Design and Analysis of Flame Retardant Material Based Microstrip Patch Antenna for the Detection of Semtex

Microstrip patch antennas are recently used in wireless detection applications due to their low power consumption, low cost, versatility, field excitation, ease of fabrication etc. The microstrip patch antenna suffers with an array elements of antenna and narrow bandwidth. To overcome the above drawbacks, Flame Retardant Material is used as the substrate. Rectangular shape of microstrip patch antenna with FR4 material as the substrate which is more suitable for the explosive detection applications. The proposed microstrip patch antenna was designed with the dimension of 60×60mm². FR-4 material has a dielectric constant value of 4.3 with thickness 1.56mm, length and width 60mm and 60mm respectively. One side of the substrate contains the ground plane of dimensions 60×60mm² made of copper and the other side of the substrate contains the patch which have dimensions 34 × 29mm² and thickness 0.03mm which is also made of copper. RMPA without slot, Vertical slot RMPA, Double horizontal slot RMPA and Centre slot RMPA structures were designed and the performance of the antennas were analysed with various parameters such as gain, directivity, E-field, VSWR and return loss. From the performance analysis, double horizontal slot RMPA antenna provides a better result and it provides maximum gain (8.61dB) and minimum return loss (-33.918dB). Based on the E-field excitation value of the double horizontal slot the SEMTEX explosive material is detected. When the absence SEMTEX material the E-field value is 18.2dBV/m which is reduced in presence of SEMTEX material and it was simulated using CST software.