A Stacked Microstrip Patch Antenna Loaded With U-Shaped Slots

In this work, an extensive design study of a stacked U-slot microstrip patch antenna for dual band operation will be presented. This antenna consists of two stacked microstrip patches, both having U-slots embedded in them. Two feeding techniques namely probe-feeding and co-planar waveguide feeding have been used and the results compared. The antennas were simulated using CST Microwave Studio's Transient Solver which is based on the Finite Integral Technique (FIT) and particle swarm optimization was used to optimize the antenna parameters for both the cases. The simulated and measured results indicate that using co-planar waveguide feeding results in a tremendous increase in bandwidth when compared with probe feeding, however degradation in gain is observed.