Microstrip antenna

Based on its origin, microstrip consists of two words, namely micro (very thin/small) and is defined as a type of antenna that has a blade/piece shape and is very thin/small.

Because such antennas have a very low profile, are mechanically rugged and can be shaped to conform to the curving skin of a vehicle, they are often mounted on the exterior of aircraft and spacecraft, or are incorporated into mobile radio communications devices.

Microstrip antennas are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and design because of the simple two-dimensional physical geometry.

It is relatively easy to print an array of patches on a single (large) substrate using lithographic techniques.

Patch antennas can easily be designed to have vertical, horizontal, right hand circular (RHCP) or left hand circular (LHCP) polarizations, using multiple feed points, or a single feedpoint with asymmetric patch structures.

When air is used as the dielectric substrate, the length of the rectangular microstrip antenna is approximately one-half of a free-space wavelength.

The impedance bandwidth is slightly lower than a half-wavelength full patch as the coupling between radiating edges has been eliminated.

The folded inverted conformal antenna (FICA)[11] has some advantages with respect to the PIFA, because it allows better volume reuse.

This technique introduces a limited number of small-sized slots, termed as 'defects' on the ground plane beneath the patch, and is potentially capable of improving its far-field as well as near-field properties.

This was conceived and introduced in 2005 by Guha[12] to control the cross-polarized radiations without involving any extra component, volume, weight, or cost.

DGS-technique is equally effective in reducing the mutual coupling in large microstrip arrays and hence mitigating the scan blindness issue of the radar beams.