Low Frequency Monopole-Like Small Metamaterial Antenna

Nabil. Dakhli1*, Mohamed. Hayouni1 , Fethi. Choubani1, and Jacques. David2

1

Research Unit of Telecommunication Systems (6Tel) at SupCOM, Tunisia

2

ENSEEIHT, France
*

nabil.dakhli@supcom.rnu.tn

Abstract-In this paper; we propose a monopole-like small antenna resonating at low frequency. The main radiating elements of the antenna are the two vias which are connected in series to an inductor at each edge of a transmission line in between. The inductance values are tuned in order to calibrate the flowing currents in the posts to be in phase so that the radiated fields are constructive in the far field region. Full-wave simulations were carried in order to study the properties of the antenna at 434 MHz. The antenna offers a fractional bandwidth of 1.08%, a radiation efficiency exceeding 50%, and a monopole-like radiation pattern. Index Terms- Metamaterials, Monopole-like small antennas, Tunable inductors, vertical polarization. 1. INTRODUCTION Metamaterials are artificial structures and represent a new breakthrough in

electromagnetic engineering. They exhibit unique electromagnetic properties such as negative electric permittivity, negative magnetic permeability and infinite wavelength propagation at specific non-zero frequency. A class of metamaterials is engineered by an artificial transmission line (TL) or LC loaded transmission line [1], [2] called in literature, CRLH (Composite Right/Left Handed) or DNG (Double Negative) structures. In this paper, we present a low frequency monopole-like small resonant antenna working at 434 MHz based on ENG (Epsilon Negative) TL, implemented in microstrip technology.The antenna was designed to incur an insertion phase of at the zeroth-order mode, which allows the two inductive vias (posts) to be fed in phase and act as the main radiating elements, the flowing currents in each of them are equal in magnitude and phase which producea monopole-like radiation pattern. 2. THEORY OF LC LOADED TRANSMISSION LINE The equivalent electric models of a lossless DNG and ENG unit cells are given by Figure 1. The DNG unit cell can be represented by a host transmission line with characteristic impedance capacitance capacitance.
2 2

and physical length and shunt inductance

(homogeneity condition) loaded with a series . For the ENG unit cell, theres no series

(a) Figure 1.

(b) Electric model of (a) DNG TL and (b) ENG TL unit cells

By applying Bloch-Floquet theory to the DNG and ENG unit cells, we obtain the following dispersion relations [2],[5]

[ [
Where and

][ ]

(1)

are the equivalent distributed inductance and capacitance, respectively of a short . must be the total physical length of

section of conventional transmission line of length

For a short-ended CRLH transmission line, the resonant condition of satisfied, where

)) is the resonance mode for the DNG TL and )) for the ENG TL, with
phase shift. (2) (zeroth-order resonance mode), an infinite

the transmission line [2].In the case where

guided wavelength is supported which corresponds to

The exact determination of the Eigen-frequencies for which (shunt-tank resonant circuit) and number

can be solved by studying the

dispersion relations given by (1).The zeroth-order resonance frequency depends only on (series resonant circuit) parameters for the ENG TL, DNG TL respectively and not on the physical length as in pure right-handed TL, as a result; the of CRLH unit cells can be set arbitrarily.

3. ANTENNA DESIGN A monopole-like small antenna composed of one ENG TL unit cell, consists of two posts closely located and connected each to an edge of a transmission line by series inductors inductors so that the antenna can operate at only one Eigen-frequency . In the other hand, the input impedance frequency inductor is lowered by increasing as shown in Figure 2. and

).The

posts can radiate in phase by simply tuning the different values of inductance of the series

) corresponding to

of the radiator can be matched to and with and an internal

, the physical size of the transmission line is kept unchanged [3],[4]. The zeroth-order

, such that

a scaling factor [5].Each via can be modeled as a radiation resistance

Figure 2. Electric equivalent circuit of the ENG TL It was shown that the antennas input resistance [5],[7] ) is expressed by the following equation (3)

and Where and

(4)

represent the number and the height of the posts in the antenna respectively. provides an easy way to adjust the radiators input using microstrip technology on FR4 , footprint of and is separated from .The etched transmission line .Top

Thus an appropriate chosen scaling factor impedance.

The ZOR antenna was designed to operate at epoxy substrate with dielectric constant thickness the substrate by has a size of

, while a ground plane of dimension an air layer height, corresponding to 2

. The diameters of the posts are equal to

and side views of the proposed antenna are shown in Figure 3. The radiation quality factor of the antenna is related to its volume by, (5) With [8]: the zeorth-order frequency, the total stored energy, the radiated energy and the antenna volume. The quality factor of this radiator is calculated by the following expression (6) is the fractional matched bandwidth band ) ),

)
Where The antenna has

is chosen to be equal to 2. volume; the radius of an imaginary sphere encompassing the 2 . Using the criterion of and maximum dimension of this antenna was approximately

, this structure would be considered electrically small at the operating frequency. For the excitation, a coaxial cable was used with inner and outer radii fixed to respectively. The chosen values of the inductances are for which the antenna is matched to

and

and the currents flowing in vias are in phase.

Ground

Substrate

Air

Posts

Excitation

(a)

(b)

Figure 3. (a) Top and (b) side view of the ZOR antenna layout

4. Simulation results A full-wave electromagnetic simulation carried using Ansoft HFSS gives the return loss coefficient S(1,1), displayed in Figure 4(a).The zeorth-order resonance mode is located at with corresponding

.The simulation suggests that the antennas

fractional bandwidth of operation is in the order of

and thus

(a)

(b)

Figure 4. (a) Return loss S11, (b) Flowing currents in the two posts of the ZOR antenna In Figure 4(b), the currents that are supported by the two radiating posts are shown; these currents are in phase and thus maximize radiation in far field region. The input impedance of the radiator is

. The radiation resistance of one post can be deduced either from , where 2 and , from 2 , where and , it is observed that the two

equation (3) or equation (4), from the first,

the latter
approximately were of values

calculated values of

are slightly different. The radiation efficiency was enhanced to

at this frequency. A maximum simulated gain and directivity obtained at and 2 2 respectively. The radiation patterns E and H shown in

Figure 5(a) and Figure 5(b), respectively, reveal the expected monopolar radiation pattern at

(a)

(b)

Figure 5. Radiation patterns (a) E and (b) H

5. CONCLUSION An electrically small monopole-like zeroth-order antenna has been presented and demonstrated to exhibit higher radiation efficiency and acceptable gain at the fundamental resonant mode than other metamaterial antennas. Generation of a vertical uniform electric field by the antenna is confirmed at .

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Radiation Pattern Based on Periodic Structures, IEEE Trans. Antenna Propag.,Vol. 55,No. 3,pp.

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