A CPW-fed antenna on 3D printed EBG substrate

This paper proposes a coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed antenna and electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure on 3D printed substrates. Low-cost fuse filament fabrication (FFF) technology is employed. Two sets of experiments are described. In the first, the antenna and EBG patterns are etched on copper clad Mylar® polyester film and attached to the 3D printed substrates. In the second, the patterns of the EBG are added using silver conductive paint. Both experiments compare very well between them, and with the simulations. The EBG structure provides improved antenna performance such as gain, efficiency and directivity. The antenna and EBG are designed for the 2.4 GHz Bluetooth frequency band. The Finite-difference timedomain (FDTD) computational method was used for the study.