Mesh-Grounded Monopolar Hexagonal Microstrip Antenna for Artillery-Launched Observation Round

Abstract

This paper presents a novel low-profile microstrip antenna with an omnidirectional radiation pattern for an artillery-launched observation round. The proposed antenna consists of one centered hexagonal patch for a feeding network and six periodic arrays of a trapezoid patch for a radiator. The trapezoid patch is equal to a half-sized hexagonal patch based on geometrical symmetry. A gap-coupled one-hexagonal patch and six trapezoid patches are supported on a nonfundamental TM02 mode for vertically polarized omnidirectional radiation patterns. In addition, a meshed ground structure for the proposed antenna is employed to improve the impedance bandwidth. The thin metal wires that are formed by the meshed ground structure yield six trapezoid slot arrays for the feeding network and three triangular slot arrays for the radiator on the ground plane. To verify the feasibility of the meshed ground structure, the mesh width, denoted by w, was investigated theoretically and optimized carefully to enlarge the impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna. Finally, the proposed antenna, with a mesh width of 0.2 mm, successfully demonstrated excellent monopolar radiation at a resonant frequency of 5.84 GHz, a realized gain of 5.27 dBi, and an impedance bandwidth of 452 MHz from 5.583 GHz to 6.035 GHz with respect to 7.78% at a center frequency of 5.809 GHz.