Horn Antennas with Enhanced Functionalities

Through the Use of Frequency Selective Surfaces

nes, Mehmet Ali Belen, Alper Calskan, Salih Demirel,
Peyman Mahouti, Filiz Gu
Zafar Sharipov
Yildiz Technical University Istanbul, Turkey
Received 11 December 2015; accepted 27 January 2016

ABSTRACT: In this work, realizations of a dual function integrated modules are simply
built by fixing the identical frequency selective surface (FSS) s into the apertures of the
available exponentially tapered transverse electromagnetic (TEM) and ridged horn antennas. Both modules are confirmed experimentally to have functions of prefiltering suppressing EMI and noise when the signal is received, alongside the enhanced directivity in the
desired band, thus these modules can be called as Filtennas. A FSS is simply built by the
properly designed periodic double anchor-shaped microstrip patches in CST microwave suit
using low-cost FR4 with the relative permittivity 4.4, thickness 1.58 mm, loss tangent
0.0035. From the measured results, it can be found that the proposed modules keep mismatching characteristics of the horn antennas, meanwhile their gains and beamwidths are
enhanced to amplify the signal in the desired band and simultaneously deteriorated to
attenuate EMI and noise in the out-band. It is expected that this methodology can be impleC 2016 Wiley Perimented to effectively reduce volume and cost of communication systems. V
odicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 00:000000, 2016.

Keywords: filtenna; frequency selective surface; horn antenna; performance enhancement; broadband

I. INTRODUCTION

which effectively would improve the signal to noise ratio

in a receiver. This multifunction integration makes entire
system be more compact and the system performance is
improved by prefiltering process. Some researchers have
paid efforts to realize filter and antenna dual functions
integration.
A type of antenna with filtering function has been
designed by mounting metal post in electromagnetic horn
[1]. The filtering antenna realized by leaky waveguide has
been proposed in [2]. Integration of filters and microstrip
patch antennas in single layer or multilayer substrate has
been studied in [35].
Frequency selective surface (FSS) are planar periodic
structures in either a one or two dimensional on a dielectric substrate. Because of their frequency selective properties, FSS can be used in many different applications like:
realization of reflector antennas, Radom design, making
polarizers and beam splitters, and as radar absorbing
structure. Especially it should be noted that FSSs are very
important and widely used for antennas and radars radar
cross section reduction in modern military platforms such
as ships, aircrafts, and missiles. Communication systems

In todays, multifunction modules, especially for filtering

and radiation performance integrated modules, so-called
as Filtering Antennas or shortly Filtennas, have been
paid more attention. In a communication system with sensitive receiver, a band pass RF filter is necessary at frontend to discriminate the desired signal at operating frequency band from extraneous signals at out-band. In
many times, the extraneous signals may be exceptionally
strong compared to the desired in-band signals, which
make required front-end RF filter performance be more
rigorous. A feasible solution for this problem is integrating the antenna and band-pass filter in a single module, in
which a prefiltering process is performed when signal is
received by antennas. Thus, a prefiltered signal will be
received by the filter at the input of the receiver antenna
Correspondence to: P. Mahouti; e-mail: pmahouti@gmail.
com.
DOI: 10.1002/mmce.20971
Published online 00 Month 2016 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com).
C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
V

Mahouti et al.
the antenna structures are carried out. Section presents
the measurement results for the return loss, maximum
gain, and radiation patterns for all the antenna modules.
Finally, the work ends with the conclusions.

II. DESIGN PROCEDURE

A. Horn Antennas
In this section, two different horn antennas in Figure 1,
are taken for modeling the proposed Filtenna modules
which are the traditionally available Exponentially
Tapered TEM and ridged horn antennas with the operational bandwidths 49 GHz. Geometrical dimensions of
both horn antennas are given in Table I.

Figure 1 Three-dimensional view of (a) exponentially tapered

TEM, (b) ridged horn antenna.

in these platforms are always enclosed with FSSs. As

electronic devices can be destroyed by strong electromagnetic interference (EMI), the anti-interference capability
of communication systems in these platforms is urgently
required. Thus, these make it required to design antenna
and FSS as an integrated module. However, very few
papers can be found about integrated design of antenna
and FSS. Structural integration antenna and FSS first
reported in [6], but where FSS was used to enhance
antenna radiation efficiency for its high impedance characteristic like as artificial magnetic conductor. Multilayer
FSS combined with open-end waveguide radiators array
have been presented in [710], in which only filtering performance of the integrated module has been analyzed with
multimode equivalent network method.
The work is organized as follows: In the next section,
the design procedure of the proposed Filtennas is presented for the two different horn antenna structures. As
the operational bandwidths of both exponentially tapered
transverse electromagnetic (TEM) and ridged horn antennas are between 4 and 9 GHz, then a FSS unit element in
the microstrip patch geometry should be designed to be
worked out within the same bandwidth as the horn antennas. In the third section, implementation of FSS units to

B. Design of the FSS Unit Element: The Double AnchorShaped Microstrip Patch
In this stage, it is aimed at constructing an efficient FSS
unit element to have functions of bandpass filter within
the desired bandwidth and reduce the interference and
noise signals at the out-band. Scattering Parameters of the
microstrip patches in the various geometries on the lowcost FR4 (relative permittivity 4.4, thickness 1.58 mm and
loss tangent 0.0035) are investigated as a two-port behavior within the 210 GHz bandwidth using CST microwave
suit. The Double Anchor shape microstrip patch is found
to be a suitable FSS unit element [11]. A FSS array (3 3
2 3 2) are found to be optimum in building Filtenna
modules for band-pass prefiltering of both horn antennas
by enhancing the gains and beam widths for amplification
of the signal in the desired 58 GHz band and simultaneously deteriorating them to attenuate EMI and noise in the
out-band meanwhile keeping the mismatching characteristics. Figure 2 shows the unit Double Anchor Shape element alongside of simulation set-up in the transmission
position. In Figure 3, the fabricated FSS array structure
consists of a 2 3 2 matrix of unit element is presented.
Simulation set-up of the used 3 3 2 3 2 FSS array and
Scattering parameters of the unit and the array are given
in Figure 4.

TABLE I Geometrical Parameters of FSS, TEM, and

Ridged Horn Antennas
Frequency Selective Surface

Parameters

W (mm)

D (mm)

a (mm)

L (mm)

20

Horn Antennas

Parameters
TEM
Ridged

Aperture
width

Aperture
height

Length
(mm)

Gap
between
FSS (mm)

74
80

73.5
60

60
125

10
10

International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering/Vol. 00, No. 00, Month 2016

Horn Antennas with Enhanced Functionalities

Figure 2 Design schematic of unit double anchor shapemicrostrip patch.

C. Implementation
The designs obtained in the previous section are combined
for implementation of Filtenna modules. In Figure 5 the
three-dimensional views of fabricated Filtenna modules
which are built by placing the FSS arrays perpendicular to
the aperture of the Horn antennas. As the distance of FSS
structures from the antennas is an important implementation parameter, it should be choose wisely, the experimental results of proposed Filtenna module for different
distances are studied and 10 mm is found to be the best
value for the proposed FSS structure in 58 GHz band
with via trial and error method. In the next section, the
experimental results belong to the proposed modules are
presented.

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In this section, the mismatching and transmission characteristics, maximum far field gains and radiation patterns
of the proposed modules are measured using two identical
antenna in [12] as a reference antenna, the transmission
characteristics, gain, and radiation patterns are given in
the Figures 68.
In Figure 6, the measured return losses of the Filtenna
modules are given. As it seen from these characteristics,
putting FSS structures to the aperture of the antennas does
not have any disruptive effect on the return loss performance of the antennas in the operation band width of the
antennas.

Figure 3 Manufactured (2 3 2) double anchor shape microstrip

patch array.

Figure 4 (a) Simulation set-up of the (3 3 2 3 2) array in the

transmission position; (b) simulated S parameters of the Unit element and (3 3 2 3 2) array.

Figure 7 presents the measured Transmission characteristics of antennas and Filtenna modules at maximum
gain direction (/ 5 90 , h 5 90 ). As it can be seen from
these characteristics, the proposed FSS structure not only
increases the transmitted signal level in the desired bandwidth 58 GHz, but also filters the unwanted frequencies
4 and 9 GHz before these signals reaches to the systems.
Due to this ability of the design, these kinds of the integrated modules named as Filtennas.
In Figure 8, the measured radiation patterns of the
antennas are presented. As it is seen from Table II and
Figures 8a8b, TEM Filtenna attenuates EMI in the main
beam direction (/ 5 90, h 5 90) 4 dB and 5.7 dB at
4 GHz and 9 GHz, respectively, meanwhile the corresponding attenuations for the ridged Filtenna are 3.4 and
7.5 dB. Also the pass-band radiation performances (Figs.
8c8f) in terms of gain and 3 dB beam widths are also
given in Tables II and III, respectively. From the characteristics in Figures 8c8f and Tables II and III, one can

International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering DOI 10.1002/mmce

Figure 5 Filtenna modules (a) exponentially tapered TEM, (b) ridged horn antennas.

Figure 6 Measured return loss characteristics (a) exponentially tapered TEM, (b) ridged horn.

Figure 7 Measured transmission characteristics of the (a) exponentially tapered TEM, (b) ridged horn antenna.

Horn Antennas with Enhanced Functionalities

Figure 8 Measured radiation patterns of the horns and filtennas. (a, b) out-band, (cf) pass-band.

International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering DOI 10.1002/mmce

Mahouti et al.

TABLE II Measured Gain at / 5 90, h 5 90

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Frequency (GHz)
Model
TEM
FSS TEM
Ridged
FSS Ridged

11.48
7.41
9.59
6.2

10.65
10.7
8.7
9.05

11.55
12.41
7.98
9.33

7.74
9.82
8.11
9.98

6.65
8.23
6.55
8.92

3.82
22.1
7.14
20.5

TABLE III The 3-dB Bandwidth Measurement Results

of the Proposed Design

REFERENCES

Frequency (GHz)
Model
TEM
FSS
TEM
Ridged
FSS Ridged

The authors would like to express our special thanks of

gratitude to the BAP of Yldz Technical University for
funding our researches under project number of 2015-0403-DOP02 Metamaterial inspired high performance
microwave circuit design for Microwave Sensor
Applications and 2014-04-03-DOP03 Design of Microwave Amplifier with non-uniform Microstrip Transmission Lines.

908
808

908
708

1308
658

1308
508

1308
1008

1208
958

1008
708

1108
558

see the directivities of the horns are significantly

increased after the implementations of FSS structures.
Especially in 7 and 8 GHz, the main beam of the horn
antennas are started to be divided in two beams, and using
FSS structures not only these divisions are averted but
also the gain in these frequencies are increased.
IV. CONCLUSIONS

In this work, a dual function filtenna module design is performed by simply inserting the properly designed identical
FSSs perpendicular into the apertures of the available horn
antennas. A FSS is simply built by the properly designed
periodic double anchor-shaped microstrip patches in CST
microwave suit using low-cost FR4 with the relative permittivity 4.4, thickness 1.58 mm, loss tangent 0.0035. Briefly
the two main features gained to the horns can be summarized from examining the measured characteristics: The first
feature is the prefiltering functionality which is suppressing
EMI and noise in the unwanted frequencies simultaneously
with receiving of the desired signal. Second feature is that
directivities of the filtenna modules are well improved by
enhanced gains and beam widths compared with their individual horns in the desired band.
This novel design methodology can easily be implemented in the communication systems where multifunction integration is at most importance needed for
structural constraints, as in addition to having above functions, these filtenna structures have advantages such as
cost reduced and compact volume.
In future works, it is possible to design the desired
operation and filtering bandwidths by placing FSSs with
the units in different shapes and numbers to the aperture
of the horn antennas.

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of a filtering function in an electromagnetic horn, Proceedings
of 33rd European Microwave Conference, Vol. 3, October
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International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering/Vol. 00, No. 00, Month 2016

Horn Antennas with Enhanced Functionalities

BIOGRAPHIES
Peyman Mahouti received his M.Sc. degree
in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Yldz Technical University in
2012. He has been currently in Ph.D. program of Yldz Technical University. The
main research areas are optimization of
microwave circuits, broadband matching circuits, and device modeling, and computeraided circuit design, microwave amplifiers.

Alper Calskan received his M.Sc. degree

in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Yldz Technical University in 2013. He has been currently in Ph.D.
program of Yldz Technical University.
The main research areas are optimization
of microwave circuits, broadband matching
circuits, device modeling, and computer
aided circuit design, microwave amplifiers.

Filiz G
unes received her M.Sc. degree in
Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Istanbul Technical University. She attained her Ph.D. degree in
Communication Engineering from the
Bradford University in 1979. She is currently a full professor in Yldz Technical
University. Her current research interests
are in the areas of multivariable network
theory, device modeling, computer aided microwave circuit design,
monolithic microwave integrated circuits, and antenna designs.

Salih Demirel has received M.Sc. and

Ph.D. degrees in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Yldz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2006
and 2009, respectively. He has been currently working as an assistant professor in
the same department. His current research
interests are among of microwave circuits
especially optimization of microwave circuits, broadband matching circuits, device modeling, computeraided circuit design, microwave amplifiers.

Mehmet Ali Belen received his M.Sc.

degree in Electronics and Communication
Engineering from the S
uleyman Demirel
University in 2011. He has been currently
in Ph.D. program of Yldz Technical University. His current research interests are
in the areas of multivariable network
theory, device modeling, computer aided
microwave circuit design, monolithic
microwave integrated circuits, and antenna arrays.

Zafer Sharipov received his M.Sc. degree

in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Yldz Technical University in 2013. He has been currently in Ph.D.
program of Yldz Technical University.
The main research areas are optimization
of microwave circuits, broadband matching
circuits, device modeling, and computer
aided circuit design, microwave amplifiers.

International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer-Aided Engineering DOI 10.1002/mmce