PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SQUARE KOCH CURVE FRACTAL ANTENNA AT 2.

4 GHz USING NEC2

1

M.K Saini1 , M. Rattan2 Desh Bhagat Engineering College, Mandi Gobindgarh, Punjab, India, e-mail id: saini.mandeep07@gmail.com. 2 Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana, Punjab, India, e-mail id: dr.munishrattan@gmail.com.
are becoming a useful way to design advanced antennas such as multiband antennas with approximately the same input characteristics for different frequency bands, and also as small size antennas. Other fractals have also been explored to obtain small size and multiband antennas such as Hilbert curve fractal, the minkowski island fractal, and the Koch fractal [6]. This study presents the performance and analysis of square Koch curve antenna by 4Nec-2 software. The first part of antenna design deals with the implementation of square Koch curve designing to make the antenna to resonate at desired frequency. In second part the relevant antenna performance of the proposed design viz. return loss, gain, SWR, 3D and 2D radiation pattern are reported and discussed. II. THEORY A. Generation of Koch curve The geometric construction of basic quadratic Koch curve shown in figure 1 [7].

Abstract The use of fractal geometries has significantly impacted many areas of science and Engineering one of which is antennas. Modern telecommunication systems require antennas with wider bandwidths and smaller dimensions. This paper is concerned with the performance and analysis of square Koch curve fractal antenna. The dipole antenna based on 2nd iteration square Koch antenna has been modeled, analyzed its performance evaluated using the commercially available software NEC2. The antenna is designed using a wire of length 0.085m with dielectric constant 0.9 and conductivity 0.001. This antenna is designed for wireless application that works at 2.4 GHz. It also has a wide angle of beam in its radiation pattern. The SWR for the proposed antenna is less than 2 and Gain of 9.07dB at the desired frequency 2.4GHz. Index Terms Dipole Antenna, Fractal Antenna, Square Koch Curve, VSWR, Wireless LAN.

I.

INTRODUCTION

A large variety of applications of fractals can be found in many branches of science and engineering. One such area is fractal electrodynamics [1]. Fractal geometry can be combined with the electromagnetic theory for the purpose of investigating a new class of radiation, propagation and scattering problems [2]. In few years, the dramatic development of telecommunication technology brought the need for devices that entail their parts to be smaller and lighter and also capable of operating optimally at many different frequencies simultaneously. Fractal antenna is the power tool to meet the telecommunication operator requirements [3]. In many cases the use of fractal antennas can simplify circuit design ,reduce construction costs and improve reliability, furthermore they are self loading ,so no antenna parts such as coils and capacitors are needed to make them resonant. Fractals were first defined by Mandelbrot [4] as a way of classifying structures whose dimensions where not whole numbers. These geometries have been used previously to characterize unique occurrence in nature where difficult to define with Euclidean geometries, including the length of coastline, density of clouds, and the branching of trees [5]. The first application of fractals to antenna design was thinned fractal linear and planner array, i.e. arranging the elements in a fractal pattern to reduce the number of elements in the array and obtain wideband array for multiband performance, consequently fractal shape antenna

Figure 1

It is also known as Mikowski sausage. The starting element, the iteration 0 is a line segment, called initiator, and the geometrical object obtained at the first iteration is called generator [8]. This curve is by repeatedly replacing each line segment, composed of four quarters, with the generator consisting of eight pieces, each one quarter long. Each smaller segment of the curve is an exact replica of the whole curve.

B.

Fractal Dimension

Fractal dimension can be defined in many ways, however the most easily understood is for self similarity dimension [9]. The similarity dimension is defined as follows:

FD

log N log(8) 1.5 log 1 / log( 4)

where N is the total number of distinct copies, and (1/ ) is the reduction factor value which means how will be the length of the new side with respect to the original side length. III. MATHEMATICAL MODELLING The antenna is numerically simulated via method of moment (MoM). The fundamental concept behind the MoM employs orthogonal expansion and linear algebra to reduce the integral equation problem to a system of simultaneous linear equation. Numerical modeling is performed here using 4NEC2 [9]. The modeling process is done by dividing all wires into short segments where the current in one segment is considered constant along the length of the short segment. The length of each segment is made as short as possible without violation of maximum segment length to radius rations computational restrictions [10]. IV. PROPOSED ANTENNA DESIGN Figure 1 shows the proposed Antenna design. Simulations are performed using the 4NEC2 software package. The antenna is designed along XY axis. The feed source point of this antenna is placed at origin (0,0,0) and the voltage source set at 1 volt. Simulation is conducted by using an initial antenna height h= 6 cm, which is chosen for half of a wavelength at 2.4 GHz. Then the Square Koch curve is generated for iteration 0 until 2 in order analysis the behavior shown by the VSWR curves for each iteration. The square Koch iteration 2 curves is then chosen for possible frequency translation to the wanted frequency bands. In this proposed antenna design every segment of iteration 1 is replaced by twice of the quadratic curve on the same scale. The conductor diameter has been chosen to be 1 mm. To resonate the antenna at the desired frequency, the real antenna height should be longer than the height obtained from the assumption antenna height. So length of the antenna is changed to 8.5 m to obtain maximum gain and lesser return loss.

Figure 2

V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In this work, simulation code 4NEC2 is used to perform a detailed study of VSWR, reflection coefficient, gain, input impedance and radiation pattern characteristics of the square Koch dipole antenna in a free space.

Figure 3

The real and imaginary parts of the input impedance of this proposed antenna are shown in Figure 3 over a frequency range from 2 GHz to 2.5 GHz. The input impedance characteristics of this proposed antenna show the resonance characteristics of the antenna. The VSWR of the proposed antenna is shown in Figure 4. From the VSWR plot of the proposed antenna it is found that SWR < 2 and antenna resonate at frequency of 2.4 GHz.

Figure 4 Figure 6

Figure 5 shows the return loss -21.903 dB of the proposed antenna at 2.4 GHz frequency. Figure 6 shows the radiation pattern of the modeled antenna at resonant frequency 2.4 GHz. Figure 7 shows the gain 9.07 dB of the proposed antenna at the desired frequency. Table I shows the proposed antenna design length and their corresponding input impedances, VSWR and reflection coefficients. Table II shows the variation gain of the proposed antenna at different values of dielectric constant. Its very much clear from the table II as the value of dielectric constant is reducing there is change in the gain and return loss of the antenna. Lesser the return loss better is the antenna.

Figure 7

TABLE I PROPOSED ANTENNA DESIGN LENGTH AND OTHER PARAMETERS.

INPUT IMPEDENCE S.NO WIRE LENGTH VSWR REFLECTION COEFFICIENT

R 1 2 3 6 cm 7 cm 8.5 cm 38.21 31.8 38.21

X -2.21 1.46 -2.12 1.18 1.17 1.17 -21.375 -21.903 -21.903

Figure 5

Table II GAIN OF PROPOSED ANTENNA WITH CHANGE IN DIELECTRIC CONSTANT

Dielectric Constant 9 7 5 3 1 0.9 0.7

maximum in horizontal direction as antenna is placed horizontally above the ground. VI. CONCLUSION

S.No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Conductivity 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001 0.001

Gain(dB) 8.11 8.07 8 7.85 4.94 9.07 8.89

In case 6 we observe that the maximum gain is achieved by keeping the conductivity to 0.001 and setting dielectric constant to 0.9,so gain achieved is 9.07 dB.

In this work, the square Koch curve dipole antenna based on the 2nd iteration is investigated and its performance is analyzed. The simulation results show that this antenna can be efficiently operated at 2.4 GHz frequency and is compact in size. The maximum gain and less return loss are attained by changing the various parameters of the antenna like length, conductivity and dielectric constant. Maximum gain of the antenna is 9.07 dB, reflection coefficient 21.903 and VSWR<2. The gain and bandwidth of the antenna can be increased using array of antennas. It has been observed that the single band 2.4 GHz ISM band antenna will perform better than a dual band antenna. And some routers can only broadcast on one band at a time but can broadcast at 2.4 GHz/ 5 GHz. Single band antennas are low in cost. REFERENCES
[1]. F. J. Jibrael & M.A. Abdulkareem, Design and Simulation of Linear Array Antenna Using Koch Dipole Fractal Antenna Elements for Communication Systems Applications, Eng. & Tech. journal, Vol.28, No. 9, Feb 2010. [2]. Kulbir Singh, Vinit Grewal and Rajiv Saxena, Fractal Antennas: A Novel Miniaturization Technique for Wireless Communications,International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering, Vol 2, No. 5, November 2009 [3]. Header.S.Jaafer, Design And Analysis Of A Dual Bandd Koch Curve Dipole Fractal Antenna, Journal Of Kerbala University , Vol. 7,No.3, 2009. [4]. Mandelbrot B. B. , The fractal geometry of nature, New York: W. H. Freeman 1983. [5]. J. Gianvittorio, Fractal Antennas: Design, Characterization and Applications, M.Sc. thesis. University of California, Los Angeles, 2000. [6]. Abolfazl Azari A New Ultra Wideband Fractal Monopole Antenna, Aces Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4, April 2011. [7]. F. J. Jibrael, A.A. Sabri & S.D. Sateaa, Dipole Antenna With Fractal Koch Curve Geometry For Multiple Frequency Applications, Iraqi Journal Of Applied Physics, June 2011. [8]. Arpan Mondal, Miniaturized and Dual Band Hybrid Koch Dipole Fractal Antenna Design, International Journal of Computer Communication and Information System ( IJCCIS) Vol2. No1. ISSN: 09761349 July Dec 2010. [9]. F.J. Jibrael, F.F. Shareef and W.S. Mummo, Small Size and Dual Band of a Quadratic Koch Dipole Fractal Antenna Design, American Journal of Applied Sciences 5 (12): 18041807, ISSN 1546-9239 Science Publications, May 2008. [10]. Fawwaz J. Jibrael, Miniature Dipole Antenna Based on the Fractal Square Koch Curve, European Journal of Scientific Research, ISSN 1450-216X, Vol.21, No.4 (2008), pp.700706.

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 8 and figure 9 shows the 3D and 2D radiation pattern of the proposed antenna. This antenna radiates