Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference 2011

A Compact Printed Yagi Type Antenna for GPS Application

Huan-Chu Huang , Jen-Chen Lu , and Powen Hsu
Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering 2 and Department of Electrical Engineering National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 3 Huawei Corporation, Shanghai 201206, China * E-mail: phsu@cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw
Abstract An experiment is performed on a thin dielectric substrate for the compact printed Yagi type antenna described theoretically in [1]. This time the SMA connector at the feed is taken into design considerations. Measured results show that this implemented antenna has a high directivity of 7.3 dBi, a front-to-back ratio of 11.6 dB, a cross-polarization level of 33.5 dB, and 3-dB beamwidths of 73o and 112o in the planes of = 90o and = 90o, respectively. The bandwidth is 9.1%, and the antenna efficiency is 92%. The proposed antenna is suitable for the global positioning system application in the mobile devices whose volumes are usually not sufficient for embedded antennas with good axial ratio (AR) values of right hand circular polarizations and good angular coverage of preferred AR values. Index Terms Directive antennas, printed circuit antennas, reflector antennas, Yagi-Uda antennas.
1

1,3

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also be diminished, and the overall dimensions can be greatly reduced such that the antenna can be easier to be incorporated into mobile devices. To further demonstrate the performance and feasibility of the theoretical design in [1], a prototype is optimized, fabricated, and measured in this study. An SMA connector at the feed, which was not considered in [1], is also included in this study. II. PRINCIPLES To enhance the GPS receiving performance from the satellites signals, a Yagi type antenna, which provides the end-fire radiation, is a suitable candidate. A well-designed curve or surface, for example, a concave parabolic one, is able to increase the antenna directivity [19]. And, in order to shrink the occupied area of the arms or traces of the antenna radiators, it is very common to employ the meandered transformation technique. To increase the feasibility and to minimize the antenna volume, the printed Yagi antenna in [1] thus integrated the above three concepts into a single design. Based on the principles described above, a driven dipole is meandered and located around the focus of an elaborated concave parabolic reflector sitting behind the said driven dipole; by doing this, in a compact area, a simple but novel Yagi type antenna with high-directivity radiation pattern in the end-fire direction can be attained in spite of only a single director is applied on a printed structure because the focus is specially designed around the location of the strongest current density flowing into the driven dipole. In other words, an elaborated concave parabola can benefit the miniaturization from conventional Yagi antennas of straight reflectors with similar directivity and front-to back ratio (F/B) values. For quick understanding of the whole antenna structure, the dielectric substrate in Fig. 1 is set transparent and an SMA connector is included for simulation and fabrication. From Fig. 1, it shows that this antenna is composed of a meandered driven dipole, a single-stage director, a concave parabolic reflector, and some vias on a two-layered FR4. Moreover, one of the two arms of the meandered dipole is simply transformed from the signal path on the top metal layer, and the other arm is exactly extended from the bottom ground plane. Besides, in order to reinforce the directivity towards the end-fire direction and meanwhile increase the F/B values without additional areas, the top and bottom metal layers are elaborately designed to identical concave parabolic reflectors.

I. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been increasing demand of global positioning system (GPS) functions for portable devices such as smart phones, GPS navigators, notebooks, and tablet PCs, and the embedded GPS antennas have attracted great attentions. For good GPS antennas, their main beams should be directed toward the sky [2][3] to accomplish better reception quality from satellites and, moreover, can suppress the unwanted absorption of noise interference from the device system themselves. Yagi and patch antennas are well recognized to possess good directive characteristics so they are commonly employed to directive wireless applications. For instance, Yagi-Uda type antennas have been popularly studied and applied [4][15]. In current and emerging portable devices, however, simple and printed designs are much preferred to be implemented because of the limited volume and the printed circuit board (PCB) space; consequently, patch antennas which require specific profiles to do efficient radiations and specific orientations to direct main beams to sky due to broad-side radiation properties may not meet products trends so well. Moreover, limited volumes in mobile devices also move designers to the linearly polarized internal antenna solutions for GPS receptions [16][18]. Therefore, some simple but innovative designs with only one director instead of multiple directors [6][15] to enable printed Yagi antennas with good end-fire directivities for GPS applications are proposed [1], [5]. In [1], to reduce the whole antenna size, the design technique of the meandered line is used to transform the driven dipole into a compact one. Thus, the sizes of the reflector and director can

978-0-85825-974-4 2011 Engineers Australia

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SMA connector

Bottom-layer reflector

Via Top -layer director Top -layer meanderd drive dipole

TABLE I ANTENNAS DIMENSIONS (MM)

L1 W1 W2 L2 L3 L4 L5 W3 W4 W5 L6 W6 W7 W8 31.7 3.0 18.6 11.3 15.0 15.0 1.5 4.0 4.0 6.0 30.0 3.3 15.6 23.0 Bottom -layer director Bottom -layer meanderd drive dipole L7 W9 W10 L8 L9 L10 L11 W11 W12 W13 L12 W14 W15 W16 31.7 3.0 18.6 11.3 15.0 15.0 1.5 4.0 4.0 6.0 68.0 3.1 15.6 54.1

Top-layer reflector

Bottom-layer meandered driven dipole z Bottom-layer director Top-layer director

Top-layer reflector Top-layer y meandered driven dipole Focus

Bottom -layer reflector Substrate

Fig. 1.

Tilt view of the proposed antenna.

y L1 x W2 L4 W5 W8 L5 W7 L6 W4 W6 L3 L2

W1

Last, although the director in this proposed design is only single-stage, it is skillfully designed to upgrade the dragging ability of the end-fire radiation pattern. Specifically speaking, this single-stage director consists of two strips on the top and bottom metal layers and a connecting via. The layers of the two said strips correspond to those of the two arms of the meandered dipole; accordingly, the resultant dragging force of the radiation pattern will be advanced because of the elimination of cross-layer gaps between the director and the two arms of the driven dipole.
y

W3

(a) Top metal layer of the proposed antenna. W9 L7 x L8 W11 W10 L10 W13 W16 L11 L9 L12 W12 W15 W14

III. ANTENNA DESIGN AND FABRICATION As it is depicted in Fig. 2, the white areas are the FR4 dielectric substrate, the gray ones stand for the top metal layer, and the dark ones represents the bottom metal layer. Moreover, the curves of the concave parabolas on both of the top and bottom metals are designed to be identical and the meandered driven dipole composed of the top and bottom metal strips is placed around the focus of the concave parabolic reflectors. The distance from the apex of the concave parabolic curve to its focus is designed as 0.2 guided wavelength of the target working frequency, the GPS frequency, to lead to better reflection ability from the parabolic reflector. In this prototype, an FR4 with thickness of 0.8 mm, the relative dielectric constant of 4.4, and loss tangent of 0.02 is employed to serve the dielectric substrate. The radius of the metal via is 0.4 mm, and the operation frequency is designed at the GPS working frequency, i.e., 1575 MHz. All of the design parameters of this implemented antenna shown in Fig. 2 are listed in Table I. In addition, a photo of the fabricated prototype with an SMA connector involved is shown in Fig. 3 with an US quarter as a scale. Because of the fine tuning of the antenna dimensions when the SMA connector is involved, the total occupied area of the fabricated prototype is slightly smaller than that of the previous one [1].

(b) Bottom metal layer of the proposed antenna. Fig. 2. Geometry of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 3.

Photo of the fabricated prototype and an US quarter.

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IV. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS In this design, simulations are performed by the Ansoft EM (Electromagnetic) simulator, HFSS 11.0, and the conductivity 7 of the metal is set to be 5.8 10 S/m. In Fig. 4, the results of simulated and measured reflection coefficients are shown, and wherein the measured bandwidth for |S11| less than 10 dB is around 143 MHz or 9.1% of the target operation frequency, 1575 MHz, which is very close to the simulated one of 141 MHz or 9.0% of the GPS frequency. The mentioned bandwidths are broad enough to cover or resist the impact from the ambience, such as proximity effect of hands or holders. Besides, the trends of the simulated and the measured return loss curves are also quite similar.
0 Simulated |S11| Measured |S11|

Fig. 6.

Simulated un-normalized 3D directivity radiation pattern.

-5

-10 |S11| (dB)

-15

-20

-25 1500

1550

1600 Frequency (MHz)

1650

1700

Fig. 4.

Simulated and measured reflection coefficients.

In Fig. 5, the simulated and measured directivity values are compared. Within the whole observed band from 1500 MHz to 1700 MHz, all the measured directivity values are greater than 7.0 dBi and the gaps compared with the simulated values are smaller than 0.3 dB. At the target frequency, 1575 MHz, the measured directivity is 7.34 dBi, which is almost the same as the simulated one, 7.31 dBi.
8 0

Moreover, the simulated and measured antenna efficiency values are also shown in this figure. It is clearly seen the main trends are similar and the gap between the two efficiency curves are within 0.4 dB with the measured efficiency value of 0.36 dB or 92.0% at GPS frequency. In Fig. 6, the non-normalized simulated 3D directivity pattern is shown to reveal the high directivity of this designed antenna. The simulated directivity is around 7.31 dBi with its direction exactly towards the anticipated end-fire one of = 90 and = 90. Furthermore, the simulated and measured 2D gain radiation patterns in the planes of = 90, = 0, and = 90 are shown in Figs. 7 to 9, respectively. In Fig. 7, the measured radiation pattern has very good consistency with the simulated one. The main beam of the measured radiation pattern indeed directs to the desired end-fire direction of = 90 and = 90 with the F/B of 11.6 dB, the crosspolarization of 33.5 dB, and the 3-dB beamwidth of 73.
0 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 270 -40 90 300 60 330 30

6 Antenna efficiency (dB) Directivity (dB)

-30 -20 -10 0 210 180 Simulated co-pol component Measured co-pol component Simulated cross-pol component Measured cross-pol component 150 240 120

-2

Fig. 7.
0 1500 1550 1600 Frequency (MHz) 1650 -4 1700

Radiation patterns at 1575 MHz in the plane of = 90.

Fig. 5.

Simulated and measured directivity values and antenna efficiencies.

In Fig. 8 and Fig. 9, again, the simulated and measured patterns demonstrate almost identical shapes. The values of co-polarization and cross-polarization components in Fig. 8 at the angles of = 0 and = 180 coincide with those in Fig. 9

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0 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 270 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 210 180 Simulated co-pol component Measured co-pol component Simulated cross-pol component Measured cross-pol component 150 240 120 90 300 60 330 30

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under Contract NSC 97-2221-E-002-061-MY3, and by the Huawei corporation. We would like to thank Prof. D.C. Chang for his help for the antenna measurement in the 3D Satimo chamber at Oriental Institute of Technology, Taiwan. REFERENCES
[1] H.-C. Huang, J.-C. Lu, and P. Hsu, A planar Yagi-Uda antenna with a meandered driven dipole and a concave parabolic reflector, in Proc. Asia-Pacific Microw. Conf., Dec. 2010, pp. 995998. M. Sanad and Hassan, Mobile cellular/ GPS/ satellite antennas with both single-band and dual band feeding points, in Proc. IEEE AP-S Int. Symp., July 2000, pp. 298301. K. Yegin, AMPS/ PCS/ GPS active antenna for emergency call systems, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 255258, 2007. W. R. Deal, N. Kaneda, J. Sor, Y. Qian, and T. Itoh, A new quasiYagi antenna for planar active antenna arrays, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol 48, no. 6, pp. 910918, Jun. 2000. H.-C. Huang, J.-C. Lu, and P. Hsu, A simple planar high directivity Yagi-Uda antenna with a concave parabolic reflector, in Proc. IEEE Int. Workshop Antenna Tech., Mar. 2010. R. A. Alhalabi, and G. M. Rebeiz, High-gain Yagi-Uda antennas for millimeter-wave switched-beam systems, IEEE Trans. Antenna Propag., vol 57, no. 11, pp. 36723676, Oct. 2009. P. R. Grajek, B. Schoenlinner, and G. M. Rebeiz, A 24-GHz high-gain Yagi-Uda antenna array, IEEE Trans. Antenna Propag., vol 52, no. 5, pp. 12571261, May. 2004. Y. Yoon, B. Pan, J. Papapolymeround, M. M. Tentzeris, and M. G. Allen, A vertical wide-band surface-micromachined Yagi-Uda antenna, in Proc. IEEE AP-S Int. Symp., Jul. 2005, pp. 594597. M. Alsliety and D. Aloi, A low profile microstrip Yagi dipole antenna for wireless communications in the 5 GHz band, in Proc. IEEE Electro/ Information Tech. Conf., May. 2000, pp. 525528. D. Neculoiu, G. Konstantinidis, L. Bary, A. Muller, D. Vasilache, A. Stranvindris, P. Pon, and R. Plana, Membrane-supported Yagi-Uda MM-wave antennas, in Proc. European Conf. on Antennas Propag., Nov. 2006. N. Honma, T. Seki, and K. Nishikawa, Compact planar four-sector antenna comprising microstrip Yagi-Uda arrays in a square configuration, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 7, pp. 596 598, 2008. D. C. Nascimento, R. Schildberg, and J. C. da S. Lacava, Low-cost Yagi-Uda monopole array, in Proc. IEEE AP-S Int. Symp., Jul. 2008. R. S. Adams, B. ONeil, and J. L. Young, Integration of a microstrip circulator with planar Yagi antennas of several directors, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 34263432, Nov. 2008. K. Han, Y. Park, H. Choo, and I. Park, Broadband CPS-fed Yagi-Uda antenna, Electronics Lett., vol. 45, no. 24, pp. 12071209, Nov. 2009. R. Willmot, D. Kim, and D. Peroulis, A Yagi-Uda array of highefficiency wire bond antennas for on-chip radio applications, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 57, no. 12, pp. 33153321, Dec. 2009. K. M. Z. Shams and M. Ali, Study and design of a capacitively coupled polymeric internal antenna, IEEE Trans. Antenna Propag., vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 985993, Mar. 2005. GNSS Antenna Considerations for Handsets and Other Portables, 80V5228-8 Rev. D, Qualcomm, Sep. 2010, pp. 184. GPS Antenna Design Considerations, 80-VH684-1 Rev. A, Qualcomm, Jan. 2008, pp. 152. R. S. Elliot, Antenna Theory and Design, Revised Ed. New York: Wiley, 2003, pp. 482538.

[2]

[3]

Fig. 8.
0 -10 -20 -30 -40

Radiation patterns at 1575 MHz in the plane of = 0.

[4]
0 330 30

[5]
300 60

[6]

-50 270 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 210 180 Simulated co-pol component Measured co-pol component 150 240

90

[7]

[8]
120

[9]

Simulated cross-pol component Measured cross-pol component

[10]

Fig. 9.

Radiation patterns at 1575 MHz in the plane of = 90.

[11]

at the same angles. Besides, the mentioned values of Fig. 8 at the angles of = 90 and = 270 also are the same with the values in Fig. 7 at the angles of = 0 and = 180. Last, the co-polarization and the cross-polarization components in Fig. 9 at the angles of = 90 and = 270 are also consistent with the values in Fig. 7 at the angles of = 90 and = 270, respectively, and the 3-dB beamwidth in is around 112. V. CONCLUSION The printed GPS Yagi type antenna theoretically proposed in [1] has been implemented and measured with the fine tuning of the antenna dimensions owing to the inclusion of the consideration of the feeding SMA connector. The measured antenna performance is very close to that of the simulated, which demonstrates good feasibility to enhance GPS performance for mobile devices. Based on this proposed design, multi-band end-fire radiations from a printed antenna can also be achieved by skillful and innovative modifications.

[12] [13]

[14] [15]

[16]

[17] [18] [19]

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