Planar antenna beam deflection using low‐loss metamaterial for future 5G applications

Abstract

A method to tilt the beam of a planar antenna in the E-plane is demonstrated by implementing a metamaterial (MM) structure onto the antenna substrate at the fifth-generation (5G) band of 3.5 GHz. The beam tilting is achieved due to the phase change that occurs when the electromagnetic (EM) wave traverses through two media with different refractive indices. A new adjacent square-shaped resonator (ASSR) structure is proposed to achieve the beam tilting in a dipole antenna. This structure provides a very low loss of −0.2 dB at 3.17 GHz. The simulation and measurement results illustrate that the radiation beam of the dipole antenna is tilted by +25° and −24° depending on the position of the ASSR array onto the dipole antenna substrate. In addition, no degradation in the gain is observed as in the conventional beam-tilting methods; in fact, gain enhancement values of 3 dB (positive deflection) and 2.7 dB (negative deflection) are obtained compared with that of a dipole antenna with no ASSR array. The reflection coefficient of the dipole antenna with ASSR array has a good agreement with that of the dipole antenna with no ASSR array. The measured results agree well with the simulated ones.