Blue Origin

Evaluation of High Frequency Substrates for Antenna Designs

This project examined and compared different circuit board materials to determine which ones worked best for small wireless antennas. The antennas were designed to operate around 2.45 GHz, a common wireless frequency used by devices such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This student team designed the antennas, simulated, tuned, fabricated and measured their performance in terms of return loss, gain patterns, Axial Ratio, and polarization, and compared the results. They evaluated the tradeoff between performance, cost, manufacturability, and the ease of design for each material. The goal was to identify a material that provided the best antenna performance while still being practical and affordable to produce.