Design, Simulation, and Optimization of an Irregularly Shaped Microstrip Patch Antenna for Air-to-Ground Communications

Abstract

In this study an irregularly shaped microstrip patch antenna was designed, simulated, and optimized for air-to-ground communication (ATG) applications. The process started with the design of a rectangular patch antenna with the traditional transmission line and cavity methods, followed by a simulation with the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) in conjunction with a genetic algorithm (GA). The aim of the study was to design an efficient patch antenna. The designed antenna is resonating at 14.25 GHz with 35 dB return loss. The 10 dB bandwidth of the antenna is 3.7 GHz.