Comparative study of regtangular microstrip patch antenna array design

Abstract

Antennas play a very important role in the field of wireless communications. Modern wireless communication systems require the development of low cost, low profile, light weight, high gain, and simple structure antennas. Microstrip antenna satisfies such requirements. The key features of a microstrip antenna are relative ease of construction, light weight and low cost. These advantages of microstrip antennas make them popular in many wireless communication applications such as satellite communication, radar and medical applications. Microstrip antenna has also several limitations such as low gain, narrow bandwidth and low efficiency. To overcome these limitations, the microstrip patch antenna can be constructed in array configuration. This study presents the design, simulation and fabrication of rectangular microstrip patch antenna arrays at 2.45GHz. Since, the resonance frequency of these antennas is 2.45 GHz; they are suitable for industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands and wireless local area network (WLAN) applications. The configurations of the designed antennas are single patch, 4x1 and 2x2 rectangular microstrip patch array antennas. The simulation of the designs has been performed by using Computer Simulation Tool (CST) software which is a commercially available antenna simulator. The simulated and fabricated result of the designs has been obtained and comparative study between the arrays and the single patch has been done in order to analyze the performance of each configuration. Result parameters compared include return loss (S11), Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR), bandwidth, directivity, radiation pattern, gain, front to back ratio and efficiency.