Modified Rectangular Microstrip Antenna for Wideband Response with Conical Radiation Pattern

Broadband behavior of antennas with gap coupled configurations has been reported so far. But most of the configurations explained about broadside radiation pattern. This paper puts forward the idea of a novel compact antenna configuration for broadband response with conical radiation pattern. A rectangular microstrip antenna is truncated along its width and pairs of sectoral patches are gap coupled along truncated edges to obtain broadband response. The resonant frequency modes are identified through the study of surface current distributions. Bandwidth improvement is observed due to nearness of TM20 mode of truncated microstrip antenna and TM
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mode of the pairs of parasitic sectors. A simulated bandwidth of 642 MHz (37%) has been realized with a gain of nearly 8 dBi. The novelty of the work lies in achieving conical radiation pattern with uni polar currents at the band edge frequencies.