On Reducing the Patch Size of U-Slot and L-Probe Wideband Patch Antennas

Aaron Shackelford, Kai-Fong Lee, Deb Chatterjee*

Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 6521 1
*Coordinated Engineering Program in Kansas City
1. Introduction
The coaxially-fed U-slot rectangular patch antenna (Figure 1 ) and the L-probe fed rectangular
patch antenna (Figure 2) are two recently developed single-layer single-patch wideband
microstrip patch antennas [ 1,2]. In both cases, a second resonance is introduced near the main
patch resonance, either by the U-slot or by the L-probe. The U-slot or the L-probe also introduce
a capacitance which counteracts the inductance of the coaxial feed, allowing for the use of thick
substrates (0.08 - O.lh,) where h, is the free space wavelength. Using foam substrates (with E, =
l), the impedance bandwidths of these antennas operating in the fundamental mode are in the 30-
40% range, with stable pattern and gain characteristics. These bandwidths are more than
sufficient for most wireless communication applications. The resonant length of the fundamental
mode is about half of the free space wavelength.
For many applications, it is desirable to reduce the size of the patch to conserve real estate
space. For this reason, there have been extensive investigations on patch size reduction
techniques. One method uses microwave substrates with values of E, >1. Use of microwave
substrates also allow the fabrication of electronic circuits. Another method uses a shorting wall
at the location of zero electric field so that the resonant length is halved, resulting in the quarter-
wave patch. Yet another method uses a shorting pin near the feed. This introduces capacitive
coupling to the patch resonance, tbereby increasing the effective E, and reducing the frequency,
which means that, for a given resonant frequency, the patch size becomes smaller.
In this paper, results of some of these investigations are presented.
2. U-Slot Patches on Microwave Substrate
We have obtained simulation results using Ansoft ENSEMBLE 6.0 to design U-slot patch
antennas at various center frequencies and for several microwave substrates. An example, for
900 MHz center frequency, is shown in Table 1. The details of the patch and U-slot dimensions
and the feed positions are not shown for brevity. It is seen that, taking the area of the E, =1 (air or
foam) as the reference area of the patch, the patch area is reduced to 41% when E, =2.33 is used
and to 8.7% when E, =9.8 is used. The impedance bandwidth changes from 42% when E, =1, to
26.5% when E, =2.33, to 22.1% when E, =4.0 and to 14.4% when E, =9.8. The VSWR versus
frequency curve for the case of E, =4.0 is shown in Figure 3 as an example.
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Table 1 Wideband U-Slot Patches for 900 MHz Center Frequency
E, Patch Dimensions Thickness Normalized Probe BW
Area Diameter
(cm) (cm>
1 .O 21.97x12.45 2.69(0.08h0) 1 3.0 mm 42%
2.33 12.40x8.96 2.76(0.08h0) 0.41 3.4 mm 26.5%
9.8 5.74x4.14 2.01(0.06h0) 0.087 0.08 mm 14.4%
4.0 9.29x6.71 2.40(0.07h0) 0.23 1.7" 22.1%
h, =free space wavelength at center frequency
When a shorting wall is placed in the location where the electric field is approximately zero,
the resonant length is shortened by half, leading to about four times reduction in patch area. It is
found that the bandwidth of such small-size quarter wave patches are still substantial. Detailed
results will be presented in the meeting. At the time of writing, the use of shorting pins to reduce
U-slot patch sizes are in progress.
3. Two-Layer L-Probe Patches
It is difficult to implement the L-probe design if a single layer microwave substrate is used
because the horizontal ar mof the L-probe would have to lie inside the solid substrate. To reduce
this difficulty, a two-layer configuration is conceived, consisting of one layer of microwave
substrate and another layer of foam or air. The horizontal armof the L-probe can then lie in the
air or foam layer. This is shown in Figure 4. Table 2 shows the simulation results obtained for
four values of E, when the rectangular patch has dimensions a=3.0 cm and b =2.5 cm and the
patch and L-probe dimensions are fixed (not shown). It is found that the center frequency is
4.75 GHz when E, =l. It decreases to 3.65 GHz when E, =2.32 and to 2.80 GHz when E, =4.2
The bandwidths for the three cases are 36%, 40% and 37% respectively.
Table 2 Two-layer L-probe wideband patch antennas
1 .o - 6.6 (O.lh,)
4.75 1 .o 3 6%
2.32 3.1 6.7 9.8(0. 12h,) 3.65 0.77 40%
4.2 5.3 6.7 12.0(0.1 lh,) 2.80 0.59 3 7%
~ ~~
h, =free space wavelength at the center frequency f,
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4. Concluding Remarks
This paper presents some recent work on reducing the patch size of U-slot and L-probe
wideband patch antennas. Encouraging simulation results using ENSEMBLE 6.0 have been
obtained. More extensive simulation results and some measured results will be presented in the
meeting.
5. References
[ 11 T. Huynh and K. F. Lee, Single-layer single-patch wideband microstrip antenna,
[2] K. M. Luk, C. L. Mak, Y. L. Chow and K. F. Lee, Broadband microstrip patch antenna,
Electronics Letters, Vol. 32 (9, pp. 418-420, 1996.
Electronics Letters, Vol. 34 (15), pp. 1442-1443, 1998.
6. Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of Honeywell International, Inc.
t Y I--L 1
of pr obe
-
x
TOP View
/ Patch
Side View
L-probe
Ground
Plane
coaxial f eed
b
Figure 1 Geometry of the wideband coaxially-
Figure 2 Geometry of the wideband
L-probe fed patch antenna
fed U-slot patch antenna
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I t? 0 9
Frequency (GHz)
Figure 3 VSWR versus frequency for a U-slot patch antenna on ~,=4.0 substrate
SIDE VIEW
Patch Dimensions a s b
r-
t
Er
L probe t2
Air or Foam
Ground Plane
Coaxial line
Figure 4 Geometry of the two-layer L-probe patch antenna
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