Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 151603, 9 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/151603
Research Article

Investigation of Patch Antenna Based on Photonic Band-Gap Substrate with Heterostructures

Zhenghua Li,1,2 Yan Ling Xue,1 and Tinggen Shen3,4

1Department of Electronic Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
2Communication T & R Section, Zhenjiang Watercraft College, Zhenjiang 212003, China
3Department of Telecommunication Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
4Department of Physics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China

Received 16 February 2011; Accepted 7 September 2011

Academic Editor: Cristian Toma

Copyright © 2012 Zhenghua Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The characteristics of the patch antenna based on photonic band-gap (PBG) substrate with heterostructures were studied numerically by using the method of finite difference time domain (FDTD). The results indicate that, comparing to the conventional patch antennas, the expansion of working frequency band of the new patch antenna can be realized and its radiation efficiency also can be improved notably with the influence of PBG. In addition, for this new kind of patch antenna, its return loss is much less and there are two minimum values for return loss corresponding to the resonant frequency of the two different photonic crystals made of the substrate. Its physical mechanism lies on the PBG which suppresses the surface waves propagating along the surface of the substrate and reflects most of electromagnetic wave energy radiated to the substrate significantly.