Multiband Sector Antenna with the Same Beamwidth Employing Multiple Woodpile Metamaterial Reflectors

This paper proposes a sector base station antenna for mobile wireless communication systems employing multiple woodpile metamaterial reflectors and a multiband radiator that establishes the same beamwidth in the horizontal plane for more than two frequency bands. Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) characteristics of each metamaterial reflector can be controlled through structural parameters of the woodpile reflector, e.g., the rod width and rod spacing. As an example of the proposed antenna, a design for a triple-frequency-band antenna that radiates at 800 MHz, 2GHz, and 4GHz is shown. The algorithm used to adjust the beamwidth of the proposed antenna is newly introduced and adjusts the beamwidth to be the same for each band using the rod width of the woodpile. A prototype of the proposed antenna has the approximately 90◦ beamwidth in the horizontal plane at the three frequencies, and the measurement results agree well with the electromagnetic field simulation results. key words: sector base station antenna, multiband antenna, metamaterial, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) characteristics