Mean effective gain enhancement of antenna systems with EBG ground plane

A low profile antenna with a single dipole in front of an electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) reflecting surface, with effective polarization diversity performance is presented. The EBG is designed to reflect at the same frequency the x- and y- polarized waves with +90deg and -90deg phase shift respectively, via an artificial neural network (ANN) method. A parametric study of the mean effective gain (MEG) with respect to the characteristics of the incident waves and for various angular probability distributions of incidence was made. The target was to obtain a MEG greater than that of a radiating system with a perfect electric conducting (PEC) surface and to find out the proper geometry that would make the dipole-EBG configuration less sensitive to the continuous variation of the cross polarization power ratio of the signals, incoming from a mobile communication environment.