Microstrip Rectangular 4x1 Patch Array Antenna at 2.

5GHz for WiMax Application

Norfishah Ab Wahab, Zulkifli Bin Maslan, Wan Norsyafizan W. Muhamad, Norhayati Hamzah
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia
40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
E-mail:fishahahu@yahoo.com.my

Abstract This paper presents the design of microstrip
rectangular patch antenna with center frequency at 2.5GHz
for WiMAX application. The array of four by one (4x1) patch
array microstrip rectangular antenna with microstrip line
feeding based on quarter wave impedance matching technique
was designed and simulated using Computer Simulation Tool
(CST) Microwave Environment software. The performance of
the designed antenna was than compared with the single patch
rectangle antenna in term of return loss, Voltage Standing
Wave Ratio (VSWR), bandwidth, directivity, radiation pattern
and gain. The array antenna was then fabricated on the
substrate type FR-4 with dielectric constant of 4.9 and
thickness of 1.6mm respectively. The array antenna was
measured in the laboratory using Vector Network Analyzer
(VNA) and the results show good agreement with the array
antenna simulated performances.
Keywords-array antenna, CST Microwave Studio,
fabrication, microstrip, simulation, substrate FR-4
I. INTRODUCTION
These days, there is a very large demand by the end user
for integrated wireless digital applications. Antennas which
are used in these applications should be low profile, light
weight, low volume and broad bandwidth [1]. To meet these
requirements, microstrip antenna is preferred. According to
C. A.Balanis [2], an antenna should be low-profile,
comfortable to planar and nonplanar surfaces, simple and
inexpensive to manufacture, mechanically robust when
mounted on rigid surfaces. When the particular patch shape
and mode are selected they are very versatile in terms of
resonant frequency, polarization, pattern and impedance.
According to work done by M.A.R Osman [3], although
microstrip single antenna has several advantages, it also has
several disadvantages such as low gain, narrow bandwidth
with low efficiency. These disadvantages can be overcome
by constructing many patch antennas in array configuration.
Work done by M.K.A Rahim et al.[6], proposed a
microstrip patch antenna for point to point communication.
The design used inset feeding method based on quarter
wave impedance matching technique. However it does not
mention the radiation efficiency , directivity, VSWR and
the fabricated size.
In this paper, the design of single and four by one (4x1)
patch array microstrip rectangular antennas with microstrip
line as feeding method is presented. Quarter-wave
transformer is used to match the feeding line to the
antennas. The center frequency is determined to operate at
2.5 GHz which is suitable for WiMax application. The 4x1
patch array antenna was then fabricated on the substrate
type FR-4 with dielectric constant of 4.9 and thickness of
1.6mm. This antenna offers a return loss of -22.22 dB and
VSWR at 1.114. More significantly, as per the rigorous
simulation study using CST microwave studio, the 4x1
patch array antenna outperform the single patch antenna in
terms of radiation gain, directivity and bandwidth.
This work is organized as follows. Section II describes
the antenna design, synthesis and measurements. Section III
discussed on the results and finally, section IV concludes
the work.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
In designing a microstrip antenna, numerous substrates
can be used to achieve good response and their dielectric
constants are usually in the range of 2.2
r
12. The most
desirable substrate for good antenna performance are
normally thick substrate whereby the dielectric constant is at
the lower end This is due to the fact that the this range
provide better performance compared to thin substrate [3].
RT Duroid 5870 was originally chosen as the substrate as it
has a low loss tangent which will not reduce the antenna
efficiency, and has a relatively low dielectric constant. But,
it was replaced by FR4 as the cost of using RT Duroid 5870
is too high. Comparatively, FR4 has a higher dielectric
constant which results to a smaller patch size, high tangent
loss and lower gain.
Performance evaluation on the array antenna is
consequently conducted once the single patch antenna has
been established. The specifications of the rectangle antenna
are listed in Table 1.

TABLE 1: DESIGN SPECIFICATION FOR RECTANGLE PATCH
ANTENNA
Center Frequency, f0 2.5 GHz
Substrate FR-4
Dielectric Constant 4.9
Substrate Height 1.6 mm
Loss Tangent 0.025
Copper Thickness 0.035 mm
2010 Second International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Communication Systems and Networks
978-0-7695-4158-7/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CICSyN.2010.73
164
2010 Second International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Communication Systems and Networks
978-0-7695-4158-7/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/CICSyN.2010.73
164
A. Single Microstrip Patch Antenna Design
The objective of this part is to design a single microstrip
patch antenna which consists of patch, quarter-wave
transformer and feedline. The design of microstrip
rectangular patch antenna is initiated by determining its
patch dimension. The width, W and length, L of the
microstrip patch are given as follow:

W =[c ((
r
+1)/2)
-1/2
] / 2f
o
....(1)

The length of the patch:

L = [c / (2f
o
(
e
)
-1/2
)] -2L...... (2)

Where,

e
= (
r
+1) / 2 + ((
r
1) / 2) [(1+12h)/W]
-1/2
.....................(3)

and ,

L = 0.412h [(c+0.300)(W/+0.264)] /[(c0.258)
(W/+0.800)] ...(4)

A 50 surface mount adapter (SMA) connector is going
to be used to connect the feedline to the coaxial cable. The
feedline will be fed to the patch through a quarter-wave
transformer matching network. Fig. 1 below shows a single
microstrip patch antenna which consists of patch, quarter-
wave transformer and feedline.

Fig. 1: Patch antenna with quarter-wave transformer

The impedance of the quarter-wave transformer is given by :

Z
1
= ZoRin.....(5)

Where Z
1
is the transformer characteristic impedance and Z
0

is the characteristic impedance (real) of the input
transmission line (50 ). According to [8], R
in
is the edge
resistance at resonance. R
in
can be calculated by using:

R
in
= 1/(2G
e
)..... (6)

Where,
G
e
= 0.00836 w/
o
....(7)
G
e
represents the edge conductance. Next, for the width and
length of the quarter-wave transformer and 50 feedline
are determined as below:
w/h = 8c
A
/(c
2
A
2) for wh < 2... (8)
wh = 2/n [B-1- ln (2B-1) + (r1)/2r {ln (B-1) + 0.39-
(0.61/r)}] for wh > 2.(9)
Where h is the substrate height and,
A= (Zo60)[( r+1)/2]
1/2
+ [(r1)/( r+1)
(0.23+(0.11/r))]........(10)
B= 377n(2Zo r)......(11)
B. Microstrip Patch Array Antenna Design
The corporate feed network is chosen for designing four
elements array networks. The array antenna consists of a
branching network of two-way power dividers. Quarter-
wave transformers (70 ) are used to match the 100 lines
to the 50 lines. Fig. 2 below shows the impedance for
individual lines in the four element rectangular array
antenna.



Fig. 2: Four elements array line impedance design layout

Similarly, the patch dimensions are obtained using (1)
and (2). Calculation for impedance is also similar as a single
patch calculation by using (5) to (7). However to match the
100 to 50 transmission lines, the calculation step is
shown below. Using (5), where by replacing Z
o
= 50 and
R
in
= 100 , the transformer characteristic impedance is:
Z
1
= Su(1uu)
= 70
All impedance dimensions for 50 feedline, 70 quarter-
wave transformer and 100 impedance line are obtained by
using (8), (9) and (10).
165 165
Table 2 below shows all the dimensions of microstrip line
impedance:

TABLE 2: MICROSTRIP LINE IMPEDANCE DIMENSION
Impedance Width (mm) Length (mm)
50 2.81972838665 31.4148952545
70 1.49951007804 16.0936173639
100 0.621675421686 33.0522605069
C. CST Simulations
Table 3 shows the optimization of the designs and
comparisons were made in order to choose the best design.
Since, the desired design is the array configuration, thus the
simulations for single antenna were not very extensive. The
single patch antenna design is needed for performance
comparison with the patch array antenna. Thus, the extent of
effectiveness of array configuration can be observed when
comparing both types of configuration. Besides that, it will
be necessary to vary the patch width, length and other
parameter such as length of microstrip line of 100 in
order to optimize the performance of antenna. As the result,
the best design for single patch antenna is highlighted in
blue row and the yellow-in-colour highlighted row is chose
to be the best design of the microstrip rectangular patch
array antenna. After all this calculation and consideration
has been taken into account, both antennas were simulated
using CST Microwave software. However, only the patch
array antenna was fabricated as in fig.3. The size of the
fabricated antenna is 234mm x 150mm.

TABLE 3: DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS




Fig. 3: Fabricated 4 elements microstrip rectangular patch array antenna
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Fig. 4 shows the return loss of microstrip patch antenna
array for both simulation and measurement. The simulation
result gives a return loss of -20.24 dB at operating
frequency 2.5GHz while the measurement result gives a
return loss of -22.22 dB at 2.67GHz. The flaws during the
fabrication process may lead to the shift of the operating
frequency of measurement result. The measured operating
frequency has shifted about 6.8% from the simulated
operating frequency.



Fig.4: Return loss of 4 elements rectangular patch array antenna

Fig. 5 and 6 show the bandwidth for both single and
array antenna. Refer to Fig. 5, the bandwidth of single
antenna estimated is about 2.56%. Meanwhile, for the
bandwidth of patch array antenna, the percentage is increase
to 4.11%. This shows that the array antenna had increase the
bandwidth of the antenna as compared to the single
rectangle antenna.

Fig. 5: Bandwidth of single patch antenna
166 166


Fig. 6: Bandwidth of patch array antenna

Fig. 7 shows the voltage standing wave ratio of the array
rectangle antenna. At center frequency of 2.5GHz, the
VSWR value is 1.215. Fig. 8 on the other hand is the
measurement of VSWR measurement for array antenna.
The VSWR is 1.114 at center frequency of 2.66GHz.


Fig. 7: The simulated VSWR of array antenna


Fig. 8: The measured VSWR of array antenna
Fig. 9 is the simulated radiation pattern of single patch
antenna with directivity of 5.898 dB and gain of 0.837. Fig.
10 is the simulated radiation pattern of patch array antenna
with directivity and gain of 10.25 dB and 5.732 dB
respectively. As both radiation patterns were compared, it
can be concluded that the array design antenna generates
more intensity or focus at the center of the radiation.



Fig. 9: The radiation pattern of single antenna




Fig. 10: The radiation pattern of array antenna

Fig.11 and 12 show the radiation pattern for simulation
and measurement of patch array antenna. The simulation
result shows the major lobe directed the signal at 0 with
beamwidth (HPBW) of 24.7. The measurement result
shows the major lobe is shifted few angle to the left of
center angle 0 at 353 with beamwidth (HPBW) of 33.9.
This is possibly because of the noise floor from the
equipment itself and also the measurement is done in open
space where this should be done in the chamber to reduce
the effect of noise.



Fig. 11: The simulated radiation pattern of array antenna

167 167


Fig. 12: The measured radiation pattern of array antenna
IV. CONCLUSION
A microstrip rectangular patch array antenna that feed by
microstrip line has been designed, simulated and compared
with the single rectangle antenna. The performance was
measured and it shows that the array antenna outperform the
single antenna in terms of directivity, bandwidth and gain.
The final array antenna design was than fabricated and the
performance was than compared with the simulated array
antenna. Overall, the performance of the array antenna
meets the desired requirement in terms of return loss and
VSWR. The simulation return loss is equal to -20.24 dB and
VSWR is 1.215 at the center frequency of 2.5GHz.
However, the center frequency has been shifted about 6.8%
from the simulated value. Adding to this, the performance of
the microstrip array antenna strongly depends on several
factors such as feeding technique, type of substrate, the
thickness and dielectric constant of substrate respectively.
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