Gain-Enhanced Metamaterial Based Antenna for 5G Communication Standards

Metamaterial surfaces play a vital role to achieve the surface wavessuppression and in-phase reflection, in order to improve the antenna performance. In this paper, the performance comparison of a fifth generation (5G) antenna design is analyzed and compared with a metamaterial-based antenna for 5G communication system applications. Metamaterial surface is utilized as a reflector due to its in-phase reflection characteristic and high-impedance nature to improve the gain of an antenna. As conventional conducting ground plane does not give enough surface waves suppression which affects the antenna performance in terms of efficiency and gain etc. These factors are well considered in this work and improved by using the metamaterial surface. The radiating element of the proposed metamaterial based antenna is made up of copper material which is backed by the substrate, i.e., Rogers-4003 with a standard thickness,loss tangent and a relative permittivity of 1.524 mm, 0.0027 and 3.55, correspondingly. The proposed antenna with and without metamaterial surface operates at the central frequency of 3.32 GHz and 3.60 GHz, correspondingly. The traditional antenna yields a boresight gain of 2.76 dB which is further improved to 6.26 dB, using the metamaterial surface. The radiation efficiency of the proposed metamaterial-based 5G antenna is above 85% at the desired central frequency.