Material perturbations to enhance performance of the Thiele half-width antenna

Microstrip antennas have been shown to radiate when the dominant or fundamental mode is suppressed and the first higher order mode is excited. One such microstrip variation is the Thiele half-width (THW) antenna, which operates from 5.9 - 8.2 GHz in this paper. Increasing the bandwidth over which the THW antenna operates is desired, as is an increase in the leakage constant, alpha, over this region. A larger alpha over the leaky region allows for the antenna to be shorter in length. This work seeks to vary the material and physical properties of the THW antenna, including strip-width variations, modification of the substrate layer and the addition of a superstate, to achieve these results