A wide-band single-layer patch antenna

The typical single layer patch printed on a dielectric substrate is a narrow band element. This well-known fact is mainly due to the limitations imposed by the dielectric substrate. From efficiency and cost considerations, in most of the cases, the substrate cannot be too thick. In order to increase the microstrip element bandwidth, additional resonators, in different configurations and combinations, can be used: parasitic elements, slots, etc. In this paper, a wide-band single-layer patch antenna is presented. The patch is suspended over the ground-plane and supported by a non-conductive pin. It is fed by a three-dimensional transition connecting the patch to a perpendicular connector. The typical bandwidth of this element (in terms of VSWR) is 90%. When built on a large ground-plane, the front-to-back of this element is better than 25 dB across the band.