Ink-jet Implementation of Stacked Planar and Conformal Array Antennas for Wireless Applications

Abstract

This work addresses a double stacked array antenna with linear and circularly conformal disposition of patch elements. The single patch element is designed in the GHz band based on the inkjet-printing technique. The idea is to generate a microstrip lines using conductive silver ink which is applied on a thin Kapton film. To improve the mechanical stability, a high impact polyester (HIPS) is used as a substrate to fix the Kapton layers which also improves the impedance matching bandwidth. After designing the single patch element with . % impedance bandwidth under − and . directivity, the linear array antenna is designed to improve impedance bandwidth to . % and directivity to . . Due to the possibility of using printing technique, to make HIPS substrate and the flexibility of Kapton layers, the idea of placing eight single patch elements on a printed cylindrical structure is created to achieve the omnidirectional pattern. Therefore, the combination of inkjet-printing and printing techniques will pave the way for manufacturing compact, low cost and light weight antennas for many applications such as wireless local area network or unmanned aerial vehicles.