Meshed Patch Antennas

Conventional microstrip patch antennas are printed with continuous solid copper shapes and ground planes. The general properties of meshed patches are presented in this paper where both the patch itself and the ground plane are meshed. The gain, cross-polarization, bandwidth and radiation patterns are discussed for different combinations of patch and ground plane. The radiation patterns are not significantly affected by meshing the patch alone, but meshing the ground plane increases the back radiation. The gain can suffer by up to 3 dB or more when compared to a standard patch. Cross-polarization is improved providing that the correct mesh line geometry is chosen for the excitation mode. Meshing lowered the resonant frequency in some cases by up to 30% and also improves the bandwidth by a factor of up to 2.5 in some modes. Overall, the meshed patch offers a complex tradeoff between parameters but gives opportunities for improving the bandwidth and reducing the cross polarization and the antenna dimensions at the expense of the gain.