Microstrip Antennas

A microstrip antenna, also known as a patch antenna, consists of a metal patch on a substrate on a ground plane, as shown in Figure 1. Different feed configurations, including microstrip line feed and coaxial feed, are also shown in the figure. The patch can take various forms to meet different design requirements. Typical shapes are rectangular, square, circular and circular ring. The microstrip antenna is low-profile, conformable to planar and nonplanar surfaces, simple and cheap to manufacture using modern printed-circuit technology, and mechanically robust. In addition, it is very versatile in terms of resonant frequency, input impedance, radiation pattern and polarization. All these have made it an extremely popular modern antenna for frequencies above 300 MHz (from the UHF band). The major disadvantages of this type of antenna are: low efficiency (conducting, dielectric and especially surface wave losses), low power-handling capability (not suitable for high-power applications), poor polarization purity, and relatively narrow frequency bandwidth. In this section a rectangular patch antenna is chosen as an example for investigation, since it is the most popular printed antenna. We are going to examine the operational principles, major characteristics and design procedures. A design example will be given at the end of the section.

Figure 1: Microstrip antennas and their feeds (a) a microstrip antenna with its coordinates; (b) two feeding configurations: microstrip feed and coaxial feed

Operational Principles The rectangular antenna dimensions and coordinates are displayed in Figure 1(a). Usually, the patch length L is between 0/3 and 0/2, and its width W is smaller than 0 while the substrate thickness d is very small. To be a resonant antenna, the length L should be around half of the wavelength. In this case, the antenna can be considered a /2 transmission line resonant cavity with two open ends where the fringing fields from the patch to the ground are exposed to the upper half space (z>0) and are responsible for the radiation. This radiation mechanism is the same as the slot line, thus there are two radiating slots on a patch antenna, as indicated in Figure 1(a). This is why the microstrip antenna can be considered an aperture-type antenna. The fringing fields at the ends are separated by /2, which means that they are 180 degrees out of phase but are equal in magnitude. Viewed from the top of the antenna, both fields are actually in phase for the x components, which leads to a broadside radiation with a maximum in the z direction. Analysis and Design As a resonant cavity, there are many possible modes (like waveguides), thus a patch antenna is multimode and may have many resonant frequencies. The fundamental and dominant mode is TM100 (a half wave change along the x-axis and no changes along the other two axes). Radiation Pattern and Directivity The radiation comes from the fringing fields at the two open ends, as discussed above, which is equivalent to two slot antennas separated by a distance L. It can be proved that the far-field electric field can be expressed as:

------------------------ (1) where is the free space wave number. The first factor is the pattern factor for a uniform line source of width W in the y direction and the second factor is the array factor for the two-element slots separated by L in the x direction. For both components, the peak is at =0, which corresponds to the z direction. It has a broadside unidirectional pattern. The radiation patterns in the two principal planes are

------------------------ (2)

------------------------ (3) The typical radiation patterns in the E- and H-planes are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Typical radiation patterns of a resonant rectangular patch antenna The directivity of the microstrip antenna can be expressed as

------------------------ (4) The larger the width, the larger the directivity. Input Impedance and Bandwidth The typical impedance at the edge of a resonant rectangular patch ranges from 100 to 400, and the radiation impedance of a patch at the edge can be approximated as

------------------------ (5) Thus, the impedance is determined by three parameters. For a PTFE (Teflon) based substrate with a relative permittivity of 2.1, to obtain a 50 input impedance we need (L/W) = 0.3723. For L = 0.49, we have W = 1.316

An empirical formula can be used to estimate the fractional bandwidth for VSWR < 2:

------------------------ (6) Thus, the bandwidth is proportional to the thickness of the substrate. This also indicates that the higher the permittivity, the smaller the bandwidth. Ground Plane The ground plane is part of the antenna. Ideally, the ground plane should be infinite as for a monopole antenna. But, in reality, a small ground plane is desirable. As shown in figure (1), the radiation of a microstrip antenna is generated by the fringing field between the patch and the ground plane, the minimum size of the ground plane is therefore related to the thickness of the dielectric substrate. Generally speaking, a /4 extension from the edge of the patch is required for the ground plane, whereas the radius of a monopole ground plane should be at least one wavelength. Design Equations and Procedures Because of the fringing effects, electrically the patch of the antenna looks larger than its physical dimensions; the enlargement on L is given by ------------------------ (7) Where the effective (relative) permittivity is

------------------------ (8) This is related to the ratio of d/W. The larger the d/W, the smaller the effective permittivity. The effective length of the patch is now ------------------------ (9) The resonant frequency for the TM100 mode is

------------------------ (10) An optimized width for an efficient radiator is

------------------------ (11) Design problem: if the substrate parameters (r and d) and the operational frequency are known, how can we obtain the dimensions of the patch antenna (W and L)? Based on these simplified formulas, we can adopt the following design procedure to design the antenna: Step 1: Use Equation (11) to find the width W. Step 2: Calculate the effective permittivity reff using Equation (8). Step 3: Compute the extension of the length L using Equation (7). Step 4: Determine the length L by solving Equation (10) for L, giving the solution

Example: Design a rectangular patch. RT/Duroid 5880 substrate (r =2.2 and d=1.588 mm) is to be used to make a resonant rectangular patch antenna of linear polarization. a. Design such an antenna to work at 2.45 GHz for Bluetooth applications. b. Estimate its directivity. c. If it is to be connected to a 50 ohm microstrip using the same PCB, find the required characteristic impedance of the /4 matching section. d. Find the fractional bandwidth for VSWR < 2. Solution: a. Follow the design procedure suggested above to obtain:

Thus, the designed patch should have L=40.49 mm and W=48.40 mm. b. Since the wavelength at 2.45 GHz is 122.45 mm > W, using Equation (4) gives the maximum directivity, which is about 6.6 or 8.2 dBi. c. The input impedance is given by (5) and is

which does not match well with a 50 standard microstrip and therefore a quarter-wavelength transformer is used to connect them. The characteristic impedance of the transition section should be

d. Using Equation (6), we can find the fractional bandwidth for VSWR<2:

___________________________________________________________________________________ (Extracted from the book Antennas From Theory to Practice by Huang and Boyle (2008))