Experimental study of a microstrip patch antenna with an L-shaped probe

The L-shaped probe is shown to be an attractive feed for the thick microstr ip antenna (thickness around 10% of the operating wavelength). A parametric study on the rectangular patch antenna is presented, It is found that the antenna attains 36% impedance bandwidth (SWR less than or equal to 2) as we ll as gain bandwidth and about 7-dBi average gain. A two-element array fed by L-probes is also proposed. Experiments show that the array design can su bstantially suppress the cross polarization of the proposed antenna. Both t he antennas have stable radiation patterns across the passband. Moreover,th e measured resonant frequencies of the proposed antenna agree well with an existing formula and the L-probe does not have much effect on the resonant frequency.