Abstract
In this paper, design and characterization of an aperture-coupled circularly polarized (CP) rectangular patch antenna suitable for Gigabit per second wireless communications system is presented. The proposed antenna exhibits a large bandwidth of 2.77 GHz at centre frequency fc= 19.5 GHz (about 15% of fractional bandwidth (FBW)). It also has a gain of about 7.25 dBi at 18 GHz with good stable gain and radiation characteristics in the frequency band of interest. For indoor wireless channel measurements, two developed prototypes are employed as single input single output transmit receive (TX-RX) antennas with a robust and versatile channel modeling system. We demonstrate a measurement campaign to investigate the dynamic range of the system by calculating path loss. The pulse dispersion effect is quantified by pulse fidelity factor (PFF). The measurements are performed in laboratory environment using Gaussian pulse based sounding signal modulated at 19.3 GHz carrier frequency. The design and characterization of compact size antennas with pertinent bandwidth and excellent radiation characteristics is one of our initiatives towards developing a millimeter wave (MMW) test bed system for channel modeling and measurement, since 5G wireless communication is supposed to operate in MMW band.