Investigations on relevance of angular stability and polarization independence of frequency selective reflector in planar antenna gain enhancement

The relevance of angular stability (AS) and polarization independence (PI) is investigated by rotating the frequency selective reflectors (FSRs) kept behind a 10 GHz triangular slot antenna in orthogonal directions. Three distinct frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) based on closely packed rhombic loop (RL), square loop (SL) and merged dual rhombic loops (MDRL) are developed for the analysis under normal and oblique incidences. The gain enhancement of 4.87, 7.17 and 4.85 dB is achieved when the antenna is backed by 5 x 5 arrays of RL, MDRL and SL FSS, respectively. Later, with equal sized substrates, the gain enhancement of 7.25, 7.17 and 8.10 dB is achieved when the antenna is backed by 61 x 61 mm2 RL, MDRL and SL FSSs, respectively. It appears that stringent characteristics of FSSs i.e. AS and PI can be compromised for FSRs while employing antenna gain enhancement techniques.