This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2402292, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
Low RCS Microstrip Patch Antenna Using
Frequency Selective Surface and Microstrip
Resonator
Ying Liu, Member, IEEE, Yuwen Hao, Hui Wang, Kun Li and Shuxi Gong
 Over the past decades, many novel techniques have been
Abstract—A low radar cross section (RCS) microstrip antenna
is proposed and investigated in this letter. This design is based on
implementation of frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) and
microstrip resonators. By using the FSS ground instead of the
solid metal ground, out-of-band RCS reduction can be realized.
Moreover, in-band RCS reduction can be obtained by loading
microstrip resonators. Significant RCS reduction has been
accomplished in the frequency ranges of 3-10GHz. Compared
with the reference antenna, the simulation results show that RCS
reduction of the proposed antenna in and out of the operation
band is as much as 13dB and 17dB, respectively. Measured results
satisfactorily agree with the simulated ones. Radiation
performance of the proposed antenna is preserved compared with
the reference antenna.
Index Terms— Microstrip resonator, frequency selective
surface, microstrip patch antenna, radar cross section reduction.
I. INTRODUCTION
Considerable research interest in radar cross section (RCS)
reduction has been triggered by the development of the
modern stealth technology. For a low observable platform,
antenna scattering signature acts as one of the main contributors
to total RCS. Thus, researches on RCS reduction for antennas
are extremely meaningful and urgent [1]. Many methods have
been proposed to reduce the RCS of specific objects during the
past decades. Nevertheless, not all conventional techniques of
RCS reduction are suitable for antennas. What’s worse, some
techniques are effective for reducing the RCS signature for
antenna while they may also degrade the antenna’s radiation
characteristics. Therefore, such strategies cannot be used to
reduce the RCS of antenna. To overcome this drawback,
various approaches have been introduced to reduce the RCS of
the special scattering target.
This work is supported by Program for New Century Excellent Talents in
University (NCET-11-0690) and the Fundamental Research funds for the
Central Universities (K5051202049) and by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 61372001).
The authors are with the National Key Laboratory of Antennas and
Microwave Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail:
liuying@mail.xidian.edu.cn).
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proposed to obtain RCS reduction, such as shaping of targets,
using radar absorbing materials (RAM) [2] and application of
bionics principle [3]. By subtracting metal areas, RCS
reduction can be achieved [4-5]. In [6], a novel metamaterial
composing of double-square-loop structure is applied for RCS
reduction. Nevertheless, that approach cannot be used in many
applications because of its narrow operating band. Furthermore,
electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures are widely
employed to reduce RCS. In [7], EBG structures loaded with
lumped resistances are utilized to obtain in-band RCS reduction.
On the other hand, mushroom-like electromagnetic band gap
(EBG) structures are utilized to achieve out-of-band RCS
reduction [8-9]. Moreover, out-of-band RCS reduction can also
be realized by loading FSSs [10].
In this paper, a compact FSS is designed to replace the solid
metal ground for the purpose of the out-of-band RCS reduction.
In addition, two microstrip resonators are designed and
optimized to obtain in-band RCS reduction. Furthermore, a
better RCS reduction can be realized by cutting slots on the
metal ground. To verify the reliability and superior
performance of the proposed method, both of the reference and
proposed antenna prototypes are fabricated and tested. All
simulation work is accomplished by using Ansoft’s High
Frequency Solution Solver (HFSS) software. In SectionⅡ,
microstrip resonators and compact FSS cells are introduced and
designed. Comparisons of two antennas’ performance are
presented in Section Ⅲ.
II. DESIGN OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA
A. Microstrip Resonators
In [11], a simple and meaningful theory based on the cavity
model is introduced to analyze the behavior of microstrip
resonators. By properly designing, microstrip resonators can
operate at the same frequency as the so-called microstrip
antennas. What’s more, a microstrip antenna can be used as a
resonant cavity. In other words, it has the ability to store
electromagnetic energy of an irradiated plane wave. Based on
this characteristic, the microstrip resonators have the potential
for in-band RCS reduction. To achieve the goal of in-band RCS
reduction by using microstrip resonators, the size of the
microstrip resonators and square-microstrip antenna should be
the same. Due to the asymmetric structure of the antenna and
the effect of the patch on the microstrip resonators, w, w1 and
w2 have different values. In Fig.1, geometries of the antenna
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2402292, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
2

with and without microstrip resonators are provided. For
comparisons, the reference antenna operating at 5GHz is
designed. For a microstrip antenna, a too small ground has an
impact on front-to-back ratio. Nevertheless, the microstrip
antenna with a too large ground might be impractical in
engineering applications. Thus, the side length of the ground is
chosen as about one wavelength (5 GHz) in free space. All
antennas are printed on a FR4 with the thickness of 2.5mm and
the relative permittivity of 4.4. Table I exhibits the detailed
parameters of the reference antenna and the proposed antenna.
B. Frequency Selective Surface
Based on the above approach, in-band RCS reduction can be
achieved. And the following discussions are aimed at reducing
the out-of-band RCS. As is known to all, FSS has the
characteristic of band rejection. That is to say, the incident
wave within the FSS’s stop-band will be reflected while the
incident wave outside of the FSS’s stop-band will transmit
through the FSS without any obstruction. As a result, it can be
applied to RCS reduction. The geometry of each FSS unit cell is
illustrated in Fig.3 and the corresponding parameters are given
in TableⅡ. Our compact FSS unit cell is based on a modified
version of the traditional square-ring FSS. In addition，the total
length of the compact FSS is approximately equal to one
sub-wavelength (5 GHz), which is the wavelength in the
substrate at 5 GHz. In Fig.4, it is obviously found that FSSs
present a characteristic of stop-band in the vicinity of 5GHz.

(a) (b)

Fig.1. Top view of (a) the reference antenna and (b) the antenna with microstrip
resonators.

TABLE I
ALL PARAMETERS OF TWO ANTENNAS
Parameters L l w
Value(mm) 50 18 12.7
Parameters w1 w2 d
Value(mm) 12.7 12.6 4.3

As a special resonant cavity, the microstrip resonators

irradiated with a proper incident wave should store
electromagnetic energy. To prove this characteristic, Fig.3. The geometry of each FSS cell.
comparison of bistatic RCS is illustrated in Fig.2. Both of the
two antennas are irradiated with TE polarization (E incident TABLE II
field along x-axis) and TM polarization (E incident field along ALL PARAMETERS OF EACH FSS CELL
y-axis) incident waves at 5GHz. As shown in Fig.2 (a), it can be Parameters D1 D2 D3 D4
seen that bistatic RCS is almost reduced in all directions. In Value(mm) 5 4.8 0.1 0.1
Fig.2 (b), bistatic RCS of the proposed antenna increases and
Parameters D5 D6 D7
even exceeds the reference antenna at certain angles. The
reason is that two microstrip resonators are located at the edge Value(mm) 0.3 0.2 0.4
of the antenna and electromagnetic energy stored in them is
possible to leak.

(a) (b)

Fig.2. Comparison of bistatic RCS of two antennas in (a) xoz-plane (TM plane
wave) and (b) yoz-plane (TE plane wave). Fig.4. S-parameters of the FSS cell.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2015.2402292, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
3

C. The Proposed Antenna Besides, the gain loss in normal direction (z-axis) is 0.4dB,
By properly optimizing the dimension of microstrip which is reasonable considering the energy leakage by
resonators, its operating band can cover the impedance replacing the ground with the FSS structure and slots.
bandwidth of the reference antenna, which means that in-band
RCS reduction can be achieved by microstrip resonators.
Therefore, the FSSs are aimed at reducing RCS at the frequency
out of the operating band of microstrip resonators. However,
compared with the stop-band of each FSS cell, the operating
band of a microstrip resonator is too narrow. Thus, it is difficult
to reduce RCS at the frequency within the stop-band of FSSs
but out of the operating band of the microstrip resonator. In
order to address this issue, six slots are utilized to accomplish
RCS reduction of the frequency band which cannot be achieved (a) (b)
Fig.6. (a) top and (b) bottom view of two fabricated antennas
by FSSs and resonators. The slots can be considered as
dipole-shaped FSSs, which have the characteristic of band-pass.
When slots are resonating, the incident wave can pass through
them without any obstruction, which results in RCS reduction.
The resonant frequency of the slots is 5.5 GHz, at which
microstrip resonatros and FSSs cannot contribute to RCS
reduction. In addition, the length is approximately equal to half
sub-wavelength (5.5 GHz), which is the wavelength in the
substrate at 5.5 GHz. After appropriate optimization, the length
and width of each slot are 15.6mm and 0.3mm, respectively.
With the delicate analysis and simulation, the geometry of the
proposed antenna is determined and depicted in Fig.5.

Fig.7. Comparison of S-parameter characteristics.

(a)
Fig.5. The geometry of the proposed antenna.

III. SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS

A. Radiation Performance
In order to verify simulation results of the proposed antenna,
a prototype is fabricated and shown in Fig.6. Fig.7 shows
simulated and measured S-parameter characteristics of two
antennas. It can be seen that the frequency of the simulated
antenna is slightly lower than the measured one. This is mainly
due to the fabrication tolerance and measurement uncertainty.
Moreover, the small shift of the return loss between the
proposed and reference antennas is imputable to the coupling
between two microstrip resonators and the radiation patch. As
shown in Fig.8, we can draw a conclusion that radiation (b)
patterns of the proposed antenna do not degrade obviously.
Fig.8. Comparison of radiation patterns in (a) xoz-plane and (b) yoz-plane.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
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4

B. Radar Cross Section Reduction

In order to validate effect of RCS reduction, the monostatic
RCS of two antennas irradiated by TM polarization and TE
polarization waves are described in this section. In Fig.9, the
RCS curves versus the frequency for a normal incident plane
wave are plotted. The insets in Fig.9 have an obvious
description of remarkable RCS reduction in the whole
operation band (4.84GHz-5.13GHz) of the proposed antenna.
And satisfying RCS reduction out of the operation band is also
illustrated in Fig. 9. In summary, in-band and out-of-band RCS
reduction is as much as 13dB and 17dB, respectively.
Ultimately, it can be seen that RCS reduction is realized over
the range of 3-10GHz except the narrow band of
4.5GHz-4.7GHz. Furthermore, variation of RCS as a function
(b)
of the incident angle at 5GHz and 7.75GHz are given in Fig.10. Fig.10. Comparison of RCS’s curves versus the incident angle at (a) 5GHz and
As is apparent from Fig.10, RCS reduction based on FSSs and (b) 7.75GHz .
resonators can be obtained in a certain angular range.
IV. CONCLUSION
A novel microstrip patch antenna has been considered as a
test case to validate the strategy for RCS reduction. The results
exhibit that it is possible to acquire wideband RCS reduction by
combining FSSs and microstrip resonators on the premise of
acceptable detrimental effect on the radiation properties.
Excellent RCS reduction in frequency ranges of 3-10GHz is
implemented at the cost of slight shift of resonator frequency
and low gain loss. With these outstanding features, the
proposed antenna can be employed in low RCS platforms.

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