A heuristic method for the design of flat antennas

Innovations in flat antenna technology have been ongoing for over two decades. In that time, flat antenna technology has come to represent an inherently low-cost means for producing printed circuit antennas in the form of multilayer stripline-fed slot arrays that operate at high efficiencies over a relatively wide bandwidth. This paper seeks to encapsulate what may best be described as a heuristic method for creating preliminary flat antenna designs. The value of a heuristic is its ability to yield a reasonable design approximation that is suitable for baselining a more detailed full-wave design and analysis process, developing engineering and cost estimations, as well as supporting higher-level link budget analyses.