Microwave sintered Mg-Cd ferrite substrates for microstrip patch antennas in X-band

The ferrites with chemical formulae MgFe2O4, Mg0.6Cd0.4Fe2O4 and Mg0.2Cd0.8Fe2O4 specified with Ferrite S1, S2 and S3 were prepared by the oxalate co-precipitation method using AR grade sulphates under microwave sintering technique. The single phase cubic spinel structure formation of all the ferrites was confirmed by XRD and FTIR techniques. The dielectric parameters such as permittivity (εr), dielectric loss tangent (tan δe), permeability (µr) and magnetic loss tangent (tan δm) were determined from parameters S11 and S21 by using material measurement software with VNA. The synthesized ferrites S1, S2 and S3 with determined dielectric parameters were used as substrate to design rectangular microstrip patch antenna by simulation using Ansoft Designer SV 2.2. The designed antennas were fabricated by using screen printing technique. The return loss (RL), 10 dB % bandwidth and VSWR of these fabricated antennas were measured on vector network analyzer. The simulated and measured values of resonating frequency, return loss (RL), 10 dB % bandwidth and VSWR were nearly matched with each other. Mg0.2Cd0.8Fe2O4 (Ferrite S3) can be used as substrate of antenna for better results.