| Experimental investigation of frequency bandwidth dependence on geometrical characteristics of microstrip patch antennas (MPAs) has shown that variations in impedance are a dominant bandwidth limiting factor. Other functional techniques to increase MPA bandwidth exist such as increasing the thickness of the substrate or decreasing the substrate permittivity, but there are obvious tradeoff's to these methods including cost, increased mass and spatial footprint. In this work, there is a supposition regarding the restriction of basic design elements including choice of substrate materials, thereby limiting the discussion to the first method in order to attack the MPA narrow bandwidth problem in the context of manufacturability.; These MPAs suffer from variations in material electrical properties as well as inaccuracies and variations of machining during fabrication which result in a shifting of the resonant frequency of the patch antenna. The narrowband nature of MPAs may result in a completely non-radiating build of hardware due to this real variability during the manufacturing process. Low cost printed circuit board (PCB) fallout for digital interconnect is not significant; however, variations in material have very significant impacts on MPA performance. Thus with the advent of wireless commercial electronics, methods to add robustness to RF designs are of increasing importance.; A rigorous process of computer simulation is applied to examine geometric manipulation of MPAs and how the introduction of two coplanar design element, capacitively gap coupled parasitic elements and an impedance matching network feed line, can improve and increase MPA bandwidth sufficiently to overcome small errors encountered in the MPA fabrication process. |
