Microstrip Patch Antennas

With the rapid development of printed circuit technology, printed antennas have found numerous applications in high-performance systems where size, weight, and cost are of significant importance. The most notable feature of these printed antennas is that they are low profile. In particular, microstrip patch antennas and arrays of patches are perhaps the most common form of these printed structures. Extensive investigations into the radiation characteristics of patch antennas began in the 1970s, and both analytical and numerical solutions have been developed for printed antennas. Moreover, the physical insight obtained by these analyses led to the development of several advanced design configurations. While the conventional microstrip patch antenna has a narrow bandwidth, their advanced configurations can achieve broadband and multiband performance. In addition, both circular and linear polarization can be achieved with the patch antenna. In this chapter, we will briefly study some of the fundamentals of microstrip patch antennas, will show the procedure for designing patch antennas using the commercial software package FEKO, and will present several examples.