Selection of Microstrip Patch Antenna Substrate for WLAN Application Using Multiple Attribute Decision Making Approach

This paper presents a material selection approach for selecting microstrip patch antenna substrate for WLAN applications using multiple attribute decision making (MADM) approach. In this paper, different microwave dielectric materials for substrate and their properties like relative permittivity, quality factor, and temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency are taken into consideration and MADM approach is applied to select the best material for microstrip patch antenna. It is observed that Pb0.6Ca0.4ZrO3 is the best material for the antenna substrate in MPA for WLAN applications. It was observed that the proposed result is in accordance with the experimental finding thus justifying the validity of the proposed study. 1. Introduction Due to increase in variety of mobile communication equipment, such as laptops, personal digital assistants, smartphones, and wireless modems, the demand for adaptable and functional miniature antennas are growing very fast [1]. A wireless local area network (WLAN) links two or more devices using some wireless distribution method (typically spread-spectrum or OFDM radio) and usually providing a connection through an access point to the wider internet. This gives users the mobility to move around within a local coverage area and still be connected to the network [2, 3]. To achieve this, microstrip patch antennas (MPAs) play an important role and are good candidates for wide-band applications. Material selection for MPA in general and dielectric materials for its substrate in particular are complicated as there are a number of materials that have been proposed; however, each of these materials has certain merits and limitations. The key performance indices for MPA substrate are relative permittivity, quality factor, and temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency. This paper discusses a strategy for selecting suitable material for substrate based on multiple attribute decision making (MADM) approach [4] in order to improve the antenna performance. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the microstrip patch antenna design. Section 3 explains the selection criteria of materials. This section describes the decision making approach and details of technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), while Section 4 includes the application of TOPSIS method to antenna substrate material selection in MPAs. Section 5 presents the conclusions drawn from this study. 2. Microstrip Patch Antenna Design Schematic view of microstrip patch antenna (MPA) is shown in Figure 1. The patch and the