Design of a Circular Patch Antenna for 3D Printing

This paper proposes an innovative circular patch antenna that resonated at 2.34 GHz using 3D printing technique. The purpose of using 3D printing is a way to reduce cost and time in fabrication of the antenna. By introducing a new material to the subject which is Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) as the substrate of the antenna, the cost can be greatly reduced. Furthermore, a coaxial probe feed is used and it is said to be easy to fabricate, matched and has low spurious radiation. The feeding method that has been used in this research is a coaxial line feed where the inner conductor of the coax is connected to the patch meanwhile the conductor is connected to the ground. This antenna is designed on an ABS substrate with εr = 2.74 and it has a loss tangent of 0.007. The thickness is said to be 3.25 mm. In addition to that, it has the return loss (S11) of 24.3 dB at 2.34 GHz. The whole designation of the antenna is by using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software. The anticipated design of a circular patch antenna can be extended to conformal antenna and therefore, the prototype will become more compact, efficient and robust.