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A very popular antenna for many applications is the ‘’patch’’ or ‘’panel’’ antenna. A patch
antenna gains its name from the fact that it basically consists of a metal patch suspended
over a ground plane. The assembly is usually contained in a plastic radome, which
protects the structure from damage (as well as concealing its essential simplicity). Patch
antennas are simple to fabricate and easy to modify and customize. They are closely
related to microstrip antennas, which are just patch antennas constructed on a dielectric
substrate, usually employing the same sort of lithographic patterning used to fabricate
A microstrip or patch antenna has a number of advantages over other antennas -- it is lightweight,
inexpensive, and easy to integrate with accompanying electronics. While the antenna can be 3-D
in structure (wrapped around an object, for example), the elements are usually flat; hence their
other name, planar antennas. Note that a planar antenna is not always a patch antenna.
The following drawing shows a patch antenna in its basic form: a flat plate over a ground plane
(usually a PC board). The center conductor of a coax serves as the feed probe to couple
drawbacks. One of main limitation with patch antenna is there inherently narrowband
performance due to its resonant nature. With bandwidth as low as a few percent [2],
broadband applications using conventional patch design are limited. Other characteristics
of patch antenna include low efficiencies, limited power capacity, spurious fed radiation,
The most direct approach to increase the bandwidth of patch antenna is to increase the
thickness of the substrate, while using a low dielectric substrate [3]. This can extend
efficiency (as much as 90% if surface waves are not included) and bandwidth (up to
35%). However, surface waves must be included, since surface waves extract power from
the direct radiation pattern, resulting in increased side lobe levels, antenna loss, and a
the thickness of the substrate increases. As patch antenna radiates, a portion of the total
available power for direct radiation becomes trapped along the surface of the substrate.
This trapped electromagnetic energy leads of the development of surface waves. In fact,
the Ratio of power that radiates into the substrate compared to the power that radiates
into air is approximately (03/2:1). Is this governed by the rules of total internal reflection,
which states that any field radiated into the substrate at angles greater than the critical
angle are totally internally reflected at the top and bottom surfaces. This is illustrated I
figure [1]. Therefore, for a substrate with dielectric constant Er=10.2, nearly 3.1 of total
radiated power is trapped in substrate with a critical angle of roughly 18.2 degrees.
Surface waves effect can be eliminated by using cavities or stacked substrate techniques.
However, this has the fundamental drawbacks of increasing the weight, Thickness, and
complexity of the microstrip antennas. These complications and others prevent microstrip
The following values were taken as constant in the experimental patch antenna we
Loss tangent=0.0001
Length of patch=9.06mm
Width of patch=11.8mm
Radius of probe=0.6mm
below 2 dB
Conclusion:
waves take their toll and the performance of the antenna declines.