Novel structural design for compact and broadband patch antenna

In order to meet the miniaturization of portable communication equipment, researchers have given much attention recently to compact microstrip antennas. Conventional microstrip antennas in general have a conducting patch printed on a grounded microwave substrate, and have the attractive features of low profiles, light weight, easy fabrication, and conformability to mounting hosts. However, microstrip antennas inherently have a narrow bandwidth, and bandwidth enhancement is usually demanded for practical applications. Thus, the present paper discusses about the novel design for compact and broadband microstrip antennas. The bandwidth of the designed antenna is enhanced by reactively loading with slots symmetrically to one of the axis. The antenna was designed for operating in S band (1.9 - 2.4 GHz) frequency range with a linear polarization. The feeding arrangement exhibited in the designed model is coaxial connector in the ground plane with the centerpin extended to the patch as an inductive probe although other feeding methods could be easily adapted. The designed antenna successfully attains a bandwidth of 24.5% at 10dB return loss with the central frequency of 2.1 GHz; also the antenna attains a gain of 9.1dB at its resonant frequency. The simulated 3dB beamwidth is of about 110 and 98.2 in E-plane and H-plane respectively. The antenna was designed using High frequency simulation software Ansoft Designer 4.0.