A broad bandwidth and high gain rectangular patch antenna was specifically designed in this paper using planar-patterned metamaterial concepts. Based on an ordinary patch antenna, the antenna has isolated triangle gaps and crossed strip-line gaps etched on the metal patch and ground plane, respectively. Demonstrated to have left-handed characteristics, the patterned metal patch and finite ground plane form a coupled capacitive-inductive circuit of negative index metamaterial. It is shown to have great impact on the antenna performance enhancement in terms of the bandwidth significantly broadened from a few hundred megahertz to a few gigahertz, and also in terms of high efficiency, low loss, and low voltage standing wave ratio. Experimental data show a reasonably good agreement between the simulation and measured results. This antenna has strong radiation in the horizontal direction for some specific applications within the entire band. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3396984]