Design of compact bent dipole antenna and its array with high gain performance for GPS application

Abstract

Antennas have become ubiquitous devices and occupy a salient position in wireless systems. The size of the communication devices decreased by its increase in portability. Microstrip and printed antennas are promising candidates for this design due to their low profile, low-weight, and ease of fabrication. In this paper, a compact high gain bent dipole antenna is designed for GPS application at 1.575 GHz. This involves design and development of bent dipole antenna on FR4-Epoxy substrate with dielectric constant of 4.3 and thickness 1.52mm. It is then developed for two elements and six elements array antenna. The antenna is designed to improve the gain, reduce the design complexity and size of array antennas. The designed antenna is simulated using Empire 3D FDTD based simulation tool. The return loss of the single element, two and six elements bent dipole antennas are -31.17dB, -20dB and -17dB respectively. The gains are 2dB, 4.59dB and 8.01dB for single element, two elements and six elements bent dipole antenna. Hence, the antenna array structure increases the gain. The antenna is the fabricated and tested to confirm the simulated results.