Conformal UWB Antenna with enhanced gain characteristics using Mu-Negative Metamaterial

Here, a compact conformal Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) antenna is designed having CPW feed arrangement and integrated with mu-negative (MNG) metamaterial structure to enhance its radiation characteristics. Initially, a CPW-fed UWB antenna with dimensions of 50 mm × 44 mm is designed, optimized, and simulated using a 0.25 mm FR4 substrate. Next, a meta cell is developed on same conformal FR4 substrate material that exhibits two magnetic resonance regions ranging from 4.8 to 6.5 and 10.3 to 11.7 and further exhibiting stop band attenuation of -5.1 dB with maximum MNG of -104.9 at 5.3 GHz. Further, an (5 × 5) array of designed metasurface unit cell is formed to be employed as a ground plane underneath the flexible UWB antenna design resulting in improving its achievable bandwidth, radiation characteristics and antenna gain. Working of integrated, conformal UWB antenna structure with unit cell is evaluated by optimizing the air gap distance between them. The optimized, integrated antenna performance exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 13.5 GHz covering the entire UWB band with a maximum gain of 9.1 dB validating a suitable candidate for healthcare monitoring and other wearable applications.