Design of circularly polarized hexagonal patch antenna with perturbations in 3D printed substrate

Abstract This paper presents the design and implementation of a novel single-fed microstrip hexagonal patch antenna, which operates on 2.4 GHz by employing three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies for circular polarization (CP) with wide 3 dB beamwidth. It was fabricated using a thermoplastic polymer-based material through a 3D printer and subsequently coated with copper. The design of the antenna consists of identical hexagonal slots in mesh grid fashion. These slots are filled with air and perturbations are introduced, by partially filling them with rectangular chunks of the polymer. This produces asymmetry in the substrate layer which leads to the splitting of the degenerate modes of the patch antenna, thus producing CP waves. The presence of volume fraction of air influences the effective permittivity and as a result the axial ratio beamwidth enhances to 176 ∘ . The substrate was created as a double layer, lightweight unit using fused deposition modeling. A copper layer was then added to the underside of the lower substrate to serve as ground. The 3D gain of the antenna is found to be 7.01 dB. The proposed low-profile antenna has the potential to be incorporated in IoT and smart devices, intelligent transport systems, and GPS tracking.