2012 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Applied Electromagnetics (APACE 2012), December 11 - 13, 2012, Melaka, Malaysia

Design and Analysis of Microstrip Yagi Antenna for Wi-Fi Application

Nuraiza bt. Ismail, M.T Ali
Microwave Technology Centre (MTC), Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia.
nuraiza_ismail@yahoo.com, mizi732002@yahoo.com

N.N.S.N. Dzulkefli, R. Abdullah, S. Omar

Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Cawangan Terengganu, 23000 Dungun, Terengganu, Malaysia.
nik_shaadah@yahoo.com, rinaa5158@tganu.uitm.edu.my, suzia5374@tganu.uitm.edu.my

AbstractThis paper presents the design and analysis of the microstrip Yagi antenna appropriate for wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) application. The antenna comprises of two elements which are driven and parasitic that consists of reflector and directors. The analysis has been carried out to identify the effects of each element to the performance of antenna that will achieve a high gain. A gain enhancement method using Yagi antenna concept is designed with array application. Two branches of microstrip Yagi antenna have been connected in a composite array format using corporate-feed network. The designed antenna with microstrip line feeding based on quarter wave impedance matching technique is simulated using Computer Simulation Tool (CST) Microwave Studio. The simulation result of return loss shown that the operating bandwidth at frequency range of 5.47-5.57 GHz coverage standard of IEEE 802.11 in 5 GHz Wi-Fi band between 5.15-5.875 GHz. The antenna is fabricated on the low cost FR-4 substrate with dielectric constant of 4.7 and thickness of 1.6 mm. Simple fabrication techniques can be utilized to the proposed antenna design due to the placing feeding network is on the same layer with the antenna patch elements. The microstrip Yagi antenna is measured using Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). Both the simulation and experimental results are compared and analyzed. Keywords-microstrip antennas; elements, array; return loss; gain Yagi antenna; parasitic

dB) is attributed to the constructive interference that takes place between the individual printed Yagi arrays in the design. In essence, there are two types of antenna elements: driven and parasitic (non-driven). Driven element is directly connected to the transmission line and receives power from or is driven by the source. Whereby parasitic elements are not connected to the transmission line; they receive energy only through mutual induction with a driven element or another parasitic element. A parasitic element that is longer than the driven element from which it receives energy is called a reflector. A reflector affected the signal strength by reducing in its direction but increases it in the opposite direction. Hence, it acts as if it were a concave mirror. A parasitic element that is shorter than its associated driven element is called director. A director usually is added to increases field strength in its direction and reduces it in the opposite direction. Therefore, it acts as if it were a convergent convex lens [9]. In the microstrip antenna, parasitic elements can be placed around a driven element in order to enhance the gain of the single driven element by several decibels. This paper introduces a technique to enhance gain using two branches of microstrip Yagi antenna with array application. The proposed antenna achieves a higher gain of 9.5 dB than the one branch of only 6.89 dB. Both the simulation and experimental results show good agreement which covers the 5GHz band in Wi-Fi operation. II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND STRUCTURE

I.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last several years, there have been many contributions in the design and optimization of printed microstrip antenna arrays [1][4]. Recently, having attractive features such as low profile, light weight, easy fabrication and so on, microstrip antennas are widely used around the world [5]-[6]. Furthermore, microstrip antennas also have the unique features on the dielectric substrate material which can reduce losses exhibited by high frequency signals when ordinary PCB is used [7]. The use of Yagi antenna designs in microstrip technology was first proposed by Huang in 1989 for mobile satellite (MSAT) applications, which required a low-cost lowprofile antenna that covers a 40 beamwidth [1]. In [8], a new printed microstrip Yagi array antenna is proposed that can achieve a high gain and low backside radiation for various applications up to the millimeter-wave frequency range. The high front-to-back (F/B) ratio (up to 15

The microstrip Yagi antenna of one branch is depicted in Figure 1. It consists of a driven patch element and a few parasitically coupled director and reflector patch elements. The driven element, D is excited by a simple feeding structure through a small gap of the reflector elements. The reflector elements, R will be treated as one element with a gap through the middle of feeding element. The feeding structure consists of a 50 microstrip feedline is fed to the center of the driven element through the use of a quarter-wave transformer. The remaining patches consist of two directors D1 and D2 are used to establish the directionality of the beam as well as to increase the antenna gain.

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2012 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Applied Electromagnetics (APACE 2012), December 11 - 13, 2012, Melaka, Malaysia

design is chosen to become a complete design for one branch because when more directors are added to the array, the gain and return loss is decreased. All patches element and the ground plane are separated by a dielectric substrate. The proposed microstrip Yagi antenna design is consist of two branches as shown in Figure 2. This design is a derivative of the microstrip Yagi antenna of one branch. The major advantages of this structure in comparison to the structure of one branch are the increased gain and better return loss (S11).

Figure 1: Geometry of the microstrip Yagi antenna (one branch).

The first step of the design procedure is started by designing a single element. This element is a rectangular microstrip patch of one branch which is called a driven element. It is designed to operate at a resonant frequency, fr = 5.8 GHz using Flame Retardant 4 (FR-4) substrate material. The dielectric constant of the substrate is r = 4.7, the tangent loss 0.019 and thickness of the substrate h = 1.6 mm. The physical width and length dimensions of the driven patch element are calculated using following equations.
Figure 2: Geometry of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna.

1 2 fr
o o r

2 1

vo 2 fr

2
r

(1)

vo is the velocity of light in free space. The calculation of effective dielectric constant reff is given by
reff r

1 2

1 2

h 1 12 W

(2)

The actual length, L of the patch can be determine as follows 1 L 2 L (3) 2 f r reff o o As mentioned before, the design antenna is started with driven element and then it is accomplished by having the parasitic elements in the forward beam act as directors while those in the rear act as reflectors. The microstrip Yagi antenna for one branch consists of five designs with array application. First design is driven patch element (D). Second design is driven and director (D, D1), followed by third design of driven and reflector elements (D, R). Fourth design is driven with one director and reflector (D, D1, R). The last design consists of driven, two directors and one reflector (D, D1, D2, R). This

The feeding method that is used to feed the microstrip Yagi antenna is microstrip line. The microstrip line feed is chosen because it is easy to fabricate, simple to match by controlling the inset position and rather simple to model. The optimized length of feed, LF and LF1 are designed as g/2 and g/2 respectively. The quarter-wavelength impedance transformer technique is used to match the antenna to the transmission line. In order to match 100 patch elements to a 50 matching characteristic impedance of microstrip line, the equation (4) is used by simply varying the width (w) of the center conductor.
Zo
r

87 1.41

ln

5.98h 0.8W

(4)

In the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna design, two microstrip Yagi antenna of one branch have been connected in a composite array format using corporate-feed network. The center-to-center spacing between the driven elements is 1.57g. The size of the substrate is 65x80 mm2. All values were chosen to optimize gain of the antenna with good return loss. The spacing between elements, g is 0.1g where g is given by the following equation:
g o reff

(5)

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2012 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Applied Electromagnetics (APACE 2012), December 11 - 13, 2012, Melaka, Malaysia

The directors width, WD1 and WD2 are slightly shorter than driven element width, WD around 5% and 10 % respectively. While the reflector width, WR is 5% longer than the driven element width. Through simulation, the length of reflector and directors are designed to be about of their total width. The dimensions of the optimization microstrip Yagi antenna for both branches are shown in Table I.
TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF THE OPTIMIZATION ANTENNA

One Branch

Parameter WD WD1 WD2 WR WF WF1 LD LD1 LD2 LR LF LF1 g

Dimension (mm) 15.30 14.54 13.81 8.03 2.89 3.00 11.37 3.63 3.45 4.02 12.80 18.10 2.56

Figure 4: Simulated return loss of each patch in one branch comparing with proposed antenna of two branches TABLE II. TABULATED RESULTS OF SIMULATED RETURN LOSS, VSWR, GAIN AND BANDWIDTH Parameters
Frequency (GHz) S11 (dB) VSWR Gain (dB) Bandwidth (%)

Elements D D, D1 D, R D, D1, R D, D1, D2, R

5.76 5.76 5.76 5.76 5.77 5.52

-10.55 -10.76 -10.45 -12.21 -11.17 -20.38

1.84 1.82 1.86 1.65 1.76 1.21

6.69 6.79 6.80 6.83 6.89 9.50

1.15 1.33 0.94 1.47 1.89 2.00

III.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The design process is started using CST simulator, aiming a return loss bigger than 10 dB and frequency at 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi application. After an optimized design was obtained, the proposed antenna was fabricated on an FR-4 substrate as shown in Figure 3. The fabricated antenna is fed by a SMA connector to connect to the VNA for measurement process.

Two Branches (Proposed)

The simulation results indicate that each design in one branch has return loss bigger than 10 dB at frequency around 5.7 GHz which is cover 5 GHz Wi-Fi band (5.725-5.825 GHz). As more the microstrip array is added with parasitic elements, it seems that the gain is increased up to 6.89 dB when the design is consists of driven element parasitically coupled with reflector and two directors. However, there is a limit beyond which the gain is decreased by the addition of more directors. This may be due to the progressive reduction in magnitude of the induced currents on the more extreme elements. The simulated result of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna is clearly found that the return loss of 20.38 dB and antenna gain of 9.5 dB is much better compared to one branch. The proposed antenna designed of two branches shows that the gain is increased by 2.61 dB from 6.89 dB of one branch. Thus, the percentage of gain enhancement from one branch to two branches is 16 %. High gain antennas is preferred because it have the benefit of longer range and signal quality is better compared to low gain.

Figure 3: Illustration of fabricated microstrip Yagi antenna.

The simulated return losses versus frequency comparing each patch for one branch and two branches of proposed antenna are presented in Figure 4. All simulated results for both branches are tabulated in Table II in terms of return loss, VSWR, gain and bandwidth.

The simulated far-field radiation pattern as shown in Figure 5 indicate the value of gain and the forward directional pattern of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna in three dimensional pattern. The main and side lobes can be observed in the simulated two dimensional radiation pattern as shown in Figure 6. From this figure, the front-to-back ratio is 17.8 dB.

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2012 IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Applied Electromagnetics (APACE 2012), December 11 - 13, 2012, Melaka, Malaysia

IV.

CONCLUSION

Figure 5: Simulated three dimensional radiation pattern of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna.

A microstrip Yagi antenna design with array application has been presented for coverage standard IEEE 802.11 in 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi frequency range of 5.15-5.875 GHz. The simulation tool CST is utilized to perform the antenna design and optimization process. The antenna consists of driven patch element and a few parasitically coupled director and reflector patch elements. The effect of each element to the antenna performance has been studied in achieving high gain with good return loss. The analysis has been carried out in term of return loss, VSWR, gain and bandwidth. The best design of microstrip Yagi antenna for one branch has been chosen to design the proposed antenna of two branches. Simple fabrication technique that is inexpensive can be employed to realize the design using FR-4 substrate with feeding structure on the same layer as the antenna. The result of proposed antenna shows that the antenna performance is better compared to antenna design of one branch. The percentage increasing of gain from one branch to two branches is 16 %. Hence, by designing the microstrip Yagi antenna of two branches, a good return loss and a high gain can be achieved by placing parasitic patches around driven element in array format. For future development, more branches of microstrip Yagi antenna is recommended that aim higher gain and better return loss than the two branches. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Figure 6: Simulated two dimensional radiation pattern of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna.

The measured result of return losses of the proposed microstrip Yagi antenna compared with the simulation is shown in Figure 7. It can be seen that the measured frequency response of 37.575 return loss is shifted to 5.85 GHz as compared to the simulated result. Deviations may be partly due to the inaccuracies in antenna fabrication process such as during soldering and losses occurred because of the FR-4 board itself. However, the measured result still covering the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band (5.725-5.875GHz).

The author would like to first thank her supervisor, Dr. Mohd Tarmizi b. Ali for his strong support and advices. Special thanks also to husband, friends and members in Microwave Technology Centre (MTC), Universiti Technologi Mara (UiTM) for their helps in completing this project. REFERENCES
[1] [2] J. Huang, Planar microstrip Yagi array antenna, in Proc. IEEEAPSSymp., Jun. 1989, vol. 2, pp. 894897. A. Densmore and J. Huang, Microstrip Yagi antenna for mobile satellite service, in Proc. IEEE-APS Symp., Jun. 1991, vol. 2, pp. 616 619. D. Gray, J. Lu, and D. Thiel, Electronically steerable YagiUda microstrip patch antenna array, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 46, pp. 605608, May 1998. S. K. Padhi and M. E. Bialkowski, Investigations of an aperture coupled microstrip Yagi antenna using PBG structure, in Proc. IEEEAPSSymp., Jun. 2002, vol. 3, pp. 752755. G. R. DeJean and M. M. Tentzeris, A new high-gain microstrip Yagi array antenna with a high front-to-back (F/B) ratio for WLAN and millimeter-wave applications, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, pp.298304, Feb. 2007. R. Jothi Chitra, A, Suganya, V. Nagarajan, Enhanced gain of double Uslot micro strip patch antenna array for WiMAX application, 2012. Zaiki Awang, Microwave Engineering for Wireless Communications, Prentice Hall Inc., 2006. G. R. DeJean and M. M. Tentzeris, A new high-gain microstrip Yagi array antenna with a high front-to-back (F/B) ratio for WLAN and millimeter-wave applications, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2007. Wayne Tomasi, Electronic Communications Systems: Fundamentals Through Advanced, Prentice Hall Inc., 5th Edition, 2004

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6] [7] [8] Figure 7: Simulated and measured return loss of the proposed design antenna.

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