Effect of a flexible polymer dielectric and magneto-dielectric composite substrates in antenna array

This paper presents a comparative study on the effect of the polymer dielectric and magneto-dielectric substrates in antenna array. A 1×2 multilayer antenna array based on polymer magneto-dielectric (PDMS-Fe3O4) composite substrate have been designed and fabricated to evaluate the contribution of such substrate materials in antenna array performance and characteristics. The proposed antenna was compared with another antenna fabricated on multilayer dielectric polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates which used as a reference antenna. Both antennas are operating at 5.8 GHz. The simulated and measured results of the proposed magneto-dielectric (PDMS-Fe3O4) antenna have shown an excellent enhancement in impedance bandwidth up to 1554 MHz (26.7%) compared to 470 MHz (8.1%) for a pure dielectric PDMS antenna that has the same substrate thickness. The gain and radiation efficiency of the magneto-dielectric based antenna is 7 dB and 60%, respectively, which indicate a good and satisfactory of antenna's performance.