Gain Enhancement of Microstrip Patch Using Different Array Configurations

Abstract

This paper discusses the design of X band patch antenna. The aim of the work is to enhance the gain and minimize the return loss as much as possible. Initially, the design was focused toward single-patch antenna, but later it was modified with an array of different configurations. For selection of substrate, the trial was made on different substrates and finally epoxy of dielectric constant 4.4 was chosen due to its readiness in the availability. All the antennas were made to resonate in X band. The motive behind choosing this frequency band is to replace the existing dish antenna used in DTH service with the proposed one. Dish used in DTH services are having a high gain of around 30–35 dB and to match this with patch antenna requires an array of larger size. However, in this paper, an array of size to 16 is shown and the work is still going on in order to increase the array size. The performance of the antenna is measured in terms of return loss, directivity, main lobe-to-side lobe ratio and radiation pattern.