Thin-membrane aperture-coupled L-band patch antenna

A microstrip line on very thin membrane substrate (0.05mm) is slot-coupled through a thick air substrate (12.7mm) to excite an L-band radiating patch element. It achieved a relatively wide bandwidth of 100 MHz (8%). A very narrow coupling slot is used with aspect ratio of 160 (conventional slot aspect ratio is between 10 to 30). This new feed design makes the thin-membrane or inflatable array antenna technology more practical. It reduces the number of thin-membrane layers required for a dual-polarised wideband inflatable array from three layers in a previous design to two layers. In addition, this technology allows the thin-membrane array antenna elements to be readily integrated with thin-membrane-mounted transmit/receive (T/R) modules.