Experimental study of a microstrip patch antenna with an L-shaped probe

The L-shaped probe is shown to be an attractive feed for the thick microstrip antenna (thickness around 10% of the operating wavelength). A parametric study on the rectangular patch antenna is presented. It is found that the antenna attains 36% impedance bandwidth (SWR/spl les/2) as well as gain bandwidth and about 7-dBi average gain. A two-element array fed by L-probes is also proposed. Experiments show that the array design can substantially suppress the cross polarization of the proposed antenna. Both the antennas have stable radiation patterns across the passband. Moreover, the measured resonant frequencies of the proposed antenna agree well with an existing formula and the L-probe does not have much effect on the resonant frequency.