Rectangular Microstrip Antenna (MSA) design for base station application

Abstract

Conventional base station antennas are omnidirectional, resulting in loss of power and increase in interference with signals from other base stations. The design of two high gain Microstrip antennas (MSAs) for operation at 900MHz and 1800MHz respectively are presented. The design theory was based on transmission line model while the simulation was done using High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) software.The simulated results reveal that the antennas have low losses deduced from the return loss values of -16dB and -15dB for 900MHz and -1800MHz frequencies respectively. They equally have good gain (> 6.7 dB) and high directivity (> 5 dB). The minimum radiation efficiency obtained is 93% given by the antenna designed to resonate at 900MHz as against 97% efficiency given by that designed to operate at 1800MHz. Also, bandwidth of 55MHz was obtained at 1800MHz. Based on the performance characteristics, the proposed antennas are good candidates for base station application. However, the paper recommends that network providers should employ the frequency of 1800MMHz for their base stations since MSA designed to operate at this frequency gave higher gain, directivity, bandwidth and radiation efficiency than MSA at 900MHz.