2014 IEEE Students Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science

Performance Enhancement of Coaxial Feed

Microstrip Patch Antenna Using
Left-Handed Metamaterial Cover

Pradeep Paswan, Vivekanand Mishra, P. N. Patel, Surabhi Dwivedi

Electronics Engineering Department, S. V. National Institute of Technology, Surat-395007, Gujarat, India
paswan_pradeep@yahoo.co.in, vive@eced.svnit.ac.in, pnp@eced.svnit.ac.in, sur_2310@yahoo.co.in

AbstractThe conventional microstrip patch an- II. ANTENNA DESIGN

tenna (MSA) have low gain and low directivity. This pa-
per presents coaxial feed rectangular microstrip patch Fig. 1 represents conventional coaxial feed microstrip
antenna along with left-handed metamaterial (LHM) patch antenna. The basic microstrip patch antenna consist
cover. The Proposed metamaterial cover increases the of three layers. The dielectric substrate is placed between
gain and directivity of the antenna in comparison to a ground plate (lower layer) and radiating metallic patch
conventional microstrip patch antenna alone. The an- (top layer). The proposed microstrip patch antenna is
tenna has been designed for 8-10 GHz, hence it can realized on FR4 substrate r =4.4 and thickness (t) of
be used for X-band application. S-Parameters (S11 and
substrate is 1.56 mm and ground plate and radiating patch
S22 ) are used for verifying the double-negative proper-
ties of the proposed metamaterial cover. The proposed is made of copper. The resonant frequency of proposed
antenna is simulated by using Ansoft HFSS. antenna is 9 GHz. The dimension of radiating patch is
calculated by equation (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) where
KeywordsMicrostrip patch antenna, Coaxial feed- L, W are length and width of radiating patch [12]. The
ing, metamaterial, LHM cover, Directivity. dimensions of ground plate is calculated by equation (6)
and (7) where Lg , Wg are length and width of ground plate
I. INTRODUCTION [13].
The microstrip patch antenna is widely used in wireless r + 1 r 1 h
communication equipment because of its numerous advan- ef f = + [1 + 12 ]1/2 (1)
tages such as low profile, low weight and low cost etc., 2 2 w
but it suffer from low gain, low directivity and narrow
bandwidth [1]. To overcome this problem, in this paper W=
c
(2)
we have presented the metamaterial cover over patch at
q
(r +1)
height 10.1 mm which improves the gain and directivity of 2fo 2
antenna [2]. Metamaterials are artificial materials, which
has simultaneously negative permittivity () and perme- c
Lef f = (3)
ability () over some frequency range [3]. The concept 2f0 ef f
of metamaterial were proposed theoretically by Veselago
(1968) [3] but it was realized experimentally by D. R. (ef f + 0.3)(w/h + 0.264)
Smith et al. in 2000 [4]. Metamaterial has unusual electro- L = 0.412h (4)
(ef f 0.258)(w/h + 0.8)
magnetic properties, which is usually not present in nature
[5]. Because of some interesting properties of metamaterial,
it has several names like left-handed metamaterial (LHM), L = Lef f 2L (5)
double negative materials (DNG) and negative index ma-
terials (NIM) [6]. The refractive index by using Maxwell Lg = 6h + L (6)

equation is given by n = . As metamaterials has both
 and negative, n takes negative root hence refractive Wg = 6h + W (7)
index of LHM is negative over some frequency range. This
negative refractive index properties of metamaterial is used The patch dimension (W L) have been calculated as
to realize a focusing flat lens [7]. (10.14 mm 7.27 mm) and for ground plate dimension
The left-handed metamaterial as cover over patch antenna (Wg Lg ) have been calculated as (19.5 mm 16.63 mm).
act as lens when it is illuminated by the electromagnetic The proposed microstrip patch antenna is excited by coax-
(EM) fields radiated from the patch antenna, which is ial feed. Coaxial feed can be placed at any desired location
similar to the focusing of convex lens on the propagation inside patch for perfect matching with input impedance.
of light waves [8][9]. Many papers have been published To find the antenna feed position the antenna input
based on focusing effect of left-handed metamaterial cover impedance is matched to 50 by formula cos2 (y0 /L).
to improve gain and directivity of antenna [10][11]. Antenna feed location (y0 ) is obtained 1.47 mm.
978-1-4799-2526-1/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

Fig. 1: Geometry of coaxial feed microstrip patch antenna
(a) top view (b) side view
The Left-handed metamaterial cover consist of periodic
arrays of metallic split ring resonators (SRR) and thin
metallic wires [14]. Split ring resonator (SRR) and wire
together form a material with both negative permittivity
() and permeability () over some frequencies [15]. Fig.
2 represents LHM cover consist of 3X3 unit cell (SRR +
wire) of metamaterial. The length and width of LHM cover
is same as ground plate and lattice distance x and y is 5
mm. If we increasing the number of periodic structure,
the bandwidth is decreases. To get the better antenna
characteristics the optimum dimension of LHM cover is
chosen. The LHM cover is placed on patch antenna at
height (hm) as shown in fig. 3. hm can be varied to obtain
the better antenna characteristics, so the best height after
optimization was 10.1 mm.
Fig. 2: Left-Hand Metamaterial (LHM) cover
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Fig. 3: Microstrip patch antenna with LHM cover
Fig. 4 represents single SRR and wire structure of
metamaterial cover. The dimensions of this model are the
same as described in [16]. A 0.25 mm thick substrate
with = 4.4, loss tangent of 0.02 is assumed. The copper
thickness is 0.017 mm. The width of the wire structure is
0.14 mm and its length is 2.5 mm. The outer ring length
of the SRR is 2.2 mm and line-width of both rings is 0.2
mm. The gap in each ring is 0.3 mm and the gap between
the inner and outer rings is 0.15 mm [16].
Fig. 4: Single SRR and Wire structure (unit cell of LHM
cover )
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Ansoft High frequency structure simulator (HFSS)
software is used to model and simulate the microstrip
patch antenna. HFSS has been widely used in design of
patch antenanas, microwave filters and other microwave
components. It can be used to calculate and plot S-
Parameters (S11 and S22 ), bandwidth, gain and directivity.
The effective medium theory is used to extract the and
from the reflection (S11 ) and transmission (S21 ) coefficient
parameters (S-parameters) using smith approach [16]. The
following equations are used to determine the effective
parameters where where n is the refractive index, z is the
impedance and d is the height of slab as described in [16].
1 1
n= cos1 [ (1 S11
2
+ S21
2
)] (8)
kd 2S21
 s
(1 + s11 )2 + s221
z= (9)
(1 s11 )2 s221

The permittivity () and permeability () are then calcu-

lated from = nz and = n/z [16]. By using S-parameters
of unit cell of metamaterial cover and MATLAB code, the
metamaterial characteristics have been verified. The value
of () and () is simulatensouly negative for short range
of frequnecy as shown in fig. 5 , it confirms left-handed
nature of metamterial.

Fig. 7: Simulated return loss of MSA without LHM cover

Fig. 8 shows the radiation pattern of microstrip patch

Fig. 5: The retrieved permittivity () and permeability ()
antenna without LHM cover. The result shows that an-
of unit cell
tenna gain and directivity at resonant frequency of 9 GHz
is 6.80 dB and 7.80 dB respectively. The half-power (-3
dB) beamwidth (HPBW) is 80 and main lobe direction
is 0 .

The retrieved refractive index in fig. 6 confirms the

negative index band that lies roughly between 8 and 11
GHz. Hence, the proposed metamaterial cover can be used
as lens for the microstrip patch antenna, which operates
in X- Band (8-12 GHz).

Fig. 8: Radiation pattern of MSA without LHM cover

Fig. 6: The retrieved refractive index (n) of unit cell

Fig. 9 shows the return loss (S11) characteristics of

Fig. 7 shows the return loss (S11) characteristics of
coaxial feed microstrip patch antenna without LHM cover.
The result shows that antenna has about -30.00 dB return
loss at resonant frequency of 9 GHz.
coaxial feed microstrip patch antenna with LHM cover.
From the plot it can be observed that there is shift of 0.16
GHz in resonant frequency towards the left. The result
shows that antenna has about -24.35 dB return loss at
resonant frequency of 8.84 GHz.

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 IV. Conclusion
In this paper, a coaxial feed antenna for X-band with
LHM cover above the patch is presented to improve the
gain and directivity of antenna. The simulated results for
microstrip patch antenna with LHM cover at resonant
frequency (9 GHz) show the improvement in gain and di-
rectivity. The increment in gain is 7.6% and for directivity
it is 4.5%. Based on a study of radiation pattern of the
antenna, it is concluded that LHM cover acts as lens for
EM radiation. It is obvious that multiple layers of LHM
cover can be used to further enhance the performance of
microstrip patch antenna.

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