Design of a quint-band antenna with a hybrid-AMC reflector for internet of vehicle applications

In this paper, a low-profile, high gain enhancement quint-band antenna system backed with a hybrid artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) reflector is proposed. Firstly, a quint-band microstrip antenna was designed. Its radiation patch looks like a Chinese knot composing of many slots and branches, and the ground plane is etched 8 shaped and cross-shaped grooves to form the defected ground structure (DGS). Then, a hybrid-AMC reflector was developed and placed underneath the antenna for improving its radiation performance. This hybrid-AMC reflector consists of a cross-shaped AMC array with twenty one-unit cells and four PEC patches. The AMC unit cell includes five nested rings producing five in-phase reflection bands which are perfectly coincident with the antenna's five operation bands. On the basis of simulations, the antenna and the hybrid-AMC array were fabricated and tested. The measured results agree well with the simulated data, and show that the hybrid-AMC backed antenna system achieves five working frequency bands resonating at 2.45, 3.36, 4.6, 5.9 and 7.4 GHz with strong directional patterns. Thanks to the hybrid-AMC reflector, the maximum gain enhancement of the antenna reaches 7.3 dBi at 4.6 GHz. The proposed antenna system covers WLAN, WiMAX, 5G and satellite bands, and is suitable for multi-channel communications in Internet of vehicle applications.