Design and Development of a 2 × 1 Array of Slotted Microstrip Line Fed Shorted Patch Antenna for DCS Mobile Communication System

Compact microstrip antennas have recently received much attention due to the increasing demand of small antennas for personal communication equipment. The problem of achieving a wide impedance bandwidth for compact microstrip antennas is becoming an important topic in microstrip antenna design. In this paper the design and development of a 2 × 1 array of a low cost slotted microstrip line fed shorted patch antenna (MFSPA) has been presented. Both the shorted patch and microstrip line feed network have air substrate. The material cost is thus reduced to a minimum. The array consists of two adjacent patches fed, using a simple microstrip T network. The impedance bandwidth of nearly 40%, covering the bandwidth requirement of 1750 MHz band is obtained. Also the antenna exhibits dual band operation. The cross polarization radiation in H-Plane observed with a single element antenna has been reduced considerably with 2 × 1 array. A peak antenna gain of 9.2 dBi is obtained with a small variation of 0.8 dBi. From the results obtained it is clear that the antenna array studied has a low cost fabrication and is suitable for applications in DCS mobile communication base station.