A Frequency Selective Surface Loaded UWB Antenna for High Gain Applications

This paper presents the design of wideband and high gain Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) loaded antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless applications requiring high-gain. The antenna consists of a monopole and an FSS reflector. Initially, a conventional rectangular monopole antenna is modified using slot and stub to achieve wide operational bandwidth and size reduction. This modified antenna shows 50% miniaturization compared to a primary rectangular monopole, having a wide impedance bandwidth of 3.6–11.8 GHz. Afterward, an FSS is constructed by the combination of circular and square ring structures. The FSS array consisting of 8 × 8-unit cells are integrated with the antenna as a reflector to enhance the performance of the proposed miniaturized UWB antenna. The loading of FSS results in an improvement of at least 4 dBi gain in the entire operational bandwidth. Moreover, the antenna's bandwidth is also increased at the lower frequency band due to the presence of the FSS. A prototype of the antenna is fabricated and tested to verify the simulation results. The simulation and measurement results show that the antenna offers a wideband –10 dB impedance bandwidth ranging from 2.55–13 GHz with a stable peak gain of 8.6 dBi and retains the radiation pattern stability.