Analysis of The Microstrip-Grid Array Antenna and Proposal of A New High-Gain, Low-Complexity, and Planar Long-Range WiFi Antenna

This work presents a systematic numerical analysis of the microstrip-grid antenna aiming not only to explore the antenna performance limits in terms of frequency impedance bandwidth and maximum gain, but also to use this analysis as a starting point for further optimization. The obtained antenna has dimensions 297 mm x 210 mm x 9.9 mm and at 2.41 GHz, has a maximum gain of 15.4 dB, which is very close to the directivity of an ideal, lossless aperture antenna with the same dimensions, at the same frequency. Measurements have shown that the antenna operates from 2.38 to 2.51 GHz (i.e., across the WiFi-band with a 5.32% frequency bandwidth relative to 50 Ohm), with maximum radiation efficiency 98.2%, while the latter remains over than 91% for the whole.WiFi-band, and finally has a measured half-power beamwidth of 18.5 and 34.5 deg. in the horizontal and vertical planes, respectively. Thus,the antenna is suitable candidate for long-range WiFi links.