Flexible microstrip grid array polymer-conductive rubber antenna for 5G mobile communication applications.

A flexible microstrip grid array antenna (MGAA) fabricated by printing the patch and the ground plane using a 0.25 -mm -thick conductive rubber layer onto a 1.9 mm thick Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate layer is presented in this article. The proposed antenna was designed to operate at 14 GHz frequency band. It is composed of 24 radiating elements to achieve a high gain and compact size characteristics. The measurement results shows that the antenna exhibits wideband characteristics in return loss ( S11) covered from 12 to 18 GHz and it can works at bending state without sacrificing the performance. The measured radiation pattern results also present good agreement with the simulated results. All the criteria of this proposed antenna make it as a suitable candidate to be applied for future flexible and conformal-5G mobile communication applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]