In this paper, a high gain and directional coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed ultra-wideband (UWB) planar antenna with a new frequency selective surface (FSS) unit cells design is proposed for UWB applications. The proposed UWB antenna was designed based on the Mercedes artistic-shaped planar (MAP) antenna. The antenna consisted of a circular ring embedded with three straight legs for antenna impedance bandwidth improvement. The modelled FSS used the integration of a two parallel conductive metallic patch with a circular loop structure. The FSS provided a UWB stopband filter response covering a bandwidth of 10.5 GHz, for frequencies from 2.2 to 12.7 GHz. The proposed FSS had a compact physical dimension of 5 mm × 5 mm × 1.6 mm, with a printed array of 19 × 19 FSS unit cells. The FSS unit cells were printed on only one side of the dielectric FR4 substrate and placed as a sandwich between the antenna and the reflector ground plane. An equivalent circuit configuration (ECC) was used to verify the FSS unit cell structure’s performance. The simulated results indicated that the UWB MAP antenna and FSS reflector provided a fractional bandwidth of 136% and a high gain of 11.5 dB at 8.5 GHz with an acceptable radiation efficiency of 89%. Furthermore, the gain was improved across the operating band and kept between 8.3 and 11.5 dB. The proposed antenna was in good agreement between theoretical and experimental results and offered a wide enough bandwidth for UWB and vehicle applications.

UWB MAP antenna; stable gain; FSS reflector; ECC; stopband response; reflection phase