Microstrip antenna phased array with electromagnetic bandgap substrate

Uniplanar compact electromagnetic bandgap (UC-EBG) substrate has been proven to be an effective measure to reduce surface wave excitation in printed antenna geometries. This paper investigates the performance of a microstrip antenna phased array embedded in an UC-EBG substrate. The results show a reduction in mutual coupling between elements and provide a possible solution to the "blind spots" problem in phased array applications with printed elements. A novel and efficient UC-EBG array configuration is proposed. A probe fed patch antenna phased array of 7×5 elements on a high dielectric constant substrate was designed, built and tested. Simulation and measurement results show improvement in the active return loss and active pattern of the array center element. The tradeoffs used to obtain optimum performance are discussed.