Microstrip patch antenna array for Rainfall RADAR

The design of a high Gain microstrip patch antenna array using microstrip line feed is presented in this paper. The design has been done for C band application at 5.81GHz for Rainfall RADAR also called as Precipitation Occurrence Sensor System (POSS). Array consisting of 16 elements of 4×4 were designed and simulated using HFSS v13 on Taconic TLY substrate of dielectric constant 2.2 and height of substrate equal to 1.58 mm. For the proposed antenna, the achieved gain is 19.5 dBi, return loss is ≤ 30 dB, 3 dB bandwidth of 170 MHz with low side lobes and back lobe. The Array antenna was excited by uniform amplitude and phase feeding method. A comparative analysis was done between 1×2, 2×2 and 4×4 array. It was found that gain increases at cost of bandwidth.