Compact wideband microstrip thinned array antenna using EBG superstrate

A compact wideband microstrip array antenna with EBG superstrate is presented. We compare and summarize the results for the impedance bandwidth and gain characteristics of three different antenna prototypes, namely two conventional 2 × 2 arrays with EBG superstrate and 2 × 2 array of multiple resonator patches with EBG superstrate. The designed antenna has a moderate gain of over 8.5 dBi and a wideband impedance bandwidth of over 20%, which covers the required bandwidth of the WLAN (2.4–2.484 GHz) and WiMAX (2.3–2.5 GHz) systems. The EBG superstrate is also utilized to achieve a thin antenna with a cavity height of λ0/16 at the center frequency of 2.45 GHz. The proposed antenna is low-cost and low-profile, having overall dimension of 0.9 λ0 × 0.9 λ0 × 0.081 λ0 (110 mm × 110 mm × 9.9 mm).