Radiation Characteristics of a Probe-Fed Microstrip Patch Antenna on a Finite Grounded High Permittivity Substrate

Radiation characteristics of a probe-fed rectangular microstrip patch antenna printed on a finite grounded high permittivity substrate are investigated systematically for various square grounded dielectric substrate sizes with several thicknesses and dielectric constants by experiment and full wave simulation. The effect of the substrate size on the radiation characteristics of a rectangular patch antenna is mainly determined by the effective dielectric constant of surface waves on a grounded dielectric substrate. As the effective dielectric constant of surface waves increases, the substrate sizes for the maximum broadside gain and the required onset for a large magnitude of squint angle decrease, while the variations of the broadside gain, the front-to-back ratio, and the magnitude of squint angle versus the substrate size increase due to the increase of the power of the surface wave.