Comparison of Gain between Unoptimised Microstrip Patch Antenna and 4-Element Array Microstrip Patches Antenna

A patch antenna is a narrowband, wide-beam antenna fabricated by etching the antenna element pattern in metal trace bonded to an insulating dielectric substrate, such as a printed circuit board, with a continuous metal layer bonded to the opposite side of the substrate which forms a ground plane. Common microstrip antenna shapes are square, rectangular, circular and elliptical, but any continuous shape is possible. Some patch antennas do not use a dielectric substrate and instead made of a metal patch mounted above a ground plane using dielectric spacers; the resulting structure is less rugged but has a wider bandwidth. Because such antennas have a very low profile, are mechanically rugged and can be shaped to conform to the curving skin of a vehicle, they are often mounted on the exterior of aircraft and spacecraft or are incorporated into mobile radio communications devices. Once the individual patch has been designed, it then has to be incorporated into an array. In this case, the choice of box and patch type limits the possible layouts for the array, and so a 4 × 4 planar array is used. However, any arbitrary array shape can be imported as a text file containing the location of each element and the magnitude and phase of the feeding current.

In this project, designed a 4-element Microstrip patches antenna array of a given frequency (5.88 GHz) is established with the help of mathematical analysis and is designed and simulated with the help of IE3D software. This patch array antenna is also optimised at that frequency with the help of IE3D software and also being simulated. In this analysis, a comparative study between single-element unoptimised Microstrip patch antenna and 4-element array Microstrip patches antenna.