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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 8, AUGUST 2015
AbstractA novel technique to design a phase-correcting structure (PCS) for an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) resonator
antenna (ERA) is presented. The aperture field of a classical
ERA has a significantly nonuniform phase distribution, which
adversely affects its radiation characteristics. An all-dielectric
PCS was designed to transform such a phase distribution to a
nearly uniform phase distribution. A prototype designed using
proposed technique was fabricated and tested to verify proposed
methodology and to validate predicted results. A very good agreement between the predicted and the measured results is noted.
Significant increase in antenna performance has been achieved
due to this phase correction, including 9-dB improvement in
antenna directivity (from 12.3 dBi to 21.6 dBi), lower side lobes,
higher gain, and better aperture efficiency. The phase-corrected
antenna has a 3-dB directivity bandwidth of 8%.
Index TermsAperture field, cavity resonator, directivity
enhancement, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) resonator antenna
(ERA), FabryPerot resonator, frequency-selective surface (FSS),
high-gain, patch antennas, phase correction, phase shifting surface
(PSS), resonant cavity antenna.
I. I NTRODUCTION
LECTROMAGNETIC band gap (EBG) resonator antennas (ERAs) have been widely investigated in the past
due to their simple feed mechanisms, planar configurations,
and highly directive radiation patterns [1][3]. Owing to these
promising features, they are considered as possible replacements for some high-gain antennas such as arrays and reflectors
[4][6]. ERAs, also known as FabryPerot resonator antennas,
resonant cavity antennas, or two-dimensional (2-D) leaky-wave
antennas, consist of a feed source placed in a cavity formed
between a ground plane and a partially reflecting superstructure (PRS) [7][12]. The PRS is usually a 1-D [13][15],
2-D [16], [17], or three-dimensional (3-D) [18][20] periodic
structure. Nevertheless, our recent investigations revealed that
aperture electric fields of many ERAs have nonuniform phase
distributions, which reduce the effective radiation aperture and
result in lower peak directivity and higher side-lobe levels.
This led to the hypothesis that a phase correction technique
Manuscript received October 16, 2014; revised December 14, 2014; accepted
January 05, 2015. Date of publication June 01, 2015; date of current version
July 31, 2015. This work was supported by the Australian Government under
the AustraliaIndia Strategic Research Fund, and the International Macquarie
University Research Excellence Scholarship (iMQRES) scheme.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering,
Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, N.S.W., Australia (e-mail: muhammad.
afzal@mq.edu.au).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2015.2438332
0018-926X 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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Fig. 2. 2-D grid created at the PCS-P to discretize the physical aperture of the
ERA (X = Y = 60 ).
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 8, AUGUST 2015
Fig. 3. Cross-sectional view of a hypothetical PCS used for mathematical modeling. N dielectric slabs each one having a unique height to provide the required
transmission phase (for a wave propagating along the positive z-axis) at that location.
(1)
(2)
where k0 is the wave number in free space. It is worth mentioning here that the total phase delay in the dielectric is not simply
kn hn (where kn is the wave number in dielectric) but it should
be determined by taking into consideration the multiple reflections between the dielectricair and airdielectric interfaces.
Referring to the dielectric section shown in Fig. 3 inset, this
phase is determined by calculating the ratio of the transmitted
(bn ) and incident (an ) fields [33]
bn
1 2
d (hn ) =
= jkn hn
an
e
(1 + 1 2 e2jkn hn )
(3)
where 1 and 1 are the intrinsic transmission and reflection
coefficients, respectively, for the first (air-to-dielectric) interface, and 2 and 2 are the intrinsic transmission and reflection
coefficients, respectively, for the second (dielectric-to-air) interface. The intrinsic reflection coefficients at the two interfaces
are given by
0
0
1 =
2 =
(4)
+ 0
0 +
where 0 and are the intrinsic wave impedances of air and
.
(5)
2
+ 0
0 +
After simplification, the products 1 2 and 1 2 in (4) and (5)
can be expressed in terms of r
1 r 2
4 r
1 2 =
1 2 =
2 . (6)
1 + r
1 + r
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Fig. 4. Actual phase of the electric field (Ey ) produced by ERA, sampled on
the 2-D grid of UCs at PCS-P.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 8, AUGUST 2015
TABLE I
P HASE OF E LECTRIC F IELD P RODUCED BY ERA
IN THE H-P LANE AT PCS-P
Fig. 7. Phase delays obtained from the theory in Section III for r = 2.53 and
d = 40 mm.
TABLE III
E STIMATED H EIGHT (hn ) OF E ACH R EGION FOR PCS D ESIGN I
Low values of r make the PCS taller while high values increase
internal reflections from the PCS towards PRS. Hence, dielectric constants in the range 23 are desirable. PCS-P to RP
spacing (d) is critical for the design as it is the maximum permitted dielectric height. Therefore, it determines the minimum
(T (min)) and maximum (T (max)) values of total phase
delay, corresponding to hmin = 0 and hmax = d, respectively.
In other words, d controls the range of T . To find an appropriate value for d, the range of T was calculated using (8) for
several values of d. These results are summarized in Table II.
As can be seen in Table II, the phase range increases with d.
For an example, when d is 20 mm, the minimum phase delay
between PCS-P and RP is 267 , which occurs when the whole
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TABLE IV
H EIGHT (hn ) OF E ACH R EGION IN PCS D ESIGN II}
Fig. 9. Comparison of the phase of Ey in the reference plane, with and without
PCS. Uniform phase region is almost doubled due to PCS.
as PCS Design I) could be implemented but since the maximum thickness of the available dielectric slabs was only 37 mm,
a small reduction in dielectric thickness was required. This
profile reduction is discussed below.
Note that exact phase correction is not required in outer
regions R7 R9 because aperture field magnitude in these
regions is relatively very weak. Hence, phase correction in these
regions is sacrificed to reduce the maximum dielectric thickness
of the PCS. The height of the tallest region of PCS is determined by the largest required normalized phase delay which in
PCS Design I is 311 according to Table III. To reduce the maximum thickness of the PCS, all phase delays (T ) in Table III
were reduced by 15 . As a result, maximum required dielectric thickness decreased by 2 mm. The required phase delays
and the corresponding heights of PCS Design II are given in
Table IV. Then, considering the weak field strength in regions
R7 R9 , ideal phase correction for these regions was sacrificed.
The height of these regions have been revised to meet PCS
stability and fabrication requirements and the revised heights
are also given in Table IV. The required height of R9 is made
5 mm instead of 1.45 mm, which obviously cannot be implemented. Cross-sectional view of the resulting PCS Design II
(using revised height) is shown in Fig. 8.
B. Antenna Performance With PCS
The complete antenna consisting of aforementioned ERA
and the PCS (Design II) was simulated in CST Microwave
Studio to verify the design. The cavity height of ERA (h1 )
Fig. 10. Radiation pattern showing directivity of the ERA with and without PCS.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 63, NO. 8, AUGUST 2015
Fig. 12. Input reflection coefficient of the ERA with the PCS.
only 3.8% without the PCS. Despite this significant improvement, aperture efficiency of the ERA is still low because of the
large area of the PRS and the natural amplitude taper in the
aperture fields towards the edges. It is possible to improve it by
strongly truncating the PRS, as demonstrated in [36], for applications where small footprint is more important than the best
directivity. These results prove the concept, and highlight the
validity of the proposed methodology and ability of the PCS to
significantly improve the performance of a classical ERA.
Fig. 13. Measured and predicted radiation patterns at 11.1 GHz in (a) E- and
(b) H-plane.
V. M EASUREMENTS
A fabricated prototype of the PCS is shown in Fig. 11. The
ERA and the patch feed were fabricated for the parameters
given in Section IV. The measured input reflection coefficients
are shown in Fig. 12. The measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth is 14%, from 10.9 to 12.5 GHz. A good agreement
between predicted and measured results is noted.
The radiation patterns, measured in an NSI spherical nearfield range at 11.1 GHz, are shown in Fig. 13 with predicted
patterns. The measured and predicted patterns are in good
agreement. The ERA with PCS also exhibits good cross polar
performance, which is a requirement for some applications.
The measured cross-polar components in principle planes are
plotted at the design frequency in Fig. 13. Within the 3-dB
beamwidth, cross-polar component in the E-plane is at least
24 dB below the co-polar component. In the H-plane it is
even smaller, at least 37 dB below the co-polar component,
Fig. 14. Directivity and gain of the antenna with and without PCS.
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VI. C ONCLUSION
Fig. 15. Predicted radiation pattern of the ERA with the proposed PCS
at (a) f = 10.6 GHz, (b) f = 10.8 GHz, (c) f = 11.0 GHz, and
(d) f =11.3 GHz.
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