Omnidirectional Planar Antennas for PCS-Band Applications Using Fiberglass Substrates

The design, construction and characterization of planar antennas implemented using fiberglass substrate is presented. For PCS-band frequencies (1.9 GHz), planar antennas are usually constructed of copper films on low- permittivity low loss substrates such as Duroid. Duroid improves the antenna efficiency due to its uniform structure for microwave designs, but its main disadvantage is its high cost. Good antenna performance can be achieved using other substrates, like fiberglass, that is one of the most common materials to construct DC printed circuit boards. Dipoles, patches and collinear arrays are implemented using fiberglass substrates achieving good performance over PCS band. A directional wideband Vivaldi antenna is designed and implemented using the same fiberglass substrate for gain measurements.