A compact broadband stripline-fed slot antenna for array application

A compact broadband stripline-fed slot antenna is presented. The stripline-fed slot is covered with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-filled rectangular slot. With the PTFE-filled slot acting as an impedance transformer, the 10 dB return loss bandwidth of this antenna can be extended to be over 20%. The size of the antenna is only 0.49/spl lambda//sub 0//spl times/0.29/spl lambda//sub 0/ at the center frequency of 6.1 GHz. The wide bandwidth and compact size make it very suitable to be used in C-band mobile satellite (MSAT) vehicle phased-array applications.