Broadband metamaterial based Resonant Cavity Antenna

A high gain planar Resonant Cavity Antenna (RCA) inspired by metamaterial superstrate is proposed operating at C-band. The RCA is modelled using simple ray tracing method. The unit cell metamaterial consists of Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) and square patch laminated on either side of the dielectric material, is used as the superstrate to design RCA. Square patch is capacitive type and that AMC as inductive. Effects of the reflection phase of the substrate decides the gain of the antenna. A cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) has been used as the primary radiator. The metamaterial unit cell structure is characterized and its effective material parameters are extracted through its S-parameters simulation. The proposed antenna achieves 22dBi gain in the broad range of 3.4 to 7.8 GHz with only 4 × 4 array superstrate.