Optimal Design and Comparative Study of Circular Patch Antennas Using Different Feeds for WLAN and WiMAX Applications

The design of simple, dual band circular patch antennas with different feeding techniques for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) application is presented in this paper. These antennas are operable at 2.4 / 5.2 GHz, corresponding to WLAN band and 2.5 / 3.5 / 5.8 GHz corresponding to WiMAX band. In fact, the potential of circular patch antenna instead of popular rectangular patch is exhaustively investigated in this paper. The investigation describes that the circular patch is equally applicable for these applications. The dimensions of ground plane, substrate, radiating patch and a simple C-shaped slot on the patch antenna are optimized using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to obtain the desired operating frequency band. A comparative study of these patch antennas is also made in terms of their volume, bandwidth, return loss and suitability for WLAN and WiMAX applications.