Novel high gain honeycomb shaped slotted ground microstrip patch antenna design for broadcasting fixed satellite, mobile satellite and downlink frequency applications

Abstract

This paper emphasizes on the design, analysis, fabrication and testing of honeycomb shaped ground slotted microstrip patch antenna suitable to be employed for Ku-Band Broadcasting Fixed Satellite, Mobile Satellite and Downlink Frequency applications. The proposed antenna has been designed and fabricated using flame retardant-4 (FR-4) as substrate having dielectric constant (e r ) of 4.4. A flame retardant-4 (FR-4) has been employed as substrate material with thickness 1.62 mm and 80 × 80 mm2 dimensions. The proposed antenna has a gain of 8.874 dB, directivity of 8.995 dBi with return loss of −39.57 dB at 11.85 GHz resonant frequency. The proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 105 MHz with resonant frequency of 11.85 GHz. The antenna has VSWR of 1.02. The performance of proposed antenna has been scrutinized in terms of return loss in dB, gain in dB, directivity in dBi, bandwidth in MHz, resonating frequency in GHz and VSWR. The microstrip feed line technique has been employed for proper impedance matching (48.23 Ω) in order to match the impedance of 50 ohms of SMA connector for minimal reflection losses. The antenna has been designed and simulated using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) microwave studio 2014 software. The proposed antenna has been physically fabricated and tested for experimental validation of results using Network Analyzer E5071C and anechoic chamber. It has been observed practical results of fabricated antenna match with the simulated results.