Bandwidth enhancement of a microstrip patch antenna using Cuckoo Search optimization

Microstrip patch antennas are indispensable in the areas of mobile communication, medicine and RFID, largely due to low costs of fabrication. In this paper, we aim to increase the bandwidth of a patch antenna, operating in the X band region of frequency. For the said purpose, we initially synthesize a co-ax fed patch antenna for a solution frequency of 9 GHz. By the variation of three distinct parameters, one at a time, viz the patch length, patch width and feed position, we formulate a relationship between the bandwidth of the antenna and each parameter separately, the other two remaining constant. Thereafter, combining the effects of the three variations simultaneously, we propose a cost function to establish the bandwidth in terms of the net varying parameters. Using this equation and a popular optimization algorithm, viz the Cuckoo Search algorithm, we find the combination of the three concerned parameters which can leadus to have a significant increase over the initially measured bandwidth, thereby achieving optimization.