Bending Effect of an Inkjet-Printed Series-Fed Two-Dipole Antenna on a Liquid Crystal Polymer Substrate

Abstract

This letter presents a series-fed two-dipole antenna fabricated on a flexible liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate by using inkjet printing technology. The proposed antenna consists of two modified dipole elements of distinct lengths, a director element, a modified ground plane, and a balun filter, yielding a wide bandwidth with bandpass responses. The proposed antenna can be used at a frequency band of 26-32 GHz. The bending behaviors of the antennas with and without director elements were analyzed. The bending effect of the antenna should be considered when calculating the gain loss and bandwidth reduction. Inkjet printing on LCP substrates provides a low-cost, compact, and flexible packaging application that can be used in probable and flexible communication technology.