A Folded Pyramid-Shaped Microstrip Antenna with Improved Bandwidth

Microstrip antennas are an indispensable part of modern wireless communication systems and 3D printing has become very popular to overcome the design limitations of traditional microstrip technology. In addition, 3D printing technology provides an affordable cost, ease-of-manufacturing the complex models and easy availability of raw materials. In this study, a pyramid-shaped antenna is proposed utilizing Polylactic acid (PLA) filament. The conventional square (flat) antenna is shaped like a pyramid by folding its corners. So as to prevent surface waves and spurious propagation in the design, instead of increasing the thickness of the entire substrate, only the thickness of radiating square patch area is increased. With the proposed approach the projected antenna resonant size can be minimized up to 50% compared to its flat version. On the other hand, fractional antenna bandwidth has increased from 3.8% to 13%. Furthermore, an increased gain up to 2 dB is achieved in the operating frequency bandwidth with folded design. Simulation results show that the proposed antenna design can be an alternative for X-band applications.