Patch antennas constructed from meshes

This paper discusses the performance of microstrip patch antennas where the solid conducting printed patch and the ground plane are replaced by conducting grids of appropriate geometry for the mode of patch excitation. For this study the patches were initially printed on RT Duroid substrates and perspex to study the effects of meshing the antenna. Later the antennas were screen printed on glass. The merits of meshing patches with a solid ground plane are better cross polarisation and unwanted mode suppression but the antenna gain reduces as the density of the mesh lines reduces. The advantages in using a meshed patch together with a meshed ground plane are that the entire antenna can be printed into a glass laminate. A degree of optical transparency is therefore possible and the in some cases the bandwidth improves significantly. The gain varies with mesh geometry and density but at best was marginally lower than a standard patch antenna. However this is achieved at the expense of the front-to-back radiation levels.