PRS Based Microstrip Antenna for Beam Steering Applications

---This paper proposes a technique which improves Directivity and control of Beam-Steering by including metamaterial surfaces onto microstrip patch antenna superstrate used for wireless communication applications. Metamaterials are designed with Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC), inductive and capacitive planar structures. These structures allow obtaining Partially Reflective Surfaces (PRS). The antenna used is a rectangular microstrip patch which operates nearly at a frequency of 11.92 GHz. The PRS reflector used for the design of the steerable directive beam antenna consists of a periodic array of copper strips. By using Metamaterial based microstrip patch antenna it is possible to improve the performance of antenna, in terms of Beam steering and directivity. These antennas are more useful in telecommunication systems requiring compact low profile and environment friendly directive antennas. This paper deals with design aspects of PRS based antenna and to study its properties. Based on the study, simulations are carried out on PRS based antenna and the same is fabricated for testing to analysis the results. Keywords--Metamaterial, Microstrip patch antenna, Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC), Partially Reflective Surfaces (PRS), IE3D software, Beam steering.