High gain textile rectangular microstrip patch antenna design employing denim substrate for satellite space to Earth downlink applications

This paper proposed a rectangular microstrip patch antenna employing textile substrate material suitable for satellite downlink applications has been demonstrated and analyzed. The paper presents a compact and low profile microstrip fed textile patch antenna employing rectangular patch as a radiating element and Denim as substrate with relative permittivity (dielectric constant) ε
r
= 1.6 and dimensions 26.8mm × 22.8mm × 0.7mm. The proposed antenna has operating range of frequencies from 10.705 GHz to 10.953GHz. The proposed antenna has gain of 8.49 dB and directivity of 8.35dBi at resonant frequency of 10.832GHz. The performance of the prototype antenna has been examined in terms of return loss (dB), directivity (dBi), gain (dB), input impedance and VSWR. The antenna has been designed, simulated and analyzed using CST Microwave Studio 2014. The proposed textile antenna has impedance bandwidth of 247 MHz with input impedance of 49.9 ohms. The compact size and flexibility of antenna enables the structure to be easily integrated into spacesuit for satellite downlink communication purposes. The antenna has been practically fabricated then tested for experimental validation using E5071C Network Analyzer and anechoic chamber. It has been observed that the practical results closely match with the simulated results of the proposed antenna.