Design of a Bowtie Slot Antenna with FSS Optimization for the WiMAX Electronic Systems

Abstract

This paper shows a slotted bowtie antenna design with FSS metamaterial operating at a frequency of 3.66 GHz supporting the WiMAX applications. The proposed design is an improvement to a typical bowtie antenna using the Frequency Selective Surface Technique (FSS). Previous studies showed the slotted bowtie antenna capabilities while this study shows the gain enhancement by adding the FSS Metamaterial. The substrate used in the design is the FR4 with a dielectric constant of 5.4. Loss tangent of 0.019. Additionally, the thickness of the substrate is 1.6 mm. The design was first carried out for simulation without the FSS then the FSS was added to the configuration and the produced performance was analyzed and compared with the typical bowtie design in terms of bandwidth, gain return loss and radiation patterns. Moreover, the fabrication was carried out for antenna with and without the FSS. The comparison between the fabrication scenarios showed an increase in the antenna gain by 80% to 3.27 dB after adding the FSS. The return loss was also improved to -46.78 dB. The simulation software used before the fabrication was the CST computer simulation software, the 2017 version.

Keywords- Bowtie, antenna, FSS, WiMAX, gain, return loss, bandwidth, frequency, FSS, metamaterial.