Development of dual-band microstrip patch antenna for WLAN/MIMO/WIMAX/AMSAT/WAVE applications

The present work represents a dual-band microstrip-fed patch antenna in which the radiating structure is formed with a pair of inverted L-shaped patches and ground plane is being modified to a shape. Both the radiating patch and modified ground plane are perfect electric conductors. The patch is printed on a readily available Epoxy Glass (FR-4) substrate with thickness 1.6 mm, relative permittivity 4.4, and loss tangent 0.0024. The proposed microstrip patch antenna (MPA) design is capable of generating two distinct operating bands with 10-dB return loss as follows 3.34-3.54 GHz and 4.90-6.26 GHz with adequate bandwidth of 200 MHz and 1.36 GHz, respectively. The impedance bandwidths are wide enough to cover the required bandwidths of 3.3-3.5 GHz, 5.15-5.35 GHz, 5.725-5.825 GHz for wireless local area network, 3.3-3.5 GHz for multiple input multiple output, 5.25-5.85 GHz for world-wide interoperability for microwave access, 5.650-5.670 GHz for uplinks and 5.830-5.850 GHz for downlinks of Amateur Satellite, and 5.9 GHz wireless access in the vehicular environment (WAVE-IEEE 802.11p). Proposed MPA was simulated using Computer Simulation Technology Microwave Studio V9 based on the finite integration technique with perfect boundary approximation and effect of using different substrate materials was studied. Finally, the proposed antenna with optimized parameters was fabricated and some performance measurements were taken to validate against simulation results. The design procedure to achieve the required performance are presented and discussed. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:988-993, 2014