Broadband Active Receiving Patch With Resistive Equalization

The active integrated antenna (AIA) concept has been applied to design a broadband receiver front-end. A design procedure for active broadband patch antennas based on resistive equalization is presented. The use of the AIA has allowed the design of efficient RF front-ends by increasing its effective gain, noise figure, and merit . In addition to improving the classical parameters, the resistive equalization technique allows enlarging the bandwidths of the active antenna parameters versus the corresponding ones in passive antennas. A receiving patch antenna (with one amplifying stage) with a measured noise figure lower than 0.6 dB in a bandwidth over 38% and an effective gain improvement of 13 dB over the corresponding passive antenna has been achieved. The -parameter has also been measured for both the active and passive antenna, resulting in a relative planar of 16 dB/K, with a ripple of 0.5 dB, over a 30% bandwidth for the active antenna versus a of 22 dB/K for a typical front-end with a passive antenna over 20% bandwidth.