Curvature effects on the characteristics of triangular microstrip antennas

A number of studies on the characteristics of cylindrical rectangular and circular microstrip antennas have been available in the open literature. The investigations of cylindrical triangular microstrip antennas, however, are relatively scant. Since the triangular patch can be a good substitute for the rectangular patch in microstrip antenna and array designs, due to its physically smaller patch size than the rectangular and circular ones, the related studies become interesting and important. This motivates the present study. In this article, both the cavity-model and full-wave analyses of cylindrical triangular microstrip antennas are described. Curvature effects on the input impedance and radiation characteristics for the antenna with various cylinder radii at its fundamental TM/sub 10/ mode are analyzed. Measured input impedances and radiation patterns are also presented for comparison. In addition, curvature effects on the cross-polarization characteristics of a triangular microstrip antenna at the TM/sub 10/ mode are also analyzed.