Assessment of microstrip patch antenna performance based on dielectric substrate

A performance comparison and analysis between two dielectric substrates with different permittivity for square slot patch antenna is presented in this paper. The reflection coefficient, voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR), bandwidth and gain performances of the proposed antenna at 5.5 GHz have been thoroughly investigated. The antenna is realized using a square patch printed on a dielectric substrate and ground plane. A square slot is loaded on the patch for antenna size reduction. The achieved gain results of FR4 and Rogers at the design frequency are 2.96 dB and 6.4 dB respectively. There is a significant improvement in gain and this indicates that the lower the permittivity the higher the antennas gain. Lastly, to validate the simulated results, scattering parameter measurements have been performed using vector network analyzer and the results show good agreement with simulations.