Modified principle of miniaturisation of rectangular microwave patch antennas

Abstract

Background. At this stage of technology development, the main trend in modern nanotechnology is the need to accommodate as many objects as possible in a given volume. In the case of, for example, antenna systems, this means striving for miniaturization. The compactness, simplicity of design models, and low cost of patch antenna make them particularly attractive in terms of miniaturization of antennas and antenna systems. At first glance, the obvious way to miniaturize the volume profile of such antennas is to use dielectrics with a high permittivity which are needed to create patch antenna substrates. However, this approach causes the appearance of undesirable parasitic capacitance between the antenna patch and the metal background of the substrate, which leads to low radiation efficiency of the patch antenna. These difficulties can be overcome by using metamaterial substrates with high values of the real parts of the effective relative permittivity.

Objectives. To create the principle of miniaturization of microwave rectangular patch antennas by using metamaterial metal-dielectric substrates with a high real part of the effective relative permittivity instead of dielectric substrates with the same value of the relative permittivity.

Materials and methods. The problem of radiation of the obtained antenna array structures is solved by numerical methods in time domain. This approach makes it possible to accurately take into account all the design features of the constructed arrays.

Results. Using the principle of minimization of a function of one variable and the effective medium theory, a hybrid approach for miniaturization of the antenna patch volume profile is created. The principle allows us to obtain the main relationship between the values of the effective relative permittivity of the substrate, the resonant frequency and the thickness of the metamaterial substrate in the microwave range.

Conclusion. An approach for miniaturization of the volume profile of microwave rectangular patch antennas to be created on metamaterial substrate is proposed. The approach helps to improve the antenna performance. It is shown that this approach significantly improves the earlier miniaturization principle developed by the first author of this work in such a way that it enables to economize machine time used in the automated design of such antennas, and also enables to allow an obtaining with higher accuracy such antenna parameters as the linear dimensions of the volume profile, operating frequency, efficiency and power gain.