Planar micro-wire array with microwave plasma frequency and use of its near zero ε for antenna gain enhancement

Easy to fabricate planar micro-wire array printed on multilayer dielectric substrates arranged with the required lattice constant is shown to exhibit microwave plasma frequency. The presented micro-wire array acts as high pass spatial filter having plasma frequency as the cut off frequency with low loss over wide band. The characteristics of near zero ε above the plasma frequency is used to enhance the gain of the antenna by embedding the micro strip patch antenna in the near zero ε material. This is in accordance to Snell´s law.