Low-Profile Broadband Patch-Driven Metasurface Antenna

In this letter, a patch-driven low-profile broadband metasurface (MTS) antenna is proposed. The novel antenna is constituted utilizing an aperture coupled patch and proposed configurations of finite-sized artificial magnetic conductor. With the surrounding MTS excited by the surface wave introduced through the center patch, an additional TM resonance is generated and a wideband impedance matching is achieved. The performance and operating mechanism of the proposed antenna are investigated and analyzed. To demonstrate the concept, a 1 × 4 array with an overall thickness of 0.047 λ ₀ (λ ₀ is the free-space wavelength at 28 GHz) is successfully implemented through advanced substrate manufacturing process. The obtained impedance bandwidth for reflection coefficient below −10 dB is 27.1% with a maximum realized gain of 13.6 dBi.