Antenna beam shaping and gain enhancement using compensated phase conformal artificial magnetic reflector

ABSTRACT An antenna constructed with a conformal engineered reflector is presented, demonstrating an enhanced gain, shaped‐beam radiation pattern. The reflector is composed of artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) unit cells designed for the desired reflection phase responses. A methodology is developed, describing the scattering mechanism of AMC unit cells to collimate the reflected waves toward the broadside direction. Obtained results show a gain enhancement of about 7.5 dBi compared with the case where antenna is alone. Moreover, the antenna has a fan‐shape radiation beam with half power beam‐widths of 37° and 87° in the E‐ and H‐planes, respectively. Measured results show a shaped‐beam antenna with maximum gain of 9.5 dBi, and a wide impedance bandwidth ranging from 2.4 to 2.6 GHz. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:880–883, 2017