Author's reply [to Comments on "Resonant frequencies of rectangular microstrip antennas with flush and spaced dielectric superstrates"]

Bernhard and Tousignant (see IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 47, p. 302-308, Feb. 1999) replies that Mishra's (see IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagat., vol. 51, no. 4, p. 917, 2003) makes the point that we do not consider the thickness of the spaced superstrate in the theoretical formulation. We already note this detail. The goal of the paper is to provide a closed-form model to predict the resonant frequency of a microstrip antenna with a spaced superstrate as accurately as possible given the tolerance ranges of the structure's electrical and physical parameters. For materials with relative permittivities less than 3, the data suggest that the thickness of the superstrate can be neglected without loss of accuracy in light of these tolerances.