W.S.T. Rowe (Australia) and R.B. Waterhouse (USA)
Microstrip antennas, antenna arrays, spurious feed radiation, cross-polarized fields.
In this paper, a technique to reduce the spurious feed radiation from edge-fed patch antennas by using a dual thickness substrate is presented. A thin microwave substrate is employed for the feed network, and then makes a transition to a thick substrate for the patch antenna element. Measured results on a single element prototype exhibit a reduction in the level of cross polarized fields and decreased pattern distortion whilst preserving a reasonable impedance bandwidth. Also presented is a theoretical study of 1 x 8 edge-fed patch arrays that utilize the dual thickness substrate configuration. This analysis demonstrates that the technique is extremely valuable in an array environment, as an extensive transmission line feed network is required. A reduction the overall level of cross-polarized fields and sidelobes, and an enhanced gain are observed.
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