Abstract
A miniaturized inverse L-slotted meta-material inspired antenna is developed and presented for WiFi, WLAN and WiMAX applications. The designed 'Z-shaped' metamaterial structure consists of an outer split ring resonator having an inner split ring resonator nested within the outer split ring resonator. A metallic strip connected with the inner split ring resonator top and bottom strips in a way that form like a 'Z-shaped' structure. The Z-shaped metamaterial is integrated on the ground plane for reduce the dependency of the ground plane and enhanced the bandwidth. The computer simulation technology microwave Studio is used to design and perform numerical analysis. The overall size of the metamaterial loaded antenna is 25 × 18 mm2 and fabricated on FR-4 dielectric substrate material (thickness of 1.6 mm and dielectric constant of 4.6). The measured operating band of frequencies from 2.36 ∼ 2.49 GHz and 3.07 ∼ 4.0 GHz covering the bandwidth of 130 MHz and 930 MHz. In addition, the measured average gain is 1.87 dBi, whereas the minimum and maximum gain are 0.1 dBi and 1.93 dBi. Finally, the proposed metamaterial loading antenna is applicable for WiFi (2.41-2.48 GHz), WLAN (2.40-2.49 GHz and 3.65-3.69 GHz), and WiMAX (3.30-3.80 GHz) wireless communications.