Designing hardware is a complex phenomenon. Especially when we talk about antennas.

We cant just make any hardware with out studying its behavior or characteristics. HFSS from Ansoft corp. provides that platform, where we can design the prototype,and then study its behavior and observe its characteristics and then keeping them in mind fabricate our hardware.
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 The acronym stands for High Frequency Structural Simulator. It is one of the most popular and powerful applications used for antenna design, and the design of complex RF electronic circuits in the industry.
Major users of this software for rnd purposes are Ericsson ,Nokia etc.

Introduction to HFSS

As we know the length of a half-wave dipole antenna should be half the wavelength of the operating carrier wave frequency. Thus the dipole modeled in HFSS has the following specifications

Center frequency 200 MHz

Wavelength

1.5m

/2

0.75m

Length of each arm

0.375m

The following figure shows the complete geometry of the dipole antenna on HFSS.

Radiation Pattern

3-D Radiation Pattern

The computed 3-Dimensional pattern radiation pattern of the of the radiation is as modeled dipole follows antenna is as follows.

The E-fields determines the type of polarization . The electric and magnetic fields of the modeled dipole antenna are shown.

 A Microstrip Patch Antenna consists of a metallic strip or a patch mounted on a dielectric layer (substrate) supported by ground plane.

 The micro strip patch is designed so its pattern maximum is normal to the patch hence making it a broadside radiator. The conducting micro strip or patch and the ground plane are separated by a substrate. There are numerous substrates that can be used for the design of micro strip antennas and their dielectric constants are usually in the range of (2.2 to 12).

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 There are many configurations that can be used to feed microstrip antennas. There are three most common structures that are used to feed planar printed antennas Feeding techniques are given below. Coaxial probe feeds Microstrip line feeds Aperture coupled feeds
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The Coaxial feed or probe feed is a very common technique used for feeding Microstrip patch antennas. 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

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 For the modeling of Micro Strip Patch antenna, a paper of IEEE was kept as a reference paper.

Application of Three-Dimensional FiniteDifference Time Domain Method of the Analysis of Planar Micro strip Circuits by David M.Sheen ,Sami M.Ali, Jin AU. Kong was repulbished.

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The antenna mentioned in the IEEE papers follows a strip line feed.

Substrate used Duroid Dielectric constant given Thickness of the Substrate Length of the Patch Width of the Patch Strip line feed 2.2

The dimensions used for the antenna centers it at 7.8 GHz.

0.794 mm 12.45mm 16.0 mm 2.09mm away from the left corner.

Following table shows the entire data about the Micro Strip Patch antenna.

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 Microstrip Antenna modeled on HFSS

Microstrip Antenna given in the IEEE paper

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 Return loss graph of our modeled antenna was compared to that of the one given in the IEEE paper. The main purpose of this comparison was to authenticate the behavior of the return loss graph given in the IEEE paper and that of the modeling software which is HFSS .

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RESULTS GENERATED BY HFSS

RESULTS GIVEN IN IEEE PAPER

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 The results clearly showed that the behavior of the return loss graphs of both the antennas are almost similar.

Now after gaining confidence on the patch design we moved forward to our next part of the project that was to model and then fabricate a prob feed Patch Antenna

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 Mathematical calculations were carried out for the dimensions of our Prob Feed Patch Antenna, at frequency of 1.8GHz.
Calculations, carried out for the Patch are as under.

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 The width of the Microstrip patch antenna is given by

Substituting c = 3x108 m/s r = 4.4 fo = 1.8 GHz We calculated the width and it came out to be W=50.77mm
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 The formula for calculating the Effective dielectric constant is

Substituting r = 4.4, W = 50.77 mm and h = 1.6 mm we get: We get the effective dielectric constant as

reff =4.14
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 The formula for the Effective length is given as

Substituting the mentioned values as reff = 8.79 c = 3e8 m/s f o = 1.8 GHz we get

Leff =40.9mm

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 The formula for the length extension is given as

Substituting values in the formula.

The value for length extension comes out to be

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 The actual length of the patch can now be calculated via the following

Substituting the values in the above formula as Leff = 24 mm L = 7.5 e-4 mm we get

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 As mentioned earlier that the results are the same if the size of ground plane is greater than the patch dimensions by approximately six times the substrate thickness all around the periphery. For a larger element size we took the ground plane approximately twelve times the substrate thickness

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Geometry of Probe fed Patch Antenna

Tabular form of our Calculations

CENTER FREQUENCY SUBSTRATE USED DIELECTRIC CONSTANT LENGTH WIDTH HEIGHT FEEDING METHOD POLARIZATION 1800 MHz

G10 FIBER GLASS (FR4) 4.4 40.1mm 50.77mm 1.6mm COAXIAL FEED LINEAR.

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Return loss

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7dB

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The VSWR of the modeled antenna comes out to be very good.

The VSWR of any practical antenna should be atleast or less than 2.

The VSWR of our antenna came out to be 1.25 at a resonant frequency if 1.76 GHz
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Finding the Ideal Feed Point Location Minimum Return Loss will decide the coordinates of feed point

(x,y)
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( 0,0 )

( 0,-1 )

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( 0,-2 )
(0,-2)

( 0,-3 )
(0,-3)

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( 0,-4 )
-4

( 0,-5 )

-5

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( 0,-6 ) -6

( 0,-7 )
-7

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( 0,-8 ) -8

( 0,-9 )
-9

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( 0,-11 )

( 0 , -11 )

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S.No 1 2 3 4 5 6

Feed location (x,y) (0,0) (0,-1) (0,-2) (0,-3) (0,-4) (0,-5)

Center Return loss frequency(GHz) (dB) 1.76 1.76 1.76 1.76 1.76 1.76 -0.07 -0.33 -0.75 -1.89 -2.02 -4.98

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8 9 10 11 12

(0,-6)
(0,-7) (0,-8) (0,-9) (0,-10) (0,-11)

1.76
1.76 1.76 1.76 1.76 1.76

-7.34
-9.55 -14 -19.79 -21.45 -24.83
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After the modeling of the probe feed patch antenna and achieving satisfactory results we came to our fabrication part.

Fabrication Procedure

For this purpose we etched two antennas. To learn how patch antennas are built we constructed one antenna ourselves

In order to get more accurate results we got one antenna etched from Allied electronics Lahore.

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Final step towards the fabrication

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A network analyzer is an instrument used to analyze the properties of electrical networks, especially those properties associated with the reflection and transmission of electrical signals known as scattering parameters (S-parameters).
Network analyzers are used mostly at high frequencies

Network Analyzer

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The following figure was obtained from the vector network analyzer. The figure shows the return loss graph of the patch antenna we fabricated. The results came out to be outstanding. Well beyond our expectations. The return loss graph showed that the return loss at 1.82 GHz is -30.261 dB

Return Loss of the Antenna

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The following figure shows the Voltage standing wave ratio of our patch antenna. The VSWR of any working antenna should not exceed 2. In our case the result came out to be very outstanding. At the resonant frequency of 1.82GHz the VSWR comes out to be 1.0840.

Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR)

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BACK VIEW (GROUND PLANE) OF PATCH ANTENNA

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FRONT VIEW (PATCH) OF PATCH ANTENNA

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As we progressed with the passage of time we had to face challenges in different ways. If they wouldnt have been solved timely we could not have achieved our goal. A brief review of difficulties during the whole project are summarized below. Unavailability of HFSS Very few people having knowledge of soft ware, so finding an instructor of this field was difficult and time consuming. Lack of antenna testing educational institutes. equipment in any of the

People who had knowledge of network analyzer at comsats were busy with there own university commitments so taking some time from them also became an isssue. This problem was solved after requesting to Dr.Shahid A.Khan Dean comsats who requested the concerned person to help us.
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