Abstract
The performance of a microstrip antenna has been known sensitive to substrate’s dielectric properties, which is dependent on the angle of laminate layers inside a composite laminated substrate. Modal analysis in spectral domain is applied to investigate the resonant frequency and radiation pattern of rectangular microstrip antenna on composite substrates. It is shown that the substrate’s dielectric properties are dependent upon the laminate angles, i.e., upon the orientation of the antenna relative to the substrate’s fiber direction. For the same operating frequency, the antenna size on composite substrates is larger than that on isotropic substrates, and the far field pattern is also more directional.
Highlights
Many studies of microstrip antenna design often assumed the substrate to be isotropic with uniform dielectric property
For the substrate of η = 0.75, the antenna frequency is about 1.4 GHz at laminate angle θ = 0, while it is 1.3 GHz at θ = 45 and 2.4 GHz at θ = 90. Such significant differences in size and resonant frequency are critical to antenna design. These results show that the laminate angle is critical to antenna performance
The non-diagonal permittivity matrix from different laminate angles comes from the fact that the fiber direction of the laminate layer may not necessarily align with the antenna’s optical axis
Summary
Many studies of microstrip antenna design often assumed the substrate to be isotropic with uniform dielectric property This “isotropic assumption” was made to conjecture the performance of a microstrip antenna attached on Kevlar composite substrate [1] and composite structure [2]. Composite laminated substrates have been widely used in aerospace structures, where continuous fiber/matrix layers stacking at suitable laminate angles can achieve desirable mechanical properties. Such substrates facilitate embedding sensor/actuator and microstrip antenna to improve aerodynamic performance [3]. Previous studies of microstrip antenna in composite substrates were often by numerical methods, but none was able to predict the effects of different laminate angles on the substrate’s dielectric properties, and antenna performance. Analytical solution would be desirable to conduct parametric study on substrate’s laminate angles affecting antenna performance
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