Design And Development of Inset Feed Microstrip Patch Antennas using Various Substrates

Abstract

Selecting an appropriate substrate material for the design of microstrip patch antenna for various applications is a very important step in antenna design. This paper presents a work of various substrates materials used for the design of low cost inset feed rectangular microstrip antenna for WLAN, WiMax, LTE, C-band and X-band applications. The substrates used are FR-4 epoxy, foam, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The antennas were designed, optimized and simulated using HFSS 15.0. Return loss, voltage standing wave ratio and gain analysis is carried out for these antennas. The measurement of reflection coefficient of the fabricated antennas is done using Agilent PNA-L series vector network analyzer. The simulated and measured results are well in agreement. The analysis show that antenna with foam substrate offers the lowest return loss of - 41.28 dB. Larger bandwidth and gain of 4.38 dB is observed with PET substrate.