A metasurface-inspired printed monopole antenna for 5G and RF energy harvesting application

In this paper, a wideband circularly polarized (CP) Y-shaped printed monopole antenna with the twin parasitic conducting strips (PCS) loaded with a circular-shaped metasurface (MS) layer is investigated. Initially, a linearly polarized (LP) Y-shaped monopole antenna is designed. Thereby, to attain a CP from LP, a metallic strip is used to short one of the parasitic conducting strips to the ground plane. Further, a circular-shaped MS of a radius of 1.25 lambda(degrees), is placed just below the radiator at a height of 0.33 lambda(degrees), which enhances the impedance and axial bandwidths, as well as the CP antenna gain, with a motive to achieve the performance trade-offs from an application perspective. So, it is fabricated on FR-4 substrate with a dimension of 1.33 lambda(degrees) x0.9 lambda(degrees )x0.02 lambda(degrees) (lambda(degrees) = 5 GHz) & offers the measured impedance bandwidth of 2.58 GHz (3.27-5.85 GHz, 48.45%), axial bandwidth of 860 MHz (4.24-5.1 GHz, 19.67%), CP gain (avg.) of > 8.75 dBic, & antenna efficiency of > 80% in the desired frequency band (3.5/5 GHz). In addition to the fundamental analysis pursued here, CP is presented in the form of a distinctive gain-bandwidth product relationship, which has been noted as being very rare in the existing literature, especially for 5G communications (sub-6 GHz) and RF energy harvesting applications.