Ceramic Material For Antenna

Hello,
I bought an antenna for use with 900MHz RFID.
It's a patch antenna.
Compared to other 900MHz antennas I tried,
this is the smallest. Size is cruicial to my application.

It appears to be made of some ceramic material, dense, almost
feels like marble. (It's conducts heat well, and is cold to touch)
There is metal (looks like aluminum) deposited of two sides,
which forms the two plates of the patch antenna.

I have attached a picture here.

Have anyone here seen antennas similar to this? I'd like to know
what kinda ceramic is used. My search turned up something called
LTCC. But LTCC, as I understand, is used for embedding components
in layers. Do you think this is LTCC? Does this antenna has stuff
embedded inside the ceramic? Or is the ceramic merely acting
as a dielectric, to reduce the size of the antenna?

I'd also like to know how the metal gets coated on it.
Could anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks for your time.

Dear Sir
From where did you buy the antenna? What is the dimension of the antenna?
Best Regards

Hello,

If your ultimate goal is to have a small RFID antenna for 900 MHz, you can also use an air patch that is capacitively loaded at both high impedance points (for example down folded edges). Note that both the dielectric loading and down folding causes increase of radiation in the horizontal plane.

If you are able to use other antennas, in my opinion it is best to think about the required radiation pattern, required field strength at certain distance, number of units and then decide what is the best manufacturing technology for your application.

Note that there are limitations on size, when you make it too small, you will get bad VSWR at the band edges (this is a physical limitation).

Depending on the size, it is probably a ceramic with a relative dielectric constant in the 10 - 100 range.

Hello
I would like to know dimension, the S11 bandwidth and gain of UHF RFID antenna using cermaic. Could you please send me the data sheet of this antenna
Best Regards