Gain Enhancement of Planar Dipole Antenna Using Grounded Metamaterial

In this paper, a simple approach for enhancing the gain of a planar dipole antenna using the concept of grounded metamaterial (MTM) has been proposed. In this regard, a magnetic metamaterial with Mu-very large (MVL) property has been placed over the ground plane of the antenna to increase the gain of the electric dipole source. A fully planar structure has been configured due to the placement of the metamaterial just over the ground plane. A significant amount of gain improvement of about 3.7 dB for the dipole has been attained using the metamaterial. In addition, increase of fractional bandwidth by 2.2% has been obtained due to the loading of the metamaterial. A comparative study with respect to recently reported literature for the gain enhancement of planar dipole has also been discussed. The proposed antenna is a worthy candidate for wireless communication owing to the high gain, low profile, and wide bandwidth characteristics.