Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

Samiran Chatterjee
Department of ECE,
Brainware Group of Institutions,
Barasat, West Bengal, India
Kalyanbrata Ghosh , and Joydeep Paul
Department of ECE
Aryabhatta Institute for Engineering and Management, Durgapur
Panagarh, West Bengal, India
S.K.Chowdhury
Department of ECE
JIS College of Engineering,
Phase-III, Block-A5, Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal, India
Debasree Chanda (Sarkar), and P.P.Sarkar
USIC Department, University Of Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal,
Address: B-7/27, Kalyani, Nadia, Pin-741235
Abstract- A single layer, single feed compact rectangular microstrip antenna is proposed.
Resonant frequency has been reduced drastically by cutting unequal rectangular slots at the edge of
the patch. Two rectangular slots are introduced at the left and right side of the patch to reduce the
resonant frequency. The widths of the rectangular slots are different to improve the gain bandwidth
performance of the antenna. The antenna size has been reduced by 73.9% when compared to a
conventional rectangular microstrip patch antenna. The characteristics of the designed structure are
investigated by using MoM based electromagnetic solver, IE3D. There is reasonable agreement
between these simulated data and measured value. An extensive analysis of the return loss,
radiation pattern, gain and efficiency of the proposed antenna is shown in this paper. The simple
configuration and low profile nature of the proposed antenna leads to easy fabrication and make it
suitable for the applications in Wireless communication system. Mainly it is developed to operate
in the mobile communication range of 900 MHz-1.8 GHz.
Index Terms Compact, Patch, Slot, Resonant frequency, Mobile Communication.

August 14, 2012

Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years demand for small antennas in wireless
communication has increased the interest of research work
on compact microstrip antenna design among microwaves
and wireless engineers [1]. To support the high mobility
necessary for a wireless telecommunication device, a small
and light weight antenna is likely to be preferred. For this
purpose Compact Microstrip antenna is one of the most
suitable devices. The development of antenna for wireless
communication also requires an antenna with more than
one operating frequency. This is due to many reasons,
mainly because there are various wireless communication
systems and many telecommunication operators using
various frequencies. Therefore one antenna that has
multiband characteristic is more desirable than having one
antenna for each frequency band. To reduce the size of the
antenna one of the effective techniques is cutting slot in
proper position on the microstrip patch [2-4]. There are so
many antennas which are used to reduce the size of the
antenna. Reducing the size of the antenna means the
resonant frequency of slotted antenna is drastically reduced
compared to conventional antenna [6-8].Other than slotted
antenna there are antennas like DRA (Dielectric Resonator
Antenna), Fractal Antenna etc [15-20]. Fractal antennas are
difficult to design and DRA requires high dielectric
constant substrates which are not readily available.
Compact microstrip antenna is a topic of
intensive research in recent years because of increasing
demand for small antennas used in various types of
communications including mobile communication [9-10].
The size of the antenna may be effectively reduced by
cutting rectangular slots on printed antennas. The work to
be presented in this paper is also a compact printed antenna
obtained by cutting rectangular slots which gave a resonant
frequency much lower than the resonant frequency of the
conventional printed antenna with the same patch area. The
work to be presented in this paper is also a compact
microstrip antenna design obtained by cutting rectangular
slots on the patch to increase the return loss and gainbandwidth performance of the antenna. To reduce the size
of the antenna substrates are chosen with higher value of
dielectric constant [11-14]. Our aim is to reduce the size of
the antenna as well as increase the operating bandwidth.
The proposed antenna (substrate with r = 4.4) presents a
size reduction of 73.9% when compared to a conventional
rectangular microstrip patch. The simulation has been
carried out by IE3D [21] software which uses the MOM
method and verified by measurements. Due to the small

size, low cost and light weight this antenna is a good candidate
for the application of mobile communication in the frequency
range of 900 MHz-1.8 GHz.
2. ANTENNA STRUCTURE
The configuration of the conventional printed antenna is
shown in Figure 1 with L=24 mm, W=30 mm, substrate
(PTFE) thickness h = 1.5875 mm, dielectric constant r = 4.4.
Coaxial probe-feed (radius=0.5mm) is located at W/2 and L/3.
The dielectric material selected for this design is an FR4
epoxy with dielectric constant (r) =4.4 and substrate height
(h) =1.6 mm. Co-axial probe feed of radius 0.5 mm with a
simple ground plane arrangement is used at point (0,-4) where
the centre of the patch is considered at point (0,0). Figure 2
shows the configuration of antenna 2 designed with similar
PTFE substrate. Two

Figure 1: Antenna 1 configuration

Figure 2: Antenna 2 configuration

August 14, 2012

Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

unequal rectangular slots whose dimensions and the

location of coaxial probe-feed (radius=0.5 mm) are shown
in the figure 2. The configuration of antenna 2 which is
designed with a similar substrate. The antenna is also a
30mm x 24 mm rectangular patch. The location of coaxial
probe- feed (radius=0.5 mm) is also shown in figure 2.
3. SIMULATED RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
In this section, various parametric analysis of the proposed
antenna are carried out and presented.
Several parameter of the antenna have been investigated to
improve bandwidth, gain and return loss performance of
the antenna. Optimal parameter values of the antenna are
listed in Table 1.
L1 is the left hand & L2 is the right hand patch length.
Table 1. Optimal parameter values of the antenna.
Parameter
W
L1
L2
Values (mm)

14

1.5

The simulated return loss of the conventional antenna

(antenna 1) and the proposed antenna (antenna 2) are
shown in Fig. 3 and fig 4 respectively.

Fig 3: Simulated return loss of the antenna1

Fig 4: Simulated return loss of the antenna2.

In the conventional antenna return loss of about -18.02 dB is

obtained at 2.840 GHz. Corresponding 10 dB bandwidth is
42.79 MHz. The second, third & fourth resonant frequencies
are obtained at f2 = 4.65 GHz, f3 = 5.62 GHz, f4 = 7.51 GHz
with return losses -10.37 dB, -11.14 dB and -17.30 dB
respectively. Corresponding 10 dB bandwidth obtained for
Antenna 1 at f2, f3, f4 are 27.44 MHz, 31.97 MHz and 28.36
MHz respectively. Comparing fig.3 and fig.4 it may be
observed that for the conventional antenna (fig.3). There is
practically no resonant frequency at around 1.54 GHz with a
return loss of around -6 dB. For the proposed antenna there is
a resonant frequency at around 1.54 GHz where the return loss
is as high as -12.1 dB. Due to the presence of slots in antenna
2 resonant frequency operation is obtained with large values of
frequency ratio. The first resonant frequency is obtained at
f1=1.540 GHz with return loss of about -12.1 dB. The second,
third & fourth resonant frequencies are obtained at f2 = 4.66
GHz, f3 = 5.71 GHz, f4 = 9.24 GHz with return losses -11.2
dB, -17.35 dB and -11.8 dB respectively. Corresponding 10
dB bandwidth obtained for Antenna 2 at f1, f2, f3, f4 are 38.60
MHz, 72.50 MHz, 11.82 MHz and 57.04 MHz respectively.
3.4. Simulated radiation pattern
The simulated E-plane & H-plane radiation patterns for
antenna 1 at the 1st resonant frequency are shown in Fig. 5.
Also the simulated E-plane & H-plane radiation patterns for
antenna 2 at the 1st resonant frequency are shown in Fig. 6

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Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

Fig 7: Top Layer photograph of proposed antenna

Fig 5(a): Simulated E-field pattern radiation pattern at 2.84

GHz

Fig 5(b): Simulated H-field pattern radiation pattern at

2.84 GHz

Fig 8: Bottom Layer photograph of proposed antenna

The comparisons of the measured return loss with the
simulated ones are shown in Fig.9. The discrepancy between
the measured and simulated results is due to the effect of
improper soldering of SMA connector or fabrication tolerance.

Fig 6 (a): Simulated E-field radiation pattern at 1.54 GHz

Fig 9: Comparison between simulated & measured data

5. CONCLUSION
Fig 6 (a): Simulated H-field radiation pattern at 1.54 GHz
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The prototype of the antenna 2 (proposed antenna) was
fabricated and tested, which are depicted in Fig.s 7-9. All
the measurements were carried out using Vector Network
Analyzer (VNA) Agilent N5 230A.

Theoretical investigations of a single layer single feed micro

strip printed antennas have been carried out using Method of
Moment based software IE3D. Introducing slots at the edge of
the patch size reduction of about 73.9% has been achieved.
This has been verified experimentally by Vector Network
Analyzer (VNA) Agilent N5 230A. The 3dB beam-width of
the radiation pattern is 89.17 which is sufficiently broad beam
for the applications for which it is intended.

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Compact Microstrip Antenna for mobile communication

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

8.

We acknowledge gratefully the financial support for this

work provided by AICTE (India) in the form of a project
entitled
DEVELOPMENT
OF
COMPACT,
BROADBAND AND EFFICIENT PATCH ANTENNAS
FOR MOBILE COMMUNICATION. The measurement
facility provided by Prof. Santanu Das of BESU, Shibpur,
Howrah is gratefully acknowledged.

9.

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