AN APERTURE-COUPLED SMALL MICROSTRIP ANTENNA WITH ENHANCED BANDWIDTH lkmo Park* and Bum Jun Cho Deparhnent of Elechical

Engineering Ajou University Suwon 442-749, Korea Raj Mittra Electrical Engineering Department Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802, USA

I.

Introduction

In recent years there has been considerable interest in the development of small microstrip antennas for personal communication. Common techniques for reducing the size of a microstrip antenna are to employ a substrate with high dielectric constant [I] and/or to incorporate a shorting pin in a microstrip patch [ 2 , 31. It is well-known, however, that the bandwidth of the microstrip antenna becomes narrower as the size of the antenna becomes smaller. Consequently, it is difficult to achieve an impedance bandwidth of more than 3% for small microstrip antennas. Recently, two techniques that enhance the impedance bandwidth of small antennas to about 10% have been reported in the literature. Kokotoff et al. [4] use an annular ring coupled to a shorted circular patch to enhance the bandwidth, while Wong and Lin [5]employ a low resistance chip resistor instead of the shorting pin. It is also possible to enhance the bandwidth without enlarging the size of the antenna stmcture by designing a matching network in the feedline. We have applied this technique to the aperture-coupled small antenna

- specifically,

an open-

circuited stub connected in shunt with the microstrip feedline. To further enhance the bandwidth of the antenna, an additional shunt stub and multiple shorting pins are incorporated. In this paper. the design of the aperturecoupled antenna with shunt stubs and shorting pins is described, and experimental data for the return loss and radiation pattern of the antenna are presented. 11. Experimental results and discussion The geometry of the aperture-coupled small antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The rectangular patch of length L = 27 mm and width W = 12 mm is etched on a 0. I27 = 2.2. The rectangular patch, mm-thick RT Duroid 5880 skbstrafe with supported by 6.35 mm-thick Rohacell 51 substrate with ~~2 = 1.07, is connected to a 77 mm x 52 mm ground plane with shorting pins. The radius of the shorting pins is 0.5 mm and they are placed along one of the radiating edges with equal spacings.
0-7803-5639-X/99/$10.00 01999 IEEE.

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When only one shorting pin is incorporated, it is placed at the center of the radiating edge. The microstrip feed network of width wf-O.bmm, located below the ground 5. plane, is etched on a 0.635 mm-thick RT Duroid 6006 substrate with ~ ~ 1 = 6 . 1The antenna is excited by the microstrip feed network through a coupling aperture in the ground plane that is centered with respect to the width of the rectangular patch. The shunt stubs in the microstrip feed network are bent around 90, so that it is located inside the line extending from the rectangular patch. The other relevant design parameters of the antenna are listed in Table 1. The measured results for the above antenna obtained by using an HP8510C network analyzer are shown in Fig. 2. The impedance bandwidths (VSWR < 2 1) are: 45 MHi (fc=1.604 GHz) for the antenna with one shorting pin; 119 MHz (fc=1.672 GHz) for the antenna with one shorting pin and one shunt stub; 230 MHZ (fc=2.099 GHz) for the antenna with six shorting pins and one shunt stub; and, 255 MHz (fc=2.111 GHz) for the antenna with six shorting pins and two shunt stubs. In terms of fractional bandwidth, these represent 2.8196, 7.12%, 10.96% and 12.08%, respectively. Therefore, we have been able to increase the bandwidth of the antenna by a factor of 2.53, 3.9, and 4.3, respectively, as compared to the antenna with only one shorting pin. The effect of the shorting pins on the resonant frequency and bandwidth of the antenna will now be. discussed. The resonant frequency is increased or decreased depending on the number of shorting pins due to inductive or capacitive effects as described in [6];however, in general, the bandwidth increases as the number of shorting pins is increased. It is found that the resonant frequency and the bandwidth reach their maximum values when the sum of the diameter of shorting pins is approximatelyone-half the width of rectangular patch. A further increase of the number of shorting pins neither changes the resonant frequency nor the bandwidth appreciably, and has the same effect as that obtained by using a total short circuit. The radiation patterns have been measured for the antenna with one shorting pin and one shunt stub at 1.64 GHz, and for the antenna with six shorting pins and two shunt stubs at 2.02 GHz. The CO- and cross-polarization components of the antenna for both E- and H-planes are shown in Fig. 3. The H-plane crosspolarization levels are relatively high because of the radiation from the shorting pin. The beamwidth in the E-plane of the antenna with six shorting pins i.s narrower than that for the antenna with one shorting pin. This is athibutable to the effect of the shorting pins on the antenna located on a finite ground plane.

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111.

Conclusions

A bandwidth-enhanced small microstrip antenna has been presented in this paper. The bandwidth enhancement has been achieved by using shorting pins and open-circuited stubs connected in shunt with the microstrip feedline in an aperturecoupled antenna structure. The fractional bandwidth of 12% has been achieved for an antenna whose dimensions are only 27 mm x 12 mm x 7 mm.
References
[ l ] T. K. Lo, C . Ho,Y. Hwang, E. K. W. Lam, and B. Lee, "Miniature aperture-coupled microstrip antenna of very high permittivity," Electron. Left., vol. 33, pp. 9-10, 1997. [2] R. Waterhouse, "Small microstrip patch antenna," Electron. Lert., vol. 3 1, pp. 604-605, 1995. [3]

I. Park and R. Mittra, "Aperture-coupled small microstrip antenna," Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 19, pp. 1741-1742, 1996.
coupled to a shorted patch," IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 913-914, 1997.

[4]D. M. Kokotoff, R. B. Waterhouse, and J. T. Aberle, "An annular ring

[5] K. L. Wong and Y. F. Lin, "Small broadband rectangular microstrip antenna with chip-resistor loading," Electron. Len., vol. 33, pp. 1593-1594, 1997.
[6] M. Sanad, "Effect of the shorting posts on short circuit microstrip antennas," Proc. IEEE Antenna Propagat. Symp., Seattle, USA, pp. 701-704, 1994.

Table 1: Relevant design parameters for the bandwidth-enhanced antennas (in mm).

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f
IWf

x2

XfJ

y II

-4-n

c c

UL

, w
I

li ii

% -20

-10

E -30

L
-50
15
17 19

2 1

23

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 2 Measured return loss for the aperture-coupledsmall mcrostnp antennas

180

I80

(a) (b) Fig. 3 Measured radiation patterns for the aperture-coupled small microstrip antennas. (a) Antenna with one shorting pin and one shunt stub at 1.64 GHz. (b) Antenna with six shorting pins and two shunt stubs at 2.02 GHz.

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