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EDITORIAL
A Note From the Outgoing Editor-in-Chief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. W. Glisson 1926
PAPERS
Bandwidth Enhancement and Further Size Reduction of a Class of Miniaturized Slot Antennas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N. Behdad and K. Sarabandi 1928
Miniature Built-In Multiband Antennas for Mobile Handsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y.-X. Guo, M. Y. W. Chia, and Z. N. Chen 1936
Miniature Reconfigurable Three-Dimensional Fractal Tree Antennas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. S. Petko and D. H. Werner 1945
Investigations on Miniaturized Endfire Vertically Polarized Quasi-Fractal Log-Periodic Zigzag Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. K. Sharma and L. Shafai 1957
Compact Wide-Band Multimode Antennas for MIMO and Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Waldschmidt and W. Wiesbeck 1963
Ground Influence on the Input Impedance of Transient Dipole and Bow-Tie Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. A. Lestari, A. G. Yarovoy, and L. P. Ligthart 1970
Adaptive Crossed Dipole Antennas Using a Genetic Algorithm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .R. L. Haupt 1976
Modeling and Investigation of a Geometrically Complex UWB GPR Antenna Using FDTD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .K.-H. Lee, C.-C. Chen, F. L. Teixeira, and R. Lee 1983
Radiation Properties of an Arbitrarily Flanged Parallel-Plate Waveguide . . . . . . D. N. Chien, K. Tanaka, and M. Tanaka 1992
Scan Blindness Free Phased Array Design Using PBG Materials. . . . . L. Zhang, J. A. Castaneda, and N. G. Alexopoulos 2000
Fractile Arrays: A New Class of Tiled Arrays With Fractal Boundaries . . . . D. H. Werner, W. Kuhirun, and P. L. Werner 2008
A New Millimeter-Wave Printed Dipole Phased Array Antenna Using Microstrip-Fed Coplanar Stripline Tee Junctions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Y.-H. Suh and K. Chang 2019
Physical Limitations of Antennas in a Lossy Medium. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Karlsson 2027
Minimum Norm Mutual Coupling Compensation With Applications in Direction of Arrival Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .C. K. E. Lau, R. S. Adve, and T. K. Sarkar 2034
A Phase-Space Beam Summation Formulation for Ultrawide-band Radiation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Shlivinski, E. Heyman, A. Boag, and C. Letrou 2042
COMMUNICATIONS
Full-Wave Analysis of a Waveguide Printed Slot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G. Montisci and G. Mazzarella 2168
Dual Polarized Wide-Band Aperture Stacked Patch Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .K. Ghorbani and R. B. Waterhouse 2171
Resonant Frequency of Equilateral Triangular Microstrip Antenna With and Without Air Gap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .D. Guha and J. Y. Siddiqui 2174
Effect of a Cavity Enclosure on the Resonant Frequency of Inverted Microstrip Circular Patch Antenna. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .D. Guha and J. Y. Siddiqui 2177
Design and Development of Multiband Coaxial Continuous Transverse Stub (CTS) Antenna Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. Isom, M. F. Iskander, Z. Yun, and Z. Zhang 2180
Near-Field, Spherical-Scanning Antenna Measurements With Nonideal Probe Locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. C. Wittmann, B. K. Alpert, and M. H. Francis 2184
Resonance Series Representation of the Early-Time Field Scattered by a Coated Cylinder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. Vollmer and E. J. Rothwell 2186
High Order Symplectic Integration Methods for Finite Element Solutions to Time Dependent Maxwell Equations . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .R. Rieben, D. White, and G. Rodrigue 2190
CORRECTIONS
Corrections to “Phased Arrays Based on Oscillators Coupled on Triangular and Hexagonal Lattices” . . . R. J. Pogorzelski 2196
AP Transactions web site: http://aps.ee.olemiss.edu AP Transactions Manuscript Central web site: http://tap-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com
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Allen W. Glisson (S’71–M’78–SM’88–F’02) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in elec-
trical engineering from the University of Mississippi, in 1973, 1975, and 1978, respectively.
In 1978, he joined the faculty of the University of Mississippi, where he is currently a
Professor and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. His current research interests
include the development and application of numerical techniques for treating electromagnetic
radiation and scattering problems, and modeling of dielectric resonators and dielectric resonator
antennas. He has been actively involved in the areas of numerical modeling of arbitrarily
shaped bodies and bodies of revolution with surface integral equation formulations. He has
also served as a consultant to several different industrial organizations in the area of numerical
modeling in electromagnetics.
Dr. Glisson is a Member of Sigma Xi Research Society and the Tau Beta Pi, Phi Kappa Phi, and
Eta Kappa Nu Honor Societies. He is a Member of several professional societies within the IEEE,
Commission B of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), and the Applied Computa-
tional Electromagnetics Society. He was a U.S. delegate to the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th General Assemblies of URSI. He was selected
as the Outstanding Engineering Faculty Member in 1986, 1996, and 2004. He received a Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award in
1989 and the Faculty Service Award in the School of Engineering in 2002. He received a Best Paper Award from the SUMMA
Foundation and twice received a citation for excellence in refereeing from the American Geophysical Union. He is the recipient
of the 2004 Microwave Prize awarded by the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society. He has served as a member of the IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society Administrative Committee and is currently a member of the IEEE Press Liaison Committee.
He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society and has recently served as
Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal. He has also served as an Associate Editor for
Radio Science and as the Secretary of Commission B of the U.S. National Committee of URSI. From August 2001 to July 2004
he was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION.
1928 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—In this paper, new methods for further reducing allow for impedance matching are highly desirable. The funda-
the size and/or increasing the bandwidth (BW) of a class of mental limitation introduced by Chu [1] and later re-examined
miniaturized slot antennas are presented. This paper examines by McLean [4] relates the radiation Q of a single resonance
techniques such as parasitic coupling and inductive loading to
achieve higher BW and further size reduction for this class antenna with its BW. However, whether such limitation can
of miniaturized slot antennas. The overall BW of a proposed be directly extended to multiresonance antenna structures or
double resonant antenna is shown to be increased by more than not is unclear. In fact, through a comparison with filter theory,
94% compared with a single resonant antenna occupying the designing a relatively wideband antenna may be possible using
same area. The behavior of miniaturized slot antennas, loaded multipole (multiresonance) high Q structures. In this paper we
with series inductive elements along the radiating section is also
examined. The inductive loads are constructed by two balanced examine the applicability of multiresonance antenna structures
short circuited slot lines placed on opposite sides of the radiating to enhance the BW of miniaturized slot antennas.
slot. These inductive loads can considerably reduce the antenna Different techniques have been used for antenna miniaturiza-
size at its resonance. Prototypes of a double resonant antenna at tion such as: miniaturization using optimal antenna topologies
850 MHz and inductively loaded miniaturized antennas at around [5]–[7] and miniaturization using magneto-dielectric materials
1 GHz are designed and tested. Finally the application of both
methods in a dual band miniaturized antenna is presented. In all [8], [9]. In pursuit of antenna miniaturization while main-
cases measured and simulated results show excellent agreement. taining ease of impedance matching and attaining relatively
Index Terms—Slot antennas, electrically small antennas, para- high efficiency, a novel miniaturized slot antenna was recently
sitic antennas, multifrequency antennas. presented [6]. Afterwards, a similar architecture in the form
of a folded antenna geometry was presented in order to in-
crease the BW of the previously mentioned miniaturized slot
I. INTRODUCTION antenna [7]. Here we re-examine this topology [6] and propose
modifications that can result in further size reduction or BW
C URRENT advancements in communication technology
and significant growth in the wireless communication
market and consumer demands demonstrate the need for
enhancement without imposing any significant constraint on
impedance matching or cross polarization level. In Section II,
smaller, more reliable and power efficient, integrated wireless a dual-resonant antenna topology is examined for BW en-
systems. Integrating entire transceivers on a single chip is hancement. This miniaturized antenna shows a BW which is
the vision for future wireless systems. This has the benefit of 94% larger than that of a single-resonant miniaturized antenna
cost reduction and improving system reliability. Antennas are with the same size.
considered to be the largest components of integrated wireless Using series inductive elements distributed along the antenna
systems; therefore antenna miniaturization is a necessary task aperture results in the increase of inductance per unit length of
in achieving an optimal design for integrated wireless systems. the line. Therefore the guided wavelength of the resonant slot
The subject of antenna miniaturization is not new and has been line is shortened. Thus, the overall length of the antenna is de-
extensively studied by various authors [1]–[4]. Early studies creased. In Section III, this technique is first demonstrated using
have shown that for a resonant antenna, as size decreases, a standard resonant slot antenna and then incorporated in the
bandwidth (BW) and efficiency will also decrease [1]. This is a miniaturized antenna topology of [6] to further reduce the res-
fundamental limitation which, in general, holds true indepen- onant frequency without increasing the area occupied by the
dent of antenna architecture. However, research on the design antenna.
of antenna topologies and architectures must be carried out The aforementioned techniques for BW enhancement and
to achieve maximum possible BW and efficiency for a given further size reduction can be used individually or in combina-
antenna size. Impedance matching for small antennas is also tion. The combined application of the techniques of Sections II
challenging and often requires external matching networks; and III is presented in Section IV by demonstrating the design
Therefore antenna topologies and structures which inherently of a dual band miniaturized slot antenna.
Manuscript received May 22, 2003; revised September 30, 2003. This work II. MINIATURIZED SLOT ANTENNA WITH ENHANCED BW
was supported in part by the Engineering Research Centers program of the Na-
tional Science Foundation (NSF) under Award EEC-9986866 and by the U.S.
Army Research Office under Contract DAA-99-1-01971.
A. Design Procedure
The authors are with The Radiation Laboratory, Department of Electrical En- In this section the design of coupled miniaturized slot an-
gineering and Computer Science, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
48109-2122 USA (e-mail: behdad@engin.umich.edu). tennas for BW enhancement is studied. The configuration of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832330 the proposed coupled slot antenna is shown in Fig. 1(b) where
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
BEHDAD AND SARABANDI: BW ENHANCEMENT AND FURTHER SIZE REDUCTION 1929
Fig. 1. Geometry of single- and double-element miniaturized slot antennas. (a) Single-element miniaturized slot antenna. (b) Double-element miniaturized slot
antenna.
two miniaturized slot antennas are arranged so that they are entire frequency band. Here the resonant frequencies of both an-
parasitically coupled. Each antenna occupies an area of about tennas are fixed at MHz and is used as the
[Fig. 1(a)] and achieves miniaturization by the tuning parameter. However, it is also possible to change and
virtue of a special topology described in detail in [6]. However, slightly, in order to achieve a higher degree of control for
this antenna demonstrates a small BW (less than 1%). A close tuning the response.
examination of the antenna topology reveals that the slot-line The input impedance of a microstrip-fed slot antenna, for a
trace of the antenna only covers about half of the rectangular given slot width, depends on the location of the microstrip feed
printed-circuit board (PCB) area. Therefore another antenna, relative to one end of the slot and varies from zero at the short
with the same geometry, can be placed in the remaining area circuited end to a high resistance at the center. Therefore an
without significantly increasing the overall PCB size. Placing off-center microstrip feed can be used to easily match a slot an-
two antennas in close proximity of each other creates strong tenna to a wide range of desired input impedances. The optimum
coupling between the antennas which, if properly controlled, location of the feed line can be determined from the full-wave
can be employed to increase the total antenna BW. simulation. In the double antenna example the feed line consists
As seen in Fig. 1(b), only one of the two antennas is fed by of a 50 transmission line connected to an open-circuited 75
a microstrip line. The other antenna is parasitically fed through line crossing the slot [Fig. 1(b)]. The 75 line is extended by
capacitive coupling mostly at the elbow section. The coupling beyond the strip-slot crossing to couple the maximum
is a mixture of electric and magnetic couplings that counteract energy to the slot and also to compensate for the imaginary part
each other. At the elbow section, where the electric field is large, of the input impedance. Using this 75 line as the feed, allows
the slots are very close to each other; therefore, it is expected that for compact and localized feed of the antenna and tuning the
the electric field coupling is the dominant coupling mechanism location of the transition from 50 to 75 provides another
and the electric fields (magnetic currents) in both antennas will tuning parameter for obtaining a good match.
be in phase and thus the radiated far field is enhanced.
The two coupled antennas are designed to resonate at the B. Fabrication and Measurement
same frequency, , where is the center fre-
quency and and are the resonant frequencies of the two A double-element antenna (DEA) and two different single-
antennas. In this case the spectral response of the coupled element antennas (SEAs) (SEA 1 and SEA 2) were designed,
antenna will show two nulls, the separation of which is a func- fabricated, and measured. SEA 1 is the constitutive element of
tion of the separation between the two antennas, , and their DEA and SEA 2 is an SEA with the same topology as SEA 1
overlap distance . In order to quantify this null separation a [see Fig. 1(a)] but with the same area as the DEA. SEA 2 is used
coupling coefficient is defined as to compare the BW of the double resonant miniaturized antenna
with that of the single-resonant miniaturized antenna with the
same size. All antennas were simulated using IE3D [12] which
(1) is a full wave simulation software based on method of moments
(MoM) and fabricated on a Rogers RO4350B substrate with
where and are the frequencies of the upper and lower nulls thickness of 500 m, a dielectric constant of , and a
in . Hence can easily be adjusted by varying and loss tangent of with a copper ground plane of
[Fig. 1(b)], and decreases as is increased and is decreased. 33.5 23 cm . The return losses of the SEAs as well as the
A full-wave electromagnetic simulation tool can be used to ex- DEA are presented in Fig. 2. SEA 1 shows a BW of 8 MHz or
tract as a function of and in the design process. BW maxi- nearly 0.9% and SEA 2 shows a BW of 11.7 MHz or 1.31%
mization is accomplished by choosing a coupling coefficient (by whereas the BW of the DEA is 21.6 MHz (2.54%) which in-
choosing and ) such that remains below dB over the dicates a factor of 1.94 increase over a SEA (SEA) with the
1930 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 2. Return losses of DEA and SEA 2: SEA with the same size as DEA. (a) Return losses of the DEA and SEA of the same size (SEA 2). (b) Return loss of
the SEA that constitutes the DEA (SEA 1).
Fig. 3. Far field radiation patterns of the double-element miniaturized slot antenna at 852 MHz. (a) H-plane and (b) E-plane.
Fig. 4. Loaded and unloaded straight slot antennas. (a) Geometry of a microstrip-fed straight slot antenna. (b) Geometry of a microstrip-fed straight slot antenna
loaded with an array of series inductive elements.
(2)
Fig. 6. Simulated and measured return losses of the straight slot antennas and miniaturized slot antennas with and without inductive loading. (see Figs. 4 and 5).
(a) Return losses of straight loaded and unloaded slot antennas. (b) Return losses of ordinary and loaded miniaturized slot antennas.
Fig. 7. Far field radiation patterns of loaded straight slot antenna shown in Fig. 4(b). (a) H-plane and (b) E-plane.
the discontinuity. Hence the electric current traverses a longer of the microstrip line are found by trial and error, using full
path length than the radiating slot length which in turn lowers wave simulations. For both straight slots (with and without
the resonant frequency. Fig. 4(b) shows a slot antenna loaded series inductors) the lengths of the extended microstrip lines
with a number of narrow slits which act as an array of series are found to be , where is the wavelength in the
inductors. These slits are designed to have a length smaller microstrip lines at their respective resonance frequencies.
than and carry a magnetic current with a direction normal Fig. 5 shows a miniaturized slot antenna (similar to the
to that of the main radiator. Placing them only on one side of topology in [6]) loaded with series inductive slits to further
the radiating slot results in asymmetry in phase and amplitude reduce its resonant frequency. The antenna without the series
of the current along the slot which could create problems in inductors is already small, and adding series inductive elements
matching and worsen cross polarization. In order to circumvent further reduces the resonant frequency or equivalently the
this problem, two series slits are placed on the opposite sides electrical dimensions of the antenna. Instead of using identical
of the main slot. These slits carry magnetic currents with equal inductive elements along the radiating slot, differently sized
amplitudes and opposite directions. Since the lengths of these inductive slits are used to cover most of the available area on
narrow slits are small compared to the wavelength and since the PCB in order to maintain the area occupied by the antenna.
they are closely spaced, the radiated fields from the opposite The antenna is matched to a microstrip transmission line in
slits cancel each other and they do not contribute to the radiated a manner similar to the straight slots described earlier. The
far field. Matching is performed by using an off-centered open feed line is composed of a 75 open-circuited microstrip line
circuited microstrip feed. The optimum location and length connected to a 50 feed line. In this case, the open circuited
BEHDAD AND SARABANDI: BW ENHANCEMENT AND FURTHER SIZE REDUCTION 1933
Fig. 8. Far field radiation patterns of loaded miniaturized slot antenna shown in Fig. 5. (a) H-plane and (b) E-plane.
TABLE III
COMPARISON BETWEEN BW, MEASURED Q AND THE MINIMUM ATTAINABLE Q OF THE MINIATURIZED ANTENNAS IN SECTION III
TABLE IV
COMPARISON BETWEEN BW, MEASURED Q AND THE MINIMUM ATTAINABLE Q OF THE DUAL BAND MINIATURIZED ANTENNA
IV. DUAL BAND MINIATURIZED SLOT ANTENNA the slot-strip transition. Table IV shows a comparison between
In this section the techniques introduced in the previous the antenna size, dB BW, measured Q, and minimum at-
sections are used in the design of a dual band miniaturized tainable Q for the two bands. It is seen that the Q of both bands
slot antenna. The geometry of this antenna is shown in Fig. 9. are well above the Chu limit. The overall size of the structure
The resonant frequencies of the slot antennas ( and ) is 5.73 cm 5.94 cm or equivalently at the
and the value of the coupling coefficient are used as lowest frequency of operation. Radiation patterns of the antenna
design parameters to achieve the desired response. Increasing at the two bands are measured and found to be similar to those
the vertical displacement, , and decreasing the horizontal of the SEA topology (Fig. 8).
separation, , causes to increase or equivalently result in
a larger separation between the two frequency bands. Small V. CONCLUSION
changes in the resonance lengths of the slots result in slight Two approaches are introduced for increasing the BW and
changes in and which can be used as a means of fine- reducing the size of miniaturized slot antennas. Placing two
tuning the response. Note, however, that resonant frequencies similar slot antennas in close proximity of each other creates a
, and should be close to each other so that coupling double resonant structure, the response of which is a function of
takes place. The separation between the two bands is limited relative spacing between the two antennas. The coupled minia-
by practical values of . Large values cannot be obtained turized antenna can be designed to have a BW which is larger
easily, since both electric and magnetic couplings are present by 94% than the BW of a single resonant antenna with the same
and add destructively. In addition to this problem, matching area or to behave as a dual band antenna.
the antenna at the two bands becomes increasingly difficult For a fixed resonant frequency, adding series inductive el-
as the separation increases. A parameter is defined as a ements to a slot antenna reduces its size. The size reduction
measure of separation between the two frequency bands is a function of number and values of the inserted inductive
elements. Using series inductive elements does not adversely
(3) affect impedance matching and the cross polarization level.
This technique is also used in combination with other miniatur-
where is the center frequency. In practice by changing , ization techniques to further decrease the size of the radiating
and , values of up to 10% can easily be obtained. This ar- structure. The technique is applied to a straight as well as a
chitecture is particularly useful for wireless applications that use miniaturized slot antenna and for a given antenna size, sig-
two separate frequency bands (different bands for transmit and nificant reduction in resonant frequencies are observed.
receive for example) that are close to each other but still cannot Finally, both techniques are applied to the design of a minia-
be covered with the available BW of these types of miniaturized turized dual band antenna. Series inductors are used to reduce
antennas. the resonant frequencies of each resonator. A large coupling co-
In order to achieve a higher miniaturization level for the given efficient is used to achieve a large separation between the two
size, series inductive elements are also placed along slots to re- nulls in the response of the parasitically coupled antenna.
duce the resonance frequencies of each element. Fig. 10 shows The values of , and are used as design parameters in
the simulated and measured return losses of this dual band an- order to obtain a miniaturized dual band slot antenna with rela-
tenna. The discrepancies between the simulated and measured tively good simultaneous matching.
results are due to the finiteness of the ground plane as described
in [6]. The measured results indicate an MHz and
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
MHz or equivalently a %. A good match at
both bands is obtained by using an off center open-circuited mi- The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
crostrip feed where the microstrip line is extended by 7 cm over their constructive comments.
BEHDAD AND SARABANDI: BW ENHANCEMENT AND FURTHER SIZE REDUCTION 1935
Abstract—In this paper, we propose a new design for built-in antennas, which are well suited for integration with multiband
handset antennas in that metal strips as additional resonators are multifunctional personal communication transceiver systems,
directly connected with a feed strip. With the new design scheme, is a big challenge for antenna engineers.
a quad-band antenna for covering GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900,
and UMTS2000 bands and a five-band antenna for covering Currently, many mobile telephones use one or more of the fol-
GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2000, and ISM2450 bands lowing frequency bands: the GSM band centered at 900 MHz,
for use in mobile built-in handsets are experimentally carried out. the DCS band centered at 1800 MHz, and the PCS band centered
Compared with the parasitic form with a shorted strip placed at 1900 MHz. Many interesting designs based on the IFA and
away from the main radiator in the open literature, the size of the PIFA concepts for achieving dual-band operations have been
proposed antennas can be reduced by an order of 10 20%, which
is desirable since the size of mobile phones is becoming smaller available in open literatures [1]–[11]. Triple-band built-in an-
according to consumer preferences. Moreover, the impedance tennas to operate at GSM900, DCS1800, and PCS1900 bands
matching for each band of the new antennas becomes easy. The were demonstrated [12]–[14]. These tri-band antennas consist
new quad-band and five-band built-in handset antennas are of a main radiator operating at a low frequency band and a
developed within the limits of a 36 16 8 mm3 volume. The first high band and a shorted parasitic radiator operating at a
antennas are also analyzed using the finite-difference time-domain
technique. A good agreement is achieved between measurement second high band. The parasitic radiator lies in a plane par-
and simulation. allel to and away from the main radiator and therefore occupies
valuable space in mobile phones that are constantly shrinking
Index Terms—Antennas, built-in antennas, handset antennas,
planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) antennas, small antennas. in size. Moreover, the parasitic-feed technique used for intro-
ducing one more mode may have problems in tuning of the an-
tenna. More recently, some customers may need the designed
I. INTRODUCTION mobile antennas can also include the UMTS2000 band for 3G
mobile applications or 2450 MHz ISM band for indoor cord-
T HE SIZES AND weights of mobile handsets have rapidly
been reduced due to the development of modern inte-
grated circuit technology and the requirements of the users.
less phones, WLAN and Bluetooth applications. Antenna de-
signs for covering GSM900, DCS1800, and ISM2450 bands can
Conventional monopole-like antennas have remained relatively be found in the literatures [15], [16]. Furthermore, a quad-band
large compared to the handset itself. Thus, built-in antennas built-in antenna for covering GSM900, DCS1800, GSM1900,
are becoming very promising candidates for applications in and UMTS2000 was reported in [17].
mobile handsets. Most built-in antennas currently used in In this paper, we propose a new design in that metal strips as
mobile phones include microstrip antennas, inverted-F shaped additional resonators are directly connected with a feed strip.
wire-form antennas (IFAs), and planar inverted-F antennas With this direct-feed scheme, the forgoing problems relating
(PIFAs). Microstrip antennas are small in size and light in to the parasitic-feed technique for an additional resonance in
weight. However, at the lower band for mobile applications a conventional multiple-band antenna can be alleviated. As
such as GSM900, half-wavelength microstrip antennas are an example, a quad-band antenna for covering the GSM900,
too large to be incorporated into a mobile handset. Basic IFA DCS1800, PCS1900, and UMTS2000 was achieved, which
and PIFA elements, which have a length equal to a quarter was initially presented in [18], [19]. Herein, we would like to
wavelength of the center frequency in the operating band, are report extensive results on this quad-band antenna. Further,
narrow in bandwidth. In addition to reduced antenna sizes, it is by the addition of a second metal strip, a five-frequency band
envisaged that next generation mobile phones will require the operation to cover GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2000,
capability to tune to a number of frequency bands for cellular and ISM2450 can be implemented. In the wireless industry,
applications, wireless local area networks (WLAN) and other there are several ways to fabricate handset antennas, such
wireless communications. The trend in the development of as: 1) molded intrusion design (MID) technology; 2) using a
wireless personal communication systems has been in the conductive pattern, screen-printed on an adhesive flexible film;
pursuit of a single system that can accommodate the needs of 3) thin film technology; and 4) metal cutting. It is possible to
all users. To develop compact, highly efficient and broadband fabricate our newly designed antennas using MID technology or
metal cutting. The simulations were performed using Remcom
software XFDTD5.3, which is based on the FDTD method.
Manuscript received February 24, 2003; revised November 2, 2003. This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents a
The authors are with the Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore 117674,
Singapore (e-mail: yxguo@ieee.org). simple and efficient measurement setup, which is very impor-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832375 tant for measuring small handset antennas. In Section III, a
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
GUO et al.: MINIATURE BUILT-IN MULTIBAND ANTENNAS FOR MOBILE HANDSETS 1937
Fig. 3. (a) Measured and simulated return losses of the antenna in Fig. 2(a)
and (b) measured and simulated return losses of the antenna in Fig. 2(b).
IV. QUAD-BAND ANTENNA
A. Antenna Structure
part of the antenna is tuned to have a high band resonance fre-
quency, such as 1800 MHz. The ground plane has dimensions The proposed antenna in this work is shown in Fig. 4.
of length 80 mm, and width 36 mm. The dielectric constant of Compared with the dual-band folded patch in Fig. 2(b), a
foam is around 1.07. The dimensions of the dual-band antenna new radiating strip is added. The new radiating strip as an
are , , , , additional resonator is directly connected to the feed strip and
, , positioned at a plane perpendicular to the ground plane and
, , , the original folded patch, whereas in the previous triple-band
and . designs [12]–[14], the additional parasitic radiator has a small
The measured and simulated return losses of the dual-band distance from the original folded patch. Due to that, the designs
antenna in Fig. 2(a) is shown in Fig. 3(a). The measured band- in [12]–[14] may occupy valuable space in mobile phones that
widths, defined for 6 dB return loss (SWR 3), are 82 MHz are constantly shrinking in size. Compared with the designs
(972–1054 MHz) for the lower band and 263 MHz (1769–2032 in [12]–[14], the size of the newly proposed antenna can be
MHz) for the upper band, respectively. The corresponding sim- reduced by an order of 10 20%, which is desirable since
ulated bandwidths are 120 MHz (965–1085 MHz) and 270 MHz the size of mobile phones is becoming smaller according
(1830–2100 MHz). Reasonable agreement between measure- to consumer preferences. The new additional strip is like a
ment and simulation is achieved. The wide bandwidth at the PIFA antenna and is tuned to have a second high resonance
upper band in this design may also be due to one resonance frequency, such as 2100 MHz. The new quad-band antenna was
generated by the ground plane, which has a half-wave length developed within the limits of a volume. The
with the center frequency being around 1.8 GHz. If the influ- rectangular ground plane has a length of and a
ence of the plastic casing as in real situation is considered with width of . The dimensions of the new antenna
a rough 5% reduction of the resonant frequency [12], it is ob- are , , , ,
served that the corresponding frequencies are still a little out of , , , ,
the GSM900 and DCS1800 bands. ,
GUO et al.: MINIATURE BUILT-IN MULTIBAND ANTENNAS FOR MOBILE HANDSETS 1939
C. Parametric Study
In this section, effects of varying key antenna parameters, i.e.
Fig. 6. Measured gains of the dual-band antenna in Fig. 2(b) and the quad-band the substrate thickness, the ground plane size, and the additional
antenna in Fig. 4. strip position and width are considered on the antenna band-
width. Again, for all the simulations in this section, 2-mm thick
dielectric sheet with dielectric constant and 1-mm
, , , and
spacing between the cover and the antenna are used to simu-
.
late the actual effect of the plastic cover as before [7], [24].
1) Effects of the Substrate Thickness: The first variation is
B. Measured and Simulated Results performed by varying the height of the substrate. Other param-
The return losses and radiation properties of the new antenna eters of the antenna are as follows: , ,
as shown in Fig. 4 were investigated using measurement and , , , ,
simulation. The simulation was performed using the commer- , , ,
cial software XFDTD5.3, which is based on the FDTD method. , ,
Fig. 5 shows the measured and simulated return losses of , , and . It can
the new antenna presented in Fig. 4. In the actual design, we be seen from Fig. 8, that this variation has a large impact on
need to consider around 5% frequency-shifting due to the ef- the impedance matching of the upper band. With the substrate
fect of the plastic cover [7]. Thus, the simulated result with the height increasing, the bandwidths for the upper band increase
plastic cover is also provided. In the simulation, 2-mm thick significantly, while the bandwidths of the lower band increase
dielectric sheet with dielectric constant and 1-mm slightly. The lower cutoff frequency (f1L), upper cutoff fre-
spacing between the cover and the antenna is used to simulate quency (f1U) and the absolute bandwidth (BW1) for the lower
the actual effect of the plastic cover [7], [24]. The measured band and the lower cutoff frequency (f2L), upper cutoff fre-
bandwidths without the plastic cover according to 6 dB re- quency (f2U) and the absolute bandwidth (BW2) for the upper
turn loss matching are 78 MHz (933–1010 MHz) at the lower band are tabulated in Table I for reference, respectively. Addi-
band and 516 MHz (1772–2288 MHz) at the upper band, respec- tionally, the resonant frequencies of the lower band shift up with
tively. The corresponding simulated results without the plastic the substrate height being increased, which may be due to the
cover are 130 MHz (924–1054 MHz) at the lower band and 486 decreased capacitance between the folded radiating patch and
MHz (1824–2310 MHz) at the upper band, respectively. A good the ground plane.
1940 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 7. Radiation patterns of the antenna in Fig. 4 at xz plane: (a) 925 MHz, (b) 1795 MHz, (c) 1935 MHz, and (d) 2100 MHz.
Only small variations are seen for the bandwidths of both the
lower and upper bands with the ground plane width varying
from 36 to 44 mm. Other parameters of the antenna are as fol-
lows: , , , ,
, , , ,
,
, , , and
.
3) Effects of the Additional Strip Position and Its
Size: Fig. 10 shows the effects of the additional strip position
and its width on the new antenna. Other parame-
ters of the antenna are as follows: , ,
, , , ,
, , , ,
,
Fig. 8. Simulated return losses with variation of H for the antenna in Fig. 4. , and . Referring to the Fig. 10,
it can be seen that the additional strip position and its width
2) Effects of the Ground Plane Size: For small PIFA-like an- mainly affect the impedance matching of the upper band.
tennas, the finite ground plane can be considered as a radiator. The matching will become deteriorated when the additional
Therefore, it is necessary to study the effects of the ground plane strip bottom approaches very near the ground plane as high
size on the impedance characteristics of the new antenna. With capacitance may be introduced in this case. The bandwidths
regard to Fig. 9 it is observed that the ground plane length has of the lower band almost keep constant with the additional
a large effect on the upper band with the length varying from strip position and its size varying. The antennas with other
60 to 100 mm, while the lower band almost keeps unchanged. additional strip positions and the strip sizes were also simulated
GUO et al.: MINIATURE BUILT-IN MULTIBAND ANTENNAS FOR MOBILE HANDSETS 1941
TABLE I
SIMULATED BANDWIDTHS WITH DIFFERENT SUBSTRATE THICKNESS H OF THE QUAD-BAND ANTENNA
V. FIVE-BAND ANTENNA
A. Antenna Structure
Fig. 11 depicts a five-band antenna for covering the GSM900,
DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2000, and ISM2450 bands by
adding a second additional strip and connecting it to the feed
strip. The second metal strip is parallel to the ground plane
and the original dual-band PIFA patch but orthogonal to the
first additional radiating strip with a horizontal separation
d3 and a height h1. The additional separation and position
arrangement between the first radiating strip and the second
additional strip reduces the mutual coupling therebetween. The
Fig. 9. Simulated return losses with variation of L for the antenna in Fig. 4. new five-band antenna was still developed within the limits of
a volume. The rectangular ground plane has
a length of and a width of .
The dimensions of this antenna are ,
, , , ,
, , , ,
,
, , , ,
, , and .
TABLE II
SIMULATED BANDWIDTHS WITH DIFFERENT W9 AND d2 OF THE QUAD-BAND ANTENNA
analyzed using the FDTD technique. A good agreement has [21] C. Icheln, J. Ollikainen, and P. Vainikainen, “Reducing the influence of
been achieved between measurement and simulation. feed cables on small antenna measurements,” Electron. Lett, vol. 35, no.
15, pp. 1212–1214, July 1999.
[22] C. Icheln and P. Vainikainen, “Dual-frequency balun to decrease influ-
ence of RF feed calbes in small antenna measurements,” Electron. Lett.,
vol. 36, no. 21, pp. 1760–1761, Oct. 2000.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT [23] J. Haley, T. Moore, and J. T. Bernhard, “Experimental investigation
of antenna-handset-feed interaction during wireless product testing,”
The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers Microwave and Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 169–172,
for their comments which improved this paper. Aug. 2002.
[24] H. S. Hwang, “private communication,” unpublished.
REFERENCES
[1] K. Hirasawa and M. Haneishi, Eds., Analysis, Design, and Measurement
of Small and Low-Profile Antennas. Norwood, MA: Artech House,
1992. Yong-Xin Guo (M’01) received the B.Eng. and
[2] Z. D. Liu, P. S. Hall, and D. Wake, “Dual-frequency planar inverted-F M.Eng. degrees from Nanjing University of Science
antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 1451–1457, Oct. and Technology, Nanjing, China, and the Ph.D.
1997. degree from City University of Hong Kong, all in
[3] C. R. Rowell and R. D. Murch, “A compact PIFA suitable for dual- electronic engineering, in 1992, 1995, and 2001,
frequency 900/1800-MHz operation,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., respectively.
vol. 46, pp. 596–598, Apr. 1998. From 1995 to 1997, he was a Teaching and
[4] M. Sanad and N. Hassas, “Compact wide-band microstrip antennas for Research Assistant and then a Lecturer in the
PCS and cellular phones,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Antennas Propagation Department of Electronic Engineering, Nanjing
for Wireless Commun., Nov. 1998, pp. 152–155. University of Science and Technology. From January
[5] R. Mittra and S. Dey, “Challenges in PCS antenna design,” in Proc. IEEE 1998 to August 1998, he was a Research Associate
Antennas Propagation Symp. Dig., Orlando, FL, July 1999, pp. 544–547. in the Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong.
[6] S. Tarvas and A. Isohatala, “An internal dual-band mobile phone an- Since September 2001, he has been with the Institute for Infocomm Research,
tenna,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propagation Symp. Dig., Salt Lake City, Singapore, as a Scientist. He also holds an appointment of Adjunct Assistant
UT, July 2000, pp. 266–269. Professor at the National University of Singapore. He has published over
[7] M. Yang and Y. Chen, “A novel U-shaped planar microstrip antenna 50 technical papers in international journals and conferences. He holds one
for dual-frequency mobile telephone communications,” IEEE Trans. An- Chinese Patent and one pending U.S. patent. His current research interests
include design and modeling of microstrip and dielectric resonator antennas for
tennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. 1002–1004, June 2001.
handsets and other wireless communications, UWB antennas, LTCC filters and
[8] A. Taflove and L. Vasilyeva, “Elongate Radiator Conformal Antenna for
baluns and LTCC optoelectronic transceiver for radio-over-fiber application,
Portable Communication Devices,” U.S. patent 6 292 144, Sept. 2001. and numerical methods in electromagnetics.
[9] M. Martinez-Vazquez, M. Geissler, D. Heberling, A. Martinez-Gon- Dr. Guo has served as a reviewer for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
zalez, and D. Sanchez-Hernandez, “Compact dual-band antenna for PROPAGATION since 2002. He also served as one session chair for 2003 Asia and
mobile handsets,” Microwave and Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 32, no. 2, pp. Pacific Microwave Conference (APMC2003), Korea.
87–88, Jan. 2002.
[10] R. Chair, K. M. Luk, and K. F. Lee, “Measurement and analysis of minia-
ture multilayer patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 50,
pp. 244–250, Feb. 2002.
[11] K. L. Wong, “A short course note on planar antennas for wireless
communications,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society
Int. Symp., San Antonio, TX, June 2002, pp. 6–14.
[12] D. Manteuffel, A. Bahr, D. Heberling, and I. Wolff, “Design con- Michael Yan Wah Chia (M’94) was born in Singa-
sideration for integrated mobile phone antennas,” in Proc. 11th Int. pore. He received the B.Sc. (1st Class Honors) and
Conf. Antennas and Propagation, Manchest, U.K., April 2001, pp. Ph.D. degrees from Loughborough University, U.K.
252–256. He joined the Center for Wireless Communica-
[13] Z. Ying, Multi Frequency-Band Antenna PCT application WO01/91233, tions (CWC), Singapore, in 1994 as a Member of
May 2001. Technical Staff (MTS), was promoted to Senior
[14] I. Egorov, “Antenna,” U.S. patent application 09/908 817, July 2001. MTS, then Principal MTS, and finally Senior Prin-
[15] W. P. Dou and Y. M. W. Chia, “Novel meandered planar inverted-F an- cipal MTS. He was also holding the appointment
tenna for triple-frequency operation,” Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., as Division Director of Radio Division. In 1999, he
vol. 27, pp. 58–60, Oct. 2000. started UWB work at CWC, which was later merged
[16] C. T. P. Song, P. S. Hall, H. Ghafouri-Shiraz, and D. Wake, “Triple band to I R. Currently, he is the Division Director of
planar inverted F antennas for handheld devices,” Electron Lett., vol. 36, Communications and Devices Division (which consists of five Departments),
pp. 112–114, Jan. 2000. Institute for Infocomm Research (I R) of ASTAR (Agency of Science Tech-
[17] M. Martinez-Vazquez and O. Litschke, “Design considerations for nology And Research). Concurrently, he has been appointed as an Adjunct
Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. Externally, he has
quadband antennas integrated in personal communications devices,” in
also served in the Public Service Funding Panel of ASTAR-2002, Radio Stan-
Proc. Int. Symp. Antennas (JINA), vol. 1, Nice, France, Nov. 2002, pp.
dard Committee and UWB Task Force Committee of Infocomm Development
195–198.
Authority(IDA) of Singapore. He was also on the Technical Program Com-
[18] Y. X. Guo, M. Y. W. Chia, and Z. N. Chen, “Compact multi-band an- mittee International Workshop on UWB System (IWUWBS) 2003, Finland,
tennas for wireless communications,” in Proc. Progress in Electromag- and has been listed in Marquis’s Who’s Who in Engineering since 2002. He
netics Research Symp., Singapore, Jan. 2003, p. 130. has published 28 international journal papers and 50 international conference
[19] , “Miniature built-in quad-band antennas for mobile handsets,” papers. He has 10 patents both filed and granted. Some of the patents has
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propagat. Lett., vol. 2, pp. 30–32, 2003. been commercialized and licensed to companies. His main research interest
[20] S. Saario, D. V. Thiel, J. W. Lu, and S. G. O’Keefe, “An assessment are ultraeide-band(UWB) system, antenna, transceiver, radio over fiber, RFIC,
of cable radiation effects on mobile communications antenna measure- linearization and communication, and radar system architecture.
ments,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propagt. Symp. Dig., Montreal, Canada, Dr. Chia was awarded Overseas Research Studentship (ORS) and British
July 1997, pp. 550–553. Aerospace Studentship from the U.K.
1944 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE II
PARAMETERS FOR GENERATING SIX- AND EIGHT-BRANCH FRACTAL TREES
the third stage is 2 cm, and the fourth stage is 1.936 cm. In
addition, the diameter of the wire assumed for each antenna is
. Finally, all of the fractal tree dipole antennas
are assumed to be center-fed.
The resulting radiation characteristics of these fractal tree
antennas were evaluated using a numerically rigorous approach
based on the method of moments (MoM). Fig. 3 plots the for
the first two stages of the six- and eight-branch antenna classes
and compares them to the first four stages for the four-branch
class. The results show that the six-branch antennas have a
resonant frequency 100 MHz lower than the four-branch antenna
at the same fractal stage of growth, whereas the eight-branch
Fig. 2. First two iterations of the six-branch and eight-branch classes of fractal antenna has a resonant frequency approximately 150 MHz
tree antennas.
lower. The six- and eight-branch classes follow the same trend
as the four-branch in the sense that the resonant frequency
to it at each end: one from which it is a child and the other to decreases with an increase in the fractal stage of growth;
which it is the parent. however, there is no valid geometry for the six- and eight-branch
Three different families of 3-D fractal trees are first evalu- antenna classes beyond stage 3, because wire segments will
ated for their suitability as miniature dipole antennas. These intersect. Nevertheless, at these lower stages of growth, the
classes of antennas will be referred to throughout the paper six- and eight-branch antenna classes are more effective than
as four-branch, six-branch, and eight-branch fractal trees. The the four-branch and are easier to fabricate than higher order
four-branch class of antennas, shown in Fig. 1, has been adapted four-branch antennas because the six- and eight-branch classes
from [7] and is used as a benchmark of comparison for the have less junctions. Despite the complicated geometry of these
six-branch and the eight-branch classes introduced in this paper. fractal tree structures, the radiation patterns exhibited by these
Table I shows the generation parameters for the four-branch types of antennas are very similar to those of typical dipole
fractal trees shown in Fig. 1. antennas. Fig. 4 shows the radiation patterns produced by the
The fractal generators of these antennas have several prop- four-, six-, and eight- branch fractal tree dipoles compared
erties in common. First, the child branches are half the length to the radiation pattern of a conventional half-wave dipole.
of the parent branches from which they separate. In addition, The radiation patterns for these fractal tree antennas have
child branches bend 30 from the direction the parent branch negligible cross-polarization components (i.e., 150 dB)
is aimed. Also, all child branches have equal angles separating and are nearly identical to the radiation pattern of the half-wave
them (i.e., for the four-branch class, there are 90 between each dipole antenna.
child branch, for the six-branch class, there are 60 between
each branch, and for the eight-branch class, there are 45 be- B. Fractal Tree Generators of Varying Angle
tween each branch). Finally, one of these child branches must In this section, several different 3-D fractal trees are evalu-
continue the arc path of its parent and the parent branch before ated for their suitability as miniature dipole antennas at their
that. The generation parameters are listed in Table II for both second and third stages of growth. These antennas are related
the six- and eight-branch cases. The similarities between four-, to the four-branch class of antennas adapted from [7]; how-
six-, and eight-branch antenna classes are evident from Figs. 1 ever, the elevation angle that the child branches bend from the
and 2. parent branch is not held constant at 30 but is varied over a
Several of the other fractal tree design parameters are also range of angles from 10 to 90 . All other independent design
held constant for the sake of comparison. First, the distance from parameters are assumed to be the same for each antenna. For
tip to tip for each fractal tree dipole antenna is fixed at 7.5 cm (or instance, the antennas are all center fed dipoles with fractal
3.75 cm from tip to source). More specifically, the base or trunk tree loads placed on both ends, each generator has only four
length of the first stage is 2.5 cm, the second stage is 2.143 cm, equally spaced branches, child branches are half the length of
PETKO AND WERNER: MINIATURE RECONFIGURABLE 3-D FRACTAL TREE ANTENNAS 1947
Fig. 3. Comparison of S versus frequency for four-branch, six-branch, and eight-branch fractal trees. The S was calculated with respect to 50
line.
Fig. 5. Third iteration of four-branch fractal tree antennas with the elevation
angle at 10 , 30 , 45 , 60 and 90 respectively.
TABLE III
PARAMETERS FOR GENERATING FOUR-BRANCH FRACTAL TREES WITH
VARYING ELEVATION ANGLE
Fig. 6. Fractal tree dipole VSWR versus resonant frequency for elevation angles ranging from 10 to 90 . The VSWR was calculated with respect to 50
line.
Fig. 8. Comparison of S for eight-branch hybrid fractal tree dipoles with standard four-branch and eight-branch fractal trees. The S was calculated with
respect to 50
line.
TABLE V
PARAMETERS FOR GENERATING FOUR-BRANCH, 45 FRACTAL TREES WITH AND WITHOUT CENTER STUB
Fig. 10. S versus frequency for a four-branch, 45 fractal tree dipole antenna (stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3) with and without a center stub. The S was
calculated with respect to 50
line.
Fig. 12. S versus frequency for a stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3, six-branch 50 –30 fractal tree antenna. Also shown for comparison is the S for the first four
stages of a standard four-branch fractal tree antenna. The S was calculated with respect to 50
line.
TABLE VII
LOAD COMPONENT VALUES FOR THE DUAL- AND TRI-BAND FOUR-BRANCH FRACTAL TREE MONOPOLE ANTENNAS
tri-band fractal tree monopole with two reactive loads. The re-
active loads also have another advantage in further reducing the
minimum resonant frequencies of the antenna structure. The
unloaded fractal tree structure has one primary resonance at
910 MHz, the dual-band antenna has two primary resonances at
800 and 2460 MHz, and the tri-band antenna has three primary
resonances at 550, 2300, and 5240 MHz. Also, fundamental
or primary resonant frequencies can be distinguished from sec-
ondary resonant frequencies in that there is only one main lobe
present in the radiation pattern at a primary resonant frequency.
Fig. 15 shows the radiation patterns at each resonant frequency
within the 400 to 6400 MHz band. In the plot for the unloaded
Fig. 13. Load locations on dual- and tri-band four-branch fractal tree fractal tree, we see that there is a primary resonance at 910 MHz,
monopole antennas.
characterized by a single lobe in the radiation pattern, and a sec-
ondary resonance at 6100 MHz, characterized by two lobes in
antenna are considered here. For the dual-band antenna, one the radiation pattern. For the fractal tree with one load, the pri-
resonant load is placed near the top of the fractal tree’s base, mary resonances are confirmed to be at 800 MHz and 2460 MHz
1.95 cm above the ground plane along the 2-cm tall trunk. For while there is a secondary resonance at 6230 MHz. Finally for
the tri-band antenna, an additional load is placed on the base the fractal tree with two loads, primary resonances occur at 550,
at a height of 1.65 cm above the ground plane. Fig. 13 illus- 2300, and 5240 MHz.
trates the load locations on the dual- and tri-band monopole The next case study considers the third stage of a four-branch,
antennas and Table VII lists the corresponding load compo- 45 fractal tree monopole with center stub. In this instance, se-
nent values. Plots of the versus frequency are shown in ries LC traps are placed inside the fractal tree end-load structure
Fig. 14 for the single-band unloaded fractal tree monopole, the instead of, as in the previous instance, parallel LC traps being
dual-band fractal tree monopole with one reactive load, and the placed on the trunk or base of the tree. The capability of placing
1952 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 14. S versus frequency for self-reconfigurable four-branch fractal tree monopoles. The response of the single-band unloaded fractal tree monopole is
compared to a dual-band and a tri-band version of the same antenna with one and two reactive loads respectively. The S was calculated with respect to 50
line.
Fig. 17. Matching network for the tri-band four-branch, center stubbed fractal
tree monopole antenna.
the traps only on the base, the antennas will exhibit a charac-
teristically large separation between the lowest operating band
Fig. 15. Radiation patterns for self-reconfigurable four-branch fractal tree and any higher frequency bands. Having the ability to place the
monopoles. traps in the branches of the fractal tree structure provides more
flexibility in the design of miniature multiband monopole an-
tennas by allowing the resonances to be placed closer together.
Using five distinct reactive LC traps, a tri-band version of the
third stage four-branch, 45 fractal tree monopole with center
stub is presented and discussed here. Four traps are placed near
the top of the first stage of the outer four branches. A fifth trap is
placed near the bottom of the first stage of the center stub. Fig. 16
shows the position of the traps and Table VIII provides the cor-
responding component values. The antenna has three primary
resonances at 330 MHz, 800 MHz, and 2220 MHz. The sepa-
ration between the first and third resonant frequencies is only
1890 MHz, 2800 MHz less than the separation between the first
and third resonant frequencies of the tri-band four-branch fractal
Fig. 16. Load locations on a tri-band four-branch, center stubbed fractal tree tree shown in Fig. 13. In this case, a five-element matching net-
monopole.
work can be used to allow the antenna to perform efficiently at
each resonant frequency. The topology of a candidate matching
LC traps in the end-load structure is an important advantage of network is shown in Fig. 17 along with the required component
the fractal tree antenna. Resonant traps can be placed on the values. The candidate matching network was designed using a
base of any end-loaded monopole antenna; however, by placing trial and error approach in combination with a random variable
PETKO AND WERNER: MINIATURE RECONFIGURABLE 3-D FRACTAL TREE ANTENNAS 1953
TABLE VIII
LOAD COMPONENT VALUES FOR THE TRI-BAND FOUR-BRANCH, CENTER STUBBED FRACTAL TREE MONOPOLE ANTENNA SHOWN IN FIG. 16
Fig. 18. S versus frequency comparison of matched and unmatched tri-band four-branch, center stubbed fractal tree monopole antennas. The S was calculated
with respect to 50
line.
tion patterns at 300 MHz, 800 MHz, and 2220 MHz each only
have a single lobe, indicating that all three cases represent pri-
mary resonant frequencies.
Fig. 21. Several states for the reconfigurable six-branch, 50 –30 fractal tree
dipole antenna. For illustrative purposes, the branches that are switched off for
each of the five different bands have been removed.
Fig. 20. Switch layout for the reconfigurable six-branch, 50 –30 fractal tree
dipole antenna.
Fig. 23. Co-polarized and cross-polarized radiation patterns for each state of the reconfigurable six-branch, 50 –30 fractal tree dipole antenna.
we note that a monopole version of this antenna can also be trees. A prime advantage of placing the traps or RF switches
created with half the number of switches. In this case a broadband at critical locations on branches of the fractal tree end-loads
or tunable matching network would be also required. is that the resonant frequencies of the antenna can be spaced
much closer together than if they were applied only to the tree
V. CONCLUSION trunks. Among the designs considered was a miniature reac-
tively loaded tri-band center stubbed fractal tree monopole with
This paper begins by investigating the relationship between associated matching network. Also considered was a design for
the geometrical structure of fractal tree antennas and their cor- a miniature reconfigurable dipole antenna that achieves a 57%
responding radiation characteristics. It was found, through a size reduction for the lowest intended band of operation and has
series of systematic MoM simulations, that the two most crit- a tunable bandwidth of nearly 70%.
ical factors influencing the successful design of miniature 3-D
fractal tree antennas appear to be the density and elevation angle
REFERENCES
of their branches. These observations subsequently led to the
development of several new design configurations that employ [1] D. H. Werner, R. L. Haupt, and P. L. Werner, “Fractal antenna engi-
neering: the theory and design of fractal antenna arrays,” IEEE Antennas
fractal tree end-loads as a means of miniaturizing conventional Propagat. Mag., vol. 41, pp. 37–59, Oct. 1999.
dipole or monopole antennas. Hybrid fractal trees and center- [2] D. H. Werner and R. Mittra, Frontiers in Electromagnetics. Piscat-
stubbed fractal trees represent two types of end-load structures away, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000.
[3] M. Sindou, G. Ablart, and C. Sourdois, “Multiband and wideband prop-
that have proven to be particularly effective in achieving a sig- erties of printed fractal branched antennas,” IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 35,
nificant amount of size reduction. Next, multiband and recon- no. 3, pp. 181–182, Feb. 1999.
figurable versions of these miniature antennas are introduced, [4] C. Puente, J. Claret, F. Sagues, J. Romeu, M. Q. Lopez-Salvans, and
R. Pous, “Multiband properties of a fractal tree antenna generated by
where either reactive LC traps or RF switches are strategically electrochemical deposition,” IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 25, pp.
placed throughout the branches and/or along the trunk of the 2298–2299, Dec. 1996.
1956 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
[5] D. H. Werner, A. R. Bretones, and B. R. Long, “Radiation characteristics Douglas H. Werner (S’81–M’89–SM’94) received
of thin-wire ternary fractal trees,” IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 8, pp. the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-
609–610, Apr. 1999. gineering and the M.A. degree in mathematics from
[6] J. P. Gianvittorio and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Fractal element antennas: a The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State),
compilation of configurations with novel characteristics,” in Proc. IEEE University Park, in 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1986,
Antennas and Propagation Society Int. Symp., vol. 3, Salt Lake City, UT, respectively.
July 2000, pp. 1688–1691. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of
[7] J. P. Gianvittorio, “Fractal Antennas: Design, Characterization, and Ap- Electrical Engineering, Penn State. He is a member of
plications,” M.S. thesis, Dept. Elect. Eng., University of California Los the Communications and Space Sciences Lab (CSSL)
Angeles, 2000. and is affiliated with the Electromagnetic Communi-
[8] J. P. Gianvittorio and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Fractal antennas: a novel cation Research Lab. He is also a Senior Research
antenna miniaturization technique, and applications,” IEEE Antennas Associate in the Electromagnetics and Environmental Effects Department of
Propagat. Mag., vol. 44, Feb. 2002. the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State. He is a former Associate Editor
[9] D. H. Werner and S. Ganguly, “An overview of fractal antenna engi- of Radio Science. He has published numerous technical papers and proceedings
neering research,” IEEE Antennas Propagat. Mag., vol. 45, pp. 38–57, articles and is the author of nine book chapters. He is an Editor of Frontiers
Feb. 2003. in Electromagnetics (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000). He also contributed
[10] J. S. Petko and D. H. Werner, “Dense 3-D fractal tree structures as minia- a chapter for Electromagnetic Optimization by Genetic Algorithms (New York:
ture end-loaded dipole antennas,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propaga- Wiley Interscience, 1999). His research interests include theoretical and com-
tion Society Int. Symp., vol. 4, San Antonio, TX, June 2002, pp. 94–97. putational electromagnetics with applications to antenna theory and design, mi-
[11] B. B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: crowaves, wireless and personal communication systems, electromagnetic wave
Freeman, 1983. interactions with complex media, meta-materials, fractal and knot electrody-
[12] H. O. Peitgen, H. Jurgens, and D. Saupe, Chaos and Fractals: New Fron- namics, and genetic algorithms.
tiers of Science. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992. Dr. Werner is a Member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Inter-
[13] A. Boag, E. Michielssen, and R. Mittra, “Design of electrically loaded national Scientific Radio Union (URSI) Commissions B and G, the Applied
wire antennas using genetic algorithms,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop- Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi,
agat., vol. 44, pp. 687–695, 1996. and Sigma Xi. He received the 1993 Applied Computational Electromagnetics
[14] Z. Altman, R. Mittra, P. L. Werner, and D. H. Werner, “Application of Society (ACES) Best Paper Award and a 1993 URSI Young Scientist Award.
genetic algorithm to boradband antenna design,” in Electromagnetic Op- In 1994, he received the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Lab-
timization by Genetic Algorithms, Y. Rahmat-Samii and E. Michielssen, oratory Outstanding Publication Award. He received a College of Engineering
Eds. New York: Wiley, 1999, pp. 181–210. PSES Outstanding Research Award and Outstanding Teaching Award in March
[15] Microwave Office, Applied Wave Research Inc., 2000. 2000 and March 2002, respectively. He recently received an IEEE Central Penn-
sylvania Section Millennium Medal. He has also received several Letters of
Commendation from Penn State’s Department of Electrical Engineering for
outstanding teaching and research. He is an Editor of IEEE ANTENNAS AND
Joshua S. Petko (S’02) was born in Brownsville, PROPAGATION MAGAZINE.
PA, in 1979. He received the B.S. degree in electrical
engineering from The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, in 2002, where he is currently
working toward the M.S. degree.
Currently, he is a Research Assistant for the
Communications and Space Sciences Laboratory
and the Applied Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania
State University. His research interests include
antenna theory, computational electromagnetics,
fractal electrodynamics, and evolutionary algorithms
with a focus on fractal antenna elements and arrays.
Mr. Petko is a Member of Eta Kappa Nu. He has been awarded the 2002
James A. Barnak Outstanding Senior Award from the Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Eta Kappa Nu chapter and was a finalist and an honorable mention for the
Alton B. Zerby and Carl T. Koerner National Outstanding Senior Award from
Eta Kappa Nu. He also has been awarded second place in both the 2002 Penn
State Undergraduate Poster Competition and the 2002 IEEE Region 2 Student
Paper Competition.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 1957
I. INTRODUCTION
TABLE I
Fig. 3. Step by step antenna miniaturization technique. (a) Step I: original antenna height of H , (b) Step II: reduced height, H=2, (c) Step III: reduced height,
H=4, and (d) Step IV: final reduced height, H=8. In all cases, the antenna is lifted from ground plane by 0:002 .
Fig. 8. Effect of varying the arm-to-arm angle on double arm reduced length
(L = 1:96 )QFLPZA. (a) Gain and (b) F/B ratio.
V. CONCLUSION
Vertically polarized antennas are an important class of an-
tennas that are used efficiently over conducting ground planes,
and monopoles are the most popular configurations. Their
height of , however, becomes large at low frequencies.
They are also narrow band. In this study, we have investigated
the possibility of using LPZA to achieve wide impedance bands
and modified their geometry to reduce the height to . The
resulting antenna is a quasifractal antenna. Steps leading to the
height reduction are described and their effects on the antenna
performance are studied. While the height reduction process
has deteriorated the front-to-back ratio at some frequencies, the
Fig. 9. Performance of reduced length (L = 1:96 ) double arm quasifractal overall antenna performance has remained remarkably good.
LPZA (QFLPZA). (a) Resistance and reactance, (b) input impedance on Smith The gain pattern becomes smoother and decreases gradually
Chart with 575
normalization impedance, (c) return loss, and (d) vertically
polarized radiation pattern at = 0 plane. with the angle away from the main beam.
[3] K. Iizuka, “The traveling wave V-antenna and related antennas,” IEEE Lotfollah Shafai (F’87) received the B.Sc. degree
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-15, pp. 236–243, Mar. 1967. from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 1963 and the
[4] W. Rotman and N. Karas, “Sandwich wire antenna: A new type of M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Faculty of Applied
microwave line source radiator,” Proc. IRE Nat. Conf. Rec., pt. 1, pp. Sciences and Engineering, University of Toronto,
166–172, 1957. ON, Canada, in 1966 and 1969, respectively, all in
[5] K. Chen, “Sandwich wire antenna,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. electrical engineering.
AP-10, pp. 159–164, Mar. 1962. In November 1969, he joined the Department of
[6] H. E. Green and J. L. Whitrow, “The new analysis of the sandwich wire Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-19, pp. 600–605, Manitoba, Canada, as a Sessional Lecturer, then as an
Jan. 1971. Assistant Professor in 1970, an Associate Professor
[7] G. A. Hockham and R. I. Wolfson, “Broadband meander-line planar in 1973, and as Professor in 1979. Since 1975, he
array antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-27, pp. has made a special effort to link the University research to the industrial de-
645–648, 1979. velopment by assisting industries in the development of new products or es-
[8] O. Aboul-Atta and L. Shafai, “Hemispherically radiating meander-line tablishing new technologies. To enhance the University of Manitoba’s contact
planar array antenna,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Antennas and Propagation, with industry, in 1985 he assisted in establishing The Institute for Technology
1987, pp. 141–144. Development, and was its Director until 1987, when he became the Head of the
[9] Antenna Handbook, Theory, Applications, and Design, Y. T. Lo and S. Electrical Engineering Department. His assistance to industry was instrumental
W. Lee, Eds., Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1988. in establishing an Industrial Research Chair in Applied Electromagnetics at the
[10] S. H. Lee and K. K. Mei, “Analysis of zigzag antennas,” IEEE Trans. University of Manitoba in 1989, which he held until July 1994.
Antennas Propagation, vol. AP-18, pp. 760–764, Nov. 1970. Dr. Shafai is a Member of the International Scientific Radio Union (URSI)
[11] A. F. Gangi, S. Sensiper, and G. R. Dunn, “The characteristics of electri- Commission B, was its Chairman during 1985 to 1988, and is currently the
cally short, umbrella top-loaded antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop- Vice-Chairman. He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada in
agat., vol. AP-13, pp. 864–871, Nov. 1965. 1998. He has been the recipient of numerous awards. In 1978, his contribution
[12] S. K. Sharma and L. Shafai, “Investigations of a compact vertically po- to the design of a small ground station for the Hermus satellite was selected as
larized backfire high frequency traveling wave antenna,” in Proc. IEEE the 3rd Meritorious Industrial Design. In 1984, he received the Professional En-
Antennas Propagation Int. Symp., vol. 1, Columbus, OH, June 22–27, gineers Merit Award and in 1985, “The Thinker” Award from Canadian Patents
2003, pp. 253–256. and Development Corporation. From the University of Manitoba, he received
[13] J. P. Gianvittorio and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Fractal antennas: A novel the “Research Awards” in 1983, 1987, and 1989, the Outreach Award in 1987
antenna miniaturization technique, and applications,” IEEE Antennas and the Sigma Xi, Senior Scientist Award in 1989. In 1990, he received the
Propagat. Mag., vol. 44, pp. 20–36, Feb. 2002. Maxwell Premium Award from IEE (London) and in 1993 and 1994, the Dis-
[14] E. C. Jordan and K. G. Balmain, “Ch. 15,” in Electromagnetic Waves tinguished Achievement Awards from Corporate Higher Education Forum. In
and Radiating Systems, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1998, he received the Winnipeg RH Institute Foundation Medal for Excellence
Inc., 1968, pp. 620–621. in Research. In 1999 and 2000, he received the University of Manitoba, Faculty
[15] V. H. Rumsey, Frequency Independent Antennas, New York: Academic, Association Research Award. He was a recipient of the IEEE Third Millenium
1966, pp. 105–110. Medal in 2000 and in 2002 was elected a Fellow of The Canadian Academy
[16] Numerical Electromagnetic Code. of Engineering and Distinguished Professor at The University of Manitoba. He
holds a Canada Research Chair in Applied Electromagnetics. He has been a par-
ticipant in nearly all Antennas and Propagation symposia and participates in the
review committees. In 1986, he established the symposium on Antenna Tech-
Satish Kumar Sharma (M’00) was born in Sul- nology and Applied Electromagnetics, ANTEM, at the University of Manitoba,
tanpur (U.P.), India, in April 1970. He received the which is held every two years.
B. Tech. degree from Kamla Nehru Institute of Tech-
nology, Sultanpur affiliated with Avadh University,
Faizabad, and the Ph.D. degree from Institute of
Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi,
both in India, in 1991 and 1997, respectively, both
in electronics engineering.
He was a Lecturer and Project Officer with the
Kamla Nehru Institute of Technology, Sultanpur,
and Institute of Engineering and Rural Technology,
Allahabad, from February 1992 to December 1993, respectively, both in Uttar
Pradesh. There, he taught courses in electromagnetics, antennas and propaga-
tion, electronics instrumentation and electronic communication, etc. During
December 1993 to February 1999, he was a Research Scholar, and Junior and
Senior Research Fellow of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR), Government of India, in the Department of Electronics Engineering,
Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. He was a Postdoctoral
Fellow with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The
University of Manitoba, with Professor L. Shafai from March 1999 to April
2001. Since May 2001, he has been a Senior Antenna Researcher/Engineer with
InfoMagnetics Technologies Corporation, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. Since June
2001, he has also been a part-time Research Associate with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Manitoba. Here, he has
been involved in the design and development of several antennas for wireless
and satellite communications as feed for reflectors, polarizers, and MEMS
phase shifters. His main research interests are in applied electromagnetics,
antennas, and RF MEMS.
He is a registered Professional Engineer (P. Eng.) of the Province of Man-
itoba, Canada. He is reviewer of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION and Indian Journal of Radio and Space Physics (IJRSP).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 1963
I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Geometry of a spiral antenna with voltage sources between the single
arms of the spiral.
Fig. 5. Phase of the pattern of mode 1 and mode 2, shown in Figs. 3 and 4.
Fig. 3. Pattern of mode 1 of the spiral antenna with a radius of 10 cm at 2 GHz The phase of mode 1 changes 360 per circulation around the antenna, mode 2
separated into left (lhc) and right hand circular (rhc) polarization. If the spiral is changes 720 .
fed at the outer end of the arms, the polarization is orthogonal to the one obtained
by exciting at the center of the spiral.
Fig. 8. Gain of the rhc and lhc polarized field of the sinuous antenna with
= 50 and an outer radius of 0.1 m.
III. MULTIMODE-DIVERSITY
MIMO transmission channels are characterized by the
channel matrix , which contains the channel impulse re-
sponses or the channel coefficient in the flat fading case
between the different sets of transmit and receive antenna
ports. For broadband systems the spectrum can be divided into
narrowband sections with flat fading. The diversity gain or
MIMO capacity depends on the correlation coefficients among
those channel coefficients of , see [3], and the SNR. The
correlation is influenced by the statistical properties of the
Fig. 7. Pattern of mode 1 of the sinuous antenna with a radius of 10 cm at wave propagation and the antenna properties, in this case the
2 GHz. is 50 . Mode 3 is orthogonally polarized, but has the same pattern. properties of the single modes. In the following the correlation
coefficient among two receive signals as a function of the
The geometry of a four-arm sinuous antenna is given in Fig. 2 incident field is calculated. This is equivalent to the correlation
and described in detail in [11]. The antenna is self-complemen- among the channel coefficients of for one transmit and two
tary and used as a multimode antenna. The modes are excited the receive antennas in a MIMO system.
same way as for the spiral antenna. The lower frequency bounds The spatial wave propagation properties are describable by
of the modes are a function of different geometry parameters, the power azimuth and elevation profile and
thus are not as easy accessible as for the spiral. In general the for both polarizations and . To allow for analytical calcula-
lower frequency bounds are higher than the ones for the spiral tions typical statistical functions to model the wave propagation
antenna for a given outer radius of the antennas. They decrease are chosen. Measurements have shown, that the power azimuth
with increasing (for see Fig. 2), since the antenna resembles spectrum is best modeled by a Laplacian function [13]
in sections a spiral antenna for large . The patterns of mode for both polarizations. For the power elevation profile a
1 and 2 are given in Figs. 6 and 7. The shapes of the patterns Gaussian function is assumed. The total power angle spectrum is
change only slightly with frequency or , but the polarization given by the product of the Laplacian function for the azimuth
changes. The pattern is alternately left and right hand ellipti- and a Gaussian function for the elevation, normalized so that
cally polarized versus frequency, see Fig. 8. The axial ratio of . With [14] (earlier shown in [8] in a
the sinuous antenna depends on . For large the antenna acts similar way) it can easily be shown that the complex correlation
in sections like a spiral, thus the axial ratio is almost 0 dB. For coefficient among two signals received by different antennas, in
small the antenna is rather linearly polarized. Both modes may this case different modes, is given by
be excited at the center or at the outer ends of the arms, but in
contrast to the spiral antenna, orthogonal polarizations are only (2)
obtained for large ( , spiral-like behavior). The shape
1966 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 9. Correlation coefficient among mode 1 (a) and mode 2 (c), excited at Fig. 10. Correlation coefficient among the same modes as in Fig. 9, but the
the center of the spiral, and mode 1 (b), excited at the outer edge of the spiral to incident field has an elevation spread of 5 and an azimuth spread of 20 .
generate orthogonal polarizations. The incident field has an elevation spread of Due to slight changes in the pattern for different frequencies the correlation
5 and azimuth spread of 60 . The lower frequency bound of mode 2 is 1.2 GHz, coefficient changes. But it is over the whole frequency range low enough to
thus the spiral does not work correctly for lower frequencies. obtain a diversity gain.
(3)
(4)
where is the ratio of the power in -polarization to the Fig. 11. Correlation coefficient among mode 1 (1), mode 2 (2) and mode 3
power in polarization at the receiver. Note, that is a func- (3) of the sinuous antenna. The incident field has an elevation spread of 5 and
tion of the polarimetric radiation pattern, thus disappears for azimuth spread of 60 . The lower frequency bound of mode 2 is 1.7 GHz, thus
the antenna does not work correctly for lower frequencies.
orthogonally polarized antennas in this case lhc and rhc polar-
ized modes. The power correlation coefficient is obtained by
, according to [15]. the different phases of the patterns of mode 1 and 2 (see Fig. 5)
Basically it is possible to use spiral or sinuous antennas with decorrelate the received signals, since the single plane waves
any different modes and polarizations for multimode-diversity. from different directions superpose differently for each mode.
In the following first a spiral and second a sinuous antenna are The influence of the feed network on the pattern of the modes
used to calculate the correlation coefficients among receive sig- is neglected.
nals. The orientation of the both antenna planes is vertical. A The sinuous antenna is used with three modes, all
spiral antenna with mode 1 and mode 2, excited at the center of excited at the center of the antenna. Figs. 11 and 12 show the
the antenna, and a third mode (mode 1) with orthogonal polar- correlation coefficient versus frequency for the scenarios men-
ization excited at the outer edge of the antenna is used. Figs. 9 tioned above. Mode 3 is orthogonally polarized to mode 1 and
and 10 show the power correlation coefficient between 2, thus the correlation is low. Mode 1 and 2 hardly overlap, thus
different modes for a large azimuth angular spread of 60 and different signals are received.
a small spread of 20 for a mean direction of 10 in azimuth In order to fulfill the requirement of an equal or “similar”
and 0 in elevation of the incident waves. The third mode is or- SNR of the signals received by different modes to obtain a diver-
thogonally polarized to the other modes, thus the correlation is sity gain the MEG may be used, see [16]. The MEG is defined as
almost zero. The other modes are more strongly correlated as the ratio of the mean received power of one antenna under test
the pattern of mode 1 and 2 partly overlap. On the other hand, to the mean received power of a reference antenna, when both
WALDSCHMIDT AND WIESBECK: COMPACT WIDE-BAND MULTIMODE ANTENNAS FOR MIMO AND DIVERSITY 1967
Fig. 13. Scenarios for the measurements. For the LOS scenarios transmitter
and receiver are placed in the same room. For the NLOS scenarios the
transmitter is placed in the corridor.
Fig. 15. Transmission gain of different MIMO systems for the path based
channel model. The SISO system has one transmit and one receive dipole.
for all measurements. The transmitter was moved along two dif-
ferent routes, shown in Fig. 13. During the first route a strong
LOS component is present, whereas the other route is always
NLOS. Along each route measurements at 801 discrete frequen-
cies in the frequency range from 1.5 to 2.5 GHz at 210 different
positions were performed. The measured data are normalized,
according to (7), to obtain a constant mean SNR of each channel
matrix of 10 dB. Fig. 14 shows the cumulative capacity distribu-
tion for both routes at 2 GHz. The capacity distribution changes
negligibly with frequency. Due to the higher multipath richness
of the NLOS route, it outperforms the LOS route.
For comparison two dipole arrays, consisting of three dipoles
each, were used, one at each side of the link. The dipoles were
Fig. 14. Measured cumulative distribution functions of the capacity for
different antenna scenarios at 2 GHz. The three dipoles have spacings of =4. arranged in parallel with spacings of and vertical polariza-
The capacity of the NLOS measurements reaches higher capacities as in the tion. The array covers approximately the same area as the spiral
LOS scenarios for a constant mean SNR of 10 dB. antenna with dimensions, so that the resonance frequency of the
dipoles equals the lower frequency bound of the spiral. Fig. 14
dipoles (also simulated with FEKO) with spacings on each shows, that the dipoles perform worse than the spiral, since nei-
side of the link shows, that the gain of the channel matrices of ther polarization nor pattern diversity is exploited. The space
the multimode MIMO system is not worse than with the dipole diversity is very limited due to the small antenna spacings.
arrays. Additionally this distribution function is given for dipole
arrays with spacings on each side of the link. V. CONCLUSION
C. Measurements This paper shows that four-arm spiral and sinuous antennas
The measurements were performed with two spiral antennas. allow to exploit multimode diversity, which is a combination
The antenna were designed for a frequency range from 1.2 GHz of pattern and polarization diversity. The antennas are ex-
up to 2.5 GHz, limited by the feeding network. Mode 1 and 2 are tremely broadband, thus allow applications for multistandard
excited with the feeding network given in [9]. At the outer ends radios. The space required for the antennas is relatively small.
of the arms a hybrid mode with orthogonal polarization com- If placing dipoles on the same space required by the spiral,
pared to the other modes is excited. The coupling between the the dipoles do not reach the capacity of multimode-based
single modes is below 20 dB. The measurement system con- MIMO-systems.
sists of a two channel network analyzer, amplifiers and coaxial
switches. The channel coefficients were measured one by one. REFERENCES
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WALDSCHMIDT AND WIESBECK: COMPACT WIDE-BAND MULTIMODE ANTENNAS FOR MIMO AND DIVERSITY 1969
[3] C. Chuah, D. N. C. Tse, J. M. Kahn, and R. A. Valenzuela, “Capacity Christian Waldschmidt (S’01) was born in Basel,
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2000, pp. 1532–1535. Ing. (M.S.E.E.) and the Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.E.E.) degrees
[10] R. G. Corzine and J. A. Mosko, Four-Arm Spiral Antennas. Norwood, from the Technical University of Munich, Munich,
MA: Artech House, 1990. Germany, in 1969 and 1972, respectively.
[11] T. T. Chu and H. G. Oltman, “The sinuous antenna,” Microwave Syst., From 1972 to 1983, he was with AEG-Tele-
News and Commun. Technol., vol. 18, pp. 40–48, 1988. funken in various positions including the Head of
[12] www.emss.de [Online] Research and Development, Microwave Division,
[13] K. I. Pedersen, P. M. Mogensen, and B. H. Fleury, “Spatial channel Flensburg, Germany, and Marketing Director in
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pp. 719–724. millimeter-wave radars, receivers, direction finders
[14] K. Fujimoto and J. R. James, Mobile Antenna Systems Handbook. Nor- and electronic warfare systems. Since 1983, he has been Director of the Institut
wood, MA: Artech House, 1994. für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE), University of Karlsruhe,
[15] J. R. Pierce and S. Stein, “Multiple diversity with nonindependent Karlsruhe, Germany, where he is presently Dean of the Faculty of Electrical
fading,” in Proce. IRE, vol. 48, 1960, pp. 89–104. Engineering. In 1989 and 1994, respectively, he spent a six month sabbatical
[16] M. G. Douglas, M. Okoniewski, and M. A. Stuchly, “Performance of at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. He serves as a Permanent Lecturer
pcs handset antennas in mobile environments,” in Proc. IEEE MTT-S for radar system engineering and for wave propagation For the Carl Cranz
Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., vol. 3, 1997, pp. 1759–1762. Series for Scientific Education. He is a Member of an Advisory Committee of
[17] J. B. Andersen and F. Hansen, “Antennas for VHF/UHF personal radio: a the EU-Joint Research Centre (Ispra/Italy), and he is an advisor to the German
theoretical and experimental study of characteristics and performance,” Research Council (DFG), to the Federal German Ministry for Research and to
IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. AP-26, pp. 349–357, 1977. industry in Germany. His research topics include radar, remote sensing, wave
[18] T. Taga, “Analysis for mean effective gain in mobile antennas in land propagation and antennas.
mobile radio environments,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 39, pp. Dr. Wiesbeck has received a number of awards including the IEEE Mil-
117–131, 1990. lennium Medal. Since 2002, he has been a Member of the “Heidelberger
[19] T. Zwick, C. Fischer, and W. Wiesbeck, “A stochastic multipath channel Akademie der Wissenschaften.” He was a Member of the IEEE GRS-S AdCom
model including path directions for indoor environments,” IEEE J. Se- from 1992–2000, Chairman of the GRS-S Awards Committee from 1994 to
lect. Areas Commun., vol. 20, pp. 1178–1192, 2002. 1998, Executive Vice President IEEE GRS-S from 1998 to 1999, President
[20] C. Waldschmidt, T. Fügen, and W. Wiesbeck, “Spiral and dipole an- IEEE GRS-S from 2000 to 2002, Associate Editor IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
tennas for indoor MIMO-systems,” Antennas Wireless Propagat. Lett., ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION from 1996 to 1999, past Treasurer of the IEEE
vol. 1, no. 9, pp. 176–178, 2002. German Section. He has been General Chairman of the 1988 Heinrich Hertz
2
[21] J. W. Wallace and M. A. Jensen, “Characteristics of measured 4 4 and Centennial Symposium, the 1993 Conference on Microwaves and Optics
2
10 10 MIMO wireless channel data at 2.4 GHz,” in Proc. IEEE Symp. (MIOP ’93) and he has been a member of scientific committees of many
Antennas and Propagation, vol. 3, 2001, pp. 96–99. conferences.
1970 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—In this paper, the influence of a lossy ground on the numerically solved by the method of moments (MoM) using
input impedance of dipole and bow-tie antennas excited by a short the marching-on-in time approach. By neglecting end reflec-
pulse is investigated. It is shown that the ground influence on the tions in the time-domain solution, the input impedance is given
input impedance of transient dipole and bow-tie antennas is signif-
icant only for elevations smaller than 1 5 of the wavelength that by the high-frequency limit of the frequency-domain solution
corresponds to the central frequency of the exciting pulse. Further- obtained by Fourier transforming the mentioned time-domain
more, a principal difference between the input impedance due to solution. Unfortunately, when it comes to layered-medium
traveling-wave and standing-wave current distributions is pointed problems, well-suited Green’s functions in space-time domain
out. are not yet well documented. One of few developments of such
Index Terms—Bow-tie antenna, dipole antenna, input Green’s functions has recently been reported for analyzing the
impedance, transient antenna. response of a transient dipole in stratified media [6]. However,
layered-medium Green’s function formulations in space-time
I. INTRODUCTION domain which are directly applicable to surface-patch MoM
methodologies, are not yet widely reported.
(3)
F W F (5)
(6)
Fig. 5. Input impedance of transient dipoles in free space for two different wire
diameters: analytical against numerical results. Analytical results are obtained
using [3]; numerical results are computed by our code.
V. CONCLUSION
The influence of a lossy ground on the input impedance
of dipole and bow-tie antennas excited by a short pulse is
investigated. It is shown that the ground influence on the input
impedance of a transient dipole and bow-tie antennas is signif-
icant only for elevations smaller than of the wavelength
that corresponds to the central frequency of the exciting pulse.
Furthermore, it is shown that for a very close proximity to the
interface, the input resistance of a transient dipole decreases
Fig. 6. Computed input impedance of a transient dipole with respect to the as the dipole approaches the interface. This behavior is the
0.8-ns monocycle as functions of elevation for different ground types. opposite of the time-harmonic case, in which for very small
distances from the interface the input resistance increases as
close proximity to the interface, the input resistance decreases as the dipole is lowered.
the dipole approaches the interface. We note that this behavior
is the opposite of the time-harmonic case, in which for very ACKNOWLEDGMENT
small distances from the interface the input resistance increases
The authors thank P. Hakkaart for his assistance in the con-
as the dipole is lowered [13], [14]. This result indicates a
struction of the experimental antenna and J. Zijderveld for his
principal difference between traveling-wave and standing-wave
assistance in the measurements.
current distributions of transient and time-harmonic antennas,
respectively.
In this paper the input impedance of a transient bow-tie REFERENCES
antenna is computed as functions of elevation above the ground [1] T. P. Montoya and G. S. Smith, “A study of pulse radiation from several
for flare angles of 30 , 50 , and 70 . The computed input broad-band loaded monopoles,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
44, pp. 1172–1182, Aug. 1996.
impedance of a transient bow tie above sandy soil ( and [2] K. L. Shlager, G. S. Smith, and J. G. Maloney, “Optimization of bow-tie
S/m) with respect to the 0.8-ns monocycle is pre- antennas for pulse radiation,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42,
sented in Fig. 7. We notice in the figure that for the three flare pp. 975–982, July 1994.
[3] T. T. Wu, “Input admittance of infinitely long dipole antennas driven
angles the value of the reactance at a 6-cm elevation is already from coaxial lines,” J. Math. Phys., vol. 3, pp. 1298–1301, 1962.
close to zero, which is the free-space value of the characteristic [4] R. L. Carrel, “The characteristic impedance of two infinite cones of ar-
reactance of a transient bow tie [4]. Moreover, by inspection of bitrary cross section,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-6, pp.
197–201, Apr. 1958.
the result given in [4] it is found that that at a 6-cm elevation the [5] S. M. Booker, A. P. Lambert, and P. D. Smith, “A numerical calculation
resistance nearly assumes its free-space value. Hence, similar of transient antenna impedance,” in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Computation in
to the case of the transient dipole discussed previously it is Electromagnetics, 1994, pp. 359–362.
[6] A. G. Tijhuis and A. Rubio Bretones, “Transient excitation of a layered
shown that the ground essentially affects the input impedance dielectric medium by a pulsed electric dipole,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
of a transient bow-tie antenna only when the antenna elevation Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 1673–1684, Oct. 2000.
LESTARI et al.: GROUND INFLUENCE ON THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF TRANSIENT DIPOLE AND BOW-TIE ANTENNAS 1975
[7] K. A. Michalski and D. Zheng, “Electromagnetic scattering and radia- Alexander G. Yarovoy (M’96) received the Diploma
tion by surfaces of arbitrary shape in layered media, part I: Theory, part (with honors) in radiophysics and electronics and
II: Implementation and results for contiguous half-spaces,” IEEE Trans. the Cand. Phys. & Math. Sci. and Dr. Phys. &
Antennas Propagat., vol. 38, pp. 335–352, Mar. 1990. Math. Sci. degrees in radiophysics, from Kharkov
[8] S. M. Rao, D. R. Wilton, and A. W. Glisson, “Electromagnetic scattering State University, Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1984, 1987,
by surfaces of arbitrary shape,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. and 1994, respectively.
AP-30, pp. 409–418, May 1982. In 1987, he joined the Department of Radio-
[9] A. A. Lestari, A. G. Yarovoy, and L. P. Ligthart, “Numerical and ex- physics, Kharkov State University, as a Researcher
perimental analysis of circular-end wire bow-tie antennas over a lossy and became a Professor in 1997. From September
ground,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 52, pp. 26–35, Jan. 2004. 1994 through 1996, he was with the Technical
[10] K. D. Palmer and M. W. van Rooyen, “Simple broadband measurement University of Ilmenau, Germany, as a Visiting
of balanced loads using a network analyzer,” in CD-ROM Proc. Mil- Researcher. Since 1999, he has been with the International Research Centre
lenium Conf. Antennas Propagat. (AP-2000), Davos, Switzerland, Apr. for Telecommunications-Transmission and Radar (IRCTR), Delft University
2000. of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, where he coordinates all GPR-related
[11] R. W. P. King and H. J. Schmitt, “The transient response of linear an- projects. His main research interests are in ultrawide-band electromagnetics,
tennas and loops,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 10, pp. 222–228, wave scattering from statistically rough surfaces and penetrable obstacles and
May 1962. computational methods in electromagnetics.
[12] C. M. Butler, “The equivalent radius of a narrow conducting strip,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-30, pp. 755–758, July 1982.
[13] G. Turner, “The Influence of subsurface properties on ground pene-
trating radar pulses,” Ph.D. dissertation, Macquarie University, Sydney,
NSW, Australia, 1993.
[14] C. J. Leat, N. V. Shuley, and G. F. Stickley, “Complex image model for
ground-penetrating radar antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
vol. 46, pp. 1483–1488, Oct. 1998. Leo P. Ligthart (M’94–SM’95–F’02) was born in
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on September 15, 1946.
He received the Engineer’s degree (cum laude)
and the Doctor of Technology degree from Delft
Andrian Andaya Lestari was born in Bogor, University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in
Indonesia. He received the Ingenieur and Ph.D. de- 1969 and 1985, respectively, the Doctorates (honoris
grees in electrical engineering from Delft University causa) from Moscow State Technical University
of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 1993 and of Civil Aviation, Moscow, Russia, in 1999, and
2003, respectively. the Doctorates (honoris causa) from Tomsk State
From 1993 to 1998, he was with a government University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics,
research agency in Jakarta, Indonesia. He joined Tomsk, Russia, in 2001.
the International Research Centre for Telecommu- Since 1992, he has held the Chair of Microwave Transmission, Radar and
nications-transmission and Radar (IRCTR), Delft Remote Sensing in the Department of Information Technology and Systems,
University of Technology, as a Researcher in 1998. Delft University of Technology, where in 1994, he became Director of the In-
His work at IRCTR has resulted in over 20 publica- ternational Research Centre for Telecommunications-Transmission and Radar.
tions, which include national and international patents, journal and conference His principal areas of specialization include antennas and propagation, radar
papers, and scientific reports. Currently he works on ultrawide-band antennas and remote sensing, but he has also been active in satellite, mobile, and radio
and numerical tools for transient antenna analysis. communications.
1976 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—Antenna misalignment in a mobile wireless commu- and directivity of the receive and/or transmit antennas must be
nications system results in a signal loss due to a decrease in an- adaptively changed if the positions of the two antennas change.
tenna directivity and a polarization mismatch. A genetic algorithm Adaptive antennas usually place a null in the antenna pattern
(GA) is used to adaptively alter the polarization and directivity of a
crossed dipole receive antenna in order to increase the link budget. to reject interference or steer a beam toward a desired signal.
The three orthogonal dipole configuration works better than only Phased arrays have more than one antenna, so they are perfect
two crossed dipoles, but both improved the link loss as the angular for adapting their patterns. Adapting the polarization, however,
pointing errors increased. A GA with a high mutation rate works requires an antenna that can modify the major and minor axes
best for a noiseless open loop adaptation, while a GA with a low
of its polarization ellipse. Crossed dipoles are perfect for this
mutation rate works best for noisy fully adaptive system.
application.
Index Terms—Adaptive antenna, crossed dipole, genetic algo- The crossed dipole antenna has found use before in systems
rithm (GA), polarization, smart antenna.
requiring antennas that change their polarization. A wireless
communications system in a high multipath environment can
I. INTRODUCTION improve the link better through polarization diversity in the
form of crossed dipoles than through spatial diversity (antenna
I F ONE OR MORE of the antennas in a wireless commu-
nication system is mobile, then as the antennas move, the
direction of the peak gains and the polarization of the antennas
separation) [1]. A crossed dipole consists of two or three
orthogonal dipoles. When linearly polarized signals become
depolarized due to reflections, each dipole can receive the
change. As a result, the power received goes down. For instance,
electric field component parallel to it. Using three orthogonal
a wireless system that transmits vertical polarization has some
crossed dipoles has been experimentally shown to significantly
of its power converted to horizontal polarization as the signal re-
increase channel capacity of a wireless communication system
flects from the environment. Unless the receive antenna can de-
inside a building [2].
tect both polarizations, the received power decreases. Another
The polarization and directivity of a crossed dipole antenna
example is when a spacecraft orbits the earth; the antennas in
are easy to control. One dipole controls the electric field parallel
the communications system no longer align for optimum power
to it and the orthogonal dipoles control the electric fields par-
transfer. Antenna engineers design the antennas for maximum
allel to them. Each dipole has an independent complex weight.
directivity and polarization match when the antennas point at
Controlling the amplitude and phase of the signal at each dipole
each other. Both the directivity and polarization of an antenna
modifies the electric field amplitude and phase in orthogonal
change with angle. If the antennas do not point at each other,
directions resulting in any polarization from linear through el-
then the product of the receive and transmit antenna directivi-
liptical to circular. Modifying the amplitude and phase of the
ties goes down. The directivity loss coupled with the polariza-
signal at the dipoles also modifies the directivity of the antenna
tion mismatch reduces the received power.
as well.
An obvious solution to this problem is to keep the antennas
Adaptive crossed dipoles alter their polarization based upon
pointing at each other. Constantly maneuvering a spacecraft re-
environmental conditions. When a transmitted circularly polar-
quires an unacceptable expenditure of precious fuel, though.
ized millimeter wave passes through rain, it becomes elliptically
Steering the ground antenna is another option but only solves
polarized. The depolarization can be calculated if the rainfall
half of the problem, since the spacecraft might still be out of
rate is known. Reference [3] proposed an open loop adaptive
alignment. If the antenna is a phased array, then steering the
transmit antenna that adjusted its polarization based upon the
main beam maximizes the directivity but does not improve the
measured rainfall in the propagation path. In [4], a least mean
polarization mismatch.
square (LMS) algorithm adapted the polarization and pattern of
One way to improve the link budget is to adaptively change
a two element array of crossed dipoles to improve the signal to
the antenna polarization and directivity to maximize the power
interference plus noise ratio (SINR). As long as the desired and
transfer. In order to improve the link budget, the polarization
interference signals are not at the same angles and have the same
polarizations, the SINR was improved. In another paper, the
Manuscript received February 10, 2003; revised May 27, 2003. LMS algorithm was used to find amplitude and phase weights
The author was with the Utah State University, Electrical and Computer for three orthogonal dipole antennas in order to improve the
Engineering, Logan, UT 84322-4120 USA. He is now with the Applied SINR. This arrangement provided some rejection for interfer-
Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA 16804
USA (e-mail: haupt@ieee.org). ence signals for most angles of arrival and polarizations [5]. A
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832493 previous paper presented results from adaptively adjusting the
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
HAUPT: ADAPTIVE CROSSED DIPOLE ANTENNAS USING A GA 1977
(1)
(2)
where
distance from the origin to the field point at ;
dipole length in the and directions;
radial frequency;
wave number;
permeability;
constant current in or direction.
In the far field, the electric field in rectangular coordinates is
found from the magnetic vector potential by
Fig. 1. Coordinate system for the crossed dipole transmit and receive antennas.
(3)
amplitude and phase of the current fed to one dipole while the
other dipole had an amplitude of one and phase of zero. The Nu- The transmitted electric field is given by
merical Electromagnetic Code generated the electromagnetic
response of the dipole antennas and a local optimizer performed
the optimization [6]. It was found that optimizing only for cir-
cular polarization produces losses in radiated power that offset Converting this rectangular form of the electric field into spher-
the polarization correction. An improvement in the power trans- ical coordinates produces the far field components
ferred increased up to a maximum of 2.0 dB at . Using
adaptive crossed dipoles at the transmitter and receiver was also
considered and further improved the model.
This paper expands upon a recent presentation that introduced (4)
the application of a genetic algorithm (GA) to adaptively change
the current fed to crossed dipole antennas in order to improve (5)
the link budget [7]. The dipole model consists of three orthog-
onal short dipoles with variable control of the phase and am- The directivity is given by
plitude fed to each element. A GA is used to maximize the
received signal by improving the directivity and polarization
match through weighting the currents at each dipole. Improve-
ments in the link budget of up to 6 dB are possible. (6)
and the polarization loss factor is
II. CROSSED DIPOLE MODEL
Satellite communications systems use circularly polarized
antennas for the satellite and the ground antennas. In this
paper, the circularly polarized antennas are modeled as crossed (7)
dipoles. Consequently, controlling the amplitude and phase of
the signals at the dipoles of the transmit and receive antennas,
modifies the directivity and polarization of both antennas. where with a perfect match. The
In this case, the crossed dipole has three orthogonal dipoles. and subscripts represent transmit and receive, respectively.
The receive antenna is located at an angle of from Equations (10) and (11) are key ingredients to the link budget.
the transmit antenna (Fig. 1). Similarly, the transmit antenna The examples presented here assume the earth station con-
is located at an angle of from the receive antenna. sists of a pair of orthogonal crossed dipoles in the plane
Maximum power transfer occurs when and . transmitting a circularly polarized field in the -direction. In-
In order to determine the directivity and polarization of the creasing toward the horizon transitions from circular polar-
antennas, the electric fields can be found from the currents on ization through elliptical until linear polarization results at the
the dipoles. If the dipoles are assumed to be short , horizon. In this paper, the transmit antenna has the following
1978 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 4. Circularly polarized crossed dipoles along the x and y axes. This is a
Fig. 2. Circularly polarized crossed dipoles along the x and y axes. This is a hemispherical plot of the directivity. Light color indicates high with a value in
hemispherical plot of the inverse axial ratio. Light color indicates high with a
0
value of 1 in the z -direction and a value of 0 in the x y plane.
0
the y -direction and a low value in the x y plane.
currents: , , and . Fig. 2 shows a hemispher- crossed dipoles. Since the crossed dipoles have a maximum di-
ical plot and Fig. 3 a linear plot of the inverse axial ratio as a rectivity close to one, the directivities are not normalized in the
function of . White (at the poles) represents an inverse axial objective function. The maximum possible value of this fitness
ratio of one (circular polarization), while black (at the equator) function is approximately 2.25 or 3.5 dB.
is an inverse axial ratio of zero (linear polarization). Increasing There are several approaches to performing the adaptation.
also changes the antenna directivity as shown in Figs. 4 and With current technology, the most likely approach is to do an
5 from a maximum at 0 (white) to a minimum at 90 (black). open loop adaptation. The satellite uses various sensors to make
Compensating for the loss in directivity and polarization match it aware of its orientation. Once its orientation is known, then the
can improve the link budget by several decibels. dipole currents can be found from a lookup table of optimized
values, or the optimization could be done at that time. Noise and
III. GENETIC ALGORITHM OPTIMIZATION orientation errors limit the improvement possible. The other ap-
proach is a fully adaptive system capable of correcting for noise
In a wireless communications system, the goal is to maximize and system inaccuracies. This approach would be necessary for
the power transfer between the transmit and receive antennas. using the adaptive dipoles on another mobile system, such as an
The following fitness function calculates the portion of the link airplane, where the orientation and environment of the dipoles
budget relating to polarization and directivity from the ampli- quickly changes and cannot be predicted ahead of time.
tude and phase of the currents for each dipole: A continuous parameter GA was used to find the values of the
(8) amplitude and phase of the receive dipole currents that max-
imize (12). The GA has a population size of 8, mutation rate
where is the directivity of the transmit crossed dipoles in the of .2, single point crossover, and 50% replacement. This small
direction of the receive crossed dipoles, and is the directivity population size and high mutation rate results in a very fast con-
of the receive crossed dipoles in the direction of the transmit vergence as will be shown in the following section. The goal of
HAUPT: ADAPTIVE CROSSED DIPOLE ANTENNAS USING A GA 1979
Fig. 6. Average number of function calls needed to get the fitness above 3 for Fig. 8. In this case, varies with time and = 0. The receive antenna
various population sizes and mutation rates. consists of two crossed dipoles. The solid line results from adaptation and the
dashed line has no adaptation.
Fig. 7. Link is optimal when the two antennas face each other or = = 0.
Fig. 10. In this case, = vary with time. The receive antenna consists of two crossed dipoles. The solid line results from adaptation and the dashed line has
no adaptation.
Fig. 11. In this case, = vary with time. The receive antenna consists of three crossed dipoles. The solid line results from adaptation and the dashed line has
no adaptation.
link improvement than the two dipole case, particularly at generation 21, the number of fitness function evaluations made
smaller angles (Fig. 11). The maximum improvement is 3 dB by this GA run is
at .
How fast can a GA adapt? If the receive antenna continuously
adapts as it moves, then only small perturbations are necessary
(9)
at each angle and the adaptation is very fast. As an example,
consider maximizing the link budget of the receive antenna with
three orthogonal dipoles at . If the adaptation starts A fitness function evaluation equates to a power measurement
with the optimal weightings at , then the solid curve in a real system. If the adaptation starts with the optimal weight-
in Fig. 12 results. In order to reach the steady state solution at ings at , then the dashed curve in results. Continuously
HAUPT: ADAPTIVE CROSSED DIPOLE ANTENNAS USING A GA 1981
Fig. 12. Typical link improvement versus generation for a three orthogonal dipole receive antenna at an angle of 50 . If the adaptation process is started with the
receive antenna at circular polarization (0 ), then the GA finds an optimum in 21 generations or about 100 power measurements (solid line). If the process starts
with the optimum dipole weights at 45 , then minimal adaptation is necessary (dashed line).
TABLE I
AVERAGE MAXIMUM AND MEAN OF THE POPULATION OVER 100
GENERATIONS FOR VARIOUS MUTATION RATES AND NOISE VARIANCES
V. CONCLUSION
The received signal in a mobile communications system
loses strength due to a decrease in antenna directivity and polar-
ization mismatch. The current fed to a set of crossed dipoles can
be modified to increase the directivity and polarization match
between the transmit and receive antennas. Two orthogonal
dipoles can compensate for the loss in gain but not polarization.
Three adaptive orthogonal dipoles can fully restore the loss due
to loss in directivity and polarization mismatch if tracked by the
transmit antenna. A GA quickly adapts the receive antenna to
the transmitted signal. Three orthogonal dipoles provide more
improvement than just two orthogonal dipoles.
REFERENCES
Fig. 15. Performance of the GA when normally distributed noise is added to [1] A. Singer, “Space versus polarization diversity,” Wireless Review, pp.
=
the amplitude and phase of the currents fed to the dipoles ( 0 and = 0:1) 164–168, Feb. 15, 1998.
[2] M. R. Andrews, P. P. Mitra, and R. deCarvalho, “Tripling the capacity of
and the satellite is moving 1 per generation. The GA has a population size of
8 and mutation rate of 0.2. wireless communications using electromagnetic polarization,” Nature,
vol. 409, pp. 316–318, Jan 18, 2001.
[3] R. E. Marshall and C. W. Bostian, “An adaptive polarization correction
scheme using circular polarization,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Antennas and
Propagation Society Symp., Atlanta, GA, June 1974, pp. 395–397.
[4] R. T. Compton, “On the performance of a polarization sensitive adaptive
array,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-29, pp. 718–725, Sept.
1981.
[5] , “The tripole antenna: an adaptive array with full polarization flexi-
bility,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-29, pp. 944–952, Nov.
1981.
[6] B. D. Griffin, R. Haupt, and Y. C. Chung, “Adaptive polarization
for spacecraft communications system,” presented at the Proc. IEEE
Aerospace Conf., Big Sky, MT, Mar. 2002.
[7] R. Haupt, “Adaptive crossed dipole antennas,” in URSI General As-
sembly, Maastricht, Netherlands, Aug. 2002.
Abstract—A detailed analysis of ultrawide-band (UWB), systems that exhibits low antenna-ground interaction. On the
dual-polarized, dielectric-loaded horn-fed bow-tie (HFB) an- other hand, most GPR antennas used for the detection of deep
tennas is carried out using the finite-difference time-domain targets are operated very close to the ground so that most of the
(FDTD) method. The FDTD model includes realistic features of
the antenna structure such as the feeding cables, wave launchers, energy is radiated into the ground to improve sensitivity. This
dielectric loading, and resistive-film loading. Important antenna configuration also minimizes radiation into the air to comply
characteristics that are usually difficult to obtain via measure- with the FCC regulations.
ments can be obtained more directly from this FDTD model. Since The characteristics of such GPR antennas while in field
the HFB antennas under consideration are intended for ground
penetrating radar (GPR) applications, the effects of the half-space operation are usually difficult to determine a priori because of
medium are also investigated. The simulated results serve to verify the large coupling with the environment. For instance, the input
the performance of the HFB antenna design, and to optimize impedance of the commonly used dipoles or flat bowtie dipoles
various antenna parameters. are directly affected by the electrical property of the particular
Index Terms—Bow-tie antenna, coaxial cable, dielectric loading, ground for antennas operated close to the surface. Moreover,
finite-difference time-domain (FDTD), ground penetrating radar the amount of energy coupled into the ground changes as the
(GPR), impedance, resistive, ultrawide-band (UWB). permittivity increases and hence the radiation patterns also
depend of the soil permittivity [11]–[13]. Hence, one major
I. INTRODUCTION disadvantage is that the antenna characteristics in the field
become dependent on the electrical properties of the ground
memory. This partition scheme for modeling the electrically HFB prototype was constructed in-house using multiple layers
large HFB antenna in the presence of ground also allows for of commercial window films [23]. These have various sheet
faster simulations on a personal computer. An anisotropic resistance for different percentage of light transmission. When
perfectly matched layer (APML) especially formulated for the multiple films are overlaid properly together, one can obtain
dielectric or lossy half spaces [16], [21], [22] is implemented. a desired resistivity profile with desired taper length. Fig. 1
This paper is organized as follows. The HFB antenna design illustrates how the tapered R-card was constructed for the HFB
is discussed in Section II. Section III describes the construction prototype.
of the FDTD model for the dual-polarized HFB design and the The objective of the resistive card is to reduce reflections by
performance of the resistive-film loading which is optimized gradually dissipating the currents propagating toward the end of
for a given length. Section IV presents various HFB antenna each antenna arm. This requires the resistivity on the R-card to
characteristics obtained from the FDTD simulations. be tapered from a small value to a large value along the antenna
arm. An exponential taper of the resistivity was adopted in the
II. BASIC DUAL-POLARIZED HFB ANTENNA DESIGN HFB prototype with a tapering shown as follows:
Fig. 1 illustrates the basic structure of the dual-polarized
(1)
UWB HFB antenna design. This is somewhat similar to a
planar bowtie dipole with the feed point being raised off the
ground. The feed section resembles that of a small transverse where is the initial sheet resistance of the
electromagnetic (TEM) horn except that it is filled with low R-card at the perfect electric conducting (PEC)/R-card inter-
loss dielectric material. Each antenna arm is smoothly curved in face, and is the sheet resistance at the far
the transition from the horn section to the planar bowtie dipole end of the R-card, is the length of the R-card, and
section. The ends of the dipoles are terminated with tapered is the distance along the R-card from the PEC arm.
resistive cards (R-card) to reduce antenna ringing.
B. Feed Section
A. Resistive Taper Section The feed section of HFB resembles a dual polarized TEM
Tapered R-cards have many useful applications for radia- horn except that the end of each antenna arm is curved outward
tion and scattering control [23]–[25], but commercial tapered gradually to be connected to the flat bowtie section, and the
R-cards are often expensive and have very limited choices internal space of the horn was filled with low loss dielectric
of tapering profile and taper length. The R-card used in the material. The geometry of the horn and the antenna arms was
LEE et al.: MODELING AND INVESTIGATION OF A GEOMETRICALLY COMPLEX UWB GPR ANTENNA USING FDTD 1985
Fig. 2. Dimension and computation domain partitioning of the fully polarimetric dielectric filled HFB antenna.
chosen based upon the tradeoff among the dielectric constant, end of the PEC arm is 63 cm in length and is implemented via a
size, weight, and cost. The objective was to obtain a surge conductive sheet. The ground was assumed to be a lossless half
impedance of 100 to match to the characteristic impedance space with relative permittivity of 5.
of the feeding twin-coaxial cables shown at the bottom of
Fig. 1 (each cable has a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms). A. Heterogeneous FDTD Domain Partition
Although tabulated characteristic (or surge) impedances for an The antenna geometry under study is very complicated and
infinite TEM horn with arbitrary geometry are available [26], resides in a complex environment. A traditional FDTD approach
[27], the exact impedance of a dual-polarization TEM horn to represent the geometry would require either the storage of the
with dielectric filling is complicated to obtain analytically. material properties for each cell or else a data organization sim-
The experimental data obtained from [28] was used during ilar to what is used in the finite element method, which would
the construction of HFB prototype. Note that the center of also require a significant amount of memory overhead. To mini-
each coaxial cable was connected to one antenna arm and mize the memory usage, we have adopted a partitioning scheme
each pair of the 50 coaxial cable feed one polarization. [20]. The FDTD domain is divided into blocks. The size and
A 0–180 broadband hybrid was used as a balun for each number of the blocks are judiciously chosen, so that the material
pair of cables. Accurate FDTD models recently constructed to properties within most of the blocks are homogeneous. Within
calculate the surge impedance for such an antenna geometry the code, the FDTD algorithm is computed in different ways,
are employed here [29]. The prototype to be analyzed here and based on the properties of the block, the appropriate FDTD
has a dielectric constant of 5. The plate angle of each antenna algorithm will be chosen. If the block is a perfect conductor, the
arm is 11.5 . The horn angle itself is approximately 150 . FDTD code will recognize this, and not perform any computa-
tions for that block. Thus, there is no need to store either the
fields or the material properties for that particular block. If the
III. FDTD MODEL DESCRIPTION
block is an homogeneous dielectric, the material properties are
A full scale model of the UWB HFB antenna prototype re- not treated as a function of the grid points within the block but
quires a minimum of space. A spatial instead represented just as a constant parameter. Thus only the
cell size of 6.3 mm was chosen to accurately model the geomet- field values need to be stored for each cell within that block. If
rical details of the antenna and cable structure [30]. This yields the block is an inhomogeneous dielectric, then the FDTD algo-
approximately 96 million unknowns. The FDTD grid is shown rithm used will assume a constant permeability and no conduc-
in Fig. 2. All dimensions in the model were chosen to be as close tivity. Thus, only the fields and permittivity must be stored for
to the actual prototype as possible. The four antenna arms were each cell. In our case, we divide the geometry into 196 blocks
modeled as PEC plates, and the curved edges and surfaces were with only five of the blocks being heterogeneous as demon-
approximated by staircases. Each tapered R-card attached to the strated in Fig. 2.
1986 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 3. Coaxial cable modeling in rectangular FDTD grid and the TEM current excitation scheme. (a) Top view, (b) side view, and (c) J (t).
Fig. 5. S , S , and surge impedance of the HFB antenna. (a) Reflection coefficient S and S and (b) antenna surge impedance.
exponential taper, i.e., 0.63 m. As it will be shown shortly, a the same design. and provide the co-polarized backscat-
linear taper provides a better performance, i.e., lower reflection tering data. provides the cross-polarized kscattering data.
at low frequency end, due to relatively short taper length with A calibration procedure was carried out in a similar manner as
respect to wavelength. A more detailed analysis on this aspect done in real measurement using “short” and “matched” (PML)
can be found in [29]. Fig. 4 plots the linear resistive taper as well reference loads at the end of the feed cables
as its position relationship with respect to the antenna arm. The
lateral edges of the R-card were kept aligned to the edges of the
PEC arms to avoid undesired diffractions (see Fig. 1).
(4)
IV. CHARACTERISTICS OF DUAL-POLARIZED HFB In the above, is the response obtained with the coaxial
ANTENNA DESIGN cables connected to the antenna, is the response obtained
with the coaxial cables connected to matched load, is the
A. & and Input Impedance response obtained when the coaxial cables are shorted at the end
The simulated and measured reflection and transmission co- with a conducting wire, is the response obtained at coaxial
efficients, and , of the HFB design are compared in cable 2 with antenna connected when the excitation is applied
Fig. 5(a). Note that the antenna is located on the surface of a half to cable 1, and is the incident wave.
space with a dielectric of 5, corresponding to the dry sand in re- It is observed that the both linear and exponential taper have
ality. The is similar to since the both antenna arms have similar performance at frequency above 0.3 GHz where the
1988 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 7. Reflected (E ) field in time domain for HFB antennas with different
Fig. 6. Comparison of reflected electric field difference with various ground
profiles.
resistive card overlay configurations and using same conductivity profile.
Fig. 9. Snap shots from FDTD simulation for E field strength in dB scale where R = 300
= . (a) t = 7:4539 ns with R-card attached-(dB) scale;
(b) t = 7:4539 ns without R-card-(dB) scale; (c) t = 13:0954 ns with R-card attached-(dB) scale; (d) t = 13:0954 ns without R-card-(dB) scale.
Fig. 7. As expected, the overlay distance of the tapered R-card R-card attached to the HFB antenna arms. Without the R-card,
affects the reflection at the PEC end. Note that the R-card in the significant diffraction and reflection at the end of the PEC arms
overlay section is shorted out by the PEC, this section would are observed. The reflected fields later propagate back to the
have an effective resistance of zero regardless of the R-card observation point inside the cables as shown in Fig. 9(b). On
value. The larger geometric discontinuity in Case 3 provides the the other hand, the R-card extension significantly reduces the
stronger junction reflection observed in the figure. Case 1 and 2 diffraction and reflection at the ends as depicted in Fig. 9(a) and
provide a smoother transition and result in a 35 dB reflected lowers the antenna ringing by approximately 20 dB. Note that
field at the end of the R-card. Based on the simulations, we con- the signals that propagate back to the feed point are partially re-
cluded that a linear-tapered R-card with either a 11.3 or 5 cm flected due to the imperfect matching. This reflected fields gen-
overlay at the PEC/R-card does the best job of suppressing the erate the secondary reflection. This process repeats and becomes
reflections. the well known “antenna ringing” effect, a major clutter source
To optimize the choice of , values of 100, 200, 300, and in GPR measurements.
400 were implemented and simulated separately. From the
reflected field observed at the feed point, the amount of end- E. Radiated Field Distribution & Polarization
reflection suppression was compared as shown in Fig. 8, where The near-field radiation characteristics are investigated next.
late time (after 20 ns) antenna reflections can be observed. These Fig. 10 depicts the simulated horizontal co-polarized and cross-
results indicate that provides the maximal polarized field distributions at a plane 40 cm below the antenna
suppression of the arm end reflections. aperture, (corresponding to the ground surface plane), at the
center frequency of 400 MHz. The cases with and without the
D. Antenna Ringing R-card are also plotted for comparison. The fields are nearly
Fig. 9 compares snapshots of the instantaneous field dis- linearly polarized in the principal planes. The results with the
tribution in the vertical (or ) plane with and without the R-card clearly show a more uniform distribution, because the
1990 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 10. Comparison of co- and cross-polarized aperture field distributions at f = 400 MHz, depth z = 40 cm or 0.53 ,R = 300
= in R-card.
(a) Co-polarized field with R-card, (b) cross-polarized field with R-card, (c) co-polarized field without R-card, and (d) cross-polarized field without R-card.
diffracted fields from the antenna arm ends modify the radiated HFB antenna was calculated from the reflection coefficients
fields that otherwise would have been close to simple spherical and was found to be approximately 100 ohms over the entire
wavefronts. The more uniform field distributions simplify the frequency band of interest. This result confirms the broadband
subsequent signal processing and inverse problem and improve characteristic of the HFB design. The FDTD model also provided
the overall detection/classification capabilities of a GPR system. useful visualization of dynamic field distributions that can
As the observation point moves away from the principal help identify undesired radiations and reflections sources. The
planes, the level of depolarization increases and reaches a near-field distributions of the co-polarized and cross-polarized
maximum of approximately 12 dB between the two antenna fields were examined. This information is particularly useful
polarizations. This is, of course, due to the spherical nature in GPR applications where the depth of the target is unknown.
of the wavefront. We note that the cross-polarized field levels Overall, the simulated results confirm that the optimized HFB
with the R-card present are a little bit higher. This again may antenna design is a very attractive choice for broadband, fully
be caused by distributed diffractions along the resistive cards. polarimetric GPR applications.
V. CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In this work, a detailed FDTD model was used to incorporate The authors acknowledge the reviewers for their helpful
realistic features of UWB HFB antennas such as feeding comments.
cables, dielectric loading and tapered resistive terminations. The
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media,” Radio Sci., vol. 26, pp. 265–273, Jan. 1991. from the National Taiwan University, Taiwan,
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Patterns for a horizontal dipole on a half space interface,” in Proc. 8th from The Ohio State University, Columbus, in 1993
Int. GPR Conf., vol. SPIE-4084, Gold Coast, Australia, June 2000. and 1997, respectively.
[13] C. C. Chen and J. D. Young, “Unfurlable folded-dipole UWB antenna He joined the ElectroScience Laboratory, The
for mars explorer subsurface sensing,” in Proc. 8th Int. GPR Conf., vol. Ohio State University, as a Postdoctoral Researcher
SPIE-4084, Gold Coast, Australia, Jun. 2000. in 1997 and became a Senior Research Associate in
[14] M. Moghaddam, E. J. Yannakakis, W. C. Chew, and C. Randoll, “Mod- 1999. His main research interests include the ground
eling of the subsurface interface radar,” J. Electromag. Waves Applicat., penetrating radar, UWB antenna designs, radar target
vol. 5, pp. 17–39, 1991. detection and classification methods, automobile radar systems. In recent years,
[15] J. M. Bourgeois and G. S. Smith, “A fully three-dimensional simula- his research activities have been focused on the detection and classification of
tion of a ground-penetrating radar: FDTD theory compared with exper- buried landmines, unexploded ordnance and underground pipes.
iment,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. 34, pp. 36–44, 1996. Dr. Chen is a Member of Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi.
[16] K. R. Rao, K. H. Lee, C. C. Chen, and R. Lee, “Application of full-
polarmetric ground penetration radar for buried UXO Classification,”
The Ohio State Univ., ElectroSci. Lab., Tech. Rep. 738 520-1, Feb. 2001.
[17] K.-H. Lee, N. V. Venkatarayalu, and C.-C. Chen, “Numerical modeling Fernando L. Teixeira (S’89–M’93) received the
development for characterizing complex gpr problems,” in Proc. Int. B.S. and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from
GPR Conf., vol. SPIE-4758, May 2002, pp. 625–652. the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
[18] F. L. Teixeira, W. C. Chew, M. Straka, M. L. Orstaglio, and T. Wang, “Fi- (PUC-Rio), Brazil, in 1991 and 1995, respectively,
nite-difference time-domain simulation of ground penetrating radar on and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
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Remote Sensing, vol. 36, pp. 1928–1937, Nov. 1998. 1999.
[19] L. Gurel and U. Oguz, “Three-dimensional FDTD modeling of a ground From 1999 to 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Re-
penetrating radar,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. 38, pp. search Associate with the Research Laboratory of
1513–1521, Jul. 2000. Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
[20] J. Nehrbass, “Physics based partitioning,” in Proc. 26th General As- (MIT), Cambridge. Since 2000, he has been an
sembly for URSI, Ontario, Canada, Aug. 2000. Assistant Professor at the ElectroScience Laboratory (ESL) and the Depart-
[21] F. L. Teixeira and W. C. Chew, “Finite-difference simulation of transient ment of Electrical Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus. His
electromagnetics fields for cylindrical geometries in complex media,” current research interests include analytical and numerical techniques for wave
IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sensing, vol. 38, pp. 1530–1543, July 2000. propagation and scattering problems in communication, sensing, and devices
[22] K.-H. Lee, N. Venkalayalu, C.-C. Chen, F. L. Teixeira, and R. Lee, “Ap- applications. He has edited one book Geometric Methods for Computational
plication of full-polarmetric ground penetration radar for buried UXO Electromagnetics (PIER 32, EMW: Cambridge, MA, 2001), and has published
Classification (II),” The Ohio State Univ., ElectroSci. Lab., Tech. Rep. over 30 journal articles and 50 conference papers in those areas.
778 520, May 2002. Dr. Teixeira is a Member of Phi Kappa Phi. He was awarded the Raj Mittra
[23] C. Handel, I. J. Gupta, and W. D. Burnside, “Low frequency modification Outstanding Research Award from the University of Illinois, and a 1998 MTT-S
of a dual chamber compact range,” The Ohio State Univ., ElectroSci. Graduate Fellowship Award. He received paper awards at 1999 USNC/URSI
Lab., Tech. Rep. 732 264, Sep. 1997. National Symposium (Orlando, FL), and received a Young Scientist Award at
[24] L. Chaung, T. Chang, and W. D. Burnside, “An ultrawide-bandwidth the 2002 URSI General Assembly. He was the Technical Program Coordinator
tapered resistive TEM horn antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., of the Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium (PIERS), Cambridge,
vol. 48, pp. 1848–1857, Dec. 2000. MA, in 2000.
[25] M. S. A. Mahmoud, T.-H. Lee, and W. D. Burnside, “Enhanced com-
pactrange reflector concept using an R-card fence: two-dimensional
case,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. 419–428, Mar.
2001. Robert Lee (M’92) received the B.S.E.E. degree in
[26] F. C. Yang and K. S. H. Lee, “Impedance of a Two-Conical-Plate Trans- 1983 from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, and the
mission Line,” Tech. Rep., Sensor and Simulation Company, Nov. 1976. M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degree in 1988 and 1990, respec-
[27] H. M. Shen, R. W. P. King, and T. T. Wu, “V-conical antenna,” IEEE tively, from the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 36, pp. 1519–1525, Nov. 1988. From 1983 to 1984, he worked for Microwave
[28] C. C. Chen, “A new ground penetrating radar antenna design—the Semiconductor Corporation, Somerset, NJ, as a
horn-fed bowtie (HFB),” in Proc. Antenna Measurement Techniques Microwave Engineer. From 1984 to 1986, he was
Association (AMTA) Symp., Nov. 1997, pp. 67–74. a Member of the Technical Staff, Hughes Aircraft
[29] N. Venkatarayalu, C.-C. Chen, F. L. Teixeira, and R. Lee, “Modeling Company, Tucson, AZ. From 1986 to 1990, he was
of ultrawide-band dielectric horn antennas using FDTD,” IEEE Trans. a Research Assistant at the University of Arizona.
Antennas Propagat., vol. 52, pp. 1318–1323, May 2004. During summer 1987 through 1989, he worked at
[30] A. Taflove, Computational Electrodynamics. Norwood, MA: Artech Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM. Since 1990, he has been
House, 1995. at The Ohio State University, where he is currently a Professor. His major
[31] T. B. A. Senior, “Approximate boundary conditions,” IEEE Trans. An- research interests are in the development and application of numerical methods
tennas Propagat., vol. 29, pp. 826–829, Sept. 1981. for electromagnetics.
1992 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—The radiation properties of an arbitrarily flanged par- (GMEIEs). We derive GMEIEs for the problems of dielectric
allel-plate waveguide are investigated by means of the boundary filled and unfilled PPW having an arbitrarily flanged surface.
integral equations that are called guided-mode extracted integral By treating these problems, we can easily understand the ad-
equations. The boundary integral equations derived in this paper
can be solved by the conventional boundary-element method. Nu- vantages of GMEIEs compared with other techniques proposed
merical results are presented for a number of cases of flanged par- before. Since the method in this paper does not employ any
allel-plate waveguide. Reflection coefficient, reflected and radiated approximation, the results are accurate in principle. The numer-
powers as well as radiation patterns are numerically calculated for ical results of computer simulations are presented, in which,
the incidence of transverse electric guided-mode wave. the reflection coefficient, the reflected and radiated powers as
Index Terms—Boundary-element method (BEM), boundary well as the radiation pattern are calculated numerically for the
integral equations (BIE), electromagnetic radiation, numerical incidence of TE guided-mode wave. The results are compared
analysis, parallel-plate waveguides (PPW). with those reported in the literature, and are confirmed by the
law of energy conservation.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. PPW WITH AN ARBITRARILY FLANGED SURFACE
T HERE has been remarkable progress in the development
of communication systems over the last decade. Signif-
icant improvements in noise figure, gain, output power, and
A. Formulation of the Reflection Coefficient in Terms of
GMEIEs
efficiency have been achieved at millimeter-wave frequencies. Consider a dielectric filled PPW of width having a tilted
However, the demand of the wireless broadband communi- flange surface radiating into a free space as shown in Fig. 1(a).
cation at millimeter-wave frequency recently increases with The dielectric is with refractive index of . The waveguide is
activities of digital multimedia-contents circulation. One of assumed to be satisfied the single-mode condition.
the problems of millimeter-wave communication is the large Referring to Fig. 1(d), we denote the actual boundaries (solid
transmission loss in free space. For instance, the transmission lines) of the waveguide by – . The boundary (dotted
loss of the signal at 60 GHz frequency for 5 m distance be- line) does not express an actual boundary, but rather express a
tween transmitter and receiver is about 82 dB [1]. Therefore, virtual boundary. The whole space is assumed to be magneti-
the antenna with high output radiation power is required to cally homogeneous with a magnetic permeability
compensate the large transmission loss. H/m. In the following analysis, a harmonic time depen-
The flange-shaped parallel-plate waveguide (PPW) is known dence is supposed and suppressed for the electromag-
well as a fundamental structure extensively used for electro- netic field quantities, the free-space wave number is denoted by
magnetic wave radiation (as, e.g., in feed horns, flush-mounted , where is the velocity of light in a vacuum. Since
antennas, etc.). So far, even though a closed-form solution to the waveguide is assumed to be infinite-extended in the -direc-
the problem of the flanged PPW radiation is unavailable, the tion, all field quantities are independent of (i.e., )
waveguide-radiation behavior has been well understood using and thus the electromagnetic field can be decomposed in terms
a number of numerical techniques and approximate theories of TE mode.
[2]–[13]. However, since most of the studies have based on the To derive GMEIEs, we assume that a dominant guided-
approximation solution, the presented results have restricted to mode wave is incident upon the aperture in the tilted flange sur-
the problem of perpendicularly flanged PPW. As far as we know, face from inside of the waveguide. Since the electric fields have
no one has reported to the problem of an arbitrarily flanged PPW only a -component under the above-mentioned condition, we
that expects to give high output radiation power. denote the electric fields of the -component by
In this paper, the radiation properties of an arbitrarily
flanged PPW are investigated by the boundary-element method (1)
(BEM) based on the guided-mode extracted integral equations
in the coordinate systems and , as shown in
Fig. 1(a). The incident guided-mode wave , the reflected
Manuscript received July 9, 2003. The work of D. N. Chien was supported
by the Rotary Yoneyama Memorial Foundation, Inc., Japan, under a Yoneyama guided-mode wave , and the radiated wave are
Scholarship. used to express electric field quantities.
The authors are with the Department of Electronics and Computer Engi- We first consider the case in which an observation point
neering, Gifu University, Gifu 501-1193, Japan (e-mail: chien@tnk.info.gifu-
u.ac.jp). is in the region surrounded by the boundary
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832323 . From Maxwell’s equations and Green’s theorem,
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
CHIEN et al.: RADIATION PROPERTIES OF AN ARBITRARILY FLANGED PPW 1993
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
with
(7)
Fig. 1. (a)–(c) Models of arbitrarily flanged PPW. (b) Location of the Here the Green’s theorem for the guided-mode waves in
boundaries on integral equations. the region surrounded by the boundary is applied
as
the well-known boundary integral equation (BIE) for the total
electric field is given by
(8)
(2)
1994 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Substituting (9) into (6) and dividing both sides of the resultant
equation by , we can obtain the relation
(19)
(12) It can be seen that the (19) has the integral boundary
also with semi-infinite length. However, it is easy to truncate
the boundary in the numerical solution procedure at a
with finite length where the total electric fields are enough small to
be regarded as vanished.
The BIEs (16) and (19) are equations to be solved numeri-
cally by using the conventional BEM or MM for the problem of
an arbitrarily flanged PPW as shown in Fig. 1(a)–(c). Once the
(13) fields on all the boundaries have been obtained. The reflection
coefficient can be obtained by the use of (15). And fields at
Since it is impossible for a reflected radiation field to exist at any point can also be calculated by the boundary integral repre-
points in the waveguide far away from the aperture, we can set sentations similar to (16) and (19).
(20)
(15) with
TABLE I
COMPARISON BETWEEN THE VARIOUS METHODS USED TO CALCULATE THE
REFLECTION COEFFICIENT R OF A DIELECTRIC UNFILLED PPW HAVING A
PERPENDICULAR FLANGE SURFACE FOR d= = 0:5001
TABLE II
REFLECTED POWER 0 , RADIATED POWER 0 , AND THEIR TOTAL
0 OF A DIELECTRIC FILLED PPW HAVING A TILTED
FLANGE SURFACE FOR d= = 0:5001, AND n = 1:6
j j
Fig. 3. (a) Distribution of the disturbed field @E =@n on the boundary
j j
C . (b) Distribution of the total field @E =@n on the boundary C . The
parameters used in calculations are the same as for Fig. 2, the virtual boundary
C is located at k a = 2. 0
Fig. 2. Reflection coefficient R of a dielectric filled PPW having a tilted
flange surface as a function of location of the virtual boundary C for
d= = 0:5001; n = 1:6, and ' = 10 .
Fig. 5. Numerical results of a dielectric filled PPW having a tilted flange Fig. 7. Numerical results of a dielectric filled PPW having a tapered flange
surface for d= = 0:5001 and n = 1:6. (a) Dependence of radiated power surface for d= = 0:5001 and n = 1:6. (a) Dependence of radiated power
0 on tilting angle '. (b) Typical radiation patterns. 0 on tapering angle '. (b) Typical radiation patterns.
Fig. 8. Numerical results of a dielectric filled PPW having an up-tapered aperture for d= = 0:5001 and n = 1:6. (a) Dependence of radiated power 0
on tapering width w=d for h=d = 0:5. (b) Typical radiation patterns of (a)-case. (c) Dependence of radiated power 0 on tapering height h=d for w=d = 2.
(d) Typical radiation patterns of (c)-case.
From Fig. 3, it is found that the use of BEM based on GMEIEs The results in Fig. 5 show that the radiated power of a dielec-
is possible to treat waveguide discontinuity problems as an iso- tric filled PPW can be improved by the use of a tilted flange sur-
lated object of finite size. So that it is suitable for the basic face, and the symmetry of radiation pattern is maintained even
theory of computer-aided design (CAD) software for waveguide though changing the tilting angle. In particular, from Fig. 5(b)
circuits. it is found that the angle of beam center (i.e., the angle of center
of radiation pattern) with respect to the -axis is changed with
B. Examples changing the tilting angle. In order to see the relationship be-
tween the angle of beam center and the tilting angle , we
In the first sequence of examples we consider the conven- numerically plot that relationship in Fig. 6.
tional problem of a dielectric filled PPW having a perpendicular It is observed that for the tilting angle less than 15 the
flange surface. The result of radiated power as a function of above-mentioned relationship is linear, i.e., the center axis of
refractive index is shown in Fig. 4 for . beam is perpendicular to the flange surface, but for the tilting
From Fig. 4, it is evident improvement of radiated power of a angle larger than 15 that relationship is nonlinear. This effect
dielectric filled PPW compared with a dielectric unfilled PPW. may be important in the prediction of radiation properties from
Since most of the solid dielectrics have the index larger than antennas.
approximate 1.4, we choose the dielectric with index of 1.6 for 2) PPW Having a Tapered Flange Surface [Fig. 1(b)]: For
the next investigations. the case of a dielectric filled PPW having a tapered flange sur-
In subsequent examples we apply the method to a number of face with and , the dependence of ra-
cases of arbitrarily flanged PPW as shown in Fig. 1(a)–(c). The diated power on the tapering angle is shown in Fig. 7(a),
results of computer simulations are shown below. and the typical radiation patterns are plotted in Fig. 7(b).
1) PPW Having a Tilted Flange Surface [Fig. 1(a)]: For a In Fig. 7(a), the weak effect of change of tapering angle on
dielectric filled PPW of width having a tilted radiated power is observed. But on the contrary, the strong
flange surface, the dependence of radiated power on the effect of that on radiation pattern is found from Fig. 7(b). It
tilting angle is shown in Fig. 5(a), and the typical radiation seems obvious that the beam width decreases and the far-field
patterns are plotted in Fig. 5(b). intensity increases with up-tapering the flange surface. This is an
1998 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
interesting and important result for millimeter-wave free-space [9] M. S. Leong, P. S. Kooi, and XQXQXQ Chandra, “Radiation from a
communication systems. flanged parallel-plate waveguide: Solution by moment method with in-
clusion of edge condition,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microwaves, An-
3) PPW Having an Up-Tapered Aperture [Fig. 1(c)]: The tenna and Propagation, vol. 135, Aug. 1988, pp. 249–255.
radiated power as functions of tapering width and ta- [10] C. M. Butler, C. C. Courtney, P. D. Mannikko, and J. W. Silvestro,
pering height , as shown in Fig. 1(c), are respectively shown “Flanged parallel-plate waveguide coupled to a conducting cylinder,”
in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microwaves, Antenna and Propagation, vol.
in Fig. 8(a) and (c) for . Typically, the 138, Dec. 1991, pp. 549–558.
corresponding radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 8(b) and (d). [11] C. H. Kim, H. J. Eom, and T. J. Park, “A series solution for TM-mode ra-
Notice that in Fig. 8(a) and (b) the tapering height is diation from a flanged parallel-plate waveguide,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
given by , and in Fig. 8(c) and (d) the tapering width Propagat., vol. 41, pp. 1469–1471, Oct. 1993.
[12] T. J. Park and H. J. Eom, “Analytic solution for TE-mode radiation
is given by . From Fig. 8, it is found that the radiated from a flanged parallel-plate waveguide,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Mi-
power of a dielectric filled PPW can be improved significantly crowaves, Antenna and Propagation, vol. 140, Oct. 1993, pp. 387–389.
by using an up-tapered aperture. In particular, as shown in [13] J. W. Lee, H. J. Eom, and J. H. Lee, “TM-wave radiation from flanged
parallel plate into dielectric slab,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microwaves,
Fig. 8(c), the radiated power is improved to approximate 0.99 Antenna and Propagation, vol. 143, June 1996, pp. 207–210.
by a tapering height , i.e., only 1% of [14] M. Tanaka and K. Tanaka, “Computer simulation for two-dimensional
power is reflected. The strong effect on radiation patterns is near-field optics with use of a metal-coated dielectric probe,” J. Opt. Soc.
also found by changing the tapering parameters. However, it Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 18, pp. 919–925, Apr. 2001.
[15] D. N. Chien, M. Tanaka, and K. Tanaka, “Numerical simulation of an ar-
is observed from Fig. 8(d) that the number of lobe of radiation bitrarily ended asymmetrical slab waveguide by guided-mode extracted
pattern is more than one, and the far-field intensity fluctuates integral equations,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 19, pp.
with increasing the size of aperture. Let us note that these 1649–1657, Aug. 2002.
[16] D. N. Chien, K. Tanaka, and M. Tanaka, “Accurate analysis of power
results, which are very interesting and potentially important in coupling between two arbitrarily ended dielectric slab waveguides by
design of antennas, have not shown by any researcher so far. boundary-element method,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol.
20, pp. 1608–1616, Aug. 2003.
[17] , “Optimum design of power coupling between two dielectric slab
IV. CONCLUSION waveguides by the boundary-element method based on guided-mode ex-
tracted integration equation,” IEICE Trans. Electron., vol. E86-C, Nov.
The radiation properties of a dielectric filled and unfilled 2003.
PPW having an arbitrarily flanged surface have been studied [18] , “Guided wave equivalents of Snell’s and Brewster’s Laws,” Opt.
Commun., vol. 225, pp. 319–329, Oct. 2003.
by the BEM based on GMEIEs. Based on the theory developed
in Section II, the typical numerical evaluations have been per-
formed for the case of incident guided-mode wave. The
numerical results were confirmed by using the law of energy Dao Ngoc Chien (S’03) received the B.E. de-
gree from the Department of Telecommunication
conservation. It has been found that the numerical results are Systems, Faculty of Electronics and Telecommu-
in good agreement with previous results and physical consid- nications, Hanoi University of Technology, Hanoi,
eration. Vietnam, in 1997 and the M.S. degree from the De-
partment of Electronics and Computer Engineering,
It is apparent that the method in this paper is suitable for Gifu University, Gifu, Japan, in 2002, where he is
the basic theory of CAD)software for the antennas systems. currently working toward the Ph.D. degree.
Since we do not employ any approximations, such as simple In 1997, he became a Teaching Assistant in the De-
partment of Telecommunication Systems, Faculty of
end-shape, in the formulation of GMEIEs used in this paper, so Electronics and Telecommunications, Hanoi Univer-
that it is easy to extend the GMEIEs to more complicated wave- sity of Technology. He is currently on leave from Hanoi University of Tech-
guide circuits that have more than one port, etc. nology and is a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Electronics and Com-
puter Engineering, Gifu University. His current research interests are the CAD
of optical waveguide circuits, and waveguide technology for antennas and feeds.
Mr. Chien is a Student Member of the Optical Society of America (OSA),
REFERENCES Washington, DC, and the Institute of Electrical, Information and Communica-
[1] H. Shiomi and S. Yamamoto, “Numerical simulation of fat dielectric tion Engineers (IEICE), Japan. He was awarded a Yoneyama Scholarship by the
loaded waveguide antenna using FDTD method,” in IEICE Proc. Int. Rotary Yoneyama Memorial Foundation, Inc., Japan.
Symp. Antennas and Propagation ISAP i-02, Nov. 2002, pp. 520–523.
[2] R. C. Rudduck and D. C. F. Wu, “Slope diffraction analysis of TEM par-
allel-plate guide radiation patterns,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
vol. AP-17, pp. 797–799, Nov. 1969. Kazuo Tanaka (M’75) received the B.E., M.S., and
[3] D. C. F. Wu, R. C. Rudduck, and E. L. Pelton, “Application of a surface Ph.D., degrees from the Department of Communica-
integration technique to parallel-plate waveguide radiation-pattern anal- tions Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan,
ysis,” IEEE Trans. Antennas a Propagat., vol. AP-17, pp. 280–285, May in 1970, 1972, and 1975, respectively.
1969. In 1975, he became a Research Associate in the
[4] S. W. Lee, “Ray theory of diffraction by open-ended waveguide, I, field Department of Electrical Engineering, Gifu Univer-
in waveguides,” J. Math. Phys., vol. 11, pp. 2830–2850, 1970. sity, Gifu, Japan, where he became an Associate Pro-
[5] K. Hongo, “Diffraction by a flanged parallel-plate waveguide,” Radio fessor in 1985 and a Professor in 1990. His research
Sci., vol. 7, pp. 955–963, Oct. 1972. since 1970 has been a general-relativistic electromag-
[6] T. Itoh and R. Mittra, “TEM reflection from a flanged and dielectric- netic theory and application, radiographic image pro-
filled parallel-plate waveguide,” Radio Sci., vol. 9, pp. 849–855, Oct. cessing and computational electromagnetic and he is
1974. currently interested in the CAD of integral optical circuits, near-field optical cir-
[7] K. Hongo, Y. Ogawa, T. Itoh, and K. Ogusu, “Field distribution in a cuits and simulation of Anderson localization hypothesis of ball-lightning. He
flanged parallel-plate waveguide,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. was a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1994.
AP-23, pp. 558–560, July 1975. Dr. Tanaka was awarded the Uchida Paper Award by the Japan Society of
[8] S. Lee and L. Grun, “Radiation from flanged waveguide: Comparison of Medical Imaging and Information Science. He was a Chair of the Technical
solutions,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-30, pp. 147–148, Group of Electromagnetic Theory of the Institute of Electrical, Information and
Jan. 1982. Communication Engineers (IEICE), Japan.
CHIEN et al.: RADIATION PROPERTIES OF AN ARBITRARILY FLANGED PPW 1999
Abstract—Scan blindness occurs for phased arrays when propa- In this paper photonic band-gap (PBG) materials are used
gation constants of Floquet modes (space harmonics) coincide with as antenna substrates to treat the scan blindness problem. PBG
those of surface waves supported by the array structure. In this materials are essentially periodic structures whose dispersive
paper, we studied the possibility of using photonic band-gap (PBG)
substrate to eliminate scan blindness. A specially designed printed properties may be controlled by the periodicity and the electro-
PBG substrate can suppress surface wave propagation inside its magnetic properties of lattice elements [8]. For PBG materials
bandgap range, therefore it can be used to eliminate scan blind- realized on dielectric substrates, surface waves can be con-
ness. In this paper, we presented a method of moments (MoM) anal- trolled. For example, they can be suppressed along certain
ysis of the scan properties of dipole arrays on PBG substrates with direction for PBG materials with partial bandgaps or along
ominidirectional bandgap(s). We found that scan blindness is com-
pletely eliminated. The elimination of scan blindness makes PBG any direction for those with ominidirectional (or complete)
materials very attractive in phased array design. bandgaps [9]–[12] inside a certain frequency range. Such prop-
erties of PBG could be used to eliminate scan blindness. In
Index Terms—Phased array, photonic band-gap (PBG) sub-
strate, scan blindness. [13] the authors studied the active array pattern of phased
arrays on a PBG substrate which is composed of air holes
inside a dielectric substrate, but since that kind of material with
I. INTRODUCTION finite thickness does not have an ominidirectional bandgap,
the scan blindness cannot be eliminated completely.
S CAN blindness for phased arrays can be traced to the forced
surface waves by phase matching with those of the Floquet
modes (space harmonics). This is common for printed arrays on
Recently, a novel printed PBG substrate with ominidirec-
tional bandgap was presented in [9], [10]. In this PBG material,
dielectric substrates, phased arrays with radomes, etc. [1]–[3]. periodic metallic patches are printed on a substrate and each
Scan blindness limits the scan range and lowers the antenna ef- patch is connected to the ground plane through a via. It is both
ficiency, therefore it must be considered in phased array design. experimentally and numerically verified that this PBG material
Many efforts have been devoted to eliminate scan blindness, has a complete surface wave bandgap. In [11] a planar PBG
for example, the subarray technique is used to suppress scan without any via was also fabricated and an ominidirectional
blindness but at the expense of a larger unit cell size, which bandgap was reported. In this paper our analysis is based on
causes an increase in power loss to the grating lobes [3]. But the first kind of PBG substrate in [9], [10], however we believe
the idea of using subarray to perturb the phase progression that any PBG substrate with complete bandgap can eliminate
of surface waves in the substrate is quite an inspring idea. scan blindness.
In [4] the authors studied the scan properties of antennas on In this paper, we first present the theorectical method of
perturbed inhomogeneous substrates, and they found that the moments (MoM) formulation for the array analysis, then we
inhomogeneous substrate can mitigate the scan blindness for discuss the surface-wave bandgap properties of the PBG ma-
proper designed substrate media. Scan properties of phased terials. After that we present detailed theoretical case studies
arrays on ferrite substrates have been investigated in [5], the for phased arrays on PBG substrates, from low permittivity
scan properties of dipole arrays in a two-layer structure have to high permittivity substrates, from thin to thick substrates.
been studied in [6], [7]. It is found that in a two layer structure Finally, waveguide simulator experimental results are presented
it is possible to select the parameters to prevent the excitation to validate the theory and the code we developed.
of any surface waves, therefore to eliminate scan blindness.
This however may be a very narrow band operation.
II. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS: THE METHOD OF MOMENTS
In Fig. 1, we show the PBG material [9] and a dipole phased
Manuscript received May 4, 2001; revised March 26, 2003. This work was array printed on it. The unit cell of the PBG is around .
supported in part by MURI. For phased arrays the radiating dipole is printed in every by
L. Zhang and J. A. Castaneda were with the Department of Electrical En- PBG unit cell, here in the figure the dipole is printed in every
gineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544 USA. They
are now with Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA 92619-7013 USA (e-mail: 2-by-2 PBG unit cells as an example.
lzhang@broadcom.com; jcastan@broadcom.com). Printed arrays on uniform substrate and their scan blindness
N. G. Alexopoulos is with the Department of Electrical and Computer En- phenomenon have been extensively analyzed using a MoM in
gineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92695-2625 USA (e-mail: al-
fios@uci.edu). [1], [2]. The MoM is a very fast and accurate full-wave analysis
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832516 method for the analysis of phased array and therefore is used in
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
ZHANG et al.: SCAN BLINDNESS FREE PHASED ARRAY DESIGN USING PBG MATERIALS 2001
(4)
where
Fig. 1. Structure of the phased dipole array on a PBG substrate. The top
figure shows 3-by-3 unit cells of the PBG substrate. The bottom figure gives (5)
the top view of a unit cell of the infinite phased dipole array printed on the
PBG susbstrate. Some key parameters are: patch size L by W , gap between
4 4 4
patches g , via size x by y , dipole size D (length) by w (width), substrate (6)
thickness h and substrate permittivity .
(7)
our analysis. The Dyadic Green’s function, which is the electric where stands for the number of attachment modes,
field caused by an infinite array of such dipoles is given by and are the center coordinates of each patch
(1)
(8)
(also see (11) shown at the bottom of the page), and similarly
(2) for .
On metallic surfaces tangential electric fields should be zero B. Entire Domain Current Expansion on the Dipole and Patch
Current expansions on each patch are simply entire domain
basis functions given as follows:
(3)
for
(11)
for .
2002 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(13)
(14)
(15)
where is the number of entire domain basis functions
used in the dipole current expansion.
(16)
(17)
(18)
(19)
(20)
(21) Fig. 3. Convergence of the input impedance versus the number of Floquet
modes and the number of EDB functions. Impedances are for broadside scan.
(22)
(23) materials. Here we present some simulation data of the printed
(24) PBG material calculated using three different methods which
are the MoM, the finite-element-integral-equation method (FE-
(25)
IEM) [17] and the FE perfect-matched-layer method (FE-PML)
Notice that , are local indexes for submatrices. For detailed [14].
formulation of the matrix entries please refer to [18], they are Fig. 2, shows the eigenmodes of the PBG material with pa-
omitted here for brevity. rameters given in the caption of the Figure. , , and are
The input impedance of the dipole is calculated as vertices of a reduced Brillouin zone. From to , the waves
are propagating along the direction, varies from 0 to .
From to , the waves are propagating at an angle between
(26)
0 and 45 with respect to the direction, where and
varies from 0 to . From to , waves are propagating
(27) along the 45 and both and varies from or to 0.
The MoM and FE based codes produce consistent results.
where is the width of voltage gap source, and is the
The MoM code only searches for bounded modes, therefore, it
width of the dipole.
stops when it intercepts the light line in the air (straight line in
this figure) for the second mode. Between the first and second
III. SURFACE WAVE BANDGAP OF PRINTED PBG SUBSTRATES mode is the surface wave bandgap. The higher band edge is
The MoM procedure discussed in the previous section can determined by the interception point of the second mode and
also be used to calculate the bandgap properties of printed PBG the light line. Simulation suggests that the second mode is
ZHANG et al.: SCAN BLINDNESS FREE PHASED ARRAY DESIGN USING PBG MATERIALS 2003
Fig. 4. Comparison of the scanned impedances for the dipole array on PBG and uniform substrates. FREQ = 13:0 GHz. = 2:2. For PBG case dipole size
2 0
is 8.982 mm 0.06 mm, broadside impedance is Z = 71:083 j 0:032
. Array unit cell is 0:4992 . For uniform case the dipole size is tuned to have a
resonance at broadside.
radiating inside the bandgap. In the FE-PML calculation, the occurs for both the uniform and PBG substrate. For the array
eigen frequencies are complex inside the bandgap region for on the uniform substrate, the scan blindness spot moves toward
given real propagation constants, which implies that modes broadside comparing to the 13.0 GHz case. There is no blind-
inside this bandgap region are damping in the lateral direction. ness spot for the array on the PBG substrate.
The leakage properties of these modes need further investigation, In the next example, a substrate with higher dielectric con-
and some similar work has been done in [12] on dielectric stant is picked. The PBG lattice sizes are
PBGs. The good agreement between the MoM and FEM based , patch width mm, mm,
codes verifies the validity of the MoM analysis. . One array unit is made of one dipole in the middle of
four-by-four PBG units. The surface wave bandgap is from 9.25
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS ON PHASED ARRAY to 12.85 GHz. Fig. 6 shows the scanned impedance at 12.8 GHz.
In the first example of phased array, one unit cell is made of For the case on uniform substrate, the blindness spot moves to-
one dipole in the middle of two by two PBG unit cells. Dipoles ward the broadside when the permittivity is higher. Again, no
in the rectangular array are separated by mm blindness spot is observed for the PBG case.
in and directions, respectively. The substrate thickness is Compact arrays can be realized on high permittivity sub-
mm, , mm, strates, however strong surface waves excited in the substrate
mm, mm. The surface wave bandgap is cause problems such as small scan range, strong mutual
between 9.55 and 14.10 GHz. coupling between elements, low efficiency, etc. Use of PBG
Fig. 3 shows convergence plot of the input impedance versus substrate can avoid the formentioned drawbacks.
the number of Floquet modes and the number of entire domain In the third example, an array on a thick substrate is analyzed.
basis (EDB) functions for patch current. In the axis, is Thicker substrate provides wider bandwidth. A unit of the array
the highest index of the Floquet mode, which means that the is made of one dipole in the middle of four by four PBG unit
total number of Floquet modes is . It is seen that the cells. The substrate thickness is mm, ,
impedance converges as the number of the Floquet modes and with the PBG unit period of mm,
the EDB functions are increased. In our following calculation, mm and mm. The bandgap is from 9.7 to
we use for the Floquet modes and 16 EDB functions. 15.1 GHz. Fig. 7 shows the scanned impedance. Again no scan
The reflection of the array at two different frequencies are blindness exists for the array on the PBG substrate.
plotted in Figs. 4 and 5. In Fig. 4, the array operates at 13.0 GHz.
For the case with uniform substrate scan blindness occurs at V. PBG SUBSTRATE DESIGN PROCEDURES
69.0 in the -plane, there is no blindness in the -plane be-
cause of polarization mismatch. For the PBG case, there is no In practical phased array design, the most important issue is
blindness spot. In Fig. 5 the operating frequency is at 13.5 GHz. how to design the PBG substrate. For example, given the sub-
Since the array unit cell is greater than , a grating lobe strate thickness ( ), permittivity ( ), array unit cell size ( ),
2004 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 5. Scan impedance of the dipole array on PBG substrate. FREQ = 13:5 GHz, dipole 8.668 mm 2 0.06 mm, broadside impedance is Z = 62:635 +
0 085
. Array unit cell is 0:5184
j : .
Fig. 6. Scan impedance of the dipole array on PBG and uniform substrates. = 4:4. FREQ = 12:8 GHz. For PBG case, dipole length is 7.14 mm, broadside
0
impedance is Z = 50:30 j 0:08
. Array unit cell is 0:49152 .
how to design the PBG substrate to meet the bandgap and band- In the array design, one also needs to consider the effects of
width requirement ( ). The suggested steps are listed in the feeding and the radiating element loading.
the following:
Fig. 7. Scanned impedance of a dipole array on thick PBG substrate. FREQ = 13:0 GHz, Dipole length is 9.766 mm, broadside impedance is Z = 82 43 0
:
j 0 15
.
:
(28)
Fig. 8. Waveguide simulator experimental setup.
with which is the broadside dimension of the wave- simulation data are plotted in Fig. 9, where consistency can be
guide and the free space wavelength. For frequencies from observed between the two.
2.6 to 3.9 GHz, the simulated scan range is from 51.22 to In the second case, we fabricated a PBG material with double
31.32 . substrate thickness, the surface wave bandgap is between 1.9
In the experiment, a power divider was used and the two and 3.9 GHz. The patch size is 6.5 mm by 7.5 mm. The
outputs are connected to two coax cables used to excite the monopole length is 21.0 mm. Results are shown in Fig. 10.
monopoles. The return loss is measured at the input of the power For the uniform substrate, scan blindness occurs at 3.7 GHz,
divider, and then de-embedded to obtain the reflection coeffi- which is corresponding to an -plane scan angle of 34 from
cient at the feeding point of the monopole. The substrate is a the broadside. This agrees with the scan angle predicted by the
RT 5870 Duriod board, with , the thickness is following [1]:
390 mil.
In the first case we fabricated a PBG substrate using one
layer of this board, the metal patch size is 8.9 mm by 10.5 mm, (29)
with a period of 17.018 mm by 18.034 mm. By mirroring, the
equivalent dipole is between every two by four PBG unit cells. where is the surface wave propagation constant,
The monopole length is 16.32 mm. The experimental and MoM mm is the period of the PBG in broadside. The nonunit
2006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge Prof. F. De Flaviis
and Mr. R. Ramirez from the University of California at Irvine
for their kind help in the waveguide experiments. The authors
would like to thank Prof. D. Yang from the University of Illi-
nois at Chicago for helpful suggestions on the use of attachment
modes in the MoM solution.
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29, pp. 99–105, 1981.
the MoM analysis is also valid for thick substrates. [16] J. T. Aberle and D. M. Pozar, “Analysis of infinite arrays of probe-fed
rectangular microstrip patches using a rigorous feed model,” IEE Proc.,
pt. H, vol. 136, no. 2, pp. 109–119, Apr. 1989.
VII. CONCLUSION [17] L. Zhang and N. G. Alexopoulos, “Finite-element based techniques
for the modeling of PBG materials,” Electromagn., Special Issue on
Scan properties of phased arrays on PBG substrates have been Theory and Applications of Photonic Band-Gap Materials, vol. 19, pp.
investigated. Through the example of printed dipoles on PBG 225–239, May-June 1999.
[18] L. Zhang, “Numerical characterization of electromagnetic band-gap ma-
substrates, it is found in both simulation and experiment that terials and applications in printed antennas and arrays,” Ph.D. disserta-
scan blindness can be completely eliminated, due to the sup- tion, Univ. Calif., Los Angeles, 2000.
pression of surface wave propagation inside PBG substrates. [19] P. W. Hannan and M. A. Balfour, “Simulation of a phase-array antenna
in waveguide,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 13, pp. 342–353,
PBG substrates, especially those with complete surface wave
May 1965.
bandgaps, will find extensive applications in printed antennas [20] N. Amitay, V. Galindo, and C. P. Wu, Theory and Analysis of Phased
and arrays. Array Antennas. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1972, pp. 59–63.
ZHANG et al.: SCAN BLINDNESS FREE PHASED ARRAY DESIGN USING PBG MATERIALS 2007
Lijun Zhang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Nicoloas G. Alexopoulos (S’68–M’69–SM’82–F’87) received the B.S.E.E.,
University of Science and Technology of China, in 1993 and 1996, respectively, M.S.E.E., and Ph.D.E.E. degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Department of Electrical in 1965, 1967, and 1968, respectively.
Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, in 2000. He was a member of the faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering,
From June 2000 to December 2000, he was with Agilent Technology in West University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), from 1969 to 1996. While at
Lake Village, CA, working on RF-CMOS CAD. Since December 2000, he has UCLA, he served as Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs from 1986 to 1987,
been working for Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA, in the areas of on chip and Chair of the Electrical Engineering Department from 1987 to 1992. Under
passives modeling and wireless radio transceiver design. his leadership and tenure as Chair the department doubled in size, created a
highly successful Corporate Affiliates Program, raised more than $30 million
in gifts and endowments and established the High Frequency Electronics
Laboratory. In 1997, he joined the Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science Department, University of California, Irvine, and has been Dean
of The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. As Dean he led the efforts
to establish The Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility, The Biomedical
Engineering Department, The Center for Pervasive Communications and
Computing, The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology, supported the establishment of The National Fuel Cell Research
Center and initiated The Arts, Computing and Engineering Program. In
addition, he is the Principal Investigator of the University of California
Irvine Mathematics Engineering Science Achievement Program (MESA)
and Co-PI of The National Science Foundation UC Systemwide California
Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP). His research contributions over
time include the first contributions in the interaction of electromagnetic
waves with active surfaces and particles in the early 1970s. He was the
first to define and publish on Active and Passive Magnetic Walls (PBG
and EBG structures) and their realization with artificial periodic structures
and specifically arrays of antennas terminated at variable load impedances.
He demonstrated how such surfaces can be used for beam scanning, and
radar cross section elimination or enhancement. Subsequently he focused on
Jesus A. Castaneda received the B.S. degree in physics from Saint Mary’s Col- developing, with his students, a single full wave theory for the simultaneous
lege, Moraga, CA, in 1970, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D.E.E. degrees from the design of microstrip circuits and printed antennas, thus taking into account
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles all wave phenomena and mutual interactions. This work also led to the
(UCLA), in 1978, 1981, and 1988, respectively. study of substrate-superstrate effects and anisotropic and gyrotropic substrate
From 1978 to 1985, he was with the Antenna Department, Radar Systems materials. This body of research contributed significant progress in the use
Group, Hughes Aircraft Company, working in the area of microwave antenna of the MoMs for the development of useful design algorithms for microstrip
design and analysis, including electronically scanned antenna arrays. Other antennas and circuits. More recently, he and his students focused in the
work areas included planar arrays, frequency selective surfaces, radomes, development of percolation theory and its applications in materials and
and adaptive arrays. From 1986 to 1997, he was with Phraxos Research and wave propagation in complex media, as well as the design of artificial
Development, Inc. as Senior Research Engineer and Engineering Manager materials. Presently, he is working on the integration of the above mentioned
with responsibility for the technical management of projects in the area of experience in the research of electromagnetically metamorphic objects and
electromagnetic modeling for microwave and millimeter wave applications. interfaces. He has more than 250 publications and lectures on a variety
From 1995 to 2000, he was a Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering of subjects including a popular lecture on “The Genesis and Destruction
and Applied Science, UCLA. Since 2000, he has been with Broadcom of The First Research University; The Library/Museum of Alexandria.”
Corporation, Irvine, CA, as a Senior Principal Scientist working in the Dr. Alexopoulos was the corecipient (with his students) of the Schelkunoff
areas of antennas for wireless systems and on-chip passives design. Award in 1985 and 1998.
2008 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—In this paper, a new class of antenna arrays are in- parameter. Planar fractal array configurations, based on Sier-
troduced, which we call fractile arrays. A fractile array is defined pinski carpets, were also considered in [2], [3], [5], [9]. The
as any array with a fractal boundary contour that tiles the plane fact that Sierpinski carpet and related arrays can be generated
without gaps or overlaps. It will be shown that the unique geo-
metrical features of fractiles may be exploited in order to make
recursively (i.e., via successive stages of growth starting with a
available a family of deterministic arrays that offer several highly simple generating array) has been exploited in order to develop
desirable performance advantages over their conventional peri- rapid algorithms for use in efficient radiation pattern computa-
odic planar array counterparts. Most notably, fractile arrays have tions and adaptive beamforming, especially for arrays with mul-
no grating lobes even when the minimum spacing between ele- tiple stages of growth that contain a relatively large number of
ments is increased to at least one-wavelength. This has led to the
elements [2], [3], [5]. The Cantor linear and Sierpinski carpet
development of a new design methodology for modular broadband
low-sidelobe arrays that is based on fractal tilings. Several exam- planar fractal arrays have also been shown to be examples of
ples of fractile arrays will be considered including Peano–Gosper, deterministically thinned arrays [2], [3], [5].
terdragon, 6-terdragon, and fudgeflake arrays. Efficient iterative More recently, a new type of deterministic fractal array was
procedures for calculating the radiation patterns of these fractile introduced in [10]–[12] that is based on the Peano–Gosper
arrays to arbitrary stage of growth are also introduced in this family of space-filling curves. The elements of the array are
paper.
uniformly distributed along a Peano–Gosper curve, which
Index Terms—Fractal antennas, fractal arrays, broad-band leads to a planar array configuration with parallelogram cells
arrays, grating lobes, low-sidelobe arrays. that is bounded by a closed Koch-type fractal curve. These
unique properties were exploited in [10]–[12] to develop a
design methodology for deterministic arrays that have no
grating lobes even when the minimum spacing between ele-
I. INTRODUCTION ments is increased to at least one wavelength. Hence, these
Peano–Gosper arrays are relatively broadband when compared
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. First three stages in the construction of a terdragon curve. The initiator
is shown in (a) as a dashed line superimposed on the stage 1 generator. The
generator (unscaled) is shown again in (b) as the dashed curve superimposed on
the stage 2 terdragon curve. The stage 3 terdragon curve is shown in (c).
Fig. 3. Element locations and associated current distributions for the (a) stage 1, (b) stage 3, and (c) stage 6 terdragon fractile arrays. The spacing d between
consecutive array elements uniformly distributed along the terdragon curve is assumed to be the same for each stage.
Fig. 6. 6-terdragon fractile arrays for (a) stage 4 and (b) stage 6.
Fig. 5. Element locations and associated current distributions for the (a) stage
1, (b) stage 2 and (c) stage 3 6-terdragon fractile arrays. The spacing d
between consecutive array elements uniformly distributed along the 6-terdragon
curve is assumed to be the same for each stage.
(1)
where
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8) Fig. 7. The first three stages in the construction of a fudgeflake fractile.
The initiator is shown in (a) as the dashed curve superimposed on the stage 1
(9) generator. The generator (unscaled) is shown again in (b) as the dashed curve
superimposed on the stage 2 fudgeflake. The stage 3 fudgeflake curve is shown
in (c).
(10)
(12)
(11) (13)
2012 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 8. Element locations and associated current distributions for the (a) stage 1, (b) stage 3, and (c) stage 5 fudgeflake fractile arrays. The spacing d between
consecutive array elements uniformly distributed along the fudgeflake curve is assumed to be the same for each stage.
Note that the parameter represents the scale factor used to where represents the empty set. Note that if then
generate the terdragon fractile arrays shown in Fig. 3. The values for the corresponding values of and . The values of
of required in (8) are found from and for – required to evaluate (9) and (10) are
listed in Table I.
Fig. 10. Plot of the normalized stage 6 terdragon fractile array factor versus Fig. 12. Plot of the normalized array factor versus with ' = 90 for a
for ' = 90 . The dashed curve represents the case where d = =2 and the 2
uniformly excited 18 18 periodic square array. The dashed curve represents
solid curve represents the case where d = . the case where d = =2 and the solid curve represents the case where
d = .
shown in Fig. 3, arranged in the plane around the point at
the origin. Therefore, we introduce the terminology 6-terdragon where the matrices and are defined in (2) and (6),
array to denote a fractile array generated from the curve shown respectively.
in Fig. 4. The first three stages (i.e., , and )
in the construction of a 6-terdragon fractile array are shown in D. The Fudgeflake Fractile Array
Fig. 5. Also indicated in Fig. 5 are the locations of the elements
In this section, another type of fractile, known as the fudge-
and their corresponding values of current amplitude excitation.
The minimum spacing between array elements is held fixed at a flake, is investigated for its potential utility in the design of
value of for each stage of growth. Fig. 6 shows the geom- broadband low-sidelobe antenna arrays. The first three stages in
etry for a stage 4 and a stage 6 6-terdragon fractile array. This the construction of a fudgeflake fractile are illustrated in Fig. 7
figure also clearly illustrates how these arrays can be considered [14]. The initiator appears as the dashed curve (i.e., the triangle)
as being composed of six associated terdragon subarrays tiled in Fig. 7(a) superimposed on the stage 1 generator. This gener-
together around a common central point. The array factor for a ator is shown again in Fig. 7(b) as the dashed curve superim-
stage 6-terdragon fractile array may be expressed in terms of posed on the stage 2 fudgeflake, while Fig. 7(c) shows the stage
the product of matrices which are premultiplied by a 3 fudgeflake with the associated generator from stage 2 super-
vector and postmultiplied by a vector such that imposed. The geometry and current distributions for a stage 1,
stage 3, and stage 5 fudgeflake fractile array located in the
(15)
plane are depicted in Fig. 8. Finally, an example is presented in
(16) Fig. 9 that illustrates how a fudgeflake fractile array can be di-
(17) vided into three self-similar subarray apertures.
2014 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE II
MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR SEVERAL DIFFERENT TERDRAGON FRACTILE ARRAYS
TABLE III
COMPARISON OF MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR A STAGE 6 TERDRAGON FRACTILE ARRAY WITH 308 ELEMENTS AND AN 18 2 18 SQUARE ARRAY OF
COMPARABLE SIZE WITH 324 ELEMENTS
The array factor for a stage fudgeflake fractile array may III. RESULTS
be expressed as Fig. 10 contains a plot of the normalized array factor (in deci-
bels) versus with for the stage 6 terdragon fractile
(18) array shown in Fig. 3(c). The dashed curve represents the ra-
diation pattern slice for a terdragon fractile array with element
spacings of while the solid curve represents the
where the matrices and have been defined in (2) and (6), corresponding radiation pattern slice for the same array with
respectively, and . Fig. 11 shows a plot of the normalized array factor
for the case where , and .
(19) This plot demonstrates that there are no grating lobes present
anywhere in the azimuthal plane of the terdragon fractile array,
(20) even with elements spaced one-wavelength apart. For compar-
ison purposes, we consider a uniformly excited periodic 18 18
square array of comparable size to the stage 6 terdragon fractile
Finally, we point out that the self-similar and associated itera- array, which contains a total of 308 elements. Plots of the nor-
tive properties of fractile arrays could be exploited to develop malized array factor for the 18 18 periodic square array are
fast algorithms for calculating their driving point impedances. shown in Fig. 12 for element spacings of
This could be accomplished by following a similar procedure to (dashed curve) and (solid curve). A grating lobe
that introduced in [5] and [16] for the more conventional Cantor is clearly visible for the case in which the elements are periodi-
linear and Sierpinski carpet planar fractal arrays. cally spaced one wavelength apart.
WERNER et al.: FRACTILE ARRAYS: A NEW CLASS OF TILED ARRAYS WITH FRACTAL BOUNDARIES 2015
Fig. 13. Plots of the normalized array factor versus for ' = 0 with
mainbeam steered to = 45 and ' = 0 . The solid curve represents the
radiation pattern of a stage 6 terdragon fractile array with d = =2 and the Fig. 15. Plot of the normalized stage 5 fudgeflake fractile array factor versus
dashed curve represents the radiation pattern of a uniformly excited 18 182 for ' = 90 . The dashed curve represents the case where d = =2 and
square array with d = d = =2. Note that terdragon arrays are examples the solid curve represents the case where d = .
of almost uniformly excited arrays.
(22)
(23)
TABLE IV
MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR SEVERAL DIFFERENT 6-TERDRAGON FRACTILE ARRAYS
array may be attributed to the appearance of grating lobes in cited 15 15 planar square array for three different values of
the radiation pattern. element spacings.
Next, we consider the case where the mainbeam of the ter- Finally, the last example to be considered will be the stage
dragon fractile array is steered in the direction corresponding to 5 fudgeflake fractile array illustrated in Fig. 8(c). A plot of
and . In order to accomplish this, the element the normalized array factor for this array is shown in Fig. 15,
phases for the terdragon fractile array are chosen according to where the dashed curve and solid curve represent the cases
where and , respectively. Table VI
(24) lists the values of maximum directivity for several fudgeflake
fractile arrays with different minimum element spacings and
stages of growth , while Table VII provides a comparison
Fig. 13 shows normalized array factor plots with the mainbeam
between the maximum directivity of a stage 5 fudgeflake
steered to and , where the solid curve re-
fractile array and a uniformly excited 18 18 planar square
sults from a stage 6 terdragon fractile array and the dashed curve
array for element spacings of , and . Therefore,
results from a conventional uniformly excited 18 18 square
this example provides yet another illustration of the unique
array. The minimum spacing between elements for both arrays
feature characteristic of fractile arrays; namely, the fact that
is assumed to be a half-wavelength. This comparison demon-
they possess very low sidelobes and no grating lobes will
strates that the terdragon fractile array is superior to the 18 18
appear in the radiation patterns when the minimum spacing is
square array in terms of its overall sidelobe characteristics.
changed from a half-wavelength to at least a full-wavelength.
At this point the radiation characteristics of the 6-terdragon
It is also interesting to note that terdragon, 6-terdragon, and
fractile array illustrated in Fig. 6(a) will be investigated. A plot
fudgeflake fractile arrays are all deterministic examples of
of the normalizad array factor as a function of for the stage 4
almost uniformly excited arrays [17].
6-terdragon fractile array is shown in Fig. 14 for . The
dashed curve represents the case where , whereas
IV. CONCLUSION
the solid curve represents the case where . Again,
we see from Fig. 14 that there are no grating lobes present for A new class of antenna arrays, which we call fractile arrays,
this array when the minimum spacing between elements is as has been introduced in this paper. These fractile arrays are
much as one-wavelength. The values of maximum directivity characterized by having a fractal boundary contour that tiles
for several 6-terdragon fractile arrays with different minimum the plane without gaps or overlaps. The unique geometrical
element spacings and stages of growth are listed in Table IV. properties of fractiles have been exploited in order to develop
Table V provides a comparison between the maximum direc- a deterministic design methodology for modular broadband
tivity of a stage 4 6-terdragon fractile array and a uniformly ex- low-sidelobe arrays. The radiation properties of several different
WERNER et al.: FRACTILE ARRAYS: A NEW CLASS OF TILED ARRAYS WITH FRACTAL BOUNDARIES 2017
TABLE V
COMPARISON OF MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR A STAGE 4 6-TERDRAGON FRACTILE ARRAY WITH 211 ELEMENTS AND A 15 2 15 SQUARE ARRAY OF
COMPARABLE SIZE WITH 225 ELEMENTS
TABLE VI
MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR SEVERAL DIFFERENT FUDGEFLAKE FRACTILE ARRAYS
TABLE VII
COMPARISON OF MAXIMUM DIRECTIVITY FOR A STAGE 5 FUDGEFLAKE FRACTILE ARRAY WITH 292 ELEMENTS AND AN 18 2 18 SQUARE ARRAY
WITH 324 ELEMENTS
[3] D. H. Werner and R. Mittra, Eds., Frontiers in Electromagnetics. Pis- Douglas H. Werner (S’81–M’89–SM’94) received
cataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000. the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-
[4] J. P. Gianvittorio and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Fractal antennas: A novel gineering and the M.A. degree in mathematics from
antenna miniaturization technique, and applications,” IEEE Antennas The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State),
Propagat. Mag., vol. 44, pp. 20–36, Feb. 2002. University Park, in 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1986,
[5] D. H. Werner and S. Ganguly, “An overview of fractal antenna engi- respectively.
neering research,” IEEE Antennas Propagat. Mag., vol. 45, pp. 38–57, He is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Penn State. He is a member of
Feb. 2003.
the Communications and Space Sciences Lab (CSSL)
[6] Y. Kim and D. L. Jaggard, “The fractal random array,” Proc. IEEE, vol.
and is affiliated with the Electromagnetic Communi-
74, no. 9, pp. 1278–1280, 1986. cation Research Lab. He is also a Senior Research
[7] C. P. Baliarda and R. Pous, “Fractal design of multiband and low side- Associate in the Electromagnetics and Environmental Effects Department of
lobe arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 44, pp. 730–739, the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State. He is a former Associate Editor
May 1996. of Radio Science. He has published numerous technical papers and proceedings
[8] D. L. Jaggard and A. D. Jaggard, “Cantor ring arrays,” Microwave and articles and is the author of nine book chapters. He is an Editor of Frontiers
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 19, pp. 121–125, 1998. in Electromagnetics (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000). He also contributed
[9] D. H. Werner, K. C. Anushko, and P. L. Werner, “The generation of sum a chapter for Electromagnetic Optimization by Genetic Algorithms (New York:
and difference patterns using fractal subarrays,” Microwave and Opt. Wiley Interscience, 1999). His research interests include theoretical and com-
Technol. Lett., vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 54–57, July 1999. putational electromagnetics with applications to antenna theory and design, mi-
[10] D. H. Werner, W. Kuhirun, and P. L. Werner, “The Peano–Gosper fractal crowaves, wireless and personal communication systems, electromagnetic wave
array,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 51, pp. 2063–2072, Aug. interactions with complex media, meta-materials, fractal and knot electrody-
2003. namics, and genetic algorithms.
[11] , “A new class of modular broadband arrays based on gosper islands Dr. Werner is a Member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Inter-
national Scientific Radio Union (URSI) Commissions B and G, the Applied
and associated Peano–Gosper curves,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Antennas and
Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi,
Propagation Symp. and URSI North American Radio Science Meeting,
and Sigma Xi. He received the 1993 Applied Computational Electromagnetics
vol. 4, Columbus, OH, June 22–27, 2003, pp. 250–253. Society (ACES) Best Paper Award and a 1993 URSI Young Scientist Award.
[12] , “A new design methodology for modular broadband arrays based In 1994, he received the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Lab-
on fractal tilings,” in Proc. IEEE Topical Conf. Wireless Communication oratory Outstanding Publication Award. He received a College of Engineering
Technology, Honolulu, HI, Oct. 15–17, 2003. PSES Outstanding Research Award and Outstanding Teaching Award in March
[13] B. B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: 2000 and March 2002, respectively. He recently received an IEEE Central Penn-
Freeman, 1983. sylvania Section Millennium Medal. He has also received several Letters of
[14] G. A. Edgar, Measure, Topology, and Fractal Geometry. New York: Commendation from Penn State’s Department of Electrical Engineering for
Springer-Verlag, 1990. outstanding teaching and research. He is an Editor of IEEE ANTENNAS AND
[15] B. Grunbaum and G. C. Shephard, Tilings and Patterns. New York: W. PROPAGATION MAGAZINE.
H. Freeman and Company, 1987.
[16] D. H. Werner, D. Baldacci, and P. L. Werner, “An efficient recursive pro-
cedure for evaluating the impedance matrix of linear and planar fractal Waroth Kuhirun received the B. Eng. degree from Chulalongkorn University,
arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 52, pp. 380–387, Feb. Thailand, in 1994 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
2004. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in 1998 and 2003, respectively.
[17] P. Lopez, J. A. Rodríguez, F. Ares, and E. Moreno, “Low sidelobe level From 1994 to 1995, he worked at Kasetsart University, Thailand. His research
in almost uniformly excited array,” Inst. Elect. Eng. Electron. Lett., vol. interest is in the area of fractal and fractile antenna arrays.
36, no. 24, pp. 1991–1993, Nov. 2000. Dr. Kuhirun received a scholarship from the Thai Government for his M.S.
and Ph.D. studies.
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. CCPS structure (a) original CPS, (b) CCPS, (c) cross-sectional view at
A-A’ with fields distributions of the CCPS for different layers of metallization.
Fig. 2. Simulated performances comparison at Ka band between conventional and coupled CPS.
will be changed. This phenomenon induces a variable phase is better than 10 dB. The radial stub provides virtual short to
shift along the transmission line controlled by PET. In [6] and the bottom layer metallization, which depends on the radius of
[7], an end-fire Vivaldi antenna was used for covering a wide the radial stub. Hence, smaller radius of radial stub gives higher
bandwidth, and a transition was required to feed antennas. operating frequency with minimal insertion loss and return loss
Consequently, the system was large and bulky. deteriorations compared to the original CPS configuration.
The new printed twin dipole phased array using a mi- Performances of CCPS are simulated with IE3D and com-
crostrip-fed CPS combined with a PET phase shifter provides pared with those of conventional CPS as shown in Fig. 2. The
low-cost, low-loss, low-profile, compact-size and low-com- simulated transmission line length is about 5 mm and the con-
plexity with simple antenna feeding. ventional CPS has almost zero insertion loss with that short
length transmission line. Fig. 2 shows that the insertion loss of
II. A MICROSTRIP-FED CPS TEE JUNCTION CCPS is deteriorated by about 1 dB as compared with that of
conventional CPS for the frequency range from 29.2 GHz to 35
The twin dipole antenna is fed by a CPS. Since conventional
GHz and the return loss is better than 10 dB. Insertion loss de-
planar transmission line is microstrip line, a microstrip-to-CPS
terioration of less than 2 dB covers the wider frequency range
transition is needed to feed the dipole. A microstrip-fed CPS
from 26.4 GHz to 35 GHz. From the above results, CCPS shows
Tee junction without using bonding wires or air bridges was in-
that fields are continuous all over the transmission line with the
troduced in [8]. In [8], the operating frequency is centered near
aid of radial stub, though a discontinuity is introduced at one of
3.5 GHz with 0.7 dB insertion loss ranged from 2 to 4.15 GHz.
the CPS strips.
The Tee junction utilized novel coupled CPS (CCPS). This
The structure of microstrip-fed CPS Tee junction at 30 GHz
transmission line can have a physical discontinuity while fields
is shown in Fig. 3. The Tee junction has the characteristic
are continuous over the whole transmission line using CCPS.
impedance of 202 at each output port 1 and 2. The input
The structure of original CPS and CCPS at 30 GHz is shown
impedance to the microstrip feed at port 3 is about 101 , which
in Fig. 1(a) and (b). For the CPS, CCPS, Tee junction and
is half of 202 . Radial stubs effectively rotate the electric
antenna design, IE3D software [9], which uses the method of
fields from parallel to the normal to the substrate to have a
moments, is employed for full wave electromagnetic simulation.
good coupling to the bottom metallization, which provides the
A 31 mil RT/Duroid 5870 substrate with a dielectric constant
ground of microstrip line.
of 2.33 is used for the antenna and feeding network fabrication.
The Tee junction is simulated with IE3D to verify the per-
The width ( ) of CPS strip is 0.65 mm and gap ( ) between
formance at 30 GHz. Simulated performance of the Tee junc-
the strips is 0.5 mm, which has the characteristic impedance
tion is shown in Fig. 4. The simulated performance shows that
of 202 . This impedance is chosen to match a dipole an-
the Tee junction equally splits the power to each CPS port with
tenna input impedance which will be shown later. As shown
1.2 dB insertion loss at 30 GHz. Simulated 2 dB insertion loss
in Fig. 1(b), one of the CPS strips is discontinued and is
bandwidth of the Tee junction is from 27.2 to 34.8 GHz, and the
terminated with radial stubs with a rotation angle of 30 and
return loss is better than 20 dB. Because of high frequency oper-
a radius of 0.65 mm for coupling to the bottom layer met-
ation bandwidth restriction of the microstrip-to-CPS transition
allization. The bottom layer metallization, which is coupled
in [8], the Tee junction is not measured but simulation results
from the top layer’s radial stubs, works as a CPS strip shown
quite verifies its performances.
in Fig. 1(c). The radial stub is used to accomplish the smooth
field transition. The wideband coupling performance of radial
stubs has been reported in the microstrip-to CPS-to-microstrip III. TWIN DIPOLE ANTENNA USING MICROSTRIP-FED CPS
back-to-back transition for lower frequency operation [10]. The TEE JUNCTION
back-to-back transition has a measured 3 dB insertion loss over The structure of the twin dipole antenna is illustrated in
a frequency range from 1.3 to 13.3 GHz (1:10.2) and return loss Fig. 5. The twin dipole antenna utilizes the microstrip-fed CPS
SUH AND CHANG: A NEW MILLIMETER-WAVE PRINTED DIPOLE PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA 2021
Fig. 3. Structure of Ka-band microstrip-fed CPS Tee junction for twin dipole antenna feeding near 30 GHz.
Fig. 6. Simulated and measured return loss of the twin dipole antenna.
IV. PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA WITH MULTITRANSMISSION distributions are more recognizable [11]. It is assumed that the
LINE PET CONTROLLED PHASE SHIFTER reference point is the physical center of the array.
For the linear phased array, an array factor is a function of the
progressive phase shift and the element spacing . The array (4)
factor is given as
The total field of array is equal to the field of a single element
(1) positioned at the origin multiplied by an array factor, which is
expressed as
where (5)
(2) From (4), the maximum value of array factor is [11]. Hence
maximum achievable gain of the array can be found from (4)
where is expressed as and is beam scanning angle. and (5), which is expressed as
is the number of elements.
The progressive phase shift causes the radiation emitted from
the array to have a constant phase front that is pointing at the
angle . This beam scanning angle ( ) is also a function of (6)
and , given by
In (6), the effect of mutual coupling between elements is
excluded for the simplicity. Mutual coupling normally degrades
(3) arrayed antenna gain. Equation (6) can be used for the gain
approximation of the array. To achieve more accurate calculation
The array factor in (1) can also be expressed as (4) below in including mutual coupling effects, a full-wave electromagnetic
an alternate, compact and closed form whose function and their simulation can be used for antenna array analysis.
SUH AND CHANG: A NEW MILLIMETER-WAVE PRINTED DIPOLE PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA 2023
Fig. 8. Structure of printed dipole phased array antenna controlled by PET (a) top view and (b) side view.
TABLE I
PARAMETER VALUES OF THE TWIN DIPOLE PHASED ARRAY
TABLE II
COMPARISON AMONG ANALYTICAL, SIMULATION, AND MEASURED RESULTS OF THE 1 2 8 PHASED ARRAY
Fig. 10. Measured return loss of the printed twin dipole phased array antenna.
IE3D analysis shows that a progressive phase shift of 88.8 V. PHASED ARRAY MEASUREMENTS
gives around beam scanning with low side lobe levels. The phased array is measured in an anechoic chamber. As
An analytical scan angle can also be obtained using (3), and shown in Fig. 8, the antenna is arrayed for the -plane beam
maximally achievable gain of the phased array can be obtained scanning. To accomplish bidirectional beam scanning, two tri-
from (6). The maximum spacing ( ) between elements to avoid angular perturbers are used side by side [12]. PET actuation for
grating lobes is expressed as the dielectric perturber is configured as 0 V for no perturbation
(no PET deflection) and 50 V for full perturbation (full PET de-
(10) flection). The measured twin dipole phased array antenna gain
without perturbation (0 V for PET) is about 14.4 dBi with a 3 dB
From analytical equations in (3), (6) and (10) and the parameters beam width of 6 as shown in Fig. 11. The fully perturbed an-
in Table I, the calculated , maximally achievable gain, and tenna with a dielectric perturber controlled by PET shows about
maximum spacing are calculated to be 19.47 , 16.73 dBi, and 42 ( ) beam scanning with the gain of 12.2 dBi.
7.5 mm, respectively. The results agree very well with IE3D Side lobe levels of the steered beam are more than 11 dB down
simulation as given in Table II. compared with main beam. The gains of steered beams are about
Measured return loss of the 1 8 twin dipole array is 2.2 dB down due to the insertion loss incurred by dielectric per-
plotted in Fig. 10. The measured return loss is about 41.9 dB at turbation. The beam can be dynamically steered depending on
30.3 GHz for the unperturbed twin dipole phased array antenna. the voltages applied to PET because the amount of phase shift
With perturbation by the dielectric perturber, the return loss is changes according to the applied voltages on PET as shown in
about 31.8 dB at 30.7 GHz, which shows a 0.4 GHz frequency Fig. 9.
shift compared with the unperturbed result. For a bandwidth The comparison among analytical, simulation, and measured
from 30 to 31.5 GHz, a measured return loss is better than results of the phased array are exhibited in Table II. Beam scan-
15 dB. ning angle is following closely among analytical, IE3D simula-
SUH AND CHANG: A NEW MILLIMETER-WAVE PRINTED DIPOLE PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA 2025
Fig. 11. Measured H-plane radiation pattern for twin dipole phased array antenna at 30 GHz. Measured beam scanning is from 020 to +22 with full
perturbation.
tion, and measured results. Measured unperturbed gain is about [5] K. L. Deng, C. C. Meng, S. S. Lu, H. D. Lee, and H. Wang, “A fully
2.3 dB lower than analytical or IE3D simulated data. This is due monolithic twin dipole antenna mixer on a GaAs substrate,” in Proc.
Asia Pacific Microwave Conf. Dig., Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2000, pp.
to the insertion loss of power divider and the mutual coupling ef- 54–57.
fects among elements, which normally degrades antenna gain. [6] T. Y. Yun and K. Chang, “A phased-array antenna using a multi-line
The measured gains of steered beams are about 2.2 dB down phase shifter controlled by a piezoelectric transducer,” in IEEE Int. Mi-
crowave Symp. Dig., vol. 2, Boston, MA, 2000, pp. 831–833.
compared to that of unperturbed beam due to the insertion loss [7] , “A low-cost 8 to 26.5 GHz phased array antenna using a piezoelec-
incurred by dielectric perturbation. tric transducer controlled phase shifter,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop-
agat., vol. 49, pp. 1290–1298, Sept. 2001.
[8] Y. H. Suh and K. Chang, “A microsatrip fed coplanar stripline Tee junc-
VI. CONCLUSION tion using coupled coplanar stripline,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Microwave
Symp. Dig., vol. 2, Phoenix, AZ, 2001, pp. 611–614.
A new printed twin dipole phased array antenna is developed [9] IE3D, 8.1 ed., Zeland Software Inc., 2001.
at 30 GHz using a multitransmission line tunable phase shifter [10] Y. H. Suh and K. Chang, “A wideband coplanar stripline to microstrip
controlled by a PET. The new twin dipole antenna is designed transition,” IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Lett., vol. 11,
pp. 28–29, Jan. 2001.
using a microstrip-fed CPS Tee junction. To construct the [11] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory Analysis and Design, 2nd ed. New
Tee junction, CCPS is used to have a physical discontinuity York: Wiley.
at CPS while fields are continuous all over the transmission [12] T. Y. Yun, C. Wang, P. Zepeda, C. T. Rodenbeck, M. R. Coutant, M. Y.
line. The Tee junction effectively splits power to each CPS Li, and K. Chang, “A 10- to 21-GHz, low-cost, multifrequency, and full-
duplex phased-array antenna system,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
output port with low insertion loss. The PET actuated phase vol. 50, pp. 641–650, May 2002.
shifter requires only one (one-directional beam scanning) or
two (bi-directional beam scanning) applied voltages to produce
the progressive phase shift. A PET controlled phase shifter is
tested and optimized for the proper phase shift with minimal
insertion loss. The twin dipole phased array antenna shows a
42 ( ) beam scanning with more than 11 dB
side lobe suppression across the scan. The phased array should Young-Ho Suh (S’01–M’02) received the B.S degree
in electrical and control engineering from Hong-Ik
find many applications in wireless communications and radar University, Seoul, Korea, in 1992, and the M.S and
systems. Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Texas
A&M University, College Station, TX, in 1998, and
2002, respectively.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT From 1992 to 1996, he worked for LG-Honeywell
The authors would like to thank C. Wang of Texas A&M Uni- Co. Ltd., Seoul, Korea, as a Research Engineer.
From 1996 to 1998, he worked on developing robust
versity for technical assistance. wireless communication systems for GSM receiver
under multipath fading channel for his M.S degree.
REFERENCES From 1998 to 2002, he was a Research Assistant in the Electromagnetics and
Microwave Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M
[1] A. Nesic, S. Jovanovic, and V. Brankovic, “Design of printed dipoles University, College Station, TX, where he was involved in rectenna design
near the third resonance,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Antennas and Propagation for wireless power transmissions, phased array antennas, and coplanar trans-
Symp. Dig., vol. 2, Atlanta, GA, 1998, pp. 928–931. mission line circuit components development. In May 2002, he joined Mimix
[2] M. Scott, “A printed dipole for wide-scanning array application,” in Broadband Inc., Houston, TX, as a Senior Microwave Design Engineer, where
Proc. IEEE 11th Int. Conf. Antennas and Propagation, vol. 1, 2001, pp. he is working on state-of-the-art microwave/millimeter-wave active circuit
37–40. designs including low noise/power amplifiers, receivers, transmitters, and trans-
[3] G. A. Evtioushkine, J. W. Kim, and K. S. Han, “Very wideband printed ceiver modules for LMDS, point-to-point, point-to-multipoint radio systems
dipole antenna array,” Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 24, pp. 2292–2293, in Ka band using GaAs MMICs. His research area includes state-of-the-art
Nov. 1998. millimeter-wave transceiver modules, transitions between dissimilar transmis-
[4] L. Zhu and K. Wu, “Model-based characterization of CPS-fed printed sion lines, uniplanar transmission line analysis and components development,
dipole for innovative design of uniplanar integrated antenna,” IEEE Mi- microwave power transmission, antennas for wireless communications, and
crowave and Guided Wave Lett., vol. 9, pp. 342–344, Sept. 1999. phased array antennas.
2026 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—The dissipated power and the directivity of antennas and the power gain of antennas are defined and studied for the
in a homogeneous, lossy medium are systematically analyzed in this simplified geometry where the antenna is enclosed in a loss-
paper. The antennas are ideal and located inside a lossless sphere.
less sphere. The optimal values of these three quantities are the
In the lossy space outside the sphere, the electromagnetic fields are
expanded in a complete set of vector wave functions. The radia- main results in this paper. The optimal value of the directivity is
tion efficiency, the directivity, and the power gain are defined for shown to be related to the maximum number of ports, or chan-
antennas in a lossy medium, and the optimal values of these quan- nels, of the antenna, a result that holds also in a lossless medium.
tities are derived. Simple relations between the maximal number of
It is emphasized that in a lossy medium the magnetic dipole is
ports, or channels, an antenna can use and the optimal directivity
and gain of the antenna are presented. the most radiation efficient antenna, a well known and impor-
tant result, cf. [11].
Index Terms—Antenna theory, lossy systems.
II. PRELIMINARIES
I. INTRODUCTION
The antennas are confined in a spherical, lossless region,
Manuscript received May 9, 2003; revised August 6, 2003. This work was
supported by the Competence Center for Circuit Design at Lund University.
The author is with the Department of Electroscience, Lund Institute of Tech-
nology, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden (e-mail: anders.karlsson@es.lth.se). (3.2)
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832335
where . Here, is the index for the two C. The Power Flow
different wave types (TE and TM), for waves that are The complex power radiated from an antenna is given
even with respect to the azimuthal angle and for the by
waves that are odd with respect to is the index
for the polar direction, and is the index for the
(3.3)
azimuthal angle. For only the partial waves with
are nonzero, cf., (A.2). The expansion in (3.1) covers all possible
types of time harmonic sources inside . where is the surface is the radial unit vector,
and is the complex conjugate of the magnetic field. The
complex power is decomposed as
A. Classification
(3.9)
The asymptotic values in (3.8) and (3.9) are valid for all of the
antennas in Section III-A. The values are illustrated in Fig. 1.
In the rest of the pape,r only active power will be considered
and for this reason the term power is understood to mean active
power.
(3.10)
Fig. 1. Argument of the impedance, arg(Z ) of magnetic multipole antennas
of order l = 1 (lower dashed line), 2 (middle dashed), and 3 (upper dashed)
The far-field amplitude of a combined antenna of order is and for the electric multipole antennas of order l = 1 (upper solid line), 2
given by the asymptotic values of the spherical Hankel func- (middle solid), and 3 (lower solid). The frequency is 400 MHz, " = 50, and
= 1 S/m, corresponding to an argument of the wave impedance arg( ) =
tions, cf., (A.6)
!
0:37 rad. The asymptotic values in (3.8) and (3.9) are reached when a
1
0 and
, respectively.
(3.12)
2030 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(3.16)
(3.18)
is adopted. This definition is in concordance with the power Fig. 2. Radiation efficiency, , of six different multipole antennas. The
gain of antennas in lossless media, also referred to as the dashed curves are for the magnetic antennas and the solid curves are for electric
antennas. The curves are for l = 1 (upper), l = 2 (middle), and l = 3 (lower).
maximum value of the gain, cf. [2]. The notations and These curves emphasize that the magnetic dipole is the most radiation efficient
are below used for the power gains of magnetic and electric antenna. When a = 5 mm the magnetic dipole is approximately 10 dB more
antennas, respectively. efficient than the electric dipole. The frequency is 400 MHz, " = 50, and
= 1 S/m.
(3.17)
KARLSSON: PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS OF ANTENNAS IN A LOSSY MEDIUM 2031
Fig. 3. Power gain G of three magnetic and three electric antennas. The
dashed curves are for the magnetic antennas and the solid curves for the electric
antennas. The curves are for l = 1 (lower), l = 2 (middle), and l =
(4.3) 3 (upper). The frequency is 400 MHz, " = 50, and = 1 S/m.
APPENDIX A (B.1)
VECTOR WAVES
The definition of spherical vector waves can be found in dif- where are given real numbers and are given positive real
ferent textbooks, e.g., [6] and [8]. In this paper they are defined numbers. This function has a maximum when all of its first order
using vector spherical harmonics, cf. [1] derivatives with respect to are zero. That leads
to the following relations for the variables
(B.2)
(A.1)
(B.3)
The following definition of the spherical harmonics is used:
Now consider electric antennas and magnetic antennas of order
and let and denote the corresponding directivities.
Without loss of generality the maximum power flow density is
assumed to be in some direction given by the spherical angles
(A.2)
and , and in that direction the polarization of the corre-
where and take the values sponding wave is assumed to be parallel to some unit vector .
The optimal value of the directivity is independent of the angles
and , and of the vector , due to the invariance under ro-
(A.3) tation described in Section III-B. If , then
and are identified as the real quantities
In the current application the index will never take the value
0, since there are no monopole antennas. The vector spherical
harmonics constitute an orthogonal set of vector function on the (B.4)
unit sphere
According to (B.2), the optimal directivity is obtained when
(A.4)
(B.5)
where the integration is over the unit sphere and where
The optimal value of the directivity is given by (B.3)
. The outgoing divergence-free spherical vector
waves are defined by (A.5), show at the bottom of the page,
where is the spherical Hankel function of (B.6)
the second kind. The asymptotic behavior in the far-zone and
the limiting values in the near-zone of the spherical Hankel
Next, is expressed in terms of and as
functions are
. Since is independent of one may integrate
(B.6) in from 0 to . The result is
(B.7)
(A.6)
(A.5)
KARLSSON: PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS OF ANTENNAS IN A LOSSY MEDIUM 2033
where . Furthermore, is also independent of [4] L. J. Chu, “Physical limitations of omni-directional antennas,” Appl.
and , and the relation above can be integrated over the unit Phys., vol. 19, pp. 1163–1175, 1948.
[5] R. E. Collin, “Minimum Q of small antennas,” J. Elect. Waves Applicat.,
sphere. The orthonormality of the vector spherical harmonics, vol. 12, pp. 1369–1393, 1998.
(A.4), results in [6] J. E. Hansen, Ed., Spherical Near-Field Antenna Measurements. ser.
Number 26 in IEE electromagnetic waves series, Stevenage, U.K.: Pere-
grinus, 1988, ISBN: 0-86 341-110-X.
(B.8) [7] R. C. Hansen, “Fundamental limitations in antennas,” Proc. IEEE, vol.
69, no. 2, pp. 170–182, 1981.
This is in accordance with the result in [8]. [8] R. F. Harrington, Time Harmonic Electromagnetic Fields. New York:
Notice that that (B.5) and (B.6) can be generalized. Assume McGraw-Hill, 1961.
a general antenna consisting of independent partial wave [9] R. W. P. King and G. S. Smith, Antennas in Matter, Cambridge, London,
U.K.: MIT Press, 1981.
antennas that are to be fed so that the directivity function [10] J. D. Kraus, Antennas, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988.
, cf. [10], is optimized in a prescribed direction and [11] H. A. Wheeler, “Fundamental limitations of a small vlf antenna for sub-
with a prescribed polarization of the radiated wave. Then a marines,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 6, pp. 123–125, 1958.
[12] , “Small antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 23, no.
slight modification of (B.5) and (B.6) gives the amplitudes of 4, pp. 462–469, 1975.
the antennas and the value of the optimal directivity function.
It also follows that the mean value of the optimal directivity
function, with respect to and , is . Hence, the optimal
value of the directivity is always greater than or equal to . Anders Karlsson was born in 1955, Gothenburg,
Sweden. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees
from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothen-
REFERENCES burg, Sweden, in 1979 and 1984, respectively.
[1] G. Arfken, Mathematical Methods for Physicists, 3rd ed. Orlando, FL: Since 2000, he has been a Professor at the De-
Academic Press, 1985. partment of Electroscience, Lund University, Lund,
[2] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1997. Sweden. His research acivities comprehend scat-
[3] A. Boström, G. Kristensson, and S. Ström, “Transformation properties tering and propagation of waves, inverse problems,
of plane, spherical and cylindrical scalar and vector wave functions,” and time-domain methods. Currently, he is involved
in Field Representations and Introduction to Scattering, V. V. Varadan, in projects concerning propagation of light in blood,
A. Lakhtakia, and V. K. Varadan, Eds, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science wireless communication with implants, and design
Publishers, 1991, ch. 4, pp. 165–210. of passive components on silicon.
2034 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—This paper introduces a new mutual coupling com- for arrays with strong mutual coupling, the phase front is sig-
pensation method based on the minimum norm solution to an un- nificantly corrupted and the DOA estimate is inaccurate. Any
derdetermined system of equations. The crucial advantage over practical implementation of DOA estimation therefore requires
previous techniques is that the formulation is valid independent
of the type of antenna element and provides good results in situa- compensation for mutual coupling.
tions where signal strengths vary considerably. In using the matrix Research into compensating for the mutual coupling has been
pencil algorithm to estimate the directions of arrival, the examples based mainly on the idea of using open circuit voltages, first
show that the proposed method results in significantly lower bias proposed by Gupta and Ksienski [5]. The authors argue that due
than the traditional open circuit method. The analysis of mutual to the lack of a terminal current, the open circuit voltages are free
coupling is also applied in the context of a Code Division Multiple
Access communication system. of mutual coupling. However, as shown in [7], this only reduces
the effects of mutual coupling. The technique presented there is
Index Terms—Code division multiaccess, direction of arrival es- more effective in suppressing mutual coupling effects [7], [8].
timation, matrix pencil, MUSIC, mutual coupling compensation.
A big drawback with the approaches of [5] and [7], is that
they are valid for only linear dipoles. The work of [5] is
I. INTRODUCTION valid only for a linear array of half wavelength dipoles spaced
apart by half a wavelength. The work of [7] is restricted to
D IRECTION of arrival (DOA) estimation is an important
feature of smart antenna arrays. It could serve as a fun-
damental building block for applications such as space divi-
linear arrays of linear dipoles, though of arbitrary length and
spacing. In this paper we introduce the use of a minimum norm
sion multiple access (SDMA) and Enhanced 911 (E911), the technique, based on the technique in [7], for general arrays with
proposed wireless emergency service [1]. Several algorithms arbitrary elements. As an aside we also extend the open circuit
have been proposed for DOA estimation, including the popular technique of [5] to arbitrary arrays. The method of moments
MUSIC-type techniques, ESPRIT [1] and matrix pencil (MP) (MoM) is used to accurately model the interactions between
[2]–[4]. These signal processing algorithms have been shown antenna elements. In the minimum norm approach, the MoM
to provide accurate estimates, even in moderate signal to noise admittance matrix is used to estimate the incident fields, with
(SNR) conditions. minimum energy, that would generate the received voltages.
The problem is that these signal processing algorithms gen- Unlike in [9], this technique does not require the solution to
erally ignore the electromagnetic behavior of the receiving an- the entire MoM problem. The compensation matrix depends
tenna. The receiver is assumed to be an ideal, equispaced, linear only on the MoM admittance matrix and can be calculated
array of isotropic point sensors. In this case, the array sam- a priori to reduce computation load.
ples, but does not reradiate the incident signals. Each signal In this paper, we use the MP [2] and the popular MUSIC [1],
can be associated with a linear phase front, the slope of which [10] DOA estimation algorithms to compare various compensa-
is directly related to the DOA. Most signal processing tech- tion methods. Section II presents the model for mutual coupling
niques rely heavily on this assumption. In practice, this ideal using antenna analysis based on the MoM. This eventually leads
situation cannot be met. The elements of the array must be of to the formulation of minimum norm mutual coupling compen-
some nonzero size. The elements sample and reradiate the inci- sation method. Section III presents examples illustrating the per-
dent fields, causing mutual coupling. Mutual coupling distorts formance of the open circuit and the minimum norm methods
the linear phase front of the incoming signal, significantly de- in case of a equispaced, linear array of dipoles. Section IV ends
grading performance [5]–[7]. Only in the case of a single in- with some conclusions and a summary of the contributions pre-
coming signal is the phase front somewhat retained. However, sented here.
Manuscript received July 23, 2002; revised September 7, 2003. This research II. MUTUAL COUPLING AND COMPENSATION
was supported by a grant from the Nortel Institute for Telecommunications, Uni-
versity of Toronto. Most DOA estimation algorithms including MP and MUSIC
C. K. E. Lau and R. S. Adve are with the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON assume an ideal, linear array of isotropic sensors. Unfortunately,
M5S 3G4, Canada (e-mail: rsadve@comm.utoronto.ca).
T. K. Sarkar is with Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244 USA. such an ideal sensor is clearly not realizable. A practical antenna
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832511 array comprises elements of some physical size. Such elements
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
LAU et al.: MINIMUM NORM MUTUAL COUPLING COMPENSATION WITH APPLICATIONS 2035
sample and reradiate incident fields that interact with other ele-
ments, i.e., the elements are mutually coupled. Mutual coupling
severely degrades the accuracy of the DOA estimator [6]. Any
implementation of DOA estimation must account for the mutual
coupling between elements.
In a practical antenna array, the received signals are the volt-
ages measured across the load at the port of each element. To
deal with mutual coupling, researchers originally proposed pro-
cessing these measured voltages to obtain the open circuit volt-
ages, the voltages if all the ports were open circuited [5], [6]. Fig. 1. Linear array of wire dipoles terminated in loads Z .
Open circuiting the ports reduces the currents on the elements,
consequently the reradiated fields and therefore the mutual cou-
entry corresponds to the port. This th entry is the load
pling. However, as shown in [7], this methodology is valid only
impedance of the corresponding element. The matrix is
when all signals have similar strengths. In [7], we use a MoM
the MoM impedance matrix. Assuming a single basis function
analysis to compensate for mutual coupling. That technique is
corresponds to the current at a port of the array, from (4), the
very effective, but is valid only for a linear array of parallel
measured voltages, affected by mutual coupling are given by
dipoles.
We present here a technique that is theoretically valid for all
kinds of arrays. Based on a minimum norm solution to an un- (7)
determined system of MoM equations, the technique makes no
assumptions regarding the type of antenna, or the spacing be- The matrix is the submatrix of corre-
tween elements. However, for simplicity, this methodology is sponding to the ports. , a compressed version of , is
presented here for a linear array of dipoles. We begin with a the diagonal matrix of port impedances. is a
brief review of the analysis technique, as the MoM analysis for matrix of dimensionless entries. Note that the entries of
dipole arrays is well known [7], [11]. The review included here are directly related to the incident fields and are free of mutual
sets the stage for the minimum norm solution. coupling.
In this paper, this general formulation is applied to a linear
A. System Model array of dipoles. It must be emphasized that this choice is not
fundamental to the theoretical development here and is made
We begin with the general formulation of the MoM based only for purposes of illustration. Consider a wire dipole antenna
on subdomain basis functions for a receiving antenna array of array of -directed elements as shown in Fig. 1. Each element
-elements. The central assumption is that only a single basis has a centrally located port terminated in impedance . To an-
function contributes to the current at the port of each element in alyze this array we use sinusoidal basis functions. Each element
the array. The incident electric field is related to the currents on is divided into segments of equal length. To satisfy the
the antenna through a linear operator [12] requirement that only a single basis function corresponds to the
current on the array is chosen to be odd. Based on a Galerkin
(1)
formulation, the weighting and testing functions are the same.
The entries for the MoM voltage and impedance matrices are
The current is approximated by a set of subdomain basis func-
available in [7], [11].
tions, , with basis functions per element, i.e.
(5) (8)
(6)
(9)
The matrix is the matrix with zero en-
tries other than the diagonal entries, where the th (10)
2036 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 2. Example 3.1. MP, using uncompensated voltages. Fig. 3. Example 3.1. MP, using open circuit voltages.
The open circuit voltages are then related to the short circuit
currents as
(11)
(12)
Eliminating the short circuit currents from (11) and (12) yields
the open circuit voltages
(13)
C. Minimum Norm Compensation Formulation Fig. 4. Example 3.1. MP, using minimum norm compensation.
As shown in [7], using the open circuit voltages only some-
what reduces the effects of mutual coupling. In [7], we recon- Physically, the compensation procedure may be interpreted
struct a part of the MoM voltage vector under the assumption of as finding the signal with minimum energy that results in the
a linear dipole array. The motivation comes from the fact that, measured voltages. Since the MoM analysis and so the matrix
from (5), the MoM voltages are directly related to the incident may be obtained a priori, the computation load to use (14)
fields and so are free of mutual coupling. is no greater than finding the open circuit voltages or using the
In the general case, from (7), the equation relating the mea- technique of [7]. In the following section, we compare the per-
sured and MoM voltages is underdetermined and the formance of the two compensation methods in various settings.
cannot be reconstructed exactly. However, one can find the min-
imum norm solution to this equation. This solution provides
the vector with the minimum two-norm (minimum energy) that III. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
would result in the received voltages. The resulting vector is an In this section, we present numerical examples to illustrate the
estimate of the MoM voltage vector. Using (7), the minimum workings of the two compensation techniques, the open circuit
norm solution to the MoM voltage vector is and minimum norm methods. The application here is DOA es-
timation. The first two examples deal with the DOA estimation
(14) of multiple signals and demonstrates the impact of mutual cou-
pling and compares the two compensation techniques. The third
where is the conjugate transpose (Hermitian) of matrix . example deals with the impact of mutual coupling on code di-
Entries in corresponding to the ports may be used for vision multiple access (CDMA) communications in particular,
further signal processing. and the effectiveness of mutual coupling compensation in this
LAU et al.: MINIMUM NORM MUTUAL COUPLING COMPENSATION WITH APPLICATIONS 2037
TABLE I
COMPARING OPEN CIRCUIT AND MINIMUM NORM TECHNIQUES. EQUAL SIGNAL STRENGTHS
Fig. 11. Example 3.2. MP, using open circuit voltages. Signal at 70 is 25 dB. Fig. 12. Example 3.2. MP, using minimum norm compensation. Signal at 70
is 25 dB.
TABLE II
COMPARING OPEN CIRCUIT AND MINIMUM NORM TECHNIQUES. UNEQUAL SIGNAL STRENGTHS.
[6] C.-C. Yeh, M.-L. Leou, and D. R. Ucci, “Bearing estimations with mu-
tual coupling present,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 37, pp.
1332–5, Oct. 1989.
[7] R. S. Adve and T. K. Sarkar, “Compensation for the effects of mu-
tual coupling on direct data domain algorithms,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 86–94, Jan. 2000.
[8] M. Ali and P. Wahid, “Analysis of mutual coupling effect in adaptive
array antennas,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propagation Soc. Int.
Symp., June 2002.
[9] K. M. Pasala and E. M. Friel, “Mutual coupling effects and their reduc-
tion in wideband direction of arrival estimation,” IEEE Trans. Aerospace
and Electron. Syst., vol. 30, pp. 1116–1122, Apr. 1994.
[10] R. O. Schmidt, “Multiple emitter location and signal parameter estima-
tion,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 34, pp. 276–290, Mar. 1986.
[11] B. J. Strait, T. K. Sarkar, and D. C. Kuo, “Special programs for
analysis of radiation by wire antennas,” Syracuse Univ., Tech. Rep.
AFCRL-TR-73-0399, 1973.
[12] R. F. Harrington, Field Computation by Moment Methods. Melbourne,
FL: Kreiger, 1982.
[13] C. K. E. Lau, R. S. Adve, and T. K. Sarkar, “Combined CDMA and
matrix pencil direction of arrival estimation,” in Proc. IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conf., 2002, pp. 496–499.
REFERENCES
[1] J. C. Liberti Jr and T. S. Rappaport, Smart Antennas for Wireless Com-
munications: IS-95 and Third Generation CDMA Applications. Engle- Raviraj S. Adve (S’88–M’97–SM’03) received the
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 99. B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology,
[2] Y. Hua and T. K. Sarkar, “Matrix pencil method for estimation param- Bombay, in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree from Syracuse
eters of exponentially damped/undamped sinusoids in noise,” IEEE University, Syracuse, NY, in 1996, all in electrical
Trans. Acoust. Speech and Signal Processing, vol. 38, pp. 814–24, May engineering. His dissertation, on the impact of
1990. mutual coupling on the performance of adaptive
[3] J. E. F. del Rio and T. K. Sarkar, “Comparison between the matrix pencil antenna arrays, received the Syracuse University
method and the Fourier transform for high-resolution spectral estima- “Outstanding Dissertation Award” in 1997.
tion,” Digital Signal Processing: A Review Journal, vol. 6, pp. 108–125, From 1997 to August 2000, he was a Senior
1996. Research Engineer with Research Associates for De-
[4] R. S. Adve, O. M. Pereira-Filho, T. K. Sarkar, and S. M. Rao, “Extrapo- fense Conversion (RADC) Inc., Marcy, NY, working
lation of time domain responses from three dimensional objects utilizing on contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Sensors Directorate,
the matrix pencil technique,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, Signal Processing Branch, Rome, NY. He is currently an Assistant Professor
pp. 147–156, Jan. 1997. in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
[5] I. J. Gupta and A. A. Ksienski, “Effect of mutual coupling on the per- Toronto. He has also been a consultant to Stiefvater Consultants. His research
formance of adaptive array,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 31, interests are in practical adaptive signal processing algorithms for wireless
pp. 785–91, Sept. 1983. communication and airborne radar systems.
LAU et al.: MINIMUM NORM MUTUAL COUPLING COMPENSATION WITH APPLICATIONS 2041
Fig. 2. Coverage of an overcomplete phase space grid with = 0:5 using the
Gaussian window (14) with = 0:5 ; 1; and 2 (dotted, solid, and dash-dotted
lines, respectively). Heavy dots: Grid points.
transform (WFT) frames that form the basis of the beam sum-
mation representation (Sections II-B and II-C). Using analysis
Fig. 1. Discrete phase space beam summation representation for wideband and numerical examples, we identify the relevant frame pa-
radiation from an extended aperture source.
rameters for a snug and stable representation. The UWB beam
summation representation is presented in Section III, starting
Difficulty (b) makes the conventional Gabor-based beam formu- with the formulation of the frequency independent beam lattice
lation inapplicable for UWB applications. Difficulty (a) makes (Section III-A) followed by the parameterization of the ID-GB
it inconvenient even for monochromatic fields. windows for an UWB snuggest representation and a thorough
For monochromatic applications, difficulty (a) has been cir- analysis of the algorithm (Section IV). The localization and
cumvented recently by using a frame-based beam summation frequency independence issues implied by the new formula-
representation [19], [20]. The overcomplete nature of this rep- tion are demonstrated numerically in Section V for an UWB
resentation smoothes out and localizes the dual function, ending focused aperture. It is shown that the algorithm extracts the
up with stable and local coefficients at the expense of having to local radiation properties of the aperture source and enhances
calculate more coefficients and trace more beam propagators. only those beams that conform with these properties, i.e., those
This poses a tradeoff in the choice of the oversampling ratio residing near the phase space Lagrange manifold. The pre-
versus the stability and localization of the representation. A rea- sentation concludes in Section VI with an extensive summary
sonable solution has been found at an oversampling of order 4/3 of the algorithm, the various considerations in choosing the
or larger for one dimensional (1-D) apertures. expansion parameters.
In this paper, we introduce a novel scheme wherein the
frame formulation accommodates the difficulty under (b) for II. ELEMENTS OF FRAME FORMULATIONS
UWB fields [21], [22]. The scheme is based on the fact that the This section presents a brief review of the relevant theory of
overcomplete frame removes the Gabor constraint and hence frames, starting in Section II-A with general frames and then
by a proper scaling of the overcompletness with the frequency proceeding in Section II-B with a detailed analysis of the WFT
(see Section III-A) one may construct a frequency independent frames that form the basis of our beam summation representa-
beam lattice, so that the same set of beams is used for the tion. Extensive treatments of frame theory can be found in [16],
entire relevant frequency spectrum as schematized in Fig. 1. In [17], yet the results are presented here with a new slant that is
Section IV, it is shown further that the iso-diffracting Gaussian more relevant to our UWB wave analysis.
beams (ID-GBs) provide the “snuggest” frame basis for all
frequencies (thus providing local and stable coefficients). These A. Frames, Dual Frames and Frame Representation of Signals
windows, which in fact have been introduced in a different
The theory of frames has been introduced originally in [30],
context [23]–[26], also simplify the beam calculations since,
but it has gained renewed interest recently since it provides a
the resulting ID-GB propagators are fully described by fre-
framework for an advanced phase-space signal processing [16],
quency independent matrices whose calculation in the ambient
environment need to be done only once for all frequencies. [17].
Consequently, these beams can be transformed in closed form Definition [17, Sec. 3.2]: A family of functions , ,
into the time domain, where they describe the so-called ID in a Hilbert space is called a frame if there exist “frame
pulsed beams [23]–[28]. Based on this property, we have also bounds” such that for all
introduced in [29] a new discrete phase space beam summation
(1)
representation for short-pulse fields directly in the time domain
(full papers will be published elsewhere).
The paper is organized as follows: Section II reviews the In the context of this paper, we shall be interested in the function
relevant elements of frame theory, starting with general frames space with the inner product for
(Section II-A) and then concentrating on the windowed Fourier , where the asterisk denotes complex conjugate. For the
2044 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 3. Exact and approximate dual functions '(x) and ' (x) (solid and dotted lines) corresponding to the Gaussian window (14) for 6 different values of .
6 =2 are depicted as two vertical lines.
In all cases, the phase space grid has been chosen to match to the window according to (16), and the unit cell boundaries at x
2-D aperture distributions considered later on in this paper, the The frame representation requires a choice of an appropriate
frame will be obtained by a Cartesian multiplication of the 1-D frame for a given application, and a calculation of its
frames in each of the Cartesian coordinates. dual via (3). The computations involve the inversion of
Generally, the set is overcomplete, thus, it is not orthog- , which can be performed via several methods, e.g., an iter-
onal and not even a basis. It does not have to be normalized and ative Neumann series procedure [17, Sec. 3.2] or a projection
the bounds and may depend on the relative magnitude of of on a finite Hilbert space (e.g., a set of sufficiently dense
the elements in . sampling points) discussed in the Appendix . The frame calcu-
The frame operator is defined as lations to be presented below have been performed via the latter
approach, yet, we shall briefly comment on the former since it
(2) explains some properties of frames, which will be used in our
UWB beam representation of Sections III and IV.
Clearly is self adjoint. Rephrasing (1) in operator conventions, Recasting as where and
yields the bounds on , is a constant, leads to a Neumann series expansion of
[17, Sec. 3.2], where is the identity operator. Since
has a lower bound , it has an inverse. Applying to (5)
, yields the set
In general however, and are not known analytically, hence , (11) is known analytically and does not require numerical
the calculation of for each frequency may be time con- calculations; this becomes essential when the frame expansion
suming. In our UWB formulation, we shall therefore choose a is used for UWB fields where needs to be calculated for
parameter range where one can use an analytic approximation each frequency in the band. Equation (11) also yields simple an-
for and [see (11)]. This not only simplifies the frequency alytic expressions when the formulation is transformed to obtain
domain calculations but also leads to closed form expressions a beam representation in the time domain [29].
in the time domain theory [29]. The properties of the frame and of its dual depend on two
main parameters: the “overcompleteness” parameter of (9)
B. WFT Frames and the “matching” parameter that describes how well the spa-
In two types of frames are mostly used: the wavelet tial and spectral distributions of fit into the phase space lattice.
frames and the WFT frames (also termed Weyl-Heisenberg It is defined as
frames or Gabor frames). In this paper, we utilize the latter.
Choosing a proper window function , the ele- (12)
ments of the frame and of its dual are given by [16], [17]
where and
(8a) are the spatial and spectral widths
(8b) of . When , the spatial and spectral window coverage
of the unit cell are balanced, but if or ,
where we use conveniently the vector index . the window is spatially narrow or wide, respectively (i.e.,
The parameters define the spatial and spectral displace- spectrally wide or narrow), with respect to the unit cell (see
ment units, i.e, is centered at the lattice point in Fig. 2). As we shall show in Figs. 3 and 5, for a given , the
the phase-space. For the set to constitute a frame, snuggest frame and, thus, the most localized dual function
it is necessary that the unit-cell area be smaller than , i.e. are obtained when .
Finally, in view of (4), the WFT frame representation for
(9) is given by
The parameter describes the overcompleteness or the redun-
(13a)
dancy of the frame ( is the oversampling factor). The frame
is overcomplete for and it is critically complete in the
Gabor limit , where it becomes a basis. A necessary con-
dition on [17, Proposition 3.4.1] basically states that the phase
space should be covered without “holes”, i.e., and all its (13b)
translations should provide a full coverage of the real axis with
From (13b), are samples of the WFT of with respect to
no gaps, with a similar condition on its Fourier transform .
the “analysis function” at the phase space points ,
The dual window needs to be calculated for a given
while (13a) synthesizes in terms of all the phase space trans-
and a phase space lattice . One numerical approach is
lations of the “synthesis function” .
outlined in the Appendix . An exact reference solution can also be
In general, it is desired that and its dual be localized
computed via the Zak transform for rational oversampling [33].
both spatially and spectrally, so that (13a) expresses in term
Though not used in computations below, the Neumann series
of localized phase space constituents with local and stable
approach (5)–(7) is helpful here since it explains properties that
coefficients . Balian-Low theorem [17, Theorem 4.1.1] and
will be employed in constructing the UWB beam representation
[32] implies in this case is required to be strictly less than 1.
of Sections III and IV. In general, finding of (6) involves
elaborate calculations for the frame bounds and (see C. Special Case: Gaussian Windows
Appendix). For WFT frames, we may use the bounds [17,
eq.. 3.4.2] We consider the Gaussian window
(14)
(10)
which is normalized to . Noting that the spatial and
to find an approximation to (6): spectral widths are and , respec-
, so that the term in the Neumann series tively, the matching parameter (12) is found to be
(5) for becomes (cf. (7))
(15)
(11)
where the second expression follows via (9). The cell dimen-
is not only the limit of for , but it also approxi- sions that “match” this window are obtained by setting ,
mates over a wide range of provided that the window is giving
matched to the lattice over that range as discussed in (12). We
prefer (11) with over the “optimal” value in (7) since unlike (16)
2046 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
k 0
Fig. 4. Relative error ' ' kk k
= ' between the exact ' and its Fig. 5. Exact dual function ' corresponding to the Gaussian window (14) for
approximation ' of (11), as a function of . = 0:5 with three values of : = 0:5 ; 1; and 2 (dotted, solid and dash-dotted
lines, respectively).
We therefore define the spatial-spectral phase space as Assuming that is localized around , the coefficients
are the local spectrum of sampled at the grid points .
(18) The radiated field for is obtained now by replacing
in (23a) by the “beam propagators” , giving
The UWB phase space grid is, thus, defined in the domain by
(24)
(19)
where are the unit cell dimensions, and we use where denote the fields radiated into by the synthesis
conveniently a vector index notation windows . They may be described, for example, by the
. In general, the unit cell dimensions Kirchhoff integral
along the and axes need not be the same as long as they
satisfy the overcompleteness condition (21) in each coordinate. (25)
Here, however, we shall not utilize these options. This grid
defines the origins and directions of the beam lattice hence
it is required to have the same grid for all frequencies in the where is the free space Green’s function,
relevant band, while providing an overcomplete coverage of with .
the domain. Alternatively, can be expressed by a plane wave
To construct this grid we first choose a reference frequency representation
such that (the choice of will be discussed in
Section IV.B), and then choose to be critically complete at
(26)
, i.e., it satisfies the Gabor condition at
The same grid is then used for all . The unit cell area is , with being the spectrum of the “mother” , and
given by is the spectral wavenumber in the direction.
If is wide on a wavelength scale then behave like
collimated beams whose axes emerge from the points in the
(21)
plane in the frequency independent directions
defined via . Propagating beams
Thus, scaling the overcompleteness parameter with the fre-
occur only for where is the spectral width of
quency such that yields a frequency independent
( for collimated beams). For , propagate
beam lattice for all .
tangentially along the plane and decay exponentially
with . In practice, we ignore all the evanescent beams and use
B. Wideband Beam Expansion of the Field
in (24) only the beams with , thereby expressing the
Next, for a proper window function and its dual radiated field as a discrete superposition of beams that emerge
, we introduce the WFT frames in for all from all lattice points in the aperture plane and in all real
[cf. (8a) and (8b)] lattice directions .
(22a)
IV. ID GAUSSIAN WINDOWS
(22b)
The ID Gaussian windows are the preferable basis functions
The window and its dual are obtained from a for the UWB beam synthesis, either in the frequency or time
Cartesian multiplication of the 1-D functions, i.e., domains, because they have the following properties:
. Note that in general, and do not have 1) Their width is scaled with the frequency in a specific
to be the same as long as they are valid windows in each coordi- fashion, termed “isodiffracting” [see (31)] that provides the
nate for all the relevant frequencies. Nevertheless, here assume snuggest frame for all frequencies in the relevant band [see
that . (33)].
Referring to the synthesis (13), the WFT frame representation 2) They give rise to GB propagators that can be tracked lo-
of the field in the plane for all is given by cally in the ambient environment. In view of the ID scaling,
the beam propagation through inhomogeneous nondispersive
(23a) media or through interfaces need to be calculated only at a
reference frequency, and can then extrapolated to all other
frequencies [23], [25], [26].
3) The corresponding time-domain phase-space propagators
have closed form expressions, known as the ID pulsed beams
(23b) [23], [25], [26].
2048 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
The ID windows have the general form [25], [34] . The collimation distances are given, accordingly,
where is a frequency independent, com- by
plex symmetric matrix such that is positive definite and
is the transpose of . The positive definiteness of (30)
guarantees that has a Gaussian decay as the distance
from the origin increases. These determines the waists , the beamwidths ,
For the sake of simplicity, we consider here the special case the wavefront radii of curvature and the diffraction an-
of a real symmetric window gles in the cuts, via
(27)
Utilizing these coordinates, we find by saddle point integration B. Choosing the Frame Parameters
of (26) that is a GB of the form The optimal value of is determined by considering the
matching parameter in (12). Using
and , where
, yields the frequency independent result
. Setting for a “balanced” window which provides
the snuggest frame (see Section II-B and Fig. 5), we obtain
(29)
Fig. 7. Relative error of the GB approximation (29) to the exact beam Fig. 8. Ray trajectories for the focused aperture in (40). The figure also
propagators, shown as a function of the tilt angle n for several values of the shows four observation points where the field will be tested: (a) (near zone)
collimation parameter kb, at k = 0:1. Without loss of generality, the beams r = (x; z ) = (0; 50), (b) (cusp point) (0, 400), (c) (far zone) (0,600), and
are tilted only in the x direction (i.e., n = (sin n ; 0)). The error is (d) (shadow zone) (200 360). The phase space observation manifolds O (r )
calculated at a distance z = 400 from the source by integrating the beam corresponding to these points are depicted in Fig. 11.
profile normal to the axis along the beam coordinate x (the field structure
along x is not affected by the beam tilt; see (30).
where we also used . Choosing, for example,
via (33), provides the snuggest WFT frame for all frequencies yields hence from Fig. 4 the error in
in the band. calculating the expansion coefficients at via the approx-
This leads to the following considerations for choosing the imate of (35) is bounded by 4%, and it becomes smaller
frame parameters , and : for as gets smaller. The field reconstruction
First, is chosen to be sufficiently large so that will be error is also bounded by this level: see Figs. 10 and 12–14.
collimated even at the lowest end of the frequency spectrum to Choosing a larger improves the accuracy (e.g., yields
justify the GB solution. Recalling (31), should satisfy and a 2% error bound). Note that actually Fig. 4
depicts the error for the 1-D frames considered in Section II-C;
(34) for the 2-D frames considered here, the error is larger by a factor
of roughly 1.5.
It follows that the choice of depends on and on the source Clearly for the cases noted above, is localized (ap-
spectral (directional) spread. If the source has a wide spectral proximately a Gaussian) and the expansion coefficients are local
range that give rise to large propagation angles, it is required and stable as required.
to choose the beam collimation to be sufficiently large Finally, it is important to note though that the UWB beam
so that GB be collimated even at the largest in the source expansion is valid in the entire band even if is taken to be
spectrum. smaller, yet the approximation (35) can be used only for the
Another factor that should be considered in this context is lower frequencies where is small enough (say,
that the quality of the GB approximation (29) to the exact beam ).
propagators (given by either the Kirchhoff or the plane wave in- Once and are determined subject to these considera-
tegrals in (25)–(26) with Gaussian initial condition) deteriorates tions, the lattice is determined via (33). Note that
for large tilt angles . This is demonstrated in Fig. 7 which also is proportional to , hence in choosing one should also
shows that for a given , the quality of the GB approximation consider the desired degree of spatial localization which sets
improves by increasing the collimation . Thus, it is also re- a limit on .
quired to choose to be sufficiently large so that from Fig. 7
the GB approximation of the propagators at the largest is ac- C. Phase-Space Localization
curate to a desired level.
An important feature of the phase-space representation is the
Next, we set where is a constant to a priori localization of and around well defined regions in
be chosen, as a tradeoff between the desired accuracy and the the domain. We assume that the initial distribution is given
numerical efficacy, see the discussion in Section V. From (21), by
, so that should be as small as possible
to minimize the oversampling. For analytic simplicity, on the (36)
other hand, should be sufficiently large making small
enough for all so that the dual ID window can where the “amplitude” and “phase” functions and are
be approximated by the 2-D extension of (11) slowly varying functions of on a wavelength scale. The local
direction of radiation at a given and is given by
(35)
(37)
2050 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
^ at k = 0:25 and 0.5, shown in the m ; n plane for m ; n = (0; 0). The expansion parameter b has been taken as: (a,b) b = jRj=2 =
Fig. 9. Coefficients a
x; ) are determined by b via (33). The gray scale is in decibels.
200, (c,d) b = jRj = 400, and (e,f) b = 2jRj = 800. The corresponding grids (
In the continuous phase space of (18), this relation defines the points near the discrete Lagrange manifold [1], [3], [25],
so called Lagrange submanifold (the phase-space skeleton [34], [36]
of GOs).
As mentioned after (23b), the coefficients are samples (38)
of the local spectrum of with respect to the window at
the phase space grid points . If in (23b) is wide on the The number of nonnegligible elements near depends on the
wavelength scale, then it senses the local radiation properties of width of . This limits the number of beams that are excited by
. Consequently the coefficients are nonnegligible only for the aperture.
SHLIVINSKI et al.: PHASE-SPACE BEAM SUMMATION FORMULATION FOR ULTRAWIDE-BAND RADIATION 2051
Fig. 10. Real part of the reconstructed field in the aperture, shown only for x 0 (for x < 0, the field is symmetrical). (a) k = 0:4 and (b) k = 0:5. Full lines:
the exact field. Dashed and dotted lines: the reconstructed field using the exact and the approximated dual function (the analysis window) '
^ , respectively. The
dashed lines are almost indistinguishable from the full lines).
(39)
Fig. 12. Radiated field at three frequencies k = 0.25, 0.4, and 0.5, shown in the z = 200 plane for x 0 (the field for x < 0 is symmetrical). The algorithm
utilizes threshold level " = 0.03 and summation over all beams passing within a three beamwidths vicinity of the observation point. Dashed and dotted lines: The
^ , respectively. Solid line: Exact reference solution.
field synthesized by using the exact and the approximated dual function (the analysis window) '
the distribution in (40), . In the discrete phase space, One may readily verify that the dominant coefficients in (44) are
this condition becomes using (33) indeed aligned along the discretized Lagrange manifold of (42).
(42)
B. Reconstruction of the Aperture Field
Note that this condition is frequency independent, but the width
of the strip of coefficients and their magnitudes depend on the The quality of the representation is explored first by consid-
frequency. Also note the difference in the unit cell dimensions ering the field reconstruction in the aperture. We apply thresh-
for the different values of . olding to the set , i.e., we consider only the significant coef-
One also observes large contributions along the phase space ficients that satisfy where is a small error
lines corresponding to the diffraction at the end parameter, thus reducing the number of elements in the summa-
point of the aperture. They were termed diffraction manifolds tion. Specifically we use , i.e., we neglect the terms in
[1], [25], [36]. Fig. 9 below .
The phase space characteristics can be explored analytically We compare reconstruction using the exact coefficients
by evaluating the coefficients approximately, using (dashed lines), and using the approximate ones that are obtained
from (35). Substituting into (23b) yields the following integral by processing the data with the approximate of (35) [dotted
for the coefficients lines]. In the former case, the error is mainly due to the thresh-
olding at a level [for the reconstructed field is
almost indistinguishable from the exact field (solid line)]. In the
latter, there is a noticeable error for , which is due to the
(43) error in (35) for , whereas for where ,
the reconstruction error is smaller than 6% as predicted in Fig. 4
For grid points that are far away from the aperture boundaries,
and the discussion after (35). One also observes a weak Gibbs
the end points effect in the integral can be neglected leading to
effects at the aperture truncation points . We there-
the closed form result for :
fore consider here only and 0.5 since the quality of the
approximate reconstruction is excellent for .
In view of these results it is recommended to use or
even in order to obtain accurate results while using the
(44) approximate dual function of (35).
SHLIVINSKI et al.: PHASE-SPACE BEAM SUMMATION FORMULATION FOR ULTRAWIDE-BAND RADIATION 2053
This expression describes a complete phase space coverage and those in the second column of Table I for the beams that are actu-
it is obtained, for example, by assigning visible spectrum ally excited by the aperture at the same threshold level. The dif-
points to each of the spatial points in the aperture where ference is essentially due to the edge diffraction beams that are
. included in the calculations of Table I but not in (48). Recalling
A smaller number is obtained if one includes only the GOs the discussion before (47), it is expected that for larger apertures
radiation from the aperture and excludes edge diffraction. Re- the relative difference between the estimate for in (48)
ferring to the aperture source distribution in (40) we use and the results of Table I will diminish.
and obtain
hence, depending on the source properties, the number of el- number of rows, however, it may be truncated since from [41]
ements in the expansion can be significantly reduced relative we have for . This property holds for any
to the LP bound (see Section V-D). frame, yet it may readily be verified for the present WFT frame
In view of the frequency independence of the various charac- by recalling the essentially finite support of . Since is
teristics above, the formulation can be transformed in closed a frame set, (50) is overdetermined and its solution may be ob-
form into the time domain, where the propagators are the ID tained by the singular value decomposition (SVD) [42], yielding
pulsed-beams and the expansion amplitudes are found via a new , being the pseudo inverse obtained after trun-
discrete local slant-stack (or Radon) transform. Initial results of cating the low singular values (see [43]).
these new formulations have been reported in [29], [37], [38], A convenient choice for the expansion set is the Galerkin set
but full details will be published separately. in which case is Hermitian. In
Referring to item 1, we note that the oversampling increases this case, the largest and smallest singular values of are the
at lower frequencies so that the numerical efficiency there de- upper and lower frame bounds and , respectively [41].
creases (see item 5). Thus, although the bandwidth of the for-
mulation above can be arbitrarily large, we have introduced in REFERENCES
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[8] , “Gaussian beam analysis of propagation from an extended plane
to circular cylinders, mainly in connection with applications to aperture distribution through dielectric layers: II-Circular cylindrical
indoor propagation. This subject will be reported elsewhere. layer,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 38, pp. 1618–1624, 1990.
[9] R. J. Burkholder and P. H. Pathak, “Analysis of EM penetration into and
scattering by electrically large open waveguide cavities using Gaussian
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DUAL FRAME CALCULATION VIA AN EXPANSION IN A FINITE [10] H. T. Chou, P. H. Pathak, and R. J. Burkholder, “Novel Gaussian beam
method for the rapid analysis of large reflector antennas,” IEEE Trans.
HILBERT SPACE Antennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. 880–893, 2001.
[11] B. Rao and L. Carin, “Hybrid (parabolic equation) (Gaussian beam) al-
We present the numerical algorithm used for calculating the gorithm for wave propagation through large inhomogeneous regions,”
dual window of the WFT frames shown in Figs. 3 and 5 and IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 46, pp. 700–709, 1998.
of the frame bounds in Fig. 6. Two other approaches, namely [12] , “Beam-tracing-based inverse scattering for general aperture an-
tennas,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 16, pp. 2219–2231,
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The dual window is defined in (8b) by , which signals,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 68, pp. 538–539, 1980.
[14] , “Signal descriptions by means of a local frequency spectrum,”
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are unknown coefficients. We therefore obtain [17] , Ten Lectures on Wavelets. Philadelphia, PA: SIAM Publ., 1992,
CBMS-NSF Series in Applied Mathematics.
(49) [18] B. Z. Steinberg and E. Heyman, “Phase space beam summation for time
dependent radiation from large apertures: Discretized parametrization,”
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[19] D. Lugara and C. Letrou, “Alternative to Gabor’s representation of plane
Recalling that for , this equation is satisfied aperture radiation,” Electron. Lett., vol. 34, pp. 2286–2287, 1998.
if [20] , “Printed antennas analysis by a Gabor frame-based method of mo-
ments,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 50, pp. 1588–1597, 2002.
[21] A. Shlivinski, E. Heyman, A. Boag, D. Lugara, and C. Letrou, “Gabor-
(50) frame phase space beam summation formulation for wideband radiation
from extended apertures,” in Proc. URSI Trianum Int. Symp. Electro-
where , is a column vector and magnetic Theory, Victoria, Canada, May 2001, pp. 56–58.
[22] D. Lugara, C. Letrou, A. Shlivinski, E. Heyman, and A. Boag, “The
is a column vector of nulls except for the term corresponding frame based Gaussian beam summation method: Theory and applica-
to that equals 1. has columns but an infinite tion,” Radio Sci., vol. 38, no. 2, pp. VIC27/1–15, 2003.
2056 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
[23] E. Heyman, “Pulsed beam propagation in an inhomogeneous medium,” Ehud Heyman (S’80–M’82–SM’88–F’01) was
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 311–319, 1994. born in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1952. He received the
[24] E. Heyman and T. Melamed, “Certain consideration in aperture syn- B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Tel Aviv
thesis for ultra-wideband/short-pulsed fields,” IEEE Trans. Antennas University, Israel (summa cum laude) as Valedicto-
Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 518–525, 1994. rian, the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering (with
[25] E. Heyman and L. B. Felsen, “Gaussian beam and pulsed beam dy- distinction) from The Technion—Israel Institute of
namics: Complex source and spectrum formulations within and beyond Technology, Haifa, and the Ph.D. degree in electro-
paraxial asymptotics,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 18, pp. physics from the Polytechnic Institute of New York
1588–1611, 2001. (now Polytechnic University), Brooklyn, in 1977,
[26] E. Heyman, “Pulsed beam solutions for propagation and scattering prob- 1979, and 1982, respectively.
lems,” in Scattering: Scattering and Inverse Scattering in Pure and Ap- In 1983, he joined the Department of Physical
plied Science, R. Pike and P. Sabatier, Eds. New York: Academic, Electronics of the Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University where he is
2002, vol. 1, ch. 1.5.4, pp. 295–315.
now a Professor of electromagnetic theory and Heads the School of Electrical
[27] S. Feng and H. G. Winful, “Spatiotemporal transformations of isod-
Engineering. From 1991 to 1992, he was on sabbatical at Northeastern Uni-
iffracting ultrashort pulses by nondispersive quadratic phase media,” J.
Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 16, pp. 2500–2509, 1999. versity, Boston, MA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
[28] M. A. Porras, “Nonsinusoidal few-cycle pulsed light beams in free and the A. J. Devaney Association, Boston. He spent several summers as a
space,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image Sci., vol. 16, pp. 1468–1474, Visiting Professor at various universities. He has published over 80 articles and
1999. has been an Invited Speaker at many international conferences. His research
[29] A. Shlivinski, E. Heyman, A. Boag, A. Fluerasu, and C. Letrou, “A interests involve analytic methods in wave theory, including high-frequency and
discretized-phase-space pulsed beam representation for time dependent time-domain techniques for propagation and scattering, short-pulse antennas
radiation,” in Proc. URSI Trianum Int. Symp. Electromagnetic Theory, and pulsed beams, inverse scattering and target identification, imaging and
Victoria, Canada, May 2001, pp. 71–73. synthetic aperture radar propagation in random medium.
[30] R. J. Duffin and A. J. Schaeffer, “A class of nonharmonic Fourier series,” Prof. Heyman is a Member of Sigma Xi and the Chairman of the Israeli Na-
Trans. AMS, vol. 72, pp. 341–366, 1952. tional Committee for Radio Sciences (URSI). He is an Associate Editor of the
[31] K. Gröchenig, “Acceleration of the frame algorithm,” IEEE Trans. IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Waves and was an Associate Editor of
Signal Processing, vol. 41, pp. 3331–3340, 1993. the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION. While at the Poly-
[32] Gabor Analysis and Algorithms: Theory and Applications, H. G. Fe- technic Institute he was a Research Fellow and later a Postdoctoral Fellow, as
ichtinger and T. Strohmer, Eds., Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 1998. well as a Rothschild, a Fullbright, and a Hebrew Technical Institute Fellow.
[33] M. J. Bastiaans, “Gabor’s signal expansion and the Zak transform
for continuous-time and discrete-time signals: critical sampling and
rational oversampling,” Eindhoven Univ. Technol., Faculty Elect. Eng.,
Eindhoven, Netherlands, EUT Report 95-E-295, ISBN 90-6144-295-8,
1995.
[34] E. Heyman and T. Melamed, “Space-time representation of ultra-wide-
band signals,” in Advances in Imaging and Electron Physics, P. W.
Hawkes, Ed. New York: Academic, 1998, vol. 103, pp. 1–66. Amir Boag (S’89–M’91–SM’96) received the B.Sc.
[35] T. Melamed, “Phase space beam summation: A local spectrum analysis degree in electrical engineering and the B.A. degree
of time dependent radiation,” J. Electromagn. Waves Appl., vol. 11, pp. in physics (both summa cum laude) in 1983, the
739–773, 1997. M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering in 1985, and
[36] J. M. Arnold, “Rays, beams and diffraction in a discrete phase space: the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1991
Wilson bases,” Optics Express, vol. 10, no. 16, pp. 716–722, Aug. 2002. from The Technion—Israel Institute of Technology,
[37] A. Shlivinski, E. Heyman, A. Boag, and C. Letrou, “Frame-based beam- Haifa.
summation algorithms for ultra wideband radiation from extended aper- From 1991 to 1992, he was on the Faculty of the
tures. Part I: Formulations in the multi-frequency domain,” and “Part Department of Electrical Engineering, The Tech-
II: Time domain formulation,” in Ultra-Wideband, Short-Pulse Electro- nion—Israel Institute of Technology. From 1992
magnetics, E. Mokole, K. Gerlach, and M. Kragalott, Eds. New York:
to 1994, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor with
Plenum Press, 2003, vol. 6, pp. 101–122.
the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory,
[38] , “A frame based phase-space beam and pulsed beam summation
formulations for ultra wideband/short pulse radiation,” in Proc. XXVII Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at
General Assembly Int. Union of Radio Science (URSI), Maastricht, The Urbana-Champaign. In 1994, he joined Israel Aircraft Industries as a Research
Netherland, August 2002, manuscript #699, pp. 1–4. Engineer where he became a Manager of the Electromagnetics Department in
[39] A. E. Siegman, Lasers. Mill Valley, CA: Univ. Sci. Books, 1986. 1997. Since 1999, he has been with the Department of Physical Electronics, the
[40] J. J. Stamness, Waves in Focal Regions: IOP Publishing, 1986. School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Israel. He has published
[41] A. Teolis and J. J. Benedeto, “Local frames and noise reduction,” Signal more than 40 journal articles and presented more than 70 conference papers on
Processing, vol. 45, pp. 369–387, 1995. electromagnetics and acoustics. His research interests are in electromagnetic
[42] G. H. Golub and C. V. Loan, Matrix Computations, 2nd ed. Baltimore, theory, wave scattering, and design of antennas and optical devices.
MD: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1989.
[43] T. Strohmer, “Approxiamtion of dual Gabor frames, window decay, and
wireless communications,” App. Comp. Harmonic Anal., vol. 11, pp.
243–262, 2001.
Amir Shlivinski (S’98–M’04) was born in Tel-Aviv, Christine Letrou (M’96) received the Diplôme
Israel, in February 1969. He received the B.Sc. (cum d’Ingénieur of Institut National des Télécommu-
laude), M.Sc. (summa cum laude), and Ph.D. (with nications (INT), Evry, France, in 1982 and the
distinction) degrees in electrical engineering, all from Docteur-Ingénieur and Ph.D. degrees from Uni-
Tel-Aviv University, Israel, in 1991, 1997, and 2003, versité Paris XI, Orsay, France, in 1985 and 1988,
respectively. respectively.
From 1991 to 1999, he worked as a research and Since then, she has been an Assistant Professor
development Electromagnetic Engineer, and between at INT in charge of microwaves, electromagnetics
1999 and 2003, he was a full-time Ph.D. student and a and antennas, teaching, and research activities. Cur-
Teaching Assistant at Tel-Aviv University. Currently, rently, she is also a Member of the CNRS Laboratory
he is a Postdoctorate Fellow at the Department of SAMOVAR (UMR 5157), Paris, France. Her main
Electrical Engineering, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany. His main fields research interests are in phase-space methods development, antennas and
of interest are electromagnetics, wave theory and antenna theory, with emphasis quasioptical devices and systems design, and propagation modeling for high
on analytic methods and time-domain phenomena. bit rate communication systems.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2057
I. INTRODUCTION (b)
Fig. 1(a). 2-D model of a grounded dielectric slab of relative permittivity "
E XCITATION of surface waves on planar integrated mi-
crowave circuits is often considered as an adversary effect
causing power loss and undesired coupling. However there
with a slot source in the ground plane. (b). Grounded dielectric slab fed by a
Yagi array of three slots. The middle slot of width “s” is the driven one and the
other two are director and reflector slots having widths s and s , respectively.
exist situations when the main objective is to efficiently excite The spacing between the driven slot and the director/reflector slots are “c ”=c ,
a surface wave with least possible leakage, or radiated power. respectively.
One recent example of these situations is the implementation
of quasioptical slab beam power combiners in the millimeter admittance of a single slot and mutual admittance between
band, in which surface waves are the means of power transport two slots are derived in Section III. Numerical examples are
[1]–[4]. These combiners depend on the efficient excitation given in Section IV including design examples of Yagi slot
of the dominant surface wave mode inside a dielectric slab. arrays that achieve high surface wave front to back ratio. In
Recent investigations by the authors [3], [4] have suggested Section V, we alleviate the assumption of uniformly excited
the use of coplanar waveguide (CPW) driven slots as the most slot by allowing a Gaussian distribution of the E-field inside
suitable surface wave launchers for monolithic fabrication in the slot. This breaks the two dimensionality of the problem,
the millimeter regime. In this paper an attempt is made to but still allows the derivation of closed forms for the surface
establish the theoretical foundation for operation of the slab wave and radiated powers. Comparison is made between the
beam power combiner. Accordingly we seek to maximize the present theory and experimental implementations as given by
surface wave excited by a slot dipole on the ground plane of the authors in earlier work [4].
a grounded dielectric slab. Starting with a two-dimensional
(2-D) model of the grounded slab and the slot, a rigorous II. THEORY OF GROUNDED SLAB EXCITATION BY A SLOT
theory is presented in Section II that leads to closed forms SOURCE (2-D MODEL)
for the excited surface wave and leakage powers. The input We start by considering a 2-D model of the problem where
a grounded dielectric slab of uniform thickness is assumed
Manuscript received January 5, 2003; revised July 9, 2003. to extend infinitely parallel to the - plane. A -directed slot
S. F. Mahmoud is with the Electrical Engineering Department, Kuwait Uni- of width “ ” (along ) in the ground plane is used to excite
versity, Kuwait (e-mail: samir@eng.kuniv.edu.kw).
Y. M. M. Antar is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- the slab as shown in Fig. 1(a). The slot itself is excited by
neering, Royal Military College of Canada, Station Forces Kingston, ON K7K a uniform -oriented electric field and therefore, acts as
7B4, Canada (e-mail: antar-y@rmc.ca). an infinite magnetic line source of magnetic current given by
H. F. Hammad and A. P. Freundorfer are with the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada. (volts). To limit the problem to the 2-D
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832498 model, we assume that the slot is infinite in the direction and
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
2058 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
is uniformly excited. In Section V, we consider a finite slot across leading to the modal equation for a surface wave
excitation. The excited fields can be expressed by a discrete set and determines for a pseudomode as
of (say ) surface wave modes traveling along as well as a
continuous spectrum over the transverse wavenumber (along )
that account for radiated fields. This is known as the transverse (5)
spectral representation for the fields [5]–[8]. This representation
is adopted here since it facilitates the determination of the Obviously, the range of the spectrum represents
modal amplitudes as will be seen. Since the slot acts as a fields with active radiation power while the range
-oriented uniform magnetic line source, fields are obviously of corresponds to the evanescent part of the field. While a pseudo-
TM type with magnetic field and electric field components mode does not satisfy the radiation condition on its own, the sum
and . Assuming a time harmonic excitation of the form of pseudomodes making up the radiated and evanescent fields
, and that the source lies in planes, general does satisfy the radiation condition, as it should [6]. The modal
expressions for the total fields in the directions are electric field vector is .
Orthogonality relationships can be established among the sur-
face wave modes and pseudomodes and can be expressed by [8]
(1)
(6)
and .
Here, , ,
the attenuation rate of the th mode in air, and
(8)
is the free space wavenumber.
On the other hand, , are the fields of a pseu-
Evaluating the right-hand side (RHS) and using the identity
domode [6]–[8] with a transverse real wavenumber . A pseu-
, we get
domode is the result of an incident plane wave on the slab and
in (6) as
a reflected one; namely
(9)
(4)
It is worth noting that, in the absence of any loss in the struc-
where: , and . Ob- ture, is real and stands for the surface wave power flowing
viously, (3) and (4) ensure the continuity of the -magnetic field along . Meanwhile is real and represents spectral power
across the interface . The associated electric field is ob- density over the range , while in the range ,
tainable from (3) and (4) through Maxwell’s equations. The is pure imaginary and so is , which then represents re-
continuity of requires that be continuous active power density.
MAHMOUD et al.: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE OPTIMIZATION OF SURFACE WAVES 2059
Now consider a -directed infinite slot of infinitesimally accounting for the finite width of the slot and the variation of
narrow width ; Fig. 1, over which a uniform exists. over the slot. Therefore
This acts as a magnetic line source of magnetic current
. The fields generated by this source
take the general form in (1) and (2) and the coefficients and
are to be determined from the electric field discontinuity
and the magnetic field continuity across the source; namely (15)
where which is real over the range of
integration. Performing the integrals over and , and substi-
(10) tuting for from (9), we arrive at
Inserting and from (1) and (2) and using the orthogonality
relations in (6), we get the modal amplitudes as
(16)
Note, that the square bracketed term accounts for the finite width
(11) of the slot. As tends to , this term behaves as , rendering
the whole integrand to behave as , which ensures a conver-
Now, we are able to obtain both the guided surface wave power gent integral.
(in both ) and radiation power in simple summation and in- The results obtained so far also allow us to determine the
tegral form, respectively. Namely mutual admittance between two parallel slots of given
widths and given spacing “ .” For “ ” sufficiently larger than
slot widths, the mutual admittance is given by
(12)
and
(17)
(13)
normalized frequency F
p 0
Fig. 2. Percentage surface wave power excited by a slot source versus
k d " 1. The relative permitivity " is a
Fig. 3. Slot conductance in milli-mho per a free space wavelength versus
normalized frequency F . The relative permitivity " is a varying parameter.
varying parameter.
(22)
(27)
(28)
Fig. 7.Surface wave conductance versus F for a Gaussian excited slot with
k w = =2 and . Two values of " ; 3.0 and 9.8, are considered.
where
VI. CONCLUSION
(29)
Rigorous analysis of surface wave excitation and radiation
We can define an effective length of the Gaussian source as the
from a grounded dielectric slab driven by a slot source has been
length of a uniformly excited slot that would produce the same
presented. The analysis is relevant to the design of quasioptical
TM surface wave power as the Gaussian excited slot. Denoting
slab beam power combiners that use surface waves to transport
that length by , we have from (28)
power on a dielectric slab. Adopting a 2-D model of the slab and
the slot, closed form expressions for the surface wave and radia-
(30) tion powers have been derived. In addition, slot self-admittance
and mutual admittance of two parallel slots have been derived.
A plot of the surface wave conductance versus This facilitates the design of Yagi slot arrays aiming at achieving
normalized frequency is shown for different and different maximum front to back ratio of excited surface waves.
normalized Gaussian width in Fig. 7. Here is the ef- Numerical results show that ratio better than 20 dB can
fective wavenumber on the dielectric slab and is taken equal to be achieved over a bandwidth of 4%. The analytical results are
. It is worth noting here that the TE mode contri- supported by previously published simulation and experimental
bution to the power is zero for . For the example given work by the authors [4]. In order to improve the 2-D model, the
in Fig. 7, the contribution of the TE mode is less than 5% up to case of a Gaussian -excited slot is treated. Analysis shows that
for and less than 8.5% for . As the surface wave power decays linearly with distance traveled
it is the case with uniform excitation (Fig. 5), the surface wave along the slab for much greater than the Gaussian beamwidth.
conductance peaks around . It increases with except An effective length of the Gaussian slot is derived. Although the
for low values of . The Gaussian efficiency parameter defined present theory has been applied to a single homogeneous dielec-
in [(29), (30)] is plotted in Fig. 8. It is seen that , which is tric slab, extension to an inhomogeneous slab, or a multiplayer
also equal to , increases with up to a satura- slab, is straightforward. Such extension should lead to the study
tion level. The variation with depends on the value of as of the interplay between surface wave and radiated powers on
seen in the figure. printed circuits. This study is underway.
MAHMOUD et al.: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE OPTIMIZATION OF SURFACE WAVES 2063
Abstract—The generalized system function ( ), directly as- have been proposed for dealing with these numerical problems
sociated with radiated and scattered fields, is presented to effec- [8]–[12]. Most of these methods generate a system of equations
tively analyze the exterior and interior resonances of antenna and that has a unique solution for the current and external fields at
scattering systems in this paper. ( ) is constructed by using the
model-based parameter estimation technique combined with the all frequencies.
complex frequency theory. The behaviors of the exterior and inte- The complex resonant frequency presented in circuit
rior resonances can be distinguished by analyzing the character- theory [13], [14] is firstly introduced to antenna and scat-
istics of pole-zero of ( ) in a finite operational frequency band. tering systems in this paper, which relates the real resonant
The intensity of the exterior resonance can be effectively estimated frequency with radiated or scattered losses. The generalized
in terms of values and residues at the complex resonant frequen-
cies. The truly scattered fields from a closed conducting region can system function, , directly associated with radiated and
be obtained by eliminating the poles corresponding to the interior scattered fields, is presented to effectively analyze the exterior
resonances from ( ). Some examples of the practical antenna and interior resonances of the antenna and scattering problems
arrays and scattering systems are given to illustrate the applica- in this paper, which is constructed by using model-based pa-
tion and validity of the proposed approach in this paper. rameter estimation (MBPE) technique. The MBPE [15]–[19]
Index Terms—Generalized system function, exterior and is a form of “smart” curve fitting, with broad applications to
interior resonances, complex resonant frequency, factor, a fast analysis of radiation patterns or RCS of antennas or
model-based parameter estimation (MBPE). scatterers in a widely operating bandwidth. By analyzing the
characteristics of poles and zeros of, we can determine the
I. INTRODUCTION exterior and interior resonant frequencies of antenna and scat-
tering systems efficiently. The complex frequency method for
where is the average energy present at . But the rate of where and represent the
decrease of must equal the power loss, so that coefficients of numerator and denominator polynomials, respec-
tively. Note that or can be normalized to 1 in denominator
(4) coefficients. Thus, (8) has unknown complex
coefficients. represents the complex frequency . It is ob-
vious that MBPE utilizes the rational function approximation
In addition, an important parameter specifying selectivity, and
and extends it into complex frequency domain, which provides
performance in general, of a resonant system is the quality
an appropriate tool for analyzing the resonance characteristics
factor, . A general definition of applicable to all resonant
of antenna and scattering systems from the point of view of com-
system is
plex frequency. According to the uniform approximation theory
[21], the error of MBPE interpolation is minimum when
(5) or , and the properties of existence and uniqueness
of rational function approximation can be demonstrated [22].
Substituting (5) into (4), we can easily get Based on the theory of signals and systems, we know a partic-
ularly important and useful class of linear time-invariant (LTI)
systems is those for which the input and output satisfy a linear
(6)
constant-coefficient differential equation of the form [23]
(8)
(11)
2066 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(12)
.. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . Fig. 2. Frequency response of system function (far E -field) magnitude.
(16) (19)
LI AND LIANG: GENERALIZED SYSTEM FUNCTION ANALYSIS OF EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR RESONANCES 2067
TABLE I
ZEROS, POLES, AND RESIDUES OF THE GENERALIZED SYSTEM FUNCTION
(20)
must locate in the left half of the plane. Therefore, the poles oc-
curred in the right half of the plane must be invalid poles of the
system. On the other hand, in MBPE, if the Padé rational func-
tions with different numerator and denominator orders
are used to construct the generalized system function, we might
get some different complex poles. One knows that the true poles
are corresponding to the complex natural exterior resonant fre-
quency of systems, which should be independent of the form of
fitting function and the orders of the rational function. Thus, the
locations of the true poles are stable or invariant. However, the Fig. 5. Two conducting bodies scattering system.
other poles besides those residing in the right half of the plane
will vary with the orders of the rational functions, which must be
invalid poles and referred to as “parasitical” poles. In addition,
as previous discussion, the poles corresponding to the interior
resonances are not strictly occur on the imaginary axis of the
plane but reside in the left half of the plane off imaginary axis
very small. The truly external scattered field can be obtained by
eliminating these poles from (12).
TABLE II
ZEROS, POLES, AND RESIDUES OF THE SUB-SYSTEM FUNCTION H (s)
TABLE III
ZEROS, POLES, AND RESIDUES OF THE SUB-SYSTEM FUNCTION H (s )
Fig. 8. Plane wave incident upon an infinite long perfect conducting elliptical
cylinder.
TABLE IV
ZEROS, POLES, AND RESIDUES OF THE GENERALIZED SYSTEM FUNCTION (E )
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper has presented the generalized system function
which directly associate with radiated and scattered fields
to give an efficient analysis of the exterior and interior reso-
nances of antenna and scattering problems. is constructed
by using the MBPE technique combined with the complex
frequency theory. The behaviors of the exterior and interior res-
onances can be distinguished by analyzing the characteristics
of pole-zero of in a finite operational frequency band.
The exterior complex resonant frequencies must reside in the
left half of the plane off the imaginary axis. The imaginary
part of is related to the radiated or scattering losses, i.e.,
. The intensity of the exterior resonance can be estimated
effectively in terms of values and residues at the complex
resonant frequencies. The interior resonant frequencies occur
on the positive imaginary axis of the plane theoretically, but
due to truncation error and numerical error effects, the internal
(cavity) modes are both very weakly excited and radiated
very weakly. Therefore, those poles corresponding to interior
resonances also locate in the left half of the plane but off
Fig. 10. Comparison of the modified system function response with the results imaginary axis very small. It is shown that only exterior poles
calculated by CFIE and EFIE: (a) Full frequency band, (b) near interior resonant can be interpreted as intrinsic to the scatterer. The truly scat-
frequency 1, and (c) near interior resonant frequency 2.
tered fields from a closed conducting region can be obtained
simply by eliminating the poles corresponding to the interior
obtained from the MoM formulation of EFIE, which are trans- resonances from the generalized system function.
formed into RCS and indicated by circles on the plots con-
tained in Fig. 9. The Padé rational function is chosen to have
a numerator order and a denominator order . REFERENCES
In this case, the MBPE-calculated curve is excellent agreement [1] H. C. Pocklington, “Electrical oscillations in wires,” in Proc. Cambridge
with the MoM result, including those in the vicinity of the in- Phil. Soc., vol. 9, 1897, pp. 324–332.
terior resonances. It is worth pointing out that MoM requires a [2] L. Page and N. Adams, “The electrical oscillations of a prolate spheroid,
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very larger number of evaluations in order to resolve these in- [3] J. A. Stratton, Electromagnetic Theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
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2072 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
[4] C. H. Liang and L. Li, “On the generalized resonance,” presented at the [21] S. V. Polstyanko, R. Dyczij-Edlinger, and J. F. Lee, “Fast frequency
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Long Li was born in Anshun, Guizhou, China, in
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January 1977. He received the B.Eng. degree in
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from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 1998.
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Since 1999, he has taken a combined Master-Doctor
effects of interior resonances,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat, vol. 39,
program and is working toward the Ph.D. degree
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in the National Key Laboratory of Antenna and
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Microwave Technology, Xidian University.
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[14] C. H. Liang and Y. J. Xie, “The accurate variational analysis for the
tromagnetics, slot antenna array, hybrid algorithms
measurement of the complex dielectric constant of a sample rod inserted
and electromagnetic compatibility.
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1998-206 951, Mar. 1998. Chang-Hong Liang (M’80–SM’83) was born in
[16] E. K. Miller and G. J. Burke, “Using model-based parameter estima- Shanghai, China, in December 1943. He gradu-
tion to increase the physical interpretability and numerical efficiency of ated from Xidian University (Formerly Northwest
computational electromagnetic,” Comput. Phys. Commun., vol. 68, pp. Telecommunications Institute), Xi’an, China, in
43–75, 1991. 1965, and continued his graduate studies until 1967.
[17] C. J. Reddy, “Application of model based parameter estimation From 1980 to 1982, he worked at Syracuse Uni-
for fast frequency response calculations of input characteristics of versity, New York, as a Visiting Scholar. Since 1986,
cavity-backed aperture antennas using hybrid FEM/MoM technique,” he has been a Professor and Ph.D. student advisor
NASA/CR-1998-206 950, Mar. 1998. in the School of Electronic Engineering, Xidian Uni-
[18] D. H. Werner and R. J. Allard, “The simultaneous interpolation of an- versity, where he is also a Director of the Academic
tenna radiation patterns in both the spatial and frequency domains using Committee of National Key Lab of Antenna and Mi-
model-based parameter estimation,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., crowave Technology. He has published numerous papers and proceeding arti-
vol. 48, pp. 383–392, Mar. 2000. cles, is the author of five books. He is an Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Xidian
[19] R. J. Allard and D. H. Werner, “The model-based parameter estimation University. He has wide research interests, which include computational mi-
of antenna radiation patterns using windowed interpolation and spherical crowave and computational electromagnetics, microwave network theory, mi-
harmonics,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 51, pp. 1891–1906, crowave measurement method and data processing, lossy variational electro-
Aug. 2003. magnetics, electromagnetic inverse scattering, electromagnetic compatibility.
[20] W. Geyi, P. Jarmuszewski, and Y. Qi, “The foster reactance theorem for Prof. Liang is a Fellow of the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE), and has
Q
antennas and radiation ,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 48, pp. received the titles of “National Distinguished Contribution,” “National Excel-
401–407, Mar. 2000. lent Teacher,” etc.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2073
Abstract—Wireless communication using multiple-input mul- reported. Third, experimental phenomenological results are re-
tiple-output (MIMO) systems enables increased spectral efficiency ported for both 4 4 and relatively large 8 8 MIMO systems,
and link reliability for a given total transmit power. Increased including channel stationarity, both in time and frequency.
capacity is achieved by introducing additional spatial channels
which are exploited using space-time coding. The spatial diversity Fourth, two metrics of channel variation are introduced. One
improves the link reliability by reducing the adverse effects of metric provides a measure of capacity loss assuming that
link fading and shadowing. The choice of coding and the resulting receiver beamformers are constructed using incorrect channel
performance improvement are dependent upon the channel estimates, which is useful to determine performance losses
phenomenology. In this paper, experimental channel-probing due to channel nonstationarity (either in time or frequency).
estimates are reported for outdoor environments near the per-
sonal communication services frequency allocation (1790 MHz). The other metric is sensitive to the shape of the channel eigen-
A simple channel parameterization is introduced. Channel dis- value distribution, which is appropriate for space-time coding
tance metrics are introduced. Because the bandwidth of the optimization, assuming a uniformed transmitter (UT) (that
channel-probing signal (1.3 MHz) is sufficient to resolve some is transmitters without channel state information). Finally, a
delays in outdoor environments, frequency-selective fading is also simple channel parameterization is provided which empirically
investigated. Channel complexity and channel stationarity are in-
vestigated. Complexity is associated with channel-matrix singular matches channel eigenvalue distributions well and provides a
value distributions. Stationarity is associated with the stability of simple approach to generate representative simulated channels
channel singular value and singular vector structure over time. for space-time coding optimization.
Index Terms—Channel coding, information theory, multipath MIMO systems provide a number of advantages over single-
channels, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. antenna communication. Sensitivity to fading is reduced by the
spatial diversity provided by multiple spatial paths. Under certain
environmental conditions, the power requirements associated
I. INTRODUCTION with high spectral-efficiency communication can be significantly
reduced by avoiding the compressive region of the information
M ULTIPLE-INPUT multiple-output (MIMO) systems are
a natural extension of developments in antenna array
communication. While the advantages of multiple receive an-
theoretic capacity bound. This is done by distributing energy
amongst multipath modes in the environment. Spectral efficiency
tennas, such as gain and spatial diversity, have been known and is defined as the total number of bits per second per Hz
exploited for some time [1]–[3], the use of transmit diversity transmitted from one array to the other. Because MIMO systems
has been investigated more recently [4], [5]. Finally, the advan- use antenna arrays, interference can be mitigated naturally.
tages of MIMO communication, exploiting the physical channel In this paper, outdoor MIMO channel phenomenology near
between many transmit and receive antennas, are currently re- the PCS frequency allocation, 1.79 GHz, is discussed. The
ceiving significant attention [6]–[8]. Because MIMO commu- channel-probing signal has a bandwidth of 1.3 MHz. This
nication capacity is dependent upon channel phenomenology, bandwidth is sufficient to resolve some delays, inducing fre-
studying and parameterizing this phenomenology is of signifi- quency-selective fading in outdoor environments. In Sections II
cant interest [9]–[19]. and III, information theoretic capacity of MIMO communi-
This paper makes a number of contributions to this area cation systems and channel estimation are reviewed. Channel
of study. First, while most experimental results have focused difference metrics are introduced in Section IV. Performance
on indoor phenomenology, the phenomenology investigated of MIMO communication systems and optimal selection
here focuses on outdoor environments. Second, results for of space-time coding are dependent upon the complexity
both stationary and vehicle-mounted moving transmitters are of the channel [20], [21]. This phenomenology for outdoor
environments is investigated using MIMO channel-probing
experiments. The results are interpreted using a simple parame-
terization introduced in Section V. The channel phenomenology
Manuscript received March 19, 2003; revised September 27, 2003. This work
was supported by the U.S. Air Force under Air Force Contract F19628-00-C-
experiments are described in Section VI, and the experimental
0002. results, reporting estimates of channel complexity and station-
D. W. Bliss and A. M. Chan are with Advanced Sensor Techniques arity, are discussed in Section VII.
Group, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA 02420-9185 USA (e-mail:
bliss@ll.mit.edu, achan@ll.mit.edu.
N. Chang is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer II. CHANNEL CAPACITY
Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2122 USA (e-mail:
changn@eecs.umich.edu). The information theoretic capacity of MIMO systems has
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832363 been discussed widely [6]–[8]. It is assumed for the sake of the
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
2074 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
following discussion that the receiver can accurately estimate a If (6) is not satisfied for some , it will not be satisfied for any
pseudostationary channel. Given this assumption, there are two smaller .
types of spectral-efficiency bounds: informed transmitter (IT)
and UT, depending on whether or not channel estimates are fed B. UT
back to the transmitter. If the channel is not known at the transmitter, then the optimal
For narrowband MIMO systems, the coupling between the transmission strategy is to transmit equal power with each an-
transmitter and receiver can be modeled using tenna, , [7]. Assuming that the receiver can
accurately estimate the channel, but the transmitter does not at-
(1) tempt to optimize its output to compensate for the channel, the
maximum spectral efficiency is given by
where is the (number of receive by transmit
antenna) channel matrix, containing the complex attenuation
(7)
between each transmit and receive antenna, is an
matrix containing the samples of the transmit array vector,
is an matrix containing the samples of the This is a common transmit constraint as it may be difficult to
complex receive-array output, and is an matrix provide the transmitter channel estimates.
containing zero-mean complex Gaussian noise. It is often useful Similarly to the IT case, the UT spectral-efficiency bound
to investigate the structure of the channel matrix and the is purely a function of the channel-matrix singular values. Ex-
mean-square attenuation independently. This can be achieved pressing the channel matrix with a singular vector decomposi-
by studying the root-mean-square normalized channel matrix tion, , the capacity is a function of eigenvalues, but
not of the eigenvectors, of
(2)
(3)
(8)
where is the mean-square transmitter-to-receiver attenuation,
is the normalized channel matrix, and indicates the where the singular-value entries of the diagonal matrix are
Frobenius norm. given by .
A. IT C. Frequency-Selective Channels
There are a variety of possible transmitter constraints. Here In environments where there is frequency-selective fading,
it is assumed that the fundamental limitation is the total power the channel matrix is a function of frequency . As has been
transmitted. The optimization of the noise-nor- discussed in [22], the resulting capacity is a function of this
malized transmit covariance matrix is constrained by the fading structure. Exploiting the fact that frequency channels are
total noise-normalized transmit power . Allowing different orthogonal, the capacity in frequency-selective fading can be
transmit powers at each antenna, this constraint can be enforced calculated using an extension of (5) and (7). For the UT, this
using the form . The results of the channel-spec- leads to the frequency-selective spectral-efficiency bound
tral-efficiency bounds discussions presented in [8] are repeated
here. The capacity can be achieved if the channel is known by
both the transmitter and receiver, giving
(4)
For the IT channel capacity, power is optimally distributed sampling, the explicit frequency-selective form can be con-
amongst both spatial modes and frequency channels. The ca- structed using a discrete Fourier transform
pacity can be expressed
(16)
(11)
or equivalently
which is maximized by (5) with the appropriate substitutions
for the frequency-selective channel, and diagonal entries in
in (6) are selected from the eigenvalues of . Because of
the block diagonal structure of , the (17)
space-frequency noise-normalized transmit covariance matrix
is a block diagonal matrix, normalized so that . where the -point discrete Fourier transform is represented by
and the Kronecker product is represented by .
III. ESTIMATION
The Gaussian probability density function for a multivariate, IV. CHANNEL DIFFERENCE METRICS
signal-in-the-mean, statistical model of the received signal is A variety of metrics are possible. Here, two metrics are dis-
given by cussed. Both metrics are ad hoc, but are motivated by limiting
forms of the information theoretic capacity.
(12) The first metric, discussed in Section IV-A, is sensitive to the
differences in channel eigenvalue distributions. While there are
an unlimited number of channel eigenvalue distributions that
where is the noise covariance matrix. The maximum-likeli- can provide a particular capacity, for a given mean channel at-
hood estimate of is given by tenuation and power, performance of space-time codes is sensi-
tive to the shape of the distribution. Because the optimization of
(13) UT space-time codes depends upon the eigenvalue distribution
but not the eigenvector structure, the metric introduced in Sec-
assuming that the reference signals in are known and tion IV-A is an appropriate metric for investigating this issue.
is nonsingular. As one might intuit from the structure of (13), Specifically, space-time codes must select a rate versus redun-
if a signal’s sole use is channel estimation, then the choice of dancy operating point [20], [21]. The optimal operating point
, such that is proportional to the identity matrix (that is is a function of the shape of the channel eigenvalue distribution.
equal-power orthogonal signals) is optimal for channel probing This metric is used to estimate the channel parameter introduced
in finite signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments. However, if in Section V-C.
joint channel and signal detection is used, then orthogonal sig- The second metric, discussed in Section IV-B, is sensitive
nals are not necessarily optimal for link performance. to differences in both the singular-value distribution and the
The previous channel-estimation discussion explicitly as- channel eigenvector structure. In general, MIMO receivers
sumed flat fading. However, the frequency-selective channels employ some sort of beamformer to coherently combine the
can be estimated by first estimating a finite impulse-response signals impinging upon each receive antenna. In dynamic
MIMO channel which can be transformed to the frequency environments (either in time or frequency) channel estimates
domain. can quickly become inaccurate. A measure of the adverse
A finite impulse-response extension of (1) is given by intro- effects of using these “stale” estimates is provided by this
ducing delayed copies of at delays metric. Effectively, this metric provides a measure of the
fractional capacity loss in the low SNR (or equivalently low
spectral-efficiency) limit. Because performance in the low SNR
limit is not affected by interference introduced by the other
.. (14) transmit antennas, MIMO systems operating at higher SNR will
. experience greater interference and thus worse performance.
Consequently, this metric is an optimistic estimate of the
expected performance due to dynamic channels.
so that the transmit matrix has dimension . The
resulting wideband channel matrix has the dimension
A. Eigenvalue-Based Metric
As was mentioned in Section II, MIMO capacity is only a
(15) function of the channel singular values. Equivalently, capacity
is invariant under channel-matrix transformations of the form
Using this form, an effective channel filter is associated with
each transmit-to-receive antenna link. Assuming regular delay (18)
2076 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
where and are arbitrary unitary matrices. Conse- where is the column of the channel matrix associated with
quently, for some applications it is useful to employ a metric transmitter . In the low SNR limit, the optimal receive beam-
which is also invariant under this transformation. Because ca- former is given by the matched response given in . If some
pacity is a function of the structure of the channel singular-value other beamformer is employed, , then signal energy is lost,
distribution, the metric should be sensitive to this structure. adversely affecting the capacity
The channel capacity is a function of . A natural metric
would employ the distance between the capacity for two channel (23)
matrices at the same average total received power, that is, the
same
One possible reason that a beamformer might use the wrong
matched spatial filter is channel nonstationarity. Assuming the
SNR is sufficiently low, the fractional capacity loss is given by
(19)
However, there are two problems with this definition. First, the
difference is a function of . Second, there is degeneracy in
singular values that gives a particular capacity. To address
the first issue the difference can be investigated in a high SNR
limit, resulting in
(24)
V. CHANNEL PHENOMENOLOGY
A. Singular Values
The singular-value distribution of , or the related eigen-
value distribution of , is a useful tool for understanding
the expected performance of MIMO communication systems.
From the discussion in Section II, it can be seen that the
channel capacity is a function of channel singular values, but
not the singular-vector structure of the channel. Thus, channel
phenomenology can be investigated by studying the statistics
(22)
of channel singular-value distributions.
BLISS et al.: MIMO WIRELESS COMMUNICATION CHANNEL PHENOMENOLOGY 2077
B. Channel Parameterization
A commonly employed model assumes the channel is pro-
portional to a matrix, , where the entries are independently
drawn from a unit-norm complex circular Gaussian distribu-
tion. While the distribution is convenient, it does suffer from
a singular-value distribution that is overly optimistic for many
environments. One solution is to introduce spatial correlations
using the transformation [10]–[12]. While
this approach is limited [8], it produces simply more realistic
channels than the uncorrelated Gaussian model.
The spatial correlation matrices can be factored so that
and , where and are unitary
Fig. 1. Ratio of bounds on mean UT capacity of = 0:2, 0.4, 0.6 to = 1.
matrices, and and are positive semidefinite diagonal
matrices. When the arrays are located in environments that are
significantly different, then correlations seen by one array will the ratio of capacity bounds for 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 for a 4 4
typically be much stronger than the other, and the effect of either MIMO system is displayed. In practice, the ratio of bounds tends
the left or right will dominate the shaping of the channel ma- to produce slightly optimistic capacity results at values of . The
trix singular-value distribution. Conversely, if the environments essential features are accurate. Assuming that the space-time
are similar then one would expect that . In prac- coding takes the channel statistics into account for values of
tice, similar channel matrix singular-value distributions can be 0.6 or greater, performance loss is not overwhelming. A second
achieved given either assumption. However, the required values interesting feature is that at very high SNR the ratio of capacity
of and , are, of course, different. For the experiments dis- slowly approaches 1. This is because at very high SNR even
cussed in this paper, both arrays are in similar environments and strongly attenuated channel modes become useful. Modeling
a symmetric form seems a reasonable model. Assuming that the approaches that introduce reduced “effective” numbers of an-
number of transmit and receive antennas are equal and have sim- tennas do not reproduce this phenomenon well.
ilar spatial correlation characteristics, the diagonal matrices can
be set equal, , producing the new random C. Channel Parameter Estimation
channel matrix An estimate for associated with particular transmit and re-
ceive locations is given by minimizing the mean-square metric
given in (21)
(26)
(29)
(27)
where indicates the estimated value of . Here the expecta-
where is used to set overall scale, is given by the size of tion, denoted by , indicates averaging is over an ensemble
, and and indicate random unitary matrices. The form of for a given and an ensemble of for given transmit and
of given here is somewhat arbitrary, but has the satisfying receiver sites.
characteristics that as a rank-one channel matrix is pro- It is worth noting that this approach does not necessarily pro-
duced, and as a spatially uncorrelated Gaussian matrix vide an unbiased estimate of . Estimates of , using the metric
is produced; thus, the parameterization can easily approximate, introduced in here, are dependent upon the received SNR. To
in a statistical sense, nearly all environments. This stochastic reduce the bias, one can add complex Gaussian noise to
channel parameterization has the advantage that it is not depen-
to produce , mimicking the integrated SNR of the estimate
dent upon the particular causes of the correlation, or details of
of .
the arrays or environment. The normalization for is chosen
Data presented here has sufficiently high SNR such that can
so that the expected value of is .
be estimated within .
The model can be related to the ergodic or mean capacity [8]
(averaged over an ensemble channel). Exploiting the fact that
VI. EXPERIMENT
MIMO capacity is convex cap, a bound on the mean capacity is
given by The experimental system employed is a slightly modified
version of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Lincoln Laboratory system used previously [3], [23], [25]–[27].
The transmit array consists of up to eight arbitrary waveform
transmitters. The transmitters can support up to a 2 MHz
bandwidth. These transmitters can be used independently, as
(28) two groups of four coherent transmitters or as a single co-
herent group of eight transmitters. The transmit systems can
This bound is not necessarily tight, but is useful for illustrating be deployed in the laboratory or in vehicles. When operating
the effects of channel parameter value on capacity. In Fig. 1, coherently as a multiantenna transmit system, the individual
2078 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE I
LIST OF TRANSMIT SITES
The experiments were performed during July and August Channel-complexity and channel-stationarity performance
2002 on and near the MIT campus. These outdoor exper- results are presented in this section. A list of transmit sites
iments were performed in a frequency allocation near the used for these results is presented in Table I. The table includes
PCS band (1.79 GHz). The transmitters periodically emitted distance between transmitter and receiver, velocity of trans-
1.7 s bursts containing a combination of channel-probing and mitter, the number of transmit antennas, and the estimated
space-time-coding waveforms. A variety of coding and inter- for the transmit site. Uncertainty in is determined using the
ference regimes were explored for both moving and stationary bootstrap technique [28]. Cumulative distribution functions
transmitters. The space-time-coding results are beyond the (CDF) reported here are evaluated over appropriate entries
scope of this paper and are discussed elsewhere [23], [24]. from Table I. The systematic uncertainty in the estimation of
Channel-probing sequences using both four and eight transmit- caused by estimation bias, given the model, is less than 0.02.
ters were used.
A. Attenuation
The receive antenna array was placed on top of a tall one-story
building (Brookline St. and Henry St.) surrounded by two- and The peak-normalized mean-squared single-input single-
three-story buildings with a parking lot along one side. Different output (SISO) attenuation (path gain) averaged over transmit
four or eight antenna subsets of the 16-channel receiver were and receive antenna pairs for a given transmit site is displayed
used to improve statistical significance. The nearly linear re- in Fig. 2 for the outdoor environment. The uncertainty in the
ceive array had a total aperture of less than 8 m, arranged as three estimate is evaluated using a bootstrap technique.
subapertures of less than 1.5 m each. The transmit arrays were
located on the top of vehicles within 2 km of the receive array. B. Channel Complexity
On each vehicle four antennas were approximately located at Channel complexity is presented using three different ap-
the vertices of a square, with separation of greater than two to proaches. Variation in estimates, eigenvalue CDFs, and
three wavelengths. When operating as an eight-element trans- estimate CDFs are presented.
mitter, two adjacent parked vehicles were used, connected by a In Fig. 3, CDFs of estimates nor-
cable that distributed a local oscillator signal. malized by mean for each transmit site are displayed. CDFs
The channel-probing sequence supports a bandwidth of are displayed for narrowband SISO, 4 4, and 8 8 MIMO
1.3 MHz with a length of 1.7 ms repeated ten times. All systems. As one would expect, because of the spatial diversity,
four or eight transmitters emitted nearly orthogonal signals the variation in mean antenna-pair received power decreases
simultaneously. dramatically as the number of antenna pairs increases. This
BLISS et al.: MIMO WIRELESS COMMUNICATION CHANNEL PHENOMENOLOGY 2079
2
Fig. 4. CDF of narrowband channel eigenvalue distributions for 4 4 MIMO 2
Fig. 5. CDF of narrowband channel eigenvalue distributions for 8 8 MIMO
systems: (a) simulated Gaussian channel and (b) experimental results. systems: (a) simulated Gaussian channel and (b) experimental results.
VIII. SUMMARY
In this paper, outdoor MIMO channel phenomenology was
discussed. Data from an experiment performed on and near
the MIT campus was used to study the phenomenology. The
phenomenology was investigated from the perspective of the
singular-value distributions of the channel matrices. A channel
CDF of time variation of power-weighted mean cos , parameterization approach was introduced. Two channel-dif-
H(t ); H(t)g,
Fig. 10.
f 2
for moving 4 4 MIMO system. Contours of CDF ference metrics were introduced. The first was used to estimate
probabilities of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, and 0.9 are displayed.
the channel parameter. The second metric was employed to
demonstrate significant channel variation both as a function
of time and frequency.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations
are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the
United States Government.
The authors would like to thank the excellent MIT Lincoln
Laboratory staff involved in the MIMO experiment, in par-
ticular S. Tobin, J. Nowak, L. Duter, J. Mann, B. Downing,
P. Priestner, B. Devine, T. Tavilla, A. McKellips and G. Hatke.
Fig. 11. Example of frequency-selective variation of the power-weighted The authors would also like to thank the MIT New Technology
mean cos ,
fH H g
(f ); (f ) . Initiative Committee for their support. The authors would also
like to thank K. Forsythe, A. Yegulalp, and D. Ryan of MIT
Lincoln Laboratory and V. Tarokh of Harvard University for
their thoughtful comments. The authors would like to thank
N. Sunkavally of MIT for his contributions to the experiment
and the analysis.
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mean is displayed in Fig. 11. The variation is indicated mental issues for MIMO capacity,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol.
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using the metric presented in (25). In the example, the stationary [9] P. Marinier, G. Y. Delisle, and C. L. Despins, “Temporal variations of the
transmitter is located at site #7. Relatively small frequency indoor wireless millimeter-wave channel,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop-
offsets induce significant changes in . The agat., pp. 928–934, June 1998.
[10] D. Gesbert, H. Bolcskei, D. A. Gore, and A. J. Paulraj, “Performance
CDF of the frequency-selective channel variation is displayed evaluation for scattering MIMO channel models,” in Proc. 34th Asilomar
in Fig. 12 (using sites: 7, 9, 16, and 18). This sensitivity indi- Conf. Signals, Systems & Computers, vol. 1, Pacific Grove, CA, Oct.
cates that there is significant resolved delay spread and that to 2000, pp. 748–752.
[11] D.-S. Shui, G. J. Forschini, M. J. Gans, and J. M. Kahn, “Fading corre-
safely operate using the narrowband assumption, bandwidths lation and its effect on the capacity of multielement antenna systems,”
less than 100 kHz should be employed. It is worth noting that IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 48, pp. 502–513, Mar. 2000.
2082 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
[12] D. Chizhik, F. Rashid-Forrokhi, J. Ling, and A. Lozano, “Effect of an- Daniel W. Bliss (M’97) received the B.S.E.E. degree
tenna separation on the capacity of blast in correlated channels,” IEEE in electrical engineering from Arizona State Univer-
Commun. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 337–339, Nov. 2000. sity, Tuscon, in 1989 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
[13] D. Hampicke, C. Schneider, M. Landmann, A. Richter, G. Sommerkorn, in physics from the University of California at San
and R. S. Thoma, “Measurement-based simulation of mobile radio chan- Diego, in 1995 and 1997, respectively.
nels with multiple antennas using a directional parametric data model,” Employed by General Dynamics from 1989 to
in Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. 2, 2001, pp. 1073–1077. 1991, he designed avionics for the Atlas-Centaur
[14] M. Stoytchev and H. Safar, “Statistics of the MIMO radio channel in launch vehicle and performed research and devel-
indoor environments,” in Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. opment of fault-tolerant avionics. As a member
3, 2001, pp. 1804–1808. of the Superconducting Magnet Group at General
[15] D. P. McNamara, M. A. Beach, and P. N. Fletcher, “Experimental in- Dynamics from 1991 to 1993, he performed mag-
vestigation of the temporal variation of MIMO channels,” in Proc. IEEE netic field calculations and optimization for high-energy particle accelerator
Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. 2, 2001, pp. 1063–1067. superconducting magnets. His doctoral work rom 1993 to 1997, was in the
[16] C. C. Martin, N. R. Sollenberger, and J. H. Winters, “MIMO radio area of high-energy particle physics, searching for bound states of gluons,
channel measurements: Performance comparison of antenna configu- studying the two-photon production of hadronic final states, and investigating
rations,” in Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. 2, 2001, pp. innovative techniques for lattice gauge theory calculations. Since 1997, he
1225–1229. has been employed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he is currently a Staff
[17] J. F. Kepler, T. P. Krauss, and S. Mukthavaram, “Delay spread measure- Member at in the Advanced Sensor Techniques Group, where he focuses on
ments on a wideband MIMO channel at 3.7 GHz,” in Proc. IEEE Vehic- multiantenna adaptive signal processing, primarily for communication systems,
ular Technology Conf., vol. 4, 2002, pp. 2498–2502. and on parameter estimation bounds, primarily for geolocation. His current
[18] T. Svantesson, “A double-bounce channel model for multi-polarized research topics include algorithm development for multichannel multiuser
MIMO systems,” in Proc. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. 2, detectors (MCMUD) and information theoretic bounds and space-time coding
2002, pp. 691–695. for MIMO communication systems.
[19] J. P. Kermoal, L. Schumacher, K. I. Pedersen, P. E. Mogensen, and
F. Frederiksen, “A stochastic MIMO radio channel model with ex-
perimental validation,” IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 20, pp.
1211–1226, August 2002. Amanda M. Chan received the B.S.E.E. and
[20] L. Zheng and D. Tse, “Optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff in mul- M.S.E.E. degrees in electrical engineering from the
tiple antenna fading channels,” in Proc. 35th Asilomar Conf. Signals, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000 and
Systems & Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, Nov. 2001. 2002, respectively.
[21] H. E. Gamal, “On the robustness of space-time coding,” IEEE Trans. Currently, she is an Associate Staff Member
Signal Processing, vol. 50, pp. 2417–2428, Oct. 2002. in the Advanced Sensor Techniques Group, MIT
[22] G. G. Raleigh and J. M. Cioffi, “Spatio-temporal coding for wireless Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, MA. Her interests
communications,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 46, pp. 357–366, Mar. are in channel phenomenology. She has previously
1998. worked with implementation of synthetic aperture
[23] D. W. Bliss, P. H. Wu, and A. M. Chan, “Multichannel multiuser detec- geolocation of cellular phones. Most recently, she
tion of space-time turbo codes: Experimental performance results,” in has worked on the implementation of MIMO channel
Proc. 36th Asilomar Conf. Signals, Systems & Computers, Pacific Grove, parameterization.
CA, Nov. 2002.
[24] D. W. Bliss, “Robust MIMO wireless communication in the presence of
interference using ad hoc antenna arrays,” presented at the Proc. Military
Communications Conf., MILCOM 2003, Boston, MA, Oct. 2003. Nicholas B. Chang received the B.S.E. degree in
[25] , “Angle of arrival estimation in the presence of multiple access electrical engineering (magna cum laude) from
interference for CDMA cellular phone systems,” in Proc. 2000 IEEE Princeton University, Princeton, NJ and the M.S.E.
Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop, Cam- degree in electrical engineering from the Univer-
bridge, MA, Ma. 2000. sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2002 and 2004,
[26] C. M. Keller and D. W. Bliss, “Cellular and PCS propagation measure- respectively.
ments and statistical models for urban multipath on an antenna array,” He worked for MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lex-
in Proc. 2000 IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing ington, MA, in 2001 and 2002, focusing on synthetic
Workshop, Cambridge, MA, Mar. 2000, pp. 32–36. aperture geolocation of wireless systems and channel
[27] D. W. Bliss, “Robust MIMO wireless communication in the presence of phenomenology of MIMO communications systems.
interference using ad hoc antenna arrays,” presented at the MILCOM, He is currently a Graduate Student in the Department
Boston, MA, Oct. 2003. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann
[28] B. Efron, The Jackknife, the Bootstrap and Other Resampling Arbor.
Plans. Bristol, U.K.: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathe- Mr. Chang is a Member of Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research
matics, 1982. Society.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2083
Abstract—The paper reports and discusses simulated statistics The necessity to distinguish between channel unavailability
obtained by the synthetic storm technique, in the Po Valley, and service unavailability calls for statistics on the number (or
Northern Italy, on the interruptions (outages), due to rainfall, probability) of outages of a given duration in specific times of
observed in contiguous (clock) periods of the day of duration ,
with 1 min 24 h. The results refer to a 32 slant path at the day, i.e., statistics on the interruptions of a service because
11.6 GHz, although the main conclusions are independent of car- of excessive rain attenuation.
rier frequency and of site, and are based on a large experimental To author’s knowledge, however, this kind of statistics,
rain rate database (10.6 years of observation). The results can be or service grades, and a clear distinction between channel
used to assess the quality and unavailability of services of duration unavailability and service unavailability, have not yet been
during a day in earth-space communication systems affected
by rain attenuation. A distinction is made and discussed between established. Once this is done, the kind of statistics and the
channel unavailability and service unavailability. The numerical scaling methods proposed in this paper could be used to design
results and the best fit and extrapolation formulas derived might a satellite system based on service unavailability rather than on
provide a rough approximation to the same statistics at different channel unavailability.
elevation angles, clock intervals and carrier frequencies, for sites The assessment of these statistics for a geographical area and
with the same climate of the Po Valley.
a satellite system requires long term experiments and thus a very
Index Terms—Channel unavailability, diurnal cycles, fade large economic and human effort. Few experimental data col-
duration, microwave propagation, rain attenuation, service lected many years ago in relatively short observations and for
unavailability.
long intervals of the day (e.g., four hours), are available in the
open literature [1]–[5]. Reliable simulations, based on physical
I. INTRODUCTION prediction models and a long observation, are then welcome.
One such method is the “synthetic storm” technique [6] and the
T HE design of satellite systems working in frequency bands
affected by rain attenuation, (dB), are based, today, only
on the long term probability distribution (i.e., fraction of time)
long observation is our database of rain-rate time series.
For each rainstorm, physically described by a rain rate time
that is exceeded in an average year (or in the worst series collected at a site with a rain gauge, the synthetic storm
month). In an age of a large variety of services offered, or to be technique can generate a rain attenuation time series at any car-
offered, to users from satellites or from troposphere platforms, rier frequency and polarization, for any slant path with elevation
it would be useful to match system design to the time of the angle larger than about 10 . The synthetic storm technique was
day and to the expected duration of the services offered, e.g., successfully tested to predict conventional long term ’s
internet sessions, digital video and audio broadcasting. The ap- [6], long term statistics of fade duration [7], long term ’s
plication of forward error correction (FEC) codes, as currently relative to contiguous periods of the day of four hours [8]. If
done, may make rainfall attenuation a less severe problem for a simulated rain attenuation time series are compared to simulta-
satellite system in the 12-GHz band, if the system is designed neous real measurements (e.g., as done for Spino d’Adda in a
by taking into account not and its low values (i.e., the 37.8 slant path to Italsat, at 18.77 GHz [9]), the agreement is
range – ) and thus very short fade durations usually very good, especially when the rain storm motion is parallel to
considered in telephony services, a concept we can call channel projection to ground of the slant path. When the motion is not
unavailability, but the number of interruptions of a maximum parallel to projection to ground, the simulated time series are so
duration that a user can tolerate for a certain service, a TV or realistic that they might as well be measured in a long obser-
radio show, etc., a concept we can call service unavailability. vation. In fact, the synthetic storm technique yields results that
At higher frequencies (e.g., 20–30 and 40–50 GHz frequency are averaged over all the rain storms velocity field. These indi-
bands), coding gain may be, however, largely ineffective, both rect tests are of considerable importance for the present work
for rain attenuation and for the “quasistatic” extra attenuation because, in our opinion, they suggest that our simulations can
due to other sources of fading, such as oxygen, water vapor provide results that remind experimental ones.
and clouds. Rain attenuation, however, is likely to cause long An earth-space microwave radio link is also affected by
random interruptions as the results below show. fading due to clouds, water vapor and oxygen. The fading due
to these phenomena can be large (e.g., see [10]), but more
static than rain attenuation. They must be taken, of course,
Manuscript received March 3, 2003; revised October 27, 2003. into account in a full design of the communication system. At
The author is with the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politec-
nico di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy (e-mail: matricci@elet.polimi.it). microwaves, however, rainfall is still the major random physical
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832374 cause of fading that can affect a channel for intervals of time
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
2084 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE I
NUMBER OF OUTAGES (INTERRUPTIONS) FOR CONTIGUOUS (CLOCK) PERIODS OF DURATION T (min) OF THE DAY, AS A FUNCTION OF RAIN ATTENUATION
THRESHOLD A (dB) AT 11.6 GHz, IN A 32 SLANT PATH, AT SPINO d’ADDA, IN 10.6 YEARS OF OBSERVATION
Fig. 3. Number of occurrences of full outages in clock intervals of 5 min along a day for thresholds 0 dB (upper figure), 1 dB (middle) and 3 dB (lower) at
+
11.6 GHz, 32 slant path. The local time is one hour ahead of Universal Time (UT). Notice that, to show more clearly the cycles, 24 6 repeated hours are shown.
Numerical values are reported at the beginning of the interval. Observation time is 10.6 years. Horizontal dotted lines yield the equivalent uniform distributions.
Fig. 4. Number of occurrences of full outages in clock intervals of 15 min along a day for thresholds 0 dB (upper figure), 1 dB (middle) and 3 dB (lower) at
+
11.6 GHz, 32 slant path. The local time is one hour ahead of Universal Time (UT). Notice that, to show more clearly the cycles, 24 6 repeated hours are shown.
Numerical values are reported at the beginning of the interval. Observation time is 10.6 years. Horizontal dotted lines yield the equivalent uniform distributions.
B. Relation Between and the Probability Distribution of stance, for (the usual sampling time of rain attenuation
1-min Long Fades measurements) we would simply obtain:
(5)
(6)
In (9), is a constant, once and are fixed. Equation (5) can The application of FEC coding schemes, as currently done,
thus be used to find the ratio to scale to . For may make rainfall attenuation a less severe problem for a satel-
instance, if we want to scale rain attenuation measured [or pre- lite broadcasting system, if the system is designed by taking into
dicted, we must know ] at in a slant account not the conventional probability distribution and
path (zenith) to a different , from (9) we get , so that its low values (i.e., the range – ) and thus very short
rain attenuation to be inserted into (5) is reduced to 22%. Now, fade durations usually considered in telephony services (channel
we can calculate the scaling ratio for . For instance, unavailability), but the number of interruptions of a maximum
10 dB in a 90 slant path at 40 GHz yields 2.2 dB at 11.6 GHz duration that a user can tolerate for a certain service, a TV or
in the reference 32 slant path. Now, if , from (5) radio show, etc., (service unavailability). Once a clear distinc-
we get , so that, from (6), tion between channel unavailability and service unavailability
. From this probability (or relative fre- is established, the statistics and the scaling methods proposed in
quency) it is then possible to find the number of 10-min interrup- this paper could be used to design an earth-space system based
tions, or synchronized partial interruptions, in an average year, on service unavailability rather than on channel unavailability.
according to Section IV. At higher frequencies (e.g., 30-40-50 GHz), coding gain may
be, however, largely ineffective, both for the “quasistatic” extra
attenuation due to oxygen, water vapor and clouds, and for rain
VI. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION attenuation. For the latter, long random interruptions will be ex-
The simulated results obtained by the synthetic storm tech- perienced, as Table I, would show, once were scaled.
nique can be considered, in our opinion, as experimental ones.
They provide statistics on the interruptions (outages), due to REFERENCES
rainfall, in contiguous (clock) periods of the day of duration . [1] J. Goldhirsh, “Cumulative slant path rain attenuation statistics associated
with the comstar beacon at 28.56 GHz for Wallops Island, VA,” IEEE
The results are then useful to assess the quality and unavail- Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 27, pp. 752–758, 1979.
ability of services of duration during a day, e.g., in a satellite [2] H. W. Arnold, D. C. Cox, and A. J. Rustako, “Rain attenuation at 10–30
broadcasting system, or in a system using troposphere “geo- GHz along earth-space paths: elevation angle, frequency, seasonal, and
diurnal effects,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 29, pp. 716–721, 1981.
stationary” platforms 20 km aloft, in brief, in any earth-space [3] H. Fukuchi, T. Kozu, K. Nakamura, J. Awaka, H. Inomata, and Y. Otsu,
radio link. The numerical results at 11.6 GHz in a 32 slant path “Centimeter wave propagation experiments using the beacon signals of
CS and BSE satellites,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 31, pp.
(Table I) and the best fit and extrapolation formulas (2)–(9) can 603–613, 1983.
provide a rough approximation to the same statistics for other [4] M. Mauri, “Hourly variation of attenuation statistics at 11–12 GHz as
elevation angles, clock periods and carrier frequencies, at sites seen with SIRIO,” presented at the 32 Congr. Scientifico Int. per l’Elet-
tronica, Rome, 1985, pp. 81–85.
with the same climate of the Po Valley. [5] P. J. I. de Maagt, S. I. E. Touw, J. Dijk, G. Brussaard, L. J. M. Wijde-
As for broadcasting system design, the data in Table I show, mans, and J. E. Allnut, “Diurnal variations of 11.2 GHz attenuation on
for instance, that a TV program that lasts 1 h is likely to be a satellite path in Indonesia,” Electron. Lett., vol. 29, pp. 2149–2150,
1993.
interrupted (“blocked”) in Northern Italy for [6] E. Matricciani, “Physical-mathematical model of the dynamics of rain
times in an average year, if no built-in power margin or FEC attenuation based on rain rate time series and a two-layer vertical struc-
ture of precipitation,” Radio Science, vol. 31, pp. 281–295, 1996.
gain are available (case ). For a power margin of 3 dB [7] , “Prediction of fade durations due to rain in satellite communica-
(case ), in an average year (data of Table I, divided tion systems,” Radio Science, vol. 32, pp. 935–941, 1997.
by 10.6) there is one interruption of 30 min, 49 interruptions of [8] , “Diurnal distribution of rain attenuation in communication and
broadcasting satellite systems at 11.6 GHz in Italy,” IEEE Trans. Broad-
5 min, 365 interruptions of 1 min. casting, vol. 44, pp. 250–258, 1998.
Now, let us consider a probability of bit error or less [9] E. Matricciani, M. Mauri, and C. Riva, “A rain rate data base useful to
simulate reliable rain attenuation time series for applications to satellite
(e.g., see [16], p. 450), and code the bit stream with one of the and tropospheric communication systems,” in Proc. Eur. Conf. Wireless
latest turbo codes with code rate 1/2 and 18 iterations. Assuming Technology (ECWT 2002), Milan, Sept. 26–27, 2002, pp. 265–268.
that in clear-sky conditions there are enough power and band- [10] S. Ventouras, I. Otung, and C. Wrench, “Simulation of satellite systems
operating at Ka-band and above using experimental time series of tro-
width for the doubled bit rate, the turbo code yields a gain of pospheric attenuation,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Colloquium on Simu-
about 10 dB in the ratio between the energy per bit and the lation and Modeling of Satellite Systems, London, U.K., Apr. 2002, pp.
one-sided white noise power density , , e.g., see [16, 11/1–11/5.
[11] E. Matricciani, “An assessment of rain attenuation impact on satellite
p. 282, fig. 7.4]. Then, in an average year, in the Milan area, communication: matching service quality and system design to the time
by providing a system power margin (relative to clear-sky con- of the day,” Space Commun., vol. 16, pp. 195–205, 2000.
[12] A. Safaai-Jazi, H. Ajaz, and W. L. Stutzman, “Empirical models for rain
ditions) only by means of the most effective turbo code, in an fade time on Ku- and Ka-band satellite links,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
average year there would be 84 interruptions of 1 min (Table I, Propagat., vol. 43, pp. 1411–1415, 1995.
, 890/10.6), 8.4 interruptions of 5 min (some of [13] E. Matricciani, “Physical-mathematical model of dynamics of rain at-
tenuation with application to power spectrum,” Electron. Lett., vol. 30,
which can include, of course, 5 contiguous 1-min interruptions), pp. 522–524, 1994.
2.3 interruptions of 10 min, etc. These numbers provide results [14] E. Matricciani, M. Mauri, and C. Riva, “Scintillation and simultaneous
rain attenuation at 12.5 GHz to satellite Olympus,” Radio Science, vol.
averaged over a day (the uniform distribution of Figs. 3 and 4), 22, pp. 1861–1866, 1997.
but in specific parts of the day, as Figs. 3 and 4 show, these values [15] G. Drufuca, “Rain attenuation statistics for frequencies above 10 GHz
can be exceeded several times, especially in the afternoon and in from raingauges observations,” J. Rech. Atmosperique, pp. 399–411,
1974.
the evening at Spino d’Adda, and a finer system design should [16] T. Pratt, C. W. Bostian, and J. E. Allnutt, Satellite Communications, 2nd
consider this fact. ed. New York: Wiley, 2003.
2090 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—A novel vectorial modal method is presented for large reflecting antennas [9]. Thin-film dielectric structures
studying guidance and scattering of frequency-selective structures containing a periodic variation along the film have recently been
based on lossy all-dielectric multilayered waveguide gratings of considerable interest in integrated optics [10], because of the
for both TE and TM polarizations. The wave equation for the
transverse magnetic field is written in terms of a linear differential important role they play in applications such as beam-to-sur-
operator satisfying an eigenvalue equation. The definition of an face-wave couplers, filters, distributed feedback amplifiers and
auxiliary problem whose eigenvectors satisfy an orthogonality lasers, nonlinear generation of second harmonics, and beam
relationship allows for a matrix representation of the eigenvalue reflection on steering devices of the Bragg type. Eielectric
equation. Our proposed technique has been applied to the study frequency-selective surfaces (DFFS) have been analyzed with
of lossy all-dielectric periodic guiding media with periodicity in
one dimension. This method yields the propagation constants and a variety of different methods, both analytical and numerical.
field distributions in such media. The reflection and transmission Rigorous analytical methods [1], [11] for studying dielectric
coefficients of a single layer under a plane-wave excitation can periodic structures are limited however to gratings with special
be obtained by imposing the boundary conditions. Study of the simple groove shapes. Numerical methods [12], on the other
scattering parameters of the whole multilayered structure is hand, have made possible the analysis of periodic structures of
accomplished by the cascade connection of components as charac-
terized by their scattering parameters. Results obtained with this significant geometry/material complexity in the periodic cell.
method for the propagation characteristics of a one-dimensional The numerical method presented in this paper is based on a
periodic dielectric medium are compared with those presented by novel vectorial modal method [13], [14] for studying guidance
other authors, and results for the scattering of several dielectric and scattering by lossy all-dielectric guiding periodic structures.
frequency-selective surfaces (DFSS) are compared with both For the structures considered here, each layer is either a peri-
theoretical and experimental results presented in the literature,
finding a very good agreement. A symmetrical band-stop filter odic dielectric grating, formed by any number of lossy dielec-
with a single waveguide grating is also demonstrated theoretically. tric slabs, or a uniform dielectric slab, and all grating layers
have the same periodicity. This formulation has been applied to
Index Terms—Band-stop filter, dielectric grating, frequency-
selective surfaces, Galerkin method, orthogonality relationship, the accurate analysis of the modal spectrum (propagation con-
vectorial modal method. stants and fields distribution) of dielectric periodic structures
for both TE and TM polarizations, and results are successfully
compared with those presented in the technical literature. The
I. INTRODUCTION reflection and transmission coefficients of the structures under
a plane-wave excitation are obtained with the generalized scat-
T HE frequency-selective characteristics of multilayered
periodic structures, both dielectric [1]–[5] and metallic
[6]–[8] are of considerable importance in electromagnetics.
tering matrix (GSM) theory [15], [16] and successfully com-
pared with both theoretical and experimental results obtained
Periodic screens have been used in the last decades in many ap- by other authors.
plications as filters, radomes and polarizers of electromagnetic It must be emphasized that the complexity of the new method
waves. A dielectric layer with periodically varying dielectric proposed in this paper does not increase with the number of di-
constant can be used as an alternative way to obtain a frequency electric slabs present in the unit cells, such as it usually happens
selective surface. Dielectric waveguide gratings can be used with other classical analysis techniques (e.g., the TRM tech-
in the microwave-frequency band as dichroic subreflectors in nique [17]). Furthermore, the presence of losses in the dielectric
slabs can be easily considered by simply introducing a complex
permittivity in the formulation derived.
Manuscript received September 25, 2002; revised February 4, 2003. This The formalism used to obtain the modal spectrum of lossy
work was supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, Spanish Gov- dielectric periodic structures and the orthogonality relations
ernment, under Research Projects TIC2000-0591-C03-01 and TIC2000-0591-
C03-03. of the modes is presented in Section II. In Section III-A,
A. Coves and A. A. San Blas are with the Departamento de Física y Arquitec- numerical results obtained using this formalism for the propa-
tura de Computadores, Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche, 03202 Elche gation constants and the fields distribution in the grating region
(Alicante), Spain.
B. Gimeno and M. V. Andrés are with the Departamento de Física Aplicada y are compared with those presented in the bibliography. The
Electromagnetismo- I.C.M.U.V., Universidad de Valencia, 46100 Burjasot (Va- spectral response of several DFSS are obtained and compared
lencia), Spain. with both numerical and experimental results obtained by other
J. Gil and V. E. Boria are with Departamento de Comunicaciones, Universidad
Politécnica de Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain. authors in Section III-B, and a symmetrical band-stop filter
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832507 with a single waveguide grating is also proved theoretically.
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
2092 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(14) (20)
were the matrix elements of the operator are obtained as
follows: Thus, the information contained in the above matrix (14) and
(20) is the same as in the differential equations shown in (5).
(15) Diagonalization of the matrix yields the squared of the
th mode propagation constant (the th eigenvalue of ),
and also its transverse magnetic amplitude through the
For practical purposes, it is convenient to introduce the differ- knowledge of the th eigenvector . It is important to note
ence operator , resulting that the diagonalization of not only provides us with the
propagation constants (eigenvalues) and transverse magnetic
(16) amplitudes (eigenvectors) of the modes, but also with the
transverse electric fields of the modes, which are related to
Thus, the matrix elements of the operator are ob- through constraints derived from Maxwell’s equations [20].
tained by means of (15) This fact is very important from a computational point-of view,
because the diagonalization process for the matrix is only
(17) requested in the numerical implementation of this method.
Therefore, it is not necessary to implement the numerical
where the first term is diagonal because the operator is ex- diagonalization of the matrix corresponding to the electric
pressed in its own orthogonal basis. However, it can be easily operator .
shown that there is no coupling among TE and TM modes when However, the matrix has an infinite number of elements.
evaluating the integrals of the matrix elements of the oper- In order to develop a realistic method, we have to work with
ator. Thus, the problem can be easily separated into two TE and a finite set of well-known auxiliary fields. Unfortunately, there
TM polarizations. The integrals involved in the evaluation of the are no general conditions that guarantee the convergence of the
matrix elements of contain the relative dielectric permittivity expansions. This convergence will depend on both the nature of
2094 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
the operator and the auxiliary problem chosen to define the or- case, a study of convergence must be performed in order to reach
thogonal basis. In general, we observe that the modes are better an accurate solution for both the propagation characteristics
described by increasing the number of auxiliary modes. In the in each periodic layer, and the scattering parameters of the
same way, auxiliary bases that can represent the most relevant overall structure.
features of the real problem produce faster convergence. In any
case, numerical convergence tests must be done by sweeping the III. NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
number of auxiliary modes over meaningful ranges and studying
the stability of solutions. A. Accuracy and Convergence Properties of the Modal
Finally, the transverse electric field of the th mode is related Expansion in Periodic Dielectric Media
to through constraints given by Maxwell’s equations, which In order to compare our results for the propagation charac-
in this case can be expressed in terms of the modal characteristic teristics of an infinite periodic dielectric structure with those
impedances [6] obtained previously by other authors, we first examine an in-
finite periodic structure (see Fig. 1) with five dielectric slabs
(21) within the unit cell of period . The parame-
(22) ters are , , , ,
, , , ,
where these modal characteristic impedances are given by , , and . In the
calculations the auxiliary system used was an infinite homoge-
neous dielectric medium with with the same period
(23) of the real problem. Results of the convergence study of the so-
lutions of this infinite periodic medium are shown in Fig. (2a)
(24) and (b). In these figures it is represented, for TE [Fig. 2(a)] and
TM [Fig. 2(b)] polarization, the normalized propagation con-
Note that the TM characteristic impedance varies with the stant of the first and third mode (left-hand axis), and
coordinate, that is, the characteristic impedance is not a con- the sixth mode (right-hand axis) as a function of the number
stant because the relative permittivity is a function of the of auxiliary modes, which in this case are the Floquet modes
coordinate. of an infinite homogeneous medium with relative permittivity
Once obtained the fields and propagation constants in all . Results are obtained for a frequency of 10 GHz and
regions of the structure, both homogeneous and periodic, the for a normalized Floquet wavenumber . For TE
problem is reduced to obtain the scattering parameters of the polarization it can be seen that for all modes represented the con-
structure. To this end, the boundary conditions between adjacent vergence is reached with only 15 modes of the auxiliary basis,
layers will be imposed, obtaining the GSM at each interface taking 0.01 s per frequency point for obtaining the first fifteen
between adjacent layers of the structure, i.e., the amplitudes of modes (in a Pentium II@350 MHz processor). Nevertheless, a
reflected and transmitted modes. For a propagation distance higher number of auxiliary modes is needed for the case of TM
through a layer with propagation constants , the multimode polarization in order to reach the convergence of the solutions,
scattering matrix is defined as the scattering matrix of a uniform which in this case is auxiliary Floquet modes, which
transmission line of length [16]. Then, we construct the GSM takes again only 0.01 s per point.
of the global structure by means of the cascaded connection For the same problem considered before, Fig. 3 shows the
of the individual GSMs of the interfaces and the scattering curves of the normalized propagation constant as a func-
matrices corresponding to the propagation through the layers, tion of the normalized Floquet wavenumber of the
following the technique described in [16]. The global GSM first and second mode for both TE and TM polarizations. In this
yields the amplitudes of the scattered modes, which are re- figure the results calculated in [21] with the transverse resonant
flected and transmitted by the structure, considering an incident method (TRM) are also shown, and an excellent agreement is
plane wave with a unit amplitude. Finally, the reflectance observed.
and transmittance of the structure are easily obtained. The present method also allows the calculation of the field
In the described theory, when all modes are included, the patterns. The electric field distribution of the first and second
matrix is infinitely-dimensional. In order to develop a realistic mode along the characteristic cell for the geometry of Fig. 2
method, we have to work with a finite set of well-known is shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 4(a) shows the behavior of the elec-
auxiliary fields to expand the modes of each periodic dielectric tric field normalized with respect to its maximum value for the
layer in terms of the modes of the auxiliary basis functions. first and second TE modes as a function of the normalized co-
On the other hand, also the multimode scattering matrix is ordinate for values of (straight line) and 1
infinitely-dimensional. The most straightforward way to reduce (dashed line). In this figure we have also represented the results
the scattering problem to a computationally tractable form is calculated in [21] for the first TE mode at and
to truncate the individual layer multimode scattering matrices , showing an excellent agreement with our re-
at a finite size which is large enough to allow for accurate sults. The normalized magnetic field for the first and second TM
calculation of the scattered modes, reflected and transmitted, mode is shown in Fig. 4(b) as a function of for values of
which are significant in the overall solution but small enough to (straight line) and 1 (dashed line). We have also
be tractable for numerical calculation. Then, for each particular represented the results calculated in [22] for the first TM mode at
COVES et al.: FULL-WAVE ANALYSIS OF DFSS USING VECTORIAL MODAL METHOD 2095
Fig. 2. Study of convergence of the normalized propagation constant j=k j as a function of the number N of auxiliary modes for the first and third mode
(left-hand axis), and sixth mode (right-hand axis) for both (a) TE and (b) TM polarizations of an infinite periodic dielectric medium with five dielectric slabs within
the unit cell. Parameters: D = 17:99 mm, " = 1:0, " = 1:28, " = 2:56, " = 1:28, " = 1:0, "~ = 1:0, l = 5:105 mm, l = 2:09 mm,
l = 3:60 mm, l = 2:09 mm and l = 5:105 mm. Results obtained for a normalized Floquet wavenumber (k D= ) = 0 and a working frequency of
10 GHz.
Fig. 4. Field distributions along the unit cell of the first and second mode for the geometry of Fig. 2. (a) Distribution of the normalized electric field for the first
and second TE mode at (k D= ) = 0 (straight line) and 1 (dashed line). Results calculated in [21] are shown with dots. (b) Distribution of the normalized
magnetic field for the first and second TM mode at (k D= ) = 0 (straight line) and 1 (dashed line). Results calculated in [22] are also shown with dots.
Fig. 8. Transmittance of a multilayered periodic structure with two grating layers (layers 1 and 7) and six homogeneous layers between air and a substrate.
Comparison between our results (line) and those calculated in [24] with the rigorous coupled-wave theory (dots).
Angel A. San Blas was born in Fortaleny (Valencia), Vicente E. Boria (SM’02) was born in Valencia,
Spain, on September 20, 1976. He received the Inge- Spain, on May 18, 1970. He received the Ingeniero
niero de Telecomunicación degree from the Univer- de Telecomunicación degree with first-class honors
sidad Politécnica de Valencia, in November 2000. and the “Doctor Ingeniero de Telecomunicación”
In 2001, he was awarded a researcher position in degree from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia,
the Departamento de Comunicaciones, Universidad Valencia, Spain, in 1993 and 1997, respectively.
Politécnica de Valencia, where he worked for two In 1993, he joined the Departamento de Comu-
years. In 2003, he joined the Departamento de nicaciones, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia,
Física y Arquitectura de Computadores, Universidad where he was an Assistant Lecturer from 1993 to
Miguel Hernández de Elche, Spain, where he is 1995, a Lecturer from 1996 to 1997, an Associate
currently an Assistant Professor. His current research Professor from 1998 to 2002, and became Full
interests include the analysis of discontinuities in waveguide structures, design Professor in 2003. In 1995 and 1996, he was awarded a Spanish Trainee
of microwave filters, and coaxial excitation of microwave devices. position at ESTEC-ESA, Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where he worked in
the area of electromagnetic analysis and design of waveguide devices. He
has authored or coauthored over 20 papers in refereed international technical
journals and over 70 papers in international conference proceedings in his areas
of research interest. His current research interests include numerical methods
for the analysis of waveguide and scattering structures, automated design of
waveguide components, radiating systems, measurement techniques and power
effects in passive systems.
In 1993, Dr. Boria received from the Spanish “Ministerio de Educación y
Ciencia” the First National Prize of Telecommunication Engineering Studies for
his outstanding student record. In 2001, he received from the Social Council of
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia the First Research Prize for his outstanding
activity during the period 1995 to 2000. Since 1992, he has been a member of
the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) and of
the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (IEEE AP-S). Since 2003, he has
been a member of the Technical Committee of the IEEE-MTT International
Microwave Symposium and of the European Microwave Conference.
2100 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
A particularly interesting situation is encountered when mod- II. MODELING APERTURES IN THICK SCREENS
eling slots in thick metallic planes. An approximate method to
deal with this problem, termed the “Delta” approach, has re- To illustrate the general strategy proposed in this paper to deal
cently been presented in [3]. In its final formulation, this method with interactions, we start by considering the “thick slot”
only provides a first order approximation to the effect of finite problem of Fig. 1, where a stratified medium includes a thick
thickness and neglects the effect of the walls, particularly the ground plane in which a slot has been created. This
possible coupling between the walls at both sides of the slot. problem is usually solved by using equivalence principles to re-
Other methods [4] only consider the walls approximately. The duce it to a more tractable configuration. Fig. 2 shows the stan-
dard strategy, which divides the problem in three parts linked
Manuscript received June 2, 2003; revisedAugust 22, 2003. This work was
by magnetic currents. In the layered media above and below the
supported by the ESA/ESTEC under Contract 14062/00/NL/GD. thick slot, standard MoM integral equation approaches may be
The authors are with the Laboratory of Electromagnetics and Acoustics used. The medium representing the slot is now a cavity (or a
(LEMA), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL-Ecublens Lausanne,
CH-1015, Switzerland (e-mail: daniel.llorensdelrio@epfl.ch). waveguide closed at both ends); here, apropiate modal expan-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832329 sions or cavity/waveguide Green’s functions should be used.
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
LLORENS DEL RÍO AND MOSIG: ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC CURRENTS IN STRATIFIED MEDIA 2101
(2b)
(2c)
, but also the contribution of the closest im- correspond to spatial domain rotational symmetry
ages. This is clearly a limitation of the double-aperture formula-
tion, as has already been pointed [11]. The “Delta” formulation (8a)
[3] is specifically designed to handle the limiting case. (8b)
The submatrix involves terms of the form . (8c)
These are computed by putting in full mixed potential
form, according to the formulation in [12]. Rectangular rooftops Making use of the identities (14) in Appendix I, at most four
are used to expand in an orthogonal mesh.1 The classical Sommerfeld transform operations are needed to obtain the trans-
Sommerfeld form for is used, as in [8], but the computa- verse components , and only one to obtain
tion of [13] is never necessary, because it can be substi- (vertical magnetic currents are not considered).
tuted by proper application of reciprocity relation (4c). We note These operations are
that the line integrals inherent in our choice of the Sommerfeld
form of do not appear in the particular case of a homoge- (9a)
neously filled PPWG. Otherwise, the spectral integration tech- (9b)
nique, which is detailed in the next section for the elements of
(9c)
, is also applied to the computation of the elements of . The
integrated functions to be tabulated present at most a logarithmic (9d)
singularity. (9e)
(5)
(10)
The various components are obtained from the well known
spectral TL model, where the stratified medium is represented
by two (TE and TM) equivalent transmission line networks, and In principle, as discussed in previous sections, every Green’s
all field quantities can be expressed in terms of voltages and function will depend on three space coordinates, , and .
currents in this network, under either voltage or cur- However, the vertical regularity of the structure makes it pos-
rent excitation [14]. We have cast them in the following sible to take this dependence into account in the spectral do-
form, ready for numerical implementation: main. For it is well known that the existence of a TL model for
the stratified medium ensures that the dependence with respect
(6a) to the vertical coordinates will be of the form
(6b)
(6c)
(11)
(6d)
(6e) where parameters do not depend on the vertical co-
(6f) ordinates once source and observer layers are fixed. Formulae
of this type, that explicitly reveal the exponential dependence
(6g)
on both vertical coordinates and for any transmission line
parameter ( or ) have been presented in [8] and, more re-
whose symmetry properties
cently, again in [9].
(7a) The transverse Fourier transform does not affect the vertical
dependence; thus, any spatial integration along can be car-
(7b) ried over in the spectral domain, analytically. This effectively
(7c) eliminates the spatial Green’s functions dependence on these
1We
coordinates, avoiding cumbersome three-dimensional spatial
shall use the conditions that
• e=e ^e(z; ) = e ^e (z )e (); (separability)
interpolation during matrix-of-moments fill.
• e ? k
z^ or e z^ (orthogonality). In the particular case of elements of the type
A mesh of the kind needed is pictured in Fig. 8. is fixed because it corresponds to a horizontal
LLORENS DEL RÍO AND MOSIG: ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC CURRENTS IN STRATIFIED MEDIA 2103
Fig. 4. Rectangular slot antenna: thickness 35 m =1400 at 6 GHz. Fig. 6. Rectangular slot antenna: thickness 10 mm =5 at 6 GHz.
A. Examples
As a test case, a slot loop antenna that resonates at 3 GHz
has been selected. This antenna (Fig. 12) was a model for
studying the radiating element of open structure, integrated
receiver front-ends for submillimeter-wave operation [22]. In
that application, the diode can be connected in series to the feed
line; then, the airbridge (in the symmetrical position) is used to
provide a dc return path. The airbridge should not affect the RF
characteristics of the slot loop, so it should be comparatively
long.
In the asymmetrical position, the airbridge can be used to
connect to ground a diode that has been placed at the center of
Fig. 10. ”Dogbone” antenna: thickness 1 mm =60 at 5 GHz. the loop. The role of the airbridge is wholly different because
now it must conduct RF signal. The slot loop, which is about
one wavelength at RF, presents a magnetic current null at that
III. AIRBRIDGE MODELING
position, which allows for a very short airbridge.
CPW circuits usually require airbridges for proper operation, For the first case, a series of airbridges of different form
to eliminate the unwanted slotline mode [2]. In many circuits, factors, listed in Fig. 13, was built, and antenna impedance
such as the dual-mode filter introduced in [20], or in MEMS was measured at the end of the CPW feeding line (Fig. 14).
delay lines, the response of the circuit is highly dependent on An excellent agreement is observed for all cases, as compared
airbridge dimensions. to simulations (Fig. 15). It can be appreciated that for the
2106 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 12. Slot antenna propotype. Dimensions in millimeters: r = 15:92; w = 2; l = 19:89; w = 1:140; s = 0:930; w = 0:126; s = 2:748. Substrate:
h = 1:57 mm, = 2:33.
Fig. 13. Dimensions (in millimeters) for each case of Figs. 14, and 15. Fig. 14. Measured jS j for the slot loop antenna of Fig. 12 with the airbridges
of Fig. 13, with airbridges on the symmetrical position.
longest airbridge (case #2) the main resonance of the bare
loop is least affected.
For the “thick slot” problem, this is done by solving for mag-
The asymmetrical placement of the airbridge produces in
netic currents at both sides of the slot and for electric currents
turn a very complex behavior, with multiple resonances, due to at the walls on its contour. The problem posed by these ver-
the introduction of asymmetric modes in the loop. The main tical walls inside a parallel-plate medium is ideally suited to a
resonance of the bare loop remains unaffected however, be-
mixed spectral-spatial formulation. A pure mixed potential for-
cause at that frequency the condition imposed by the airbridge
mulation has been kept for the electric elements. For the parallel
matches the natural symmetric configuration of magnetic plate medium, this choice leads to less integral types and con-
currents. Again, comparison of measurement and simulation sequently to reduced memory requirements and faster compu-
(Fig. 16) shows good agreement.
tations. For electric-magnetic interactions, a field formulation is
used. The singularity of the mixed-type Green’s functions
IV. CONCLUSION is integrated over the source cell (always a magnetic current cell)
A technique to compute interactions between electric and with a closed formula.
magnetic currents embedded in multilayered media has been The method presented here has the flexibility required to go
described, as applied to the analysis of 1) slots in metalliza- beyond regular slot shapes, where the use of the cavity approach
tion screens of finite thickness, and 2) airbridges in slot/CPW would be much more involved. This ability has been demon-
circuits. strated with the analysis of a “dogbone”-shaped aperture.
LLORENS DEL RÍO AND MOSIG: ON THE INTERACTION BETWEEN ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC CURRENTS IN STRATIFIED MEDIA 2107
(14a)
(14b)
(14c)
(14d)
(14e)
APPENDIX II
SINGULARITY EXTRACTION
When in (12) is a triangular RWG rooftop, the inner inte-
gral in (12) is proportional to (substituting the static part of (10)
for )
(15a)
Fig. 15. Computed jS j for the slot loop antenna of Fig. 12 with the airbridges
of Fig. 13, with airbridges on the symmetrical position. (15b)
(16)
(17)
(18)
Fig. 16. Computed and measured jS j for the slot loop antenna of Fig. 12
with an airbridge (case #4 of Fig. 13) on the asymmetrical position.
(because ). Noting
that
Quite remarkably, the same technique has been applied to
a very different problem, namely, the analysis of the effect of (19)
an airbridge short-circuiting a slot loop antenna at different po-
sitions. Again, comparison with measurements has shown the
validity of the method.
APPENDIX I
TRANSFORM RELATIONS
(13a)
(13b)
2108 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
we may write, separating from an infinitesimal region [12] J. Chen, A. A. Kishk, and A. W. Glisson, “Application of a new MPIE
around , say, a circular sector of radius formulation to the analysis of a dielectric resonator embedded in a
multilayered medium coupled to a microstrip circuit,” IEEE Trans.
Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 49, pp. 263–279, Feb. 2001.
[13] K. A. Michalski and D. Zheng, “Electromagnetic scattering and radation
by surfaces of arbitrary shape in layered media, part II: Implementation
and results for contiguous half-spaces,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop-
agat., vol. 38, pp. 345–352, Mar. 1990.
[14] K. A. Michalski and J. R. Mosig, “Multilayered media Green’s functions
in integral equation formulations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
45, pp. 508–519, Mar. 1997.
[15] D. R. Wilton, S. Rao, A. W. Glisson, D. H. Schaubert, O. Al-Bundak,
and C. M. Butler, “Potential integrals for uniform and linear source dis-
tributions on polygonal and polyhedral domains,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 32, pp. 276–281, Mar. 1984.
[16] P. Gay-Balmaz and J. R. Mosig, “Three dimensional planar radiating
structures in stratified media,” Int. J. Microwave and Millimeter-Wave
CAE, vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 330–343, 1997.
[17] J. R. Mosig, “Integral equation technique,” in Numerical Techniques
for Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Passive Structures, 1st ed, T. Itoh,
Ed. New York: Wiley, 1989, ch. 3.
[18] D. Llorens del Río, I. Stevanović, and J. R. Mosig, “Analysis of printed
(20) structures including thick slots,” presented at the Proc. COST-284
Meeting, Budapest, Apr. 2003.
The second term becomes zero as , and the integrand of [19] A. Álvarez Melcón, “Applications of the integral equation technique to
the analysis and synthesis of multilayered printed shielded microwave
the third term is bounded, so it also vanishes as . There filters and cavity backed antennas,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ecole Polytech-
remains nique Fédérale de Lausanne, LEMA-DE, 1998.
[20] L. Cohen, H. Baudrand, D. Bajon, and J. Puech, “Full wave analysis of
coplanar four-poles resonators using odd and even modes,” in Proc. Int.
(21) Workshop on Microwave Filters, Toulouse, France, June 2002.
[21] T. M. Grzegorczyk and J. R. Mosig, “Line charge distributions arising in
the integral equation treatment of bent scatterers in stratified media,” in
which is immediate. Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 148, Dec. 2001,
If is a linear function of , the resulting integral can be pp. 365–368.
[22] P. Otero, G. V. Eleftheriades, and J. R. Mosig, “Integrated modified rect-
seen to be a combination of (17) and a term of the same type as angular loop slot antenna on substrate lenses for millimeter- and sub-
(15b). millimeter-wave frequencies mixer applications,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 46, pp. 1489–1497, Oct. 1998.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. Lin of ESTEC (Earth
Observation Programs) for his support of this work. Daniel Llorens del Río received the Electrical Engi-
neer degree from the University of Málaga, Málaga,
Spain, in 2000. He is currently working toward the
REFERENCES Ph.D. degree at the Laboratory of Electromagnetics
and Acoustics, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lau-
[1] H. Chen, Q. Li, L. Tsang, C.-C. Huang, and V. Jandhyala, “Analysis of
a large number of vias and differential signaling in multilayered struc- sanne (EPFL), Switzerland.
tures,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 51, pp. 818–829, Mar. His research interests are numerical methods and
2003. antenna modeling.
[2] R. Simons, Coplanar Waveguide Circuits, Components and Systems, 1st
ed. New York: Wiley, 2001.
[3] J. R. Mosig, Scattering by arbitrarily-shaped slots in thick conducting
screens: An approximate solution, in IEEE Trans. on Antennas Prop..
Accepted for publication to.
[4] D. T. Auckland and R. F. Harrington, “Electromagnetic transmission
through a filled slit in a conducting screen of finite thickness, TE case,”
IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 26, pp. 499–505, July 1978. Juan R. Mosig (S’76–M’87–SM’94–F’99) was
[5] J. Sor, Y. Qian, and T. Itoh, “Miniature low-loss CPW periodic structures born in Cadiz, Spain. He received the Electrical
for filter applications,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 49, Engineer degree in 1973 from the Universidad
pp. 2336–2341, Dec. 2001. Politecnica de Madrid, Spain. In 1976, he joined
[6] R. F. Harrington, Field Computation by Moment Methods, 1st ed. New the Laboratory of Electromagnetics and Acoustics
York: Macmillan, 1968. (LEMA), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
[7] M.-J. Tsai, C. Chen, N. G. Alexopoulos, and T.-S. Horng, “Multiple ar- (EPFL), Switzerland, from which he obtained the
bitrary shape via-hole and air-bridge transitions in multilayered struc- Ph.D. degree in 1983.
tures,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 44, pp. 2504–2511, Since 1991, he has been a Professor at EPFL and
Dec. 1996. since 2000, the Head of the EPFL Laboratory of Elec-
[8] N. Kınayman and M. I. Aksun, “Efficient use of closed-form Green’s tromagnetics and Acoustics. In 1984, he was a Vis-
functions for the analysis of planar geometries with vertical connec- iting Research Associate at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.
tions,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 45, pp. 593–603, May He has also held scientific appointments at universities of Rennes (France), Nice
1997. (France), Technical University of Danemark and the University of Colorado at
[9] M. Vrancken and G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Hybrid dyadic-mixed poten-
tial and combined spectral-space domain integral-equation analysis of Boulder. He is the author of four chapters in books on microstrip antennas and
quasi 3-D structures in stratified media,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory circuits and more than 100 reviewed papers. He is co-organizer and lecturer of
Tech., vol. 51, pp. 216–225, Jan. 2003. yearly short courses in numerical electromagnetics (Europe and USA). He is
[10] V. H. Rumsey, “Reaction concept in electromagnetic theory,” Physical the Chairman of a European COST project on antennas and is responsible for
Rev., vol. 94, no. 6, pp. 1483–1491, June 1954. several research projects for the European Space Agency. His research interests
[11] R. F. Harrington and D. T. Auckland, “Electromagnetic transmission include electromagnetic theory, numerical methods and planar antennas.
through narrow slots in thick conducting screens,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Dr. Mosig is a Member of the Swiss Federal Commission for Space
Propagat., vol. 28, pp. 616–622, Sept. 1980. Applications.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2109
the theory which follows is also formally valid for the more
general geometry of Fig. 1.
Following the standard procedure, we replace the two open-
ings of the thick aperture by zero-thickness conducting surfaces.
The two sides of the surface separating regions and
will be denoted and , while the two sides of the surface
separating regions and will be denoted and .
Now, according to the equivalence theorem, we define un-
known equivalent magnetic surface currents in the following
way [Fig. 2(a)]
(1)
(4)
(5)
if the interior of the cavity is homogeneous or it is symmetri-
Therefore, if we solve the system of (4) associated to the thick cally filled with dielectric media, because then we would have
slot problem in the limiting case of a vanishing slot thickness by symmetry
, we should end up with the result ,
which is the solution of the integral equation (5). Unfortunately, (8)
this is not the case in practice, as the cavity Green’s functions
show a divergent behavior when the cavity thickness vanishes. where the index reminds us that this Green’s functions corre-
This fact deserves further consideration and will be investigated spond to a “self” interaction of one of the surfaces bounding the
now. slot and hence the cavity with itself.
The four cavity Green’s functions correspond to the
In all cases, the four cavity Green’s functions corre-
four interactions shown in Fig. 3(a). Electromagnetic reciprocity
spond all to particular cases of the situation depicted in Fig. 3(b).
ensures that we must have
Formally, we can solve this problem by transforming the cavity
(6) into an infinite waveguide. This is achieved by taking images
of the source respect to both the lower and upper cavity walls
where the index reminds us that this Green’s functions as in Fig. 3(c). But in this situation, it is well-known that all
correspond to a “mutual” interaction between the two parallel the images will keep the sign of the original magnetic source.
surfaces bounding the slot and hence the cavity. With this Therefore, all the Green’s functions (which are of the
simplified notation, the set of coupled integral equations (4) HM-type) will diverge in the limiting case, as all the images co-
can be cast into a convenient matricial form alesce into a single source of infinite intensity.
This heuristic conclusion will be confirmed later on by a rig-
orous analytic development in a more specific geometry. At this
time, let us simply point out the evident consequence: in its
(7) current formulation (7), the thick aperture problem cannot be
solved numerically in the limiting case of a zero thickness slot,
where electromagnetic reciprocity ensures the symmetry of the since all the elements in the Green’s function matrix would di-
Green’s functions matrix. A further simplification can be used verge. Indeed, numerical difficulties should be expected when
2112 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
trying to solve (7) for small values of the thickness , and alter- sides of the slot). Therefore, the logical thought is to replace the
nate forms must be investigated to provide a smooth transition original equations by their sum and difference
to the zero-thickness case.
where the coefficients play the role of the potentially di- (16)
verging cavity Green’s functions and . The formal
with the result
solution of this system is
(17)
(10) We have here finally uncovered the clue for a successful at-
tack to problem. The combination in the first equation
Now, we can easily see that if under a certain condition of (17) includes both a small coefficient and a small unknown
all the coefficients diverge but in such a way that the fol- and hence can be safely neglected. Therefore by starting with
lowing conditions are satisfied: , the first equation provides directly the initial guess
for the average value . This is already an excellent esti-
(11) mation of the true solutions of the original system (14), namely
. If we need a better estimation pro-
then we obtain the limit solution viding different values for the unknowns, we just replace
in the second equation and obtain directly , and
therefore and . If still better accu-
(12)
racy is needed, the cyclic iteration can be pursued indefinitely.
Now, coming back to formal algebra, let us symbolize our linear
which is indeed the solution of the algebraic equation equiva- system (14) by the matrix equation
lent to the zero-thickness slot integral equation (5). The conclu-
sion is that the thick slot equation (7) contains as a particular (18)
case the zero-thickness slot solution, if the cavity Green’s func-
tions fulfill conditions equivalent to (11). These conditions will It is easy to show that replacing the original individual equations
be checked in a coming section. But even with these conditions by their sum and difference, is equivalent to premultiplication by
satisfied, the presence of the convolution operator prevents the a matrix and the linear system (15) corresponds to the matrix
use of the equation (7) in situations approaching the zero thick- equation
ness case and an improved formulation of the thick slot problem
must be sought after. To get some hints about what must be done, (19)
let us progress a further step in the simplification of our problem
and move from algebra to arithmetic by introducing a set of nu-
By the same token, replacing the original unknowns by their
merical values for the coefficients, namely
half-sum and half-difference can be also related to this matrix
since
(13)
(20)
which reproduce quite faithfully the numerical conditions
arising in a typical thin-slot situation. The corresponding linear and therefore the final transformed problem (17), easily
system is amenable to an iterative solution, is formally given by
(21)
(14) But is just a scaled version of the unitary 45 rotation matrix
A close look to this system with engineer eyes reveals two very
(22)
similar equations (the information about the field values in both
MOSIG: SCATTERING BY ARBITRARILY-SHAPED SLOTS IN THICK CONDUCTING SCREENS 2113
Hence, we conclude that the potentially useful transformation of gent term is . Therefore, the second line in (26) automati-
our linear system is just achieved by pre- and post-multiplying cally gives the result , and the first line reduces to the
by a 45 rotation matrix. zero-thickness slot equation.
Hence, we can set up the following procedure for thin slots:
V. THICK SLOT INTEGRAL EQUATIONS AND Step 1) assume
ROTATION MATRICES Step 2) solve a modified zero-thickness slot equation to ob-
Let us apply to our thick slot matrix integral equation (7) the tain a first estimate of
pre- and post-multiplications by the rotation matrix as indi-
cated in (21). The final result is given in (23), at the bottom of (27)
the page, where we have introduced the “average” and “devia-
tion” values of the magnetic currents in the slot Step 3) estimate by solving the equation
(24)
The matrix equation (23) looks much more complicated than the Step 4) improve, if necessary, the estimation of by
original one (7) and it could be feared that we have worsened solving
our chances. But, as in the numerical example of the previous
section, the first line in the system (23) is the clue, since none
of its elements will diverge when the slot thickness vanishes,
if conditions (11) are fulfilled. We can therefore start with the Step 5) go to Step 3).
assumption and solve the first equation in the system It is worth mentioning that all the above steps are single un-
(23) to obtain a first estimation of . It is remarkable indeed coupled integral equations. In most cases, stopping after the
that if media and in both sides of the slot are identical (for Step 2) will be enough to predict the first order deviation from
instance, free space), then we have and then the the zero-thickness case introduced by a reasonable slot thick-
first equation in (23) becomes uncoupled, directly providing the ness. In fact, Step 2) is identical to the zero-thickness slot in-
exact value of . tegral equation (5), but with the Green’s function kernel cor-
To clarify these ideas, let us fully develop the proposed proce- rected by an additive term . Therefore, if the “delta” cavity
dure in the case of a slot filled by an homogeneous or symmet- Green’s functions could be approximated by an easily com-
rically disposed dielectric medium, and therefore satisfying the putable expression, the Step 2) would provide first corrections
symmetry condition (8). In this case, the notation can be greatly for thick slots with no increase in the computational complexity.
simplified by introducing the combinations The next section proposes some reasonable expressions for the
“delta” Green’s function.
(25)
VI. APPROXIMATIONS FOR DELTA AND
that we can call the “sigma” and “delta” cavity Green’s func- SIGMA GREEN’S FUNCTIONS
tions ( and ). First of all we move from fields to potentials and introduce
For a vanishing thickness slot, the sigma Green’s function will the convenient formalism of the “Mixed Potential Integral Equa-
diverge but the delta one will vanish. With this notation, it is a tion” [20], [21]. Until now, all the Green’s functions referred
straightforward matter to show that the matrix equation (23) is in previous section are of the HM-type (magnetic field due to
equivalent to a magnetic current). Therefore any generic convolution in the
previous sections can be expanded in terms of potentials
(28)
(26)
where and are the vector and scalar potentials associated
This is a great improvement with respect to the original matrix with transverse magnetic currents and is the equivalent
equation (7)! When the slot thickness vanishes, the only diver- magnetic charge.
(23)
2114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(29)
2
Fig. 6. Thick slot of thickness =10 illuminated by normally incident
plane wave having its electric field along the y -coordinate.
Fig. 9. Radiation pattern in E -plane. Full-wave cavity approach (solid line), “Delta approach” (dashed line), Zero-thickness approximation (dash-dotted line).
Square 2 aperture of =10 thickness. Plane wave impinging from bottom with 45 incidence and H -field polarized in x-direction.
time with a plane wave incident at an angle of 45 . Fig. 9 shows values of the half-difference and half-sum of the magnetic cur-
the scattered field radiation pattern obtained with the rigorous rents in both sides of the slots. Also, other approximations of
“full-wave cavity model,” assuming a zero-thickness slot and the cavity Green’s functions could be explored, like the use of
with our “delta approach.” Even without iterations, the delta images respect to the lateral walls or a modal waveguide expan-
approach already provides a much better result than the zero- sion, that should be excellent for very deep and narrow slots.
thickness approach and with no increase in computational com- The formulation presented is this paper is very flexible
plexity. Moreover, accuracy can be increased if needed. This and combines naturally well with the integral equation based
would be essential when looking for precise predictions of near models currently used for cavity backed antennas, thick irises
field quantities. in waveguide filters, slot-fed patches and thick coplanar lines.
These configurations and many related ones are of paramount
VIII. CONCLUSION relevance in innovative and emerging applications, where con-
ducting wall thickness cannot be any more neglected, because
In this paper, we present a rigorous integral equation for-
of the technology (self-supporting metallic plates rather than
mulation of the thick aperture problem providing a smooth
printed sheets), the frequency (mm- and sub mm-waves) or
transition to the zero-thickness case, inspired by an analogy
both. An intensive numerical exploration of these geometries,
with an algebraic problem. The full usefulness of the new
including predictions of very sensitive near-field quantities like
formulation is only evident if the cavity Green’s functions can
multiport scattering parameters, should provide a more detailed
be easily calculated or at least efficiently approximated. In this
appraisal of the scope of this theory and of its accuracy.
paper, we propose to use as starting point the zero-thickness
case. Consequently, a logical approximation is to neglect the
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
internal lateral walls of the slot and to assume that the equiv-
alent cavity is a parallel plate waveguide. The final result is a Thanks are given to Dr. E. Suter, McKinsey Consultants,
new integral equation whose unknown is the average value of Geneva, Switzerland, and to Mr. I. Stevanović, LEMA-EPFL,
the magnetic currents in both sides of the thick slot. And this Switzerland, for helpful discussions and numerical checking of
new equation has exactly the same degree of complexity as the ideas developed in this paper.
the zero thickness slot equation, since the only modification
is the addition of a correcting “delta” term for the Green’s REFERENCES
functions, that can be analytically approximated and that dis- [1] L. Rayleigh, “On the incidence of aerial and electric waves upon small
appears naturally in the zero-thickness limiting case. obstacles in the form of ellipsoids or elliptic cylinders, and on the
passage of electric waves through a circular aperture in a conducting
It is hard to obtain an a priori estimate of the accuracy of this screen,” Phil. Mag., vol. 44, pp. 28–52, July 1897.
approximate technique. It should logically work better for large [2] H. A. Bethe, “Theory of diffraction by small holes,” Phys. Rev., vol. 66,
shallow slots and deteriorate as the slot thickness increases. But pp. 163–182, Oct. 1944.
[3] H. Levine and J. Schwinger, “On the theory of difraction by an aperture
the analysis of rather electrically thick slots should still lead in an infinite plane screen I,” Phys. Rev., vol. 74, pp. 958–974, 1948.
to reasonable results if the slot’s transverse dimensions remain [4] , “On the theory of difraction by an aperture in an infinite plane
large compared with its thickness. In any case, thicknesses of screen II,” Phys. Rev., vol. 75, pp. 1423–1432, 1949.
[5] Y. Rahmat-Samii and R. Mittra, “Electromagnetic coupling through
the order of a tenth of wavelength should not pose any real small apertures in a conducting screen,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop-
challenge as the results in this paper demonstrate for the scat- agat., vol. AP-25, pp. 180–187, Mar. 1977.
tered field. If the knowledge of the average value of the cur- [6] J. B. Keller, “Geometrical theory of diffraction,” J. Appl. Phys., vol. 28,
pp. 426–444, 1962.
rents is not sufficient, the technique can always be improved by [7] R. Mittra, Y. Rahmat-Samii, and W. Ko, “Spectral theory of diffraction,”
looping across an iterative process, which provides improved Appl. Phys., vol. 10, pp. 1–13, 1976.
MOSIG: SCATTERING BY ARBITRARILY-SHAPED SLOTS IN THICK CONDUCTING SCREENS 2117
[8] C. T. Tai, Generalized Vector and Dyadic Analysis. New York: IEEE [21] K. Michalski and J. R. Mosig, “Multilayered media Green’s functions in
Press, 1992. integral equation formulations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
[9] C. M. Butler, Y. Rahmat-Samii, and R. Mittra, “Electromagnetic pene- 45, pp. 508–519, Mar. 1997.
tration through apertures in conducting surfaces,” IEEE Trans. Antennas [22] J. R. Mosig, R. C. Hall, and F. E. Gardiol, “Numerical analysis of mi-
Propagat., vol. AP-26, pp. 82–93, Jan. 1978. crostrip patch antennas,” in Handbook of Microstrip Antennas, London,
[10] C. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics. New York: U.K.: Peregrinus, 1989, ch. 8.
Wiley, 1989. [23] K. Michalski, “Extrapolation methods for sommerfeld integral tails,”
[11] S. C. Kashyap and M. A. K. Hamid, “Diffraction characteristics of a IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 46, pp. 1405–1418, Oct. 1998.
slit in a thick conducting screen,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
AP-19, pp. 499–507, July 1971.
[12] F. L. Neerhoff and G. Mur, “Diffraction of a plane electromagnetic wave
by a slit in a thick screen placed between two different media,” Appl. Sci.
Res., vol. 28, pp. 73–88, July 1973.
[13] D. T. Auckland and R. F. Harrington, “A nonmodal formulation for elec-
tromagnetic transmission through a filled slot of arbitrary cross-section Juan R. Mosig (S’76–M’87–SM’94–F’99) was
in a thick conducting screen,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. born in Cadiz, Spain. He received the Electrical
MTT-28, pp. 548–555, June 1980. Engineer degree in 1973 from the Universidad
[14] J. Jin and J. Volakis, “TM scattering by an inhomogeneously filled aper- Politecnica de Madrid, Spain. In 1976, he joined
ture in a thick conducting plane,” in Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 137, the Laboratory of Electromagnetics and Acoustics
June 1990, pp. 153–159. (LEMA), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
[15] S. Gedney and R. Mittra, “Electromagnetic transmission through inho- (EPFL), Switzerland, from which he obtained the
mogeneously filled slots in a thick conducting plane—Arbitrary inci- Ph.D. degree in 1983.
dence,” IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 34, pp. 404–415, Nov. Since 1991, he has been a Professor at EPFL and
1992. since 2000, the Head of the EPFL Laboratory of Elec-
[16] D. M. Pozar, “A microstrip antenna aperture coupled to a microstrip tromagnetics and Acoustics. In 1984, he was a Vis-
line,” Electron. Lett., vol. 21, pp. 49–50, 1985. iting Research Associate at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY.
[17] P. Haddad and D. Pozar, “Characterization of aperture coupled mi- He has also held scientific appointments at universities of Rennes (France), Nice
crostrip patch antenna with thick ground plane,” Electron. Lett., vol. 30, (France), Technical University of Danemark and the University of Colorado at
pp. 1106–1107, July 1994. Boulder. He is the author of four chapters in books on microstrip antennas and
[18] A. Roberts, “Electromagnetic theory of diffraction by a circular aperture circuits and more than 100 reviewed papers. He is co-organizer and lecturer of
in a thick, perfectly conducting screen,” J. Opt. Soc. Amer. A, Opt. Image yearly short courses in numerical electromagnetics (Europe and USA). He is
Sci., vol. 4, pp. 1970–1983, Oct. 1987. the Chairman of a European COST project on antennas and is responsible for
[19] J. Van Bladel, Electromagnetic Fields. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. several research projects for the European Space Agency. His research interests
[20] J. R. Mosig, “Integral equation technique,” in Numerical Techniques for include electromagnetic theory, numerical methods and planar antennas.
Microwave and Milimeter Wave Passive Structures. New York: Wiley, Dr. Mosig is a Member of the Swiss Federal Commission for Space
1989, ch. 3. Applications.
2118 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—A novel double higher order Galerkin-type method of approach, where both electric and magnetic surface currents
moments based on higher order geometrical modeling and higher are introduced over boundary surfaces between homogeneous
order current modeling is proposed for surface integral equation parts of the structure, and surface integral equations based
analysis of combined metallic and dielectric antennas and scat-
terers of arbitrary shapes. The technique employs generalized on boundary conditions for both electric and magnetic field
curvilinear quadrilaterals of arbitrary geometrical orders for intensity vectors are solved with current densities as unknowns.
the approximation of geometry (metallic and dielectric surfaces) The SIEs are discretized by the method of moments (MoM)
and hierarchical divergence-conforming polynomial vector basis [1], which gives rise to MoM-SIE modeling techniques [2]–[4].
functions of arbitrary orders for the approximation of electric Overall, the MoM-SIE method is an extremely powerful and
and magnetic surface currents within the elements. The geomet-
rical orders and current-approximation orders of the elements versatile numerical methodology for electromagnetic-field
are entirely independent from each other, and can be combined simulation in antenna and scattering applications that involve
independently for the best overall performance of the method in perfectly conducting and penetrable (dielectric and linear
different applications. The results obtained by the higher order magnetic) materials.
technique are validated against the analytical solutions and the However, practically all the existing 3-D MoM-SIE simu-
numerical results obtained by low-order moment-method tech-
niques from literature. The examples show excellent accuracy, lation tools for metallic/dielectric structures are low-order or
flexibility, and efficiency of the new technique at modeling of both small-domain (subdomain) techniques—the structure is mod-
current variation and curvature, and demonstrate advantages of eled by surface geometrical elements (boundary elements) that
large-domain models using curved quadrilaterals of high geomet- are electrically very small and the electric and magnetic currents
rical orders with basis functions of high current-approximation over the elements are approximated by low-order (zeroth-order
orders over commonly used small-domain models and low-order
techniques. The reduction in the number of unknowns is by an and first-order) basis functions. More precisely, the boundary
order of magnitude when compared to low-order solutions. elements (patches) are on the order of in each dimension,
being the wavelength in the medium. This results in a very
Index Terms—Electromagnetic analysis, electromagnetic scat-
tering, higher order modeling, integral equations, method of large number of unknowns (unknown current-distribution coef-
moments (MoM). ficients) needed to obtain results of satisfactory accuracy, with
all the associated problems and enormous requirements in com-
putational resources. In addition, commonly used boundary ele-
I. INTRODUCTION ments are in the form of flat triangular and quadrilateral patches,
current-approximation flexibility for current modeling in the of double-higher order MoM modeling of purely metallic
same method. In other words, if higher order (large-domain) structures are presented in [21].
basis functions for currents are used on flat patches, many small This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
patches may be required for the geometrical precision of the mathematical development of the proposed boundary elements
model, and then higher order basis functions actually reduce and describes numerical components of the new double higher
to low-order functions (on small patches). On the other hand, order MoM-SIE technique. This includes the derivation of sur-
geometrical flexibility of curved patches can be fully exploited face integral equations for electric and magnetic surface current
only if they can be made electrically large, which implies the density vectors as unknown quantities, development of general-
use of higher order current expansions within the elements as ized Galerkin impedances (the system matrix elements) for arbi-
well. Finally, in order to make the modeling of realistic struc- trary boundary elements (i.e., for any choice of surface elements
tures optimal, it is convenient to have elements of different or- for geometrical modeling and any choice of divergence-con-
ders and sizes combined together in the same model. If all of forming basis functions for current modeling), generation of
these requirements are to be satisfied, implementation of hier- generalized curvilinear quadrilateral elements for higher order
archical-type higher order polynomial basis functions for the modeling of geometry, implementation of hierarchical polyno-
approximation of electric and magnetic surface currents over mial vector basis functions for higher order modeling of currents
curved boundary elements seems to be the right choice. over the quadrilaterals, and evaluation of generalized Galerkin
This paper proposes a novel higher order (large-domain) impedances for the new proposed double higher order quadri-
PC-oriented Galerkin-type MoM-SIE technique for 3-D elec- lateral elements. In Section III, the accuracy, convergence, and
tromagnetics based on higher order geometrical modeling and efficiency of the new MoM-SIE technique are evaluated and
higher order current modeling, which we refer to as a double discussed in several characteristic examples. The results ob-
higher order method. The surface elements proposed for the ap- tained by the higher order MoM are compared with the an-
proximation of geometry (metallic and dielectric surfaces) are alytical solutions and the numerical results obtained by low-
generalized curvilinear quadrilaterals of arbitrary geometrical order MoM techniques from literature. Numerical examples in-
orders. The basis functions proposed for the approximation of clude a dihedral corner reflector, a metallic spherical scatterer
currents within the elements are hierarchical divergence-con- (analyzed using six different higher order models), a dielectric
forming polynomial vector basis functions of arbitrary orders. spherical scatterer (analyzed using five different higher order
The proposed technique represents a generalization of the models), and a circular cylinder of finite length with attached
MoM-SIE technique [9], where bilinear quadrilateral surface wire monopoles. The examples show excellent flexibility and
elements (boundary elements of the first geometrical order) efficiency of the new technique at modeling of both current
are used with higher order polynomial current expansions. variation and curvature, and demonstrate its advantages over
The new method enables excellent curvature modeling (e.g., low-order MoM techniques.
a sphere is practically perfectly modeled by only six curved
quadrilateral boundary elements of the fourth geometrical
order) and excellent current-distribution modeling (e.g., using II. NOVEL DOUBLE HIGHER ORDER MOM FOR
the eighth-order polynomial current-approximation in the two ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELING
parametric coordinates on a quadrilateral boundary element).
A. Surface Integral Equation Formulation
This enables using large curved MoM quadrilaterals that are on
the order of (e.g., ) in each dimension as building Consider an electromagnetic system consisting of arbitrarily
blocks for modeling of the electromagnetic structure (i.e., shaped metallic and dielectric bodies. Let the system be excited
the boundary elements can be by two orders of magnitude by a time-harmonic electromagnetic field of complex field-in-
larger in area than traditional low-order boundary elements). tensities and , and angular frequency . This field may
Element orders in the model, however, can also be low, so that be a combination of incident plane waves or the impressed field
the lower order modeling approach is actually included in the of one or more concentrated generators. According to the sur-
higher order modeling. The geometrical orders and current-ap- face equivalence principle (generalized Huygens’ principle), we
proximation orders of the elements are entirely independent can break the entire system into subsystems, each representing
from each other, and the two sets of parameters of the double one of the dielectric regions (domains), together with the be-
higher order model can be combined independently for the best longing metallic surfaces, with the remaining space being filled
overall performance of the method. Because the proposed basis with the same medium. One of the domains is the external space
functions are hierarchical, a whole spectrum of element sizes surrounding the structure. The scattered electric and magnetic
with the corresponding current-approximation orders can be fields, and , in each domain can be expressed in terms of
used at the same time in a single simulation model of a com- the equivalent (artificial) surface electric current, of density ,
plex structure. Additionally, each individual element can have and equivalent (artificial) surface magnetic currents, of density
drastically different edge lengths, enabling a whole range of , which are placed on the boundary surface of the domain,
“regular” and “irregular” element shapes (e.g., square-shaped, with the objective to produce a zero total field in the surrounding
rectangular, strip-like, trapezoidal, triangle-like, etc.) to be space. On the metallic surfaces, only the surface electric currents
used in a simulation model as well. Some preliminary results exist (these are actual currents) and .
2120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
The boundary conditions for the tangential components of the B. Generalized Galerkin Impedances for Arbitrary Surface
total (incident plus scattered) electric and magnetic field vectors Elements
on the boundary surface between any two adjacent dielectric Assume first that all the surfaces (metallic and dielectric)
domains (domains 1 and 2) yield in the system are approximated by a number of arbitrary sur-
face elements. Let us approximate the surface electric and mag-
netic current density vectors, and , over every element
(1) in the model by a convenient set of basis functions with un-
known complex current-distribution coefficients. In order to de-
(2) termine these coefficients, the EFIE/MFIE system in (1)–(3) is
tested by means of the Galerkin method, i.e., using the same
where we assume that the incident (impressed) field is present functions used for current expansion. The four types of general-
only in domain 1. On the conducting bodies, the boundary con- ized Galerkin impedances (the system matrix elements) corre-
ditions (1) and (2) reduce to only, so for metallic sponding to the four combinations of electric- and magnetic-cur-
surfaces in domain 1 we have rent testing functions and defined on the th surface
element and the electric- and magnetic-current basis func-
(3) tions and defined on the th element in the model are
given by
The scattered electric field in the region of complex permit-
tivity and complex permeability is expressed in terms of the (15)
electric and magnetic current densities as follows:
(4)
(16)
(5)
(6)
(17)
while the scattered magnetic field is obtained as
(7) (18)
(8)
(9) The generalized voltages (the excitation column-matrix ele-
ments) are evaluated as
In the above expressions, and are the magnetic and elec-
tric vector potentials, and and are the electric and magnetic (19)
scalar potentials, respectively. The potentials are given by
(10) (20)
(13)
(14)
where is the outward normal to the boundary contour
being the propagation coefficient in the medium and the of the surface . When the divergence-conforming current ex-
distance of the field point from the source point. pansion on boundary elements is used, the last term in (21) is
Having in mind the integral expressions for fields and in identically equal to zero, because the normal components of
(4)–13, (1)–(3) represent a set of coupled electric/magnetic field testing functions are either zero at the element edges or the
integral equations (EFIE/MFIE) for and as unknowns, two contributions of the elements sharing an edge exactly cancel
which can be discretized and solved using the MoM. out in the final expressions for generalized impedances. Finally,
DJORDJEVIĆ AND NOTAROŠ: DOUBLE HIGHER ORDER MoM FOR SIE MODELING 2121
(22)
(26)
where are the position vectors of the interpo-
(23) lation nodes, are Lagrange-type interpolation polyno-
mials satisfying the Kronecker delta relation ,
with and representing the parametric coordinates of the
By duality, the magnetic/electric and magnetic/magnetic gen- th node, and are constant vector coefficients related to
eralized Galerkin impedances in (17) and (18) have the same re- . For more details on geometrical properties
spective forms as those in (23) and (22), and are given by of parametric elements (in the context of FEM) the reader is
referred to [22], [23].
In this paper, we use the equidistant distribution of interpola-
tion nodes along each coordinate in the parametric space, while
(24) the use of specific nonequidistant node distributions, which
would provide additional modeling flexibility and accuracy in
some applications, is possible as well. In addition, any other
choice of higher order surface expansions for geometrical
modeling that can be represented as a double sum of 2-D power
(25)
functions (e.g., parametric quadrilaterals using spline
functions for describing the geometry) can also readily be
implemented in our method for electromagnetic analysis.
Equations (22)–(25) provide general expressions for MoM
generalized impedances for solving the EFIE/MFIE in (1)–(3) Note that, in general, the surface tangent is discontinuous
using any type of surface discretization and any adopted set on the boundary of two attached curved generalized parametric
of divergence-conforming basis functions in the context of the quadrilateral elements defined by (26), regardless of the geo-
Galerkin method. In what follows, we shall restrict our attention metrical orders and of the quadrilaterals. However, this
to the specific higher order MoM technique proposed for anal- geometrical discontinuity across the boundaries of adjacent ele-
ysis of electromagnetic radiation and scattering in this paper. ments becomes less pronounced as the elements of higher ge-
ometrical orders are used. For instance, when approximating
a circular cylinder using 32 interpolation points along its cir-
C. Higher Order Geometrical Modeling
cumference and three different geometrical models constructed
As basic building blocks for geometrical modeling of from: (A) 32 first-order elements; (B) 16
3-D electromagnetic structures of arbitrary shape and mate- second-order elements; and (C) eight fourth-
rial composition, we propose generalized curved parametric order elements per cylinder circumference,
quadrilaterals of higher (theoretically arbitrary) geometrical the angles between the surface tangents of the neighboring ele-
orders (Fig. 1). A generalized quadrilateral is determined by ments at the junctions in models (A), (B), and (C) are 168.750 ,
points (interpolation nodes) arbitrarily 179.787 , and 180.011 , respectively, compared to the exact
positioned in space, where and ( , ) are 180 . If a more accurate model is needed, one can increase the
geometrical orders of the element along - and - parametric total number and/or geometrical orders of patches. Note also
coordinates, respectively (note that the orders do not need to be that this geometrical problem is not present if the geometry is
2122 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
described in terms of spline functions, which can provide con- to be a preferable choice for modeling of surface currents in all
tinuous surface tangents across the edges shared by curved el- applications. It enables considerable reductions in the overall
ements (e.g., third-order splines used to solve scattering from number of unknowns, at no expense in terms of the accuracy of
bodies of revolution in [24]). current and charge modeling over surfaces. An excellent theo-
All the geometries considered as examples in this paper are retical elaboration of this approach (in the context of FEM) can
modeled using specialized geometrical preprocessor codes, and be found in [25].
no general meshers are employed. Development and discussions
of general geometrical preprocessors for mesh generation for E. Generalized Galerkin Impedances for Higher Order
an arbitrary geometry using higher order surface elements is Quadrilateral Elements
beyond the scope of this paper. The unknown coefficients and in (27) and (28) are
determined by solving the EFIE/MFIE system with the gener-
D. Higher Order Basis Functions for Electric and Magnetic alized Galerkin impedances given in (22)–(25), which we now
Currents specialize for the implementation of generalized curved quadri-
Electric and magnetic surface current density vectors over lateral elements of arbitrary geometrical orders, (26), and hier-
every generalized quadrilateral in the model are represented as archical divergence-conforming polynomial vector basis func-
tions of arbitrary current-approximation orders, (29). Without
the loss of generality, we consider only the -components of
basis and testing functions. Furthermore, we consider the func-
tions in the following simplified form:
(27)
(32)
(30)
with given in (26), and is the Jacobian of the covariant trans-
formation
(31)
Note, that the sum limits in (27) and (28) that correspond to
the variations of a current density vector component in the di-
rection across that component are by one smaller than the orders
corresponding to the variations in the other parametric coordi-
nate. This mixed-order arrangement, which ensures equal ap-
proximation orders for surface charge densities corresponding
to the - and -directed current basis functions, has been found (34)
DJORDJEVIĆ AND NOTAROŠ: DOUBLE HIGHER ORDER MoM FOR SIE MODELING 2123
(35) (39)
Taking into account the parametric representation of the where is the basic Galerkin field integral evaluated as
quadrilateral surface element, (26), then leads to the final
expression:
(40)
Fig. 6. Induced electric surface current over the surface of the model obtained that follows the geometry of the quadrilateral mesh,
in Fig. 4(b) at two frequencies, corresponding to (a) a= = 0:6 and (b) where the variations of the current density magnitude clearly
a= = 1:2.
indicate the boundaries of the quadrilaterals constituting the
model. These variations, of course, do not exist on the surface
errors in the RCS prediction using these models are a conse- of the actual spherical scatterer. In other words, the error in
quence of the inaccuracy in geometrical modeling of the sphere modeling of curvature expressed in terms of the wavelength
surface. Note also that, even though this is an almost small-do- is negligible at the frequency (a), while at the frequency (b),
main application of the proposed large-domain method, where it can not be ignored. The same conclusion is then translated
a large number (600) of elements (with relatively low current from the current distribution consideration to the far field and
approximation orders) is needed for the sphere surface to be ge- RCS computation at frequencies (a) and (b), as can be observed
ometrically accurately represented by parametric surfaces of the from Fig. 5.
first geometrical order, the largest quadrilateral elements in the In the second set of experiments, the fourth-order geometrical
model (4) are on a side at the highest frequency consid- modeling is employed ( 4 in all elements). The
ered, which is still considerably above the usual small-domain sphere surface is first approximated by (A) 6 fourth-order
limit of . quadrilaterals [Fig. 7(a)] in conjunction with the eighth-order
For an additional insight into the correlation of errors in current approximation ( 8) in each element and
modeling of geometry and errors in modeling of currents, then by (B) 24 fourth-order quadrilaterals
Fig. 6 shows the induced electric surface current over the [Fig. 7(b)] with the sixth-order current approximation (
surface of the model (2) at two frequencies, corresponding to 6) in each element. This results in a total of 768
(a) and (b) . We observe that, while the and 1728 unknowns in models (A) and (B), respectively, with
mutual orientation of quadrilateral elements in the model at the no symmetry used.
frequency (a) does not influence the surface current distribution Fig. 8 shows the simulated RCS of the sphere obtained by
over the sphere surface, the interconnections and surface-tan- the two geometrically higher order MoM models, as compared
gent discontinuities between quadrilaterals at the frequency with the exact solution calculated in terms of Mie’s series. We
(b) act like wedges, and a nonphysical current distribution is observe an excellent agreement between the numerical results
2126 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 9. Normalized radar cross-section [RCS=(a )] of a dielectric Fig. 10. Normalized radar cross-section [RCS=(a )] of a dielectric (" =
(" = 2:25) sphere, for three higher order MoM models employing the 2:25) sphere, for two higher order MoM models employing the fourth-order
first-order geometrical modeling in Fig. 4(a)–(c), respectively, along with the geometrical modeling in Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively, along with the exact
exact solution (Mie’s series). solution (Mie’s series).
obtained with the model (A) and analytical results up to the fre- Note, however, that a very good agreement can be observed
quency at which and the curved quadrilateral ele- between the numerical results obtained by the model (3) and
ments in the model are approximately across. In particular, the analytical results in the entire frequency range considered.
the maximum absolute RCS prediction error is less than 1% for Note also that the numerical results in Fig. 9 obtained by any of
(quadrilaterals are maximally across), and the three models in Fig. 4(a)–(c) are significantly more accurate
then increases slightly for . With the model than the corresponding numerical results obtained with the
(B), an excellent agreement with the exact solution is obtained same models for the metallic sphere (Fig. 5), which can be
in the entire frequency range considered, with the maximum ab- attributed to the fact that inaccuracies in modeling of surfaces
solute RCS prediction error less than 0.5% for and of penetrable (dielectric) bodies do not degrade the overall
less than 3% for . analysis results as significantly as in the case of nonpenetrable
Note that all the results for scattering from metallic spheres (metallic) bodies.
presented in this subsection are obtained by solving the EFIE Fig. 10 shows the RCS of the dielectric sphere evaluated using
(3) and no treatment of internal resonances is applied. The new the two fourth-order geometrical models
double higher order method appears to yield equally accurate shown in Fig. 7. In the model (A), the adopted electric and
results at the internal resonances of the sphere, even though the magnetic current approximation orders are
condition number of the MoM matrix is very large at these fre- , while in the model (B), these orders are set
quencies. The RCS solution is sensitive to internal resonances to be . We observe that, as
only when the current approximation orders are not sufficient, compared to the exact solution (Mie’s series), the model (A)
which is also in agreement with the previous results [32]. performs well up to the frequency at which
and the curved quadrilateral elements in the model are about
C. Dielectric Spherical Scatterer or across .
Furthermore, the maximum absolute RCS prediction error is
As an example of curved dielectric structures, consider a
less than 2% for , with the maximum length
spherical dielectric scatterer 1 m in radius in the frequency
of curved quadrilateral elements not exceeding
range 10–600 MHz. The relative permittivity of the dielectric
. The model (B) provides an accurate RCS predic-
is (polyethylene). Shown in Fig. 9 is the RCS of the
tion in the entire frequency range considered (quadrilaterals are
sphere calculated using the first-order geometrical modeling
across at the highest frequency), with the maximum
, with the sphere surface being approximated
absolute error less than 1% for (maximum
by means of (1) bilinear quadrilaterals [Fig. 4(a)], (2)
side dimension of quadrilaterals is about ) and a slightly
bilinear quadrilaterals [Fig. 4(b)], and (3)
increased error in the rest of the frequency range considered due
bilinear quadrilaterals [Fig. 4(c)], along with the analytical so-
to a minimal frequency shift of the results.
lution in the form of Mie’s series. The adopted electric and
magnetic current approximation orders in models (1), (2), and
(3) are 4, 2, and 2 and the resulting total numbers D. Wire Monopoles Attached to a Metallic Cylinder
of unknowns 6144, 3456, and 6144, respectively. We As an example of antennas with curved surfaces, consider a
observe that the RCS predictions are slightly shifted toward system of wire monopoles attached to a metallic cylinder. The
higher frequencies with all the three models, the frequency radius of the cylinder is 10 cm and its height 22 cm. The system
shift being the most pronounced with the model (1) at higher is analyzed in two configurations: (1) with a single 12-cm
frequencies. The fact that the geometrical models are inscribed monopole antenna attached to the cylinder and (2) with an 8-cm
into the sphere certainly contributes to this shift of the results. driven monopole and 44-cm parasitic monopole attached to the
DJORDJEVIĆ AND NOTAROŠ: DOUBLE HIGHER ORDER MoM FOR SIE MODELING 2127
Fig. 12. Normalized far field pattern and the antenna input impedance
Fig. 11. Circular cylinder of finite length with attached wire monopoles,
K
modeled by 32 biquadratic ( = K = 2) quadrilaterals and two wires.
of the antenna system in Fig. 11 with only one monopole antenna present
[configuration (1)], obtained by the higher order MoM and by the low-order
MoM from [33].
Galerkin impedances (MoM matrix elements) for double higher [11] , “General entire-domain Galerkin method for analysis of wire
order quadrilateral boundary elements. antennas in the presence of dielectric bodies,” in Proc. Inst. Elect.
Eng.—Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, vol. 145, Feb. 1998,
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DJORDJEVIĆ AND NOTAROŠ: DOUBLE HIGHER ORDER MoM FOR SIE MODELING 2129
Miroslav Djordjević (S’00–M’04) was born Branislav M. Notaroš (M’00–SM’03) was born
in Ćuprija, Serbia and Montenegro (former Yu- in Zrenjanin, Yugoslavia, in 1965. He received the
goslavia), in 1973. He received the Dipl.Ing. (B.S.) Dipl.Ing. (B.Sc.), M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in elec-
degree from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, trical engineering from the University of Belgrade,
Serbia and Montenegro, in 1998, the M.S. degree Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1988, 1992, and 1995,
from the University of California, Los Angeles respectively.
(UCLA), in 2000, and the Ph.D. degree from the He is currently an Assistant Professor of electrical
University of Massachusetts (UMass) Dartmouth, in and computer engineering with the University of
2004. Massachusetts Dartmouth. From 1996 to 1998, he
From 1998 to 2000, he was a Graduate Student Re- was an Assistant Professor with the Department
searcher at the Antenna Research and Measurement of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade.
(ARAM) Laboratory, UCLA. Since 2000 to 2003, he was a Research Assistant He spent the 1998 to 1999 academic year as a Visiting Research Associate
at UMass where he is currently a Postdoctoral Associate. His research interests with the University of Colorado at Boulder. His teaching activities are in the
are in higher order modeling, hybrid methods, and analysis of vehicle mounted area of theoretical and applied electromagnetics. He is the Co-Director of the
antennas. Telecommunications Laboratory, Advanced Technology and Manufacturing
Center, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He has authored or coauthored
15 journal papers, 40 conference papers, a book chapter, five university
textbooks and workbooks, and a conceptual assessment tool for electromag-
netics education. His research interests are predominantly in computational
electromagnetics and antenna design.
Dr. Notaroš was the recipient of the 1999 Institution of Electrical Engineers
(IEE) Marconi Premium.
2130 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—The adaptive integral method (AIM) is implemented number of unknowns is in the order of tens and even hun-
in conjunction with the loop-tree (LT) decomposition of the elec- dreds of thousands. This makes the direct implementation of
tric current density in the method of moments approximation of MoM-approximations of EM integral equations computation-
the electric field integral equation. The representation of the un-
known currents in terms of its solenoidal and irrotational compo- ally prohibitive and thus impractical.
nents allows for accurate, broadband electromagnetic (EM) simu- The second shortcoming of the MoM approximation of EM
lation without low-frequency numerical instability problems, while integral equations is the so-called low frequency breakdown
scaling of computational complexity and memory storage with the [1], [2] that occurs when the harmonic field wavelength be-
size of the problem of the are of the same order as in the conven- comes substantially larger than the characteristic size of the
tional AIM algorithm. The proposed algorithm is built as an ex-
tension to the conventional AIM formulation that utilizes roof-top MoM grid. In the application of MoM-based solvers for the
expansion functions, thus providing direct and easy way for the de- narrow band analysis of traditional EM devices of resonant
velopment of the new stable formulation when the roof-top based lengths (e.g., antennas, waveguides, and various types of
AIM is available. A new preconditioning strategy utilizing near in- RF/microwave passive components) this problem of geometry
teractions in the system which are typically available in the imple- over-sampling tends to be the exception rather than the rule.
mentation of fast solvers is proposed and tested. The discussed pre-
conditioner can be used with both roof-top and LT formulations of However, over the last decade, the advent of miniaturization
AIM and other fast algorithms. The resulting AIM implementation and high-density integration of electronic devices has led to
is validated through its application to the broadband, EM analysis new classes of RF/microwave passive components and as-
of large microstrip antennas and planar interconnect structures. sociated integrated waveguides and packaging structures of
Index Terms—Fast algorithms, full-wave electromagnetic (EM) increasing geometric complexity, primarily due to the presence
CAD, loop-tree (LT) decomposition, low frequency, method of mo- of numerous minute features, the accurate modeling of which
ments (MoM). results in the aforementioned geometric over-sampling in the
development of the MoM discrete model. Even in the absence
I. INTRODUCTION of minute features, the aggressive push toward the integration
of mixed-signal (e.g., high-speed digital and RF/microwave)
size . Even though the FMM and FFT acceleration schemes solution complexity and memory usage
lead to similar improvements in computational efficiency, the of the conventional AIM are preserved, while the numerical
FFT-based schemes are much more simple to implement and stability of the solution is maintained down to very low fre-
more flexible in usage of various types of Green’s functions quencies.
accounting for the surrounding medium. The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, MoM ap-
With regards to the theme of this paper, it is important to point proximation in the standard and mixed-potential forms is out-
out that, irrespective of the fast solution methodology employed, lined, with emphasis on conversion from roof-top into the LT
the problem of low-frequency breakdown remains and has to be basis. In Section III, the proposed alternative AIM process is
addressed in the context of the specific fast solution scheme. presented in standard and mixed potential forms, highlighting
Thus, if a robust and broadband EM simulator is to be devel- the differences and similarities between the new and the con-
oped, it is necessary to introduce appropriate modifications in ventional formulations. In the following, the proposed imple-
both the development of the MoM approximation and the ac- mentation will be referred to as AIM-LT. Section IV discusses
celeration schemes to avoid the numerical instability at low fre- a new preconditioning strategy utilizing near interactions in the
quencies. For the FMM class of fast solvers such a modification system. The numerical studies of Section V are used to demon-
was presented in [16], [17]. As discussed in [18], the fact that in strate the validity of the AIM-LT methodology. Finally, Section
the regular FMM the threshold distance separating the near and VI concludes the paper with a brief summary of the method and
far interactions in the system and/or the order of the multipole a few remarks about its attributes.
expansion are related to the wavelength makes necessary the
reformulation of the entire FMM scheme in order to ensure nu- II. LOOP-TREE DECOMPOSITION OF THE MoM WITH
merical stability at low frequencies. For the class of FFT-based ROOF-TOP BASIS
fast solvers, the separation into the near and far interactions is
The EFIE statement of the problem is usually obtained
either not required at all (in the case when the MoM mesh is
through the application of Green’s theorem to the distinct vol-
bound to the FFT grid [13]) or the threshold distance separating
umes of the structure. Assuming perfect electrically conducting
far and near interactions of the algorithm is not related to the
(PEC) surfaces, the EFIE forces the tangential electric field,
wavelength (this is the case for the adaptive versions of such
produced by the current flowing on PEC surface of the
solvers where the MoM and FFT grids are independent [10],
circuit , to cancel the applied tangential electric field on
[12]).
the same surface . This results in standard [22]
In view of this property of the FFT-based fast solvers it was
proposed in [15] that the problem of low-frequency breakdown
may be circumvented through the use of a higher-order, lo-
cally corrected Nyström method [19], combined with a nonuni-
form grid FFT scheme [20]. To understand how the Nyström (2)
scheme stabilizes the solution of the electric field integral equa-
tion (EFIE) at low frequencies one must recall that the nature of
low-frequency breakdown is purely numerical [1]. It is caused or mixed potential formulation [12], [23] of EFIE
by the loss due to round-off error of the small term
compared to much larger term in the scattered
field representation
(1)
when . Since higher-order methods evaluate both of In (2), is the unit normal vector to ; and and are the po-
these terms with much higher accuracy, low-frequency numer- sition vectors to the observation and source points, respectively.
ical instability occurs at much lower frequencies compared to Expanding the unknown current over a set of roof-top ex-
the conventional MoM with Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) ex- pansion functions with triangular [21] or rectangular support
pansion functions [21]. [22]
In this paper, an alternative implementation of the adaptive
integral method (AIM) [also referred to as the precorrected
FFT algorithm] is proposed for overcoming the low-frequency (3)
breakdown. First, within the framework of the MoM approx-
imation of the EFIE using roof-top expansion functions, the and testing the scattered field with the same basis functions
loop-tree (LT) decomposition of the unknown current is in- , the integral equation (2) is reduced to a set of linear al-
troduced as prescribed in [1], [2]. This change of expansion gebraic equations
functions from roof-tops to loops and branches of the tree al-
lows for the explicit separation of the irrotational and solenoidal (4)
components of the current. Subsequently, the AIM solution
process is adjusted to accommodate the new representations In (4), and contain, respectively, the coefficients of expan-
of the discretized current densities. As a result, the overall sion (3) and the discrete form of the excitation. The impedance
2132 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
matrix elements and excitation vector elements are In practice submatrices , and are
represented by the following inner products evaluated based on the matrices and resulting from the
roof-top formulation of MoM. For this purpose basis conversion
matrices and are introduced as follow:s
(12)
(5)
where is the sparse transformation matrix from the
where and the Hilbert space inner loop-based expansion functions to roof-tops, is the sparse
product is defined as transformation matrices from the branch-based ex-
pansion functions to the roof-tops, and the symbol denotes
(6) matrix transposition [1], [2]. The total number of loops and
branches in the tree, , is equal to the number of the
In the form (4), the primary cause of the low-frequency break- roof-top expansion functions. Since the tree represents an undi-
down of the MoM approximation is easily recognized. As rected graph defined on the original MoM roof-top grid, the th
, the first term in (4) drops below the numerical error level row of the matrix contains only one nonzero element equal to
of the second term due to the finite accuracy of computations. unity in the th column corresponding to the th roof-top taken
In order to avoid this problem, the representation of unknown as the th branch in the tree. Each loop presents a directed graph
current in terms of loop currents (rotational component) on the roof-top mesh and the th row of matrix contains
and tree-branches currents (irrotational component) is in- nonzero values in the columns corresponding to the roof-tops
troduced composing the th loop. The sign of these elements is positive if
the corresponding roof-top function is collinear with the orien-
tation of the loop, and negative if it has the opposite direction.
The absolute value of the nonzero elements in is equal to the
inverse of the corresponding roof-top function width in order
(7) to satisfy the condition of continuous current flux through any
cross section of the loop. Using (12) we can represent matrix
The current flux through any cross section of the loop remains in terms of the roof-top based impedance matrices
constant forcing the following conditions to be satisfied and as
(8)
(13)
where is a potential in the range of operator on the surface
. Application of the Galerkin process with loops and the tree where the sparse matrices and
branches as expansion and testing functions yields an alterna-
tive form of the MoM matrix that is free of the low-frequency (14)
breakdown problem
(10)
(18)
B. Far Interactions
First, all the basis roof-top functions involved in the orig-
inal MoM discretization of the object are projected onto the FFT
(21)
grid enclosing the object in the same manner as done in the con-
ventional AIM [10]. If mixed-potential formulation is used, then where subscript FFT is used to indicate that the matrices are
charge duplets are also projected on the same FFT computed using projections of the basis and testing functions
grid. Projection means that each basis function and is re- on the FFT grid.
2134 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
From (21) it is apparent that matrix products and Since the branch-based expansion functions are nothing else but
stand for the projections of the testing and basis loops selected roof-top expansion functions, the precorrection proce-
on the FFT grid. Similarly, the products and dure for the interactions between branch-based testing and ex-
characterize the projection of the testing and basis trees on the pansion functions is identical to that in the conventional AIM. At
FFT grid. Also it is important to observe that these products are the same time, extraction of the near interactions corresponding
nothing else but the linear combinations of the projections from to closely located loops and branches allows for two alternative
the individual basis/testing functions composing them. Thus, in approaches as has been discussed in the Subsection A. In the
a way analogous to the conventional AIM, the matrix-vector first approach, one may extract contributions of the closely in-
product can be computed with flops teracting loops and branches by removing entire elements from
using FFT due to the Toeplitz structure of the discretized dyadic the matrix pertinent to them. Alternatively, one has
Green’s functions. The part of the matrix-vector multiply asso- the option of extracting only the contributions to due
ciated with inductive interactions in the system is evaluated as to the closely interacting roof-tops that contribute to the forma-
follows: tion of the pertinent loops or branches. Let us refer to these con-
tributions as
(26)
Fig. 3. Input reflection coefficient of the 2 2 2 microstrip patch array computed with regular AIM, and AIM in LT basis.
B. Multiconductor Interconnect
The second example considered is a multiconductor intercon-
nect of enough nonuniformity along the direction of signal prop-
agation to require full-wave EM modeling for the quantification
of its transmission and signal interference (crosstalk) proper-
ties. For high-speed digital signal transmission as well as for
interference analysis pertinent to mixed-signal systems, the EM
properties of such interconnects must be computed from dc to
multi-GHz frequencies. Thus, in addition to the large compu-
tational complexity of such structures, the need for broadband
EM analysis provides a significant challenge for conventional
full-wave integral equation solvers aimed for primarily narrow
band frequency modeling of microwave and RF waveguides and
passive components.
The top view of the geometry of a generic 16-line microstrip
interconnect is depicted in Fig. 5. The sixteen wires are orga-
nized into eight differential lines. It is stressed that the fine dis-
cretization along the cross-section of the wires is needed for the
accurate prediction of both the speed of signal transmission and
the EM coupling between adjacent lines. For the purposes of
this analysis the wires were assumed to be of zero thickness and
perfectly conducting.
In order to provide a reference solution, a portion of this inter-
connect structure was analyzed using the EM field solver from
Sonnet [29]. The structure analyzed in Sonnet consisted only of
the differential line that is depicted in Fig. 5 as having terminals
1 through 4, and the two adjacent differential lines. Analysis of a
truncated portion of the structure in Sonnet was necessitated by
the significant complexity of the 16-wire structure, the detailed
modeling of which makes the use of this direct EM solver very
Fig. 5. Geometry of the 16-wire microstrip interconnect structure. The circuit
time consuming. Magnitudes of some of the calculated -pa-
is printed on lossless grounded dielectric substrate of permittivity = 4 and rameters are presented in Fig. 6. Good agreement of the results is
thickness d = 0:15 mm. observed over the entire bandwidth of analysis. The discrepan-
cies between -parameters at higher frequencies, as well as for
Table I summarizes all information necessary for quantifying those frequencies and ports for which coupling becomes week,
computational complexity of the proposed fast solver. The are attributed to the difference of the geometries analyzed by
discussed AIM-LT implementation utilizing LT basis functions the two methods, namely, the entire 16-wire structure using the
exhibits the same computational complexity and proposed method and the 8-wire portion of it using Sonnet. It is
memory requirements as the conventional AIM imple- important to mention that no de-embedding of the port discon-
mented with roof-top functions. The low iteration count was tinuities was done in the generation of the presented -param-
made possible through the use of the preconditioner discussed eters [30].
in Section IV. The penalty paid for the effectiveness of the In order to demonstrate the robustness of proposed algorithm
preconditioner is the memory storage requirement the operating frequency of analysis was taken down to 0.001 Hz.
and the complexity of its LU factorization. The latter The admittance matrix element versus frequency is plotted
can definitely become a show-stopper in the use of such a pre- in Fig. 7 in the range from 0.001 Hz to 8 GHz. It can be seen
conditioner when is in the order of hundreds of thousands. that while the Sonnet EM solver experiences the low-frequency
Therefore, it is important that the numerous possibilities that breakdown the LT implementation of the AIM algorithm pro-
exist for the construction of more efficient preconditioners, in vides accurate results in the range of frequencies stretching from
the sense that they provide for lower computational complexity dc to microwaves.
without jeopardizing the efficiency of the iterative solver, are The numerical statistics of computations for the interconnect
thoroughly investigated. The choice made here reflects the situ- structure of Fig. 5 is summarized in Table II. In order to demon-
ation where it was preferable to trade-off up front CPU time for strate how the proposed algorithm scales with the size of the
2138 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE II
CPU TIME AND MEMORY ON 1.4 GHz PENTIUM4 FOR FOUR-, EIGHT-,
conditioner and the faster convergence of the iterative solution
AND 16-WIRE INTERCONNECTS AT 10 GHz was the substantial increase in memory usage. The number of
iterations taken by the GMRES algorithm [25] to converge to
outer residual error is plotted in Fig. 8 for the cases when
the matrix equation was preconditioned with P1 and P2. Fig. 8
demonstrates that while at low frequencies the choice of pre-
conditioner is irrelevant, the iteration count may become exces-
sively large at higher frequencies if the coupling between the
neighboring lines is not included in the preconditioner. It is im-
portant to point out that the total CPU time of the algorithm,
presented in the last row of Table II, was calculated as the sum
of the time required by the iterative solver and the time spent for
the LU-factorization. Other computations associated with tasks
such as the evaluation of the Green’s function and the computa-
tion of the matrix elements for the near interactions , were
not included in the complexity evaluation. This is due to the
subjective nature of the time estimates for these computations
structure, portions of the structure including four, eight and 16 in view of the wide variety of methods that can be used for per-
wires were considered separately. Also, the numerical solution forming these calculations.
was carried out using two different preconditioners. For the first
preconditioner only the matrix elements corresponding to in-
VI. CONCLUSION
teractions between testing/expansion functions separated by a
distance of 0.15 mm or less were included. This means that the This paper discusses a new fast algorithm for the iterative
matrix elements of the basis and testing functions (loops and solution of MoM approximations of EM field integral equa-
branches) located on different wires were not utilized in the pre- tions pertinent to the analysis of primarily planar and/or layered
conditioner. We refer to this preconditioner as P1 in Table II. passive structures. The methodology is based on an alterna-
For the second preconditioner, referred to as P2, the radius of tive implementation of the AIM (pre-corrected-FFT algorithm),
near interactions was extended so that the coupling between ex- where the LT decomposition of unknown current is introduced
pansion and testing functions located on adjacent wires was in- to enhance the numerical stability of the iterative solution down
cluded. In this case the penalty for the improved quality of pre- to very low frequencies. Both mixed-potential and standard
OKHMATOVSKI et al.: LT IMPLEMENTATION OF AIM FOR FEM MODELING 2139
Fig. 7. Magnitude of some of the Y -parameters for 16-wire interconnect at very low frequencies.
Fig. 8. Iteration count of GMRES solver versus frequency for 16-line interconnect depicted in Fig. 5.
formulations of the EFIE can be accommodated within the evaluated. Validation of the proposed fast solver was provided
framework of the proposed method. For microstrip structures through its application to the numerical analysis of microstrip
(2.5D geometries) the implementation of AIM utilizing LT antenna arrays and multiconductor interconnect structures.
basis and testing functions exhibits complexity
and requires memory, while for 3-D boundary element
structures the CPU time and memory scale as REFERENCES
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2140 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
[2] M. Burton and S. Kashyap, “A study of a recent, moment-method al- [27] S. Pissanetsky, Sparse Matrix Technology, London, U.K.: Academic
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agat. Mag., vol. 35, pp. 7–12, June 1993. neering Institute, as an Assistant Professor. From 1998 to 1999, he was a Post-
[8] J. M. Song, C. C. Lu, and W. C. Chew, “MLFMA for electromagnetic doctoral Fellow in the Microwave Laboratory, National Technical University
scattering from large complex objects,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop- of Athens, Greece. From 1999 to 2003, he was a Postdoctoral Research Asso-
agat., vol. 45, pp. 1488–1493, Oct. 1997. ciate with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University
[9] J. R. Phillips and J. White, “A precorrected-FFT method for capacitance of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently with the Department of CIC
extraction of complicated 3-D structures,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Computer- Advanced R&D, Cadence Design Systems, Tempe, AZ. He has authored and
Aided Design, Santa Clara, CA, Nov. 1994. coauthored over 30 papers in professional journals and conference proceedings.
[10] E. Bleszynski, M. Bleszynski, and T. Jaroszewicz, “AIM: Adaptive in- His research interests include modeling of high-speed interconnects, fast algo-
tegral method for solving large-scale electromagnetic scattering and ra- rithms in computational electromagnetics, geometrical and physical theories of
diation problems,” Radio Science, vol. 31, pp. 1255–1251, Sept.–Oct. diffraction and conformal antennas and arrays.
1996. Dr. Okhmatovski was the recipient of a 1995 scholarship of the Government
[11] J. R. Phillips and J. K. White, “A precorrected-FFT method for electro- of the Russian Federation, a 1996 Presidential Scholarship of the Russian Fed-
static analysis of complicated 3-D structures,” IEEE Trans. Computer- eration, and a 1997–2000 scholarship of the Russian Academy of Science. In
Aided Design, vol. 16, pp. 1059–1072, Oct. 1997. 1996, he received Second Prize for the Best Young Scientist Report presented at
[12] F. Ling and J.-M. Jin et al., “Full-wave analysis of multilayer microstrip the VI International Conference on Mathematical Methods in Electromagnetic
problems,” in Fast and Efficient Algorithms in Computational Electro- Theory (MMET’96). He was also the recipient of the Outstanding Technical
magnetics, W. C. Chew et al., Eds. Boston, MA: Artech House, 2001, Paper Award at the 3rd Electronics Packaging Technology Conference (EPTC
pp. 729–772. 2000).
[13] M. F. Catedra, R. P. Torres, J. Basterrechea, and E. Gago, The CG-FFT
Method—Application of Signal Processing Techniques to Electromag-
netics. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1995.
[14] N. N. Bojarski, “k -Space Formulation of the Electromagnetic Scattering Jason D. Morsey (S’01–M’03) received the B.S. (cum laude) and M.S. degrees
Problem,” Air Force Avionics Lab., Tech. Report, AFAL-TR-71-75, in electrical engineering from Clemson University, Clemson, SC, in 1998 and
Mar. 1971. 2000, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Ur-
[15] S. Gedney, A. Zhu, W.-H. Tang, and P. Petre, “High-order pre-corrected bana-Champaign, in 2003.
FFT solution for electromagnetic scattering,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas He is currently with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, NY. His research
and Propagation Int. Symp. Digest, vol. 3, San Antonio, TX, June 2002, interests include electromagnetic modeling of high-speed interconnects at all
pp. 566–569. levels of integration and their signal integrity analysis.
[16] J. Zhao and W. C. Chew et al., “Multilevel fast multipole algorithm at
very low frequencies,” in Fast and Efficient Algorithms in Computational
Electromagnetics, W. C. Chew et al., Eds. Boston, MA: Artech House,
2001, pp. 151–202. Andreas C. Cangellaris (M’86–SM’97–F’00) received the M.S. and Ph.D. de-
[17] , “Integral equation solution of Maxwell’s equations from zero fre- grees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California,
quency to microwave frequencies,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., Berkeley, in 1983 and 1985, respectively.
vol. 48, pp. 1635–1645, Oct. 2000. From 1985 to 1987, he was a Senior Research Engineer in the Electronics
[18] S. Ohnuki and W. C. Chew, “Numerical accuracy of multipole expan- Department, General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, MI. From 1987 to
sion for 2-D MLFMA,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 51, pp. 1992, he was an Assistant Professor on the faculty of Electrical and Computer
1883–1890, Aug. 2003. Engineering at the University of Arizona, Tuscon, and then an Associate
[19] H. Contopanagos, B. Dembart, M. Epton, J. J. Ottusch, V. Rokhlin, Professor from 1992 to 1997. He is currently a Professor of Electrical and
J. L. Visher, and S. M. Wandzura, “Well-conditioned boundary inte- Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
gral equations for three-dimensional electromagnetic scattering,” IEEE (UIUC). Over the past 15 years, he has supervised the development of nu-
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 50, pp. 1824–1830, Dec. 2002. merous electromagnetic modeling methodologies and computer-aided design
[20] G. X. Fan and Q. H. Liu, “The CGFFT method with a discontinuous FFT tools for high-speed/high-frequency signal integrity-driven applications, which
algorithm,” Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 47–49, have been transferred successfully to industry. He has coauthored more than
2001. 150 refereed papers and three book chapters on topics related to computational
[21] S. S. M. Rao, D. R. Wilton, and A. W. Glisson, “Electromagnetic scat- electromagnetics and interconnects and package modeling and simulation. His
tering by surfaces of arbitrary shapes,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., research work has been in the area of applied and computational electromag-
vol. 30, pp. 409–418, May 1982. netics with emphasis on their application to electrical modeling and simulation
[22] G. V. Eleftheriades and R. Mosig, “On the network characterization of of RF/microwave components and systems, high-speed digital interconnects at
planar passive circuits using the method of moments,” IEEE Trans. Mi- the board, package, and chip level, as well as the modeling and simulation of
crowave Theory Tech., vol. 44, pp. 438–445, Mar. 1996. electromagnetic compatibility and electromagnetic interference.
[23] K. A. Michalski and D. Zheng, “Electromagnetic scattering and radi- Prof. Cangellaris is an active Member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and
ation by surfaces of arbitrary shape in layered media, part I: Theory,” Techniques Society, the IEEE Components Packaging and Manufacturing Tech-
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 38, pp. 335–344, Mar. 1990. nology Society, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, and the IEEE Mag-
[24] C. H. Smith, A. F. Peterson, and R. Mitra, “The biconjugate gradient netics Society, serving as a Member of technical program committees for major
method for electromagnetic scattering,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Prop- conferences and symposia sponsored by these societies. He has served as As-
agat., vol. 38, pp. 938–940, June 1990. sociate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION,
[25] V. Fraysse, L. Giraud, and S. Gratton. A Set of GMRES Routines for and is currently serving as Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
Real and Complex Arithmetics. [Online]. Available: www.cerfacs.fr ADVANCED PACKAGING and the IEEE Press Series on Electromagnetic Fields
[26] O. Axelsson, Iterative Solution Methods. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge and Waves. He is the co-founder of the IEEE Topical Meeting on Electrical Per-
Univ. Press, 1994. formance of Electronic Packaging.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2141
Abstract—This paper presents a single-level matrix compression the approach suggested in [3] was based on a statically-deter-
algorithm, termed IE-QR, based on a low-rank approximation to mined map which was used to assemble a reduced impedance
speed up the electric field integral equation (EFIE) formulation. matrix through interpolation. The exact procedure of the inter-
It is shown, with the number of groups chosen to be proportional
to 1 2 , where is the number of unknowns, the memory and polation scheme adapted is not at all clear. In the present ap-
CPU time for the resulting algorithm are both ( 1 5 ). The proach proposed here in this paper, we have made two distinct
unique features of the algorithm are: a. The IE-QR algorithm is differences: 1) Our QR decomposition procedure is based on a
based on the near-rank-deficiency property for well-separated dual-rank process which “ranks” both the transmitter and the re-
groups. This near-rank-deficiency assumption holds true for ceivers and 2) the convergence of the QR process is determined
many integral equation methods such as Laplacian, radiation,
and scattering problems in electromagnetics (EM). The same by both the orthogonal projection as well as the estimate error
algorithm can be adapted to other applications outside EM with matrix norm smaller than the specified tolerance.
few or no modifications; and, b. The rank estimation is achieved by This paper presents a low-rank IE-QR algorithm for ef-
a dual-rank process, which ranks the transmitting and receiving ficiently compress the MoM matrix to reduce the memory
groups, respectively. Thus, the IE-QR algorithm can achieve requirement, matrix filling time, and the time of the iterative so-
matrix compression without assembling the entire system matrix.
Also, a “geometric-neighboring” preconditioner is presented in lution to . The single-level low-rank IE-QR algorithm
this paper. This “geometric-neighboring” preconditioner when is based on the rank deficiency feature of the integral equation
used in conjunction with GMRES is proven to be both efficient for well-separated groups of basis functions. The algorithm
and effective for solving the compressed matrix equations. forms a low-rank QR factorization of a matrix block, nonself
Index Terms—Electromagnetic (EM) scattering, low-rank QR interaction and nontouching groups, with only a portion of it
factorization, method of moments (MoM). being formed. Each group has a bounding box from binary
partition. The touching groups mean that the bounding boxes of
I. INTRODUCTION two groups are overlapped. As a matter of fact, the total number
of entries being computed for a matrix block, assuming the
where is the problem domain or the scatterer, is the free For the detail of the MGS process, see [9].
space wavenumber, is the distance between observation and Definition 2: (Orthogonal Component): Given an or-
source points, and is the characteristic wave impedance in thonormal matrix , and a column
free space. In the current paper, we have employed surface div- vector , we define by
conformal vector basis functions for the surface current, namely
the Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) basis functions. (5)
It is clear that .
III. SINGLE-LEVEL LOW-RANK IE-QR ALGORITHM
Definition 3: We say that a matrix is an approx-
The single-level low-rank IE-QR algorithm is based on the imate of if
rank deficiency feature of the integral equation for well-sep-
arated groups of basis functions. The algorithm factorizes the
local impedance matrix due to the group and into (6)
and matrices without a priori knowledge of ,
where and are the number of receiving and transmitting and we write .
basis functions, respectively, and is the rank of interaction Definition 4: (Column Index Selection): Given a rect-
angular matrix , and assuming
( ) exists, we define
.. (2) as the minimum index , , such that
.
(7)
Here, is the column vector due to the th basis function in
Definition 5: (Row Index Selection): Given a rectan-
the transmitting group (transmitter) and is the row vector
due to the th basis function in the receiving group (receiver). ..
gular matrix and its row partition . , we define
The information of the global matrix is stored in the ma-
trices and where ; , and the
self-impedance matrices , , which are com- according to
puted directly from the integral equation formulation, where
is the number of groups of basis functions. Also, the geometrical
touching groups, in which the rank deficient aspect cannot be (8)
preserved, are directly computed. The computing IE-QR of the Definition 6: (Approximate Norm): Given a rect-
touching groups has expensive computational complexity com- angular matrix , and a series of indexes , we
pared with the direct computation. define an approximate norm of by
The single-level low-rank IE-QR algorithm is used to gen-
erate orthogonal columns of that approximately span the
column space of the original matrix and the columns of (9)
that are the expansion coefficients of the corresponding
columns of with respect to the column vectors in .
The rest columns of are obtained by solving the B. A Single-Level Low-Rank IE-QR Algorithm With Matrix
equations extracted from (2). The important advantage of the Block Partially Formed
single-level low-rank IE-QR algorithm is that it does not require The following is a straightforward theorem, so we just simply
a priori knowledge of . Storing and using and state it.
instead of helps both to save the required memory for Theorem 1: Given a matrix and its column partition
each group interaction and to reduce the numerical complexity , the matrix product
of both the matrix assembly and matrix-vector multiplication in with (10), shown at the bottom of the next page, is an
the iterative solver. The detail of the algorithm can be shown approximate of , assuming is nonsingular.
below. That is . Moreover, note that the
error for the approximate is
A. Definitions and Notations Needed for the IE-QR Algorithm
Definition 1: (MGS): Given linearly independent column
vectors, , we denote the orthonormal matrix
.. .. .. .. .. ..
which is obtained by these . . . . . .
vectors through the MGS process. Namely
(3)
.. .. ..
and . . .
(4) (11)
SEO AND LEE: SINGLE-LEVEL LOW RANK IE-QR ALGORITHM FOR PEC SCATTERING 2143
Now we are ready to state our IE-QR algorithm with the ma-
trix blocks partially formed. Suppose at the th step, we have
explicitly formed a approximate of the permuted
matrix, namely
.. ..
. .
(12)
.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . .
Fig. 1. Geometry of the open cone scatterer, with the height of 20 cm and the
base diameter of 20 cm. (a) Surface triangulation and (b) mesh partitioning.
In (12), the entries marked by are available, i.e., have
been computed, whereas the entries are not. Moreover, an IV. GEOMETRIC-NEIGHBORING PRECONDITIONER
orthonormal matrix , with dimensions ,
In this section, we consider the efficient solution of dense
has been constructed through previous steps. Also, in
linear system by preconditioned iterative
(12), and are row and column permutation matrices,
methods, particularly GMRES method. An insightful discus-
respectively. The detail of these permutation matrices will be
sion of three types of preconditioners, the operator splitting
described in the following algorithm.
preconditioner (OSP), the least squares approximate inverse
Algorithm: IE-QR Algorithm with Matrix Block Partially
preconditioner (LSAI), and the diagonal block approximate
Formed
inverse preconditioner (DBAI) [5], for dense matrices arising
Step 1) Let , we compute from the application of BIE is provided. Our approach contains
. Then the permutation matrix is an the idea of the mesh neighbor (MN) preconditioner in [6]
identity with and columns interchanges. and DBAI. The “mesh-neighboring” preconditioner proposed
Step 2) Update to in the current paper, is based upon a two-step process [7].
In the first step, we extract from the full impedance matrix,
, a sparse version, , which includes the near
.. .. range interactions as well as a heuristic bias toward geometrical
. . singularities. Once the sparse matrix, , is obtained, the final
preconditioner, , will be formed through an incomplete
(13) factorization with a heuristic dropping strategy [8]. The detail
.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . of the preconditioner can be found in [7].
V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
Let , then compute To demonstrate the efficient and validate the current single-
, , and . level IE-QR approach, we have conducted studies on one nu-
Update from to . merical example. In the example, we employed constant (as con-
Step 3) Compute , and the row stant as we possibly can) mesh density while increase the oper-
permutation matrix is a identity with ating frequency.
and rows interchanged. Update to
. A. An Open Cone Plate
Step 4) If , where is a prescribed tolerance, An open cone PEC scatterer is shown as inset in Fig. 1, whose
then compute according to (10). Find in- height and diameter of the bottom are 20 cm. From Fig. 1(b), we
dexes, , and compute clearly establish the open cone PEC scatterer is uniformly par-
. If , stop the titioned using a simple mesh-partitioning algorithm. The parti-
procedure. tioned groups are well-separated for the single-level low-rank
Otherwise, continue the IE-QR process. IE-QR algorithm. The rank map for the open cone mesh at
(10)
2144 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE I
PERFORMANCE OF SINGLE-LEVEL LOW-RANK IE-QR ALGORITHM WITH THE
OPEN CONE PLATE (tolerance = 10 )
TABLE II
PERFORMANCE OF SINGLE-LEVEL LOW-RANK IE-QR ALGORITHM WITH THE
OPEN CONE PLATE (tolerance = 10 )
Fig. 5. Plot of the memory consumption for the open cone example. Note that VI. SUMMARY
ON
the reference is the ( ) line.
This paper presents the novel single-level low-rank IE-QR al-
gorithm. The algorithm proves memory consumption and CPU
time are reduced significantly.
REFERENCES
[1] R. Coifman, V. Rokhlin, and S. Wandzura, “The fast multipole method
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Propagat. Mag., vol. 35, pp. 7–12, June 1993.
[2] S. Kapur and J. Zhao, “A fast method of moments solver for efficient
parameter extraction of MCMs,” in Proc. 34th Design Automation Conf.,
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efficient 3-dimensional extraction,” in Proc. 37th Int. Conf. Computer
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[5] K. Chen, “An analysis of sparse approximate inverse preconditioners for
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Fig. 6. Plot of the CPU time for the open cone example. Note that the reference robust preconditioner for EFIE scattering problems,” IEEE Trans. An-
ON
is the ( ) line. tennas Propagat., vol. 51, pp. 1855–1863, Aug. 2003.
2146 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—An electromagnetic feasible adjoint sensitivity tech- sufficient database for the system response in the design param-
nique (EM-FAST) has been proposed recently for use with fre- eter space becomes available. Such response data, for example,
quency-domain solvers . It makes the implementation of the ad- would gradually accumulate during optimization.
joint variable approach to design sensitivity analysis straightfor-
ward while preserving the accuracy at a level comparable to that of It is possible to derive exact sensitivity expressions for
the exact sensitivities. The overhead computations associated with the state variables of a system by directly differentiating its
the estimation of the sensitivities in addition to the system analysis equations with respect to the desired design parameters. For
are due largely to the calculation of the derivatives of the system example, in [2], a mixed potential integral equation is developed
matrix. Here, we describe the integration of the EM-FAST with for the current density derivatives with the method of moments
two methods for accelerated estimation of these derivatives: the
boundary-layer concept and the Broyden update. We show that the (MoM) applied to planar multilayer structures. This equation,
Broyden update approach (Broyden-FAST) leads to an algorithm when solved together with the original electric field integral
whose efficiency is problem independent and allows the computa- equation, yields both the currents and their derivatives with
tion of the response and its gradient through a single system anal- respect to the design parameters. Such an approach—generally
ysis with practically no overhead. Both approaches are illustrated referred to as sensitivity analysis via direct differentiation—can
through the design of simple antennas using method of moments
solvers. be applied to both steady-state [3], [4] and dynamic [5] systems.
For each design parameter, an additional linear system analysis
Index Terms—Adjoint sensitivities, antenna design, Broyden up- is required to obtain the respective response derivative. Each
date, design methodology, method of moments (MoM), optimiza-
tion, sensitivity. of these analyses is characterized by the same system matrix,
which is also identical with the original system matrix.
A more efficient design sensitivity analysis is provided by the
I. INTRODUCTION adjoint variable method [3]–[7]. It reduces the computational
overhead of the sensitivity computation to just one additional
T RADITIONAL full-wave electromagnetic (EM) solvers
do not compute the gradient of the response (e.g., -pa-
rameters, input impedance or antenna gain) with respect to
linear system analysis where the system matrix is the transpose
of that of the original problem. Thus, its computational overhead
the design parameters, which relate to the geometry and the is times smaller than that of the direct differentiation approach
materials of the structure. Commercial high-frequency CAD and is practically independent of the number of design param-
software typically resorts to finite-difference approximations eters . Adjoint-based design sensitivity analysis of microwave
of the response sensitivities, which are numerically inefficient structures has been first formulated in terms of circuit concepts
but simple to implement with existing EM solvers. To compute rather than field concepts, and it is referred to as the adjoint net-
the response and its sensitivities, such an approach requires work method [7]–[12].
a minimum of full-wave analyses, being the number To obtain exact sensitivities, both the direct differentiation
of the design parameters. This approach is also known as the and the adjoint-variable techniques require the analytical deriva-
perturbation approximate sensitivity technique (PAST) [1]. tives of the system matrix with respect to the design parameters.
Higher-order approximations may also be used at the expense This constitutes a major difficulty in applications with full-wave
of an increased number of simulations. They are feasible when EM solvers for research or commercial design software. Re-
cently, adjoint variable approaches were used with the finite-el-
ement method (FEM); see, for example, [13]–[15]. The FEM is
well suited for exact sensitivity calculations because of the ana-
lytical relation between the coefficients of the FEM matrix and
Manuscript received December 12, 2002; revised September 30, 2003. the coordinates of the vertices of the finite element grid. This
This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada under Grants OGP0227660-03, OGP0007239, analytical relation, however, is not trivial. Its implementation in
OGP0249780-02, STR234854-00, through the Micronet Network of Centres the computation of the derivatives of the FEM system matrix
of Excellence and Bandler Corporation. with respect to any geometrical or material design parameter
N. K. Nikolova, R. Safian, E. A. Soliman, and M. H. Bakr are with the Depart-
ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, is in practice difficult and, to our knowledge, has not been ex-
ON L8S 4K1, Canada. ploited yet in commercial high-frequency CAD software.
J. W. Bandler is with with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- A similar difficulty exists with the exact sensitivities for the
neering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada and also with
Bandler Corporation, Dundas, ON L9H 5E7, Canada. MoM. The different varieties of MoM techniques rely on spe-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832313 cific Green’s functions, as well as different basis and weighting
0018-926X/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE
2148 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
functions. The dependence of the system matrix coefficients on We assume that the response is a scalar function, which is dif-
possible geometry perturbations is involved and case specific ferentiable in and . We define the gradient operator as a row
[2], [16]. operator
In summary, exact sensitivities appear to be often impractical
in full-wave EM analysis for two reasons: (1) the analytical pre- (3)
processing is involved and solver specific; (2) the implementa-
tion requires thorough reworking of the analysis engine. The When the gradient operator acts on a vector, e.g., , the result
second requirement is especially unattractive in the develop- is a matrix
ment of commercial software.
Recently, a feasible adjoint-sensitivity technique (FAST)
for applications with full-wave EM solvers (EM-FAST) has .. .. (4)
. .
been proposed [17]. It uses finite differences to approximate
the derivatives of the system matrix. Its implementation in a
versatile CAD environment is straightforward since it requires The optimization problem is formulated as
minor additions to existing frequency-domain computational
algorithms. Its accuracy is comparable to that of the analytical (5)
exact sensitivities. Its overhead is mostly due to the finite-differ-
ence computation of the derivatives of the system matrix, and it where is the objective function to be minimized, and is the
is equivalent to that of the exact sensitivity calculations. Here, vector of optimal design parameters. Gradient-based optimizers
we propose the use of two techniques—the boundary-layer require both the response of the current design and its sensi-
concept and the Broyden update—to enhance the speed of the tivity (3) in order to predict the next design iterate.
EM-FAST, which is crucial in gradient-based optimization. The sensitivities of the objective function are obtained as [18]
There is a certain loss of accuracy; however, the approximated
sensitivities are sufficiently accurate to efficiently guide the op-
timization toward the optimal design. In applications requiring (6)
higher accuracy of the response gradient such as tolerance or
yield analysis, the original EM-FAST may be preferable. where is the solution of the complex adjoint problem
We start with a brief outline of the EM-FAST [17] and its
computational requirements. We then discuss ways to accelerate (7)
its performance through the boundary layer concept (BLC) and
in which the adjoint excitation is defined by
the Broyden update. The resulting algorithms offer significant
CPU time reduction in comparison with the original EM-FAST
on the order of the number of design parameters . The savings ..
. (8)
in comparison with the traditional finite-difference gradient ap-
proximation applied directly to the set of responses (e.g., PAST)
are drastic, especially in the case of multiple design variables.
Here, and denote the real and imaginary parts, respectively,
of a complex variable. The gradient reflects the explicit
II. FEASIBLE ADJOINT SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS dependence of on . The matrix would typically be an-
alytically available. In fact, the excitation is often insensitive to
A. Definitions and Notations in Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis changes in the design parameters, i.e., . For example,
Consider the system of complex-valued equations arising in a microstrip circuit, the excitation is defined at ports located
form the discretization of a linear EM problem at feed lines. If the design parameter variations affect neither the
dielectric constant nor the height of the substrate, nor the width
of the feed line, the excitation remains unchanged.
(1)
In is a constant vector representing the solution at
the current design, i.e., (6) can be written explicitly as
where, is the vector of design parameters.
These parameters typically have real values related to the ge-
ometry and the materials of the structure. is
the state variable vector, e.g., complex-valued current distribu- (9)
tion in the MoM; is the excitation vector; is the system
matrix whose complex coefficients depend on the geometry and The sensitivity expression (6) is a generalization of the well-
materials. known, linear, real-system sensitivity formula [3], [17].
The objective of sensitivity analysis is to determine the gra- As evident from (6) and (7), the adjoint approach provides the
dient of a properly defined response function at the gradient of the response with respect to all design parameters
current solution of (1) with respect to the design parameters with just one additional system analysis (7) whose system ma-
trix is simply related to that of the original problem (1). When
(2) factorization of is used to solve (1), the factors of
NIKOLOVA et al.: ACCELERATED GRADIENT BASED OPTIMIZATION USING ADJOINT SENSITIVITIES 2149
are easily obtained by rearranging the factors of . Thus, the III. ACCELERATED OPTIMIZATION WITH APPROXIMATED
additional system analysis (7) is practically avoided, the over- ADJOINT SENSITIVITIES
head being due only to the forward-backward substitutions. In
There are two techniques which can lead to faster calculation
the case of iterative solvers—often used when is large and/or
of the derivative matrices. The first one is the boundary-layer
sparse—a complete additional system analysis seems impera-
concept (BLC) first proposed by Amari [19] in the sensitivity
tive.
analysis with the direct differentiation method. The accelera-
B. The Feasible Technique tion offered by the BLC depends on the relation between the re-
spective design parameter and the geometry of the structure as
The matrices , which we refer to as we explain below. Its computational requirements are dependent
derivative matrices, may be analytically available, as is the case on the number of design parameters . It requires modifications
with the FEM. Then the sensitivities obtained with (9) are exact. of existing EM analysis software, which relate to meshing and
The calculation of an analytically available matrix at matrix building subroutines. Its advantage is that it yields sen-
the current design is computationally equivalent to a -matrix sitivity estimates of very good accuracy.
fill; therefore, at each design iteration, the equivalent of The second approach uses Broyden’s update to iteratively
matrix fills is needed. Thus, the advantage of analytically avail- compute approximate derivative matrices. This approach
able derivative matrices is in the accuracy of the derivative esti- reduces the overhead drastically since its computational re-
mation rather than in its computational efficiency. When the quirements—negligible compared to a matrix fill—practically
factors of the system matrix are available from the analysis of do not depend on . The Broyden-update approach does not
(1), the computation of the derivative matrices determines the require any modifications of the EM analysis algorithms.
overhead associated with the sensitivity analysis since it is far
more computationally demanding than the forward-backward
A. BLC With the EM-FAST
substitutions when solving the adjoint problem (7). When the
system equations of (1) and (7) are solved iteratively, the ad- The BLC can be applied with solvers which allow nonuni-
ditional (adjoint) system analysis determines the computational form discretization and/or unstructured grids, e.g., the FEM
overhead. Even in this case, the reduction of the time to estimate and the MoM. The idea is to perturb a certain geometrical
the derivative matrices is desirable. parameter (the design parameter ) of a structure by respective
In full-wave EM analysis usually the derivative matrices deformations of as few grid elements as possible. This makes
, are not analytically available or they are most of the -matrix coefficients insensitive to the perturba-
too complicated to obtain for the purposes of general and versa- tion. Consequently, the matrix derivative is mostly
tile design software. Then, we can resort to the finite-difference sparse and only few nonzero coefficients need to be calculated.
approximation [17], which requires This is in contrast with the conventional EM-FAST where full
additional -matrix fills if forward (or backward) finite remeshing is applied to the perturbed structure, which results
differences are used. The associated computational overhead is in a full matrix.
equivalent to that of the exact sensitivity estimation discussed We present two examples, which illustrate the BLC. Through
above. The important advantage here is that the implementa- them, we investigate the accuracy of the modified EM-FAST
tion with existing software is simple. The technique does not algorithm which exploits the BLC.
require any analytical preprocessing, which often restricts the 1) A Dipole of Finite Thickness: We analyze the sensitivity
versatility of the algorithm. of the input impedance of a dipole with respect to the nor-
We have investigated the accuracy of the sensitivity estima- malized length of the dipole . The dipole is dis-
tion with the feasible adjoint technique [17] and we have found cretized into segments whose normalized length is uniform and
that it is excellent for relative perturbations between equal to [see Fig. 1(a)]. Here, is the number
0.5% and 2%. The relative error in comparison with the exact of segments. In this example, . This example is suit-
sensitivities is well below 1% for a broad range of values of the able for design sensitivity tests because the input impedance
design parameters, close to or far from the nulls of the sensi- of a dipole is highly sensitive to its length, especially close to
tivity curves. resonance. The thickness of the dipole is represented by the
A detailed comparison between the computational require- radius of its cross-section, which is constant and set to
ments of the EM-FAST and the commonly used finite differ- . The derivatives and are calcu-
ences applied directly to the response is made in [17]. Here, we lated, where and . We use the sym-
only note that the EM-FAST reduces the number of required metry of the structure and analyze half of it. The analysis algo-
full-wave analyses by a factor of being the number of rithm is based on Pocklington’s equation, which is discretized
design parameters. However, there are overhead computations using pulse basis functions and a point-matching technique [20].
associated with the additional matrix fills in order to compute Magnetic frill excitation is applied.
. In certain cases, e.g., electrically small Fig. 1(b) shows the perturbed geometry corresponding to a
problems, the MoM matrix fill may account for a significant por- change of length at the th design iteration where only
tion of the CPU time required by the overall analysis (matrix the boundary-layer (edge) segments are changed accordingly.
fill plus linear system solution). Such an overhead should not The resulting derivative matrix has only one row and
be overlooked in a sequence of repetitive analyses performed one column of nonzero elements. Fig. 1(c) shows the same pa-
during optimization. rameter perturbation this time realized with the conventional
2150 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 2. Derivative of the input resistance of the dipole with respect to its
normalized length.
Fig. 1. Perturbing the length of the dipole at the k th iteration with and without
a boundary layer.
(10)
Fig. 3. Derivative of the input reactance of the dipole with respect to its
normalized length.
For each , the MoM solver is invoked twice to perform the
analysis at , and at , where . size introduced by the edge-only perturbation. We expect such
The sensitivity of is evaluated in the range from 0.3 to deterioration to be less when higher-order basis and test func-
1.2 (see Figs. 2 and 3). tions are used such as triangular functions for wire antennas or
Second, the input impedance sensitivity is computed with the rooftops for planar structures.
conventional EM-FAST [17]. The derivative matrix We now proceed with the optimization of the dipole for an
is dense and its coefficients are calculated using forward fi- input impedance of . The objective function is de-
nite differences applied to each matrix element fined as
. This requires numerical integrations. The incre-
ment is again set at . The derivative (11)
matrix is then used in (9) to compute and .
The resulting sensitivity curves are used as a reference as they We allow two geometrical parameters to vary: the normalized
are the closest to the exact sensitivities [17]. dipole length and the normalized dipole diameter .
The third and the fourth derivative estimations use the ad- The vector of design parameters is thus . The
joint technique with the BLC. The matrix is very following constraints are imposed:
sparse and its computation is fast as it involves only numer- (12)
ical integrations. The perturbations are set so that the length of
the edge elements is increased by since this problem is known to be nonunique. The BLC is used
and for the to compute the matrix derivative . Notice, however,
third and the fourth analysis, respectively. Some accuracy is sac- that it cannot be exploited in the case of the design parameter
rificed as is clear from Figs. 2 and 3; however, it is sufficient for because a change in the antenna diameter affects all -matrix
the purposes of gradient-based optimization. The slight deteri- coefficients. The matrix is computed with the con-
oration in accuracy is due to the nonuniformity of the segment ventional EM-FAST technique, which requires a full matrix fill.
NIKOLOVA et al.: ACCELERATED GRADIENT BASED OPTIMIZATION USING ADJOINT SENSITIVITIES 2151
TABLE I
OPTIMIZATION OF THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF THE DIPOLE
Fig. 5. BLC and the perturbed mesh related to the design parameter x .
TABLE II
DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE PATCH AT EACH ITERATION
Fig. 4. Geometry of the microstrip-fed patch antenna.
TABLE III
OPTIMIZATION OF THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF THE YAGI–UDA ARRAY WITH BROYDEN-FAST
where is the increment vector in the design The advantage of the Broyden update is that it is problem-in-
parameter space. It has elements corresponding to the incre- dependent and does not require any modifications of the analysis
ment of each design parameter. Broyden’s update has been used algorithm. Moreover, its computational requirements are negli-
in a number of applications such as gradient-based optimization gible in comparison with the EM-FAST. The response and its
where analytical sensitivities are not available [22], the aggres- gradient are obtained by a single system analysis with practi-
sive space mapping technique [23], etc. cally no overhead regardless of the number of design parame-
We apply Broyden’s update to estimate iteratively the deriva- ters .
tive matrices , which are subsequently The potential of the Broyden update is demonstrated by two
used in the sensitivity expression (9). We refer to this modified examples: the optimization of a Yagi–Uda array and the opti-
adjoint-based technique as Broyden-FAST. In the implementa- mization of a microstrip-fed patch antenna.
tion of (14), every complex-valued matrix coefficient 1) Optimization of a Yagi–Uda Array: An initial design of
is a nonlinear function of the design parame- the six-element Yagi–Uda antenna is given in Fig. 7. All dimen-
ters. We define as a vector which consists of the real and imag- sions are normalized with respect to the free-space wavelength
inary parts of all elements of the matrix, and as a matrix . We vary the normalized lengths of the reflector and the driven
which consists of their derivatives. To construct the vector , we element, and , as well as the normalized
stack all the columns of in a vector followed by the vector separation distances and . Thus, the
formed by all columns of . Thus, when is an ma- vector of design parameters is . The ob-
trix, is a vector with elements. A row of the matrix jective function is set as in (11) with . The progress of
contains the derivatives of the respective element of the vector the optimization is summarized in Table III where the changes
with respect to all design parameters. Therefore, of the design parameters, the input impedance and the objective
is a matrix. function are recorded at each iteration. An optimal solution is
The approximate derivative matrices generated by the reached in nine iterations.
Broyden formula are typically less accurate [22] than those At the th design iteration, we update the four derivative
obtained by perturbations in the EM-FAST. Our experience matrices , with Broyden’s formula and
shows that as the optimization proceeds, the response sensitivity use them to compute the response sensitivities according to
estimates produced by Broyden-FAST converge toward the (9). The response sensitivities are then used by the optimiza-
exact sensitivities. As a precaution, in the case of a diverging tion algorithm (fmincon) to produce the next design iterate.
objective function, the algorithm defaults to the conventional The Broyden-FAST sensitivities are then compared with the
EM-FAST technique. sensitivities calculated off-line where the derivative matrices
NIKOLOVA et al.: ACCELERATED GRADIENT BASED OPTIMIZATION USING ADJOINT SENSITIVITIES 2153
Fig. 10. Sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the separation s
Fig. 8. Sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the length of the during the optimization of Z of the Yagi–Uda antenna.
reflector during the optimization of Z of the Yagi–Uda antenna.
Fig. 11. Sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the separation s
during the optimization of Z of the Yagi–Uda antenna.
Fig. 9. Sensitivity of the objective function with respect to the length of the
driven element l during the optimization of Z of the Yagi–Uda antenna.
Fig. 13. Sensitivities of the objective function in the optimization of the Yagi–Uda antenna using the direct Broyden update: comparison with reference sensitivities
computed with the EM-FAST.
are plotted in Fig. 12. For comparison, we also plot the global shape perturbations except for the diagonal (self-impedance) el-
errors of the matrix derivatives of the forward finite differencing ements due to the intrinsic dependence on the distance between
in the original FAST computed for the same design iterates. observation and integration points. Thus, when the Broyden up-
As expected, the original FAST is robust while the accuracy of date is applied at the level of the system matrix, better conver-
the Broyden estimates may vary throughout the optimization. gence of the sensitivity estimates and of the overall optimization
These variations lead to the small (but observable) differences process is expected.
between the EM-FAST response derivatives and the respective In support of this observation, we repeat the Yagi–Uda
Broyden-FAST estimates (see Figs. 10 and 11). Notice that close antenna design, this time using Broyden’s update directly at the
to the optimum solution where the optimizer takes very small level of the objective function in order to estimate its derivatives
steps (see Table III), the Broyden update may not perform very (direct Broyden approach). We keep the optimization set-up
well for all design parameters, e.g., , due to the nearly iden- identical to that before: (1) the initial design is as shown in
tical -matrices of the consecutive design iterates; see (14). If Fig. 7; (2) the objective function is defined as in (11) with
necessary, this can be avoided by defaulting to EM-FAST when ; (3) the same optimization function fmincon of
sufficiently small value of the objective function is achieved. MATLAB is used; (4) the stop criteria
The improved accuracy of the sensitivity estimates may thus im- and are the same; and (5) the value of
prove the convergence of the optimization at its final stages. The the response sensitivity at the first iteration is supplied by the
hybrid approaches, however, are not a subject of our current dis- EM-FAST estimate. The direct-Broyden derivatives are used
cussion. by the optimizer to determine the subsequent design iterates.
The Broyden update, of course, can be applied directly to We also compute the objective function derivatives with the
the objective function . However, the objective function usu- EM-FAST technique off-line in order to supply reference values
ally exhibits strongly nonlinear behavior and sharp sensitivities for comparison.
with respect to the designable parameters. At the same time, the The direct-Broyden and the reference sensitivity curves are
Broyden formula is based on a local linear approximation of the plotted in Fig. 13 for all four designable parameters. The
function and thus it performs better with only mildly nonlinear progress of the optimization is summarized in Table IV. It is
functions. The -matrix elements, on the other hand, are smooth evident that the direct-Broyden derivatives do not converge
functions of the shape or material parameters. In fact, the ma- well toward the reference values, and the objective function
jority of the MoM matrix elements are almost insensitive to converges to a different (worse) solution than that of the
NIKOLOVA et al.: ACCELERATED GRADIENT BASED OPTIMIZATION USING ADJOINT SENSITIVITIES 2155
TABLE IV
OPTIMIZATION OF THE INPUT IMPEDANCE OF THE YAGI–UDA ARRAY WITH DIRECT BROYDEN UPDATE OF THE OBJECTIVE FUNCTION
Fig. 14. Progress of the objective function during the optimization of the microstrip-fed patch antenna.
Broyden-FAST optimization. This is due mostly to three inter- approximately equals 50 in this example. The operating fre-
related factors: (1) the objective function is very sensitive to the quency is 2 GHz. The initial values of the designable parame-
designable parameters (especially and ); (2) the Broyden ters are mm and mm. The patch is meshed
sensitivity estimation can not track well such a rapidly changing with rectangular segments. The number of segments along the
function; (3) the incorrect sensitivity information misleads the length and the width of the patch are 11 and 17, respectively.
optimizer. Possible solutions to the problems encountered with One segment is used along the width of the feeding microstrip
the direct Broyden sensitivity analysis are provided by the trust line. The optimization is carried out using the fmincon function
region optimization approaches. This topic, however, is outside of MATLAB.
of the scope of our work. With this example, we only illustrate We compute the sensitivities of the objective function with
the improved convergence of both the sensitivity analysis and three methods: 1) the direct-Broyden update; 2) the traditional
the optimization when the Broyden update is applied at the level EM-FAST which employs finite differences to approximate the
of the system matrix. derivative matrices (without a boundary layer); and 3) the pro-
2) Optimization of a Microstrip-Fed Patch Antenna: We posed Broyden-FAST which employs the Broyden update at the
now apply the Broyden-FAST to the optimization of the patch level of the system matrix. This time, we run three optimiza-
antenna in Fig. 4. The length and the width of the patch tions, each being driven by the respective sensitivity analysis
are optimized for a minimum magnitude of the reflection technique. The three objective functions are plotted in Fig. 14
coefficient. Thus, the objective function to be minimized is versus the optimization iteration number. The design parameters
versus the iteration number are plotted in Fig. 15. It is clear from
both figures that the direct-Broyden method fails in meeting the
(16)
optimum design while the other two methods, EM-FAST and
Broyden-FAST, are capable of achieving the optimum design.
Here, is the input impedance of the antenna, and is the The obtained optimal patch dimensions are mm
characteristic impedance of the feeding microstrip line, which and mm.
2156 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 15. Progress of the design parameters during the optimization of the microstrip-fed patch antenna.
The reason that Broyden-FAST succeeded where the direct- [3] E. J. Haug, K. K. Choi, and V. Komkov, Design Sensitivity Analysis of
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quency Structures,” M.A.Sc. thesis, McMaster University, May 2002. 2000, he joined the Computational Electromagnetics Research Laboratory (CERL),
University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada as an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow. He is
currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer En-
gineering, McMaster University. His research areas of interest include optimization
Natalia K. Nikolova (formerly Georgieva)
methods, computer-aided design and modeling of microwave circuits, neural network
(S’93–M’97) received the Dipl.Eng. degree in
applications, smart analysis of microwave circuits and efficient optimization using
radioelectronics from the Technical University of time/frequency domain methods.
Varna, Bulgaria, in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the University of
Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1997.
From 1998 to 1999, she held a Postdoctoral Fellow-
John W. Bandler (S’66–M’66–SM’74–F’78) was born
ship of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
in Jerusalem, on November 9, 1941. He studied at the Im-
Council of Canada (NSERC), during which time she
perial College of Science and Technology, London, U.K.,
was initially with the Microwave and Electromagnetics
from 1960 to 1966, and received the B.Sc.(Eng.), Ph.D.,
Laboratory, DalTech, Dalhousie University, Halifax, and D.Sc.(Eng.) degrees from the University of London,
Canada. For approximately one year, she was with the Simulation Optimization London, U.K., in 1963, 1967, and 1976, respectively.
Systems Research Laboratory, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada. In In 1966, he joined Mullard Research Laboratories,
July 1999, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Redhill, Surrey, U.K. From 1967 to 1969, he was a
McMaster University, where she is currently an Associate Professor. Her research Postdoctorate Fellow and Sessional Lecturer at the
interests include theoretical and computational electromagnetism, high-frequency University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. He joined
analysis techniques, as well as CAD methods for high-frequency structures and McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, in 1969,
antennas. where he has served as Chairman of the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Dr. Nikolova currently holds a University Faculty Award of NSERC, which she Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and is currently Professor Emeritus in the
received in 2000. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, directing research in the Simula-
tion Optimization Systems Research Laboratory. He was President of Optimization
Systems Associates Inc. (OSA), which he founded in 1983, until November 20,
1997, the date of acquisition of OSA by Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). OSA
implemented a first-generation yield-driven microwave CAD capability for Raytheon
Reza Safian received the B.Sc. degree from the in 1985, followed by further innovations in linear and nonlinear microwave CAD
Isfahan University of Technology (IUT), Isfahan, Iran, technology for the Raytheon/Texas Instruments Joint Venture MIMIC Program.
in 1999 and the M.A.Sc. degree from McMaster Uni- OSA introduced the CAE systems RoMPE in 1988, HarPE in 1989, OSA90 and
versity, Hamilton, Canada, in 2003, both in electrical OSA90/hope in 1991, Empipe in 1992, Empipe3D and EmpipeExpress in 1996.
engineering. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. OSA created the product empath in 1996 which was marketed by Sonnet Software,
degree at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Inc., USA. Dr. Bandler is President of Bandler Corporation, which he founded in
Canada. 1997. He has published more than 350 papers from 1965 to 2003. He contributed
During 1999 to 2002, he was a Research Engineer to Modern Filter Theory and Design (Surrey, U.K.: Wiley-Interscience, 1973) and
in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Research to Analog Methods for Computer-aided Analysis and Diagnosis Germany: Marcel
Center (ECERC), IUT. From 2002 to 2003, he was a Dekker, Inc., 1988). Four of his papers have been reprinted in Computer-Aided
Research Assistant at McMaster University working Filter Design (New York: IEEE Press, 1973), one in each of Microwave Integrated
with the Computational Electromagnetics Laboratory and the Simulation Opti- Circuits (Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1975), Low-Noise Microwave Transistors
mization Systems Research Laboratory. His research interests include theory of and Amplifiers (New York: IEEE Press, 1981), Microwave Integrated Circuits, (Nor-
electromagnetism and computational electromagnetics. wood, MA: Artech House, 1985, 2nd ed.), Statistical Design of Integrated Circuits
(New York: IEEE Press, 1987)and Analog Fault Diagnosis (New York: IEEE Press,
1987). He joined the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Numerical
Modeling in 1987, the International Journal of Microwave and Millimeterwave
Computer-Aided Engineering in 1989, and Optimization and Engineering in 1998.
Ezzeldin A. Soliman (S’97–A’99) was born in Cairo, He was Guest Editor of International Journal of Microwave and Millimeter-Wave
Egypt, on May 18, 1970. He received the B.Sc. de- Computer-Aided Engineering, Special Issue on Optimization-Oriented Microwave
gree (distinction with honors) in electronics and com- CAD (1997). He was Guest Coeditor Optimization and Engineering Special Issue
munications engineering and the M.Sc. degree in en- on Surrogate Modeling and Space Mapping for Engineering Optimization (2001).
gineering physics, both from Cairo University, Giza, Dr. Bandler is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Royal
Egypt, in June 1992 and Nov. 1995, respectively, and Society of Canada, the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), London, U.K.,
the Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) in electrical en- anf the Engineering Institute of Canada. He is a Member of the Association of
gineering from the University of Leuven, Leuven, Bel- Professional Engineers of the Province of Ontario (Canada), the MIT Electro-
gium, in February 2000. magnetics Academy, and the Micronet Network of Centres of Excellence. He
From 1992 to 1996, he was a Research and a received the Automatic Radio Frequency Techniques Group (ARFTG) Automated
Teaching Assistant with the Department of Engi- Measurements Career Award in 1994. He was an Associate Editor of the IEEE
neering Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. From 1996 to 2000, TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES (1969–1974), and has
he has been a Research Assistant at both Interuniversity MicroElectronics continued serving as a member of the Editorial Board. He was Guest Editor of
Center (IMEC), Leuven, Belgium, and the Department of Electrical Engineering, the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES Special Issue
University of Leuven. From April 2002 to July 2002, he was a Visiting Pro- on computer-oriented microwave practices (1974) and Guest Coeditor of the of
fessor at IMEC. From October 2002 to September 2003, he was on a Visiting the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES Special Issue
Researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster on Process-Oriented Microwave CAD and Modeling (1992), and Guest Editor,
University, Hamilton, ON, Canada. He is currently an Assistant Professor with IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, Special Issue on
the Department of Engineering Physics, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University. Automated Circuit Design Using Electromagnetic Simulators (1997). He is Guest
His research interests include computational electromagnetics, development and Coeditor, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, Special
characterization of planar antennas in the multilayer thin film technology, neural Issue on Electromagnetics-Based Optimization of Microwave Components and
network modeling of electromagnetic problems, and the EM-based optimization Circuits (2004). He has served as Chair of the MTT-1 Technical Committee on
techniques. Computer-Aided Design.
2158 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Abstract—In this paper, we propose two new hybrid, two-dimen- gridding schemes, are due to a lack of symmetry in some dis-
sional, generalized finite-difference time-domain algorithms—for- crete operators, and are not dependent on the Courant condition
mulated by using the cell method—and designed to analyze objects [7], [8]. In this paper we propose two new hybrid generalized
with fine details, without using very small time steps dictated by the
Courant condition. A detailed analysis of the stability of the pro- FDTD algorithms where each of them is a combination of two
posed algorithms is presented, with special attention devoted to the algorithms that work on different grids—a coarse mesh FDTD
phenomenon of late time instabilities. Finally, some rules are pro- in one domain, and either a fine mesh or a triangular one in the
vided that would ensure the stability of the proposed algorithms. other—and with different time stepping schemes. To investigate
Index Terms—Cell method (CM), generalized finite-difference their stability, we will need to account for the instabilities that
time-domain (FDTD) method, hybrid algorithms, stability, sub- may arise from the spatial as well as temporal interpolations.
gridding. The two hybrid algorithms will be developed by using the re-
cently-introduced cell method (CM) [[10]–[13]] that enables us
I. INTRODUCTION to address both the problems of instability and connectivity be-
tween the different algorithms.
Fig. 2. Primal and dual time cell complexes and the global variables associated
Fig. 1. Primal and dual space cell complexes and the global variables with their primal and dual cells.
associated with their primal and dual cells.
space-time constitutive relation links the variables and where the matrices are referred to
, whereas the magnetic space-time constitutive relation as constitutive matrices. These matrices can be gen-
provides a link between the variables and . These rela- erated explicitly from the knowledge of the geomet-
tions employ the material parameters and can be enforced rical features of the cell complexes, and the features of
on the cell complexes only in an approximate and discrete the materials inside the computational domain. As we
form by using suitable algebraic relationships. Next, by will see in Section IV, the constitutive matrices must be
introducing the following intermediate variables: symmetric and positive definite in order for the time
— electric voltage ; updating scheme to be stable. These features can be
— magnetic voltage ; obtained via the symmetrized microcell interpolation
— electric current ; scheme (SMIS) [14], which also ensures that the con-
that are global variables in space, but local variables in stitutive matrices are physically consistent.
time, we can formulate the space-time constitutive rela-
tions by combining two simpler relations. For example, III. GENERALIZED FDTD 2-D- EXPLICIT ALGORITHM
to calculate the electric voltage impulse from the elec- FORMULATED BY THE CM
tric flux , we can first calculate the electric voltage
The formulation of the generalized FDTD algorithm on two
from the electric flux , by using the constitutive relation
staggered cell complexes follows from the combination of the
, and we can then calculate the electric voltage
algebraic electromagnetic laws of the CM. In particular, we
impulse from the electric voltage , by a time integral
focus here only on the 2-D wave propagation, because the
relation . The time integration relations and the
2-D wave propagation leads to similar theoretical results.
constitutive relations we need are given below:
Since the fields do not vary along the z-axis we can use a 2-D
— Time integration relationships: These relationships
cell complex obtained from a projection of a 3-D cell complex
can be extracted in an algebraic form from the fol-
onto the xy-plane (Fig. 3).
lowing time integral relationships:
The resulting 2-D cell complex is characterized by primal
nodes ; edges ; faces ; and dual nodes ; edges and faces
. On this 2-D cell complex, the associations of the physical
variables to the space elements are related to those in the 3-D
case as follows:
• electric voltage ;
• electric flux ;
In practice, we utilize the following two sets of time • magnetic voltage ;
integration relations. The first set is • magnetic flux ;
• electric current ;
(5) and we need to modify the field equations slightly from the 3-D
case. In particular, for the FDTD algorithms that we need to set
up, we are interested only in the Faraday–Neumann and Am-
and it leads to the leap-frog time-stepping scheme em-
père–Maxwell laws. For the 2-D case, we can use the time
ployed in conventional FDTD [15], [6]. The second set
integration relation in (5), to reduce these modified equations to
is
(6)
(9)
and leads to the Newmark time-stepping scheme em- We point out that we have translated the quantities in the above
ployed in FETD [16], which is an implicit scheme. equations by half a time-step, without loss of generality, in order
— Constitutive relations: These relations approximate to simplify the analytical formalism of the stability criterion to
the following local constitutive relationships in an al- be discussed in Section V. Finally, by combining the field equa-
gebraic form: tions given in (9) with the constitutive relations, we can derive
an explicit time stepping algorithm (see Fig. 4), governing the
2-D wave propagation, which reads
Depending on the type of algorithms, we can utilize (10)
either one of the following two algebraic constitutive
relations: In general, the incidence matrices that multiply the array vec-
(7) tors and in (10) must be adjoint one to the other, and the
constitutive matrices must be symmetric and positive definite,
or the: otherwise late time instabilities may arise. Moreover, a general-
ized Courant condition must still be satisfied to avoid instabil-
(8)
ities [7]. If the cell complexes we use are Cartesian orthogonal
MARRONE AND MITTRA: THEORETICAL STUDY OF STABILITY CRITERIA FOR HYBRIDIZED FDTD ALGORITHMS 2161
Fig. 3. Associations of the physical variables with the elements of a 2-D cell complexes for the study of TM waves propagation.
Fig. 4. Graphical visualization of the CM-FDTD algorithm with the leap-frog time stepping.
grids, as shown in Fig. 3, the algorithm in (10) becomes iden- places a heavy burden on the CPU, since it requires the use of a
tical to the classical FDTD algorithm, once we replace the elec- very small time step throughout the computational domain to
tric and magnetic voltages with the electric and magnetic field satisfy the Courant condition (11), which is associated with the
components. In this case, the conditions sufficient for avoiding smallest length of the mesh edges in the entire computational
late time instabilities are satisfied automatically; hence, just as domain. It is possible to overcome this problem by combining
in the case of the conventional FDTD, the algorithm in (10) is two algorithms into a hybrid one, where we employ the FDTD
stable if the time step satisfies the following Courant condi- algorithm in the main part of the computational domain ,
tion [6] and an alternate one in a smaller region , which either uses
the subgridding (Fig. 5) or an unstructured mesh (Fig. 6). The
(11) alternate algorithms should be chosen such that their stability
characteristics are not so tied to the smallest length of the grid
in the region as those ones of the FDTD algorithm.
where and are the grid step sizes and is the speed of The use of a complementary grid that is dual to the primal
light. Since (10) can be utilized on arbitrary 2-D primal and dual grid throughout the entire computational domain, as for instance
cell complexes, we can derive a generalized FDTD algorithm for in the cases shown in Figs. 5 and 6, allows us to maintain the
such grids, and we will refer to it as the CM-FDTD algorithm. self-adjointeness between the matrices that multiply the array
vectors V and F in (10). This approach is general and it is dif-
IV. HYBRID ALGORITHMS ferent from that in [8] where one must replace the matrices
When analyzing fine details in a small region via the FDTD and (or and in the 3-D cases) with some extended
method, it is often convenient to use subgridding in that region. discrete operators constructed via the use of some particular in-
Although this technique improves the accuracy of the results, it terpolation schemes.
2162 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
(12)
(13)
: square grid with subgridding. lating are the electric and the magnetic voltages associated with
the elements of the two subdomains and . Specifically,
they are
• electric voltages ;
• magnetic voltages .
that are useful for rewriting the hybrid algorithms in terms of the
new variables and
(17)
where .
If the constitutive matrices are symmetric and positive definite,
A. Stability Analysis of the Hybrid Algorithm Set by CM-FDTD then the are symmetric, and is symmetric positive def-
(Domain ) and CM-NEW (Domain ) inite. Then there exists the matrix
To simplify the derivation of the stability criterion, we begin
by assuming that there are no input sources. Then, by using (14),
(15), (16), and (17), we can rewrite the hybrid time-stepping
algorithm as follows: such that the matrix , given by
The system in (22) has the same form as that in (19), provided TABLE I
we define to be
and
TABLE II
(21)
2166 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
APPENDIX REFERENCES
We wish to demonstrate that the discrete system [1] M. W. Chevalier, R. J. Luebbers, and V. P. Cable, “FDTD local grid
with material traverse,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp.
411–421, Mar. 1997.
(24) [2] M. Okoniewski, E. Okoniewska, and M. A. Stuchly, “Three dimensional
subgridding algorithm for FDTD,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
vol. 45, pp. 422–429, Mar. 1997.
is stable if the matrix is symmetric, or there is a nonsingular [3] M. Feliziani and F. Maradei, “Mixed finite-difference/whitney-elements
matrix such that time domain (FD/WE-TD) method,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 34, pp.
3222–3227, Mar. 1998.
[4] B. Z. Wang, Y. Wang, W. Yu, and R. Mittra, “A hybrid 2-D ADI-FDTD
subgridding scheme for modeling on-chip interconnects,” IEEE Trans.
Adv. Packaging, vol. 24, pp. 528–533, Nov. 2001.
[5] Z. Chen and J. Zhang, “An unconditionally stable 3-D ADI-MRTD
where is symmetric matrix, and if the maximum eigenvalue method free of the CFL stability condition,” IEEE Microwave Wireless
in modulus of satisfies the bound Comp. Lett., vol. 11, pp. 349–351, Aug. 2001.
[6] A. Taflove and S. C. Hagness, Computational Electrodynamics: The Fi-
nite-Difference Time-Domain Method. Norwood, MA: Artech House,
(25) 2000.
[7] T. Weiland and R. Schuhmann, “Space and time stability of discrete time
domain algorithms,” in Proc. 4th Int. Workshop on Computational Elec-
The matrix can always be transferred into the Jordan canon- tromagnetics in the Time Domain, Nottingham, U.K., July 17–19, 2001,
ical form through a nonsingular matrix as follows: pp. 155–161.
[8] O. Podĕbrand, M. Clemens, and T. Weiland, “New flexible subgridding
scheme for the finite integration technique,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 39,
pp. 1662–1665, May 2003.
[9] E. Tonti, On the Formal Structure of Physical Theories, Italian National
Research Council, 1975. preprint.
and, since is symmetric or it has the same eigenvalues as [10] , “Finite formulation of the electromagnetic field,” IEEE Trans.
those of a symmetric matrix, then is a diagonal matrix. By Magn., vol. 38, pp. 333–336, Mar. 2002.
defining the new variable we can transform the [11] M. Marrone, A. M. F. Frasson, and H. E. Hernández-Figueroa, “A novel
numerical approach for electromagnetic scattering: The cell method,” in
system (24) into a new one which reads Proc. IEEE AP-S URSI, vol. 1, San Antonio, TX, June 16–21, 2002, pp.
160–163.
(26) [12] M. Marrone, V. F. Rodríguez-Esquerre, and H. E. Hernández-Figueroa,
“Novel numerical method for the analysis of 2D photonic crystals: The
cell method,” Opt. Express, vol. 10, no. 22, pp. 1299–1304, Nov. 2002.
The solution of the above equation is stable if and only if (24) [13] M. Marrone, R. Mittra, and W. Yu, “A novel approach to deriving a stable
hybridized FDTD algorithm using the cell method,” in Proc. IEEE AP-S
is stable and if each of the following one component systems
URSI, Columbus, OH, June 22–27, 2003.
[14] M. Marrone, “A novel technique to build constitutive matrices for gen-
eralized FDTD algorithms,” in Proc. IEEE AP-S URSI, Columbus, OH,
June 22–27, 2003.
[15] K. S. Yee, “Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems in-
are stable. The root conditions given in [18] states that in general volving Maxwell’s equations in isotropic media,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
the discrete system, Propagat., vol. 14, pp. 302–307, Mar. 1966.
[16] S. D. Gedney and U. Navsariwala, “An unconditionally stable finite el-
ement time-domain solution of the vector wave equation,” IEEE Trans.
(27) Microwave Guided Wave Lett., vol. 5, pp. 332–334, Oct. 1995.
[17] G. H. Golub and C. F. Van Loan, Matrix Computations. Baltimore,
MD: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996.
with , is stable, regardless of the nature of the input [18] P. Henrici, Error Propagation for Difference Methods. New York:
source, if the roots of the polynomial equation Wiley, 1963.
(28)
Communications______________________________________________________________________
Full-Wave Analysis of a Waveguide Printed Slot
the z -directed magnetic currents are used as unknowns, and each cur-
rent (M i ; M e ) is expressed as truncated sinusoidal series with respect
to z
N N
p
M = ap sin ( z + L) iz = ap mp (z ):
p=1 2L n=1
(2)
H
1 rr 1 F
= j!"F + j! (3)
wherein H w ; H s ; H e are the waveguide region, slot region and ex- and likely for M~ . The use of expansions with different parity for F~y
ternal region magnetic field, H inc is the incident magnetic field of the and F~z is dictated by the boundary conditions on the lateral walls of
fundamental mode and in the normal to each surface. As usual for the waveguide.
radiating slots [8], we assume that the slots radiate into a half-space Since the effect of the unknowns magnetic currents has been in-
bounded by an infinite, perfectly conducting, ground plane. All the in- cluded in the continuity condition of the electric field at the source
location, then we can compute the potential F by solving two equal
homogeneous Helmholtz equations, one for F~y and the other for F~z ,
volved regions are regular and need not to be discretized in a MoM
procedure, since their Green function is known in (a simple) closed
form. which become:
@ F~n
In (1) we have also included explicitly the currents that produce each
@y2
+ 20nF~n = 0 0 y d
field. Since each magnetic field is an integral operator acting on its
@ F~n
+ 2nF~n = 0 d y b
source, (1) is already cast as a set of coupled integral equations. The
actual form of these operators is of course required, and their computa- @y2
tion will be discussed later in this section. The resulting integral equa- wherein
tions are then solved by the MoM, to obtain the unknown currents. To n 2
do this, all unknowns are expressed as a linear combination of the same 20n = k02 0 w2 0
a
basis functions. Usually the slots are narrow enough to neglect the lon-
2 2 2 n 2
gitudinal component of the electric field on them [9]. Therefore only n = "r k0 0 w 0 : (8)
a
2170 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 3. Comparison between our MoM analysis procedure and Ansoft HFSS Fig. 4. Resonant length of the slot as a function of the slot offset
(t = 0:3 mm, " = 2:2; slot length = 13:2 mm, slot width = 1 mm, (frequency = 9:7 GHz, t = 0:3 mm, slot width = 1 mm).
slot oset = 4 mm).
III. RESULTS
The presented procedure has been applied to a number of different
cases. We discuss here only a typical set of results, using a WR90 wave- Fig. 5. Normalized slot admittance at resonance as a function of the slot offset
guide (A = 22:86 mm, B = 10:16 mm) partially filled with a dielec- (t = 0:3 mm, " = 2:2; slot length = 13:2 mm, slot width = 1 mm).
tric slab. The ground plane thickness is equal to 50 m and the losses
have been neglected. Actually, this is correct at the chosen X-band fre-
quency but could be questionable, at least for the dielectric losses, at
higher frequencies. In any case such losses can be taken into account, if
required, by using a complex permittivity in the Green function and in
the pole computation. Our pole-search procedure can be directly gen-
eralized to look for complex poles.
The results of our code have been validated through a comparison
with the results of a commercial FEM code (HFSS 6.0). As it is well
known a longitudinal slot in an empty waveguide behaves as a shunt
admittance and this behavior is retained also for a dielectric-backed
printed slot since our simulations show that the magnitude of j1+S11 0
S12 j is very small [9]. Therefore only the normalized slot admittance
has been considered for the comparison. The agreement between our
code and the commercial FEM one is very good (see Fig. 3). It is worth
noting that our code is about one order of magnitude faster than Ansoft
HFSS and requires at least two orders of magnitude less memory than
HFSS.
Fig. 6. Normalized slot admittance at resonance as a function of " (t = 0:3
In Fig. 4 the normalized resonant length of the slot has been shown, mm, Oset = 4:0 mm, slot length = 13:2 mm, slot width = 1 mm).
as a function of the slot offset, for different values of the substrate di-
electric constant at the design frequency of 9.7 GHz. Finally in Fig. 5–7
the normalized slot admittance is reported respectively as a function of In all the simulations we used seven expansion functions for each slot
the slot offset, the substrate dielectric constant and the dielectric sub- [N = 7 in (2)], since we found that this choice is enough to achieve a
strate thickness. good convergence.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2171
Fig. 4. Measured radiation patterns of dual polarized ASP antenna at 2.0 GHz: (a) H-plane Port 1, (b) H-plane Port 2, (c) E-plane Port 1, (d) E-plane Port 2.
ASP antennas normally produce a relatively low front to back ratio the optimum design the FBR peaks at a frequency between the lower
(typically 10–14 dB [4]) due to the resonant aperture used to enhance band-edge and the center frequency. Slightly increasing the spacing
the bandwidth of the aperture-coupled patches. In order to increase the from this value can enhance the peak FBR at the expense of the achiev-
FBR a microstrip antenna element as a reflector (based on the method able 20 dB FBR bandwidth. The reflector patch enhanced the FBR by
described in [12]) was used. The length of the reflector is chosen so the more than 5 dB across the entire band to greater than 20 dB.
phase of the radiated field due to the reflector is approximately opposite
to the radiated field from the aperture. Changing the spacing (between
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
the reflector and the aperture) and width of the reflector can control the
magnitude of the radiated field. The total cancellation will occur when Fig. 2(a) and (b) show the measured and calculated return loss from
the magnitudes of the radiated field from the aperture and the reflector Port 1 and Port 2 of the dual polarized ASP antenna, respectively (port
are approximately equal while the phases are opposite. The spacing 1 corresponds to feed 1 in Fig. 1). As can be seen from these responses,
between the aperture and the reflector should also be sufficient so the there is good agreement between the theoretical and experimental re-
reflector has negligible affect on the input impedance of the antenna. sults. 10 dB return loss bandwidths of greater than 52% for both polar-
For the application considered here a cross-shaped element was chosen izations were obtained. The lower edge of the matched band is slighter
to ensure minimal back radiation in both polarizations was achieved. lower for Port 2 than Port 1. This can be attributed to the height of the
To reduce the cost of the antenna and to make it more rigid in con- upper feed substrate and so the coupling between the slot and the patch
struction, an FR4 substrate was used for the microstrip patch reflector. element for this polarization is stronger than between the slot and the
The spacing between the reflector patch and the lower feedline was patch element for the Port 1 excitation. The shift is less than 1%. Fig. 3
optimized in order to achieve a FBR of greater than 20 dB without af- shows the measured and calculated isolation between two ports. An iso-
fecting the input impedance behavior of both polarization networks. lation of more than 39 dB over the impedance-matched band has been
This optimization was done by simulation. The procedure outlined in achieved. As mentioned before, the two feed networks are separated
[12] was followed here. This procedure is pretty robust and so for the by the ground plane, thereby eliminating any cross coupling between
sake of brevity, we simply referenced it in this paper. The optimiza- the microstrip-lines in the two networks. The magnitude of isolation
tion procedure is conducted over the entire 10 dB return loss band- presented here is comparable with the previous dual polarized aperture
width. Plots of the affect of spacing on the FBR are given in [12] coupled patches presented in the literature and is achieved over a con-
and these were consistent with the study conducted here. Typically for siderably larger impedance bandwidth.
2174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
patch ensures the FBR of the antenna is greater than 20 dB over the
entire 50% matched-impedance bandwidth. The measured results are
in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions. The antenna is
simple to manufacture and is suited to being incorporated into a mobile
communications base station array.
REFERENCES
[1] Handbook on Antennas in Wireless Communications, L. Godara, Ed.,
CRC Press, New York, 2001.
[2] R. B. Waterhouse, “Design of probe-fed stacked patches,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propagat., vol. 47, pp. 1780–1784, Dec. 1999.
[3] J. F. Zurcher, “The SSFIP: A global concept for high performance broad-
band planar antennas,” Electron. Lett., vol. 24, pp. 1433–1435, Nov.
1988.
Fig. 5. Measured and Ensemble 6.1 gain of dual polarized ASP antenna. [4] S. D. Targonski, R. B. Waterhouse, and D. M. Pozar, “A wideband aper-
ture coupled stacked patch antenna using thick substrates,” Electron.
Lett., vol. 32, pp. 1941–1942, Oct. 1996.
A full radiation characterization of the antenna was conducted and the [5] N. Kaneda, W. R. Deal, Y. Qian, R. Waterhouse, and T. Itoh, “A broad-
band planar quasiyagi antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
results at the band edges (1.5 and 2.5 GHz) as well as the center frequency 50, pp. 1158–1160, Aug. 2002.
(2 GHz). The results at 2 GHz are shown in Fig. 4. The cross-polarization [6] N. Herscovici, “A wide-band single-layer patch antenna,” IEEE Trans.
levels for this antenna are considerably low, with a higher contribution in Antennas Propagat., vol. 46, pp. 471–474, Apr. 1998.
theE-planeofeachexcitedport.Thiscanbeattributedtotheinteractionof [7] E. Aloni and R. Kastner, “Analysis of a dual circularly polarized mi-
crostrip antenna fed by crossed slots,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
excited surface waves, the slot and the edges of the truncated substrates. vol. 42, pp. 1053–1058, Aug. 1994.
Such an interaction is always more prevalent in the E-plane. The cross- [8] M. Yamazaki, E. T. Rahardjo, and M. Haneishi, “Construction of a slot-
polar level for each excitation and in each plane is not less than 12 dB coupled planar antenna for dual polarization,” Electron. Lett., vol. 30,
below the copolar value for scan angles up to 660 , angles consistent pp. 1814–1815, 1994.
with a three-sectored base station. Of course the worse cases are at the [9] S. Hienonen, A. Lehto, and A. V. Raisanen, “Simple broadband dual-po-
larized aperture-coupled microstrip antenna,” in Proc. IEEE APS Symp.
extreme scan angles,wherethecopolarradiateddecaysmorerapidly. The Digest, Orlando, FL, June 1999, pp. 1228–1231.
cross-polarization levels are the highest at 1.5 GHz, which is due to the [10] S. C. Gao, L. W. Li, P. Gardner, and P. S. Hall, “Wideband dual-polarized
size of the ground-plane (here 105 mm 2 105 mm). The finite size of the microstrip patch antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 37, pp. 1213–1214, Sept.
ground-planewillhaveagreaterimpactatlowerfrequencies,asitsrelative 2001.
size issmaller. A measured FBR(the ratio ofpower at broadside ( = 0 )
[11] J. R. Sanford and A. Tengs, “A two substrate dual polarized aperture cou-
pled patch,” Proc. IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagation Symp. Digest,
and = 180 ) of approximately 20 dB was obtained for the antenna over pp. 1544–1547, 1996.
the entire impedance bandwidth. [12] R. B. Waterhouse, D. Novak, A. Nirmalathas, and C. Lim, “Broadband
The gain of the antenna was greater than 7 dBi over the entire printed sectoral coverage antennas for millimeter-wave wireless appli-
VSWR < 2 : 1 band. A comparison between theory and experiment cations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 50, pp. 12–16, Jan. 2002.
are shown in Fig. 5. As can be seen from this figure there is very
good agreement between the predicted and measured results. The gain
of the dual-polarized ASP drops off at higher frequencies, beyond
the operation bandwidth of the antenna due to the slot becoming the
dominant radiation mechanism [12].
Resonant Frequency of Equilateral Triangular Microstrip
There are many design parameters in the dual polarized ASP with Antenna With and Without Air Gap
reduced backward directed radiation. Because of this, it is important to
Debatosh Guha and Jawad Y. Siddiqui
ensure that the overall performance of the antenna is not sensitive to
parameter variations (tolerances in the dielectric constants of the mate-
rials, or etching procedures). We conducted a parameter sensitivity in- Abstract—A tunable equilateral triangular microstrip patch (ETMP) an-
vestigation via simulation (a three-sigma test) on the proposed antenna, tenna with a variable air gap between the substrate and the ground plane
allowing all the parameters associated with antenna (conductor/slot di- has been studied theoretically and experimentally. Calculated resonant fre-
mensions (60:02 mm, materials ("r 6 0:02; h 6 0:025 mm), to be
quencies for different air gap heights have been verified with measurements
of a coax-fed antenna. The tunability of the antenna as a function of the air
varied within the material tolerances and etching tolerances. The find- gap height is studied theoretically showing over 200% tunable range of an
ings showed minimal impact on the return loss bandwidth and FBR ETMP with 50 mm side length printed on a substrate with = 10 5.
performance. There were slight increases in the peaks of the return loss The computed results for the antennas with zero air gap height are com-
pared with a standard spectral domain moment method analysis supported
within the 10 dB return loss band by 1.5 dB when all the conductors
by other previously reported experiments. Very close agreement is revealed
were over-etched by 0.02 mm, however, these peaks were still below in all comparisons.
the 10 dB requirement. These findings show that the antenna is very
Index Terms—Microstrip antenna, triangular microstrip patch, tunable
tolerant to moderate variations in all the parameters. microstrip antenna.
Manuscript received October 22, 2002; revised June 30, 2003. This work was
IV. CONCLUSION supported by the Center of Advanced Study in Radio Physics and Electronics,
In this paper, a dual-polarized wide-band patch antenna has been University of Calcutta.
The authors are with the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Uni-
presented. The antenna has a VSWR < 2 : 1 bandwidth of greater versity of Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India (e-mail: dgirpe@yahoo.co.in; sid-
than 50%, an isolation between ports of more than 39 dB and a gain of diqui@cal.vsnl.net.in).
7:4 dBi 6 0:4 dB over this frequency range. A cross-shaped reflector Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832504
patch ensures the FBR of the antenna is greater than 20 dB over the
entire 50% matched-impedance bandwidth. The measured results are
in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions. The antenna is
simple to manufacture and is suited to being incorporated into a mobile
communications base station array.
REFERENCES
[1] Handbook on Antennas in Wireless Communications, L. Godara, Ed.,
CRC Press, New York, 2001.
[2] R. B. Waterhouse, “Design of probe-fed stacked patches,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propagat., vol. 47, pp. 1780–1784, Dec. 1999.
[3] J. F. Zurcher, “The SSFIP: A global concept for high performance broad-
band planar antennas,” Electron. Lett., vol. 24, pp. 1433–1435, Nov.
1988.
Fig. 5. Measured and Ensemble 6.1 gain of dual polarized ASP antenna. [4] S. D. Targonski, R. B. Waterhouse, and D. M. Pozar, “A wideband aper-
ture coupled stacked patch antenna using thick substrates,” Electron.
Lett., vol. 32, pp. 1941–1942, Oct. 1996.
A full radiation characterization of the antenna was conducted and the [5] N. Kaneda, W. R. Deal, Y. Qian, R. Waterhouse, and T. Itoh, “A broad-
band planar quasiyagi antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol.
results at the band edges (1.5 and 2.5 GHz) as well as the center frequency 50, pp. 1158–1160, Aug. 2002.
(2 GHz). The results at 2 GHz are shown in Fig. 4. The cross-polarization [6] N. Herscovici, “A wide-band single-layer patch antenna,” IEEE Trans.
levels for this antenna are considerably low, with a higher contribution in Antennas Propagat., vol. 46, pp. 471–474, Apr. 1998.
theE-planeofeachexcitedport.Thiscanbeattributedtotheinteractionof [7] E. Aloni and R. Kastner, “Analysis of a dual circularly polarized mi-
crostrip antenna fed by crossed slots,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat.,
excited surface waves, the slot and the edges of the truncated substrates. vol. 42, pp. 1053–1058, Aug. 1994.
Such an interaction is always more prevalent in the E-plane. The cross- [8] M. Yamazaki, E. T. Rahardjo, and M. Haneishi, “Construction of a slot-
polar level for each excitation and in each plane is not less than 12 dB coupled planar antenna for dual polarization,” Electron. Lett., vol. 30,
below the copolar value for scan angles up to 660 , angles consistent pp. 1814–1815, 1994.
with a three-sectored base station. Of course the worse cases are at the [9] S. Hienonen, A. Lehto, and A. V. Raisanen, “Simple broadband dual-po-
larized aperture-coupled microstrip antenna,” in Proc. IEEE APS Symp.
extreme scan angles,wherethecopolarradiateddecaysmorerapidly. The Digest, Orlando, FL, June 1999, pp. 1228–1231.
cross-polarization levels are the highest at 1.5 GHz, which is due to the [10] S. C. Gao, L. W. Li, P. Gardner, and P. S. Hall, “Wideband dual-polarized
size of the ground-plane (here 105 mm 2 105 mm). The finite size of the microstrip patch antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 37, pp. 1213–1214, Sept.
ground-planewillhaveagreaterimpactatlowerfrequencies,asitsrelative 2001.
size issmaller. A measured FBR(the ratio ofpower at broadside ( = 0 )
[11] J. R. Sanford and A. Tengs, “A two substrate dual polarized aperture cou-
pled patch,” Proc. IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propagation Symp. Digest,
and = 180 ) of approximately 20 dB was obtained for the antenna over pp. 1544–1547, 1996.
the entire impedance bandwidth. [12] R. B. Waterhouse, D. Novak, A. Nirmalathas, and C. Lim, “Broadband
The gain of the antenna was greater than 7 dBi over the entire printed sectoral coverage antennas for millimeter-wave wireless appli-
VSWR < 2 : 1 band. A comparison between theory and experiment cations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 50, pp. 12–16, Jan. 2002.
are shown in Fig. 5. As can be seen from this figure there is very
good agreement between the predicted and measured results. The gain
of the dual-polarized ASP drops off at higher frequencies, beyond
the operation bandwidth of the antenna due to the slot becoming the
dominant radiation mechanism [12].
Resonant Frequency of Equilateral Triangular Microstrip
There are many design parameters in the dual polarized ASP with Antenna With and Without Air Gap
reduced backward directed radiation. Because of this, it is important to
Debatosh Guha and Jawad Y. Siddiqui
ensure that the overall performance of the antenna is not sensitive to
parameter variations (tolerances in the dielectric constants of the mate-
rials, or etching procedures). We conducted a parameter sensitivity in- Abstract—A tunable equilateral triangular microstrip patch (ETMP) an-
vestigation via simulation (a three-sigma test) on the proposed antenna, tenna with a variable air gap between the substrate and the ground plane
allowing all the parameters associated with antenna (conductor/slot di- has been studied theoretically and experimentally. Calculated resonant fre-
mensions (60:02 mm, materials ("r 6 0:02; h 6 0:025 mm), to be
quencies for different air gap heights have been verified with measurements
of a coax-fed antenna. The tunability of the antenna as a function of the air
varied within the material tolerances and etching tolerances. The find- gap height is studied theoretically showing over 200% tunable range of an
ings showed minimal impact on the return loss bandwidth and FBR ETMP with 50 mm side length printed on a substrate with = 10 5.
performance. There were slight increases in the peaks of the return loss The computed results for the antennas with zero air gap height are com-
pared with a standard spectral domain moment method analysis supported
within the 10 dB return loss band by 1.5 dB when all the conductors
by other previously reported experiments. Very close agreement is revealed
were over-etched by 0.02 mm, however, these peaks were still below in all comparisons.
the 10 dB requirement. These findings show that the antenna is very
Index Terms—Microstrip antenna, triangular microstrip patch, tunable
tolerant to moderate variations in all the parameters. microstrip antenna.
Manuscript received October 22, 2002; revised June 30, 2003. This work was
IV. CONCLUSION supported by the Center of Advanced Study in Radio Physics and Electronics,
In this paper, a dual-polarized wide-band patch antenna has been University of Calcutta.
The authors are with the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Uni-
presented. The antenna has a VSWR < 2 : 1 bandwidth of greater versity of Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India (e-mail: dgirpe@yahoo.co.in; sid-
than 50%, an isolation between ports of more than 39 dB and a gain of diqui@cal.vsnl.net.in).
7:4 dBi 6 0:4 dB over this frequency range. A cross-shaped reflector Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832504
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the early phase of microstrip research the triangular geometry
of microstrip patch is being investigated as planar circuit components
[1]–[3] as well as microstrip antennas [4]–[17]. Many new configura-
tions have also been studied in recent years to explore new character-
istics [18]–[24]. Very recently, Gurel and Yazgan [25] have analyzed a
tunable equilateral triangular microstrip patch (ETMP) antenna. They
have introduced a variable air gap in between the ground plane and
the substrate like some previous investigations with other geometries
[26]–[28].
The resonant frequency fr of the ETMP becomes a critical design
parameter since it is inherently a narrow bandwidth structure. Starting
from [1], most of the formulations for fr are reported on the basis of
the cavity model analyzes (CMA) [1], [4], [7]–[17], [25], though a few
deal with other techniques like spectral domain technique [3], [19], ge-
ometrical theory [6] and spectral domain analysis with method of mo-
ment solution (SDA MoM) [12]. One recent advance in this field [25]
presents a new computation of the resonant frequency of an ETMP with
and without air gap employing Wolff’s cavity model [29]. In [25], a Fig. 1. Coax-fed ETMP antenna with an air gap between the substrate and the
better accuracy of their theory with respect to SDA MoM [12] and other ground plane.
available cavity model results is also outlined. But the formulation [25]
itself suffers from some limitations. The effective side length of the The quantity "r;dyn for the TM modes under an ETMP now can be
ETMP derived in [25] is valid only for the substrates with "r < 10. calculated from [30, eq.(4)–(16)] with
n = 0:3525.
These shortcomings are addressed in this paper and a simple formula The effective radius of the equivalent circle is calculated from [30]
of the resonant frequency of an ETMP with and without air gap is pro- which with the help of (2) determines the effective side length of the
posed on the basis of an improved cavity model recently proposed by ETMP as
one of the authors [30]. Like [30], the present model should be widely
2
applicable, even to the MIC design on semiconductor materials with se = a (1 + q ) (3)
"r 12. Furthermore, the variable air gap, as shown in Fig. 1, intro- 3
duces tunability to the antenna and enhances its impedance bandwidth. where q is the parameter determining the fringing field effect derived
Although Mirshekar-Syahkal and Hassani [20] investigated stacked as [30, eq.(4)–(17)].
ETMP with dissimilar substrates, including air, no experimental
result of an ETMP with an air gap is available in open literature. The
III. RESULTS
calculated results are compared with measurements performed on HP
8720C network analyzer. The tunability of the antenna as a function A tunable ETMP antenna with variable air gap analyzed in
of the variable air gap (h1 of Fig. 1) is presented as design data for Section II and depicted in Fig. 1, reduces to the conventional
various combinations of antenna parameters. Computed results for the geometry when h1 = 0. The computed results of such a structure
ETMPs without air gap are compared with a standard theory supported have been compared with some data reported earlier. The spectral
by different experimental data. domain analyzes with method of moment solution (SDA MoM)
is the most accurate method and hence the SDA MoM results
II. THEORETICAL CALCULATIONS [12] are taken as the reference to compare the computed values
in Tables I and II. Table I deals with an antenna printed on a
Following the cavity model analysis by Helszajn [1], a simple and low dielectric constant substrate as measured by Dahele and Lee
more general expression for the resonant frequencies of TMnml modes [7]. The present formulation is compared with another accurate
of an ETMP antenna with and with out air gaps can be given as [1] cavity model analysis using GA optimization (CMA-GA) [17] with
2c
fr;nm = p
3se "r;e
2
(n + nm + m )
2 (1) reference to the SDA MoM [12]. The comparison shows very close
approximation of the calculated results to those of the SDA MoM
where c is the velocity of light in free space, se is the effective side [12] ones and even improvement over [17]. The measured values
length of an ETMP and "r;e is the effective relative permittivity of the also correspond to the theoretical values with close agreement.
medium below the patch. A similar comparison is presented in Table II for high dielectric
In the present formulation, se and "r;e are determined using the constant substrate. Here, the present theory rather shows a closer
improved cavity model [30]. The parameter "r;e is derived in terms approximation with the SDA MoM [12] results. The authors have
of "re and "r;dyn [30, eq. 3], where "re is the equivalent permittivity experienced the same observation from the comparison with another
of the two-layer dielectric medium (Fig. 1) and "r;dyn is the dynamic SDA result [3] for a wide range of patches printed on a substrate
dielectric constant of the medium below the patch. The quantity "r;dyn with "r = 10:2.
of an ETMP can be obtained from the static main and static fringing The dominant mode resonant frequency of the ETMP without
capacitances of an equivalent circular microstrip disk [30]. The equiv- air gap is examined for different substrate heights and "r values in
alent circle of an equilateral triangular patch is determined on the basis Fig. 2. The effect of the substrate height h(h = h2 ) is predominant
of equal circumference of both the geometries keeping in view the same in the lower "r case where the fringing fields change considerably
fringing field effects for the dominant modes. The radius of an equiva- with h [30, Fig. 2]. That effect is negligibly small in high dielectric
lent circle thus can be equated as constant substrates. This is also supported by the SDA MoM [12]
3 results, also depicted in Fig. 2 by discrete circles. Excellent agreement
a=
2
s (2) is revealed except for the low "r curve with h 8 mm. This may
2176 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
TABLE I
COMPARISON OF CALCULATED RESONANT FREQUENCIES OF AN ETMP AND
MEASURED VALUES (LOW DIELECTRIC PERMITTIVITY) "r : , = 2 32
s = 100mm, h1 =0
, h2 = 1 59
: mm, : mm=30
TM
Fig. 2. Computed resonant frequency of 10 mode of the ETMP antenna
( = ) = 100
versus thickness of the substrate h h h2 . s mm, h1 =0; ——
TABLE II Present Model, SDA MoM [12].
COMPARISON OF CALCULATED RESONANT FREQUENCIES OF AN ETMP AND
MEASURED VALUES (HIGH DIELECTRIC PERMITTIVITY) "r : , = 10 5
s = 41mm, h1 =0
, h2 =07
: mm, =50
: mm TABLE III
COMPARISON OF CALCULATED RESONANT FREQUENCIES OF AN ETMP
WITH VARIABLE AIR GAP AND MEASUREMENTS s = 15 5
: mm,
h2 = 0 508
: mm, "r =22 =34
: , : mm
tunable ranges of an ETMP antenna on "r = 10:5 with s = 50 mm [19] H. R. Hassani and D. Mirshekar-Syahkal, “Analysis of triangular patch
is demonstrated from theoretical data. Larger patches on higher dielec- antennas including radome effects,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol.
tric constant substrates should offer larger tunable frequency ranges. 139, no. 3, pp. 251–256, 1992.
[20] D. Mirshekar-Syahkal and H. R. Hassani, “Characteristics of stacked
The ETMP without air gap (Fig. 1, h1 = 0) reduces to the conven- rectangular and triangular patch antennas for dual band applications,” in
tional geometry which was studied by many other researchers [1]–[17] Proc. 8th Inst. Elect. Eng. Int. Conf. Antennas and Propagation, 1993,
earlier. The present model is compared with another accurate cavity pp. 728–731.
model [17], taking SDA MoM [12] as the reference. Improvement of [21] C. L. Tang and K. L. Wong, “A modified equilateral-triangular-ring
microstrip antenna for circular polarization,” Microwave Opt. Technol.
the present model is envisaged from the studies for different antenna Lett., vol. 23, pp. 123–126, Oct. 1999.
parameters. [22] C. L. Tang, J. H. Lu, and K. L. Wong, “Novel dual-frequency and broad-
band designs of single-feed slot-loaded equilateral-triangular microstrip
antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 1048–1054,
ACKNOWLEDGMENT July 2000.
[23] J. H. Lu and K. L. Wong, “Single-feed circularly polarized equilateral
The authors would like to thank Dr. P. K. Saha and Dr. P. K. Basu, triangular microstrip antenna with a tuning stub,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
University of Calcutta, for their constant encouragement. Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 1869–1872, Dec. 2000.
[24] Y. W. Jang, “Characteristics of a large bandwidth rectangular mi-
crostrip-fed inserted triangular patch in a circular slot antenna,”
REFERENCES Microwave J., vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 288–298, May 2002.
[25] C. S. Gurel and E. Yazgan, “New computation of the resonant frequency
[1] J. Helszajn and D. S. James, “Planar triangular resonators with magnetic of a tunable equilateral triangular microstrip patch,” IEEE Trans. Mi-
walls,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-26, pp. 95–100, crowave Theory Tech., vol. 48, pp. 334–338, Mar. 2000.
Feb. 1978. [26] K. F. Lee, K. Y. Ho, and J. S. Dahele, “Circular disc microstrip antenna
[2] J. Helszajn, D. S. James, and W. T. Nisbet, “Circulators using planar with an air gap,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 32, pp. 880–884,
triangular resonators,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. Aug. 1984.
MTT-27, pp. 188–193, Feb. 1979. [27] J. S. Dahele and K. F. Lee, “Theory and experiments on microstrip an-
[3] A. K. Sharma and B. Bhat, “Analysis of triangular microstrip res- tennas with air gaps,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol. 132, no. 7, pp.
onators,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-30, pp. 455–460, Dec. 1985.
2029–2031, Nov. 1982. [28] F. Abboud, J. P. Damiano, and A. Papiernik, “A new model for cal-
[4] Y. T. Lo, D. Solomon, and W. F. Richards, “Theory and experiment on culating the input impedance of coax-fed circular microstrip antennas
microstrip antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-27, pp. with and without air gaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 38,
137–145, 1979. pp. 1882–1885, Nov. 1990.
[5] I. J. Bahl and P. Bhartia, “Radiation characteristics of a triangular mi- [29] I. Wolff and N. Knoppik, “Rectangular and circular microstrip disk ca-
crostrip antenna,” Arch. Elek. Ubertragungstech., vol. 35, pp. 214–219, pacitors and resonators,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 22,
1981. pp. 857–864, Oct. 1974.
[6] E. F. Kuester and D. C. Chang, “A geometrical theory for the resonant [30] D. Guha, “Resonant frequency of circular microstrip antennas with and
frequencies and Q-factors of some triangular microstrip patch antennas,” without airgaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. 55–59,
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-31, pp. 27–34, Jan. 1983. Jan. 2001.
[7] J. S. Dahele and K. F. Lee, “On the resonant frequencies of the trian-
gular patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-35, pp.
100–101, Jan. 1987.
[8] R. Garg and S. A. Long, “An improved formula for the resonant fre-
quency of the triangular microstrip patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propagat., vol. AP-36, p. 570, Apr. 1988.
[9] K. F. Lee, K. M. Luk, and J. S. Dahele, “Characteristics of the equilateral Effect of a Cavity Enclosure on the Resonant Frequency of
triangular patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-36,
pp. 1510–1518, Nov. 1988. Inverted Microstrip Circular Patch Antenna
[10] X. Gang, “On the resonant frequencies of microstrip antennas,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 37, pp. 245–247, Feb. 1989. Debatosh Guha and Jawad Y. Siddiqui
[11] R. Singh, A. De, and R. S. Yadava, “Comments on an improved formula
for the resonant frequency of the triangular microstrip patch antenna,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 39, pp. 1443–1444, Sept. 1991. Abstract—The inverted microstrip circular patch (IMCP) antenna has
[12] W. Chen, K. F. Lee, and J. Dahele, “Theoretical and experimental studies been analyzed very recently by the present authors and the same microstrip
of the resonant frequencies of equilateral triangular microstrip antenna,” structure enclosed in a cylindrical cavity has been employed by others to
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 40, pp. 1253–1256, Oct. 1992. develop various active integrated antennas. In this paper, the effect of the
[13] N. Kumprasert and K. W. Kiranon, “Simple and accurate formula for cylindrical enclosure in changing the resonant frequency of an IMCP has
the resonant frequency of the equilateral triangular microstrip patch an- been studied both theoretically and experimentally. The cavity-effect crit-
tenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 1178–1179, Aug. ically depends on the enclosed patch and the cavity dimensions which are
1994. thoroughly investigated to help a designer in choosing the antenna parame-
[14] K. Güney, “Resonant frequency of a triangular microstrip antenna,” Mi- ters. An efficient analytical formulation is also proposed to predict accurate
crowave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 555–557, July 1993. resonant frequencies of the cavity enclosed IMCPs and is verified with dif-
[15] , “Comments on ‘on the resonant frequencies of microstrip an- ferent experimental data.
tennas’,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 1363–1365, Sept.
1994. Index Terms—Cavity enclosed microstrip patch, inverted microstrip
[16] P. Mythili and A. Das, “Comments on ‘simple and accurate formula for patch, microstrip antenna.
the resonant frequency of the equilateral triangular microstrip patch an-
tenna’,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 48, p. 636, Jan. 2000.
[17] D. Karaboğa, K. Güney, N. Karaboğa, and A. Kaplan, “Simple and accu- Manuscript received October 25, 2002; revised July 9, 2003. This work was
rate effective side expression obtained by using a modified genetic algo- supported by the Center of Advanced Study in Radio Physics and Electronics,
rithm for the resonant frequency of an equilateral triangular microstrip University of Calcutta.
antenna,” Int. J. Electron., vol. 83, pp. 99–108, Jan. 1997. The authors are with the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Uni-
[18] J. P. Damiano et al., “Study of multilayer microstrip antennas with radi- versity of Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India (e-mail: dgirpe@yahoo.co.in; sid-
ating elements of various geometry,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol. diqui@cal.vsnl.net.in).
137, no. 3, pp. 163–170, 1990. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832502
tunable ranges of an ETMP antenna on "r = 10:5 with s = 50 mm [19] H. R. Hassani and D. Mirshekar-Syahkal, “Analysis of triangular patch
is demonstrated from theoretical data. Larger patches on higher dielec- antennas including radome effects,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol.
tric constant substrates should offer larger tunable frequency ranges. 139, no. 3, pp. 251–256, 1992.
[20] D. Mirshekar-Syahkal and H. R. Hassani, “Characteristics of stacked
The ETMP without air gap (Fig. 1, h1 = 0) reduces to the conven- rectangular and triangular patch antennas for dual band applications,” in
tional geometry which was studied by many other researchers [1]–[17] Proc. 8th Inst. Elect. Eng. Int. Conf. Antennas and Propagation, 1993,
earlier. The present model is compared with another accurate cavity pp. 728–731.
model [17], taking SDA MoM [12] as the reference. Improvement of [21] C. L. Tang and K. L. Wong, “A modified equilateral-triangular-ring
microstrip antenna for circular polarization,” Microwave Opt. Technol.
the present model is envisaged from the studies for different antenna Lett., vol. 23, pp. 123–126, Oct. 1999.
parameters. [22] C. L. Tang, J. H. Lu, and K. L. Wong, “Novel dual-frequency and broad-
band designs of single-feed slot-loaded equilateral-triangular microstrip
antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 1048–1054,
ACKNOWLEDGMENT July 2000.
[23] J. H. Lu and K. L. Wong, “Single-feed circularly polarized equilateral
The authors would like to thank Dr. P. K. Saha and Dr. P. K. Basu, triangular microstrip antenna with a tuning stub,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
University of Calcutta, for their constant encouragement. Propagat., vol. 48, pp. 1869–1872, Dec. 2000.
[24] Y. W. Jang, “Characteristics of a large bandwidth rectangular mi-
crostrip-fed inserted triangular patch in a circular slot antenna,”
REFERENCES Microwave J., vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 288–298, May 2002.
[25] C. S. Gurel and E. Yazgan, “New computation of the resonant frequency
[1] J. Helszajn and D. S. James, “Planar triangular resonators with magnetic of a tunable equilateral triangular microstrip patch,” IEEE Trans. Mi-
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Feb. 1978. [26] K. F. Lee, K. Y. Ho, and J. S. Dahele, “Circular disc microstrip antenna
[2] J. Helszajn, D. S. James, and W. T. Nisbet, “Circulators using planar with an air gap,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 32, pp. 880–884,
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MTT-27, pp. 188–193, Feb. 1979. [27] J. S. Dahele and K. F. Lee, “Theory and experiments on microstrip an-
[3] A. K. Sharma and B. Bhat, “Analysis of triangular microstrip res- tennas with air gaps,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol. 132, no. 7, pp.
onators,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-30, pp. 455–460, Dec. 1985.
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[4] Y. T. Lo, D. Solomon, and W. F. Richards, “Theory and experiment on culating the input impedance of coax-fed circular microstrip antennas
microstrip antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-27, pp. with and without air gaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 38,
137–145, 1979. pp. 1882–1885, Nov. 1990.
[5] I. J. Bahl and P. Bhartia, “Radiation characteristics of a triangular mi- [29] I. Wolff and N. Knoppik, “Rectangular and circular microstrip disk ca-
crostrip antenna,” Arch. Elek. Ubertragungstech., vol. 35, pp. 214–219, pacitors and resonators,” IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 22,
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[6] E. F. Kuester and D. C. Chang, “A geometrical theory for the resonant [30] D. Guha, “Resonant frequency of circular microstrip antennas with and
frequencies and Q-factors of some triangular microstrip patch antennas,” without airgaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. 55–59,
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-31, pp. 27–34, Jan. 1983. Jan. 2001.
[7] J. S. Dahele and K. F. Lee, “On the resonant frequencies of the trian-
gular patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-35, pp.
100–101, Jan. 1987.
[8] R. Garg and S. A. Long, “An improved formula for the resonant fre-
quency of the triangular microstrip patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. An-
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[9] K. F. Lee, K. M. Luk, and J. S. Dahele, “Characteristics of the equilateral Effect of a Cavity Enclosure on the Resonant Frequency of
triangular patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-36,
pp. 1510–1518, Nov. 1988. Inverted Microstrip Circular Patch Antenna
[10] X. Gang, “On the resonant frequencies of microstrip antennas,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 37, pp. 245–247, Feb. 1989. Debatosh Guha and Jawad Y. Siddiqui
[11] R. Singh, A. De, and R. S. Yadava, “Comments on an improved formula
for the resonant frequency of the triangular microstrip patch antenna,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 39, pp. 1443–1444, Sept. 1991. Abstract—The inverted microstrip circular patch (IMCP) antenna has
[12] W. Chen, K. F. Lee, and J. Dahele, “Theoretical and experimental studies been analyzed very recently by the present authors and the same microstrip
of the resonant frequencies of equilateral triangular microstrip antenna,” structure enclosed in a cylindrical cavity has been employed by others to
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 40, pp. 1253–1256, Oct. 1992. develop various active integrated antennas. In this paper, the effect of the
[13] N. Kumprasert and K. W. Kiranon, “Simple and accurate formula for cylindrical enclosure in changing the resonant frequency of an IMCP has
the resonant frequency of the equilateral triangular microstrip patch an- been studied both theoretically and experimentally. The cavity-effect crit-
tenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 1178–1179, Aug. ically depends on the enclosed patch and the cavity dimensions which are
1994. thoroughly investigated to help a designer in choosing the antenna parame-
[14] K. Güney, “Resonant frequency of a triangular microstrip antenna,” Mi- ters. An efficient analytical formulation is also proposed to predict accurate
crowave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 555–557, July 1993. resonant frequencies of the cavity enclosed IMCPs and is verified with dif-
[15] , “Comments on ‘on the resonant frequencies of microstrip an- ferent experimental data.
tennas’,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 42, pp. 1363–1365, Sept.
1994. Index Terms—Cavity enclosed microstrip patch, inverted microstrip
[16] P. Mythili and A. Das, “Comments on ‘simple and accurate formula for patch, microstrip antenna.
the resonant frequency of the equilateral triangular microstrip patch an-
tenna’,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 48, p. 636, Jan. 2000.
[17] D. Karaboğa, K. Güney, N. Karaboğa, and A. Kaplan, “Simple and accu- Manuscript received October 25, 2002; revised July 9, 2003. This work was
rate effective side expression obtained by using a modified genetic algo- supported by the Center of Advanced Study in Radio Physics and Electronics,
rithm for the resonant frequency of an equilateral triangular microstrip University of Calcutta.
antenna,” Int. J. Electron., vol. 83, pp. 99–108, Jan. 1997. The authors are with the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Uni-
[18] J. P. Damiano et al., “Study of multilayer microstrip antennas with radi- versity of Calcutta, Calcutta 700 009, India (e-mail: dgirpe@yahoo.co.in; sid-
ating elements of various geometry,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., pt. H, vol. diqui@cal.vsnl.net.in).
137, no. 3, pp. 163–170, 1990. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832502
I. INTRODUCTION
The inverted microstrip circular patch (IMCP) in a cavity enclosed
geometry has been employed in designing several active antenna mod-
ules in recent years [1]–[5]. The air dielectric below the patch in the in-
verted microstrips is advantageous from various aspects [1] and hence
should be an attractive candidate in exploring new integrated antennas.
The cavity enclosure, in addition, gives the antenna a compact, minia-
ture and rigid shape without degrading its gain or radiation charac-
teristics [1]. But a prior knowledge of the operating frequency of the
cavity enclosed patch becomes important in all these designs. That was
done experimentally [1], [3], [6] for some patch and cavity dimensions.
Approximate formulas without considering the cavity effect were also
used to compute some theoretical data.
Very recently, an IMCP in conventional configuration [Fig. 1(a)] has
been analyzed [7] to predict its accurate resonant frequency. The calcu-
lated values due to this [7] was inquisitively compared with the exper-
iments [1], [6] with cavity enclosed IMCPs. The comparison yields an
interesting observation that the theory for open IMCP [7] closely agrees
the experiments of the cavity enclosed IMCPs [6] and significantly dif-
fers from another measurement [1]. No theoretical or experimental re-
sults are available to understand or estimate the effect of the cavity
wall on the resonant behavior of an IMCP. This has been addressed in
this paper both theoretically and experimentally. The effect of a cylin-
drical cavity in changing the resonant frequency of an IMCP has been
analytically modeled. Some measurements have been carried out with
identical open and cavity enclosed prototype antennas to understand
the cavity-effect. The computed results are compared with some pre-
vious as well as new measurements.
II. THEORETICAL CALCULATIONS Fig. 1. Circular microstrip patch antenna: (a) inverted microstrip geometry,
(b) inverted microstrip patch enclosed in a cylindrical cavity, (c) equivalent
A cavity enclosed IMCP geometry as shown in Fig. 1(b) maybe microstrip patch printed on a substrate with relative permittivity "r;eq .
looked upon as a conventional IMCP shown in Fig. 1(a), surrounded by
a metallic cylinder of radius r . So the cavity effect may be accounted TABLE I
for in terms of the affected fringing fields caused by the closeness of COMPUTED RESONANT FREQUENCIES OF THE TM11 MODE OF CAVITY
the cavity wall to the patch edge. ENCLOSED IMCPS COMPARED WITH THE MEASUREMENTS OF
NAVARRO et al. [1] r = 6:35 mm; "r = 2:3; h1 = 1:5 mm;
Let us start with the cavity resonator model of a conventional IMCP h2 = 1:524 mm; = 2 mm
geometry [Fig. 1(a)] where the fringing fields under the influence of the
dielectric medium on top of the patch of radius a is modeled in terms
of the effective patch radius ae derived as [7]
ae = a(1 + q) (1)
01 (0:37 + 0:63"re )
01 0 1
q= 1 + "re
4
a 2 1+
4(1+" 4h 2:9h
a + 2 :6 + a
)
h
(0:37 + 0:63"re )
01 0 1
+ 2:6a 2:9h
: (2)
4+ h + a where 11 is the first zero of the derivative of the Bessel function of
order one (11 = 1:841) and c is the velocity of electromagnetic waves
The parameter q solely depends on the patch radius to air-gap height in free space.
ratio (a=h1 ) and the effective relative permittivity "re of the medium Now, if the IMCP is enclosed by a cylindrical enclosure of radius r
below the patch. The dielectric medium of height h2 [Fig. 1(a)] above [Fig. 1(b)] and ae r or ae r , under that condition one can surmise
the patch actually causes the change in the fringing electric fields. This that the cylindrical enclosure effectively turns to a circular cavity of
effect is accounted for in terms of the effective relative permittivity "re height h1 resonating at a frequency close to the fr determined as (3).
derived in [7, eqs.(4)–(11)] as the functions of a=h1 and h2 =h1 ratios. Standard h1 value of microstrip structure results in h1 =r 1 and thus
The resonant frequency of the TM11 mode in an IMCP can be de- it satisfies the condition of h1 =r < 2:03 for exciting TMz010 mode in
termined as [7] a circular cavity [8] resonating at
fr = 11 2 c (3) p 2 c:
f = 2:4049
2r "r;eq
(4)
2ae
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2179
TABLE II
RESONANT FREQUENCIES OF THE TM11 MODE OF IMCP ANTENNAS WITH AND WITHOUT CAVITY ENCLOSURE: COMPUTED RESULTS
COMPARED WITH NEW MEASUREMENTS r = 6:35 mm; h1 = 1:6 mm; = 2 mm
The cavity resonant frequency (4) equating to (3) under the condition of
ae = r (for ae r or ae r ) yields an equivalent dielectric constant
of the medium filling the cavity as "r;eq 1:706. The simple deriva-
tion under the given conditions is significant one in incorporating all the
fringing field effects caused by the cavity as well as by the inverted sub-
strate of the IMCP. Since the cavity model of a circular microstrip disk
represents a magnetic wall circular cavity of identical parameters [9],
the newly modeled circular cavity filled with "r;eq can be represented
by a simplified equivalent microstrip structure as shown in Fig. 1(c)
where a patch of radius a is printed on a microstrip substrate with di-
electric constant "r;eq and thickness h1 .
The resonant frequency of the equivalent antenna configuration of
Fig. 1(c) now can be readily determined from the improved formula-
tions proposed by one of the authors in [10].
REFERENCES
[1] J. A. Navarro, L. Fan, and K. Chang, “Active inverted stripline circular
patch antennas for spatial power combining,” IEEE Trans Microwave
Theory Tech., vol. 41, pp. 1856–1863, Oct. 1993.
[2] , “Novel FET integrated inverted stripline patch,” Electron. Lett.,
vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 655–657, 1994.
[3] R. A. Flynt, L. Fan, J. A. Navarro, and K. Chang, “Low cost and com-
pact active integrated antenna transceiver for system applications,” IEEE
Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 44, pp. 1642–1649, Oct. 1996.
[4] C. M. Montiel, L. Fan, and K. Chang, “A novel active antenna with self-
mixing and wideband varactor-tuning capabilities for communication
and vehicle identification applications,” IEEE Trans Microwave Theory
Tech., vol. 44, pp. 2421–2430, Dec. 1996.
[5] J. A. Navarro and K. Chang, “Active microstrip antenna,” in Advances
in Microstrip and Printed Antennas, K. F. Lee and W. Chen, Eds. New
York: Wiley, 1997, ch. 8.
[6] J. A. Navarro, J. McSpadden, and K. Chang, “Experimental study of
inverted microstrip for integrated antennas applications,” in IEEE An-
tennas Propagat. Int. Symp. Proc., Seattle, WA, 1994, pp. 920–923.
[7] D. Guha and J. Y. Siddiqui, “A new CAD model to calculate the
Fig. 3. Resonant frequency of IMCP antenna with and without cavity resonant frequency of inverted microstrip circular patch antenna,”
enclosure and corresponding cavity factors g and r=ae versus h1. r = Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 35, no. 6, Dec. 20, 2002.
6:35 mm, h2 = 1:524 mm, "r = 2:3, a = 4:0 mm. [8] C. A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics. New York:
Wiley, 1989, ch. 9.
[9] I. Wolff and N. Knoppik, “Rectangular and circular microstrip disk ca-
for comparison. The increase in h1 causes decrease in both r=ae and pacitors and resonators,” IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech, vol. 22,
g values revealing the increasing cavity-effect on the IMCP. The reso- pp. 857–864, Oct. 1974.
nant frequency also decreases with the increase in h1 for both cavity [10] D. Guha, “Resonant frequency of circular microstrip antennas with and
without air gaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propaga., vol. 49, pp. 55–59,
enclosed and open type IMCPs. However, the effect of the cavity enclo- Jan. 2001.
sure in diminishing the resonant frequency is significant over a consid-
erable range of h1 values, particularly at the lower values of h1 . Only
a single measured value is available [1] to compare with the theoretical
curve in Fig. 3 and this value shown by a solid circle corresponds to
g < 0:5. Excellent agreement between the experiment and the present Design and Development of Multiband Coaxial Continuous
theory is also revealed. Transverse Stub (CTS) Antenna Arrays
The present studies show that a cavity enclosure influences the res-
onance of an IMCP under limited conditions resulting in lower reso- Robert Isom, Magdy F. Iskander, Zhengqing Yun, and Zhijun Zhang
nant frequency. However, its effect on the radiation characteristics of
an IMCP is not significant to that extent as reported in [1]. Uniform
radiation patterns with acceptable cross polarization level and 6.65 dBi Abstract—Continuous transverse stub (CTS) technology has been
gain were reported [1] from the measurements of a typical cavity en- adapted to use with coaxial lines to produce effective microwave an-
tenna structures that radiate omnidirectionally, with high efficiency, low
closed probe fed IMCP antenna. reflection, and useful radiation patterns. In this paper, we describe the
design, construction, and testing of a new type of antenna arrays, that is, a
six-element multiband (4.2 and 19.4 GHz) CTS antenna array. The design
IV. CONCLUSION of the CTS array was optimized through simulation using finite-difference
time-domain and then built and tested using both S-parameters and
The inverted microstrip patches in open or cavity enclosed config- radiation pattern measurements. Simulation results agreed very well with
uration are attractive for integrating with active devices below it. The measured data. These simple and low cost coaxial CTS structures could
change in resonance condition under the influence of a cylindrical be adapted for base station applications in wireless communication, for
satellite communication systems, and Identification Friend-or-Foe systems
cavity enclosing an IMCP has been thoroughly investigated both for the military.
theoretically and experimentally. If different patches are examined in
a same cylindrical enclosure, all are not affected by the cavity and Index Terms—Antenna array, coaxial continuous transverse stub (CTS),
continuous transverse stub (CTS), multiband array.
a factor determining that dependence has been examined with the
help of the new and previous data. A simple analytical formulation
is proposed to predict the resonant frequency of cavity enclosed I. INTRODUCTION
patches so far those are under the influence of the cavity. The theory
is compared with different measurements resulting in very close Continuous transverse stub (CTS) technology developed in the early
approximation between them. The studies in this paper thus should 1990s at Hughes Aircraft Company [1] has attracted research attentions
guide a designer in choosing proper cavity and IMCP dimensions for recently [2], [3]. This technology offers advantages over traditional ap-
a specified frequency within approximately 0.5% accuracy. proaches to antenna design at microwave frequencies. Benefits of CTS
REFERENCES
[1] J. A. Navarro, L. Fan, and K. Chang, “Active inverted stripline circular
patch antennas for spatial power combining,” IEEE Trans Microwave
Theory Tech., vol. 41, pp. 1856–1863, Oct. 1993.
[2] , “Novel FET integrated inverted stripline patch,” Electron. Lett.,
vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 655–657, 1994.
[3] R. A. Flynt, L. Fan, J. A. Navarro, and K. Chang, “Low cost and com-
pact active integrated antenna transceiver for system applications,” IEEE
Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 44, pp. 1642–1649, Oct. 1996.
[4] C. M. Montiel, L. Fan, and K. Chang, “A novel active antenna with self-
mixing and wideband varactor-tuning capabilities for communication
and vehicle identification applications,” IEEE Trans Microwave Theory
Tech., vol. 44, pp. 2421–2430, Dec. 1996.
[5] J. A. Navarro and K. Chang, “Active microstrip antenna,” in Advances
in Microstrip and Printed Antennas, K. F. Lee and W. Chen, Eds. New
York: Wiley, 1997, ch. 8.
[6] J. A. Navarro, J. McSpadden, and K. Chang, “Experimental study of
inverted microstrip for integrated antennas applications,” in IEEE An-
tennas Propagat. Int. Symp. Proc., Seattle, WA, 1994, pp. 920–923.
[7] D. Guha and J. Y. Siddiqui, “A new CAD model to calculate the
Fig. 3. Resonant frequency of IMCP antenna with and without cavity resonant frequency of inverted microstrip circular patch antenna,”
enclosure and corresponding cavity factors g and r=ae versus h1. r = Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 35, no. 6, Dec. 20, 2002.
6:35 mm, h2 = 1:524 mm, "r = 2:3, a = 4:0 mm. [8] C. A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics. New York:
Wiley, 1989, ch. 9.
[9] I. Wolff and N. Knoppik, “Rectangular and circular microstrip disk ca-
for comparison. The increase in h1 causes decrease in both r=ae and pacitors and resonators,” IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech, vol. 22,
g values revealing the increasing cavity-effect on the IMCP. The reso- pp. 857–864, Oct. 1974.
nant frequency also decreases with the increase in h1 for both cavity [10] D. Guha, “Resonant frequency of circular microstrip antennas with and
without air gaps,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propaga., vol. 49, pp. 55–59,
enclosed and open type IMCPs. However, the effect of the cavity enclo- Jan. 2001.
sure in diminishing the resonant frequency is significant over a consid-
erable range of h1 values, particularly at the lower values of h1 . Only
a single measured value is available [1] to compare with the theoretical
curve in Fig. 3 and this value shown by a solid circle corresponds to
g < 0:5. Excellent agreement between the experiment and the present Design and Development of Multiband Coaxial Continuous
theory is also revealed. Transverse Stub (CTS) Antenna Arrays
The present studies show that a cavity enclosure influences the res-
onance of an IMCP under limited conditions resulting in lower reso- Robert Isom, Magdy F. Iskander, Zhengqing Yun, and Zhijun Zhang
nant frequency. However, its effect on the radiation characteristics of
an IMCP is not significant to that extent as reported in [1]. Uniform
radiation patterns with acceptable cross polarization level and 6.65 dBi Abstract—Continuous transverse stub (CTS) technology has been
gain were reported [1] from the measurements of a typical cavity en- adapted to use with coaxial lines to produce effective microwave an-
tenna structures that radiate omnidirectionally, with high efficiency, low
closed probe fed IMCP antenna. reflection, and useful radiation patterns. In this paper, we describe the
design, construction, and testing of a new type of antenna arrays, that is, a
six-element multiband (4.2 and 19.4 GHz) CTS antenna array. The design
IV. CONCLUSION of the CTS array was optimized through simulation using finite-difference
time-domain and then built and tested using both S-parameters and
The inverted microstrip patches in open or cavity enclosed config- radiation pattern measurements. Simulation results agreed very well with
uration are attractive for integrating with active devices below it. The measured data. These simple and low cost coaxial CTS structures could
change in resonance condition under the influence of a cylindrical be adapted for base station applications in wireless communication, for
satellite communication systems, and Identification Friend-or-Foe systems
cavity enclosing an IMCP has been thoroughly investigated both for the military.
theoretically and experimentally. If different patches are examined in
a same cylindrical enclosure, all are not affected by the cavity and Index Terms—Antenna array, coaxial continuous transverse stub (CTS),
continuous transverse stub (CTS), multiband array.
a factor determining that dependence has been examined with the
help of the new and previous data. A simple analytical formulation
is proposed to predict the resonant frequency of cavity enclosed I. INTRODUCTION
patches so far those are under the influence of the cavity. The theory
is compared with different measurements resulting in very close Continuous transverse stub (CTS) technology developed in the early
approximation between them. The studies in this paper thus should 1990s at Hughes Aircraft Company [1] has attracted research attentions
guide a designer in choosing proper cavity and IMCP dimensions for recently [2], [3]. This technology offers advantages over traditional ap-
a specified frequency within approximately 0.5% accuracy. proaches to antenna design at microwave frequencies. Benefits of CTS
+ S
Fig. 3. Comparison of simulated (solid with ) and measured (solid) -parameter performance for six-element multiband coaxial CTS antenna array. Design
frequencies are 4.2 GHz (C-band) and 19.4 GHz (K-band).
+s
Fig. 5. Comparison of measured ( ) and simulated (solid) radiation pattern
at 19.4 GHz for the six-element multiband coaxial CTS antenna array. Feed is
from 180 . Displayed on a dB-scale normalized to 0 dB.
S
Fig. 7. Plot showing change in 11 for small changes in the dielectric constant
of the six-element coaxial CTS array. The solid line represents "r=21 : . The
+s represent "r=20 X
: . The s represent "r =22 : .
seen, coaxial CTS array is also robust and relatively insensitive to small
changes in the dielectric constant of filling material.
V. CONCLUSION
Coaxial CTS technology provides low cost, high-efficiency antenna
arrays and with excellent radiation and S-parameter characteristics.
The radial stubs of coaxial CTS arrays provide an omni-directional pat-
tern in the plane perpendicular to the coaxial line. Coaxial CTS struc-
tures also possess the added advantages of ease of impedance matching,
ease of feed, and maintains the insensibility to dimensional and dielec-
tric constant tolerances.
In this paper, the design, construction and testing of a multiband an-
tenna array was described. S-parameter performance from 3–20 GHz
was measured using the HP8510B Network Analyzer. Good agreement
was achieved between simulated S-parameter results obtained using
S
Fig. 6. Plot showing change in 11 for small changes in the physical
FDTD and measured results, particularly at the desired multiband fre-
quencies of 4.2 and 19.4 GHz. The measured and simulated results con-
dimensions of the six-element multiband coaxial CTS array. The solid line
represents the original simulation. The +s represent a decrease in size from firmed that it was possible to obtain low reflection, high-radiation effi-
X
the original dimensions. The s represent an increase in size from the original ciency, and good radiation pattern at frequencies in two different bands
dimensions. (C-band and K-band).
Radiation pattern measurements were also taken at 4.2 and 19.4 GHz
performance and impedance matching characteristics at the design fre- and the broadside radiation pattern characteristic was verified. Several
quencies. simulations were also performed to confirm the dimensional tolerance,
Specifically, FDTD simulation tests were run on three cases for the and hence emphasize the low cost fabrication advantage of the coaxial
six-element multiband array. These cases consisted of simulation at the CTS antenna design.
design specifications, simulation at dimensions one cell size (.129 mm The excellent radiation performance shown by the coaxial CTS an-
or 5 mils) larger than the design specifications, and simulation at di- tenna arrays would enable many high-frequency communication ap-
mensions one cell size smaller than the design specifications. The re- plications for both military and commercial use. In particular, such
sults of the simulations for S11 are shown in Fig. 6. These results show high-efficiency antenna arrays would be useful for close range wire-
that despite some small variation in the S-parameter performance of less connectivity (e.g., Bluetooth). Additionally, this technology has
the array, its overall antenna performance was maintained in the re- potential military application (e.g., Identification Friend-or-Foe (IFF)
gions around the design frequencies. systems). They are compact in size and lightweight. Potentially, beam-
We also simulated the effect of small variations in the dielectric con- steering capability can be accomplished in the same manner as planar
stant of the Teflon-filled multiband antenna array on the antenna perfor- CTS designs, either mechanically or using Ferroelectric materials.
mance. A simulation was performed using the expected value of Teflon
("r = 2:1), while two others were made using somewhat smaller and REFERENCES
larger values for Teflon ("r = 2:0 and 2.2, respectively). The vari- [1] W. W. Milroy, “The continuous transverse stub (CTS) array: Basic
ations represent a change in the dielectric constant of approximately theory, experiment and application,” in Proc. Antenna Applications
5%. The results of these simulations are shown in Fig. 7. As it may be Symp., Allerton Park, IL, Sept. 25-27, 1991.
2184 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
I. INTRODUCTION
r
rection 0^. As shown in Fig. 1, the probe’s position and orientation is
described by the Euler angles ('; ; ), where and ' are the usual
As frequency increases and wavelength decreases, it becomes spherical-coordinate angles that define the location of the probe. The
difficult to maintain mechanical tolerances in near-field scanning r
angle measures rotation of the probe about ^. We assume that the
antenna measurements. Therefore, the paradigm shifts from taking receiving pattern is broad enough that small pointing errors are unim-
measurements at predefined locations to accurately determining the portant. Although possible in principle, correcting for probe wobble
positions where measurements are actually made. Standard algo- would be costly in terms of measurement and processing time.
rithms for transformation from near-field to far-field require that In order to simplify the collection and processing of measurement
data points lie on a regular grid. Our goal is to relax this condition data, we follow common practice [4] and restrict our attention to special
without increasing computational complexity or sacrificing accuracy. probes that have a response w(r; '; ; ) with a simple dependence
Previously, we have dealt with planar near-field scanning [1]. Here, w(r; '; ; ) = 0w(r; '; ; 0=2) sin + w(r; '; ; 0) cos :
we turn our attention to spherical near-field scanning [2] . Although
(2)
the details are different, the basic approach is the same: The technique
relies on efficient linear transformation between spherical-mode Such probes are not difficult to construct [5, Ch. 1]. They are called
coefficients and probe response at actual measurement locations. The = 61 probes for reasons that may not be clear in this context. An
conjugate-gradient method is applied to determine the coefficients example is a probe that measures transverse components of the electric
that produce a weighted-least-squares match to the measured probe field with, say, E' = w(r; '; ; 0) and E = w(r; '; ; 0=2). Any
response. In the following, we sketch the theory and demonstrate the practical probe will approach a = 61 probe as r is increased.
algorithm through numerical simulation. The Jensen transmission formula [4] expresses the measurement
wr
vector ( ) as an expansion in spherical harmonics
II. THEORY w(r) w(r; '; ; 0=2)^ + w(r; '; ; 0)^'
[ Bnm (kr )Xnm (^r) + Bnm (kr )Ynm (^
r) ]
The electric field of an antenna, operating at frequency f = !=2 , 1 2
= (3)
may be expressed as an expansion of spherical waves nm
N n where
E(r) = mnm (r) + b2nm nnm(r)
1
bnm (1) 1 1
n=1 m=0n Bnm
= Mn bnm
:
where the vector modal (Hansen) functions mnm and nnm are de-
2 2 (4)
Bnm bnm
1 2
scribed in [3, Ch. 7], for example, and the coefficients bnm and bnm
M
In (4), n is a known 2 2 2 matrix depending on r and the probe
completely characterize the radiated electromagnetic fields of the test
X
receiving function. The vector spherical harmonics nm and nm = Y
Manuscript received August 19, 2003. r X
i^ 2 nm are defined by Jackson [6].
The authors are with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Using (2), (3), and (4), we write
W = Ab:
Boulder, CO 80305 USA (e-mail: wittmann@boulder.nist.gov).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832316 (5)
The vector W ( )
contains the probe response w ri ; 'i ; i ; i at the mea-
b
surement points, is a vector of (unknown) expansion coefficients,
A
and is a (known) linear operator. Equation (5) is generally overde-
termined (with more measurements than unknowns), so we solve the
normal equations
A3W = Mb (6)
where
M = A3 A (7)
III. VERIFICATION
To test the effectiveness of the position-correction algorithm, we
consider the transmitting pattern of a maximum-directivity antenna
with a directivity of about 42 dB, corresponding to N = 128 ([4, p.
55]). The amplitude of this pattern, as a function of , is shown in Fig.
2. Standard spherical near-field measurement techniques require mea-
surements on a regular grid in and ' with
3
This component can be used with the E-Pulse technique to diagnose
up to may be regarded as extreme. Fig. 2 shows the far-field pattern changes in coating parameters.
obtained if the data are processed without position correction; that is, Index Terms—Electromagnetic transient scattering, nondestructive
assuming that the measurement points lie on the ideal grid. This pattern testing, dielectric materials.
bears no resemblance to the true pattern. Figs. 3 –5 show the difference
between the computed pattern and the original after 1, 15, and 56 it-
erations. (Execution time was about 3 min per iteration on a 2 GHz I. INTRODUCTION
personal computer.) At 15 iterations (Fig. 4), errors are about 1 dB at a The conducting surfaces of air vehicles are often coated with ab-
sidelobe level 40 dB below peak, which is usually adequate in practice. sorbing material to reduce their radar cross section. Since the properties
After 56 iterations (Fig. 5) the residual of the materials may degrade due to environmental exposure, detecting
3
This component can be used with the E-Pulse technique to diagnose
up to may be regarded as extreme. Fig. 2 shows the far-field pattern changes in coating parameters.
obtained if the data are processed without position correction; that is, Index Terms—Electromagnetic transient scattering, nondestructive
assuming that the measurement points lie on the ideal grid. This pattern testing, dielectric materials.
bears no resemblance to the true pattern. Figs. 3 –5 show the difference
between the computed pattern and the original after 1, 15, and 56 it-
erations. (Execution time was about 3 min per iteration on a 2 GHz I. INTRODUCTION
personal computer.) At 15 iterations (Fig. 4), errors are about 1 dB at a The conducting surfaces of air vehicles are often coated with ab-
sidelobe level 40 dB below peak, which is usually adequate in practice. sorbing material to reduce their radar cross section. Since the properties
After 56 iterations (Fig. 5) the residual of the materials may degrade due to environmental exposure, detecting
Bn = 0E0 "n j 0n
(cn 0 dn )fn E-PULSE TECHNIQUE
cn gn 0 dn Since the late-time field reflected from a planar coated conductor is
where a pure resonance series, an E pulse can be constructed that produces
Fig. 2. Field reflected by a coated circular cylinder with parameters a = 0:7m, d = 0:1m, "r = 9. TM excitation. E Pulse is that for the planar surface.
Fig. 3. Field reflected by a coated circular cylinder with parameters a = 1:9m, d = 0:1m, "r = 9. TM excitation.
Fig. 4. Field reflected by a coated circular cylinder with parameters a = 0:7m, d = 0:1m, "r = 9. TE excitation.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2189
Fig. 5. Field reflected by a coated circular cylinder with parameters a = 1:9m, d = 0:1m, "r = 9. TE excitation.
Fig. 6. Normalized energy in the convolution of the planar-surface E Pulse with the field reflected from a coated cylinder.
[5] R. Paknys and N. Wang, “Creeping wave propagation constants and that is implicit, fourth order accurate and valid for orthogonal three-di-
modal impedance for a dielectric coated cylinder,” IEEE Trans. An- mensional grids . In [4] and [5], the authors present a modified sym-
tennas Propagat., vol. AP-34, pp. 674–680, May 1986. plectic FDTD method that is up to fourth-order accurate in space and
[6] , “Excitation of creeping waves on a circular cylinder with a thick
dielectric coating,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-35, pp. time. A variation using the linear “serendipity” finite elements of [6] is
1487–1489, Dec. 1987. also mentioned. Here, we proceed in a similar manner using high-order
[7] E. J. Rothwell and M. J. Cloud, Electromagnetics. Boca Raton, FL: symplectic integration methods in conjunction with a high-order vector
CRC Press, 2001. finite element method for use in nonorthogonal, unstructured grids. The
[8] C. A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics. New York:
Wiley, 1989.
spatial discretization is handled by the use of Nédeléc [7] basis func-
tions of arbitrary order which are based on the properties of differen-
tial forms [8], [9]. For the Galerkin procedure applied to either the fre-
quency domain or time dependent Maxwell equations [10], there are
significant advantages to both one-form and two-form finite element
basis functions [11]; including the proper modeling of the jump discon-
High-Order Symplectic Integration Methods for tinuity of field intensities and flux densities across material interfaces,
the elimination of spurious modes in eigenvalue computations and the
Finite Element Solutions to Time Dependent
conservation of charge in time-dependent simulations [11]. These prop-
Maxwell Equations erties are crucial for the elimination of late time instabilities caused by
R. Rieben, D. White, and G. Rodrigue improper spatial discretization as investigated by [12]–[14].
We begin with a method of lines approach to the discretization of
the time dependent Maxwell equations. We approximate the coupled
Abstract—In this paper, we motivate the use of high-order integration partial differential equations using a high-order vector finite element
methods for finite element solutions of the time dependent Maxwell equa- scheme which yields a linear system of ordinary differential equations
tions. In particular, we present a symplectic algorithm for the integration of (ODEs). This system is then be discretized in time via a finite difference
the coupled first-order Maxwell equations for computing the time depen-
dent electric and magnetic fields. Symplectic methods have the benefit of method to produce a series of update steps which propagate the solu-
conserving total electromagnetic field energy and are, therefore, preferred tions forward in time. However, most high-order numerical integration
over dissipative methods (such as traditional Runge–Kutta) in applications methods (e.g., Runge–Kutta, Adams–Bashforth) are dissipative. This
that require high-accuracy and energy conservation over long periods of can lead to misleading results for systems that need to be iterated for
time integration. We show that in the context of symplectic methods, sev- long time intervals [15], [16]. A solution is to use a symplectic time
eral popular schemes can be elegantly cast in a single algorithm. We con-
clude with some numerical examples which demonstrate the superior per- integration method that conserves energy. Therefore, in this paper we
formance of high-order time integration methods. investigate and promote the use of symplectic methods for the time in-
tegration of Maxwell’s equations.
Index Terms—Finite element methods, high-order methods, Maxwell
equations, symplectic methods, time domain analysis.
II. AMPERE-FARADAY SYSTEM
I. INTRODUCTION We begin with the coupled first-order time dependent Maxwell equa-
tions
We are concerned with the finite element solution of the time de-
pendent Maxwell equations on unstructured grids using a combina-
@
@t
E = r 2 (01 B) 0 J(t)
tion of both high-order spatial and high-order temporal discretization
methods. In this paper we focus our attention on the high-order tem-
@
@t
B= 0r2E (1)
poral discretization process, and we investigate the use of symplectic
where and are (possibly tensor valued) functions representing the
J
integration methods. Such methods were originally developed to solve
numerical systems derived from a Hamiltonian formulation and have material properties of the system and (t) is a time dependent current
been successfully used in the fields of astronomy and molecular dy- source. Using a Galerkin finite element procedure with one-form (or
namics where numerical accuracy and energy conservation are very im- Curl -conforming) vector basis functions to discretize the electric field
portant over large time integration periods [1]. Recently, these methods intensity and two-form (or Div -conforming) vector basis functions to
have been adapted for use in computational electromagnetics (CEM) discretize the magnetic flux density yields the following linear system
in conjunction with the finite difference method. In [2] and [3] a sym- of ODEs
plectic finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm is presented
A
@
@t
T
e =K D b 0Aj
Manuscript received April 23, 2003; revised September 22, 2003. This work
@
@t
b= 0K e (2)
was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the Uni-
versity of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract where e and b represent the discrete differential one-form and two-
W-7405-Eng-48 and the U.S. Air Force under Contract F49620-01-1-0327. form electric and magnetic fields, respectively, K represents the dis-
R. Rieben and G. Rodrigue are with the University of California Davis and In-
crete Curl operator (i.e., the topological derivative matrix), A is the
stitute for Scientific Computing Research, Lawrence Livermore National Labo-
ratory, Livermore, CA 94551 USA (e-mail: rieben1@llnl.gov; ghrodrigue@uc- one-form mass matrix computed using the material property function
davis.edu). to represent the dielectric properties, D is the two-form mass ma-
D. White was with the Center for Applied Scientific Computing Research, trix computed using the material property function 01 to represent
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551 USA (e-mail: the magnetic permeability and j is the discrete two-form time depen-
white37@llnl.gov). He is now with the Defense Sciences Engineering Division,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA, 94551 USA (e-mail: dent current source. Note that the vectors e and b will have different
white37@llnl.gov). dimensions and that the matrix K will be rectangular. This is due to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832356 the dimensions of the Nédeléc polynomial spaces from which they are
[5] R. Paknys and N. Wang, “Creeping wave propagation constants and that is implicit, fourth order accurate and valid for orthogonal three-di-
modal impedance for a dielectric coated cylinder,” IEEE Trans. An- mensional grids . In [4] and [5], the authors present a modified sym-
tennas Propagat., vol. AP-34, pp. 674–680, May 1986. plectic FDTD method that is up to fourth-order accurate in space and
[6] , “Excitation of creeping waves on a circular cylinder with a thick
dielectric coating,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-35, pp. time. A variation using the linear “serendipity” finite elements of [6] is
1487–1489, Dec. 1987. also mentioned. Here, we proceed in a similar manner using high-order
[7] E. J. Rothwell and M. J. Cloud, Electromagnetics. Boca Raton, FL: symplectic integration methods in conjunction with a high-order vector
CRC Press, 2001. finite element method for use in nonorthogonal, unstructured grids. The
[8] C. A. Balanis, Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics. New York:
Wiley, 1989.
spatial discretization is handled by the use of Nédeléc [7] basis func-
tions of arbitrary order which are based on the properties of differen-
tial forms [8], [9]. For the Galerkin procedure applied to either the fre-
quency domain or time dependent Maxwell equations [10], there are
significant advantages to both one-form and two-form finite element
basis functions [11]; including the proper modeling of the jump discon-
High-Order Symplectic Integration Methods for tinuity of field intensities and flux densities across material interfaces,
the elimination of spurious modes in eigenvalue computations and the
Finite Element Solutions to Time Dependent
conservation of charge in time-dependent simulations [11]. These prop-
Maxwell Equations erties are crucial for the elimination of late time instabilities caused by
R. Rieben, D. White, and G. Rodrigue improper spatial discretization as investigated by [12]–[14].
We begin with a method of lines approach to the discretization of
the time dependent Maxwell equations. We approximate the coupled
Abstract—In this paper, we motivate the use of high-order integration partial differential equations using a high-order vector finite element
methods for finite element solutions of the time dependent Maxwell equa- scheme which yields a linear system of ordinary differential equations
tions. In particular, we present a symplectic algorithm for the integration of (ODEs). This system is then be discretized in time via a finite difference
the coupled first-order Maxwell equations for computing the time depen-
dent electric and magnetic fields. Symplectic methods have the benefit of method to produce a series of update steps which propagate the solu-
conserving total electromagnetic field energy and are, therefore, preferred tions forward in time. However, most high-order numerical integration
over dissipative methods (such as traditional Runge–Kutta) in applications methods (e.g., Runge–Kutta, Adams–Bashforth) are dissipative. This
that require high-accuracy and energy conservation over long periods of can lead to misleading results for systems that need to be iterated for
time integration. We show that in the context of symplectic methods, sev- long time intervals [15], [16]. A solution is to use a symplectic time
eral popular schemes can be elegantly cast in a single algorithm. We con-
clude with some numerical examples which demonstrate the superior per- integration method that conserves energy. Therefore, in this paper we
formance of high-order time integration methods. investigate and promote the use of symplectic methods for the time in-
tegration of Maxwell’s equations.
Index Terms—Finite element methods, high-order methods, Maxwell
equations, symplectic methods, time domain analysis.
II. AMPERE-FARADAY SYSTEM
I. INTRODUCTION We begin with the coupled first-order time dependent Maxwell equa-
tions
We are concerned with the finite element solution of the time de-
pendent Maxwell equations on unstructured grids using a combina-
@
@t
E = r 2 (01 B) 0 J(t)
tion of both high-order spatial and high-order temporal discretization
methods. In this paper we focus our attention on the high-order tem-
@
@t
B= 0r2E (1)
poral discretization process, and we investigate the use of symplectic
where and are (possibly tensor valued) functions representing the
J
integration methods. Such methods were originally developed to solve
numerical systems derived from a Hamiltonian formulation and have material properties of the system and (t) is a time dependent current
been successfully used in the fields of astronomy and molecular dy- source. Using a Galerkin finite element procedure with one-form (or
namics where numerical accuracy and energy conservation are very im- Curl -conforming) vector basis functions to discretize the electric field
portant over large time integration periods [1]. Recently, these methods intensity and two-form (or Div -conforming) vector basis functions to
have been adapted for use in computational electromagnetics (CEM) discretize the magnetic flux density yields the following linear system
in conjunction with the finite difference method. In [2] and [3] a sym- of ODEs
plectic finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm is presented
A
@
@t
T
e =K D b 0Aj
Manuscript received April 23, 2003; revised September 22, 2003. This work
@
@t
b= 0K e (2)
was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the Uni-
versity of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract where e and b represent the discrete differential one-form and two-
W-7405-Eng-48 and the U.S. Air Force under Contract F49620-01-1-0327. form electric and magnetic fields, respectively, K represents the dis-
R. Rieben and G. Rodrigue are with the University of California Davis and In-
crete Curl operator (i.e., the topological derivative matrix), A is the
stitute for Scientific Computing Research, Lawrence Livermore National Labo-
ratory, Livermore, CA 94551 USA (e-mail: rieben1@llnl.gov; ghrodrigue@uc- one-form mass matrix computed using the material property function
davis.edu). to represent the dielectric properties, D is the two-form mass ma-
D. White was with the Center for Applied Scientific Computing Research, trix computed using the material property function 01 to represent
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94551 USA (e-mail: the magnetic permeability and j is the discrete two-form time depen-
white37@llnl.gov). He is now with the Defense Sciences Engineering Division,
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA, 94551 USA (e-mail: dent current source. Note that the vectors e and b will have different
white37@llnl.gov). dimensions and that the matrix K will be rectangular. This is due to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832356 the dimensions of the Nédeléc polynomial spaces from which they are
E = eT A e + bT D b: (3)
@
@t
q = G (p): (5)
pn
qn+1=2
= 011t (1 011t t2 ) pn01
qn01=2
:
Systems of this form have the property of being nondissipative, i.e., the It is a straightforward calculation to show that this update scheme sat-
system does not lose energy as it evolves in time. Numerical integra- isfies (8) and is therefore symplectic. However, it is also straightfor-
tion methods for solving system (5) should likewise be nondissipative. ward to show that this mapping does not conserve the exact value of
For linear equations, such methods are typically written as an update E under iteration. This is due to the fact that symplectic maps solve
scheme of the form some Hamiltonian exactly, but not the exact one of the system [1], [17].
However, as shown by Yoshida [18], the numerical value of the inexact
pn+1
=M pn
(6) ~
conserved quantity E oscillates about the exact value E and the ampli-
qn+1 qn tude of this oscillation is reduced as the order of the symplectic method
where the field values at a new state are expressed in terms of values at is increased.
previous states. There are three specific cases of interest based on the To demonstrate the properties of symplectic integrators for conserva-
matrix norm of M, given by tive systems, we proceed to solve the SHO system numerically using
both a symplectic method (the order three case from Table I) and a
1
> ; unstable nonsymplectic fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. In both cases, the
jM j = 1 ; neutrally stable (nondissipative) (7) system is propagated from t =0 to t = 250 using a time step of
1
< ; stable, dissipative. 1 = 08
t : and the computed maximum global phase error will grow
linearly at each time step. Where the two cases differ is in the compu-
When the eigenvalues of the update matrix all lie within the unit circle tation of the energy of the system. Fig. 1 shows the computed numerical
in the complex plane, the method will be stable and dissipative. Nondis- energy of the system at each time step for both methods. For the sym-
sipative methods have the additional property that the eigenvalues of plectic method, the numerical energy is of the form
the update matrix all lie on the unit circle in the complex plane, with
additional constraints on the eignevectors for stability [11]. The map- E~ = 1 cos(
1 t) E
ping is said to be symplectic if the following relation holds [17]
while for the nonsymplectic method the energy is of the form
@ MT S @ M =S (8)
E~ = 2 exp(0
2 t) E :
where
Fig. 2 shows a parametric plot of the conjugate variables as a function
~
@ p F @q F ~ 0 I
@M = ~
@p G @ q G ~ ; S=
0I 0
of time. The numerical energy for the symplectic method oscillates at a
fixed amplitude around the exact value, and is therefore conserved (in
2192 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 1. Numerical energy at each time step using a symplectic method and a nonsymplectic Runge–Kutta method.
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Parametric phase plots of the conjugate variables of a simple harmonic oscillator using (a) a symplectic method and (b) a nonsymplectic Runge–Kutta
method.
a time averaged sense). The energy for the nonsymplectic method dis- set of differential equations are typically characterized by the accuracy
sipates exponentially from the exact value, indicating spurious damp- of a single step in time (the independent variable). If for some small
ening of the system. 1
time step t the integration is performed so that it is accurate through
Such behavior is typical of symplectic methods when applied to con- 1
order tk , then the method is of k th order. In general, a method of
servative systems, and has therefore motivated us to apply them to the order k will require k evaluations of the functions F and G. Therefore,
particular system of (2). It should be noted that when a symplectic as the order of the method is increased the overall computational costs
method is applied to the Maxwell system of ODEs (2) the result does will increase likewise. However, as we will show in the next section,
not satisfy the symplectic property of (8). This is due to the fact (as for higher order methods, it is possible to increase the size of the time
mentioned previously) that the vectors e and b are not of the same di- 1
step t (while still maintaining numerical stability), thereby reducing
mension and that the matrix K is rectangular. Nevertheless this does the overall number of time steps. The order of the method can be ad-
not preclude the method from being used, in fact it has been success- justed simply by providing the algorithm with a corresponding set of
fully used in FDTD schemes where the dimension of e (the number of coefficients, a and b, each of length order . Table I lists exact values of
mesh edges) is different than the dimension of b (the number of mesh the sets of coefficients a and b for methods of order one through four,
faces) [2], [3]. We demonstrate through computational experiments in as originally computed by Ruth [15] and Candy [19].
Section V that high-order symplectic methods do work when applied to
system (2) and correctly reproduce the previously mentioned features
of stability, high accuracy, and no nonphysical dissipation. Algorithm 1: General Symplectic
Integration Algorithm
input : , the order of the method
IV. GENERAL SYMPLECTIC ALGORITHM
and , two functions and ,
We now present the general symplectic integration algorithm used in two sets of coefficients and , the
our experiments. The algorithm is valid for ODE systems of the form initial conditions and , initial and
(5), such as (2). The inputs, procedure and outputs of the method are final time , the time step to use
presented in Algorithm 1. Numerical methods for the integration of a output : and , the fields at time
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004 2193
tj= i 3 1 t + ak 3 1 t
k=1
Update the eld values :
pout = pin + bj 3 1t 3 F (qin ; tj )
qout = qin + aj 3 1t 3 G(pout )
pin pout
qin qout
end
Update eld values for this time step :
pi+1 pout
qi+1 qout
end
Fig. 4. Global phase error at each time step for the third-order symplectic
integration method.
V. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
A. Example 1
We now present some computational examples using the symplectic In this example we demonstrate the growth of global phase error for
integration algorithm in conjunction with high-order finite element ma- the time integration of (2) using two different methods. We begin by
trices for the spatial discretization of Maxwell’s equations. The com- solving the general eigenvalue problem
putational domain for these examples is a unit cube subject to either a
PEC (Dirichlet) or a natural zero flux (Neumann) boundary condition. Sx = Ax (10)
The Ampere-Faraday system is discretized in space using a very coarse
eight element hexahedral mesh in conjunction with high-order vector subject to a zero flux boundary condition [20]. Here, S is the one-form
basis functions of polynomial degree p =4 stiffness matrix (i.e the Curl – Curl matrix) and this system represents
In each of the following examples, the time integration schemes are the resonant modes of the unit cube. We locate the first nonzero eigen-
subject to a stability condition. This stability condition is based on value of this system (representing the first resonant mode of the cavity)
the spectral radius of the amplification matrix which is applied to the and its corresponding eigenvector. Using basis functions of polynomial
system at every time step in an update method of the form (6). For the degree p =4 on a coarse eight element mesh, the first resonant mode
discrete Maxwell equations of system (4), there exists an upper bound is computed to an accuracy of 04 . We then use the computed eigen-
10
on the largest stable time step given by [11] vector as the initial condition for the electric field in (2), the magnetic
1t 2 :
field will have a zero value initial condition. System (2) is then propa-
MaxEig(A01 K T DK )
(9) gated forward in time for a total of 300 s (using a value of unity for the
speed of light). The resulting computed electric field will be an oscil-
We have found that about 0.95 times the upper bound of this constraint latory cosine wave with a frequency equal to the first resonant mode of
is sufficient for symplectic methods of order one through three; higher the cube. We compare the global phase error in the computed solution
order methods require a smaller time step to remain stable. For ex- against the exact value using both a first and third-order symplectic
ample, we have found that for the fourth-order method from Table I, integration method. The first-order method is integrated using a time
about 0.70 times the upper bound is sufficient for stability. 1 = 0 005 s
step of t : yielding a total of 60,000 time steps while the
In addition, for each of the following examples, evaluation of the third-order method is integrated using a time step of t 1 = 0 015 s
:
function F during the update phase requires that a linear system in- yielding a total of 20 000 time steps. The resulting computations there-
volving the matrix A must be solved. To simplify this process, we per- fore require the same total amount of CPU time to complete. The re-
form the linear solve using a diagonally scaled Conjugate Gradient al- sulting global phase errors are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. Note that in both
gorithm. However, this process could be made more efficient by using cases, the maximum global phase error grows linearly at each time step,
a sparse direct solver. but the third-order method yields a much slower rate of growth with a
2194 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 8, AUGUST 2004
Fig. 5. Numerical energy at each time step for the first-order method. Fig. 7. Computed resonant modes of cubic cavity using a third order
symplectic method. Vertical lines represent exact values.
TABLE II
COMPARISON OF RESULTS FOR TWO INTEGRATION METHODS
Fig. 6. Numerical energy at each time step for the third-order method.
modes to an accuracy of 1004 , and the data in Table II clearly shows
maximum global phase error two orders of magnitude smaller than the this same accuracy can be achieved in the time domain only if a higher
first-order method for roughly the same computational cost. order time integration is used.
Figs. 5 and 6 show the computed value of the numerical energy from
(3) at each time step for both the first and third-order methods (for VI. CONCLUSION
visual clarity, only values for the last 50 s are shown). Note that for both
cases the numerical energy oscillates around the exact value, but for The results of this paper are twofold. First, we have demonstrated
the third-order case, the amplitude of this oscillation is several orders that high-order time integration methods used in conjunction with high-
of magnitude smaller than for first-order method, again for roughly the order spatial discretizations can yield more accurate numerical results
same computational cost. for roughly the same computational cost as a low-order method. Sec-
ondly, we have presented a general symplectic method for the integra-
B. Example 2 tion of the time dependent Maxwell equations. Symplectic time inte-
gration methods have been developed for Hamiltonian systems such as
In this example we compute the resonant modes of the cubic cavity those that arise in astrophysics and molecular dynamics, where very
subject to a PEC boundary condition using two different integration long time integration is required. We show that these methods can be
methods. We do this by creating an oscillating electromagnetic field in- successfully applied to a finite element discretization of Maxwell’s
side the cavity by applying a time dependent current source to a random equations, resulting in higher order and energy conserving integration.
sampling of the interior degrees of freedom. The simple current source The higher order symplectic methods used in this paper are no more
has a temporal profile equal to the second derivative of a Gaussian complicated or expensive than traditional Runge–Kutta methods.
pulse. Setting the speed of light equal to unity, we let the simulation run
for a physical time of 300 s, then Fourier transform the resulting field
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computed Fourier spectrum for the case of the third-order method are 2001.
shown in Fig. 7. The results for both calculations are summarized in [3] I. Saitoh and N. Takahashi, “Stability of symplectic finite-difference
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2002.
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order method. We know from eigenvalue computation of Example 1 electromagnetic field using a symplectic integrator,” IEEE Microwave
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Corrections_________________________________________________________________________________
Corrections to “Phased Arrays Based on Oscillators be S and the symbol S appearing in Section C of the Appendix should
Coupled on Triangular and Hexagonal Lattices” be A. Lastly, in equation (15), the symbol in the argument of the sine
functions and the p13 appearing in front of each sine function should
Ronald J. Pogorzelski be deleted.
In [1], three lines above (11), the symbol I should be i. Also, the
symbol A appearing in (A3), (A4), and (A6) of the Appendix should
REFERENCES
Manuscript received April 29, 2004.
The author is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Tech- [1] R. J. Pogorzelski, “Phased arrays based on oscillators coupled on trian-
nology, Pasadena, CA 91109 USA (e-mail: pogp@jpl.nasa.gov). gular and hexagonal lattices,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 52,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.832315 pp. 790–800, Mar. 2004.
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