Robustness of Printed Patch Antennas

We address the question of robustness of damaged microstrip antennas, the damage being either penetrating, caused by fragment impact, or floating, caused by manufacturing imperfections. A simple analytic expression is derived to facilitate the prediction of robustness. To verify this expression a Monte Carlo method, based on a general 3D electromagnetic solver, is used to evaluate the robustness of the antennas. The simulations are verified by measurements and supplementary simulations in an alternative electromagnetic solver, using the finite difference time domain method (FDTD). The agreement between the simulated results and the analytic expression is found to be good in a qualitative comparison.