In this paper, a novel wideband conformal fractal antenna is proposed for GPS application. The concepts of fractal and partial ground are used in conformal antenna design for miniaturization and bandwidth enhancement. It comprises of Minkowski fractal patch on a substrate of Rogers RT/duroid 5880 with permittivity 2.2 and thickness of 0.787mm with microstrip inset feed. The proposed conformal antenna has a patch dimension about 0.39λmm×0.39λmm, and partial ground plane size is 29mm×90mm.The proposed antenna is simulated, fabricated and measured for both planar and conformal geometry, with good agreement between measurements and simulations. The size of the fractal patch is reduced approximately by 32% as compared with conventional patch. It is observed that the conformal antenna exhibits a fractional bandwidth(for the definition of -10dB) of 43.72% operating from 1.09 to 1.7GHz, which is useful for L1(1.56-1.58GHz), L2(1.21-1.23GHz), L3(1.37-1.39GHz), L4(1.36-1.38GHz), and L5(1.16-1.18 GHz) in GPS and Galileo frequencies: E=1589.742MHz(4MHzbandwidth), E2=1561. 098MHz(4MHzbandwidth), E5a=1176.45MHz(=L5),E5b= 1207.14MHz, and E6=1278.75MHz(40MHz bandwidth). The radiation pattern exhibits an omnidirectional pattern, and gain of proposed antenna is 2.3dBi to 3.5dBi within operating frequency range.
A Cylindrical Wideband Conformal Fractal Antenna for GPS Application