Abstract
In recent years, the fast development of fifth generation (5G) wireless communication technology has led to an increasing need for small-sized, high gain and multi-band antennas that can operate efficiently in the millimeter wave spectrum. In this paper, we have designed a miniaturized dual band microstrip patch antenna integrated with a metamaterial structure for 5G millimeter wave communications. We have developed the metamaterial patch antenna through the systematic development of a conventional microstrip patch antenna to slot-loaded antenna, two patches and finally metamaterial patch antenna. The proposed metamaterial layer design consists of concentric split ring resonators along with a hexagon shape element, where the outer ring radius is 1.3mm and inner ring radius is 1.0mm with 0.1mm gap. We have maintained the optimized distance of 1.2mm between the radiating patch and the metamaterial layer. Simulations show that the proposed antenna performs very well at 28.00 GHz and 40.95 GHz, which are significant frequencies in 5G millimeter wave bands. The antenna provides return losses of -25.66 dB and -20.20 dB, impedance bandwidth of 1.53 GHz and 3.10 GHz and realized gain of 9.0 dBiand 11.3 dBi for the lower and upper operation bands, respectively. Comparison shows that the use of the metamaterial layer increases impedance matching performance, the lower-band bandwidth and gain especially at the higher frequency band. Therefore, it can be concluded that the antenna design is a suitable choice for the development of compact 5G millimeter wave communication systems.
Keywords: 5G Communications, Dual-band Antenna, Ka-band, Metamaterial, Microstrip Patch Antenna, Millimeterwave Antenna.