17-Left-Handed Metamaterial Incorporated with Microstrip Antenna at 6 GHz

HA Majid, MKA Rahim, T Masri, O Ayop, Thelaha Masri , “Left-Handed Metamaterial Incorporated with Microstrip Antenna at 6 GHz”, 2008.

Introduction-Left-handed metamaterial (LHM) is an interesting material to be investigated where this artificial material has several unique properties such as the backward wave and the focusing effect inside it slab. Thirty four years later, on 2001, Smith made the first prototype structures of LHM. The LHM is a combination of Split Ring Resonator (SRR) and thin wire (TW). Since the introduction of LHM twelve years ago, a lot of researcher interested in investigating this artificial material and several of them was using LHM to improve the properties of the microwave devices such as antenna and filter. Many papers have been published about the LHM integrated with antennas and their properties have been analyzed. The focusing affect of LHM made a low gain antenna becomes directive and have an increment of gain. The history of LHM was started from Veselago when he made a theoretical speculation of this artificial material that exhibit negative permittivity and negative permeability.

This paper discussed and analyzed the properties of the antenna with and without the LHM structure. The designed LHM is a combination of a modified SRR and capacitance loaded strip (CLS). The LHM and antenna were designed to operate at 6.2 GHz. The negative permittivity and negative permeability of the simulated LHM structures were presented. The gain of the antenna increased and validated through measurement.