Design and Performance of a Hexagonal Ground Plane Antenna with Flower-Like Slots for Ku-Band Radar Applications

The increasing need for compact and high performance antennas in radar systems has fueled innovation in antenna design for applications spanning automotive, surveillance, and industrial domains. This paper introduces a novel hexagonal ground plane antenna with a circular patch featuring six symmetrically arranged slots in a flower-like pattern. Designed to operate at 15.4 GHz within the Ku-band (<tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$12-18 \text{GHz}$</tex>), the antenna achieves a return loss of -24.8888 dB, a gain of 3.9147 dB, and a bandwidth of 327.7 MHz. These characteristics ensure efficient energy radiation, high resolution, and wide operational bandwidth, making the antenna ideal for short- to medium-range radar systems. Its moderate gain supports focused directional radiation, while the broad bandwidth enhances target differentiation and imaging precision. The proposed antenna is particularly suited for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), perimeter security surveillance, and industrial process monitoring, where performance and compactness are critical. The results demonstrate the antenna's potential for integration into portable and embedded radar modules, offering a reliable solution for next-generation radar technologies. This is designed in ANSYS HFSS.