of this paper were obtained by simulating
the designs using a widely used method of moments based EM
simulating software called Zeland ie3d. Researchers have agreed
that simulation results found from this software find well
agreement to the measured results [5, 8, 11, 16, 22]. Due to
S21 at f0, −dB −3 dB fc, GHz −10 dB passband, GHz Max. RH, −dB
36.21 7.46 7.05 2.94
37.56 7.78 6.88 3.31
36.70 7.99 7.01 3.06
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Fig. 8 S-parameters of ring EBGS with 100 and 40% etching where FF is
0.35
unavailability of a vector network analyser in the country though we
could not measure the performances of our designs, but we have
verified some fundamental theories accurately and we have
compared a simulated result of a reported design with the reported
measured result as follows:
(i) Standard 50-Ω T-line: In Fig. 9a, a minimal standard T-line is
depicted without any EBG structure in the ground plane. In Fig. 9b,
the outcome is provided; where, we can see that since no disturbance
is present in the ground plane, hence no rejection of any frequency
band is observed – that is the ideal behaviour of a standard 50-Ω
T-line. We have observed no discrepancy between the simulated
performance and the ideal performance [8, 23].
(ii) 1D against 2D EBGS assisted design: Moreover, we have
investigated 1D and 2D square EBGSs (b = 4.653 mm) assisted
microstrip T-line shown in Figs. 10a and b, respectively.
Performances of earlier mentioned designs are compared in
Fig. 10c, where we have noticed totally identical performance
from them (details are provided in Table 4); that verifies that
electromagnetic field remains confined just at the beneath of the
Fig. 9 Simulated performance of a minimal standard T-line finds a very
good agreement with ideal performance
a 50-Ω standard T-line without any EBG element
b Performance of a simple standard T-line
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Fig. 10 1D against 2D EBGS assisted design
a 1D EBG square elements in the ground plane of the T-line
b 2D square EBGS assisted design
c S-parameters of 1D and 2D EBGS assisted designs
T-line – hence, only EBGSs just underneath the T-line has an
impact on the incident wave and contribute to form rejection band
[8]. Again, we can see that the performances obtained from this
simulating software are following the regular norm.
(iii) Simulated against measured performance: In this paper, design
with circular EBGS that has been reported in [19] is realised where,
Rogers RO3010TM substrate with ɛr = 2.45, h = 1.27 mm and w =
1.2 mm is used. The size of the circular EBGS is: r = 5.975 mm
and a = 23.9 mm, thus the FF is 0.196 (0.25 according to old r/a
ratio); total number of EBG elements is nine. A square EBGS
(b = 10.59) having 112.157 mm2 area similar to circular EBGS is
realised too. Simulated results (S21 parameter) of both designs
obtained from Zeland have been compared with the reported
measured result in [19], where the measurement is performed
using the HPTM 8753-D network analyser in Fig. 11. Simulated
performances of both circular and square shapes are found in very
well agreement with the measured result; therefore, identical
performance from identical etching area conception and well
congruency between simulated and measured performances is
Table 4 Performance of 1D and 2D EBGS assisted designs
EBG −20 dB −3 dB fc, −10 dB Max. RH,
design stopband, GHz GHz passband, GHz −dB
1D design 4.9977 7.00743 5.32169 1.7484
2D design 4.9982 7.00554 5.31953 1.7519
1257

Fig. 11 S21 parameter performances of circular and square EBGS assisted
microstrip T-lines compared with the measured result reported by Lopetegi
et al. in [19]
confirmed. The difference is attributed to the effect of SMA
connectors, non-ideal soldering, over-etching and lack of cell and
material uniformity [6, 13, 18–20, 22]. Besides, in [11, 16], we
have compared simulated results with other measured results of
different designs that are reported in other widely cited published
papers – we have observed a good congruency between simulated
and measured results too.
In essence, from the above discussions with no doubt, we can
consider all of the results presented in this paper will find well
agreement with the measured result in practice.
7 Conclusions
Hexagonal, triangular and square EBG patterns are categorised as
conventional EBGS; since, they perform identically (and/or in a
similar way) to the circular EBGS having an identical etching area
(or area of EBGS). Therefore, a general definition of FF is the
ratio of the occupied area of an EBG element (i.e. area of an EBG
pattern) to the area of unit cell. The proposed definition of FF is
more accurate; since, it gives identical values of FF for all
mentioned EBG patterns having a comparable area of EBGS and
inner element spacing.
Furthermore, with identical AEBG and ER both annular ring and
square ring EBGSs perform identically. For the values of ER
closer to the maximum value (greater than 75%), performances of
ring EBGS are likely identical to the circular, square, triangular
and hexagonal EBGSs having identical AEBG. A potential relation
between ring EBGS and normal solid shape of EBGS is
established in terms of EFF. Improved performance is observed
from ring EBGS when compared to a solid pattern of the ring.
This work, undoubtedly, refers to being a theoretical progress of
IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 12, pp. 1251–1258
1258
conventional shapes and ring EBG patterns with generalised
expressions.
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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016