A Slot-Loaded Composite Right/Left-Handed Transmission Line for a Zeroth-Order Resonant Antenna With Improved Efficiency

In this paper, a new composite right/left-handed transmission line (CRLH-TL) with equilateral slots is proposed for efficiency-improved zeroth-order resonant antennas. A 1-D infinitesimal equivalent transmission line circuit model is derived, and the characteristic impedance and dispersive relation are theoretically computed. Based on the isotropic arranged unit cells of the slot-loaded composite right/left-handed transmission line (SL CRLH-TL), 2-D zeroth-order resonators are designed for planar magnetic monopole antenna applications. The SL CRLH-TL provides the zeroth-order resonance with some degradation of the quality factor. Therefore, a highly efficient radiating resonator can be designed with higher gain at the zeroth-order frequency. The theoretical approach was verified by the experimental results. The radiation efficiency was improved by up to 45.6% for the nine-rectangular zeroth-order resonant antenna and 21.4% for the seven-hexagonal zeroth-order resonant antenna without degrading the radiating performance. Moreover, the antenna gains of these two antennas were enhanced by 7.56 and 6.31 dB, respectively, due to the increase of the radiation efficiency.