Design of Ku Band Microstrip Patch Antenna Array for Satellite Applications

Conventional Microstrip Patch Antenna’s (MPA) are in small in size, but their gain is quite low for most applications. Long distance communication requires high gain antennas. For conventional applications that require high gain mostly depends on parabolic antennas and arrays. Manufacturing parabolic antennas became complex at high frequencies because of its bent geometry. Microstrip Patch Antennas are low profile, low cost, they come with ease of fabrication and results in high beam scan width and high gain when they were used as an array configuration. In this paper, square and circular shaped Microstrip Patch Antennas are excited with inset feed are analyzed to determine which shape of antenna works well at the Ku (12-18GHz) range of frequency. Return loss, VSWR, gain, and directivity parameters are considered to analyze the above configurations. CST studio suite tool was used to simulate the configurations.