A novel Ku-band microstrip antenna

A Novel Ku-Band Microstrip Antenna Mohamed Ahmed Hassan Oweis (Oweis M. A. H) Master student in Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) Cairo, Egypt mahassanv@gmail.com Abstract—This paper presents a novel design of compact microstrip patch antenna for 79% utilization of the Ku-band satellite communication applications. The propounded design comprises of a rectangular patch with internal (built-in) resonator mounted on FR-4 single layer substrate with full ground plane fed by microstrip transmission line. The overall microstrip antenna’s patch dimensions are 9×12.75 mm2. The proposed antenna design has been simulated and optimized using the commercial CST studio. The obtained results show that a wide operating band of 2.8 GHz (from 11.2 to 14.0 GHz) has been achieved. The recorded average gain and total efficiency across the band are 4.65± 1 dB and 82.0 % respectively at center frequency. Keywords—microstrip antenna, ku-band, resonator, satellite, slits, rectangluar patch. I. The INTRODUCTION current market shows dramatic growth in demand for satellite communication services. The main areas of growth are direct-to-home (DTH), broadband data and video services. Emerging segments include cellular backhaul, maritime communications and other mobile service. The main applications that can exploit Kurtz-Under (KU) band are TCP/IP data, multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), cloud computing services and financial transactions. Satellite telecommunications technology plays a crucial role in rapidly accelerating the availability of high-speed internet services in developing countries particularly the least-developed countries, the land-locked and island nations, and economies in transition. Recently, manufacturing and designing techniques of microstrip antennas have been paid much attention by the researchers in both academia and industry sectors due to their outstanding features including low cost, light weight, small size, and ease of fabrication and integration with microwave integrated circuits (MIC). However, common inherent microstrip antennas constraints are narrow bandwidth, low gain, low efficiency and high power constraint. The most severe of these constraints is the narrow bandwidth of the common microstrip antenna, since it prevents the users from utilizing the full KU-band spectrum [1-3]. In previous studies, they developed different techniques to overcome both the bandwidth and gain limitations which are summed up as follows: (i) using partial substrate removal in multiple layer dielectric substrates to improve the gain and bandwidth, respectively [4-5]; (ii) changing the dielectric constant with notched microstrip patch antenna which decreased the quality Hussein Hamed Mahmoud Ghouz (Ghouz H. H. M.) Associate professor in Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) Cairo, Egypt Hussein.ghouz@aast.edu factor and in turn slightly increased the bandwidth [6]; (iii) splitting the KU-band into dual or multiple resonances via manipulating slots on microstrip patches with either microstrip feed line or probe feeds, this promoted the polarization diversity and stable radiation performance [7-13] and (iv) stacking microstrip antennas and slotting the ground which significantly enhanced both bandwidth and gain. However, it increased design complexity and cost when integrating into an array system [14-17]. Based on condensed search, all aforementioned techniques failed to cover the full commercial shared KU-band spectrum (10.95 –14.5 GHz) which designated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU); alongside using high cost materials and complex designs [19-20]. In this current research work, a novel compact microstrip antenna has been designed based on a single layer, single patch element with microstrip feed line. The proposed design is featuring with simplicity and cost effective material. The design has been optimized to utilize 79% of the entire KU-band satellite spectrum. The proposed antenna design geometry and its specifications are covered in section II. Section III shows simulated results and compares with previous designs. Finally, the paper is concluded in last section II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND GEOMETRY This section gives the details of the design procedure of the proposed wide band microstrip antenna. It starts by the design of a conventional rectangular patch that operates at 12 GHz, over a conventional ground plane as shown in Fig. 1. The printed patch dimensions are length L1 = 5.5 mm W1=9 mm and ground plane size Lsub × Wsub = 10×13 mm2. This conventional patch has a narrowband around its center frequency. The matching has been done through two steps. First, a λ/4 transformer is designed at the center frequency of the patch. Second, a conventional inset is used for fine tuning [1]. The characteristic impedance of the transformer is given by: z t = z o z a , where Za is the patch input impedance and Zo is the characteristic impedance of the feed line, which is 50Ω. To achieve an additional operating band, an internal (inner) resonator consists of several narrow slits at the patch’s left edge has been inserted. Finally, the main patch and resonator dimensions are optimized to tune the operating bandwidth. So, the proposed antenna is a planar microstrip antenna with compact dimensions of (9×12.75) mm2. The antenna can be easily integrated in small and sleek electronic devices. Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed antenna. All the labeled dimensions are tabulated in Table 1. The antenna was designed over FR4 substrate ( r =4.5) with 3 mm thickness and loss tangent of 0.025. amplitudes. Such resonator alters the effective electric length of the patch. Consequently, the antenna characteristic can be controlled. These results confirm that the lower and the upper frequencies of the operating band are controlled by adjusting the dimensions of the inner resonator. resonator Therefore, the key dimensions (to adjust the operating band) are slits geometries and the physical patch length. Finally, simulated s radiation pattern of the proposed antenna at 11.20 11 GHz, 12.60 GHz and 14.0 GHz are presented in Fig. 6. It is clear that the directional property of radiation pattern is less sensitive to the t frequency variation over the entire band. Fig. 2 The return rn loss of the proposed antenna Fig. 1 The geometry of the proposed antenna Table 1 the antenna Parameters (all dimensions in mm) Parameter W1 W2 W3 W4 L1 L2 2.7 Value 9 6.18 1.28 1.5 5.5 Parameter L4 L5 L6 S S1 Value 7.15 5.75 2 0.1 0.3 Fig. 3 The he gain of the proposed antenna III. RESULTS ESULTS AND DISCUSSIO DISCUSSIONS The proposed antenna is simulated usi using the CST Microwave Studio 2011. A high dense mesh and thick boundary layers are assumed to enhance the accuracy of frequency parameters of the proposed antenna design. A detailed parametric study has been performed to investigate and evaluate the impact of the inner resonator dimensions on the overall antennas characteristic. This includes the slit length “L2”, slit width “S” and the silt gap “S2”. The optimized resonator dimensions as well as the other patch dimensions are presented in table 1. Fig. 2 shows the simulated ated result of the return loss over the antenna operating band.. T The -10 dB return loss reference shows the operating band started from 11.20 GHz up to 14.0 GHz. This result ensures ures that the proposed antenna covers about 79% of the entire Ku-band. band. In addition, Fig. 3 shows the gain of the proposed antenna with average value of 4.65 dB achieved within the band band. The proposed antenna also achieved an average total radiation efficiency of 65% over the entire band as presented in Fig.4 Fig.4. To determine the main effective key parameters of the proposed antenna design, the current distribution on the patch antenna is simulated and presented as shown in Fig. 5. It is seen that the current distribution is concentrated on the inner resonator (slits lines), patch edges and feeder line at 11.2 .20 GHz (lower frequency), and at 14.0 GHz (upper frequency frequency) with different Fig. 4 The radiation efficiency iciency of the proposed antenna (a) (b) Fig. 5 Current distribution on proposed patch antenna at lower and upper frequencies of the Ku-Band: (a) 11.2 1.20 GHz and (b) 14.0 GHz 2 (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) Fig. 5 Radiation pattern of the antenna tenna at different frequencies (a) 11.2 GHz Phi=0 (b) 11.2 GHz Phi=90 (c) 12.6 GHz Phi=0 (d) 12.6 GHz Phi=90 (e) 14 GHz Phi=0 (f) 14GHz Phi=90 IV. CONCLUSION A novel design of Ku-Band microstrip patch antenna has been reported. The design not only has an excellent bandwidth coverage spanning 79% of the entire Ku-band band with 2.8 GHz bandwidth, but it achieves an average gain of 4.65 dB over the entire bandwidth in question. In fact, the proposed design is extremely compact, cost effective to manufacture an and easy to integrate into planar array configuration. Optimization of proposed antenna design has been done to use low cost material (FR-4) with moderate tangential loss 0.025. Future work will extend the proposed design to include double patch resonator resonators for fully utilization of the Ku-Band with enhanced gain and efficiency. [3] R. Garg, P. Bhartia, I. Bahl, A. Ittipiboon, Ittipiboon Microstrip Antenna Design Handbook, Artech House, Inc, 2001 [4] S. B. Yeap, and Z. N. Chen, “Microstrip Microstrip patch antennas with enhanced gain by partial substrate removal," IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, ion, Vol. 58, No. 9, Sept. 2010 [5] R. Neeraj and V. K. 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Su “The Bandwidth Enhancement Method of Rectangle Patch Antenna Used in Satellite Communication” 7th International Symposium on Antennas, ennas, Propagation & EM Theory, ISAPE '06, 2006, pp.1-4 [18] www.fcc.gov [19] www.itu.itl ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author would like to thank my instructor Dr. Hussein Ghouz for his constructive support to my thesis work. REFERENCES [1] C. A. Balanis,, Antenna Theory, Analysis and Design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 3rd edition, 2005 [2] M. Pozar David, “Microstrip Antennas”, Proceedings of IEEE, Vol. 80, No.1, January 1992 3 View publication stats