A compact metasurface-based circularly polarized antenna with high gain and high front-to-back ratio for RFID readers

Developing a compact circularly polarized (CP) antenna with good radiation characteristics for handheld radio frequency identification (RFID) readers is a very challenging task. Many compact CP antennas have been reported in the open literature, but most suffer from critical drawbacks of low gain and/or high back radiation. This paper presents a metasurface (MS) based CP antenna with compact size, high gain, and high front-to-back ratio characteristics. The compact size of the proposed design is achieved by using a 2 × 2 unit-cell MS, while the CP realization is accomplished through a coupling between the MS and a Y-shaped patch as a primary CP source. The final antenna has compact overall dimensions of 0.45λ × 0.45λ × 0.02λ, where λ is the guided wavelength at the center frequency. The operating bandwidth is about 2.0% (2.43–2.48 GHz) and the broadside gain is about 6.3 dBi. Besides, the front-to-back ratio (FBR) defined by the difference gain levels between the forward and backward directions is about 18 dB. Compared with the related compact CP antennas in the literature, the proposed design has the advantages of high gain and high FBR, making it suitable for compact RFID readers.