International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 8

Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

DESIGN AND SIMULATION OF U-SHAPED MICROSTRIP PATCH

ANTENNA WITH BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT AND SIZE
REDUCTION
Ashish Mohan Bhardwaj, Ajay Kumar Yadav, Vishal Upmanu
Mewar University Chittorgarh, Rajasthan, INDIA

Abstract

II.

The concept of microstrip radiators was proposed in

1953.However, 20 years passed before practical
antennas were fabricated. Development during the 1970s
was accelerated by the availability of good substrates
with low loss tangent and attractive thermal and
mechanical properties, improved photolithographic
techniques, and better theoretical models. Since then,
extensive research and development of microstrip
antennas and arrays ,aimed at exploiting their numerous
advantages such as light weight, low volume, low cost,
conformal configuration, compatibility with integrated
circuits, and so on, have to diversified applications and
to the establishment of the topic as the separate entity
with in the broad field of microwave antennas. [1]
The paper provides a detailed study of how to design and
fabricate a microstrip-fed U-shaped microstrip patch
antenna using IE3D software and study the effect of
antenna dimensions length (L), and substrate parameters
relative dielectric constant (r), substrate thickness(t) on
the radiation parameters of bandwidth and beam-width.
In this dissertation design and simulation of U-Shaped
microstrip patch antenna with bandwidth enhancement
and size reduction with small size, low cost, light
weight, and high performance is presented.

I.

Introduction

Microstrip Patch Antenna Microstrip antennas are

popularly investigated due to their properties such as low
profile, low cost, conformability and ease of integration
with active devices. Reduction of antenna size becomes
extremely important in wireless communications and
hence it is desired to bring down the size of antenna
while achieving the same performance of the large size
antenna.[2] Though there is a lower limit to the size of
any antenna for a given resonant frequency, other
important metrics like Gain and Bandwidth are
drastically affected for small size antennas. Hence the
idea is to balance between Gain and Size of the antenna.

Microstrip Line Feed

In this type of feed technique, [3-4] a conducting

strip is connected directly to the edge of the microstrip
patch as shown in figure 2.10. The conducting strip is
smaller in width as compared to the patch and this kind
of feed arrangement has the advantage that the feed can
be etched on the same substrate to provide a planar
structure. The purpose of the inset cut in the patch is to
match the impedance of the feed line to the patch
without the need for any additional matching element.
Hence this is an easy feeding scheme, since it provides
ease of fabrication and simplicity in modelling as well as
impedance matching

Figure 1. Microstrip line feed

Coaxial Feed:
The Coaxial feed [5] or probe feed is a very
common technique used for feeding microstrip patch
antennas. As seen from figure 2.11, the inner conductor
of the coaxial connector extends through the dielectric
and is soldered to the radiating patch, while the outer
conductor is connected to the ground plane.
The main advantage of this type of feeding
scheme is that the feed can be placed at any desired
location inside the patch in order to match with its input
impedance. The coaxial probe feed is also easy to
fabricate and match, and it has low spurious radiation.
However, it also has narrow bandwidth and it is more
difficult to mode. [6-7]

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 9

Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

Figure 4. Typical U- Shaped patch antenna

Figure 2 Probe fed rectangular microstrip patch

antenna

IV.

Aperture Coupled Feed:

In this type of feed technique, the radiating patch
and the microstrip feed line are separated by the ground
plane as shown in figure 2.12, Coupling between the
patch and the feed line is made through a slot or an
aperture in the ground plane. The amount of coupling
from the feed line to the patch is determined by the
shape, size and location of the aperture.[8-9]
Since the ground plane separates the patch and
the feed line, spurious radiation is minimized. The major
disadvantage of this feed technique is that it is difficult
to fabricate due to multiple layers, which also increases
the antenna thickness. This feeding scheme also provides
narrow bandwidth.

Design Layout

The design layout on paper for the fabrication of

U-shape microstrip patch antenna in many steps as
shown in Figure The first step towards fabrication on an
antenna is to generate a layout on the design software
such as CAD, AUTOCAD or Express PCB. The only
problem being that even though very small dimensions
can be generated on such design software efficiency is a
problem while printing it. So as scoled version of the
layout by a suitable factor X (i.e. X=10) is prepared and
printed on suitable paper. [11-12]

Figure 3. Aperture-coupled feed

III.

Design of U-Shape Microstrip Patch

Antenna

The U-Shape Microstrip patch antenna is

approximately a one-half wavelength long section of
rectangular Microstrip transmission line. When glass
epoxy is the antenna substrate, the length of the
rectangular Microstrip antenna is approximately one-half
of a free-space wavelength. As the antenna is loaded
with a dielectric as its substrate, the length of the
antenna decreases as the relative dielectric constant of
the substrate increases. The resonant length of the
antenna is slightly shorter because of the extended
electric "fringing fields" which increase the electrical
length of the antenna slightly radiating [10]

Figure 5. Design of U-Shape Patch Antenna on PCB

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 10

Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

V.

It is good to see that the return loss has a

negative value in all the cases which states that the
losses are minimum during the transmission. The
simulated and the experimental return losses are -47.4dB
and -43.5dB respectively. The proposed antenna has an
improved bandwidth of 76.36%. The VSWR for the
design performed in the project has a good value of less
than 2.0. The performance of U-shaped microstrip
antenna is far better in comparison to that of a
conventional rectangular antenna. The antenna designed
comes in C-Band and it can be used for WLAN. The
antenna length and width has been optimized so that it
works in wireless device band. The final measured
results show satisfactory performance and good
agreement with the simulated result.

Simulation Results

Figure 6. Return loss plot for U-Shaped Patch Antenna

Figure 7. VSWR plot for U-Shaped Patch Antenna

VI.

Conclusion

U-Shaped microstrip antenna offers better

bandwidth as compared to other conventional shapes of
patch. The microstrip antenna are widely used in a
number of antenna system because of their low profile,
light weight, low price, compactness, mass productivity,
etc.The aim of this thesis was to design a U-shape patch
microstrip antenna and to study the responses and the
radiation properties of the same. In this thesis an antenna
has been designed by the microstrip feed-line technique
with the dimensions as Length = 60mm, Width= 40mm,
Height =1.6mm, with a dielectric constant of 4.2(glass
epoxy), which has a loss tangent of 0.0013 at 5GHz.The
simulations are carried out using IE3D software (version
12.32).The U-Shaped microstrip antenna has been
fabricated and demonstrated theoretically and
experimentally. Having gone through the results it
happened to be a bit difficult to decide the optimized
design of the antenna, as there are different aspects that
are involved in the design of patch antenna.

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 11

Volume 4 Issue 2, February 2016, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

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