Electrically Small, Millimeter Wave Dual Band Meta-Resonator Antennas

A meta-resonator antenna is one in which a metamaterial resonator is the radiating element of the antenna. In this paper, meta-resonator antennas are developed using multilayer low temperature co-fired ceramics techniques. A pair of split-ring resonators (SRR) is used as the radiating element of the antenna. The two SRRs have different resonance frequencies due to the opposite placement of the gaps and the antenna can operate at both frequencies. Other multiband antennas can be designed by adding different metamaterial resonators. No matching network is required since feeding is by inductive/capacitive coupling. The size of the meta-resonator antenna is 10% of a conventional microstrip antenna. The electrical size (ka) of the antenna is 0.386, the bandwidth is 2%, gain is 3.76 dB and efficiency is 71%. An omnidirectional meta-resonator antenna is designed by removing the ground plane and by using a microstrip line as the feed line. The feed line can also serve as a monopole antenna if desired. The radiation pattern, efficiency and gain of the omnidirectional meta-resonator antenna are similar to those of a monopole antenna.