Journal of Communication, Navigation and Signal Processing (July 2012)

Vol. 1, No.2, pp. 46-48

Microstrip Patch Antenna analysis using PMLFDTD Technique

1

Ravi Durbha1, P.Chandrasekhar2

Senior RF Engineer, Ananya SIP Technologies Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad-500005
ravidurbha@gmail.com

Head, Department of ECE College of Engineering, Osmania University, Hyderabad-500007

sekharpaidi@yahoo.com

Abstract-The objective of this paper is to model Electromagnetic wave propagation in Microstrip Line fed Patch Antenna, using Perfect Matched Layer (PML) Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) algorithm developed in MATLAB. The approach is validated by comparing the results with those obtained using commercially available software like Agilent ADS-Momentum. Keywords: Maxwells Equations, Patch Antenna, Electromagnetic Modeling, PML Method. 1. INTRODUCTION A Microstrip Antenna is a low-profile, low gain, narrow bandwidth antenna that has number of applications and advantages over other antennas. They play an important role in modern wireless communication systems and as well as in many defense applications. These antennas are small in size, conformal to given structure, and require simple and inexpensive modern printed circuit technology to manufacture. Several electromagnetic techniques have been proposed analyze these structures for various electrical parameters like bandwidth, return loss, beamwidth, and gain. An efficient and simple method has been implemented in this paper to obtain some of the afore mentioned characteristics for microstrip line fed patch antenna using time domain differential equation based solver/boundary condition. 2. DESIGN OF PATCH ANTENNA The geometry of the considered antenna is given below: Figure1 shows the geometry of the Patch Antenna operating at 7.5GHz. The rectangular patch has dimensions of 50mm X 59mm, the quarter wave transformer has dimensions of 28.2 mm X 0.95mm and the 50 ohms input port has dimensions 5mm X 2.4mm are printed on a grounded substrate of thickness (h) 0.794 mm, relative permittivity () 2.2 and size 90 mm X 70 mm. The values of thickness (h), relative permittivity () and resonant frequency are fixed previously while length and width of patch antenna and feed line are determined using transmission line model.

W1

L1

L2

W2 W4

L3

W3 Figure: 1 Geometry of the patch Antenna The following equations are employed in calculating the dimensions of the antenna structure [1]. Width of the Patch Antenna is calculated by:
r 2 2 1 1 2

(1)

Effective permittivity is calculated as:

r eff 2 1 r 2 1 1 12 h w 1 2

(2)

Fringe length is given by:

0 .3 w h 0.258 w h 0 .8 0.264

L h

eff 0.412 eff

(3)

46

Ravi Durbha and P.Chandrasekhar Effective length of the Patch antenna is given by the total mesh dimensions are 100 X 110 X 14 in x, y, and z directions respectively. The time-step used is t = 0.441 Picoseconds, Gaussian half-width is T = 15 Picoseconds and time delay to is set to 3T so that the Gaussian will start at approximately zero. The circuit shown in figure-2 is constructed on Rogers RT Duriod substrate with r=2.2 and no appreciable loss term. The excitation pulse that is used for the simulation is given as:
t E (t) z exp t w t 2 o

L eff

L 2 L

(4)

The actual length of the patch is given by:

L 2 eff 2 L

(5)

Table 1: Values of the Design Parameters Parameter L1 W1 L2 W2 L3 W3 W4 Dimensions (mm) 50.0 59.0 28.2 0.95 5.0 2.4 3.0

(6)

The system is excited by adding equation (6) to all the Ez components under the feed line strip in the source plane. The idea is to generate a TEM wave under the strip which has a Gaussian time signature. Source Waveforms One of the considerations for the source waveform construction is the spectrum of the frequency components of the waveform. A temporal waveform is the sum of time-harmonic waveforms with a spectrum of frequencies that can be obtained using Fourier transform. A source waveform should be chosen such that its frequency spectrum includes all the frequencies of interest for the simulation, and should have a smooth turn-on and turn-off to minimize the undesired effects of high-frequency components. Some of the multiple frequency waveforms used are a Gaussian pulse, differentiated Gaussian pulse, and cosine modulated Gaussian pulse [4]. Figure 3 shows the plot of most commonly used waveforms in FDTD simulation developed using MATLAB software.
1 0.8 0.6 0.4
Magnitude

3. ELECTROMAGNETIC MODELING Berenger proposed a technique which worked equally well for all frequencies and angles of incidence [2]. The idea of PML is to add a highly damping layer around the computational domain. To prevent reflections at the boundary region between the PML and the computational domain are perfectly matched. Two media are said to be perfectly matched if a wave can travel across the boundary between them without any of its components being reflected.

Gaussian Differentiated Gaussian Modulated Gaussian

0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4

Figure-2 EM Field Distribution in Patch Antenna structure using PML-FDTD Technique In order to correctly model the thickness of the substrate, z is chosen so that three nodes exactly match the thickness. The dimensions of the antenna, x and y are chosen such that the antenna fits exactly in integral number of nodes. The space steps used are x = 0.389mm, y = 0.4mm, and z = 0.265mm. The antenna is thus 38x X 63y, and the reference plane for port 1 is chosen 8y from the edge of the FDTD wall. The line width of antenna feed is modeled as 6x. An 8 cell PML is used and

-0.6 -0.8 -1 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 time (sec) 2 4 6 8

Figure-3 Waveforms Most Commonly used in FDTD Algorithm Estimation of S-Parameters The objective of estimating S11 is just to sample the incident wave. Since we know the

47

Microstrip Patch Antenna analysis using PML-FDTD Technique incident and reflected waves at the terminal plane, S 11 can be found out as follows [3]:
V (f) ref V (f) inc E E ref inc (f) (f)

Return loss Bandwidth

-22.91dB 172MHz

-23.96dB 180MHz

S 11

(7)

H S (f) 11 H

ref inc

(f) (f)

FT{H FT{H

ref inc

(f)}

(8)
(f)}

4. CONCLUSION From the results obtained it is concluded that the time domain differential equation based Maxwells equation solver provides results which replicate the results obtained using MOM method which forms the mathematical background of Agilent ADSMomentum. REFERENCES

S (dB) 11

10log S 11

(9)

Reflection coefficient measurements implementing PML-FDTD and Agilent ADS-Momentum are shown in Figures 3 and 4 respectively.

[1] C.A.Balanis, Antenna Theory Analysis and Design, 3rd edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2005 [2] J.P.Berenger, A Perfectly matched layer for the absorption of Electromagnetic waves, Journal of Computational Physics Vol-114, page 195-200, 1994. [3] Allen Taflove and S.C.Hagness, Computational Electrodynamics: The Finite Difference Time Domain Method, 2nd ed. Artech House, 2000 [4] Atef Elsherbeni and Veysel Demir, FDTD Method for Electromagnetics with MATLAB Simulations, SciTech Publishing Inc., 2009 Ravi Durbha received B.Sc (Instrumentation) from Osmania University in 2002, AMIETE (E&T) from IETE New Delhi in 2007 and M.Eng from College of Engineering, Osmania University in 2011. From 2007 to 2009 he was employed as Antenna Design Engineer with ACD Communications Pvt Ltd., Hyderabad. From Jan2012 he is with Ananya SIP Technologies Pvt Ltd as Senior RF Engineer designing Phased Array Antennas for E.W Applications. His research interests include Microstrip Circuits, MICs, Phased Array Antennas, and Electromagnetic Modeling of Antennas. P. Chandra Sekhar received M.Tech from JNTU Hyderabad in 1999, PhD from Osmania University in 2009. He was Post Doctoral Fellow at Department of Systems Engineering, Shizuoka University, Japan 2009-10. His primary research interests include Development of new algorithms to study Interconnects & EM effects in VLSI circuits, Design of Parallel computational Systems, VLSI/VHDL based High Performance Integrated Circuits, and Computational Electromagnetics.

Figure-4 Reflection Coefficient of the Patch Antenna using PML-FDTD

0

-5

dB(S(1,1))

-10

-15

-20

m1 freq=7.47GHz dB(S(1,1))=-23.96
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

m1
8 9 10

-25

freq, GHz

Figure-5 Reflection Coefficient of Patch Antenna using ADS-Momentum Table-2 Comparison of Results ADSParameter PML-FDTD Momentum Frequency 7.45GHz 7.47GHz

48