Photonic band-gap materials for high-gain printed circuit antennas

It is found through a vector integral-equation analysis and the reciprocity theorem that the gain of a microstrip antenna can be greatly enhanced with a photonic band-gap material layer either as the substrate or the superstrate. The beam angle is found to coincide with that of a leaky-wave mode of a planar-grating structure. This observation suggests that high gain is due to the excitation of strong leaky-wave fields.