Substrate Analysis on the Design of Wide-Band Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G Communication

While copper is overwhelmingly used as the radiated part in microstrip antenna design studies, the choice of dielectric material offers a wide range of possibilities. At high frequencies, the effect of substrate permittivity on antenna performance is dramatically higher than low frequency microstrip antennas. For this purpose, in this study, a discussion on 4 different dielectric substrates to increase the overall efficiency of conventional sub-6 GHz 5G microstrip antenna is presented. A reference rectangular patch is modeled on FR4, Arlon AD300C, Rogers RO4003C and Mica substrates respectively. The radiating patch sizes are calculated and modeled for each dielectric substrate separately and then optimized for 5.65 GHz. Finally, gain and bandwidth analysis are performed with the help of CST Studio. Arlon AD300C, which is revealed to be the best in performance criteria analysis, is used for the proposed antenna fabrication and the simulated results are verified by bandwidth and gain measurements in a fully anechoic chamber. Finally, the advantages of the proposed antenna over some Sub-6 GHz 5G antennas with randomly selected substrates are confirmed by a comparative table.

Automated summary

This study discusses the use of different dielectric materials to improve the performance of sub-6 GHz 5G microstrip antennas. By modeling and optimizing four different dielectric substrates, Arlon AD300C was determined to be the best material for antenna fabrication. The simulated results were verified through experiments, and the advantages of the proposed antenna over others were confirmed through comparison.