The effects of printed lattice cell structure superstrates on printed patch antennas

摘要

This work demonstrates a fully printed patch antenna consisting of a threedimensional (3D) printed Ultem 9085 substrate and a 3D printed body-centered cubic lattice cell structure (LCS) superstrate made of Verowhite Plus. The radiating patch was fabricated by manual screen-printing method using commercially available silver pastes. The superstrate was affixed to the top of the patch to mitigate shock-induced damage to the patch. The antenna, which operates close to 5 GHz (an alternative frequency band to 2.4 GHz for data link applications) was designed as a test platform to quantify the effects of a printed superstrate on the resonant frequency and bandwidth. The addition of the superstrate shifted the resonant frequency by 0.1 GHz; and while this is not insignificant it still provides a promising strategy for adding vibration mitigation to radio frequency (RF) structures. Further, it was used to assess a less computationally expensive scheme for modeling of RF antennas involving cellular structures. In this scheme, the LCS superstrate is treated as a solid with dielectric properties that resemble that of a porous medium. Comparisons of measured and simulated S11 before and after adding the LCS superstrate revealed that the scheme yields results that are in good agreement with the experiment. Results from this work can provide guidance in the fabrication of low-cost fully printed patch antennas with LCS superstrate for specific frequency application.