The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering – Boumerdes (ICEE-B)

October 29-31, 2017, Boumerdes, Algeria.

CAD Cavity Model Analysis of High Tc

Superconducting Rectangular Patch Printed on
Anisotropic Substrates
Ahmed Mhamdi1, Sami Bedra2*, Randa Bedra3, and Siham Benkouda1
1
L.H.S, Electronics Department, University Constantine 1, Constantine 25000, Algeria
2
Industrial Engineering Department, University of Khenchela, 40004 Khenchela, Algeria
3
L.E.A Electronics Department, University of Batna 2, 05000 Batna, Algeria
*
bedra_sami@yahoo.fr

Abstract—This paper, present the resonant and the radiation
characteristics of superconducting rectangular microstrip
antenna printed on uniaxailly anisotropic substrate using an
electromagnetic approach based on cavity model in conjunction
with electromagnetic knowledge. The cavity model combined
with London’s equations and the Gorter-Casimir two-fluid model
has been improved to investigate the resonant characteristics as
well as the radiation patterns of high Tc superconducting
rectangular microstrip patch in the case where the patch is
printed on uniaxially anisotropic substrate materials. The most
advantage of our extended model include low computational cost
and mathematical simplify. The numerical simulation of this
modeling shows excellent agreement with experimental results
available in the literature. Finally, radiation patterns of
superconducting rectangular patch on anisotropic substrate are
also presented.
Keywords-component; Superconducting microstrip antenna;
resonant frequency; radiation patterns; cavity model; Gorter-
Casimir two-fluid model; anisotropic substrate.
I. INTRODUCTION
The high-temperature superconductor (HTS) have made
possible the design of low-loss, low-dispersion transmission
lines, interconnects, microwave filters, and highly efficient
antennas [1], due to the much lower surface over
corresponding devices fabricated with normal conductors such
as gold, silver, or copper [2, 3]. A high-temperature
superconducting microstrip antenna can obtain a rather high
gain, but suffers from a very narrow bandwidth, but they
suffer from the extremely narrow bandwidth, which severely
limits their application [2, 3]. Numerous analyses have been
carried out to enhancing the bandwidth of high-temperature
superconducting microstrip antenna [4-6]. In the past, several
researchers have studied the superconducting microstrip
antenna printed in layered isotropic dielectric [2, 4-6]. Other
researchers have suggested that certain anisotropic dielectric
proprieties could be used to enhance the resonant and the
radiation characteristics of microstrip antennas [7-9]. The
different computation methods for computing the resonant
characteristics of microstrip patch printed on anisotropic
substrate are available [4-9]. All these efforts produce high
accuracy results but they are not suitable for direct synthesis
of patch antenna due to their complexity and high
computational time [10]. So, the full wave analysis is not well
suited for direct synthesis of patch antenna. The computer-
aided design (CAD) oriented conformal mapping,
transmission line, and cavity model is ideal for design purpose
because it involves less mathematical steps and less
computational time. It is also easy to implement, provide
closed form expressions [10]. In the present work, the cavity
model analysis is extended to provide accurate CAD of HTS
microstrip antennas (MSA) on anisotropic substrates.
Furthermore, some modifications are made to account for
fringe fields, dispersion effects, and losses by calculating
effective dimensions, and effective relative permittivity,
respectively. However, the paper surpluses detailed numerical
results both for the resonant frequency, bandwidth, and the
radiation characteristics of the antenna. In fact, to the best of
the author’s knowledge, there is no theoretical report on the
effect of both anisotropy in the substrate and the presence of
superconducting patch, on the resonant characteristics of
rectangular microstrip antenna by using cavity model analysis.
These characteristics are firstly presented in this study by
using modified cavity model. This paper is organized as
follows. In Section II the problem is defined using cavity
model analysis, the anisotropy in the substrate and the
superconducting films are then explicitly taken into account in
the formalism of the problem. In Section III the resonant and
radiation characteristics of high-temperature superconducting
rectangular microstrip antenna on anisotropic layers are
presented, a discussion of the results obtained is also
presented. Finally, conclusions remarks are presented in
Section IV.
II. SUMMARY OF METHOD OF ANALYSIS
The problem to be solved is illustrated in Fig. 1. The
rectangular superconducting patch of thickness t with
dimensions ( L, W ) along the two axes ( x, y ), respectively, is
printed on a grounded dielectric slab of thickness h . The
substrate is characterized by the free space permeability μ0 and
a permittivity ɛ0 ɛr.

978-1-5090-4508-2/17/$31.00 ©2017
The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering – Boumerdes (ICEE-B)
October 29-31, 2017, Boumerdes, Algeria.

A. Resonant Frequency We can account the anisotropy in the substrate by treating the
The resonant frequency of the rectangular microstrip patch rectangular patch antenna on a uniaxial anisotropic substrate,
antenna for TMmn mode is given by [11] as shown in figure1. The relative permittivity tensor of the
uniaxial anisotropic dielectric is given by
2 2
c §m· § n · ªH x 0 0º
f r mn ¨ ¸ ¨ ¸  
2 Hr © L ¹ ©W ¹ Hr «0 Hx 0 »» (5)
«
«¬ 0 0 H z »¼
where c is the speed of light, H r is the relative dielectric
permittivity of the dielectric filling, m and n are the modal For the case of uniaxially anisotropic substrate, the both
numbers of the resonating modes. permittivity relative ( H r ) and thickness (h) of the substrate,
Because of the fringing effects, electrically the patch of the will replace by the permittivity equivalent and thickness
microstrip antenna looks greater than its physical dimensions. equivalent H re and he , respectively, given in [12] there
Several expressions for a modified, "effective" dimension of
resulting values are:
the rectangular patch have been proposed to account for the
fringing fields. The most common expression is the one given
by [11] H re Hz (6)

Leff L  2'L (2) Hx

he h (7)
Hz

Weff W  2'W (3) B. HTS antenna's resonant frequency

The steep change in the HTS antenna's resonant frequency
at temperatures near T, can be attributed to a change in the
High Tc superconducting y magnetic penetration depth of the YBCO (YBa2Cu3O7). To
rectangular patch
model the resonant frequency of the HTS antenna, it is
necessary to consider the effective dielectric constant, εeff ,
x given by [13]
W
ª Of § t ·º
H r ,eff H re «1  coth ¨ ¸» (8)
«¬ h ¨Of ¸»
L © ¹¼

For a HTS film with thickness t and the permittivity

t equivalent εre. for a homogeneous superconductor, the
temperature dependence of the magnetic penetration depth λf,
Uniaxial substrate: μ0, H0 Hr h can be modeled by the Gorter-Casimir two-fluid model as
[13]

1 2
Figure 1. Geometrical structure of a HTS superconducting rectangular ª §T ·
4º
microstrip antenna. Of O f 0 «1  ¨¨ ¸¸ » (9)
« © Tc ¹ »
¬ ¼
The dimensions of the patch along its length and width have
now been extended on each end by a distance 'L and 'W , Where T is the temperature and Tc is the transition temperature
respectively. The effective length of the patch Leff now of the superconductor.
becomes
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
H r  0.3 § W h  0.264 · In this section, theoretical results for the measured frequency
'L 0.412 h ¨ ¸ (4) and radiation patterns of superconducting rectangular
H r  0.258 ¨© W h  0.813 ¸¹ microstrip patch printed on anisotropic substrate are discussed
for various structures. To validate the above analysis, our
A similar expression with appropriate modifications can be results for the resonant frequencies of rectangular microstrip
used for effective width. Consequently, the resonant frequency patches on anisotropic dielectric substrates have been
of rectangular microstrip antenna can be calculated with (1) by compared with recently measurements results. Figure 2 shows
replacing equations (2)-(4) to (1). the effect of the operating temperature on the resonant

978-1-5090-4508-2/17/$31.00 ©2017
The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering – Boumerdes (ICEE-B)
October 29-31, 2017, Boumerdes, Algeria.

frequency of HTS rectangular patch is presented by uniaxial medium is lower than the one of second uniaxial
comparison with the experimental results reported in [14], medium. This decrease is significant for temperatures near the
The rectangular microstrip antenna using high Tc transition temperature.
superconducting thin film (YBa2Cu3O7) of size Now, we investigate the influence of the thickness of the high
( L 935Pm , W 1630Pm ) and having a Tc superconducting film on the resonant frequency rectangular
thickness (t 330nm) , with a zero-temperature penetration microstrip patch printed on anisotropic substrate. Figure 4,
illustrate the variation of the resonant frequency versus the
depth 140nm) , (O0
fabricated on LaAlO3 thickness of superconducting patch using the same anisotropic
substrate (H r 23.81) of thickness (h 254Pm) . The analysis substrates using in figure 3, with operating
is carried over the temperature range 20 K to 0.95 Tc , where temperature T 77 K . It can be seen that as the thickness of
Tc is the transition temperature ( Tc 89 K ) of the HTS superconductor patch grows, the resonant frequency increases
film. Note that, the variation of the permittivity of the quickly until the thickness t reaches O0 (penetration depth).
lanthanum aluminate substrate with the variation of the After this value, increasing the superconducting thickness will
temperature, as indicated by the experiment of Richard’s et al. increase slowly the resonant frequency for different values of
[14], is taken into account in the present subsection. Excellent anisotropic substrates.
agreement between ours results and those measured by
Richard’s et al. [14] is observed. 46

44

29.2 42

Resonant frequency (GHz)

29.0
40
28.8
38
Resonant frequency (GHz)

28.6 Measured [14] 36

28.4
Our results
34
Boron nitride (Hx=5.12,Hz=3.4)
28.2
32 Quartz (Hx=4.44,Hz=4.60)
28.0
30
27.8
28
27.6
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
27.4
Operating temperature (K)
27.2
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Figure 3. Resonant frequency for a rectangular microstrip superconducting
Operating temperature (K)
patch antenna as a function of the operating temperature; h 0.2 mm ,
Figure 2. Resonant frequency for a rectangular microstrip superconducting L 1700Pm , W 2550Pm , t 250nm , O0 140nm , Tc 89 K .
patch antenna as a function of the operating
temperature; H r 23.81 , h 254Pm , L 935Pm, W 1630Pm , t 350nm .
46
In this subsection, the influences of the operating temperature
on the resonant frequency of the superconducting rectangular 44
microstrip antenna printed on anisotropic substrates are
Boron nitride (Hx=5.12,Hz=3.4)
Resonant frequency (GHz)

investigated. The resonant frequency of the rectangular 42 Quartz (Hx=4.44,Hz=4.60)

antenna against operating temperature for two different
anisotropic substrates materials are shown in figure 3. The 40
first anisotropic material (Boron nitride) has the pair of
relative permittivitie (H x 5.12, H z 3.4) .The second 38

anisotropic material (Quartz) is characterized by an electric

anisotropy of positive type (H x 4.44, H z 4.6) . Each 36

dielectric substrate has a thickness of h 0.2 mm . The patch 0 40 80 120 160 200 240 280 320

of size of length L 1700Pm and width W 2550Pm , is Thickness of superconducting patch t, (nm)

made of t 250nm thick YBCO thin film, a zero-temperature
penetration depth O0 140nm , and a transition
temperature Tc 89 K . From the results of Figure 3, it can be
observed that the resonant frequencies obtained when the
superconducting patch is printed on the first anisotropic
material are higher than those obtained when the
superconducting patch is printed on the second anisotropic
material because the effective relative permittivity of the first
Figure 4. Resonant frequency for a rectangular microstrip superconducting
patch antenna as a function of the operating temperature; h 0.2 mm ,
L 1700Pm , W 2550Pm , T 77 K , O0 140nm , Tc 89 K .
In Figure 6, we plot the variation of the normalized radiation
patterns of the both planes, E-plane (figure 6.a) and H-plane
(figure 6.b), respectively, for different values of anisotropic
substrates values. The superconducting materials YBCO was
assumed to be t 320 nm thick and of very good quality with

978-1-5090-4508-2/17/$31.00 ©2017
The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering – Boumerdes (ICEE-B)
October 29-31, 2017, Boumerdes, Algeria.

a criticaltemperature Tc 89 K , a zero-temperature been modified to account the effect of the anisotropic substrate
penetration depth O0 140nm . The operating temperature on the resonant and radiation behavior of HTS rectangular
microstrip patches. The resonant frequencies calculated by
is T 77 K . The rectangular patch of size using the present technique have been compared with those
( L 1700Pm , W 2550Pm ). Each dielectric substrate has a previously measured and available in various literatures, and
thickness of h 0.2 mm . Obviously the directivity of the excellent consistency has been found. We have also
investigated the influences of electrically uniaxial substrates
superconducting patch printed on Boron nitride and the patch thickness on the resonant characteristics of
(H x 5.12, H z 3.4) substrate is higher than the one with microstrip antenna. The present study illustrates the
Quartz (H x 4.44, H z 4.60) substrate material. The results temperature dependence of various characteristics of HTS
show that the directivity patterns of superconducting rectangular microstrip antenna, like resonant frequency and
microstrip antenna increases as the effective permittivity of radiation patterns. The present technique is also simple and
the substrate decreases. adequate for engineering applications, which can be applied to
different shapes of microstrip patch antennas.
1.0
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