A general configuration of printed antennas fed by planar transmission lines in a multilayer substrate geometry is analyzed using a full wave spectral domain moment method. This includes the characterization of the impedance performance via the scattering matrix of the multiport feed circuit, and also of the far field quantities by treating the orthogonal radiation field components as additional ports. Various important aspects of the dissertation are: (a) development and extensive study of a complete set of full wave spectral domain Green's functions for a general multilayer medium, (b) exclusive study of multilayer planar transmission lines, (c) rigorous characterization of multilayer printed antennas integrated with the transmission feed lines in isolated as well as infinite array environment, and (d) case study of various useful multilayered antenna configurations. As the results of the case studies demonstrate, multilayer architectures of integrated antennas have the potentials of solving various critical requirements for a monolithic phased array system.
Various specific antenna geometries were studied, and excellent agreement of the analysis with experimental results for different cases demonstrate the validity of the solution. Considering the scope and generality, the analysis can be of significant use as a simulation tool for further developments on multilayer integrated antenna technology.
