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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009

Rectangular Microstrip Patch on a Composite Dielectric

Substrate for High-Gain Wide-Beam Radiation Patterns
Sudipta Chattopadhyay, Jawad Y. Siddiqui, and Debatosh Guha

AbstractA rectangular microstrip patch on a composite substrate is

theoretically and experimentally investigated. Considerably wide radiation
beamwidth along with high gain is experimentally demonstrated. Compared to a conventional microstrip patch, the proposed configuration shows
as much as 75% increment in beam width in its H-plane and nearly 10%
in E-plane, indicating the peak gain of the order of 8 dBi.
Index TermsHigh-gain patch antenna, microstrip antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION
Microstrip patch of rectangular or circular geometry etched on a
grounded substrate is a well known genre of printed antenna. These
patches radiate along the broadside direction with a nonuniform 3-D radiation where the E-plane pattern is wider than that in H-plane [1]. Now
if the dielectric substrate is simply replaced by air, that is, if the patch is
suspended in air, maintaining a finite spacing above the ground plane,
the gain of the patch improves by 23 dB. Some investigations using
air substrate for different patch and ground plane geometries have been
reported in [2][6]. Improved gain along with wide 3-D beamwidth is
always preferred for using it as an efficient feed for a parabolic reflector
or to cover a wide area, particularly for wireless communications.
In this communication, we have examined a rectangular patch on a
composite dielectric substrate, which shows an interesting property of
wide-beam radiation pattern with considerably high gain. Although air
becomes a part of the composite dielectric, shown in Fig. 1, it is still
compatible with integrated circuits and at the same time enjoys the gain
enhancing feature as is done using simple air substrate below a patch.
The design and implementation of the antenna is simple. An electromagnetic simulator [7] has been used to study the characteristics theoretically and also to explore the physical insight. The radiation characteristics have been experimentally studied using a set of prototypes
and those results are compared with the measurements employing uniform PTFE and air substrates for identical patches. The increment in
beamwidth by about 75% in H-plane and nearly 10% in E-plane compared to those due to an identical patch on conventional PTFE substrate is experimentally demonstrated. The results are also compared
with those obtained using air substrate. Simulated electric current and
field distributions are examined to have a physical insight in to the radiation characteristics.
II. THE ANTENNA GEOMETRY
A conventional microstrip patch is generally etched on an isotropic
PTFE substrate. For using air as the dielectric, the patch is fabricated

Manuscript received January 15, 2009; accepted April 06, 2009. First published August 07, 2009; current version published October 07, 2009.
S. Chattopadhyay is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Siliguri Institute of Technology, Sukna, Darjeeling 734009, WB, India
(e-mail: sudipta_tutun@yahoo.co.in).
J. Y. Siddiqui and D. Guha are with the Institute of Radio Physics and
Electronics, University of Calcutta, 92 A P C Road, Kolkata, India (e-mail:
jysiddiqui@ ieee.org; dguha@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2009.2029607

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a rectangular microstrip patch with composite

substrate. (a) Top view; (b) cross-sectional view.

Fig. 2. Measured and simulated return loss characteristics of a rectangular

12 mm, W
17.73 mm, h
1.6 mm,
patch using different substrates. L
 2.9 mm; Substrates: uniform PTFE: "
: , uniform air: "
,
: and "
with S
: L.
composite: "

= 2 33

=1

=
= 2 33
= 0 75

=1

from a thin rigid metallic strip. For the present design, we have conceived an intermediate configuration where a part of the dielectric will
be PTFE and the rest is simply air as shown in Fig. 1. This causes an
asymmetry in the substrate along the E-plane and is determined by the
parameter S . This is intuitively conceived with a view to realizing a
current distribution on the patch, which would provide a new feature in
the gain as well as in the radiation patterns.
In the present investigation, a 0.1-mm thin metal strip held at 1.6 mm
height above the ground plane has been excited by a PE4128 SMA
connector. The patch is soldered with the probe and thus no additional
support or spacer is required to hold it at proper position. This configuration was chosen to examine the patch with different composite and
uniform dielectric combination below it.
The patch having a commonly used aspect ratio W=L  1:5 (L =
12 mm and W = 17.73 mm) has been theoretically designed using
the recent formulations in [8] to operate around X band. A ground

0018-926X/$26.00 2009 IEEE

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TABLE I
SIMULATED RADIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF A RECTANGULAR PATCH USING
COMPOSITE SUBSTRATE WITH DIFFERENT S VALUES PARAMETERS AS IN Fig. 2

Fig. 4. Gain versus azimuth of a rectangular patch with different substrates:

composite substrate compared with uniform air substrate. (a) E plane; (b) H
plane. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

Fig. 3. Gain versus azimuth of a rectangular patch with different substrates:

composite substrate compared with uniform PTFE substrate. (a) E plane; (b) H
plane. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

plane measuring 55 mm 2 55 mm has been used for the experiments.

Taconics TLY-3-0620 has been used as the PTFE substrate. The feed
location  has been optimized based on good matching for either combination of the substrate. All the practical values are provided in respective figure caption.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The measured and simulated [7] results obtained for the prototypes
employing different substrates under a patch are presented. Essential
comparisons are also presented in both graphical and tabular forms. In
house facilities using Agilents E8363B network analyzer have been

used to obtain the measured input impedance and radiation characteristics of the prototypes.
Fig. 2 shows the measured and simulated return loss characteristics
of the patch using composite, air and PTFE substrates. The chosen feed
location indicates optimum matching of the input impedance. Also the
simulations show close agreement with the measurements.
The composite substrate, examined here, is with S=L = 0:75. The
simulated data representing the radiation characteristics for the composite substrate are depicted in Table I. When S=L ratio is too low
like S=L = 0:125, the medium below the patch is almost filled by air
(Fig. 1). As S=L ratio increases, the substrate gets more pronounced
configuration of composite nature. The beamwidth in E-plane appears
to be highly sensitive to the S=L value as it primarily determines the
order of asymmetry introduced in that plane. The beamwidth gradually increases as S=L increases and attains the optimum value when
S=L  0:75. When S=L ratio is increased further, the PTFE occupies almost the entire space below the patch, degenerating to a conventional configuration. As usual, it attains the normal gain with normal
beamwidth of a conventional rectangular patch.
In Figs. 3 and 4, the radiation patterns of the patch on a composite
substrate (S=L = 0:75) are compared with those using uniform PTFE
or uniform air substrate, respectively. Both the simulated and measured
data have been used, although only the measured results are compared
for the cross-polarized fields. The measured gain values closely follow

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2009

Fig. 5. Simulated co-polar radiation patterns of a rectangular patch on composite substrate using different ground sizes. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

TABLE II
GAIN AND BEAMWIDTH OF RECTANGULAR MICROSTRIPS WITH DIFFERENT
SUBSTRATE CONFIGURATIONS: MEASURED AND SIMULATED VALUES
PARAMETERS AS IN Figs. 3 AND 4

Fig. 6. Simulated peak gain of a rectangular microstrip using different substrates for varying ground plane size. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

the simulated curves, but normally it is found to be around 12 dB

below the simulated data. Some losses in connectors and transitions
occurring during measurements are unavoidable, and they may be the
cause behind such apparent disagreement between the measured and
the predicted values. The E-plane cross-polarized fields for any kind
of substrate appear to be almost identical. But the composite substrate
results in comparatively higher cross-polarized radiation, which may
be 56 dB larger around 645 compared to those due to air or conventional PTFE. However, this increased cross-polarized level or minor
asymmetry in co-polar pattern will have marginal effect on its performance when it is mainly meant for portable wireless applications.
The effects of the ground plane (GP) size on the back radiation particularly, are examined in Fig. 5. Larger GP helps in reducing back
radiation significantly, but the gain may be adversely affected as was
indicated in [9, Fig. 5]. Following [9], we have further investigated the
= 1 6 0,
variation of peak gain with as shown in Fig. 6, where
0 being the operating wavelength, appears to be an optimum choice
for the present study using composite substrate. This value also indicates about 18 dB front to back isolation in Fig. 5 and as such, is chosen
for the present investigation.
A comparative study of the results presented through Figs. 3 and
4 are systematically documented in Table II. The measured data
closely agree with the simulated values. To provide more confidence,
our values obtained using PTFE substrate are compared with some

:

classical works [10], [11] indicating close mutual agreement. It is

important to note that when the PTFE is replaced by air, the peak
gain improves by about 2 dB showing 20 increase in beamwidth in
H-plane and equal amount of decrease in E-plane. The air substrate,
for the present patch geometry, shows uniform radiation with identical
3-dB beamwidth in either principal plane.
When this air is replaced by a composite substrate, as shown in
Fig. 1, the E-plane beamwidth considerably improves by 50% (from
60 to 90 ) although about 15% increment is observed in H-plane.
When compared with those due to a conventional PTFE substrate, the
composite substrate shows an increment by about 75% in H-plane and
10% in E-plane. The peak gain also increases by nearly 2 dB.
The physical insight in to obtaining high gain as well as wide-beam
performance of the proposed antenna has been explored using simulated electric fields and currents distributed over the substrate and
patch, respectively. Those are shown in Fig. 7. A comparative observation between Figs. 7(a-i) and 7(a-ii) indicates that around the radiating edges of the patch, the electric field in the substrate suddenly gets
wider as soon as the PTFE is replaced by air. This is also corroborated
by the simulated current distributions if Fig. 7(b-i) is compared with
Fig. 7(b-ii). Indeed, Fig. 7(b-ii) shows wider effective radiating aperture indicating higher antenna gain. Again, the use of air as substrate
also shifts the resonance to the higher frequency (Fig. 2), i.e., at smaller
wavelength keeping the physical dimension of the patch unaltered. This
effectively turns the radiating area much larger with respect to the operating wavelength.

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diation pattern. There are plenty of scopes for future investigations

to have a complete knowledge of using composite substrates. Those
may include studying with PTFE of different higher permittivity values
and also, employing other possible composite configurations to explore
several new radiation characteristics.

REFERENCES

Fig. 7. Electric field distributed in the substrate (a); and surface current distribution on the patch (b) for (i) uniform PTFE substrate, (ii) uniform air substrate,
and (iii) air-PTFE composite substrate. Parameters as in Fig. 2.

Now, we may concentrate on the change in beamwidth value. The

increase in aperture caused by simple air as substrate enhances the gain
and as usual reduces the beamwidth.
Let us now examine the case, when the air is replaced by a composite
substrate. The electric field in the substrate takes a highly asymmetric
nature, predominantly in the E-plane and partly in the H-plane, as indicated in Fig. 7(a-iii). It is interesting to note that, apparently the effective aperture is not reduced that much and this is also corroborated by
the simulated currents shown in Fig. 7(b-iii). The measured and simulated gain values also support this specific observation very well. Only
the asymmetrical nature of the field distributions in Fig. 7(a-iii) compared to those in Figs. 7(a-ii) or 7(a-i) can be attributed to increased
beamwidth, significantly in E-plane and considerably in H-plane. Detailed theoretical analysis may give more clear view along with a quantitative prediction for beamwidth characteristics.
IV. CONCLUSION
A simple configuration of composite substrate is investigated in this
communication to achieve considerably high-gain and wide-beam ra-

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