Dependence of radius of cylindrical ground plane on the performance of coplanar based microstrip patch

There is a growing need to use conformal antennas in airborne vehicles as well as wireless applications. This paper presents a planar and five conformal coplanar patch antenna designs for airborne and mobile applications. The planar antenna consists of a rectangular patch fed by a coplanar waveguide feed and is designed to resonate at 2.2 GHz. This planar antenna is then conformed around cylinders of various radiuses and is optimized to operate at 2.2GHz. An investigation of the relationship between the antenna´s gain and the radius of the cylinder is performed. While the planar antenna demonstrates a gain of 5.2 dB while conformal antennas show gains from 5.2-6.4 dB as radiuses of the cylinders vary. It is observed that the decrease in the radius of cylinder increases the gain for the antenna. Thus conformal coplanar antennas show good promise for deployment in the aforementioned applications.