Design of microstrip antenna array for improvement of FBR using partial ground plane technique

Abstract

In this paper, improvement of front to back ratio (FBR) for rectangular microstrip array antenna is discussed by using the partial ground plane technique. A four-element rectangular microstrip antenna array is designed for X-band frequency of 9.1GHz, with a peak gain of 10.09dBi and front to back ratio of 13.72dB. By optimizing the ground plane, the FBR has improved to 38.42dB at 9.1GHz for 75% of the full ground plane. The FBR has also improved to 42.58dB, 46.57dB at 9GHz, 8.9 GHz respectively. The Peak gains have improved by 0.28dB compared to the peak gains with full ground plane. The 3dB gain bandwidth has also improved by 114 MHz compared to bandwidth with full ground plane. The simulations are carried using HFSS software. A good agreement between simulated and measured results is observed.