Design and Implementation of Microstrip Patch

Antenna Array
George Casu1, Cătălin Moraru2, Andrei Kovacs (Corresponding author)1*
Military Technical Academy, Faculty of Electronics and Informatics, Bucharest, Romania
*Corresponding author (E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract – This paper refers to a detailed analysis on the are usually in the range of 2.2<Er<12 . The most popular
design and implementation of 4x1 and 8x1 microstrip patch models for the analysis of microstrip patch antennas are the
antenna (array) of given specifications using IE3D software and a transmission line model, cavity model and full wave model.
dielectric material FR4 with dielectric substrate permittivity of The transmission line model is the simplest of all and it gives
4.28, tangent loss of 0.002 and height of 1.6 mm. The microstrip
good physical insight but it is less accurate [4].
patch antenna array is designed for WLAN applications, at an
operating frequency of 2.4 GHz with microstrip line feed and
power dividers.
Keywords - microstrip antenna; microstrip antenna arrays;
antenna; simulation; microstrip line feed.

I. INTRODUCTION

As an interface between the transmitter/receiver and the

propagation media, antenna is an essential part of any wireless
Figure 1. Geometry of microstrip patch antenna
communication (satellites, radars, aviation, medical
applications, ground penetrating radar etc.). The width of the microstrip patch antenna was computed with
[1] [2] [3] The key features of a microstrip patch antenna are the following equation [6][7]:
ease of construction, light weight, low cost, the antenna can
take an arbitrary form of the space that occupies if the
38 (1)
substrate is flexible and the production process has a highly
level of integration, the same circuit can include the microstrip
antenna and also the feeds [3] . These advantages of microstrip where c is the speed of light (3x108 m/s), fr is the operating
antennas make them popular in many wireless communication frequency of 2.4 GHz and Er is the dielectric permittivity of
applications such as telemetry and communications, aviation, 4.28.
naval communications, automatic guidance of intelligent The length of microstrip patch antenna is given by the
weaponry, radar, GPS systems. The disadvantages of following equations:
microstrip patch antennas are: narrow frequency band with
low efficiency, feeds have high losses and disability to operate 1 12 3.979 (2)
at high power levels of waveguide [3] [4]. Therefore, reliable
solutions must be found to increase bandwidth and to achieve
where Ereff is the effective dielectric constant and h is the
higher gain. thickness of the dielectric substrate.

II. MICROSTRIP ANTENNA DESIGN

. 31 (3)
In this paper, the microstrip patch antenna array ( 4x1, 8x1 )
has been designed to operate at a center frequency of 2.4 GHz . .
with an input impedance of 50 Ω using a dielectric material 0.412 7.417 10
. .
FR4 with r = 4.28, tangent loss tgδ=0.002 and thickness (h)
(4)
of 1.6 mm. For microstrip antennas, the dielectric constants
In the equation above ΔL stands for length extension.

978-1-4799-2385-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

Therefore, the actual length of the microstrip patch antenna is III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
given by:
2 30 (5) For designing the microstrip antenna and the microstrip
antenna arrays it has been used Zealand IE3D Software.
To compute the width w of the feed for an impedance Z0 of 50
Ω the following equations were used:

.
0.23 (6)

(7)

1 2 1 1
.
0.39 31 (8)

Figure 3. The designed antenna and its current distribution

Furthermore, for achieving impedance adaptation the width of
the power divider was also computed.
Taking into consideration that one section of the power divider
is equal with 2 , to achieve impedance adaptation
with the 50 Ω line feed the impedance of the power divider
was calculated :
70.711 (9)

Therefore, for an impedance of 70 Ω the following value of w

was obtained: w=1.64 mm.

Figure 4. Frequency characteristic (S11 parameter)

Figure 2. Top view of antenna

The effective wave length is given by:

Figure 5. Polar and cartesian plot for the directivity characteristic

0.063 (10)

To compute the distance between the feed and the lower

side of the antenna for a given impedance Zin of 50 Ω it
was used the equation:
50 300 (11)

√
9.123 (12) Figure 6. 3D directivity characteristic for microstrip antenna
For the phased array with 4 antennas, a center operating
frequency of 2.375 GHz was obtained.

Figure 11. Current distribution of the 8x1 array

Figure 7. Designed array and its current distribution

Figure 12. S11 parameter and VSWR

Figure 8. S11 parameter and VSWR

Figure 13. Polar and cartesian plot for the directivity characteristic

Figure 9. Polar and cartesian plot for the directivity characteristic Concerning the main difference between the microstrip patch
antenna and the array is that the directive characteristic
Concerning the phased array [8] [9], a 28 degrees orientation increases in directivity with the number of antennas.
of the maximum radiation pattern was achieved by modifying For implementing the microstrip patch antenna the dielectric
the length of the feeds of the array comparing with the sinfazic material FR4 was used [6].
array, where all the elements are fed with the same amplitude
and phase [8].

Figure 14. Implemented microstrip patch antenna

Figure 10. Designed 8x1 array

Figure 15. Implemented sinfazic array

 IV. CONCLUSIONS
The directive characteristic of these microstrip patch antennas
were measured using a power generator, a horn antenna used The results obtained in simulation proved that the 3dB
as reference and a power measurement tool . bandwidth of the microstrip patch antenna is smaller than the
3dB bandwidth of the array (90 MHz and 140 MHz). The S11
parameter of the antenna (-12 dB) is greater than the S11
parameter of the sinfazic network (-18 dB) and the phased
network (-14 dB). In practice, the measured S11 parameters
are almost the same as the simulated parameters: the antenna
Figure 16. The horn antenna used as reference
(-16 dB), the sinfazic network (-18 dB). Concerning VSWR,
the values obtained in each case were between (1,2), meaning
250
that there weren’t very high power losses, therefore, the
200
impedance adaptation between the antenna and the feed line
150
was achieved. The measured and simulated directive
Antena

100
Retea simfazica characteristics are almost identical and confirms us that a
50 microstrip patch antenna has a larger directive characteristic
0 than the array, where it is applied the group directive function.
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33
Moreover, the antenna doesn’t contain secondary lobes
Figure 17. Directive characteristic of the antenna vs. sinfazic array in the
comparing with the array which means that there aren’t power
horizontal plane
losses.
In the figure above, on the Oy axis the power level (W) is
REFERENCES
represented and on the Ox axis the orientation of the
directivity feature ( º ) is represented.
[1] Priya Upadhyay, Vivek Sharma, Richa Sharma, Design of Microstrip
Patch Antenna Array for WLAN Application, IJEIT, Volume 2, Issue
1, July 2012.
[2] Tanvir Ishtaique-ul Huque, Kamal Hosain, Shihabul Islam, Al-Amin
Chowdhury, Design and Performance Analysis with Optimum Param.
For X-band Apps, IJACSA, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2011.
[3] Koen W.A. van Dongen, Peter M. van den Berg, and Ioan Nicolaescu,
Figure. 18 Measured S11 parameter of the antenna ``Subsurface imaging using measured near-field antenna footprints'',
Near Surface Geophysics, February 2004, Vol. 2, Number 1, pp.
31-37, ISSN: 1569-4445,
[4] Naresh Kumar Poonia, Krishan Kumar Sherdia, Microstrip Antenna
Array for WiMAX & WLAN Applications, IJARCCE, Vol. 2, Issue 9,
September 2013.
[5] Muhammad Mahfuzul Alam, Md. Mustafizur Rahman Sonchoy, Md.
Osman Goni, Design and Performance Analysis of Microstrip Array
Antenna, Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symposium
Figure 19. Measured S11 parameter of the array Proceedings, august 2009 Page(s): 1837 – 1842.
[6] Nilima Bodhaye, Devashri Marotkar, Shruti Singh Roy, Design of
Reconfigurable Multiband Microstrip Patch Antenna for Wireless
Communication, ISSN, IJMER, Volume-1, Issue-1, 2013.
[7] Ion Bogdan, “Antene Microstrip – Îndrumar de proiectare”, Facultatea
de Electronică i Telecomunica ii, 2008, unpublished.
[8] Nicolaescu Ioan, Stoica Dan, Smart antennas for wireless
communications systems, 20th International Conference on Applied
Electromagnetics and Communications-ICECom 2010, Dubrovnik,
Croatia, September 20-23, pp 1-4, ISBN 978-953-6037-58-2 Issue
Date: 20-23 Sept. 2010 On page(s): 1 - 4 Dubrovnik, Print ISBN: 978-
1-61284-998-0.
[9] Nicolaescu, I.; Losif, F.D.; Null steering arrays, 5th International
Conference on Telecommunications in Modern Satellite, Cable and
Figure 20. S11 Smith Chart of the antenna and the array
Broadcasting Service, 2001. TELSIKS 2001. Volume 2, 19-21 Sept.
2001 Page(s):679 - 682 vol.2.