Effect of silver material on the performance of microstrip antenna arrays

Abstract

In this paper the effect of silver coating on the performance of microstrip antenna array is examined. The objective of the
research study in this paper is to depict the enhanced performance of microstrip antenna array in the presence of silver
material coating. The two element conventional microstrip antenna array designed at 6 GHz is resonating at simulated and
measured frequencies of 5.9 and 5.53 GHz with a good return losses. It is producing simulated and measured narrow
bandwidth of 2.11 and 2.35 % and high values of simulated and measured mutual coupling of -16.99 and -17.83 dB. The
proposed microstrip antenna array is producing enhanced simulated and measured bandwidth of 17.28 and 17.72 % and
reduced simulated and measured mutual coupling of –26.61 and 24.95 dB. In addition, good amount of reduction in
backward power and increase of forward power indicate improved performance of proposed microstrip antenna array. The
microstrip antenna arrays are designed and simulated using Mentor Graphics IE3D software. The thickness of silver
deposition is equal to 30 nm. The dielectric substrate used to design and fabricate microstrip antenna arrays is FR-4 glass
epoxy. The measured results of the fabricated antenna arrays are obtained using vector network analyzer. The components
of the antenna are radiating patch, quarter wave transformer, transmission lines of 50, 70 and 100 Ω, coupler, feed line,
dielectric substrate and ground plane.