Proximity coupled stacked configuration for wideband microstrip antenna

Two main disadvantages of the typical microstrip antenna are low gain and narrow bandwidth. These two major drawbacks have limited its applications despite of other advantages as compared to the conventional antenna. These advantages are low profile and conformability. For the purpose of designing a wideband microstrip antenna, two already proven bandwidth enhancement techniques; the patch stack configuration and coplanar parasitic patch was studied. Several configurations were proposed and from the simulation results, the antenna bandwidth was improved from the typical 8 ~ 9% up to 36% by using these two techniques with a simple coaxial probe feed without any matching network. Actual fabrication was also carried out and several measurements were conducted to verify its performance. The measurement result, even though do not fully conformed to the simulation result, has proven the potential of the above mentioned bandwidth enhancement techniques.