Dielectric Covered Microstrip Antenna Efficiency & Surface Wave Loss
Impedance Bandwidth Performance Enhanced by Optimum Efficiency Radome
The open access paper above RWT-Paper-0001-2021-07-28 was used to guide the design of the antennas below:
The 4th Edition of Microstrip and Printed Antenna Design is scheduled to be published in February of 2027. The cover has an image of the antenna on the left, which has an optimum efficiency radome. The image on the right is an antenna without a radome.
It is seen that the optimum efficiency radome can produce up to around 3.5 times the impedance bandwidth of a patch antenna without a radome. The antennas above were designed to operate at 4.25 GHz. The VSWR plots predicted by HFSS (left) and measured (right) show the large increase in impedance bandwidth.
The radiation patterns without (left) and with a radome (right) as predicted by HFSS are given below:
Note the improved cross-polarization at boresight.
Randwulf Technologies Report on The Effect of Metals on Microstrip Antenna Radiation Efficiency and Surface Wave, Conductor and Dielectric Losses: