Optimized Circularly Polarized Bandwidth for Microstrip Antenna

In very high frequency performances such as spacecraft, satellite & missile applications where the size, weight, cost, performance, ease of installation & aerodynamic profile are constraints microstrip antennas (MA) are used to meet these requirements. In spite of limitations such as small bandwidth, low gain and low power handling capability, microstrip antenna offers good performance over other type of antennas due to their advantages. Therefore nowadays they have been used in various applications. One of the most interesting applications is their use for transmitting & receiving systems required for circular polarization. Increasing demands for circularly polarized microstrip antenna (CPMA) for communication systems has directed researchers to improve the performance of circularly polarized microstrip antenna. Specifically CP microstrip antenna is used in satellite links, missiles etc. The manuscript discusses the technique which perturbates a pair of orthogonal slits along the sides of the patch. This technique results into the optimized parameters for MA which is dimensions for MA, impedance as well as circularly polarized bandwidth. It is easy to fabricate. Therefore MA had been designed at 2.4GHz with pair of orthogonal slits along the sides of patch antenna. It is simulated using electromagnetic simulation software IE3D. While simulating for patches of various dimensions, it had been observed that for a particular patch & slit dimension there is only one feed location at which maximum impedance bandwidth can be obtained. It is also observed that for fixed patch dimensions by varying the slit length CPBW can be improved. In this manner the optimized patch had been fabricated and tested. The simulated and experimental results show good agreement.