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Ground Slotted Landa Shape Single Feed UWB Circular Polarized Antenna for 2.4 GHz RFID Reader
E. A. F. Abdallah1 , T. G. Abo-Elnaga1 , and H. El-Hennawy2
2

Electronics Research Institute, Egypt Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abstract Supper High Frequency (SHF) 2.4 2.483 GHz Ultra Wide Band (UWB) circularly
polarized antenna is proposed for the Radio Frequency Identication (RFID) applications. The antenna is composed of FR4 substrate where a microstrip patch antenna is placed on the top and no ground plane beneath it. The patch antenna excited through microstrip line matched to the antenna through one fourth microstrip line transformer with stub. The ground plane lies beneath the feeding scheme where a landa shape slot is etched in the ground plane. The proposed antenna achieves measured 10 dB bandwidth of 1.77 GHz from 2.344.11 GHz which agrees with the computed results. The proposed antenna has 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 89.1089 MHz (2.39934 MHz2.48845 MHz) which covers the required band. The antenna scheme occupies an area of 29 32 mm2 . The proposed antenna is simple, cheap and oers an acceptable other antenna parameters on the 2.4 GHz RFID readers bandwidth. 1. INTRODUCTION

The rst RFID application was the Identication Friend or Foe system (IFF) and it was used by the British in the Second World War. Transponders were placed into ghter planes and tanks, and reading units could query them to decide whether to attack. Successors of this technology are still used in armies around the world. The rst commercial RFID application was the Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS). It was developed in the seventies as a theft prevention system. In the eighties RFID technology got a boost when Norway and several US states decided to use RFID for toll collection on roads. In recent years, RFID technology has been rapidly developed and applied to many service industries, distribution logistics, manufacturing companies, and goods ow systems. In RFID system, the role of antennas (for reader and tag) is very important. The reader antenna should have circular polarization (CP) characteristic since the tag antenna can be arbitrarily positioned on the target. Most RFID systems operate at ISM frequencies, such as 13.56 MHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.8 GHz, some work at UHF frequencies such as 840 845 MHz, 920 925 MHz (China), 952 954 MHz (Japan), 868 870 MHz (Europe) and 902 928 MHz (USA), etc [1]. Printed monopole antennas have many attractive features such as light weight, low prole, simple structure, wide impedance-bandwidth, omnidirectional radiation patterns and in general, are linearly polarized (LP) [2]. Typically, the planar CP antenna is achieved through using patch antenna and slot antenna [3]. In this paper, Ultra Wide Band (UWB) circularly polarized antenna is proposed for the supper high frequency (SHF) 2.4 2.483 GHz Radio Frequency Identication (RFID) applications where circular polarization can be enhanced through slotting the ground plane of a printed monopole antenna with landa shape. The antenna is composed of FR4 layer with dielectric constant of 4.65 and height of 1.5 mm. Microstrip patch antenna is placed on the top of the substrate and no ground plane beneath it. The patch antenna is excited through microstrip line matched to the antenna through quarter-wavelength microstrip line transformer with stub and their dimensions are optimized to enhance the matching between the antenna and the microstrip line. The ground plane lies beneath the feeding scheme. Landa shape slot is etched in the ground plane and its dimensions are optimized to enhance the circular polarization. The proposed antenna achieves measured 10 dB bandwidth of 1.77 GHz from 2.344.11 GHz which agrees with the computed results. The proposed antenna has 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 89.1089 MHz (2.39934 MHz2.48845 MHz) which cover the required band (2.400 MHz2.483 MHz). The antenna scheme occupies an area of 29 32 mm2 . The proposed antenna is simple, cheap and oers an acceptable other antenna parameters on the 2.4 GHz RFID readers bandwidth.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN

The schematic diagram of the proposed Ultra Wide Band (UWB) circularly polarized antenna is illustrated in Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) where top and bottom view of the proposed antenna are shown, respectively, where the antenna was etched on FR4 substrate with relative permittivity r =

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4.65, loss tangent tan = 0.02 and thickness h = 1.5 mm. The antenna length La is calculated using Equations (1) and (2) [4] where g , r and re are the guided wavelength, resonance wavelength and eective dielectric constant, respectively. The matching between the radiator element and the 50 ohm microstrip line with length L1f and width W1f is done through quarter-wavelength transformer with width Wf and length Lf . Microstrip stub with width Ws , length Ls and oset length Lo = 4.85 mm is added to the quarter-wavelength transformer as shown in Figure 1(a). Landa shape slot with curvature radius R and vertical upper length L2 , upper width W2 , horizontal upper length L3 , horizontal upper width W2 , Lower vertical length L4 and lower vertical width W3 is etched in rectangular ground plane with length Lg and width Wg as shown in Figure 1(b). The whole structure as shown in Figure 2 is optimized using IE3D Zeland based on the method of moment. All dimensions are given in Table 1. La re g r = 4 4 re r + 1 = 2 (1) (2)

Wa

La

L3

Wf Ls Lf Ws Lo
Wg

W2 R W3 W3

L2

L4

L1f

Lg

W1f

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: (a) The antenna upper view. (b) The antenna bottom view.

Figure 2: Proposed antenna whole structure.

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Table 1: The proposed antenna optimized dimensions. Dimension Dimension (mm) Dimension Dimension (mm) Dimension Dimension (mm) Dimension Dimension (mm) La 13.5 Wf 1.4 R 4.5 L4 2.97 Wa 12 Lf 9.5 L2 4.737 W3 2 L1f 6 Ws 1 W2 1 Lg 32 W1f 3 Ls 4.987 L3 3.254 Wg 13

(a)

(b)

Figure 3: (a) Fabricated antenna (upper view). (b) Fabricated antenna (bottom view).
0

Measured S 11 Computed S 11

-10

S 11 (dB)

-20

-30

Frequency (GHz)

Figure 4: Simulated and measured return loss against frequency.

3. SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS

The proposed antenna was fabricated as shown in Figure 3 where upper and bottom views are shown in Figures 3(a) and 3(b), respectively. The proposed antenna achieves measured 10 dB bandwidth of 1.77 GHz from 2.344.11 GHz which is slightly better than the computed results. The proposed antenna has 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 89.1089 MHz (2.39934 MHz2.48845 MHz) as shown in Figure 5 which covers the required band (2.400 MHz2.483 MHz). Figure 6 and Figure 7 show antenna gain and directivity, respectively. It should be noted that the antenna is not directive and that the value of directivity D (dBi) is less than 2.3 at frequency f = 2.4 GHz. This causes reduction in antenna gain in addition to low radiation eciency. Figure 8 shows the proposed antenna polar radiation pattern from which, the proposed antenna introduces Right Hand Circular Polarization performance. it is clear that, Figure 8, that the back radiation is very large due to

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removing the ground plane under antenna and the existence of the slot. The discrepancies are mainly because of the fabrication diculty in precise alignment between the patch antenna and the landa shape slotted ground plane.

Figure 5: Antenna axial ratio versus frequency.

Figure 6: Antenna gain versus frequency.

Figure 7: Proposed antenna directivity versus frequency and the SMA soldering process before measurement. 4. CONCLUSION

Figure 8: Proposed antenna polar radiation pattern.

Ultra Wide Band UWB circular polarized antenna with right circular polarization has been investigated and fabricated. In the proposed antenna design, matching is done through quarter wavelength microstrip transformer with stub. Landa shape is slotted in the ground plane which can not only be used to enhance the impedance bandwidth, but also to excite circularly polarized radiation waves. IE3D Zeland software has been used in the optimization process. The proposed fabricated antenna achieves measured 10 dB bandwidth of 1.77 GHz from 2.344.11 GHz which agrees with the computed results and the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 89.1089 MHz (2.39934 MHz 2.48845 MHz) which covers the required band (2.400 MHz2.483 MHz).
REFERENCES

1. Barthel, H., Regulatory status for RFID in the UHF spectrum, EPC Global, Brussels, Belgium, March 2009.

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2. Jou, C. F., J.-W. Wu, and C.-J. Wang, Novel broadband monopole antennas with dualband circular polarization, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 57, No. 4, 10271034, 2009. 3. Sze, J.-Y., C.-I. G. Hsu, M.-H. Ho, Y.-H. Ou, and M.-T. Wu, Design of circularly polarized annular-ring slot antennas fed by a double-bent microstrip line, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 55, No. 11, 31343139, 2007. 4. Ma, G. T. and J. S. Wu, Ultrawideband band-notched folded strip monopole antenna, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 55, No. 9, 24732479, 2007.