LETTERS International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 2, No.

6, November 2009

Effect of Slots in Ground Plane and Patch on Microstrip Antenna Performance

Raj Kumar1, J. P. Shinde2 and M. D. Uplane3
1

Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DU), Girinagar, Pune-410025,India Email: shivani40_raj@yahoo.in 2 E&TC Department , Sinhgad Academy of Engineering, Pune Email: jpshinde22@yahoo.co.in 3 Head of Department of Electronics , Shivaji University, Kolhapur

AbstractThis paper presents the effect of the slots in ground plane and patch on resonant frequency, impedance bandwidth, gain and side lobe. The microstrip antennas have been designed on r = 4.3 and h = 1.53 mm. It has been observed as the slot length increases the resonant frequency shifted to the lower side by 19.05 % and 5.04 % of fundamental frequency of slotted patch and slotted ground plane patch respectively. This indicates the size reduction of slotted patch antenna is more than slotted ground plane patch. Similarly as the slot width increases the resonant frequency further shifted to lower frequency side. The shift in the fr due to length variation is more in both case in comparison to width variation. The impedance bandwidth, Gain, side lobe and radiation efficiency effect due to slots have also been studied. This type of study is useful to design the compact antennas for Mobile communications. Index TermsMicrostrip Antenna,Resonant Frequency , slotted patch, Bandwidth and Miniaturization

II.

DESIGN OF RECTANGULAR MICROSTRIP PATCH

Rectangular Microstrip patch has been designed on r = 4.3 and h = 1.53 mm. It is decided to design the rectangular patch for 2.42 GHz. For a dielectric substrate of thickness 'h', relative dielectric constant r and antenna operating frequency fr. For the efficient antenna the width and length of the patch can be calculated by W = c/2f [(r + 1) /2]-1/2 and L = c / 2f e 2l Where, e l can be calculated from [8]. The antenna has also been designed using electromagnetic simulator

III.

SLOT IN THE RECTANGULAR PATCH

GROUND

PLANE

OF

I. INTRODUCTION
Mobile communication systems (GSM900, GSM1800, UMTS and PCS), wireless computer links, remote controls, satellite mobile phones and wireless internet have shown a tremendous growth in present days. Now a days, the size of electronics needed for mobile applications have decreased drastically, where as their functionality has increased. The antennas required for the various applications should be of small size, lightweight, low profile, broad bandwidth, low cost and integrable with MIC/MMIC circuits [1-3]. The principal disadvantages of Microstrip antenna is narrow bandwidth, poor efficiency and size [4]. For efficient radiation, the size of Microstrip antenna should be /2. If the size reduces less than /2, the radiation efficiency of antenna decreases along with other antenna parameters. The miniaturization of antenna and improvement in bandwidth can be achieved by etching the slot in ground and patch of Microstrip antenna of proper length and width [5-7]. This paper concentrates on the effect on antenna resonant frequency and other antenna parameters due to slots in patch and ground plane to design the compact antenna with improved bandwidth and efficiency.

In the simple rectangular microstrip patch, three slots in the ground plane have been made as shown in Figure 1. The three slots have been made along the axis of resonating length. The two are in one side and third is in other side in the midest of two. The slot length is varied around the axis of the resonating length of the rectangular patch. This antenna has been studied by varying slots length and width in the ground plane. The reference antenna and its prototypes were designed and studied in depth using Electromagnetic simulator. The antenna has a rectangular radiating patch of dimensions L x W printed on the same substrate as that used for simple reference antenna. Three identical slots are etched in the antennas ground plane and aligned with an equal spacing of L/4 and in parallel with the patches radiating edges or the y-axis as shown in Figure 2. In this design, the slot width are kept very narrow 2mm and have a slot length of (lin + lout) where lin and lout are the slot lengths inside and outside the projection image of the rectangular radiating patch in the ground plane. The microstrip patch is fed coaxially at distance of L/4 from the centre of the non-radiating edge for good impedance matching. The antenna has been studied using electromagnetic software.

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2009 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

LETTERS International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 2, No. 6, November 2009
IV. NEARLY SQUARE MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA Nearly square microstrip Patch was designed on a FR4 substrate r = 4.3 and h = 1.53mm with aspect Ratio = 0.985. The microstrip patch was coaxially fed at position (- 4.5, - 5.5) mm along the diagonal as shown in Figure 3. The 4 slots have been etched in patch. The effect of slot has been studied by varying length and width of slot. The effect on impedance bandwidth, half power beamwidth, gain and efficiency has been measured as the slot length and width varies. efficiency increases to 93.27% for rect-1, 91.55% for Rect-2, 98.10% for rect3, and 92.45% for rect-4. Table 2 shows the behavior of fundamental frequency as the slot width varies. As the slot width of Rect -2 antenna increases from 1 mm to 6 mm, the resonant frequency shifted slightly to lower side. The impedance bandwidth of Rect - 2 antennas with width 2mm exhibits maximum bandwidth 42.9 MHz. The gain of the antenna increases by 0.32dB and efficiency by 6.28%.

Figure 1.Microstrip Rectangular Patch Antenna

Figure 2. Slotted ground plane Rectangular Microstrip Patch

Figure 4. Simulated Return loss Vs Frequency of Rectangular Microstrip Antennas TABLE 1 PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA WITH DIFFERENT SLOTS LENGTH IN GROUND PLANE Ant. Ref. Rect-1 Rect-2 Rect-3 Rect-4 r = 4.3, h = 1.53mm, L = 29.57mm, W = 38.08mm fr R. L. BW Gain lin mm GHz (dB) MHz (dB) 0 2.42 -22.55 36.2 7.293 10 2.353 -18.58 37.2 6.908 12 2.339 -22.23 38.8 7.389 14 2.313 -44.52 31.3 7.30 16 2.298 -11.91 17.7 7.251 % 88.84 93.27 91.55 98.10 92.45

Figure 3. Nearly Square Microstrip Patch with Four Slots

IV.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

TABLE 2 PERFORMANCE COMPARISON FOR RECT- 2 FOR DIFFERENT SLOT WIDTHS IN THE GROUND PLANE Slot Width (mm) 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 4 5 6 fr (GHz) 2.3999 2.3901 2.377 2.3493 2.3454 2.3417 2.3381 2.3359 Return loss (dB) -9.018 -27.68 -20.39 -19.84 -20.16 -22.23 -22.88 -23.16 Gain (dB) 7.035 7.007 7.005 7.065 7.103 7.362 7.326 % 92.40 91.65 91.55 92.59 93.32 98.29 98.68 BW MHz --39.9 42.9 41.5 39.5 38.8 37.6 36.6

A. Slot in Ground plane The simple rectangular microstrip patch antenna Ref. and its four prototypes of the proposed antenna (Rect-1 to 4) were designed on a FR4 substrate r = 4.3 and h = 1.53 mm. The dimensions of the microstrip patch have been taken L x W = 29.57 x 38.08 mm at the fundamental resonant frequency of fr = 2.42 GHz. The slot length lout for the prototypes was fixed to be (L/4) and the slot length lin is varied in steps of 2 mm from 10 mm to 16 mm. The reference antenna is having lin = lout =0. The feed position has been taken 5.3 mm down from the centre of the antenna. The effect of embedding meandering slots length on the return loss and resonant frequency is clearly visible in Figure 4. From the Figure 4, it is clear as the slot length increases, the fundamental resonant frequency shifted to lower frequency side which indicates the size reduction of antenna. For a fixed lout, but with increasing lin it is observed that the fundamental resonant frequency is lowered. In the case of rect-1 with the slot lengths of 10 mm the resonant frequency is initially shifted to 2.353 GHz with Return loss 18.58 dB, BW 37.2 MHz, directive gain of 6.908dBi and radiation efficiency of 93.27%. The Rect-2 exhibits the maximum bandwidth 38.8 MHz and rect-4 exhibits 17.7 MHz bandwidth as shown in table 1. The measured radiation efficiency of the ref. antenna is 87.89%. The
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TABLE 3 COMPARISON OF VARYING SLOT LENGTHS AND WIDTH OF NEARLY SQUARE MICROSTRIP PATCH Slot width 1.5 mm
Slot L mm 3 5 8 10 12 14 fr GHz 1.714 1.704 1.608 1.544 1.465 1.388 R.L. (dB) -23.29 -31.94 -30.54 -18.72 -15.22 -17.19 Gain (dB) 6.106 6.109 5.98 5.865 5.588 5.570 Slot Width mm 1 1.5 2 2.5

Slot length = 5mm

fr (GHz) 1.714 1.704 1.694 1.686 R. L. (dB) -22.61 -31.74 -29.41 -31.17 Gain (dB) 6.11 6.12 6.10 6.09

B. Slot in Patch Nearly square microstrip Patch was designed on a FR4 substrate r = 4.3 and h = 1.53mm. The 4 slots have been

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LETTERS International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 2, No. 6, November 2009
made by etching in the patch. The effect of slot has been studied by varying length and width of slots. Table 3 reveals as the length of slot varies from 3 mm to 14 mm with fix width 1.5mm, the resonant frequency of the patch shifted from 1.714 GHz to 1.388 GHz i.e 19.05 % down of fundamental frequency The simulated gain of antenna decreases drastically from 6.106 dB to 5.57 dB. With the varying length, efficiency and impedance bandwidth of the patch are also decreases as shown in Table 6. Table 3 also shows the effect of width on the antenna parameters. As the width of slot increases from 1 mm to 2.5 mm, the resonant frequency shifted lower side from 1.7148 GHz to 1.6861 GHz. The gain, HPBW, efficiency and impedance bandwidth remain almost same as shown in table 3 and table 6.
TABLE 4 COMP. OF RADIATION PATTERNS OF PROPOSED ANTENNA TABLE 5 ANTENNA RECT.2 FOR FOR DIFFERENT SLOT WIDTHS

frequency shifted towards lower side. The effect on resonant frequency shift is more pronounced for slots in patch than slots in ground plane. This indicates the more size reduction due to slots in patch in comparison to slots in ground plane. It has been observed that bandwidth and gain are more affected due to slot in patch than slot in ground plane. The return loss variation exhibits impedance match as the function of slot length and width. By proper selection of feed, slot length and width, the antenna performance can be optimized which can be effectively and efficiently utilized for mobile communications Applications.

V.

RADIATION PATTERN MEASUREMENT

The radiation patterns of all the antennas were simulated for the entire prototype antenna Rect-1 to Rect -4. In table 4, the Gain (dB), Half Power Beam Width (HPWB) and side lobe in dB have been tabulated. It is observed as the slot length increases, the side lobe remain same except the rect -1 antennas the side lobe level is better around 15.4 dB in comparison to other antennas. A Good broadside Radiation pattern HPBW of 89.3 is observed for rect-1and 71.1 for rect-4. Table 5 shows as the slot width increase from 1 mm to 5mm, the HPBW varies from 70.8 deg. to 69.7 deg. and side lobe levels remain almost same. Table 6 shows, for nearly square patch the HPBW decreases from 114.9 deg. to 100.6 deg. as slot length increases from 3 mm to 14 mm. But effect of width on HPBW, efficiency and BW is negligible for nearly square patch as shown Table 6. The radiation patterns of Rect.-1 antenna have been shown in Figure 5.
TABLE 6 COMPARISON OF VARYING SLOT LENGTHS AND WIDTH OF NEARLY SQUARE PATCH

Figure 5. Radiation patterns of Rect 1 antenna.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Authors acknowledge the support of all the staff of Department of Electronics Engg., Defence Institute of Advance Technology, Girinagar, Pune and the research scholar of Microwave and Millimeter wave Antenna Lab. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] D. M. Pozar and D. H. Schaubert ed., Microstrip Antennas, New York, IEEE Press. K. R. Carver and J. W. Mink, Microstrip antenna technology, IEEE Trans.,AP-29, pp. 2-24, Jan. 1981. R. Garg, Progress in Microstrip antennas , IETE Technical Review, Vol. 18,No.2 & 3 pp .8598,March-June 2001. R. B. Waterhouse, S. D. Targibski and D. M. Koktoff,Design and performance of small printed antenna, IEEE Trans.,AP-46, 11, Nov. 1998, P. 1629 S. Dey and R. Mittra, Compact Microstrip patch antenna, MOTL, Vol. 13, Sept. 1996, p. 12. K. L. Wong and W. S. Chen,Compact Microstrip Antenna with dual frequency operation, Electronics Letters Vol. 33, no. 8, April 1997, p. 646. R. M. Vane aet.al,A shorted Rectangular Microstrip Antenna with slots in ground plane, IE(I), JournalET, Vol. 87, July 2006, pp. 19-20. M. Kirchning et.al,Accurate Model for open end effect of Microstrip line, Electron. Lett.17,Feb.1981, pp. 123-5.

[4]

[5] [6]

[7]

[8]

VII.

CONCLUSIONS

The Rectangular Microstrip Patch Antenna has been analyzed for the varying slot lengths and width in patch and the ground plane of the antenna. It is demonstrated as the slot length and width increases, the resonant
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