Design of a Circularly Polarized 88 Patch Antenna Array Using a New Series-Parallel Feed

Zhang Yanjun1, Chen Aixin1, Cao Shunfeng2, Su Donglin1

EMC Laboratory, Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics (BUAA) Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China E-mail: zhangyanjun0715@126.com, axchen@buaa.edu.cn 2 National Laboratory of Antenna and Microwave Technology, Xidian University Xi'an 710071, People's Republic of China arrays remarkably. Furthermore, due to the phase delays Abstract In this article, A novel 64-element high-gain circularly polarized patch antenna array in the a-band is necessary in the feed network, it also benefit from an presented. Sequential rotation technique is employed here and increased input impedance bandwidth, as reflections from the patches are excited by a new series-parallel feed power mismatched radiating elements tend to cancel at the feed distribution network with microstrip transmission lines to point. The feeding power distribution network is improved improve the antenna performance. The results achieved show that the microstip antenna array provides a minimum peak gain in this article for the convenience of the impedance of 24.4dBi at the center frequency 29GHz. The input return loss matching and array forming, and the optimal design of the less than -10dB bandwidth of the array is about 12.2 , and the antenna element is carried out with the simulation software 3dB axial ratio bandwidth is achieved as 5.9 . The proposed Ansoft Designer3.5. The feed network of the array is the a-band circularly polarized antenna array has the advantages symmetrical series-parallel network, which can reduce the of low-cost, less weight, compact construction and easy to be loss of the feed line compared with that of the parallel feed integrated with F/microwave active circuits, and allows a good prospect of application in the phased array radar and satellite network. Finally, the microstip antenna array presented here has not only achieved great polarisation purity, but communication systems. Key Words circularly polarized microstrip antenna antenna also better radiation and impedance performance.
array series-parallel feed network
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II. ELEMENT AND SUBARRAY DEVELOPMENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

Circularly polarized(CP) antennas are attractive for many practical applications, such as satellite communication, radar, the remote control and telemetry. Circular polarization, compared to linear polarization, allows for greater flexibility in orientation angle between transmitter and receiver, better mobility, and weather penetration, and reduction in multi-path reflections and other kinds of interferences[1,2]. Microstip patch antennas are an attractive choice for many modern communication systems due to their light weight, low profile with conformability, easy to be integrated with carriers of missile and satellite and so on[3]. Two of the major disadvantages are the low gain and very narrow impedance bandwidth due to the resonant nature of the conventional microstip antenna. By employing the microstrip antenna array[4], the characteristics of the antenna are improved observably, but in some situations, like operating above the Ka-band, there are often shortcomings that the loss of the feed network is too big and spatial arrangement is unreasonable. In this article, a new 64-element Ka-band microstip antennas array radiating a broadside beam with left-hand CP is presented. Sequential rotation technique[5,6] is employed in the array design, which improves both the polarisation purity and radiation pattern symmetry of the microstrip patch antenna
___________________________________ 978-1-4244-4076-4/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE
This work was supported in part by the national Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant (NO. 60831001/F010610)

A. Single-Element Development For an array to generate CP, its element is generally required to be circularly polarized. Although a CP array can be composed of linearly polarized elements[5], if the radiation efficiency is not a concern. To achieve high efficiency, the patch element should be circularly polarized. There are basically two techniques for a single microstrip patch to generate CP. One is to have a square or circular patch excited by two orthogonally located feeds in time quadrature to each other. The other is to have a physically perturbed patch excited by a single feed. To minimize the insertion loss from power distribution transmission lines and for the considering of array, the single-feed patch is selected for the array. There are several configurations[7] of the single-feed patch to generate CP, such as a square patch with two truncated corners, a square patch with a tilted center slot, and a circular patch with two indented edges. In this paper, a single-feed square patch antenna with corner truncated is adopted as the element of the microstrip antenna array, thus it not only can simplify the feeding network and reduce the loss of the feed line, but also is more convenient to compose array. In an attempt to obtain the best axial ratio with wide-angle and a wider frequency band, it requires the substrate with smaller dielectric constant, therefore, according to project need, the RT/duriod5880 from American Rogers Corporation is employed as the substrate for the microstrip

antenna operating at 29GHz. It has a thickness of h 0.254mm , with a dielectric constant of H r 2.2 . The starting values of the side length and truncated depth are decided according to the following formulas:

c Hr 1 2 (1) W 2 fr 2 (2) 's / s Q0 1 / 2 A type Here, 's is the sum of two truncated areas; s is the area of unperturbed patch; Q0 represents the quality factor of unperturbed patch, while f r stands for the resonance
frequency of the patch antenna. For the convenience of composing the array, the feed of the antenna element is employed to be the way of edgedfeed, and the bend dispensable branches is adopted as the feed line to match the element. The feeding present here contributes to forming large-scale array, and reduces the complexity of the feeding network, which makes the array simpler and easier to realize and simultaneously also reduces the difficulty of manufacture. B. 4-Element Subarray Development It has been demonstrated that the CP quality and bandwidth can be improved if the four elements, each being a narrow band CP element, are arranged sequentially in orientation and in phases. The four elements are arranged in 0 degrees, 90 degrees, 180 degrees, 270 degrees fashion to achieve symmetry and to cancel undesirable higher order modes, and thus to achieve purer polarization[8]. By adopting sequential rotation method and series-parallel feed technique, the impedance bandwidth and circularly polarisation purity of the antenna array are greatly improved, and the loss of the feed line is reduced, thus the gain of the array is enhanced correspondingly. When we use the subarray as a unit for a larger array, in order to achieve an equal phase at the feeding points, the space between adjacent units should be integral times of the length of dielectric waveguide wavelength[9]. Let the distance to be 8mm, which equals about the waveguide wavelength. The microstrip antenna array has the advantage of simple and compact construction and small size, which is very suitable to be the element of large-scale array and allows good prospects of application in the phased array radar and satellite communication systems. C. Antenna Element and Subarray: Configuration and Results The configuration of the antenna element and subarray is shown in Fig.1 and Fig.2, respectively. After simulation and optimization with Ansoft Designer, the truncatedcorner single-patch is designed with the following parameter: W =3.3mm, 's =0.48mm, the lengthes of the bend dispensable branches are l1 =1mm, l 2 =1.64mm respectively; A comparison of the return loss, axial ratio and gain curves between antenna element and subarray is presented in Fig.3. It is observed from the results that the single-element is tuned at 29.2GHz with the return loss of 43.6dB and a -10dB return loss bandwidth of 1.6GHz,

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while the subarray achieves the -10dB bandwidth of 3.15GHz. The 3dB axial ratio bandwidth of the subarray is about 2.5GHz, which is significantly better than that of the single element. Furthermore, the gain of the subarray is far more than that of single-element. Therefore, the use of sequential rotation subarray technique can result in an remarkable improvement of both input impedance and axial ratio bandwidth.

Fig. 1. Antenna element configuration

Fig. 2. Configuration of 4-element subarray arranged using the sequentially rotated technique

Fig. 3(a). A comparison of return loss between antenna element and subarray

Fig. 3(b). A comparison of axial ratio between antenna element and subarray

practically realized. Considering of practical microstrip antenna, the design was at the precision of 10-2mm. Moreover, the characteristic impedance of a realizable microstrip has its limitation at around 120 : -130 : for practice. According to the results, all ports are matched, and the transmission coefficient is 13.5dB form the input port to each subarray port.

Fig. 3(c). A comparison of gain between antenna element and subarray Fig. 3. Comparison results between antenna element and subarray

III. FULL ARRAY DESIGN A. Design of Feed Network The feed network consists of several two-way power dividers, which are designed to produce an impedance match at the array input[10]. Each element is fed with equal amplitude. The proposed feeding network configuration is shown in Fig.4, which mainly includes quarter-wave transformers. Port 0 is the feed point with the characteristic impedances of 50 : , while ports 1-16 are output ports, which are separately connected with corresponding 4-element antenna subarrays. The feed network of the 4-element subarray antenna is designed in a circular shape, in order to reduce the discontinuity, produce a 90q phase difference and ensure equal power between adjacent antenna elements, so the signal amplitude at the four elements will be basically identical, and the phase of the output signal will basically differ 90q in turns. Due to the proposed series-parallel feed technique applied to the feed network, the insertion loss and complexity of the network is reduced substantially. In this design, isolating resistors have not been used for the limit of small size.

Fig. 5(a). The return loss at the output p of the feed network g ( ) p port

Fig. 5(b). Magnitude at output ports of the feed network Fig. 5. Result curves of the feed network

B. Antenna Array Design The antenna elements are spaced at 0.77O at all cases, where O is the free space wavelength. It has been shown that this minimises the mutual coupling without substantial degradation of the radiation pattern by sidelobes. The 4element subarray can be used as the "building block" subarray in the full array where all the subarrays are identical and are combined by microstrip power distribution lines. Therefore, there are a total of 16 sequentially arranged subarrays with a total of 64 patch elements. The array is a square aperture with a compact radiating aperture size of 6.4cm6.4cm. The configuration of the 64-element patch array is shown in Fig.6.

Fig. 4. Configuration of feed network

Fig.5 show the results for the return loss and magnitude of the proposed feed network. It was observed from Fig.5(a) that the impedance bandwidth of this feed network, defined as the frequency with an S11 above 10dB, covered the frequency band form 27.5GHz to 30.5GHz. Fig.5(b) plots the S parameters of the 16-port feed network. The average deviation of the output power amplitude is about 1dB, due to the dissymmetry and the precision of the width of the microstrip stub. For the network operates at Ka-band, the resonant wavelength is very small, and we can not arbitrarily decide the width and length of the stubs for the

Fig. 6. Configuration of 64-element patch array with series-parallel feed network

The curves of return loss, axial ratio and gain against frequency for the 64-element antenna array are shown in Fig.7. It can be observed from the result figure that good characteristics are obtained. It indicates the return loss of the antenna array below -10dB covers from 27.7GHz to 31.3GHz, and the bandwidth of axial ratio less than 1.5dB ranges from 28.5GHz to 29.5GHz whlie the 3dB bandwidth of axial ratio will be 1.7GHz. Moreover, the gain is up to 23.1dBi and more between 28.5GHz 29.5GHz whlie reaching 24.4dBi at the center frequency. The above characteristics are far more superiorly compared with single unit. For the usage of series-parallel feeding network, the line lengths and discontinuities in the feed network are reduced and this results in improving the radiation pattern and antenna bandwidth. The use of this technique in larger size antennas will further improve the antenna performance. Investigation results show that the feed network has a significant effect on the radiation pattern and, therefore, to achieve better results the use of isolated feed mechanisms is recommended.

IV. CONCLUSION In this paper, a 64-element low-cost, high-gain, and circularly polarized microstrip patch array is presented. Modified feeding stub of the patch unit and feeding point are optimized to match the input impedance and arrange array. The effects of the serial-parallel feed and sequentially rotated technique to improve the radiation and bandwidth are examined. The results show that the proposed structure greatly improves the bandwidth, radiation pattern and polarisation purity over a wider frequency band. It illustrates that the array has a -10dB bandwidth of return loss of 12.2%, while the 3dB axial ratio bandwidth reaches 5.9%, and the gain at the center frequency is 24.4dBi. This relatively good gain/bandwidth performance is attributed to the series-parallel feed technique and the sequential rotation technique. The presented 64-element Ka-band circularly polarized microstrip antenna array has a compact structure, low cost and other excellent performances, and are thus promising for practical applications. Furthermore, it is easily integrated with RF/microwave active circuits and has a vastness prospect, especially in the fields of phased array radar and satellite communication systems. REFERENCES
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[3] Fig. 7(a). Return loss of 64-element antenna array [4]

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[8] Fig. 7(b). Axial ratio of 64-element antenna array [9]

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Fig. 7(c). Gain of 64-element antenna array Fig. 7. Result curves of 64-element antenna array