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Antenna Engineering, Peter Knott

Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

Patch Antenna Design using MICROWAVE STUDIO 1 What is CST MICROWAVE STUDIO ?

CST MICROWAVE STUDIO is a full-featured software package for electromagnetic analysis and design in the high frequency range. It simplies the process of inputting the structure by providing a powerful solid 3D modelling front end, see gure ??. Strong graphic feedback simplies the denition of your device even further. After the component has been modelled, a fully automatic meshing procedure is applied before a simulation engine is started. CST MICROWAVE STUDIO is part of the CST DESIGN STUDIO suite [?] and oers a number of dierent solvers for dierent types of application. Since no method works equally well in all application domains, the software contains four dierent simulation techniques (transient solver, frequency domain solver, integral equation solver, eigenmode solver) to best t their particular applications. The most exible tool is the transient solver, which can obtain the entire broadband frequency behaviour of the simulated device from only one calculation run (in contrast to the frequency step approach of many other simulators). It is based on the Finite Integration Technique (FIT) introduced in electrodynamics more than three decades ago [?]. This solver is ecient for most kinds of high frequency applications such as connectors, transmission lines, lters, antennas and more. In this tutorial we will make use of the transient solver for designing a microstrip patch antenna as an example.

Figure 3: Graphical User Interface of CST MICROWAVE STUDIO

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Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

Simulation Workow

After starting CST DESIGN ENVIRONMENT, choose to create a new CST MICROWAVE STUDIO project. You will be asked to select a template for a structure which is closest to your device of interest, but you can also start from scratch opening an empty project. An interesting feature of the on-line help system is the Quick Start Guide, an electronic assistant that will guide you through your simulation. You can open this assistant by selecting HelpQuick Start Guide if it does not show up automatically. If you are unsure of how to access a certain operation, click on the corresponding line. The Quick Start Guide will then either run an animation showing the location of the related menu entry or open the corresponding help page. As shown in the Quick Start-dialog box which should now be positioned in the upper right corner of the main view, the following steps have to be accomplished for a successful simulation: Dene the Units Choose the settings which make dening the dimensions, frequencies and time steps for your problem most comfortable. The defaults for this structure type are geometrical lengths in mm and frequencies in GHz. Dene the Background Material By default, the modelled structure will be described within a perfectly conducting world. For an antenna problem, these settings have to be modied because the structure typically radiates in an unbounded (open) space or half-space. In order to change these settings, you can make changes in the corresponding dialogue box (SolveBackground Material). Model the Structure Now the actual antenna structure has to be built. For modelling the antenna structure, a number of dierent geometrical design tools for typical geometries such as plates, cylinders, spheres etc. are provided in the CAD section of CST MICROWAVE STUDIO. These shapes can be added or intersected using boolean operators to build up more complex shapes. An overview of the dierent methods available in the tool-set and their properties is included in the on-line help. Dene the Frequency Range The next setting for the simulation is the frequency range of interest. You can specify the frequency by choosing SolveFrequency from the main menu: Since you have already set the frequency units (to GHz for example), you need to dene only the absolute numbers here (i.e. without units). The frequency settings are important because the mesh generator will adjust the mesh renement (spatial sampling) to the frequency range specied. Dene Ports Every antenna structure needs a source of high-frequency energy for excitation of the desired electromagnetic waves. Structures may be excited e.g. using impressed currents or voltages between discrete points or by wave-guide ports. The latter are pre-dened surfaces in which a limited number of eigenmodes are calculated and

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Antenna Engineering, Peter Knott

Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

may be stimulated. The correct denition of ports is very important for obtaining accurate S-parameters. Dene Boundary and Symmetry Conditions The simulation of this structure will only be performed within the bounding box of the structure. You may, however, specify certain boundary conditions for each plane (xmin , xmax , ymin etc.) of the bounding box taking advantage of the symmetry in your specic problem. The boundary conditions are specied in a dialogue box that opens by choosing SolveBoundary Conditions from the main menu. Set Field Monitors In addition to the port impedance and S-parameters which are calculated automatically for each port, eld quantities such as electric or magnetic currents, power ow, equivalent currents density or radiated far-eld may be calculated. To invoke the calculation of these output data, use the command Solve Field Monitors. Start the Simulation After dening all necessary parameters, you are ready to start your rst simulation. Start the simulation from the transient solver control dialogue box: SolveTransient Solver. In this dialogue box, you can specify which column of the S-matrix should be calculated. Therefore, select the Source type port for which the couplings to all other ports will then be calculated during a single simulation run.

2.1

Using Parameters

CST MICROWAVE STUDIO has a built-in parametric optimizer that can help to nd appropriate dimensions in your design. To take advantage of this feature you need to declare one or more parameters in the parameter list (bottom left part of the program window) and use the symbols in almost every input eld of the program (dimensions, port settings etc.) Also simple calculations using these pre-dened symbols are possible (e.g. 4*x+y).

Simulation Results

After a successful simulation run, you will be able to access various calculation results and retrieve the obtained output data from the problem object tree at the right hand side of the program window.

3.1

Analyse the Port Modes

After the solver has completed the port mode calculation, you can view the results (even if the transient analysis is still running). In order to visualize a particular port mode, you must choose the solution from the navigation tree. If you open the specic sub-folder, you may select the electric or the magnetic mode eld. Selecting the folder for the electric eld of the rst mode e1 will display the port mode and its relevant parameters in the main view: Besides information on the type of mode, you will also nd the propagation constant

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Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

Figure 4: Typical Patch Antenna Geometry and Dimensions at the central frequency. Additionally, the port impedance is calculated automatically (line impedance).

3.2

Analyse S-Parameters and Field Quantities

At the end of a successful simulation run you may also retrieve the other output data from the navigation tree, e.g. S-Parameters and electromagnetic eld quantities.

References
[1] Computer Simulation Technology (CST), CST http://www.cst.com/Content/Products/DS/Overview.aspx Design Studio,

[2] T. Weiland, Discretization Method for the Solution of Maxwells Equations for Six-Component Fields, Electron. Commun. (AEU), Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 116-120, 1977

3.3
3.3.1

Exercises
Rectangular Patch Antenna for WLAN application

The aim of this tutorial is the design of a microstrip patch antenna for a practical Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) application operating at 2.4 GHz as well as connecting and matching the antenna to the system via a microstrip transmission line. The typical geometry of a patch antenna and the dimension parameters important for specifying a design are shown in gure ??.

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Antenna Engineering, Peter Knott

Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

Figure 5: Antenna Matching Techniques: Asymmetric Feed, Recessed Feed and QuarterWavelength Transformer The antenna should be built on a dielectric substrate of industrial FR-4 material1 ( r = 4.9, r = 1) of height hS = 1.0 mm. The PCB has a copper cladding of thickness hC = 35 m on top and bottom. At the beginning, the substrate should be considered of innite extent (open boundary conditions at the sides) and lossless, i.e. loss tangent tan = 0. Also the conductor material should be considered perfectly conducting (PEC). 3.3.2 Coarse Design

The initial design should be a very simple microstrip-to-patch transition without any recesses or other impedance transformer (t = 0). Before you start modelling the antenna with CST MICROWAVE STUDIO, use the Transmission Line Model (TLM) design method illustrated in the script to calculate the approximate dimensions of the microstrip line width and patch width and height. 3.3.3 CST Simulation

Start CST MICROWAVE STUDIO, build a CAD model of the patch antenna (comprising feed line and rectangular patch on innite PCB substrate) based on the approximated dimensions from the previous exercise and make the appropriate settings in the program for units, frequency, boundary conditions etc. If necessary, you can make use of the Quick Start Guide to lead you through the dierent steps. Use the transient solver to calculate the antenna properties. What are the resulting frequency of resonance and input reection coecient S11 ? 3.3.4 Improved Antenna Matching

Since the input impedance of the patch antenna is dierent from that of the feeding microstrip line, the mismatch will cause a certain amount of reected waves at the input port. With additional matching techniques (e.g. asymmetric feeding, recessed feed or quarter-wavelength transformer, see gure ??) you can reduce the mismatch and improve reection coecient S11 . Try out dierent matching techniques and see how you can improve antenna matching. What is the improvement of the 10 dB-bandwidth that you can achieve? Does it satisfy the bandwidth requirements for operation in an IEEE 802.11b/g system (2.4 - 2.4835 GHz)?
1

Flame Retardant 4, a glass reinforced epoxy laminate for manufacturing printed circuit boards

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Antenna Engineering, Peter Knott

Tutorial Patch Antenna Design

3.3.5

Antenna Far-eld and Polarisation

Use a eld monitor to calculate the far-eld radiated by the antenna. What is the far-eld polarisation and maximum antenna gain in the direction normal to the antenna? How does changing the patch dimensions (W, L) aect these values? 3.3.6 More Realism

For the sake of simplicity, some idealised assumptions have been made in the previous design exercises (innite and lossless substrate material). How do the results of the simulation change if a) the PCB has a nite size with a margin of 1 cm around the antenna and transmission line structure? b) the copper material is considered lossy ( = 5.8 107 S/m)? 3.3.7 Additional Exercises

Design a quadratic patch antenna with coaxial transmission line feed and two polarization ports. Design a quadratic patch antenna with truncated edges for circular polarisation. Design an array consisting of 5 patch antennas with the beam scanned to 30 oboresight. Design an array of series fed patch antennas (see gure ??) for the same scanning direction.

Figure 6: Series Fed Patch Antenna Array

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