Resonance Characteristics Enhancement of Slot-loaded Microstrip Patch Antenna for GPS Application

Abstract

For GPS application, a rectangular microstrip patch antenna has been designed and fabricated focusing on single resonant frequency at 1.575 GHz of the L-1 band. Slots are incorporated into the patch to fine-tune the resonant frequency, decrease the return loss, and increase the directivity and bandwidth. The proposed antenna has four rectangular slots of different sizes on the patch. The antenna is designed by commercially available simulation software. The simulation result shows that it resonates at 1.536 GHz with a return loss value of -50.72 dB having a bandwidth of 48.5 MHz and directivity of 7.13 dBi and the fabricated antenna has a resonant frequency of 1.5 GHz with return loss and bandwidth of -25 dB and 30 MHz, respectively. It is found that the proposed antenna perform much better than a conventional microstrip patch antenna.