In this article, we analyzed the influence of a photonic band gap (PBG) substrate on the radiation properties of microstrip antenna with a rectangular patch. Antenna parameters as the return loss (S11), bandwidth, gain and electric field density were analyzed. The proposed PBG structure presents three different settings, with variation in the diameter of the air holes printed on dielectric substrate. The obtained results showed a better performance in the parameters of the PBG antenna when compared with the reference antenna and have been validated experimentally by measuring the return loss in function of the operating frequency, obtained from the construction of prototypes. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:826–831, 2016