A novel design for a low profile high directivity Fabry-Perot cavity antenna

In this paper we present a novel design for a low-profile Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity type antenna, which achieves a high directivity combined with an excellent aperture efficiency. Unlike similar FP cavity-type antennas, that are excited with either a dipole or a microstrip patch antenna (MPA), the proposed approach utilizes a slot feed, which not only is easier to fabricate than the presently available designs, but also offers a better control of the return loss characteristics of the antenna, We show that the proposed design achieves a directivity of 17.52 dB with an aperture size of 3lambda₀ times 3lambda₀, and an aperture efficiency of 85% relative to the uniform aperture case (directivity is 20.53 dB), which is considered to be quite good.