Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

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Ain Shams Engineering Journal

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Electrical Engineering

A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot

for wideband applications
Narinder Sharma a,⇑, Vipul Sharma b
a
ECE Department, Amritsar College of Engineering and Technology, Amritsar, Punjab, India
b
ECE Department, Gurukula Kangri, Vishwavidyalaya, Haridwar, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The paper presents a design of Microstrip Patch Antenna (MPA) using hybrid fractal slot
Received 31 January 2017 (Koch-Minkowski and Koch-Koch) along with partial ground plane for wideband applications. The length
Revised 10 March 2017 of partial ground plane is varied to optimize the bandwidth and gain of antenna. It has been observed that
Accepted 9 May 2017
the ground plane length 8 mm exhibits best result in terms of bandwidth and gain. The MPA with
Available online xxxx
Koch-Minkowski slot depicts 2260 MHz bandwidth, 6.1 dB gain and two resonant frequencies
2.47 GHz and 8.92 GHz whereas with Koch-Koch slot it reports 2440 GHz bandwidth, 5.62 dB gain, and
Keywords:
resonant frequencies 2.77 GHz and 8.62 GHz. The proposed antennas are fabricated and measured
Microstrip Patch Antenna (MPA)
Hybrid fractal slot
bandwidth for Koch-Minkowski slot is 3326 MHz and for the Koch-Koch slot is 3237 MHz. The simulated
Koch-Minkowski slot results of proposed antennas are compared with measured results and observed the reasonable
Koch-Koch slot agreement with each other.
HFSS Ó 2017 Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction popularity because of its Self Similarity and Space filling properties
[12,13]. Self similarity means an object is exactly similar to a part
With the advent of advancement in the field of wireless com- of itself at varying dimensions. Space filling leads to reduction in
munication, antenna has gained huge popularity. The compact size, the total area occupied by the antenna and also plays vital role in
ease of fabrication, light weight, wide bandwidth and low cost is the miniaturization [14,15]. Fractal antenna resonants at various
always a challenge for the researchers [1]. The MPA and fractal frequencies which may be influenced by the size of ground plane
antenna almost fulfill all the market needs and exhibits multiband [16,17]. The performance of the fractal antenna depends on the
and wideband characteristics [2–4]. MPA is a simple patch antenna parameters such as directivity, gain, return loss, VSWR, bandwidth,
which consists of radiated patch component, dielectric substrate etc. To improve the performance of fractal antenna, it is advisable
and ground plane. It is very popular because it can be printed to design a combination of two or more fractal shapes [18]. This
directly on the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) [5,6]. Fractal means can be observed from the discussed literature survey that a MPA
irregular fragments which are the set of complex geometry. Fractal with hybrid fractal slots can be designed for wireless applications.
shapes also have made the drastic revolution in the designing of In this paper, the two hybrid fractal slots of width 1 mm are
multiband antennas [7–9]. Now-a-days, there are varieties of frac- designed, first slot is designed by combining Koch curve with itself
tal shapes are available and discussed by various researchers. The (with indention or flare angle h1 = 60°) and second slot is designed
available fractal geometries are Koch, Minkowski, Mendar, Hilbert, by integrating Koch curve with Minkowski (with indention angles
Giuessepe Peano, etc. [10,11]. Fractal geometry has gained h1 = 60° and h2 = 90°) as shown in Fig. 1. Further, these hybrid slots
are introduced with rectangular MPA along with varying length of
ground plane to optimize the performance parameters.
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: narinder.acet@gmail.com (N. Sharma), vipul.s.sharma@gmail.
com (V. Sharma). 2. Antenna design and configuration
Peer review under responsibility of Ain Shams University.
The initial design of proposed MPA is started with rectangular
patch as shown in Fig. 2(a). FR4 Epoxy substrate material has been
used to design MPA with the specifications; resonant frequency
Production and hosting by Elsevier
3.2 GHz, relative permittivity 4.4 and thickness (h) 1.6 mm [19].

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
2090-4479/Ó 2017 Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
2 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

Fig. 1. Hybrid fractal slot – (a) Koch- Koch and (b) Koch- Minkowski.

Fig. 2. (a) Initial design of MPA, (b) MPA with Koch-Koch Slot and (c) MPA with Koch-Minkowski slot.

The length and width of the patch is computed with the following The Actual Length of patch is addition of Effective length and
equations [20]: extended incremental length, shown as:
c LP ¼ Leff þ DL ð5Þ
Wp ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð1Þ
er þ1
2f r 2 The computed value of LP is 21.92 mm.
where er denotes relative permittivity, f r denotes resonant fre- The hybrid fractal slot shown in Fig. 1 is being introduced in
quency and ‘c’ denotes velocity of light, and the computed value MPA, indicated in Fig. 2(b) and (c). The partial ground plane is also
of W p is 28.52 mm. used with the proposed antenna geometry, shown in Fig. 3. The
The Effective Dielectric Constant can be computed as: parametric values of the proposed antenna are shown in Table 1.
 
er þ 1 er  1 1
ereff ¼ þ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ; 1 < ereff < er ð2Þ
2 2 1 þ 12h=W p

The extended incremental length of antenna is computed as:

2 W p 3
ereff þ 0:3 h
þ 0:264
DL ¼ h  0:4124 W p 5 ð3Þ
ereff  0:258 h
þ 0:8

The Effective Length is computed as:

c
Leff ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð4Þ
2f r ereff Fig. 3. Ground plane of proposed antenna.

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 3

Table 1
Parametric values of proposed antenna.

S. No. Parameters Description Values

1. LS Length of substrate 38.92 mm
2. WS Width of substrate 45 mm
3. LP Length of Patch 21.92 mm
4. WP Width of Patch 28.52 mm
5. LG Length of ground plane 8 mm
6. WG Width of ground plane 45 mm
7. LFX Length of feed line 12.76 mm
8. WFX Width of feed line 2 mm
9. LFY Length of feed line 6 mm Quarter
Feed Line Patch
10. WFY Width of feed line 3 mm
Wavelength
3. Antenna equivalent circuit Transformer

Fig. 4. Equivalent Circuit of proposed MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid Slot.

In this section, the equivalent circuits of proposed antennas
have been designed based on L and C and reported in Figs. 4
and 5. The values of L and C have been computed by using the
following equations:



2l w þ t0
L ¼ 0:002l ln þ 0:5 þ 0:2235 ð6Þ
w þ t0 l

Ae0 er
C¼ ð7Þ
d
where L is the Ribbon Inductance
Feed Line Quarter Patch
l is the length in cm, Wavelength
w is the width in cm, Transformer
t0 is the thickness (PCB copper @ 1 oz/ft2 = 0.035 mm),
A is the overlapping surface area of the plates. Fig. 5. Equivalent Circuit of proposed MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid Slot.

4. Results and discussions

graphs of MPA with Koch-Minkowski and Koch-Koch slot along
In this section, the indention or flare angle of Koch curve is var- with variations in the length of ground plane have been shown
ied from 40° to 60°. These antennas are simulated and the perfor- in Figs. 8 and 9.
mance parameters like return loss (shown in Figs. 6 and 7) and gain It can be premeditated from the Fig. 8 that the desired wide-
has been discussed and also adorned in the Table 2, and it can be band characteristics have been exhibited with the ground plane
contemplated that Koch curve with indention angle 60° exhibits length 8 mm. The return loss reported at ground plane length
the optimal results. 7 mm and 8 mm is 27.5 dB at 2.52 GHz and 15.54 dB at
Further, the antennas are fabricated at flare angle 60°. This sec- 2.47 GHz respectively. Though, proposed antennas designed at
tion also explains the experimental and simulated proposed MPA’s ground length 7 mm is better in terms of return loss but does
with hybrid fractal slot which are analyzed in every aspect to attain not exhibit any frequency band at higher frequency whereas, in
the measured and simulated results. Antenna performance param- case of, ground length at 8 mm, the 10 dB bandwidth is depicted
eters which are reported in this section are Return Loss, radiation for entire frequency band (7.74–10 GHz). It can also be elaborated
pattern and Gain. In order to attain the desired wideband charac- from the indicated Fig. 9 that the desired wideband characteristics
teristics, the proposed antennas are simulated by varying the of the proposed antennas have been attained at the ground plane
length of ground plane. Initially, the length of ground plane was length 8 mm. The return loss observed, at ground plane length
taken 10 mm. further, this length is decreased by 0.5mm, and 7 mm and 8 mm is 51.78 dB at 2.8 GHz and 19.14 dB at
the same procedure has been repeated till 7 mm. The return loss 2.77 GHz respectively. If we visualize the aforementioned return

Fig. 6. Return loss comparison of MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot at varying indention anglesgure.

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
4 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

Fig. 7. Return loss comparison of MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot at varying indention angles.

Table 2
Comparison of proposed antennas based on flare angles.

Flare angle Koch-Minkowski Hybrid Slot Koch-Koch Hybrid Slot

Frequency (GHz) Return Loss (dB) Bandwidth (MHz) Gain (dB) Frequency (GHz) Return Loss (dB) Bandwidth (MHz) Gain (dB)
40° 2.61 12.62 147 1.83 2.91 15.93 289 3.37
8.63 20.72 2420 6.13 8.45 15.64 2350 4.89
50° 2.52 14.65 169 3.23 2.84 18.13 323 2.51
8.92 15.39 2210 5.33 4.48 14.13 2190 4.77
60° 2.47 15.54 184 5.73 2.77 19.14 405 1.58
8.92 14.86 2260 6.15 8.62 16.01 2440 5.62

Fig. 8. Return loss comparison of MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot at varying ground plane length.

Fig. 9. Return loss comparison of MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot at varying ground plane length.

loss values, it can be predicted that the antennas designed at 8 mm, the 10 dB bandwidth is indicated for entire frequency
ground length 7 mm is better but they do not exhibit any fre- band (7.56–10 GHz). From the discussed results, it is clear that
quency band at higher frequency whereas, for ground length at simulated antennas exhibit the best results at ground length 8

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 5

simulated results in terms of bandwidth towards higher frequency.

For the MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot, the maximum
bandwidth attained experimentally is 3326 MHz and numerically
calculated is 2260 MHz. For the MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot,
the maximum bandwidth attained experimentally is 3237 MHz
and numerically calculated is 2440 MHz.
The comparison between the measured results of MPA with
Koch-Minkowski hybrid fractal slot and MPA with Koch-Koch
hybrid fractal slot is illustrated in Table 3.
Radiation pattern is a graphical representation of the relative
field strength of radio waves from antenna or any other source.
This is represented in polar or rectilinear form and measured in
dB. The useful portion of radiation pattern will be elevation plane
for u = 0° and u = 90°. Fig. 13(a–b) shows the 2-D far field radiation
Fig. 10. Fabricated prototype of proposed antenna.
pattern for each frequency band whereas Fig. 13(c–d) indicates
mm. Keeping this as a benchmark; we have fabricated both the the 3-D gain plot of MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot.
antennas at ground length 8 mm as shown in Fig. 10. Fig. 14(a–b) shows the 2-D far field radiation pattern for each fre-
The return losses of the antennas are measured by using VNA quency band whereas Fig. 14(c–d) indicates the 3-D gain plot of
(Anritsu MS46322 As, 20 GHz). The return loss of the measured MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot.
and simulated antenna is reported in the Figs. 11 and 12, where The radiation pattern reports the omni-directional properties of
it can be anticipated that experimental results are better than proposed antennas and the gain of MPA with Koch-Minkowski

Fig. 11. Return loss v/s frequency plot of MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot.

Fig. 12. Return loss v/s frequency plot of MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot.

Table 3
Comparison of measured results of Proposed Antennas.

Antenna Resonant Frequency (GHz) Return loss (dB) VSWR Bandwidth (MHz)
MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot 2.41 and 8.34 (6.67–10 GHz) 14.89 and  15.76 1.44 and 1.39 80 and 3326
MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot 2.68 and 8.38 (6.76–10 GHz) 14.26 and  16.11 1.48 and 1.37 180 and 3237

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
6 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

Fig. 13. 2D Radiation Pattern and 3D gain plot of MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid slot.

Fig. 14. 2D Radiation Pattern and 3D gain plot of MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid slot.

hybrid slot is 5.73 dB and 6.15 dB whereas the gain of MPA with It can be anticipated from Table 4 that Proposed MPA’s with
Koch-Koch hybrid slot is 1.57 dB and 5.62 dB. The Comparison of hybrid (Koch-Koch and Koch-Minkowski) slot are optimal, as it is
results obtained from proposed antennas is made with published compact in size in comparison to aforementioned references
work as premeditated in Table 4. except [13,16], but if we contemplate the Ref. [13], it exhibits

Table 4
Comparison of proposed work with an existing work.

Reference Dimensions (mm3) Resonant Frequency (GHz) Gain (in dB)

[12] 173  70  1.6 3.1/5/7/10.6 8.1
[13] 47  10  5 1.8/1.92/2.45 2.8
[14] 96  72  1.6 0.91/2.44/5.7 1.42/4.69/5.7
[16] 38  10  1.6 2.45/5.36 2.29/3.85
[21] 40  78  1.6 (0.725–0.95)/(1.74–2.25) 2.58
Proposed MPA with Koch-Koch hybrid Slot 45  38.92  1.6 2.77/(7.74–10.0) 1.57/5.62
Proposed MPA with Koch-Minkowski hybrid Slot 45  38.92  1.6 2.46/(7.56–10.0) 5.73/5.62

Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008
 N. Sharma, V. Sharma / Ain Shams Engineering Journal xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 7

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Please cite this article in press as: Sharma N, Sharma V. A design of Microstrip Patch Antenna using hybrid fractal slot for wideband applications. Ain Shams
Eng J (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2017.05.008