Effect of ground plane shape on microstrip antenna performance for cellphone applications

The potential application of microstrip antennas for use in cellphones places a restriction on the size of the ground plane. Earlier work examined the influence of smaller ground planes on the radiation patterns and VSWR of antennas. The effects of rectangular, square and circular ground plane shapes are reported for a probe-fed rectangular microstrip patch, where the probe location has been pre-selected for the best VSWR based on cavity-model formulation. The effects of the finite ground plane shape are analyzed by the commercially available IE3D software. Comparison with previously published experimental and computed data is also included here along with radiation pattern and VSWR results for various ground plane shapes.