Characteristics of aperture coupled microstrip antennas on magnetized ferrite substrates

The method of moments in the spectral domain is applied to the full-wave analysis of aperture coupled microstrip antennas in the case where the substrate of the antennas is a layered medium containing magnetized ferrites. The subsectional basis functions used in the analysis make it possible to handle patch antennas and coupling apertures with right angle corners of arbitrary shape. The numerical results obtained show that antennas on ferrite substrates fed by single microstrip lines can radiate both circular and linear polarization, the polarization state being dependent on the orientation of the ferrites bias magnetic field. For a given polarization state, the matching frequency band of the antennas can be tuned over a wide frequency range by adjusting the magnitude of the bias magnetic field. Also, the polarization state can be continuously tuned from circular to linear within the same frequency band by adjusting both the magnitude and the orientation of the bias magnetic field. Some measurements are presented in order to check the validity of the numerical algorithm developed.