Design and analysis of 6CB nematic liquid crystal–based rectangular patch antenna for S-band and C-band applications

Abstract

Abstract This article presents the design and analysis of 4-hexyl-4′-biphenylcarbonitrile (6CB) nematic liquid crystal (NLC)–based rectangular patch antenna for S-band and C-band communication applications. Two glass substrates with permittivity of 6.4, loss tangent of 0.01 and thickness of 1 mm each with 21 × 25 mm2 and 19 × 19 mm2 dimension has been used, and 0.005 mm air gap has been placed to fill 6CB NLC. A rectangular patch of 10 × 11 mm2 size has been considered over the top substrate to achieve the application specific bands. The designed antenna model-1 with air gap is resonating at 5 GHz (4.01–7.85 GHz) with minimum S 11 of −24.2 dB. The proposed antenna model-2 is filled with 6CB NLC in the air gap between glass substrates is resonating at 3.3 GHz (2.61–4.45 GHz) with minimum S 11 of −29.75 dB. Antennas of both air gaps filled, and liquid crystal material filled models are fabricated and tested through combinational analyser for validation. The correlation between transmitted and received signals of the antenna models are analysed with time domain analysis by taking the identical antennas in face to face and side by side condition. The simulated results from HFSS electromagnetic tool and fabricated antennas results in chamber are exhibiting good agreement with each other.