A Novel Compact Wideband Planar Antenna Design for FOPEN Radar Applications

This paper presents a compact antenna operating in the L-band for foliage penetration (FOPEN) radar applications. The antenna structure is built using a planar technology having two dielectric layers and three metallic layers. Further, it consists of a modified near-field resonant parasitic (MNFRP) mesh structure on the top layer, an MNFRP composite Egyptian axe dipole (CEAD) placed in the middle layer, and an L-shaped dipole as a feeding element in the bottom layer. In addition, the two substrates: Roger 4003C and Roger 4350B, are sandwiched between the three metallic layers. Thereafter, the L-shaped dipole is excited separately with the MNFRP CEAD and MNFRP Mesh structure to provide resonance at two different frequencies (1.3 GHz and 1.8 GHz) in the upper portion of the L-band. Besides that, the overlapping nature of the proposed antenna structure yields enhanced bandwidth. The overall dimension of the antenna is approximately $0.41 \lambda$ $\mathrm{X} 0.41 \lambda \times 0.0038 \lambda$. The simulation results reveal that the proposed antenna structure produces a 550 MHz impedance bandwidth(−10dB) with 2.13 dBi gain and achieved the voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of 1.12. The simulations are carried out using the computer simulation tool (CST) microwave studio suite.