METAMATERIAL VIVALDI PRINTED CIRCUIT ANTENNA BASED SOLAR PANEL FOR SELF-POWERED WIRELESS SYSTEMS

Abstract

A high-gain wide-band planar antenna with H-Shaped Resonators (HSRs) for Self-Powered wireless systems is proposed in this paper. The proposed antenna consists of four major parts, namely, a grating Vivaldi electrical dipole, a half-ring magnetic dipole, HSRs, and a solar panel reflector. The dipoles are etched from both antenna substrate sides by each half on one side. The HSR structures are etched on a single side of the used substrate to avoid the capacitive coupling effects which cause the radiation efficiency reduction. HSR inclusions are designed and tested numerically to have the desired electromagnetic properties at frequency band of interest. After introducing the HSR inclusions to the antenna structure, the antenna performance is tested numerically and compared to that without HSR inclusions. The fabricated prototype based HSR structure shows an enhanced gain bandwidth product to cover the frequencies from 1.75 GHz up to 7.43 GHz with a gain varying from 9.52 dBi up to 16.71 dBi over the entire frequency range. Finally, an excellent agreement has been achieved between the gathered numerical results and those from the experimental measurements.