A novel compact spiral electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure

A novel compact electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure in a spiral shape is presented and investigated. This structure significantly enlarges the capacitance between neighboring elements. The simulations and experimental results have proved that the size of the spiral structure is only 30.9% of the conventional EBG structure. Two applications have been shown, including patch antenna with the spiral EBG structure and a double-element microstrip antenna array with low mutual coupling. The measured results show that a gain improvement over 3 dB and a significant reduction of cross polarization in H-plane are obtained. A 6 dB reduction of mutual coupling is achieved in a double-element EBG microstrip antenna array.