Small rectangular patch antenna tively longer than the length of the conventional patch.

The
dimensions of each patch antenna are chosen after a series of
K.M. Luk, R. Chair and K.F. Lee extensive measurements, and are close to the m i n i " resonant
frequency for each type of folded patch.
A novel folded rectangular patch antenna is designed and
measured. Compared with a conventional patch antenna with the
same surface area, the resonant frequencyis reduced by 37%. The
cross-polarisationlevel is -20dB. - 6

5
Zntroduction: Microstrip patch antennas have the attractive fea-
$ 4
tures of low profile and light weight, and can be made conformal .-e
to mounting structures. In the low microwave frequency range, 8 3
however, their sizes may be too large for practical applications.
Several techniques have been proposed to reduce the size of the 2
conventional half-wave patch. One approach uses expensive and 1
heavy high dielectric constant material [l]. Another approach uses n
either a shorting wall [2] or a shorting pin [3]. A shorting wall "1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4
leads to the quarter-wave patch while a shorting pin near the feed frequency, GHz mB
can reduce the patch size even further. However, in both cases, the Fig. 3 Measuved gain
cross-polarisation level is quite high. In this Letter, a novel small
folded patch antenna is proposed. The antenna is simple in struc- -configuration 1
ture and has low cross-polarisation. Compared to a conventional configuration 2
patch antenna with the same surface area, the resonant frequency
is reduced substantially. 0' 0'

top view

side view
180' 180'
a b
a b C plane
Fig. 4 Folded-patch configuration 1 radiation pattern
a E-plane
I W I di I I I hz 1 I1 I 12 i W i I W 2 I w3 I W4 1 W5 I Wg b H-plane
L
31 I 51 I 2 0 1
d2
15 I
hi
2 I 3 I 1 5 I 2 3 I 3 0 111 51 9.51 5 I 1 5 I 11 -co-polarisation
(unit:") cross-polarisation
10dB/div
Fig. 1 Structure ofpatches and antenna
O0 '
0
W = 31mm, L = 51mm, d, = 20mm, d, = 15"
h , = 2mm, h, = 3mm, w 1= 9.5mm, w, = 5mm
1, = 10mm, l2 = 15mm, l3 = 15mm, l4 = 23"

1 C
1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2
frequency, GHz
Fig. 2 S WR against frequency
(i) single layer patch;& = 2.65GHz; B W = 1.23%
(ii) folded-patch configuration 1;fo = 2.1GHz; BW = 2.03%
(iii) folded-patch configuration 2;f0 = 1.66GHz; BW = 3.16%
Antenna structure: The geometries of the antennas are shown in
Fig. 1. Fig. l a presents a conventional patch antenna with length
L = 51mm and W = 3 1mm. This antenna excited in TMIomode is
used as a reference. Fig. lb shows a folded patch antenna, desig-
nated as folded-patch configuration 1, which is made of a copper
sheet of length 85.5" and width 31mm, while Fig. IC shows a
second folded patch antenna, designated as folded-patch configu-
ration 2, which is made of a copper sheet of length 111mm and
width 31". The antennas are fed by coaxial feeds. Although all
the three antennas have the same length in the top view, it is
found that the resonant lengths of the folded patches are effec-
2366
180' 180'
a b
Fig. 5 Folded-patch configuration 2 radiation pattern
a E-plane
b H-plane
I -co-polarisation
2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 cross-polarisation
a 10dBidiv
Measurements: An HP8510C network analyser and a compact
range with an HP85301C antenna measurement system was used
to measure the S W R and the radiation pattern of each antenna,
respectively. As shown in Fig. 2, the resonant frequency of the
rectangular patch antenna is decreased when the patch is folded.
The resonant frequency for the conventional rectangular patch is
2.65GHz. Folded-patch configuration 1 has a resonant frequency
of 2.1 GHz (20.75% decrease) while the folded-patch configuration
2 has a resonant frequency of 1.66GHz (37.26% decrease). The
gains of the two configurations are 6.1 and 5.8dBi, respectively
(Fig. 3). The thickness of the antenna (Smm), in units of substrate
wavelength, is -0.056 at 2.1GHz and 0.044 at 1.66GHz. The
radiation pattems of the folded-patch configurations have been
measured at 2.1 and 1.66GHz, respectively. As shown in Figs. 4
and 5, the co-polarisation pattems have maxima in the broadside
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 10th December 1998 Vol. 34 No. 25
direction. The cross-polarisation maximum is --20dB below the measured at a positive gate bias V , = 0.25V. A large energy band
co-polarisation maximum. This is significantly lower than that for discontinuity in the AlGaNiGaN heterostructure, strong piezoelec-
a shorted quarter-wave patch or patch with shorting pin. tric effect and a large electron effective mass resulted in a turn-on
voltage for the gate current as high as +2.2V (see [l]).
Discussion: Two novel designs for small rectangular patch anten- , . , ‘ I . I . , . ,

nas have been presented. The resonant frequencies of both folded- 140
patch configuration 1 and folded-patch configuration 2 were 200
T2
found to be decreased compared to the the resonant frequency of - 120
the conventional patch. This is because the effect of folding the . E
patches is an increase in the physical length of the patch. Refer- E150 - IOl)$
E . E
ence to Fig. 2 shows that the bandwidth (SWR = 2) is 2.03% for B -
folded-patch configuration 1, 3.16% for folded-patch configura- E - 80 $
tion 2, and 1.23% for conventional patch. It was found that when
i
E100 - -
m
+-
the height of each layer is increased, the bandwidth of the antenna L
3 60 iz
c
increases but the resonant frequency also increases slightly. Com-
pared to the patch with a shorting wall or shorting pin, the folding m
K
.-
% 50 - - 40
sc
designs result in considerably lower cross-polarisation. .
- 20
0 IEE 1998 20 November 1998 0 -
Electronics Letters Online No: 19981643 - 0
K.M. Luk and R. Chair (Department of Electronic Engineering, City -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong) gate bias, V L@!?l
K.F. Lee (Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri Fig. 1 Transfer characteristics of two Al, *,Ga, ,5N-GaN HFETs (TI
Columbia, Engineering Building West, Columbia, Missouri 6521I , USA) and T2) used in digital circuit shown in Fig. 2
source-drain current calculated using following fitting parame-
References ters for T1 and T2, respectively: output conductances 0.013 and 0.01
V-I; mobility 0.15m2/Vs; sheet electron density 7.3 X and 9.8 X
1 LO, T.K.:
‘Miniature aperture-coupled microstrip antenna of very 1015m-Z; source and drain resistance 5 Q saturation velocity 1.1 X lo5
high permittivity’, Electron. Lett., 1997, 33, pp. 9-10 and 1.5 x 105m/s; knee voltage parameters 5 and 1.9; distance to
buffer layer charge 30nm; threshold voltages -0.6 and -1.13V; gate
2 PINHAS, s , and SHTRIKMAN, s.: ‘Comparison between computed and length 2 p
measured bandwidth of quarter-wave microstrip radiators’, ZEEE
Trans., 1988, AP-36, (ll), pp. 1615-1616
3 WATERHOUSE, R.B.: ‘Small microstrip patch antenna’, Electron.
Lett., 1995, 31, pp. 604605 The devices exhibited a very low gate leakage, a sharp pinch-off
and very high breakdown voltage. The gate leakage current in a
4 5 p wide HFET was 200pA at a reverse gate bias of -1V and
remained unchanged up to V , = -10V. For comparison, the maxi-
mum drain current in this device was -6.5mA at V , +2.0V. Thus,
the on-to-off ratio of this device was of the order of 108.
Low-thresholdAIGaN-GaN heterostructure To increase the breakdown voltage, we fabricated HFETs with
field effect transistors for digital applications offset gate design [3]. The breakdown voltage was measured in
4 5 p wide devices with a source-drain spacing of 5 p , gate
R. Gaska, J. D e n g a n d M.S. Shur length of 2 p , and source-to-gate and gate-to-drain distances of
0.5 and 2 S p , respectively. The irreversible breakdown of the
The fabricationof an AlGaN-GaN based digital inverter circuit is devices at a gate bias V, = -1 V occurred at a source-drain voltage
reported, in which a large gain (up to 180) and a noise margin of V, = 330V. The estimated average electric breakdown field is -1.3
-0.W have been obtained. The measured temperature coefficient x 106V/cm.This breakdown field is higher than the previously
of the switching voltage of the inverter was -3SmVi”C up to reported record value of 1.1 x 1O6Vicm[4] and is close to the max-
90°C. The simulations predict that such an inverter should imum breakdown field estimated in [3].
operate up to -230°C.
6
AlGaN-GaN heterostructure field effect transistors (HFETs) have
demonstrated an extremely low gate leakage current and exhibited 5
drain current saturation at positive gate bias as high as +6V [l].
The low values of the gate leakage point out to the potential
applications of AlGaN-GaN HFETs in high temperature digital 4
circuits such as, for example, the direct coupled field effect transis- >
tor logic (DCFL) family. Such circuits operate on a single power 93
supply and, thus, require switching transistors with a positive (or >”
small negative) threshold voltage. The first AlGaN-GaN based
digital circuit was demonstrated by Khan et al. [2]. 2
In this Letter, we report the performance of AlGaN-GaN
HFET-based inverter at elevated temperatures. 1
The low-threshold AI,, zsGa,7,N-GaN HFETS were grown on
sapphire substrates using low-pressure MOCVD [3]. We minimised
the threshold voltage of the devices by growing nominally 0 1 ’
0
’ I
1
. ’
2
* ’
3
. 4
1 1

undoped epilayer structures and by depositing a very thin (-lOnm
thick) AlGaN barrier with a 25% aluminum molar fraction. This
allowed us to fabricate HFETs with -75-80% depleted channel
even at zero gate bias (see T1 in Fig. 1). The electron mobility in
these heterostructures was 840cm2Ns and 3000cmZiVs at room
temperature and at 77K, respectively. The sheet electron density
was -5 x l O ’ * ~ m and
- ~ did not change with temperature. As seen
from Fig. 1, the maximum source-drain current of these low-
threshold devices was -130mAimm, which is almost an order of
magnitude lower than in our high power HFETs with doped chan-
nel design [l]. The maximum transconductance was 125mSimm
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 10th December 1998
Vi”, v jozlizi
Fig. 2 Characteristics of inverter
Based on switching (Tl) and load (T2) AlGaN-GaN HFETs with
threshold voltages of -0.5V and -1.0V and GaN Schottky barrier
diode (D) with turn-on voltage of 1V connected in series with HFET
gate for level shifting
Inset: schematic diagram of digital circuit
We used these the low-threshold HFETs to realise a GaN-based
digital circuit. Fig. 2 shows the measured characteristics of the
Vol. 34 No. 25 2367