2009 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Electronic and Photonic Devices & Systems (ELECTRO-2009)

Radiation Characteristics of
Rectangular Patch Antenna using Air Substrates
C. Chandan, A. Ghosh, S. K. Ghosh, S. Chattopadhyay
Department of ECE,
Siliguri Institute of Technology,
P.O-Sukna, Darjeeling 734009, WB, India
e-mail: piyalirekha@yahoo.com

Abstract- A rectangular microstrip patch on air substrate is connector. The patch is soldered with the probe and thus no
theoretically and experimentally demonstrated and compared additional support or spacer is required to hold it at proper
with conventional microstrip patch. Compared to conventional position. The patch having a commonly used aspect ratio W/L
one, these show improved radiation performance. Around 2-3 ≈1.5 (L = 12 mm and W =18mm) has been theoretically
dB improvement of peak gain observed.
designed using the recent formulations in [7] to operate around
Keywords-Microstrip Patch,Air Substrate,High Gain X-band. Taconic’s TLY-3-0620 has been used as the PTFE
substrate. The feed location ρ has been optimized based on
I. INTRODUCTION good matching for either combination of the substrate.
Microstrip patch of rectangular geometry etched on a
grounded substrate is a well known kind of printed antenna, D
normally radiates linearly polarized wave with typically 6
dBi gain. Some researchers had employed mixed substrate
configuration like, wedge shaped air-dielectric [1] and
micro machined air cavities on LTCC substrate [2]. Some LL
more investigations with different structures are reported in
[3]-[4].But only a few handful investigations dealt with
microstrip patches with air substrate from the point of view
of improved radiation characteristics. Larger gain is always WW
a positive requirement and can be achieved when
conventional PTFE is replaced by simple air substrate. One
theoretical investigation [5] addressed its bandwidth and
efficiency aspects only. y
In this paper, we have examined rectangular patches on
simple air substrate first as shown in Fig.1 and around 3 dB x
improvement of gain is revealed.
An electromagnetic simulator [6] has been used to study the
characteristics theoretically and also to explore the physical ρ
insight. The radiation characteristics have been z
experimentally studied using a set of prototypes and those
results are compared with the measurements employing h air
uniform PTFE and air substrates for identical patches. x
Simulated electric current and field distributions are
examined to have a physical insight in to the radiation
characteristics are also presented. Fig.1. Schematic diagram of a rectangular microstrip patch with air
substrate. (a) Top view, (b) Cross-sectional view.

A ground plane measuring 50 mm x 50 mm which is having its

II. ANTENNA STRUCTURES
A conventional microstrip patch is generally etched on an
isotropic PTFE substrate. For using air as the dielectric, the
patch is made of thin rigid metallic surface. In the present
investigation, a 0.1 mm thin metal strip held at 1.65 mm height
above the ground plane has been excited by a PE4128 SMA
electrical dimension as 1.55 λ has been used for the
experiments. Here λ is the operating wavelength of the patch.
Ground plane dimension has been chosen to optimize the gain
of the microstrip antenna for both the cases ( patch with
uniform PTFE and uniform air substrate ).This is indicated in
the result section.

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 2009 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Electronic and Photonic Devices & Systems (ELECTRO-2009)

as substrate also shifts the resonance to the higher frequency

at smaller wavelength keeping the physical dimension of the
H Plane
0 patch unaltered. This effectively turns the radiating area
10 330 30 much larger with respect to the operating wavelength.
Antenna gain also varies with operating wavelength is also
300 60 investigated and shown in Fig.4. in this present case.
0

-10 270 90

0 240 120

210 150
10
180

E PLane Simulated (air)

0 Measured (air)
10 330 30 Simulated (PTFE)
Measured (PTFE)
300 60
0
(i)

-10 270 90

0 240 120

210 150
10
180

Fig.2. Radiation pattern of a rectangular patch with different substrates:

conventional PTFE substrate compared with uniform air substrate.
Parameters: . L = 12 mm, W= 18 mm, h= 1.65 mm, Substrates: uniform
PTFE: Єr= 2.32, uniform air: Єr= 1.
(ii)
Fig.3.Electric field distributed in the substrate (a); and surface current
distribution on the patch (b) for (i) uniform PTFE substrate, (ii)
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS uniform airsubstrate. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

The measured and simulated [6] results obtained for the

prototypes employing different configuration of substrates
under a patch are presented. Agilent’s E8363B network 10
analyzer have been used to obtain the measured results.
In Fig.2, the radiation patterns of the patch with PTFE
substrte is compapared with the same patch when PTFE is 8
replaced by simple air.Around 2.9 dB gain improvement is
observed in both E and H plane.Moreover, microstrip patch
Gain (dBi)

with air substrate compared to PTFE substrate produce more 6

broad beam in its H plane as shown in Fig.2.
The physical insight in to obtaining high gain as well as
uniform air (εr=1)
wide-beam performance of the proposed antenna has 4 uniform PTFE (εr=2.33))
been explored using simulated electric fields and currents
distributed over the substrate and patch,
respectively. Those are shown in Fig. 3. A comparative 2
observation between Figs. 3(a-i) and 3(a-ii) indicates that 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4
around the radiating edges of the patch, the electric field in Ground Plane Size D (λ0)
the substrate suddenly gets wider as soon as the PTFE is Fig. 4. Simulated peak gain of a rectangular microstrip using different
replaced by air. This is also corroborated by the simulated substrates for varying ground plane size. Parameters as in Fig. 2.
current distributions if Fig. 3(b-i) is compared with Fig. 3(b-
ii). Indeed, Fig. 3(b-ii) shows wider effective radiating
aperture indicating higher antenna gain. Again, the use of air IV. CONCLUSIONS

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 2009 International Conference on Emerging Trends in Electronic and Photonic Devices & Systems (ELECTRO-2009)

Radiation characteristics of rectangular microstrip with air

substrate for improved gain performance along with its
effect of ground plane dimension is demonstrated
theoretically and experimentally.

REFERENCES

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