Effect of Partial Ground Plane on the Microstrip Patch Antenna Performance for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks have a number of tiny nodes. Each node has the ability to communicate with its neighbors. The communication range depends on the type of antenna used. This paper analyzes the performance of microstrip patch antenna which suppresses the surface waves from the edges of the ground-plane of the substrate. The microstrip patch antenna is designed using a substrate of dielectric constant ε_r = 2.2 and loss tangent equal to 0.0009. The thickness of the substrate is 1.575 mm. The feed used in the design is Inset-fed microstrip feed. The frequency of interest is 2.45 GHz. Initially Inset-fed microstrip patch antenna is designed for plane ground-plane. The results obtained for plane ground-plane are compared with those of a partial ground-plane. It has been observed that for plane ground-plane, the antenna resonates away from the resonant frequency but for partial ground-plane the antenna resonates at resonant frequency 2.45 GHz. The antenna with partial ground-plane has better performance than the antenna with plane ground-plane. For Inset-fed microstrip patch antenna, the efficiency is 86.457%, impedance is 32.007 + j.10352, return loss is −13.171 dB and VSWR is 1.5624. The designed antenna has efficiency equal to 90.7325%, VSWR is 1.03007 and return loss is −36.5875 dB, impedance is 48.891 + j0.9567 at the resonant frequency.