INVESTIGATION OF EFFECT OF SILVER COATING ON MICROSTRIP ANTENNA ARRAYS.

In this paper the effect of silver coating on the performance of microstrip antenna array is examined. The conventional four element microstrip antenna array is producing narrow bandwidth of 4.89% and high values of mutual coupling of -16.95, -14.22 and - 17.30 dB respectively. The modified microstrip antenna array is producing enhanced bandwidth of 31.43% and reduced mutual coupling of -29.45, -32.71 and -29.94 dB respectively. In addition, good amount of reduction in backward power and increase of forward power indicate improved performance of modified microstrip antenna array. The microstrip antenna arrays are designed using Mentor Graphics IE3D software. The thickness of silver deposition is equal to 30 nm. The conventional microstrip antenna array designed at 6 GHz is resonating at 5.53 GHz with a return loss of -21.12 dB. The dielectric substrate used to design and fabricate microstrip antenna arrays is FR-4 glass epoxy. The measured results of the fabricated antenna arrays are obtained using vector network analyzer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]