  This work proposes to use magnetic material as the substrate of planar
antennas to overcome the platform effect caused by the conducting ground plane.
The upper bound of the radiation efficiency of an electric-current-driven
low-profile antenna is theoretically derived, which is inversely proportional
to the Gilbert damping factor of the magnetic material. Meanwhile, the
improvement of radiation due to the use of magnetic material is demonstrated by
a three-dimensional (3D) multiphysics and multiscale time-domain model. The
simulation results match the theoretical derivation, showing 25% radiation
efficiency from a planar antenna backed by a FeGaB thin film with 2.56 um
thickness. Furthermore, for conductive ferromagnetic materials, it is shown
that the eddy current loss can be well suppressed by laminating the thin film
into multiple layers. The radiation efficiency of the modeled antenna with a
conductive ferromagnetic substrate is improved from 2.2% to 11.8% by dividing
the substrate into 10 layers, with a ferromagnetic material fill factor of 93%.
