Metasurface-Integrated Compact Circular Patch Antenna for 33 GHz Flexible 5G Applications
Abstract
In this paper, a compact circular microstrip patch antenna integrated with a metasurface superstrate is designed and ana-lyzed for flexible 5G applications at 33 GHz. The proposed antenna is implemented on a thin FR-4 board with overall dimensions of 9 × 9 × 1.7 mm³. The antenna is excited by an inset-fed microstrip line, and a metasurface superstrate composed of 49 circular-ring elements arranged in a 7 × 7 array is employed to enhance the electromagnetic performance. The antenna was designed and simulated using CST Studio Suite, and its performance was evaluated in terms of reflec-tion coefficient, −10 dB impedance bandwidth, directivity, realized gain, radiation pattern, and surface current distribu-tion. The results show that the metasurface superstrate improves impedance matching, bandwidth, radiation characteris-tics, and gain compared with the conventional circular patch antenna. The conventional antenna achieves a −10 dB im-pedance bandwidth of 1.5 GHz, whereas the metasurface-integrated antenna achieves 3.7 GHz. The simulated metasur-face-integrated antenna exhibits an S11 of −47 dB, directivity of 8.7 dBi, and realized gain of 8.2 dBi. The fabricated pro-totype achieves a measured −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 2.9 GHz, S11 of −40 dB, directivity of 8.1 dBi, and realized gain of 7.3 dBi. These results confirm the suitability of the proposed antenna for compact Ka-band 5G and IoT wireless communication applications.