A general analysis of an aperture-coupled vertically mounted strip antenna is presented to examine its circuit characteristics. Based on the present analysis, an equivalent circuit model is developed, and an analytic or semi-analytic evaluation of the related circuit element values is described. The effects of structure parameters on the antenna characteristics were studied with the developed equivalent circuit, and the design curves were obtained. To check the validity of the proposed analysis and design theory, two C-band antennas (5.0 GHz and 4.5 GHz) were designed and fabricated. Their computed characteristics, derived from the proposed network analysis, were compared with the measurement and simulation results. The error of the current model in predicting the operating center frequency was less than 0.50 %. In addition, the observed bandwidth was found to be comparable to the conventional microstrip antennas. All the results fully validated the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed analysis and network model.