Design and Realization of AMC-Based Tunable Multi-Band Microstrip Antenna

In this paper, design and realization of tunable multi-band microstrip antenna based on artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) is presented. The involvement of AMC structure on the design of microstrip antenna makes the dimension of antenna to be smaller, hence it is easy to use for portable communication devices. The tunable frequency response of proposed microstrip antenna can be achieved by incorporating external elements, namely varactor diode. Here, the varactor diodes of STMD3001 type are used with the reverse DC bias voltage of 0V, 3V, and 10V. The proposed multi-band microstrip antenna is design using two layers of 1.6mm thick FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate. There is a square patch on the top side of the first layer and 4 identical square patches arranged in a 2×2 array on the top side of the second layer. The results show that the proposed AMC-based microstrip antenna could produce the tunable frequency response in the frequency range of 1.575GHz to 2.75GHz along with the variation of reverse DC bias voltage.