Application of Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) Materials in Low Profile Antenna Design

In this paper, the design of low profile antennas by using Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) materials is introduced. Several novel EBG surface geometries are proposed based on results obtained by numerical simulations. The simulation results in HFSS 10 show that these EBG structures can exhibit dual band in-phase reflection, or in another words, Artificial Magnetic Conductor characteristics on the WLAN frequency band (2.4/5.2 GHz). One of these EBGs, slot Jerusalem Cross (JCSS) geometry, has been successfully implemented in the design of low profile WLAN coplanar and PIFA antennas. Both antennas have been fabricated and the measurement results are presented. Furthermore, the further research trend in EBG design is also discussed.