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Receiving Performance Enhancement of Active GPS Antenna with Periodic Structure

Han-Nien Lin1 , Ke-Wen Lin1, 2 , Chung-Wei Kuo3 , and Yu-Jie Huang1 Department of Communications Engineering, Feng-Chia University 100 Wen-Hua Road, Taichung 40724, Taiwan, R.O.C. 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, National Chiao-Tung University 1001 University Road, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan, R.O.C. 3 Ph.D. Program in Electrical and Communications Engineering Feng-Chia University, 100 Wen-Hua Road, Taichung 40724, Taiwan, R.O.C.
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Abstract The purpose of this study is to design the high gain active GPS antenna module and
analyze the performance improvement implemented with periodic structure. Since the utilization of high-impedance surface of periodic structures as reector not only signicantly reduces the antenna prole with phase enhancement, but it will also enhance its gain and directivity performance. We rst investigated the electromagnetic radiation suppression characteristic of Electromagnetic Band-Gap (EBG) structure and utilized the microstrip measurement method to verify the simulation result for required stopband and performance. In this study, we design microstrip antenna and periodic structure with center frequency at 1.575 GHz for Global Positioning System (GPS) to investigate the eect with applications of EBG structure on antenna. Microstrip antenna has the industrial demanding characteristics of light weight, low prole, and easy integration with circuits on PCB. We investigated surface wave suppression and axial ratio improvement with the antenna surrounded by matching resonant EBG structure. Finally, we design the front-end low noise amplier (LNA) with center frequency at 1.575 GHz to integrate with antenna to further improve GPS receiving sensitivity.

1. INTRODUCTION

Due to the ever increasing popularization of navigation devices in recent years, there is urgent demanding for antennas with characteristics of low-prole, light-weight, compactness, easy-fabrication, low-cost, and easy-integration with PCB. We therefore dedicated to advantageous micristrip antenna with center frequencies around 1575 MHz in this study for popular Global Positioning System (GPS) applications. The electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure [1] has gained the most attention in the microwave community and becomes a major research topic recently. The most attractive characteristic of EBG material is the band-stop and slow-wave response from the periodic arrangement of structure or component. It thus results in high surface impedance and energy band-gap (stop-band or pass-band) due to impedance discontinuity between air and highimpedance surface, and therefore prevents electromagnetic wave propagating out of the periodic structure. However, this kind of special electromagnetic material does not exist itself in nature, it is often categorized as articial magnetic conductor (AMC), perfect magnetic conductor (PMC), or even meta-material [2] by Yen et al.. The frequency selective surfaces (FSS) [3] frequently found in 2-dimensional applications also belongs to this category. Since microstrip antenna is an resonant structure, its radiation loss and Q factor are both inverse proportional to substrate thickness. Therefore the thicker the substrate is, the wider the impedancematching bandwidth will be. However, the increasing coupling of the energy also results in more surface wave occurring adverse coupling at substrate or edge of antenna. The implementation of periodic structure on microstrip antenna can suppress the surface wave propagation and obtain better axial ratio by reducing interfering scattering from surface wave. In addition to surface wave suppression by periodic structure, the integration of antenna and low-noise amplier can further improve receiving sensitivity with increasing S/N ratio.
2. ANALYSIS OF EBG STRUCTURE DESIGN

From Bragg condition [2], the completely constructed reection phenomena from radiation would result from periodic structure with half-wavelength or its integral multiple as period dimension and further result in energy band-gap characteristics. The stop-band is usually determined by

periodic separation EBG between metallic components. The stop-band and center frequency of EBG structure presented in this paper is around 1.575 GHz for GPS system. When FR4 substrate (r = 4.4 and thickness 1.6 mm) is used in this design, the resonant wavelength in dielectric and unit cell dimension EBG can be calculated from Equations (1) and (2) respectively. While conventional EBG structure is capacitive itself between periodic metallic components, we also implement vias to reduce dimension of metallic patch by introducing L according to Equations (3) and (4) due to eective inductance of via loop itself. The eect of increased equivalent inductance and capacitance is able to shift stop-band or energy band-gap to lower frequency. The dimension and EBG structure investigated in this paper are 5 5 Unit cells as shown in Figure 1 and Table 1 respectively. The design parameters can be calculated from the following: L = 0 h W 0 (1 + r ) cosh1 C = 1 = LC 1 L = BW = C (1) 2W + g g (2) (3) (4)

where L is the equivalent inductance, 0 the permeability in free space, h the thickness of substrate, C the equivalent capacitance, W the width of metallic patch, r the equivalent dielectric constant, g the spacing between metallic patches, 0 the resonant angular frequency, and the intrinsic impedance of free space. We rst calculated the basic design parameters from the above equations, and then utilized the full-wave FDTD (Finite-Dierence Time-Domain) electromagnetic simulation software to obtain the optimal geometric structure design of periodic pattern. The resulted transmission characteristic is shown in Figure 2, where the bandwidth of stop-band is around 600 MHz (1.42 GHz) to meet 20 dB attenuation specication.

Width of metallic patch (W ) Spacing (g ) Substrate thickness (h) Radius of via

size 16 mm 2 mm 1.6 mm 0.5 mm

Figure 1: Schematic of periodic structure.

0

Table 1: Dimensions of periodic structure.

transmission coefficient (dB)

-10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

frequency (GHz)

Figure 2: Simulated transmission coecient of periodic structure.

3 3. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT COMPARISON OF ACTIVE MICROSTRIP ANTENNA

The low noise amplier with center frequency f r = 1.575 GHz is designed on FR4 substrate, where the dielectric constant r = 4.4 and thickness is 1.6 mm. The physical circuit of LNA is shown in Figure 3. The measured characteristic S parameters, noise gure, and simulated stability results of low noise amplier are shown in Figure 4 to 6 respectively. When FR4 substrate (r = 4.4 and thickness 1.6 mm) is used for mircostrip antenna design, the dimension is designed as one half of resonant wavelength in dielectric with resonant frequency f r = 1.575 GHz as shown in Figure 7. It could be found that the excellent agreement between simulation and measurement results has been achieved in Figure 8, and also the increasing bandwidth after low noise amplier added to the antenna. Figure 9 shows that the simulated and measured axialratio (AR) of antenna both fall between 5 and 6. The measured 3-dimensional radiation pattern of the microstrip antenna is shown in Figure 10.
15 10 5 0

(dB)

-5 -10 -15 -20 -25 -30 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 S11 measurement S21 measurement S22 measurement

frequency (GHz)

Figure 3: Photograph of low noise amplier.

45 40 35

Figure 4: Measured characteristic parameters of LNA.

1.2 1.18 1.16 1.14

noise figure (dB)

30

1.12
25 20 15 10 5 0 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Mu1

1.1 1.08 1.06 1.04 1.02 1 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

frequency (GHz)

frequency (GHz)

Figure 5: Simulated noise gure of LNA.

5 0 -5

Figure 6: Simulated stability of LNA.

S 11 (dB)

-10 -15 -20 -25 -30 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 simulation measurement measurement with LNA

frequency (GHz)

Figure 7: Dimensions of antenna.

Figure 8: S11 comparison between simulation and measurement.

4
16 14 12

axial ratio (dB)

10 8 6 4 2 1.54

1.55

1.56

1.57

1.58

1.59

1.6

1.61

frequency (GHz)

Figure 9: Simulated and measured axial-ratio (AR) of antenna around and @1.575 GHz.

Figure 10: 3-dimensional radiation pattern of the microstrip antenna @1.575 GHz.
5 0 -5 -10

S 11 (dB)

-15 -20 -25 -30 -35 -40 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 2 simulation measurement measurement with LNA

frequency (GHz)

Figure 11: Photograph of antenna and EBG combination.

Figure 12: Simulated and measured S11 comparison.

4. INTEGRATION MODULE OF ANTENNA AND PERIODIC STRUCTURE

To suppress the surface on PCB substrate, we implement the periodic structure around the microstrip antenna to form the integrated antenna module as shown in Figure 11. The simulated and measured S11 parameters are shown in Figure 12. It could be found from the results that the resonant frequency shifts upward due to resonant dimension reduction of antenna. The simulated and measured axial-ratios are shown in Figure 13, and it reveals that the AR gains 12 dB improvement after implementing periodic structure. The measured 3-dimensional radiation pattern of the integration of microstrip antenna and EBG structure is shown in Figure 14. In the last, we show in Table 2 the performance comparison before and after periodic structure is added to the microstrip antenna.

5
11 10 9

axial ratio (dB)

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1.54

1.55

1.56

1.57

1.58

1.59

1.6

1.61

frequency (GHz)

Figure 13: Simulated and measured axial-ratio (AR) of antenna surrounded by periodic structure around and @1.575 GHz.

Figure 14: 3-dimensional radiation pattern of the microstrip antenna surrounded by periodic structure @1.575 GHz. Table 2: Performance comparison for antennas. Antenna structure Microstrip antenna Microstrip antenna with periodic structure 5. CONCLUSIONS Input return loss (dB) 21.20 16.59 Measured gain (dBi) 1.02 dBi 1.28 dBi Measured directivity (dB) 6.46(dB) 7.15(dB) Measured eciency 28.61% 25.86% AR (dB) 5.4 1.5

In this paper, we have successfully improved axial ratio characteristic for GPS antenna (AR from 5.4 dB to 1.5 dB) by surrounding the periodic structure around microstrip antenna. Not only 3 dB AR requirement for circular polarization is met from this study, but antenna gain is also increased as well. We also integrate the GPS antenna with low noise amplier to improve SNR and receiving sensitivity as shown in simulated and measured results. The resultant active antenna also shows the increasing bandwidth for the system.
REFERENCES

1. Yang., F., Electromagnetic band gap structures in antenna engineering, The Cambridge RF and Microwave Engineering Series, New York, 2009. 2. Caloz, C. and T. Itoh., Electromagnetic Metamaterials: Theory and Design, Wiley-Interscience, New Jersey, 2006. 3. Munk., B. A., Frequency Selective Surfaces: Theory and Design, Wiley-Interscience, New York, 2000. 4. Sievenpiper, D. F., Sievenpiper, high-impedance electromagnetic surfaces, Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1999.