Design of an Ultra-wide Band Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna for Early Breast Cancer Detection

In recent years, breast cancer has become the most diagnosed cancer in the world. Regular screening and early treatment can not only reduce the incidence of breast cancer, but also improve the treatment effect and prolong patients’ survival significantly. Compared with the current main clinical screening methods for breast cancer, microwave imaging technology is safe and cost-effective, uitable for regular daily screenings for breast cancer. The microwave antenna serves as the front-end system for transmitting and receiving signals, crucially influencing the detection depth and imaging resolution of the system. In this paper, a rectangular microstrip patch antenna for breast cancer monitoring is designed, and its feasibility of is verified through simulation. The antenna is designed at dimensions of 30 mm × 30 mm, with rectangular radiation patches etched onto the front of the dielectric substrate, featuring grooves, while a defect ground structure is employed at the bottom of the antenna. The antenna simulation results show that the best return loss (S11) at the operating frequency of 8.5 GHz is around −23.1 dB, and the maximum bandwidth is 11.7 GHz relative to the return loss which is less than −10 dB. The proposed antenna can identify tumors with a depth of 5.5 cm and a radius of 2 mm through simulation. It provides a technical basis for the further early realization of breast tumor screening in the later stage.