Broadband RCS Reduction of Microstrip Patch Antenna Using Bandstop Frequency Selective Surface

Abstract

In this article, a simple and effective approach is presented to reduce the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of microstrip patch antenna in ultra broad frequency band. This approach substitutes a metallic ground plane of a conventional patch antenna with a hybrid ground consisting of bandstop Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) cells with partial metallic plane. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach, the influence of different ground planes on antenna’s performance is investigated. Thus, a patch antenna with miniaturized FSS cells is proposed. The results suggest that this antenna shows 3dB RCS reduction almost in the whole out-of operating band within 1-20GHz for wide incident angles when compared to conventional antenna, while its radiation characteristics are sustained simultaneously. The reasonable agreement between the measured and the simulated results verifies the efficiency of the proposed approach. Moreover, this approach doesn’t alter the lightweight, low-profile, easy conformal and easy manufacturing nature of the original antenna and can be extended to obtain low-RCS antennas with metallic planes in broadband that are quite suitable for the applications which are sensitive to the variation of frequencies.