An enhanced bandwidth design technique for electromagnetically coupled microstrip antennas

This paper describes a method of enhancing the bandwidth of two different electromagnetically coupled microstrip antennas by utilization of a tuning stub. An approximate theory and equations are developed to demonstrate the potential bandwidth improvement and required stub impedance characteristics. A novel dual-stub design is presented that achieves better characteristics than a conventional quarter wavelength open-end stub. As examples, the bandwidth (VSWR < 2) of a conventional proximity-coupled microstrip antenna is increased from 4.8 to 8.4 % and the bandwidth of a stacked aperture-coupled microstrip antenna is increased from 27.5 to 34.5 % using this technique.