Design, Simulation and Fabrication of A Microstrip Patch Antenna For Dual Band Application

5th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering
ICECE 2008, 20-22 December 2008, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Design, Simulation and Fabrication of a Microstrip

Patch Antenna for Dual Band Application
Md. Fokhrul Islam, M. A. Mohd. Ali, B. Y. Majlis and N. Misran
Department of Electrical, Electronic and System Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
43600 Bangi, Selangor, MALAYSIA
Email: [email protected]
Abstract - There is an increasing demand for newer microstrip. However, modern civilian SAR system
microwave and millimeter-wave systems to meet the generally operates in L-, C- and X-band, where microstrip
emerging telecommunication challenges with respect to antenna dominates [3].
size, performance and cost. Microstrip antennas offer the Recently, dual-band and dual-polarized antennas have
advantages of thin profile, light weight, low cost, ease of
been studied using different techniques for satellite and
fabrication and compatibility with integrated circuitry.
This paper presents a coaxilly-fed single-layer compact wireless communication applications [4-7]. In particular,
microstrip patch antenna for achieving dual-polarized since microstrip antennas have attractive features such as
radiation suitable for applications in the IEEE Radar low profile, light weight, and easy fabrication [8], the
Band C and X. Simultaneous use of both frequencies antennas are widely used to satisfy demands for
should dramatically improve data collection and polarization diversity and dual-frequency. The work
knowledge of the targets in an airborne synthetic aperture described in this paper focuses on the design of a C-band
radar system. The designed antenna consists of three and X-band dual-polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
rectangular patches which are overlapped along their antenna sharing the same physical aperture.
diagonals. The design and simulation of the antenna were
performed using 3D full wave electromagnetic simulator II. Antenna Design and Operating Principle
IE3D. The antenna with a bandwidth of VSWR<2 reaches
154MHz (f0=6.83GHz) and 209MHz (f0=9.73GHz) was The basic configuration of the proposed patch antenna for
designed and simulated successfully. exciting dual-band dual-polarization is illustrated in Fig.
1. Three rectangular patches are overlapped along their
I. Introduction diagonals. The dimensions of the patches
Remote Sensing is the general science of gathering data are (W × L ) mm2. S1 and S 2 indicate the overlapping
and information about features, objects and classes on the dimensions of the patches. The radiating patch is fed by a
Earth’s land surface, oceans and atmosphere from sensors coaxial probe type feed in this design. As shown from
located beyond the immediate vicinity of such source. Fig. 1, the inner conductor of the coaxial connector
One such sensor that has captured the interest of the extends through the dielectric and is connected to the
scientific community is the Synthetic Aperture Radar radiating patch, while the outer conductor is connected to
(SAR) [1]. It is capable of producing high-resolution the ground plane. The main advantage of this type of
imagery in microwave bands by using a special feeding scheme is that the feed can be placed at any
processing technique that synthesises a very long antenna desired location inside the patch in order to match with its
aperture, thus the name synthetic aperture. Microwave input impedance. This feed method is easy to fabricate
frequencies are preferred as it can penetrate clouds; and has low spurious radiation. The center of the patch is
certain wavelength can even penetrate forest canopy. taken as the origin and the feed point location is given by
SAR sensors are active sensors, thus day and night the co-ordinates (Xf,Yf) from the origin. The feed point
operation is possible. SAR is usually carried on board must be located at that point on the patch, where the input
satellites or aircrafts, as it requires relative motion impedance is 50 ohms for the resonant frequency. Hence,
between the sensor and the surface being imaged. a trial and error method was used to locate the feed point.
The radar group at the Goodyear research facility in For different locations of the feed point, the return loss
Litchfield, Arizona is credited with building the first (R.L) was compared and that feed point was selected
airborne SAR, back in 1953. It operated at 930MHz using where the R.L was most negative. The structure has three
a Yagi antenna with a very wide beamwidth (1000). different resonant lengths as follows:
Subsequently many more airborne SAR systems was
developed, notable among them are the AIRSAR by Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), E-SAR by German l1 = W + (W − S 2 ) + 2Δl1 (1)
Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR), C/XSAR [2]
by Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS) and l 2 = L + (L − S 1 ) + 2Δl 2 (2)
EMISAR by Danish Centre for Remote Sensing (DCRS).
These airborne SAR systems employed many types of
antennas, ranging from Yagi, slotted-waveguide to l 3 = W + L − (L − S 1 ) + 2Δl 3 (3)
978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 799

Fig. 1 Probe feed microstrip patch antenna top view (upper) and side view (lower)
The increments to the lengths, Δl1 , Δl 2 and Δl3 are due

to the fringing fields and can be computed from
⎛W ⎞
(ε reff + 0.3)⎜ + 0.264 ⎟
Δl = 0.412h ⎝h ⎠ (4)
⎛W ⎞
(ε reff − 0.258)⎜ + 0.8 ⎟
⎝h ⎠
As an example, an antenna with the following dimensions
was designed: three rectangular patches of dimension
(13× 9) mm2 with overlapping dimensions S1 = 4.5
mm and S 2 = 6.5 mm; a dielectric substrate of relative
permittivity ε r = 2.2 and thickness h = 1.58 mm and (a) (b)
Fig. 2 Photo of the fabricated antenna: (a) top view, (b)
the feed location f p = 4.43 mm was used. backside view
In the extreme edges, it illustrates the curved paths along III. Results and Discussion
the mean dimension l 3 and thus confirms the
The results tabulated in Table 1were obtained after
corresponding resonant frequencies given by equation (3). varying the feed location along the diagonal length of the
The dual-polarized behavior is explained as follows: At patch from the origin (center of patch) to its right most
resonance frequencies f 1 and f 2 , the antenna has two edge. The coaxial probe feed used was designed to have a
radiating strips perpendicular to each other, which radiate radius of 0.5mm. A frequency range of 6–12 GHz was
in vertical and horizontal polarizations (Fig. 1). At selected and 241 frequency points were selected over this
range to obtain accurate results. Table 1 shows the
resonance frequency f 3 , the radiating strip has a bend and
calculated results for different feed locations. Fig. 3
its radiation is due to two perpendicular edges, which shows the return loss plots for some of the feed point
provides dual polarization [9]. Fig. 2 shows the locations. The center frequency is selected as the one at
photograph of the fabricated microstrip patch with SMA which the return loss is minimum. As described in
connector. The patch is fabricated on Rogers RT 5880 Section II, the bandwidth can be calculated from the
with dielectric constant of 2.2 and with thickness of return loss (RL) plot. The bandwidth of the antenna can
1.5748mm. IE3D em CAD simulator is used to optimize be said to be those range of frequencies over which the
the design parameters and the antenna is measured using RL is greater than -9.5 dB (-9.5 dB corresponds to a
the VNA-40GHz. VSWR of 2 which is an acceptable figure).
978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 800

Table 1 Effect of feed point on center frequency, return loss and bandwidth
Fig. 3 Return loss for feed located at different locations
From Table 1, the optimum feed point is found to be at ( of the patch, the center frequency starts to dicrease in the
Xf,Yf ) = (3.25,3.25) where the RL of -24.13 dB and - low frequency whereas slightly increase in the high
23.86 dB are obtained for C-band and X-band frequency. It is also seen that though the maximum return
respectively. The bandwidth of the antenna for this feed loss is obtained at ( Xf,Yf ) = (3.0,3.0), the maximum
point location is calculated to be 154 MHz (f0=6.83GHz) bandwidth is obtained at (Xf,Yf ) = (4.0,4.0). The
and 209 MHz (f0=9.73). It is observed from Table 1 that, measurement result of the return loss of the antenna is
as the feed point location is moved away from the center shown in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4 Return loss for feed located at (3.25, 3.25)
978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 801

IV. Conclusion [2] F. Stuhr, R. Jordan and M. Werner, “SIR-C/X-SAR: A

multifaceted radar”, Aerospace and Electronic Systems
A dual-band dual-polarized coaxially-fed single-layer Magazine, IEEE, 1995.
microstrip patch antenna with a compact structure has [3] M. Cyril and L. Jerome, “Dual band dual polarized radiating
been demonstrated and numerically studied. The proposed subarray for synthetic aperture radar”, Antennas and
antenna with a bandwidth of 154MHz (f0=6.83GHz) and Propagation Society International Symposium, IEEE, 1999.
209MHz (f0=9.73GHz) was designed and simulated [4] Y. J. Kim, W. S. Yun and Y. J. Yoon, “Dual-frequency and
successfully. From the results obtained, it can be seen that dual-polarisation wideband microstrip antenna”, Electron.
this novel antenna is capable of satisfying some of the Lett., vol. 35, no. 17, pp. 1399-1400, 1999.
requirements of an airborne SAR, for example, the [5] E. Lee, P. S. Hall and P. Gardner, “Compact dual-band dual-
radiation pattern and bandwidth requirements. In polarisation microstrip patch antenna”, Electron. Lett., vol.
additions, For high data collections and accurate 35, no. 13, pp. 1034-1036, 1999.
knowledge of targets missions which could need several [6] T. W. Chiou and K. L. Wong, “Broad-band dual-polarized
frequency bands, this concept allows to share between C single microstrip patch antenna with high isolation and low
and X bands SAR system. Beside this, the concept can be cross polarization”, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
simply adapted to design other antenna operating at 50, no. 3, pp. 399-401, 2002.
different frequency band. [7] D. H. Choi and S. O. Park, “Dual-Band and Dual-
Polarization Patch Antenna with High Isolation
Acknowledgement Characteristic”, Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Microwave
Conference, 2006.
The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Science,
[8] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design. New
Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) of Malaysia for
York: Wiley, 1997.
supporting this work under the eScienceFund 03-01-02-
SF0254. [9] K. Rambabu, M. Alam, J. Bornemann and M. A. Stuchly,
“Compact Wideband Dual-Polarized Microstrip Patch
References Antenna”, Antennas and Propagation Society International
Symposium, IEEE, 2004.
[1] Y. K. Chan, V. C. Koo & T. S. Lim, “Conceptual Design of
a High Resolution, Low Cost X-Band Airborne Synthetic
Aperture Radar System”, Progress In Electromagnetics
Research Symposium, Beijing, China, March 26-30, 1704-
1708, 2007.
978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 802

Design, Simulation and Fabrication of A Microstrip Patch Antenna For Dual Band Application

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Design, Simulation and Fabrication of A Microstrip Patch Antenna For Dual Band Application

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Design, Simulation and Fabrication of A Microstrip Patch Antenna For Dual Band Application

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

5th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering

ICECE 2008, 20-22 December 2008, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Design, Simulation and Fabrication of a Microstrip

978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 799

The increments to the lengths, Δl1 , Δl 2 and Δl3 are due

978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 800

Fig. 3 Return loss for feed located at different locations

Fig. 4 Return loss for feed located at (3.25, 3.25)

978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 801

IV. Conclusion [2] F. Stuhr, R. Jordan and M. Werner, “SIR-C/X-SAR: A

978-1-4244-2015-5/08/$25.00 (c)2008 IEEE 802

You might also like