Circular Microstrip Patch Loaded With Balanced Shorting Pins for Improved Bandwidth

A shorted patch geometry is examined with a circular patch loaded with a pair of balanced shorting pins. The proposed design is simple and straight forward as the location of the balanced pins are fixed with respect to the patch center. Nearly double the impedance bandwidth has been achieved with a balanced pin loaded circular patch operating in X band without sacrificing the gain or radiation properties compared to its conventional counterpart. This is an important advantage of the proposed configuration. Both measured and simulation results are presented.