International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT)

Volume 3 Issue 7, July 2015, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

246

Design and Fabrication of Tunable Frequency Magnetic Loop Antenna

Aadil Rafeeque KP1, Jitendra Kumar Sinha2, Mohammed Maaz Kampli3, Ruchita4, Shanthi P5
R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore-59

Abstract
In the short-wave range, size of the antenna becomes
large and therefore is a major constraint. Magnetic Loop
Antenna (MLA) provides an advantage over other
antennas in terms of a smaller size, higher quality factor
and better signal to noise ratio. It works on the principle
of resonance with the inductor and capacitor operating
like a tank circuit. The tunable MLA is designed to work
in the frequency range of 3-30MHz. It consists of a
circular copper pipe, an inductive feed and a variable
capacitor. The antenna is tuned using a split-stator
variable capacitor which is tuned using a stepper motor
interface. The antenna design is simulated using High
Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS). The simulated
antenna has an efficiency of 87% and the quality factor
varies between 500 and 1500 depending on the working
frequency with a gain of 0.66. The real life testing of the
antenna is done using a ham Radio.
Index Terms Magnetic loop antenna, resonance, high
quality factor, small loop, frequency, gain.

I.

INTRODUCTION

A Magnetic Loop Antenna is a closed circuit

antenna composed of one more turns with its ends joined
together. The loop antenna is circular in shape and
classified into two types based on its dimension and size.
The first type is the one in which the total length of the
conductor must not be greater than 0.1 where is the
operating wavelength. The phase and amplitude of the
current distribution will be the same at every single point
in the loop at any particular instant of time. The second
type is the one in which the length of the antenna and its
other loop dimensions are of comparable size as
compared with the wavelength at which it is working
with its amplitude and phase being different at different
points in the antenna at the same instant of time.
The magnetic loop antenna is a small length
antennas used for the communication within the short
wave range. As one moves higher into the frequency of
operation, say, in GHz range, the size of the antenna to
be used decreases considerably. Smaller the size of the
antenna, higher is the complexity. The increase in the
complexity in turn makes the design more sophisticated
and also increases the chances of error during the process
of fabrication. The antennas used for operations within
the MHz range are generally the dipole antennas. The
dipole antenna has high gain factor but one needs to
compromise in its size when the operating frequency is

as low as 1 100 MHz. The dipole can be as long as 50

meters which makes it very difficult to port from one
point to another [1]. The magnetic loop antenna provides
a solution in this scenario with a considerably smaller
size requirement for the same frequency of operation.
The magnetic loop antenna due to its high
quality factor is a highly tuned resonant frequency
antenna with a narrow bandwidth but a high signal to
noise ratio thereby increasing the reception quality [2].
As this antenna does not use the line-of-sight principle, it
can be used for both short and long distance
communications. It works on the principle of reflection
from the ionization layer in the atmosphere thereby
making it possible to communicate around the globe
with a single pair of antenna. Moreover, the simple
design and high cost effectiveness favor its use over the
conventional dipole antennas.
The problems faced in the early design of MLAs
are overcome by certain improvements made on the
basic functionalities of the MLA. The operating
frequency is increased to 55 MHz by introducing an
amplifier that separates both the magnetic loop [3].
Agilents High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS)
[4] is a simulation software which produces finite
element models of equivalent sized antennas. The
generic magnetic loop antenna is strictly designed to
resonate at a particular frequency based on the tank
circuit as shown in eq.1.
f=

(1)

In order to increase tunability, a tuning circuit

has to be installed. A control system of FPGA based
three-axis stepper motor with the hybrid stepper motor as
the control object is devised. The entire control system
uses an external keyboard to control the start, stop, jog,
acceleration, deceleration of the stepper motor [5]. This
interface is used to control the value of the capacitor
which in turn decides the resonant frequency of the
antenna.

Figure 1: Equivalent circuit of a magnetic loop antenna

www.ijaert.org

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT)

Volume 3 Issue 7, July 2015, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

II. DESIGN
OF
ANTENNA

MAGNETIC

LOOP

The equivalent circuit of the generalized loop antenna is

shown in figure 1. The antenna consists of a copper loop
having an inductance of L. The circular loop is attached
to a tuning capacitor
that is used to change the
resonating frequency. The distributed capacitance
is
the capacitance between the loops in case of a multiple
loop antenna. The predominant component of the entire
circuit is the loop inductive reactance, which is large
compared with the sum of the radiation resistance and
the loss resistance . It is because of the high ratio
between reactance and resistance, the Q (Quality factor)
is extremely high, in the order of many hundreds, and
often greater than 1000. Eq. 2 gives the quality factor of
the magnetic loop antenna.
Q=

(2)

247

around it in order to transmit or receive a signal. An

inductive shielded Faraday feed is therefore used in the
design of magnetic loop antenna to provide effective
coupling required for the efficient operation of the
antenna. The feed is made up of same material as that of
the antenna with a lesser thickness in order to prevent
any losses due to the magnetic field generated by the
feed.
Stepper Motor
The rotor present in the split stator capacitor can
be controlled by using a stepper motor interfaced to a
microcontroller that defines its movement. The stepper
motor setup automates the capacitance variation by
providing two push buttons to the user. In this antenna
design, a stepper motor controlled by a 8051
microcontroller and L298d motor driver is used which
provides the clockwise as well as anticlockwise
movement with a step angle of 1.8 degrees. Figure 2
shows the simulated design of the magnetic loop antenna
in HFSS.

The antenna to be designed is made of four main parts

[6]:
Inductor
The loop is made up of a hollow copper tube that
acts as the inductor. The value of the inductor depends
on the number of loops, length and the thickness of the
tube. In this design, a circular hollow copper tube of
length 2.3 m is taken which has a fixed inductance. The
inductance of the loop is calculated based on the eq. 3,
where
represents the relative permeability of the
copper pipe, represents the absolute permeability, is
the radius of the pipe and is the total length of the loop
[7].
L=

(3)

Figure 2: HFSS simulation design of the MLA

The proposed magnetic loop antenna is made tunable by
varying its capacitance to work in the desired frequency
range. In order to bring that tunability, the variable
capacitor is interfaced with the stepper motor using 8051
microcontroller.

Capacitor
The capacitor used is a variable split-stator
capacitor whose capacitance is varied by changing the
area between the plates. The capacitance is varied by
rotating the rotor which in turn varies the area between
the plates. The capacitance is calculated based on the eq.
4, where
is the absolute permittivity, is the area
between the plates and is the distance between the
plates.
(4)
Antenna Feed
The feed converts the incoming radiation to an
electric current and vice versa that can be detected by the
trans-receiver. As the magnetic loop antenna operates
using the magnetic field surrounding the loop unlike the
other dipole antennas that makes use of electric field

Figure 3: Block diagram of stepper motor interfacing

The microcontroller, stepper motor and its
associated components are connected as shown in the

www.ijaert.org

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT)

Volume 3 Issue 7, July 2015, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

figure 3. The microcontroller AT89S52 is programmed

with an embedded C using KEIL software. Port 1.4, Port
1.5, Port 1.6 and Port 1.7 are connected to the motor
driver with the sequence 0X66, 0X99, 0XCC and 0X33
which lets the programmer to use the first or last bits of
microcontroller [8]. Port 2.6, Port 2.7 is interfaced with
two push buttons. Push buttons are used to rotate the
motor in the forward direction and the backward
direction with the step angle of 1.8 degree of a normal
stepper motor.
Motor driver L298d is used to drive the stepper motor
with the high current amplification factor, which can also
be used with stepper with high torque. The port 1.4 to
1.7 are connected with the IN-A and IN-B of L298d,
when there is an input from the push button, then desired
motor is enabled and the output of L298d is energized
and in turn make the motor rotate. Stepper motor used is
a unipolar motor with 6 leads, in which the output of the
l298d motor driver is connected with the data pins and
the 2 common pins are connected to the 5 volts power
supply in the development board [9].

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The design of the magnetic loop antenna to be fabricated
is first simulated in HFSS. The results obtained from the
simulation are verified against the design specification.
Figure 4 shows a plot of VSWR against the frequency.
The dip in the curve at a frequency of 21.05 MHz shows
that the antenna is highly tuned at that particular
frequency with least formation of standing waves.

248

Figure 5: Return loss vs frequency

Figure 5 is a plot of return loss against frequency. The
dip in the graph at a frequency of 21.05 MHz signifies
that the antenna has a minimum reflection coefficient of
-12.9 dB at that frequency and thus suffers minimum
reflection.

Figure 6: Gain
Figure 6 shows the graph of antenna gain plotted against
polar coordinates phi and theta. The graph is circular
owing the loop antenna being an omnidirectional antenna.
The figure 7 shows the fabricated magnetic loop antenna
setup.

Figure 7: Fabricated antenna setup

Figure 4: VSWR vs frequency

Figure 8: Block Diagram of fabricated antenna testing

using Ham Radio
www.ijaert.org

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT)

Volume 3 Issue 7, July 2015, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

The fabricated magnetic loop antenna has to be tested in

real time using an amateur radio [10] as shown in Figure
8. The ham radio is connected to a power supply and
switched on in the receiving mode. The Amplitude
Modulation (AM) testing was done by using the ham
radio in the AM receiving mode. On receiving a signal
with very low SNR, the stepper motor interface is used
for fine tuning. The fabricated magnetic loop antenna
successfully received signals of different frequencies,
which are 9.3 MHz, 9.86 MHz, 15.185 MHz, 18.865
MHz and 20.125 MHz across the Asian subcontinent.
The fabricated antenna thus provides a very good signal
reception with a high signal quality.

249

[8] Mazidi Muhammad Ali, The 8051 Microcontroller

and Embedded Systems, Prentice Hall of India, 3rd
Edition, New Delhi, India, 2007.
[9] M. Zribi, H. Sira-Ramirez, and A. Ngai, Static and
dynamic sliding mode control schemes for a permanent
magnet stepper motor, International Journal of Control
(IJC), vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 103117, January 2001.
[10] Miroslav Skoric, The Amateur Radio as a Learning
Technology in Developing Countries, Proceedings of
the IEEE International Conference on Advanced
Learning Technologies (ICALT), Finland, [2004], pp.
311 316.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the magnetic loop antenna is successfully
designed and fabricated for an operational frequency
range of 3 MHz 30 MHz. The antenna was initially
simulated in HFSS with the dimensions obtained based
on the theoretical equations. The obtained values were
then further optimized. The software design gave the
exact dimension for fabricating the antenna. The antenna
is then fabricated based on the simulated results. In order
to automate the tuning of the capacitor, a stepper motor
interface controlled by a microcontroller is used. The
final setup is tested in real time using a HAM radio.

REFERENCES
[1] Richard C. Johnson and Henry Jasik, Antenna
Engineering Handbook, McGraw- Hill, 2009.
[2] Moses Emetere, Theoretical Modeling of a
Magnetic Loop Antenna for Ultra Wide Band
Application, Telkomnika, Vol. 12, No. 10, pp. 7076
7081, October 2014.
[3] P Guittienne, E Chevalier, C Hollenstein, Towards
an optimal antenna for helicon waves excitation,
Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 98, Issue. 083304,
2005.
[4] P. T. Bellett and C. J. Leat, An Investigation of
magnetic antennas for ground penetrating radar,
Progress In Electromagnetics Research, PIER 43, pp.
257271, 2003.
[5] Juan Yu and Yuansheng Wang, A Control System
of Three-axis Stepper Motor Based on the FPGA,
International Conference on Mechatronic Sciences,
Electric Engineering and Computer (ICMEC),
Shenyang, China, [Dec 20-22, 2013], pp. 315 - 321.
[6] Ichiro Yokoshima, Absolute Measurements for
Small Loop Antennas for RF Magnetic Field Standards,
IEEE
Transactions
on
Instrumentation
and
Measurement, Vol. IM-23, No. 3, pp. 217-221, Sept
1974.
[7] Frederick Grover, Inductance Calculations Working
Formulas and Tables, Dover Publications, 1946.

www.ijaert.org