Performance of Various Microstrip Patch Antenna Structures on a Heterogeneous Substrate Material

Abstract

Today's communication infrastructure is mostly supported by wireless technology. The only way to engage in wireless communication (WC) is with an antenna. An antenna is an extremely important component of a communication system and has undergone tremendous improvements, especially in the areas of compactness (miniaturization) and wide bandwidth. The key issue with standard antennas is that they only work at one or two frequencies, limiting the amount of bands that equipment can accommodate. Another problem is the antenna's size. Setting up more than one antenna is difficult due to the limited space available on a handset. The use of a heterogeneous substrate is being investigated to try and solve these issues. A heterogeneous substrate multiband microstrip patch antenna with various shapes fed by a rectangular microstrip feed line is proposed in this paper with a total area of 73.3 x 127.85 x 3.2 mm³. The antennas are printed on a heterogeneous substrate with the combinations of easily available materials like FR4_epoxy, Air and Taconic RF-30 with relative permittivity of 4.4, 1 and 3. The substrate underneath the patch's slot must have the right placements and dimensions in order to provide the multiband characteristics. The various structures of microstrip patch antennas like rectangular, square, circular, elliptical and triangular covers L (1-2 GHz), S (2-4 GHz), C (4-8 GHz) and X (8 - 12GHz) bands and used for various applications like Low Density Radio Communications Link (LDRCL), Communication satellites, Wireless LAN-802.11b, 802.11g, Bluetooth and WiMAX applications. Ansoft HFSS 13.0 antenna software is used to design and simulate each antenna. The prototype of the suggested antennas, which come in a variety of designs, is constructed, measured, and produced with good return loss, VSWR, resonant frequency, radiation pattern, and antenna gain.