Fabrication of Multi-Scale Triangular Patch High Impedance Ground Planes to Improve the Bandwidth of Conformal Bow-Tie Antennas for Remote Sensing

The realization and performance is demonstrated of a conformal bow-tie antenna printed on a multi-scale triangular element mushroom structure high-impedance ground-plane (HIGP). The two-scale HIGP was designed to exhibit a large frequency band-gap to cover the relatively broad operational frequency bandwidth of the bow-tie antenna. HIGP elements were chosen to be triangular to form a natural commensurate blending of the bow-tie into the structure. The experimental performance is characterized of the bow-tie-HIGP combination from 2-10 GHz, and it is demonstrated that the negative effects of a perfect electric conductor ground-plane may be mitigated by using a HIGP.