Analysis of effect of concavity in linear and planar microstrip patch antenna arrays

Abstract

An array of antennas is used to improve gain and directivity. Design of an antenna array gives more design parameters to the designer. In this paper, a new concave linear patch antenna array with 4 elements and concave planar patch antenna array with 4 elements and 16 elements are proposed to study the effect of mutual coupling in arrays. To reduce mutual coupling, concave rectangular patches are proposed in the linear and planar array. The effect of patch concavity on S11 is presented for both linear and planar arrays. Compared to rectangular linear and planar arrays, mutual coupling is reduced in concave linear and planar arrays resulting in increased S11 by 111.068%, 45.64%, and 25.77%, respectively, in the 4-element concave linear array, 4-element and 16-element concave planar array, respectively. The proposed microstrip antenna arrays are simulated using HFSS, and fabricated and tested using vector network analyzer.