A novel performance analysis of the microstrip antenna printed on a cylindrical body

Abstract

Performance of a circular patch microstrip antenna is highly affected by the effective dielectric constant of a used substrate material. When the circular patch is conformed on a cylindrical body, the effective dielectric constant is changing with curvature due to the changing in the fringing field. Consequently, some of antenna parameters such as resonance frequency, input impedance, voltage standing wave ratio, return loss, quality factor, and antenna bandwidth are functions of curvature. In this work, we study the effect of curvature on the performance of circular patch microstrip antenna. A mathematical model for the antenna parameters as functions of curvature is also introduced. The model is applied in case of using two substrates of different refractive index values. By extension, the antenna performance was studied through simulation by using method of moments (MoM) which is reliable in solving Maxwell's integral equations in the frequency domain. The results from simulation compare very favorably with the described analytical results.