Design and analysis of microstrip Yagi antenna for Wi-Fi application

This paper presents the design and analysis of the microstrip Yagi antenna appropriate for wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) application. The antenna comprises of two elements which are driven and parasitic that consists of reflector and directors. The analysis has been carried out to identify the effects of each element to the performance of antenna that will achieve a high gain. A gain enhancement method using Yagi antenna concept is designed with array application. Two branches of microstrip Yagi antenna have been connected in a composite array format using corporate-feed network. The designed antenna with microstrip line feeding based on quarter wave impedance matching technique is simulated using Computer Simulation Tool (CST) Microwave Studio. The simulation result of return loss shown that the operating bandwidth at frequency range of 5.47–5.57 GHz coverage standard of IEEE 802.11 in 5 GHz Wi-Fi band between 5.15–5.875 GHz. The antenna is fabricated on the low cost FR-4 substrate with dielectric constant of 4.7 and thickness of 1.6 mm. Simple fabrication techniques can be utilized to the proposed antenna design due to the placing feeding network is on the same layer with the antenna patch elements. The microstrip Yagi antenna is measured using Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). Both the simulation and experimental results are compared and analyzed.