Applications and future prospects for microstrip antennas using heterogeneous and complex 3-D geometry substrates

This paper critically reviews the electromagnetic advantages of altering the dielectric substrate section of the antenna as opposed to the conducting elements. Changing the dielectric has been used to improve the bandwidth, e±ciency and gain of antennas. Heterogeneous substrates have also been employed to lower the effective permittivity, suppress surface waves for high indexed substrate materials and reduce mutual coupling. In the second half of this paper, 3-D printing has been used to create substrates with reduced material consumption for a lightweight flexible wearable antenna.