International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 213

Volume 2 Issue 6, September 2014, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

ANALYSIS OF THREE LAYER SQUARE MICROSTRIP STACKED

ANTENNAS FOR WLAN SYSTEMS
Rashika Jain, Jupsimar Singh, R.K.Yadav, Mritunjay Rai
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering
JRE Group of Institutions, Greater Noida, India

ABSTRACT
In this paper, the design of square shaped stacked
microstrip patched antenna is presented. The three
layer square antenna has been designed and simulated
with ansoft HFSS on Roger RT Duroid substrate
having thickness of 0.16 mm with dielectric constant
of 2.2 with different configurations of ground plane at
the bottom of the substrate. The proposed antenna
offers excellent performance such as antenna gain, BW
with VSWR less than 1.5 is observed with 60 MHz
bandwidth. The proposed antenna is used in WLAN
systems.
Indexed Terms: Microstrip Patch Antenna
Roger RT Duroid;WLAN; BW(Bandwidth)

I.

(MSA);

INTRODUCTION

There are four basic coupling mechanisms: conductive,

capacitive, magnetic or inductive, and radiative. Any
coupling path can be broken down into one or more of
these coupling mechanisms working together. For
example the lower path in the diagram involves
inductive, conductive and capacitive modes.
Radiative coupling or electromagnetic coupling occurs
when source and victim are separated by a large
distance, typically more than a wavelength. Source and
victim act as radio antennas: the source emits or
radiates an electromagnetic wave which propagates
across the open space in between and is picked up or
received by the victim.
Electromagnetic coupled patch antenna has wider
bandwidth and high gain. There is a wide variety of
methods available at present for the analysis of antenna
coupling problems. Exact methods like method of
moments (MoM), finite element (FE), and finite
difference (FD) are very useful and work very well for
models which have a dimension of just a few
wavelengths. Recent developments like the fast
multipole method (FMM) or multilevel fast multipole
method (MLFMM) allow the computation of
electromagnetically even larger problems within
tolerable computation time.
The objective is to design a stacked square microstrip
patch antenna to improve gain and BW with suspended
configuration. The designed antenna is linearly
polarised having the resonant frequency of 5.8GHz

(with 10% bandwidth). The substrate material used is

Roger RT Duroid, having 0.16mm thickness. The
permittivity of the dielectric material is 2.2.The
radiation pattern of proposed antenna gives
omnidirectional configuration To find the resultant farfield radiation pattern, the variation in the phase and
amplitude of the currents in these two individual patch
elements are calculated first and then the resultant farfield pattern can be found. Self and mutual impedances
can be derived from the near field calculations. These
impedance expressions can be used to find the
effective current distributions on the individual patch
elements. The current distributions are then used for
calculating the far-field which is the required field in
the presence of mutual coupling. For example, energy
is transferred from a power source to an electrical
load by means of conductive coupling, which may be
either resistive or hard-wire. An AC potential may be
transferred from one circuit segment to another having
a DC potential by use of a capacitor. Electrical energy
may be transferred from one circuit segment to another
segment with different impedance by use of a
transformer. This is known as impedance matching.
These are examples of electrostatic and electrodynamics inductive coupling. In electromagnetic coupling,
conducting plates works as capacitor due to electric
field and works as inductor due to magnetic field.
Now we have designed electromagnetic coupled
antenna. The small size is an important requirement for
portable communication equipment, such as global
positioning satellite (GPS) receivers. So due to smaller
size, better impedance and bandwidth compared to the
square, rectangular and circular microstrip antenna for
given frequency we have choose pentagonal shaped
microstrip antenna.The microstrip antenna is simulated
using HFSS Simulator, where electromagnetic analysis
tools will be used. There are various shapes that can be
used as radiating patch. However, for this paper,
Square patch will be designed with coaxial feeding
method. The microstrip antenna is simulated using
HFSS Simulator.

II. DESIGN OF SQUARE PATCH

ANTENNA
In electronics and telecommunication, coupling is the
desirable or undesirable transfer of energy from

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 214

Volume 2 Issue 6, September 2014, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

one medium, such as a metallic wire or an optical

fiber, to another medium, including fortuitous
transfer.Coupling is also the transfer of electrical
energy from one circuit segment to another. When two
patch elements are brought in the vicinity of each
other, the current in each element changes in both
amplitude and phase. The amount of change depends
on the mutual coupling between the elements. Since
the currents are changed, the far-fields due to these
elements change.
In the most basic form, a microstrip patch antenna
consists of a radiating patch on one side of the
dielectric substrate, which has a ground plane on the
other side. The resonant length of the antenna
determines its resonant frequency. In fact the patch is
electrically a bit larger than its physical dimensions due
to the fringing fields. The patch antenna that introduces
here has made of the conduction material copper.
The coaxial feeding is given to the point where input
resistance is approximately 50 ohms. 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. This feed
method is easy to fabricate and has low spurious
radiation. The proposed antenna has been designed
using the following expressions [4]

Relative permittivity of the substrate ): 2.2

Design frequency: 5.8 GHz
Thickness of dielectric substrate: 0.16 mm
Elemental side: 16.5mm
Feed location: 7.9mm
Coaxial cable dimensions:
Inner radius a: 0.6 mm
Outer radius b: 2.1 mm

Fig 1: Structure of proposed square patch antenna

Single layer:
Initially a single layer of patch antenna was designed
using Roger RT-duroid substrate which was taken as
dielectric, which was grounded infinitely; a square
patch was further connected. Feeding port was
allocated using co-axial feeding. Analysis of this was
stimulated using HFSS, and based upon various
stimulation results obtained such as S11, VSWR, Gain,
Impedance were plotted and the numerical values were
produced in table 1.
Table 1: Various antenna parameters using single layer
of Roger RT-Duroid

and

with

Where all the parameters have their usual meaning.

Parameters
S11(dB)
Designed
frequency(GHz)
Impedance()
VSWR
BW(GHz)
Gain
Radiated Power(W)

Results for square patch

-13.75
5.8
92.71
2.13
0.04
3.615
0.313

III. METHODOLOGY
Here we have designed an antenna in which coupling
is done. This antenna consists of three layers; all are of
similar shape and lying in parallel planes with equal
orientation of the edges. These three layers are: ground
plane, substrate layer and patch. There is no gap
between ground, substrate and the patch. Material used
for substrate is Roger RT -Duroid. This is shown in
figure 1 below.

Double Layer:
Further, again a second layer of Roger RT-Duroid was
added with a varying air gap of 0mm, 0.02 mm, 0.04
mm, and 0.06 mm, similarly various stimulation results
were obtained such as S11, VSWR, Gain, Impedance
were plotted and the numerical values were represented
in table 2. This process of adding new layer is said to be
as stacking.

Design Specifications:
Feeding technique: Coaxial feed
Substrate material: Roger RT Duroid
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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 215

Volume 2 Issue 6, September 2014, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

Table 2: Calculation of various antenna parameters

using double layer of Roger RT-Duroid

TYPES
S11(dB)
Designed
frequency(GHz)
Impedance()
VSWR
BW(MHz)
Gain
Radiated
Power(W)

different frequencies and from the graph it is shown

that at 5.8 GHz the gain is maximum.

Double layer square patch

Gap between two patches
T=0.00 T=0.02 T=0.04 T=0.06
mm
mm
mm
mm
-14.49 -24.07 -27.24 -26.22
5.8

5.8

5.8

5.8

90.68

64.29

68.40

61.88

1.9
0.04
3.56

1.43
0.05
3.73

2.08
0.06
3.69

2.59
0.06
3.69

0.329

0.517

0.445

0.488

Fig. 3: Variations of return loss for square patch

antenna with different air gaps

Triple layer:
Now similar analysis is done, three layer stacking of
Roger RT-Duroid with air gap of 0.04 mm in first and
second patch and varied gap between second and third
patch from 0 mm, 0.02 mm, 0.04 mm, to 0.06 mm and
the observations were made and represented in tabular
form as shown in table 3.
Table 3: Various antenna parameters using Triple
layer of Roger RT-duroid

TYPES

S11(dB)
Designed
frequency(GHz)
Impedance()
VSWR
BW(GHz)
Gain
Radiated
Power(W)

Triple layer square patch

Gap between second and third
patch
T=0.0 T=0.0 T=0.
T=0
2
4
06
Mm
mm
Mm
Mm
-10.39

-13.12

13.34

15.39

5.8

5.8

5.8

5.8

34.45
2.41
0.03

46.62
1.56
0.06

48.13
1.54
0.06

45.96
1.64
0.06

3.79

3.76

3.81

3.83

0.780

0.76

0.75

Fig. 4: Gain plot for different air gap

The figure 5 and figure 6 shows theImpedance and
VSWR plot of designed antenna for different air gap at
different frequency value.

0.915

Characteristics plot for Designed Antenna

The figure 3 shows that the value of S11 starts
decreasing as the air gap between the stack antennas is
increased and BW of antenna starts increasing. The
figure 4 shows the gain plot for different air gap at

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Fig. 5: Impedance plot for different air gap

International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 216

Volume 2 Issue 6, September 2014, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

Fig.6: VSWR plot for different air gap

VI. CONCLUSION
A parasitically coupled square patch antenna for
WLAN application system is presented. It is observed
from the simulated results that the proposed patch
antenna can be deployed for applications in ISM band.
The active BW of 60 MHz is obtained with Triple
layer configuration having gap of 0.04 mm with the
improved gain of 3.81. The performance of the antenna
can be further improved by using substrate with low
insertion losses as well as emergence of improved
implementation techniques.

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