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A New Fractal Antenna for Super Wideband Applications

Abolfazl Azari Young Researchers Club, Isalmic Azad University, Gonabad Branch, Iran

Abstract Modern communication systems require small size and wideband antennas. Fractal
geometries have been used to fabricate multi-band and broad-band antennas. In addition, fractal geometries can be miniaturized the size of antennas. In this work, I have investigated a new fractal antenna with multi-band and broad-band properties. The proposed design is a loaded the 2nd iteration of a new fractal geometry to a square loop antenna. The simulation is performed via SuperNEC electromagnetic simulator software. The simulation results show that the proposed antenna is applicable in 130 GHz frequency range. Radiation patterns are also studied. 1. INTRODUCTION

Antenna plays such an important role in communication systems and one of the main components of ultra wideband (UWB) communication systems is an UWB antenna. UWB communication systems require smaller antennas with more bandwidth, thus the design, simulation and fabrication of these antennas are very important. This is the cause of widespread research on UWB antennas in recent years. One of the good solution is using fractal geometry to design of UWB antennas. Applying fractals to the antenna elements allows for smaller size, multi-band and broad-band properties [14]. Fractals have self-similar shapes and can be subdivided in parts such that each part is a reduced size copy of the whole. Self-similarity of fractals causes multi-band and broad-band properties and their complicated shapes provide design of antennas with smaller size. Fractals have convoluted and jagged shapes with many corners that these discontinuities increase bandwidth and the eective radiation of antennas. Fractals can be placed long electrical length in to a small area using their ability of space-lling [59]. Fractals describe by one algorithm or repetitive function, iterating several times that integral dimension does not dene for them. Several wire antenna congurations based on fractal geometries have been investigated including Koch, Minkowski, Hilbert, and fractal tree antennas in recent years. These antennas have been simulated using the moment method, as well as fabricated and measured. In this paper, a new fractal geometry is presented. By applying this fractal generator to square loop antenna elements, I have achieved a super wideband antenna. The moment method based electromagnetic simulator SuperNEC has been used for the design and simulation of the proposed antenna. According to the results this new fractal antenna is applicable in 1 GHz30 GHz. Also, the radiation patterns are studied in multi frequencies.
2. ANTENNA SPECIFICATIONS

The geometric construction of this new fractal curve starts with a straight line, called the initiator, which is shown in Figure 1 (n = 0). This is partitioned in to four equal parts, and the two centric segments are replaced with three others of the same length which are formed like a trapezoid with the indentation angle = 60 . This is the rst iterated version of the new fractal geometry and is called the generator, which is shown in Figure 1 (n = 1). The process is repeated in the generation of the 2nd iteration, which is shown in Figure 1 (n = 2). Each segment in the rst iteration (generator) is 1/4 the length of the initiator. There are ve such segments. Thus for the nth iteration, the length of the curve is (5/4)n . An iterative function system (IFS) can be used to dene the generator. The transformations to obtain the segments of the generator are: 1 1 1 3 1 sin 60 1 4 0 0 4 cos 60 4 4 4 0 8 W2 = 1 sin 60 1 cos 60 0 W3 = 0 1 1 sin 60 W1 = 0 1 4 0 4 4 4 4 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 5 3 4 cos 60 4 sin 60 8 4 0 4 1 1 W = (1) W4 = 1 0 1 5 4 sin 60 4 cos 60 4 sin 60 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 1

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The generator is then obtained as: W (A) = W1 (A) W2 (A) W3 (A) W4 (A) W5 (A) (2)

This process can be repeated for higher iterations of this fractal geometry. Also, the similarity dimension of the geometry can be calculated as: D= log 5 = 1.16096 log 4 (3)

The proposed design is based on a loaded the 2nd iteration of the new generator to a square loop antenna. If the length of each side at square is assumed to be X , with applying the 2nd iteration of this generator, the length will be X (5/4)2 . In this paper, I have supposed the length of each side at square loop is 8 cm and 2 mm in diameter. The feed location is placed at the corner. The structure of this fractal antenna is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Iterations of the proposed fractal geometry.

Figure 2: Antenna structure.

Simulation Results: The MOM (method of moments) is a very powerful technique which can be applied to the analysis of three dimensional structures. MOM is used for simulation of this antenna based on the SuperNEC electromagnetic simulator software. One starts with dening the antenna structure for software. The wire conductivity of all conductors is assumed to be 5.7E7. The voltage source is 1 volt and the frequency range is from 1 GHz35 GHz. Figure 3 shows the simulated VSWR (voltage standing wave ratio) in entire bandwidth. According to the simulated VSWR, this super wideband antenna is applied between frequencies 1 GHz30 GHz and approximately can be matched with a 50 coaxial cable. Also, Figures 4 and 5 present real and imaginary parts of the input impedance.

Figure 3: VSWR for the proposed fractal antenna.

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To study the radiation pattern, Figure 6 shows radiation patterns for ve frequencies including 1 GHz, 10 GHz, 20 GHz, 30 GHz, and 35 GHz for the xy , xz , and yz planes.

Figure 4: Real part of the input impedance.

Figure 5: Imaginary part of the input impedance.

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 6: (a) Radiation pattern (xy plane). (b) Radiation pattern (xz plane). (c) Radiation pattern (yz plane). 3. CONCLUSION

The concepts of fractals can be applied to the design of ultra wideband antennas. Applying fractals to antennas allows for miniaturization of antennas with multi-band and broad-band properties. The proposed design is a loaded 2nd iteration of a new fractal geometry to a square loop antenna. The proposed structure has a dimensions of 8 8 cm2 . The simulated results conducted by the SuperNEC electromagnetic simulator. Due to the simulation results, the proposed design is a super wideband antenna which is applicable for frequencies between 1 GHz30 GHz. This super wideband antenna is simple to design and easy to fabricate.
REFERENCES

1. Gianvittorio, J. P., Fractals, MEMS, and FSS electromagnetic devices miniaturization and multiple resonances, Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003. 2. Werner, D. H. and S. Ganguly, An overview of fractal antenna engineering research, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 45, 3857, Feb. 2003. 3. Vinoy, K. J., Fractal shaped antenna elements for wide- and multi-band wireless applications, Thesis, Pennsylvania, Aug. 2002.

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4. Gianvittorio, J. P. and Y. R. Samii, Fractal antennas: A novel antenna miniaturization technique and applications, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 1, Feb. 2002. 5. Werner, D. H. and R. Mittra, Frontiers in Electromagnetics, IEEE Press, New York, 2000. 6. Puente, C., J. Romeu, R. Pous, J. Ramis, and A. Hijazo, Small but long koch fractal monopole, Electronics Letters, 1998. 7. Cohen, N., Fractal antenna application in wireless telecommunications, Proceedings of Electronics Industries Forum of New England, 4349, 1997. 8. Gouyet, J., Physics and Fractal Structures, Springer, New York, 1996. 9. Falconer, K. J., Fractal Geometry: Mathematical Foundations and Applications, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1990. 10. Azari, A. and J. Rowhani, Ultra wideband fractal microstrip antenna design, Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 2, 712, 2008. 11. Azari, A., Super wideband fractal antenna design, IEEE MAPE, Beijing, China, 2009. 12. Azari, A., A new fractal monopole antenna for super wideband applications, IEEE MICC, Kuala lumpur, Malaysia, 2009. 13. Azari, A. and J. Rowhani, Ultra wideband fractal antenna design, IASTED ARP, Maryland, USA, 2008.