Design and analysis of high gain 2×2 and 2×4 circular patch antenna arrays with and without air-gap for WLAN applications

In this paper, high gain 2×2 and 2×4 circular patch antenna arrays are designed on FR4 substrate of standard thickness 1.5mm. The proposed antenna arrays are designed using probe feeding technique. The antenna arrays are designed for 2.4GHz resonant frequency suitable for WLAN applications. Gain is further enhanced by introducing an air-gap layer of heights 1mm to 6mm between the substrate and ground plane for each of the antenna arrays. The designed antenna arrays are simulated in High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software version v17.2. Results are evaluated in terms of return loss, VSWR, gain and radiation pattern. The designed 2×2 and 2×4 antenna arrays with air-gap layer results into a maximum gain of 13.59dB and 16.07dB respectively.