Micro Strip Antenna
Micro Strip Antenna
Micro Strip Antenna
In its most basic form. A microstrip patch antenna consist of a radiating patch on one side of a dielectric substrate which has a ground plane on the other side. The patch is generally made of conducting material such as copper or gold and can take any possible shape.The radiating patch and the feed lines are usually photo etched on the dielectric substrate. In order to simplify analysis and performance prediction .The patch is generaly square, rectangular, circular, triangular, elliptical or some other common shape. For a rectangular patch the length L of the patch is usually 0.3333<L<0.5 free space wavelength.Patch is selected vary thin such that patch thickness <<free space wavelength. The height h of the dielectric substrate is usually 0.003<=h<=0.05 free space wavelength.The dieletric constant of the substrate is typically in the range 2.2 to 12.
Feeding Technology:
Microstrip patch antennas can be fed by a variety of methods. These methods can be classified into two categories- contacting and non-contacting. In the contacting method, the RF power is fed directly to the radiating patch using a connecting element such as a microstrip line. In the non-contacting scheme, electromagnetic field coupling is done to transfer power between the microstrip line and the radiating patch. The four most popular feed techniques used are the microstrip line, coaxial probe (both contacting schemes), aperture coupling and proximity coupling (both non-contacting schemes). a. Microstrip Line Feed b. Coaxial Feed c. Aperture Coupled Feed d. Proximity Coupled Feed
Advantages:
Light Weight and low volume. Low profile planner configration. Low fabrication cost. Support both, linear as well as circular polarization. Can be easily integrated with microwave integrated circuits. Capable of dual and triple frequency operation. Mechanically robust when mounted on rigid surfaces.
Application:
Microstrip patch antennas are incresaing in popularity for use in wireless applications due to there low profile structure. There for the are extremely cpompatible for embedded antennas in handheld wirelss devices such as cellular phone, pager etc. Used in satelite communication.
Feeding Techniques
Microstrip Line Feed
In this type of feed technique, a conducting strip is connected directly to the edge of the Microstrip patch. The conducting strip is smaller in width as compared to the patch and this kind of feed arrangement has the advantage that the feed can be etched on the same substrate to provide a planar structure.
Coaxial Feed
The Coaxial feed or probe feed is a very common technique used for feeding Microstrip patch antennas.The inner conductor of the coaxial connector extends through the dielectric and is soldered to the radiating patch, while the outer conductor is connected to the ground plane. The main advantage of this type of feeding scheme is that the feed can be placed at any desired location inside the patch in order to match with its input impedance.
[4] Aperture coupled feeding is attractive because of advantages such as no physical contact between the feed and radiator, wider bandwidths, and better isolation between antennas and the feed network. The use of coplanar waveguide (CPW) as transmission media can also provide lower radiation losses and ease of monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) device integration in MMIC phase arrays. Furthermore, aperture-coupled feeding allows independent optimization of antennas and feed networks by using substrates of different thickness or permittivity.
[1] This method is advantageous to reduce harmonic radiation of microstrip patch antenna implemented in a multilayer substrate. The goal of the design is the suppression of the
resonances at the 2nd and 3rd harmonic frequencies to reduce spurious radiation due to the corresponding patch modes to avoid the radiation of harmonic signals generated by non-linear devices at the amplifying stage. The study shows the possibility of controlling the second harmonic resonance matching by varying the length of the feeding line. On the other hand, the suppression of the third harmonic is achieved by using a compact resonator.