A Low-Profile High-Gain Substrate-Integrated Waveguide Slot Antenna Enabled by an Ultrathin Anisotropic Zero-Index Metamaterial Coating

A low-profile high-gain unidirectional antenna is proposed and demonstrated using both metamaterial (MM) and substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) technologies. First, the leaky modes supported by a grounded anisotropic slab are studied. These investigations reveal that a grounded slab consisting of an anisotropic zero/low index material can provide an extremely low value for the real part of the propagation constant of the leaky mode, thereby facilitating stable unidirectional broadside radiation over a wide frequency range. The truncation effect of the slab is then investigated through full-wave simulations, which is found to be beneficial for a practical implementation of dispersive metamaterials. Finally, to validate the proposed concept, a subwavelength end-loaded dipole array is designed to realize the required anisotropic zero-index property and is applied to a SIW fed longitudinal slot antenna for the 5.8 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) band. Measurements of the fabricated antenna prototype are shown to be in strong agreement with simulation results, thus confirming the proposed antenna design. The resulting antenna is only 0.12 λ thick, all while accomplishing a broadside gain of more than 10 dBi and a front-to-back ratio larger than 26 dB, which is ~ 7 dB and ~ 10 dB higher than that of the SIW fed slot alone, respectively. The -10 dB impedance bandwidth is more than 9% both with and without the presence of the MM coating. The proposed technique offers a means for realizing low-cost and low-profile unidirectional antennas with moderate bandwidth.