Performance Analysis of Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna with Different Substrate Material at 2.4 GHz for WLAN Applications

This paper presents the design and analysis of a rectangular microstrip patch antenna using two different substrates material that are FR-4 and RT-Duroid 5880. The aim of this paper is to compare both the antennas performance based on different substrate materials. The dielectric constant of ε
r
= 4.6, and a thickness of h = 1.6 mm was used for the FR-4 substrate. The RT-Duroid 5880 had a dielectric constant of ε
r
= 2.2 with a thickness of h = 0.787 mm. Both of these antennas were fed by a 50Ω microstrip feeding line which was operated at a frequency of 2.4GHz for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) applications. A Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Studio Suite 2020 software was used to simulate and analyze the performances of both the antennas. Both of the antennas were fabricated and measured to determine the performance of the antennas. Based on the analysis, it was found that the optimum design was RT-Duroid 5880 substrate material. The gains of RT-Duroid 5880 was 50% higher than FR-4 material where the simulated gains were 6.927 dBi and measured gains of 6.2 dBi respectively. The efficiency of RT-Duroid 5880 was good at 69.1 % when compared to FR-4 which was only 42.9 %. The simulation results showed good performance in terms of bandwidth, gains, efficiency, and radiation pattern, especially for RT-Duroid 5880 substrate material.