Effects of added Secondary Dielectric material on the Performance of a Microstrip patch Antenna

Micro strip patch antennas are normally fabricated on the surface of a dielectric material. Due to various reasons, the replacement of the surface material and modifications in area are not possible, once the antenna is fabricated. In some cases, the operating frequency and bandwidth of the antenna needs to be altered without changing the substrate. This paper investigates a dual dielectric patch antenna and analyses the performances of the antenna under the combined dielectric layers inside the cavity. Initially, a patch antenna is designed for a resonant frequency with a widely used dielectric material, FR4 and after which another dielectric layer is added. The performance of the antenna is evaluated using Method of moments solver in ADS software. The thickness sharing percentage of the secondary dielectric material was linearly increased from 10% to 90% in simulation. The analysis shows an emergence of another band due to the introduction of secondary dielectric layer. Measurements also confirm the simulation results and notable change in reflection coefficient with bandwidth enhancement is observed. (paper)