Ink-jet Implementation of Stacked Planar and Conformal Array Antennas for Wireless Applications

Abstract

This work addresses a double stacked array antenna with linear and circularly conformal disposition of patch elements. The single patch element is designed in the 5 GHz band based on the inkjet-printing technique. The idea is to generate a microstrip lines using conductive silver ink which is applied on a thin Kapton film. To improve the mechanical stability, a high impact polyester (HIPS) is used as a substrate to fix the Kapton layers which also improves the impedance matching bandwidth. After designing the single patch element with 7.2 % impedance bandwidth under −20 dB and 7.7 dBi directivity, the linear array antenna is designed to improve impedance bandwidth to 11.6 % and directivity to 11.2 dBi. Due to the possibility of using printing technique, to make HIPS substrate and the flexibility of Kapton layers, the idea of placing eight single patch elements on a 3D printed cylindrical structure is created to achieve the omnidirectional pattern. Therefore, the combination of inkjet-printing and 3D printing techniques will pave the way for manufacturing compact, low cost and light weight antennas for many applications such as wireless local area network or unmanned aerial vehicles.