A comparative study of dielectric substrate materials effects on the performance of microstrip patch antenna for 5G/6G application

This article presents a comparative study of dielectric substrate material effects on the performance of square-shaped microstrip patch antenna fed by strip line. The W-shaped slit and mirror image of the W-shaped slit on the radiating stub of the proposed antennas is presented. The proposed antennas demonstrate a compact physical structure dimension (L × W × h) 15 × 15 × 1.2 mm³ laminated on FR4 substrate material. The proposed antenna recommended five resonance frequencies (f_r) currently at 4.5 GHz, 9.2 GHz, 12.9 GHz, 15.3 GHz, and 18.3 GHz, which aligns with frequency bands 267.72 MHz (4.56–4.83 GHz) utilized in 5th generation mobile network (5G), 283.88 MHz (9.16–9.45 GHz), 445.48 MHz (12.56–13.0 GHz), 1205.0 MHz (14.50–15.70 GHz) and 445.48 MHz (18.17–18.61 GHz) in 6th generation mobile network (6G) applications. The performance of the proposed antennas has been investigated with S-parameters, gain, radiation pattern, and current density to select the different types of substrate materials (RT/Duroid, FR4 and Arlon) along with the different thicknesses. This article optimized the antenna's performance to ensure the required applicability in 5G/6G applications.