High gain triple band microstrip antenna based on metamaterial super lens for wireless communication applications

This paper presents a design of highly effective triple band microstrip antenna for wireless communication applications. The triple band design is a metamaterial-based design for WLAN and WiMAX (2.4/3.5/5.6 GHz) applications. The triple band response is obtained by etching two circular and one rectangular split ring resonator (SRR) unit cells on the ground plane of a conventional patch operating at 3.56 GHz. The circular cells are introduced to resonate at 5.3 GHz for the upper WiMAX band, while the rectangular cell is designed to resonate at 2.45 GHz for the lower WLAN band. Furthermore, a novel complementary H-shaped unit cell oriented above the triple band antenna is proposed. The proposed H-shaped is being used as a lens to significantly increase the antenna gain. To investigate the left-handed behavior of the proposed H-shaped, extensive parametric study for the placement of each unit cell including the metamaterial lens, which is the main parameter affecting the antenna performance, is presented and discussed comprehensively. Good consistency between the measured and simulated results is achieved. The proposed antenna meets the requirements of WiMAX and WLAN standards with high peak realized gain.