IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation

Review Article

ISSN 1751-8725
Microstrip patch antenna miniaturisation Received on 9th September 2014
Accepted on 18th December 2014
techniques: a review doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2014.0602
www.ietdl.org

Muhammad Umar Khan 1 , Mohammad Said Sharawi 1, Raj Mittra 2

1
Department of Electrical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
2
Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, University of Central Florida, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
E-mail: umarkhan@kfupm.edu.sa

Abstract: The microstrip patch antenna (MPA) has been in use and has been studied extensively during the past three
decades. This antenna, which consists of a metallic patch printed on a dielectric substrate over a ground plane, offers
several advantages including ease of design and fabrication; low profile and planar structure; and ease of integration
with circuit elements. The minimum dimension of a conventional MPA is in the order of half a wavelength. In recent
years, with the advent of new standards and compact wireless devices, there has been a need to reduce the size of this
type of antenna. This study discusses some of the principal techniques that have been reported in the literature to
reduce the size of an MPA. These miniaturisation techniques include material loading, reshaping the antenna, shorting
and folding, introducing slots and defects in the ground plane and the use of metamaterials. The major features and
drawbacks of each of these approaches are highlighted in this study along with their effects on the antenna
performance metrics.

1 Introduction
Wireless communication devices are ubiquitous nowadays and their
use is steadily on the rise. These devices include AM and FM radios,
cellular mobile phones, tablets, laptops, satellite phones
and receivers, global positioning system (GPS) devices,
radio-frequency identication (RFID) systems, to name a few.
The antenna, being an integral part of these devices, plays an
important role in dening the performance of these devices.
Therefore the design of an antenna for any wireless device should
be carried out with care in order to guarantee good system-level
performance.
Among various kinds of antennas, printed antennas have received
considerable attention during the past few decades because of their
low-prole nature and their ease of integration with associated
electronics, which make them very suitable for use in compact
wireless devices. A printed antenna is normally fabricated using
printed circuit technology. Printed antennas were rst presented
during the 50s of the past century but they did not gain much
importance until the early 80s. Many designs of printed antennas
have appeared in the literature since the 80s. Several of these
designs were thoroughly analysed analytically as well as
numerically and their theory was developed for better
understanding of their performance characteristics. The most
commonly used printed antennas are microstrip patch antennas
(MPAs); printed monopoles and dipoles; slot antennas; loop
antennas; and planar inverted F-shaped antennas (PIFA).
Although other parts of a communication device have seen a
considerable reduction in their size because of the use of
micro-fabrication technology, reducing the size of the antenna is
still a difcult and challenging task. A conventional antenna
resonates at a frequency when its length is on the order of a
half-wavelength of that frequency. Many of the new standards for
wireless communications including Wi-Fi, fourth generation/
long-term evolution, worldwide interoperability for microwave
access etc. are dened in the frequency range of 700 MHz6 GHz.
Thus, the conventional length of an antenna operating at the lower
band of these standards would be very large, that is, 214 mm at
700 MHz. However, such a length far exceeds the specication of
many practical devices, including the RFID-based cards, mobile
phones, tablets, among other portable terminals. Moreover, most
of the new standards also require the use of multiple antenna
elements especially for multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO)
applications. Thus accommodating multiple antenna elements in
limited space, typically specied by the device manufacturer, is a
difcult task and challenges the engineers to look for novel ways
to design miniaturised antennas. Although, the size of such
antennas should be small, they must maintain desirable radiation.
An antenna which can t within a half radian sphere is called an
electrically small antenna (ESA), which has been studied
extensively. Particularly, a number of theoretical works have been
published on the topic of performance limits of small antenna. All
theories have reached the same conclusion that the size of an
antenna can only be reduced at the expense of its bandwidth and
gain [1, 2]. These theories provided a lower limit on the antenna
Q-factor given its dimensions. Although these theories are useful
for dening performance metrics, they do not offer any systematic
clues for designing practical ESAs. Recently, the design of ESA
has been an area of interest for many research groups and many
novel miniaturised antenna structures have appeared in the
literatures [35]. These include the miniaturised versions of
different types of antennas including the patch, the printed
monopoles, PIFA, among others.
The MPA is a planar printed antenna, which is well known, and
whose theory of operation is well developed. In this paper, the
design of an MPA is discussed, with a focus on how to
miniaturise it. All of the major and novel techniques, which have
appeared in the literature related to MPA miniaturisation are
surveyed in this review paper. This paper serves as an essential
starting point for students and professionals involved in antenna
design and miniaturisation by showing the pros and cons of each
method, thus making it easier to choose the appropriate method
for the application at hand. In addition, we point out some
important aspects which should be considered for antenna
miniaturisation problems.
This paper is organised as follows. The basics of MPA are
described in Section 2. The main approaches reported in the
literature for MPA miniaturisation are presented and discussed in
Section 3. A summary of the miniaturisation techniques and their
effects on the performance of the antenna are discussed in
Section 4. Conclusions and some general remarks are presented in
Section 5.

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Fig. 1 Microstrip line feed excited rectangular patch antenna
a Top view
b Side view
2 Patch antenna
MPAs are fabricated by placing a conductor on a substrate backed by
a ground plane. Although they can be designed in various shapes,
circular and rectangular patches (see Fig. 1) are the ones that are
widely used, since their design procedure is simple and well
developed [6]. MPAs have several advantages: (i) they have been
extensively studied and their theory is well understood, making
them easy to design; (ii) their planar geometry makes them easy to
fabricate and integrate with other electronic devices; (iii) they can
be fabricated on a variety of cheap available substrates, making
them a cost-effective choice for many applications; (iv) they are
rugged and low prole, which make them ideal for use in a
number of practical applications such as in GPS receivers, tablets,
personal digital assistants (PDAs) and so on. In addition to
circular and rectangular shapes, MPAs with other geometries also
exist, for instance triangular and annular ring-slot shapes [6]. In
the next section, we will show how changing the patch geometry
can help to reduce its size.
MPAs are typically analysed using the cavity model [7]. An MPA
can be considered as a cavity lled with a dielectric with non-perfect
electric conductor (PEC) side walls. Thus, the radiation from this
cavity takes place because of leakage from these side walls. To
nd the radiation characteristics and resonant frequency of the
MPA, the elds inside the cavity are solved rst. The top and
bottom parts of the cavity are considered as PECs, whereas the
sides are assumed to be perfect magnetic conductors (PMCs). The
eld distribution inside the cavity is found by applying appropriate
boundary conditions on the cavity walls. The solution is then used
to nd the resonant frequency of the patch for different modes, as
well as to determine radiating elds. The input impedance and the
Fig. 2 Circular patch antenna with solid probe feed
a Top view
b Side view
914
quality factor (Q) of the antenna are also obtained from the same
model. The resonant frequency of a rectangular MPA is a function
of the material properties of the substrate, its thickness and the
dimensions of the patch. The resonant frequency ( fr), obtained
from the cavity model is given by [8]



























mp2 np2  pp2

1
(fr )mnp =


+ + (1)
2p me h L W
where h is the height of the substrate, L is the length of the patch, W
is the width of the patch, and are the permeability and permittivity
of the substrate, respectively. The integers m, n and p correspond to
the modes of operation. In a standard MPA, h L and h W . If
the condition h < W < L is met, the lowest resonance corresponding
to the dominant mode occurs when m, n and p are 0, 1 and 0,
respectively. The resonant frequency of the dominant mode is thus
given by
1
(fr )010 =


(2)
2L me
Apart from the rectangular MPA, the theory of circular MPAs (see
Fig. 2) is also well developed and it is also widely used [8]. The
circular MPA can also be modelled using the cavity model [7]. In
this case, the cavity is circular with its top and bottom surfaces
assumed to be PEC discs while the boundary around the circular
periphery of the cavity is assumed to be PMC. By solving the
elds inside in the cavity, various parameters of the antenna are
found. The resonant frequency of the dominant mode of a circular
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patch of radius d is given by antennas efciency (rad). Thus, the antenna Q can be decreased
at the expense of its efciency and gain (increasing losses widen
1.842 c the bandwidth). The design of small antennas therefore is an art of
fr =

(3) compromise between size, bandwidth and gain. Thus, once the
2pd er
antenna is miniaturised, there is little room for improvement of its
bandwidth or gain.
where c is the speed of light and r is the permittivity of the patch
In principle, there are two ways to miniaturise the MPA. The rst
substrate.
method is to change the material properties of substrate such that the
Transmission-line theory is also used to model the MPA. It offers
effective wavelength in the substrate region is decreased. The second
a simpler model and provides more intuitive understanding.
method is to change its geometry in such a way so as to increase the
However, it yields less accurate results as compared with those
electrical size (current path). Various methods for MPA
derived from the cavity model. In this model, a rectangular MPA
miniaturisation have been reported in the literature that are based
is represented by two radiating slots separated by a low-impedance
on these two major techniques. They are grouped into ve
transmission-line of length L [8]. By nding the equivalent
categories in this paper and are described in details in the
admittance of each slot, different antenna parameters including the
following sections.
resonant frequency and resonant input resistance are calculated.
Full-wave methods are also used to determine the design
parameters and the performance characteristics of the MPA. These
methods often use computer-intensive numerical techniques such 3.1 Material loading
as the nite-difference time-domain, the nite element method or
The simplest way to decrease the size of an MPA is to use a substrate
the method of moments, to solve for the elds in complex
with a high relative permittivity (r). The length and width of the
geometries; however, they provide little physical insight.
patch are inversely proportional to the square root of r. However,
Nonetheless, with the availability of commercial full-wave solvers
such a miniaturisation method results in an increased level of
such as HFSS, FEKO, WiPL-D, IEEA etc., and powerful
surface wave excitation within the substrate and results in lower
computing platforms on which to run these solvers, full-wave
bandwidth as well as decrease in radiation efciency. The
methods are now almost exclusively used to design the MPAs.
truncation of the ground plane not only results in poor polarisation
An MPA can be excited in several different ways. Most common
purity but also changes the radiation characteristics of the MPA.
methods include the coaxial-line feed excitation and the microstrip
Various studies have investigated different materials as well as
transmission-line feed [8]. In the transmission-line feed method, a
congurations to effectively use the above approach to miniaturise
conducting strip is attached to the edge of the patch. This is also a
an MPA. In [11], MPAs with relatively thick substrates (0.02lo to
simple way to excite the MPA and antenna + feed system can be
0.03lo) and with relative permittivities of 10 and 13 were analysed
easily fabricated. Fig. 1 shows a rectangular MPA excited by a
experimentally. The input impedances and radiation characteristics
microstrip line feed. In the coaxial-line feed method, a coaxial
of these antennas were found to be different from those of a
cable is used whose inner conductor is connected to the patch
conventional patch. The input impedances were less than the one
while the outer conductor is attached to the ground plane. It not
predicted by the theoretical models for MPAs with thin substrates.
only provides a simple way to match the antenna input impedance
A four-element array was fabricated using this thick substrate in
but is also easy to fabricate.
which distortion of the radiation pattern was observed in the E-plane.
Although both of these methods are easy to implement, their use
While designing a miniaturised MPA for the Korean Cellular
limits the operating bandwidth of the MPA. There are alternate
band, Lee and Harackiewicz [12] employed a partially lled
approaches for feeding the MPAs, such as using the
high-permittivity substrate. They used a low permittivity substrate
proximity-coupled and aperture-coupled feeding methods.
and placed rectangular-shaped dielectric bars of high permittivity
However, they lead to complex designs and are used very rarely,
underneath the radiating edges of the patch, as shown in Fig. 3.
although they can provide wider operating bandwidths.
This resulted in a 50% decrease in the antenna size while it
MPAs suffer from the problem of high Q; and hence, their
achieved a fractional bandwidth of 10% and a gain of 6 dB.
bandwidth is limited. Several techniques for enhancing the
Many groups have investigated the use of ceramic substrates for
bandwidth of MPAs do exist and they can be found in [7, 9]. As
MPA miniaturisation. In [13], several MPA designs were
mentioned earlier, desirable attributes such as ease of its
investigated using various types of ceramic substrates. A square
integration with other components, good radiation characteristics
MPA was fabricated on a low-temperature co-red ceramic (LTCC)
and low cost, make the MPA one of the foremost choices in
substrate of r = 100. A reduction of the area of the patch by a
thousands of practical applications.
factor of 8 was achieved as compared with that of a conventional
patch printed on an FR4 substrate. However, the substrate was
chosen to be relatively thick (0.031lo) to mitigate the problem of
3 Miniaturisation of patch antennas low bandwidth. The antenna had a fractional bandwidth of 7.2%
and a gain of 2.8 dBi at 1.88 GHz. Another MPA was fabricated
Miniaturisation of patch and other antennas has been a topic of
using a textured ceramic substrate, which was a mixture of LTCC
interest for a long time. Wheeler was the rst one to analyse the and Stycast, and resulted in an effective permittivity of 23.5. The
fundamental limits of an ESA, and he concluded that reducing the MPA printed on this substrate was 2.5 times smaller than the
size of an antenna results in lower bandwidth and reduced gain
conventional MPA fabricated on an FR4 substrate. The measured
[10]. Later work by Chu and Harrington and several others also gain of the antenna was 3 dBi and it had a fractional bandwidth of
led to the same conclusions [1, 2]. It has been well known that
9.1% centred about 1.7 GHz. The bandwidth of the MPA was also
there is a theoretical lower limit on Q that can be achieved for a
found to improve, albeit at the expense of its gain, using a bow-tie
small antenna. For a small antenna which can be enclosed in a shape. Thus, through various design choices, signicant
sphere of radius a, the theoretical lower bound on the antenna Q is
miniaturisation was achieved using ceramic substrates while
given by [1] maintaining good antenna gain as well as bandwidth.
In [14], MPAs on different ceramic substrates were investigated
1 1 experimentally. The substrates used were barium-titanate with r =
Q= + (4)
ka (ka)3 37 and neodymium-titanate with r = 85. The truncation of the
ground plane was also analysed. The MPAs designed on these
where k is the wave number. Equation (4) is valid for a lossless ceramic substrates were found to have very limited bandwidths.
antenna. As it is evident from the equation, decreasing the size of For a resonant frequency of about 1.5 GHz, the antenna was found
an antenna results in an increase in its Q. A more realistic gure to have a bandwidth of only 2.4 MHz. Moreover, the ground plane
of antenna performance is the quality factor (Q) divided by the reduction resulted in nearly omni-directional radiation patterns.

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015 915
Fig. 3 MPA with dielectric bars underneath the patch [12]
MPA miniaturisation using a magnetodielectric substrate has been
analysed in details in [15]. A magnetodielectic substrate design was
presented in [16]. The MPA fabricated on the proposed substrate was
found to be 65% smaller, as compared with a conventional patch
resonating at 2.45 GHz. The MPA had a fractional bandwidth of
0.5% and radiation efciency was 45%.
Many other works have also appeared in the literature which
followed approaches that are similar to the ones mentioned
previously. A modied ceramic substrate was used in [17],
whereas [18] used a perforated substrate to miniaturise an MPA. In
summary, ceramic substrates and modied engineered substrates
can provide a signicant reduction in the patch size. However,
major disadvantages of this method of size-reduction are the cost
of such substrates as well as reduction of the obtained bandwidth.
3.2 Shorting and folding
Folding an MPA and the use of shorting posts has been used to
reduce the size of MPAs, and to render it electrically small [6].
For a half-wavelength rectangular MPA, the E-eld distribution
under the patch has a sinusoidal pattern with a maximum E-eld
at the radiating edges and zero in the middle. If an electric wall is
placed at the middle of the patch, and the other half is removed, it
would still resonate at the same frequency. Such a patch is called a
quarter-wavelength MPA. The theoretical analysis shows that a
quarter-wavelength patch has the same Q as that of its
half-wavelength counterpart [6]. However, the fact that the antenna
aperture has reduced results in the decrease in antenna directivity,
thus directly affecting the antenna gain.
Fig. 4 Quarter-wavelength MPA fabricated using shorting posts [6]
916
In the practical implementation of a quarter-wavelength MPA,
placing a continuous conducting sheet at the edge between the
patch and the ground plane is difcult. An easier approach to
fabricating a quarter-wavelength MPA is to add an array of
shorting pins near the edge of the patch, as shown in Fig. 4.
A number of works have appeared in the literature that presented
the design or analysis of miniaturised MPAs using the shorting or
folding techniques [1927]. In [19], a shorted patch was folded to
make it a l/8 MPA. The radiation efciency of the antenna was
found to be 90% while it had a bandwidth of 4%. The schematic
diagram of the shorted-folded patch is shown in Fig. 5. In [27],
the results of a parametric study of using a single, double or
multiple shorting posts with a circular MPA have been presented.
Various parameters were analysed. It was found that the MPA
could be reduced by more than a factor of 3, as compared with a
standard patch via the use of optimal placement of the shorting
posts. A theoretical analysis of an MPA with a shorting post has
been provided in [24].
MPA can therefore be miniaturised using folding and shorting.
However, this method comes at a cost of greatly decreasing the
gain and directivity of the antenna. Moreover, this method
complicates the geometry of the MPA at times and also makes it
non-planar, which adds to the complexity of the structure and its
conformity. However, when properly applied, this method has
little effect on the efciency of the antenna.
3.3 Reshaping or introducing slots
An MPA can also be miniaturised by making changes in the shape of
the patch or by adding slots in the MPA. Miniaturised patches can be
shaped and optimised to obtain a large electrical length in limited
space using the genetic algorithm [28], running on
high-performance computing platforms. Fractal geometries are also
used to obtain miniaturised MPAs with good efciency [5, 29].
Fractals are space lling contours in which electrically large
features can be effectively packed in a relatively small space, with
a reduction in bandwidth.
A miniaturised MPA suffers from higher ohmic losses, which lead
to a lower radiation efciency. To mitigate this problem, an
Fig. 5 l/8 shorted/folded patch antenna [19]
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Fig. 6 Multi-layer engineered conductor for use with miniaturised patch
antenna compared with a conventional conductor used in an MPA [30]
engineered conductor has been presented in [30], which consisted of
layers of conductors separated by laminations. The total thickness of
the conductor was equal to that of the conductor in a conventional
MPA. The engineered conductor, separated by laminations, is
shown in Fig. 6; it helps to increase the gain and efciency of the
small antenna. Such a conductor has also been used with different
miniaturised MPAs. It has been shown that the gain and efciency
of antenna improves as the number of conducting layers is
increased. The use of a 5-layer conductor improves the efciency
of a miniaturised antenna by 30% as compared with a
conventional single-layer conductor.
Several works [3141] have appeared in the literature in which the
size of the MPA has been reduced by introducing various types of
slots in the MPA. The use of this method generally leads to poor
polarisation purity. However, by symmetrical arrangement of the
slots on the patch, such purity can be preserved [31]. A
miniaturisation of 4075% has been achieved by inserting different
types of slots in the MPA. Although this method is widely used in
different designs and provides several degrees of miniaturisation,
this method lacks a general design methodology. Most of the
presented designs based on this method had low radiation efciency
of about 25% but provided wider operating bandwidths when using
slots. Some had a fractional bandwidth of up to 5.5% [32].
3.4 Modications of the ground plane
MPAs can also be miniaturised by modifying their ground plane. In
the general models for MPAs, an innite ground plane is assumed.
However, in any practical MPA design, the ground plane is nite.
For greater miniaturisation, the size of the ground plane is further
reduced such that at times it is only slightly larger than the patch
dimensions. The MPAs with truncated ground planes have been
analysed analytically in various works [4244]. It was found that
such antennas had poor polarisation purity and reducing ground
plane size also affected the input impedance. Moreover, because of
edge diffraction, there was signicant back lobe radiation which
decreases the front-to-back ratio.
Along with reducing the ground plane, many other modications
in the ground plane are possible to miniaturise an MPA. These
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modications include the insertion of various types of slots in the
ground plane. These slots, when properly designed, help to
increase the current path within the patch area. This helps in
lowering the resonant frequency of the MPA and, therefore, leads
to size-reduction. Many designs have appeared in the literature
which use slots in the ground plane to miniaturise the MPA [4549].
In [45], a single slot of 1 mm width was etched out underneath an
MPA to reduce its size. A parametric study was carried out by
changing the length and position of the slot underneath the patch.
The MPA initially resonated at 2.87 GHz without the slot. Using
the optimal placement and length of the slot, the resonant
frequency was decreased to 1.38 GHz, which represents a 52%
decrease. The size-reduction in terms of area of the MPA was
90%. In [46], three slots were etched underneath the patch and its
shape was modied which resulted in 50% decrease in terms of
the size of the MPA. Similar use of slots in [4749] resulted in
5683% miniaturisation in the size of patch. It is important to note
that while all of the above focused on the miniaturisation of MPA,
they did not clearly analyse other parameters that are affected by
such miniaturisation. Therefore, in most of these works, the effect
of miniaturisation on antenna efciency, bandwidth, radiation
properties, cross-polarisation levels etc., was not clearly mentioned
and compared; furthermore, at times this information was missing
altogether. Moreover, these works provided little physical insight
into the underlying principles of the miniaturisation method.
Furthermore, they did not elaborate on the generic application of
the provided method. Specically, they did not mention any
design guidelines based on the slot in ground plane method for
various frequency bands.
Another method which made use of an irregular ground structure
was presented in [50] for antenna miniaturisation. A two-layer
substrate was used to fabricate the MPA. The lower substrate had
an array of vertically placed small metallic cylinders, and their
lower end was touching the ground plane. An array of these
metallic structures was placed underneath the four diagonal
corners of the patch, which was separated from these metallic
structures using another substrate, as shown in Fig. 7. The
proposed structure introduced capacitive as well as inductive
loadings, and this, in turn, resulted in miniaturisation of the
antenna. Using this arrangement, a 75.6% reduction in the size of
was achieved for the MPA. The design was analysed and the
effect of miniaturisation on other antenna parameters clearly
explained. The size-reduction was accompanied by a bandwidth
reduction of the MPA. The antenna resonated at 5.32 GHz in the
absence of the irregular ground structure with a bandwidth of
8.3%. The resonant frequency of the antenna was decreased to
2.635 GHz using the proposed scheme; however, the bandwidth
was reduced to 1.9%. The same technique for size-reduction was
also successfully demonstrated for a circularly polarised MPA.
Many miniaturised MPA designs utilise defected ground
structures (DGSs). DGSs have a variety of shapes, including
simple ones such as spiral, V-shape, U-shape and H-shape, as well
as complex ones such as dumbell-shaped and split-ring resonators
(SRRs). DGSs have been used with printed antennas for
improving their radiation characteristics, as well as for improving
the isolation between antenna elements in MIMO/array antenna
designs, and for impedance matching of microstrip feed designs [51].
For MPA miniaturisation, complementary SRR (CSRR)-based
antenna miniaturisation has been presented in [5256]. In these
works, the CSRR has been used at various locations underneath the
patch for antenna miniaturisation. In [52], a CSRR was etched out
from the ground plane underneath the centre of the patch, as shown
in Fig. 8. A 76% miniaturisation in the size of patch was achieved
resonating at 2.45 GHz. The antenna had a fractional bandwidth of
2% and a radiation efciency of 30%. The effect of the dimensions
of the CSRR on the miniaturisation was also analysed through
parametric studies and a complete design guideline was presented
for the CSRR miniaturised MPA for other bands. The method was
relatively simple, which retained planar characteristic of the design
planar and only required adding the CSRR underneath the patch.
In [57], a DGS of certain shape was proposed for miniaturising an
MPA. The DGS consisted of four connected E-shape slots that were
917
Fig. 7 Miniaturised patch antenna on an irregular ground structure [50]

etched out from underneath the MPA. This resulted in a 68% antenna shown that the proposed DGS provided greater miniaturisation
miniaturisation in terms of the size of the MPA. The proposed DGS than did the other two DGS-based designs. The use of DGS
was analysed and compared with other cross-shaped and structures usually provide lower efciency and yield narrower
dumbell-shaped DGS-based miniaturised patch antennas. It was operating bandwidths. In addition, re-tuning of the antenna is

Fig. 8 CSRR-based miniaturised patch antenna operating at 2.45 GHz [52]

a Top view
b Bottom view

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918 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015
usually needed to compensate for the shift in the resonant frequency
because of the alterations of the ground currents especially if the
DGS is close to resonant structures.
3.5 Use of metamaterials
Metamaterials (MTMs) are articially engineered materials designed
to provide material properties not readily available commercially.
MTMs can be designed to realise materials with near zero values
of permittivity; negative permittivity or permeability; or
simultaneous negative permittivity and permeability. A material
with only negative permittivity is called epsilon negative (ENG),
whereas one with only negative permeability is referred to as a
-negative (MNG) material. A material with both negative
permittivity and permeability is called double-negative (DNG).
During the past decade, a number of structures have been realised
which when arranged periodically, exhibited MTM properties over
a certain frequency range. These structures have been of interest to
many and have been widely studied and improved. They have also
been used in many RF, microwave and photonics devices to
achieve interesting properties.
The concept of MTM as well as MTM structures have also been
used to design various types of antennas with enhanced
performance, such as high gain as well as improved efciency.
Additionally, they have been used for the miniaturisation of
antennas. Two terms are used in the literature for antennas
utilising MTM. Ones that make use of ENG, MNG or DNG
substrate are called MTM-based antennas. Others, that only
utilise the MTM unit cell such as the SRR, CSRR, omega
structures etc., are referred to as MTM-inspired antennas. The
former exist mostly as hypothetical antennas which are studied
theoretically using the ENG, MNG or DNG media. A true
realisation of MTM-based antenna is not possible. The latter are
not truly MTM antennas since they do not make use of ENG,
MNG or DNG properties of an MTM. However, since they make
use of MTM unit cells, and since they are analysed using the
theories of MTM unit cells, they are referred to as MTM-inspired
antennas.
The effect of an MTM substrate on the size of the MPA can be
analysed from the expression of its resonant frequency which can
be derived using the cavity model. From (1), it can be seen that
there is an inverse square root relationship between the resonant
frequency of the MPA and the permittivity and permeability of its
substrate. Consequently, an MPA placed on a homogeneous ENG
or MNG substrate will not resonate; furthermore, no special
feature can be realised using a homogeneous DNG substrate.
In [58, 59], MPAs on MTM substrates have been theoretically
investigated. The equation for the resonant frequency for an
annular ring patch on an MTM substrate has been derived in [58].
The geometry of the antenna is shown in Fig. 9. The substrate of
Fig. 9 Geometry of the annular ring patch on an MTM substrate [58]
IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2015, Vol. 9, Iss. 9, pp. 913922
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015
Fig. 10 Geometry of the rectangular patch on an MTM substrate [59]
the patch was a combination of DNG medium (called the
backward wave medium in [58]), and the normal medium with
and values that are both positive (also called double positive
medium (DPS) in the literature). The DNG formed the inner
circle, which was surrounded by the DPS medium. From the
derived expression of the dominant resonant mode, it was found
that patch miniaturisation was possible by carefully selecting the
ratios of area lled by the DNG and DPS media and their properties.
In [59], the MPA on MTM substrate has been further analysed
analytically, and numerical results have been presented to validate
the analytical ones. A rectangular patch on an inhomogeneous
substrate has been analysed using the cavity model. The patch was
transversally loaded with inhomogeneous substrate as shown in
Fig. 10. The substrate was composed of two homogeneous
substrates of permittivities 1 and 2, and permeabilities 1 and 2,
respectively. The ratio of the volumes of the two material media
underneath the patch was dened by a term called the lling ratio.
The problem has been analysed using the cavity model. By
applying the boundary conditions and solving for the resonant
frequency, the solution for the dominant mode is derived from the
solution of the following transcendental equation
k1 vm2
tan [k1 hW ] = tan [k2 (1 h)W ] (5)
vm1 k2
Assuming that the patch is small, a solution to (5) is given by
h e
= 2 (6)
1h e1
The above equation has been analysed under the assumption that the
materials are non-dispersive. It has been shown that by changing the
lling ratio and appropriately setting the values of the permittivities
of substrates, a size-reduction is possible. Using the above solution,
an MPA of W = 50 mm has been analysed in which the lling ratio
was = 50%. It has been found that an arbitrarily low resonant
frequency when 1 was chosen to be 2o and 2 was chosen to be
20. It was thus demonstrated in [59] that antenna miniaturisation
was possible using the combination of DPS and ENG mediums.
However, further analysis of the antenna using far-eld patterns
showed that the antenna efciency was relatively low.
A similar procedure has been followed to determine the resonant
frequency of a circular patch. A circular patch of radius a was
analysed on a substrate comprising of two different homogeneous
media. The core substrate had a permittivity and permeability of 1
and 1, respectively, and had a radius of a. The outer substrate
covered the core substrate and extended up to the edges of the
patch. It had a permittivity and permeability of 2 and 2,
respectively. The cavity model was used to solve for the resonant
frequency of the dominant mode, and a transcendental equation
was derived in terms of Bessel functions. Under small antenna
assumptions, the solution to the equation was
1 h2 m
= 2 (7)
1 + h2 m1
From the analysis of the above equation, it was found that it was
919
Table 1 Summary of MPA miniaturisation techniques and their characteristics
Miniaturisation Features Advantages Disadvantages
technique

material loading high dielectric substrates, ceramic high degree of miniaturisation, expensive materials limited bandwidth
substrates, magnetodielectric easy design procedure
substrates

shorting and folding shorting pins, shorting wall, up to four times miniaturisation, no standard design procedure, makes antenna
folding cost-effective solution geometry complex, non-planar because of
folding, very low gain and directivity

reshaping a patch or fractal antenna, engineered can provide wider bandwidth, make antenna geometry complex, affects the
introducing slots conductors, slots in the patch up to eight times miniaturisation radiation characteristics, no standard design
procedure, poor polarisation purity

modifications in slots in ground plane, use of DGS up to eight times miniaturisation, low efficiency increases the back lobe level no
ground plane antenna geometry remains planar standard design procedure
and simple

use of MTMs use of ENG, MNG or DNG high degree of miniaturisation limited bandwidth, low efficiency, complex
substrates, use of MTM inspired antenna geometry, no standard design procedure
techniques

possible to design a small antenna by choosing the core as an MNG with the models used to analyse such structures as such models
medium and using DPS for the outer medium. The computed usually ignore the polarisation of the eld that might cause
far-eld radiation patterns showed that such an antenna had better different behaviours as compared with the normal incidence/
radiation characteristics than a rectangular patch on an ENG/DPS non-polarised models used in most analysis to derive the effective
medium. medium properties. Thus caution has to be taken and full
There are no naturally occurring homogenous ENG or MNG understanding of the physics is required.
media, and realising a practical miniaturised MPA based on the
above design is not possible unless the above-mentioned media are
synthesised articially. Articially created MNG or ENG structures 4 Summary and features of miniaturisation
are frequency dependent and highly dispersive. Furthermore, the methods
size of the unit cells making the MNG or ENG medium sometimes
make it impossible to realise a practical antenna. Nevertheless, Table 1 summarises the various techniques discussed in this paper
many MTM-inspired MPA designs have been presented in the for MPA miniaturisation. The table highlights the features of each
literature, among which many are for MPA miniaturisation. technique, and lists its major advantages and disadvantages. As
A magnetic-permeability-enhanced MTM substrate for MPA seen from the table, almost all the mentioned techniques lead to
miniaturisation has been presented in [60]. The substrate consisted signicant miniaturisation. However, some techniques such as
of periodically arranged SRRs placed vertically between the patch folding or MTM-inspired can make the antenna structure more
and the ground plane. This resulted in signicant miniaturisation complex and non-planar. Moreover, most techniques reported so
of the patch antenna. The area of the MPA was reduced by a far provide little insight into a general design procedure, and they
factor of 10 as compared with a conventional MPA printed on an do not mention how the technique can be applied to design
FR4 substrate. However, since the design called for a vertical antennas in other bands. Hence, more attention should be given to
arrangement of the SRRs, the substrate was much thicker than the this issue in further works. It is also important to mention that
normal substrate. many of the patch miniaturisation gures reported in the literature
In [4], an MTM-inspired technique was used for MPA only mention the decrease in patch size (or radiating structure size)
miniaturisation. A CSRR was inserted in the substrate horizontally and do not take into account the size of the ground plane. Since
between the circular patch and the ground plane, which resulted in the size of the ground plane greatly affects the performance of an
a decrease in antenna size as well as its bandwidth. This decrease MPA, it cannot be neglected when dening the size of the antenna
was 75% at 2.45 GHz, as compared with that of a conventional
MPA fabricated on an FR4 substrate. However, this was also
accompanied by a decrease in the bandwidth and the radiation
efciency of the antenna. The antenna had a fractional bandwidth
of only 0.4% and an efciency of 28.1%.
An MNG medium created by three helices was placed between a
circular patch and the ground plane to reduce the size of the patch
[61]. This resulted in 60% miniaturisation in the patch area. The
antenna resonated at 735 MHz with a fractional bandwidth of
0.5% and a maximum gain of 7.9 dBi. In [62], an 80% reduction
in the size of patch was achieved by loading it with MTM
transmission-line. The miniaturised MPA utilising CSRR, etched
out in the ground plane, which was mentioned in the previous
section [52], can also be termed as an MTM-inspired antenna
since it used an MTM structure for miniaturisation. The same is
true for other CSRR-based MPAs discussed in the previous section.
In summary, various MTM-based as well as MTM-inspired
techniques have been implemented for MPA miniaturisation.
Although they have been successful in reducing the size, this has
Fig. 11 Comparison of bandwidths of various miniaturised patch antenna
been at a substantial cost in terms of complex material use, very
designs
narrow operating bandwidths and low radiation efciency. In
(Black = material loading, red = folding and shorting, pink = reshaping or introducing
addition, in MTM miniaturisation methods, care should be taken slots, green = modication in ground plane and blue = use of MTM)

IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2015, Vol. 9, Iss. 9, pp. 913922

920 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015
which has been miniaturised. In addition, none of the works reported
in the literature breach the fundamental limits of ESA, as described
in [1], and thus the tradeoff between size, gain and the bandwidth
needs to be carefully managed based on the application at hand.
In Fig. 11, we compare some of the miniaturised antennas that are
discussed in this article, in terms of their size (area) and bandwidth
performance (references have been colour-coded to highlight the
miniaturisation method used). As mentioned earlier, many of the
references omitted the details of the performance of the antenna
when it is miniaturised; hence, results should be viewed with
caution and thoroughly scrutinised. For this reason, only those
references which gave complete details of the performance of the
antenna along with the miniaturisation achieved are listed in
Fig. 11. Moreover, the antenna sizes have been normalised to that
of a standard MPA on an FR4 substrate covering the band of
interest. As we can clearly see from the plot, most of the
small-size MPAs have very limited bandwidths while the ones
with wider bandwidths have lower miniaturisation factors. Thus
the tradeoff is evident. Smaller antennas also suffer from low
radiation efciency specially when high levels of miniaturisations
are achieved.
5 Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an overview of various methods that
have been proposed in the literature for MPA miniaturisation. The
theory of ESAs was discussed briey, highlighting the
fundamental limits on their Q as well as the tradeoff between
antenna size, bandwidth and gain. The methods used in the
literature for MPA miniaturisation included the use of modied
and unconventional substrates; shorting and folding of the antenna;
changing the shape of antenna; introducing slots in the ground
plane; and the use of the MTMs. Some methods provided greater
miniaturisation, whereas others only achieved a moderate level of
miniaturisation in an attempt to keep a balance between decrease
in bandwidth and loss of efciency, while reducing the size.
Moreover, some of these designs were easy to fabricate while
others used complex geometries and materials that are not
low-cost. Such tradeoffs will always be present and the user must
decide which design to use, depending on the application in which
a miniaturised MPA is required. Moreover, evident from this paper
is that many designs are limited in the sense that they provide little
insight into the physics of miniaturisation technique. Many of the
designs also did not clearly specify the effect on bandwidth or
efciency accompanying the reduction in size. We have also
pointed out the fact that there is a great need to clearly identify
how the various parameters affect the performance of the antenna
for a specic miniaturisation technique. A comparison of the
antenna Q with the theoretical lower bound of Q for ESA would
be useful for the purpose of comparing the performance of the
proposed miniaturisation method. There is also need for
miniaturisation techniques which provide better insight into the
physics of the technique and clearly outline a methodology for
designing small MPA for various bands using the proposed
method. Given this background, it is safe to predict that the
challenging problem of miniaturisation of MPAs will continue to
draw the attention of antenna researchers for years to come.
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