Design of a 5G millimeter-wave wideband high-gain metamaterial-based antenna

This research paper presents a novel high-gain, wideband metamaterial (MTM)-based antenna designed for 5G millimeter-wave (mm-wave) applications. The antenna features a dual-band H-shaped patch radiator printed on a 15 mm × 15 mm Rogers 5880 substrate, backed by a metallic ground plane with a square aperture. A 2 × 2 MTM superstrate layer is positioned 6.1 mm above the patch antenna to improve gain and bandwidth. The MTM layer, fabricated on a 0.2 mm Rogers 4003 C substrate, incorporates H-shaped metallic patterns on the top surface and circular resonators on the bottom. Simulated effective constitutive parameters confirm negative permittivity ( $$\varepsilon$$ ), negative permeability ( $$\mu$$ ), and negative refractive index (n) within the target frequency range, validating the metamaterial properties. The S-parameters derived from the equivalent circuit model developed in ADS closely match those obtained from the CST simulations. Characteristic Mode Analysis (CMA) is conducted to examine the resonance behavior of the proposed MTM-based antenna. The experimental results demonstrate the wideband and high-gain performance of the proposed antenna, featuring an impedance bandwidth of 4.8 GHz, peak gains of 11.4 dBi at 30 GHz and 9.19 dBi at 27.4 GHz, and a radiation efficiency of 95% across the entire operating frequency band.