Comparison of wideband High-Impedance Surfaces for low-profile high-gain UHF antenna design

A comparison of wideband High-Impedance Surfaces (HIS) for The design of a compact low-profile high-gain UHF antenna is presented. In order to design the optimal HIS plane for the Digital Television (DTV) operating band, the separation between HIS layers is investigated in an effort to produce a low-profile and lightweight structure, and obtain a practical antenna. Low-density and low-cost substrates are employed in the design: rigid PVC for the antenna, and foamed PVC for the artificial ground plane. The final design consists of a microstrip-fed monopole placed over the proposed HIS. The artificial surface reflects effectively an in-phase field over a bandwidth of about 56%, and achieves around 10.25 dBi of peak gain (7 dB of increment with respect to the simple monopole). The overall structure is very compact (total height is 0.098λ). This paper describes the design procedure of the proposed antenna and shows simulated results.