MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA

In its most basic form. A microstrip patch antenna consist of a radiating patch on one side of a dielectric substrate which has a ground plane on the other side. The patch is generally made of conducting material such as copper or gold and can take any possible shape.The radiating patch and the feed lines are usually photo etched on the dielectric substrate. In order to simplify analysis and performance prediction .The patch is generaly square, rectangular, circular, triangular, elliptical or some other common shape. For a rectangular patch the length L of the patch is usually 0.3333<L<0.5 free space wavelength.Patch is selected vary thin such that patch thickness <<free space wavelength. The height h of the dielectric substrate is usually 0.003<=h<=0.05 free space wavelength.The dieletric constant of the substrate is typically in the range 2.2 to 12.

Physical Structure of a Microstrip Patch Antenna

Feeding Technology:
Microstrip patch antennas can be fed by a variety of methods. These methods can be classified into two categories- contacting and non-contacting. In the contacting method, the RF power is fed directly to the radiating patch using a connecting element such as a microstrip line. In the non-contacting scheme, electromagnetic field coupling is done to transfer power between the microstrip line and the radiating patch. The four most popular feed techniques used are the microstrip line, coaxial probe (both contacting schemes), aperture coupling and proximity coupling (both non-contacting schemes). a. Microstrip Line Feed b. Coaxial Feed c. Aperture Coupled Feed d. Proximity Coupled Feed

Advantages:
Light Weight and low volume. Low profile planner configration. Low fabrication cost. Support both, linear as well as circular polarization. Can be easily integrated with microwave integrated circuits. Capable of dual and triple frequency operation. Mechanically robust when mounted on rigid surfaces.

Application:
Microstrip patch antennas are incresaing in popularity for use in wireless applications due to there low profile structure. There for the are extremely cpompatible for embedded antennas in handheld wirelss devices such as cellular phone, pager etc. Used in satelite communication.

MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA TECHNOLOGY

[3] A survey of microstrip patch antenna elements defining with stress on theoretical and practical design techniques.Available substrate materials are reviewed along with the relation between dielectric constant tolerance and resonant freqnency of microstrip patches.The theoretical analysis techniques are transmission-line and modalexpansion (cavity) techniques as well as numerical methods such as the method of moments and fmite-element techniques. Practical procedures are given for both standard rectangular and circular patches, as well as variations on those designs including circularly polarized microstrip patches. The quality, bandwidth, and efficiency factors of typical patch designs are discussed.

Analytics techniques for Microstrip Patch Antenna 1.Transmission Line Models:

The simplest analytical description of a rectangular microstrip patch utilizes transmission-line theory and models the patch as two parallel radiating slots as shown in Fig. Each radiating edge of length a is modeled as a narrow slot radiating into a half-space.

The advantage of this model lies in its simplicity,

2. Modal Expansion (cavity) techniques

Although Transmission Line Model is easy to use but it has some numerous problem.It is only useful for patches of rectangular shapes. These disadvantages are eliminated in the modal expansion analysis technique whereby the patch is viewed as a thin TM,-mode cavity with magnetic walls. The field between the patch and the ground plane is expanded in terms of a series of cavity resonant modes or eigen functions along with its eigen values or resonant frequencies associated with each mode. This results in a much more accurate formulation for the input impedance, resonant frequency, etc, for both rectangular and circular patches at only a modest increase in mathematical complexity.

Feeding Techniques
Microstrip Line Feed
In this type of feed technique, a conducting strip is connected directly to the edge of the Microstrip patch. The conducting strip is smaller in width as compared to the patch and this kind of feed arrangement has the advantage that the feed can be etched on the same substrate to provide a planar structure.

Coaxial Feed
The Coaxial feed or probe feed is a very common technique used for feeding Microstrip patch antennas.The inner conductor of the coaxial connector extends through the dielectric and is soldered to the radiating patch, while the outer conductor is connected to the ground plane. The main advantage of this type of feeding scheme is that the feed can be placed at any desired location inside the patch in order to match with its input impedance.

Aperture Coupled Feed

In this type of feed technique, the radiating patch and the microstrip feed line are separated by the ground plane.Coupling between the patch and the feed line is made through a slot or an aperture in the ground plane. The coupling aperture is usually centered under the patch, leading to lower cross-polarization due to symmetry of the configuration. Since the ground plane separates the patch and the feed line, spurious radiation is minimized.

[4] Aperture coupled feeding is attractive because of advantages such as no physical contact between the feed and radiator, wider bandwidths, and better isolation between antennas and the feed network. The use of coplanar waveguide (CPW) as transmission media can also provide lower radiation losses and ease of monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) device integration in MMIC phase arrays. Furthermore, aperture-coupled feeding allows independent optimization of antennas and feed networks by using substrates of different thickness or permittivity.

Proximity Coupled Feed

This type of feed technique is also called as the electromagnetic coupling scheme.Two dielectric substrates are used such that the feed line is between the two substrates and the radiating patch is on top of the upper substrate. The main advantage of this feed technique is that it eliminates spurious feed radiation and provide very high bandwidth (as high as 13%) due to overall increase in the thickness of the microstrip patch antenna. This scheme also provides choices between two different dielectric media, one for the patch and one for the feed line to optimize the individual performances.

[1] This method is advantageous to reduce harmonic radiation of microstrip patch antenna implemented in a multilayer substrate. The goal of the design is the suppression of the

resonances at the 2nd and 3rd harmonic frequencies to reduce spurious radiation due to the corresponding patch modes to avoid the radiation of harmonic signals generated by non-linear devices at the amplifying stage. The study shows the possibility of controlling the second harmonic resonance matching by varying the length of the feeding line. On the other hand, the suppression of the third harmonic is achieved by using a compact resonator.