Directive photonic-bandgap antennas

This paper introduces two new photonic bandgap (PBG) material applications for antennas, in which a photonic parabolic reflector is studied. It is composed of dielectric parabolic layers associated to obtain a PBG material. The frequency gap is used to reflect and focus the electromagnetic waves. This device has been designed using a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) code. FDTD computations have provided the theoretical reflector´s directivity. These results are in good agreement with measurements, and it appears that the PBG reflector presents the same directivity as a metallic parabola. A second application uses a defect PBG material mode associated with a metallic plate to increase the directivity of a patch antenna. We explain the design of such a device and propose experimental results to validate the theoretical analysis