2018 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE)

Modification of Multi Band Printed Dipole Antenna

for Indoor Base Station of LTE Systems
Iswandi1, Mochamad Nur Zaini Akbar2, Albert Kristian Danan Jaya3, Eny Sukani Rahayu4
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada
Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 55281

e-mail: 1iswandi(at)ugm.ac.id, 2muchammad.nur.z(at)mail.ugm.ac.id,

3
albertkdj(at)gmail.com, 4eny_sr(at)ugm.ac.id

Abstract—Printed dipole antenna has appropriate and printed dipole antennas. Therefore, these two antennas
characteristic as base station antenna on LTE systems due to got more attention for researchers as figured out in more
compact, planar, low cross polarization, easy modification, and number of publications. These types are relatively easy in
compatible structure of array arrangement characteristics. design and have many possible modification to adjust the
This paper presents the modification of printed dipole to antenna characeteristics such as bandwidth, radiation pattern,
comply with allocated frequency band for LTE in Indonesia. impedance, feeding method, and so on.
The results show that the printed can be successfully modified
into dual band and triple band by adding the radiating element In this resarch, the printed dipole is chosen due to its
and adjusting the inter element spacing for impedance advantage to have low cross polarization on which
matching. In addition, the reflector was added behind the considering the polarization diversity that can be
antenna to modify the radiation pattern of antenna so that implemented to increase the network capacity. In our
suitable to mount on the room wall or ceiling. previous work as reported in [11], a triple band printed
dipole antenna for indoor LTE base stations has been
Keywords—LTE, 4G, antenna, base station antenna, successfully designed to work on 800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and
microstrip, printed dipole, dual band, triple band, planar 2300 MHz frequency bands. In addition, the dual
antenna, indoor base station. polarization antenna can be formed by two identical elements
I. INTRODUCTION with different orientations as in [6, 7, 8, 10]. Although our
works in [11] and this paper concern the development of
The rapid growth of mobile communication technology is antenna element in single polarization, but they are projected
followed by the increasing of its subscriber number. The to be implemented as element of dual polarized antenna.
number of mobile phone becomes higher than the people in
some regions or even countries as shown by mobile phone LTE systems introduce carrier aggregation method to
penetration rate reported in [1]. To provide wireless increase the transmission bandwidth in which allow the
connection in area with dense mobile device population, the mobile network operators to combine a number of separate
long term evolution (LTE) systems or known as fourth frequency bands. To support this method, the antenna has to
generation of wireless communication systems split the area work on those frequency bands [18]. Since each country or
into small cells to combat the limitation of frequency region can allocates a different working frequency allocation
resources. Various type of cells for different coverage area to which the antenna must be adapted. Our research aims to
have been introduced such as micro-cell, pico-cell, femto- show the adaptation of printed dipole antenna to work in
cell, etc. In the urban area with many huge and crowded different frequency bands by adding the appropriate radiation
buildings, the indoor base station is also introduced in LTE element. Dual and triple printed dipole antenna are presented
systems. In the deployment of small cell, a compact and low in this paper.
price base station is preferable to ease device mounting and Another contribution of our work is the adjustment of
reduce the system cost. antenna structure to make it suitable for indoor base station.
Antenna is part of base station equipment that often For indoor usage, the base station can be mounted on the
requires large space. In order to build a compact base station, wall or ceiling [19], so the coverage area is semi hemisphere
a compact and planar antenna is required. Some planar to increase the transmission efficiency. One possible way to
antennas have been investigated by many researchers to adjust the antenna radiation pattern into the appropriate
fulfill this requirement as listed in [2[ to [17]. Various types coverage area is by parasitic element, as done in [20] by
of antenna have been introduced for LTE base station, such adding director strip. Another method is by adding reflector
as: monopole [2], patch antenna [3,4,5], printed dipole as done in [21]. This paper proposed a conductor plate that is
[6,7,8,9,10,11], folded dipole [12], bow-tie [13], PIFA [14], a part of antenna case becomes an antenna reflector as the
cloverleaf [15], Vivaldi [16] microstrip slot [17], etc. Among second research contribution.
of those types, some designs have considered dual The structure of paper has four main part, that are
polarization to accomodate the MIMO implementation in introduction, antenna design, result and discussion, and
LTE Systems. However, there are only two types that are conclusion.
possible to be arranged in planar configuration, that are patch

978-1-5386-4739-4/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 551

 2018 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE)

Radiating elements Baluns strip varied to match the impedance of antenna and transmission
lg
line.
ws l1 Table 1. Geometrical parameters of antenna.
w1
lb Sym- Dual Triple
wg Parameters
bol Band Band
w2 wb Substrate
l2
Material - FR4 – epoxy
Permittivity r 4.4
(a) Top-view
Height H 1.6 mm
substrate Weight wg 11 mm 20 mm
SMA connector Copper layer
Length lg 68 mm 124 mm
Radiating elements
h Length of radiation element 1 l1 20.6 mm 20.8 mm
(b) Side-view Length of radiation element 2 l2 29.3 mm 27.3 mm
Length of radiation element 3a l3a - 59 mm
Figure 1. Configuration of dual band printed dipole antenna. Length of radiation element 3b l3b - 12 mm
Length of radiation element 3c l3c - 27 mm
l3b
Width of radiation element 1 w1 2 mm 2 mm
Width of radiation element 2 w2 2 mm 2 mm
Width of radiation element 3 w3 - 2 mm
lb1 Center gap ws 2.5 mm 2 mm
Baluns / transmission line
Length of baluns 1 lb1 2.5 mm 0.8 mm
w1
Length of baluns 2 lb2 - 1.8 mm
Width of baluns 1 wb1 2 mm 2 mm
l1
Width of baluns 2 wb2 - 2 mm
ws
The antenna is etched in printed circuit board (pcb) made
lg form FR4/epoxy. An additional 2 mm space is included in all
l2
edge of PCB for fabrication. The detail parameter of antenna
w3 can be seen in Table 1.
l3a
w2 B. Triple band printed dipole antenna
l3c The design of his antenna has separately been published
lb2
in [11]. It was design to work on three frequency band i.e.
800 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 2300 MHz. The additional 800
MHz is the former 2G frequency allocation. Regarding to the
wg h government rule, the 2G services have been stopped and the
(a) top view (b) front view frequency allocation was transferred to 4G by mechanism
Figure 2. Configuration of triple band printed dipole antenna. named as frequency refarming.
The configuration for triple band is shown in Fig. 2. An
additional radiating element is added to get resonant
II. ANTENNA DESIGN frequency on 800 MHz. Since the length of this radiating
This section consists of three parts. The first and second element is much longer than two others, it is folded to reduce
parts discuss about the design of dual and triple printed the antenna dimensions. The additional element caused the
dipole antena to show the modification to adjust the resonant change of total antenna impedance, thus the size of baluns
frequencies. While the third part presents the modification of must be re-optimized. The list of antenna physical parameter
antenna radiation pattern by adding a reflector. after optimization process can be seen Table 1.
A. Dual band printed dipole antenna
The first antenna is the printed antenna dipole that was
designed to work on two frquency bands. These frequency
bands are 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz that was assigned as the
main allocation for LTE services in Indonesia.
The antenna structure as shown in Fig. 1 consists of two hr wr
radiating elements. The width of radiating element is
calculated from the width of stripline as transmission line.
While the length of radiating element is initially determined lr
by the half wavelength of those frequency band. The length Figure 3. Configuration of printed dipole antenna with
of radiating element was adjusted by using elogtromagnetic reflector.
software. Those radiating elements are connected to input
port through balun stripline. Length of balun stripline is

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 2018 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE)

Figure 5. Fabrication of dual band printed dipole antenna

over the alumunium plate as reflector.
triple band printed dipole. The dimensional comparison of
both antennas can be seen in the figure. It can be recognized
that the radiation element for 800 MHz band is much longer
than other, so the folded type is necessary to reduce the
antenna size. After finishing the etching process, a female
SMA connector is soldered on input point of antenna to
provide connection of antenna to transmission line.
To evaluate the performance of antenna reflector, a
prototype of dual band printed dipole antenna with reflector
is also fabricated. Figure 5 shows the photograph of the
prototype. In this case, the SMA connector is still attached to
antenna to approach the simulated environment. In future
implementation, the connector should be mounted on bottom
plate or antenna case/radome.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A series of measurement has been done to assess the
Figure 4. Fabrication of dual and triple band printed dipole
performance of designated antennas. The evaluation process
antennas. Antenna Reflector
and results are described into two parts, the frequency
C. Triple band printed dipole antenna responses of dual and triple band antennas and the effect of
For indoor installation, the base station equipment is reflector to the radiation pattern.
commonly mounted on room sidewall or ceiling. Then the A. Frequency response of printe dipole antennas
coverage area becomes only half sphere front side of the wall As previously discussed in introduction, the working
or the below the ceiling. To optimize the radiation power, the frequency of LTE system can be a combination of some
antenna pattern has to be more directional to maximize frequency bands. Our research aims to show the flexibility of
radiation into the coverage area. printed dipole antenna design to work on different frequency
By assuming that the antenna is covered in hard casing, bands. Two printed dipole antennas was designed and
the design replaced the bottom surface of case into fabricated for dual and triple band manners. The dual band
alumunium so that it can perform as antenna reflector. The covers frequency band of 1800 MHz and 2300 MHz, whilst
size and gap between antenna and reflector is adjusted by the triple band includes additional 800 MHz frequency band.
using simulation software to obtain good antenna reflection To show that they properly work in the designated
coeffisien and appropriate radiation pattern. frequencies, the fabricated antennas were evaluated by
The optimization process found the optimum set up as measuring their return losses with vector network analyzer.
Firstly, the measured results are compared to the simulation
illustrated in Fig. 3 with following paremeters: length of
results as depicted in Fig. 6. It can be seen that the measured
reflector (lr) = 168 mm, width of reflector (wr) 111 mm, and
results agree with the simulation results. The results show
gap of reflector (hr) = 32 mm. In addition, the thickness of that both antennas have resonant at their working frequency
alumunium plate is 2 mm based on material availability. bands.
Lastly, a rubber bar is used to hold the antenna mounted over
the reflector. As recommended by standard for LTE systems, the
antenna must have at maximum return loss -15 dB in the
D. Fabrications working frequency bands. The dual band antenna can fulfill
After the completing the process in simulation, the the requirement and the bandwidth 171 MHz for 1800
designs are fabricated and empirically evaluated. The MHz band (from 1801 – 1972 MHz) and 101 MHz for 2300
fabrication process was done by PCB etching machine to MHz band (from 2242 – 2343 MHz). In contrast, the triple
ensure the accuracy of fabrication. Figure 3 shows the band antenna has minimum return loss more than -15 dB
results of dual and almost for all frequency bands. It means more optimization is
required to improve the design of triple band, and it will be
part of our future works.
B. Effect of reflector
The research proposed the use of reflector to point the
antena radiation toward the room inside. Since the antenna is
mounted in the sidewall or ceiling, the antenna should radiate
in half sphere. The radiation pattern of fabricated antenna
was observed by conducting a series of measurements.
Regarding the characteristic of electromagnetc field radiated
by a dipole antenna, the antenna under test (AUT) is fixed on
vertical posi tion and horisontally rotated to measure the H-
plane radiation pattern, and on horizontal position to observe

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 2018 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE)

the E-plane radiation pattern. A vector network analyzer is 0

350 0 10
utilized to acquire transmission coefficient by set the AUT as 330
340 20
30
transmitter and a testing antenna as copolarized receiver. 320 40
-10
310 50
300 -20 60
290 70
-30
280 80

270 -40 90

260 100
250 110
240 120
230 130
220 140
210 150
200 160
190 170
180
Simulation, 2300 MHz
Measurement, 2300 MHz

Figure 8. E-plane radiation pattern of dual band printed

dipole antenna at frequency 2300 MHz.
0
Figure 6. Comparison of measured and simulated return loss 3403500 10 20
of dual and triple band antennas. 330 30
320 -10 40
0 310 50
340 350 0 10 20 300 -20 60
330 30 290 70
320 40 -30
-10 280 80
310 50
300 -20 60 270 -40 90
290 70 260 100
-30 250 110
280 80
240 120
270 -40 90
230 130
260 100 220 140
210 150
250 110 200190 170160
240 120 180
230 130 Simulation, 1800 MHz
220 140
210 150 Measurement, 1800 MHz
200 190 170 160
180
Figure 9. H-plane radiation pattern of dual band printed
Simulation, 1800 MHz dipole antenna at frequency 1800 MHz
Measurement, 1800 MHz
0
3403500 10 20
Figure 7. E-plane radiation pattern of dual band printed 330 30
320 40
dipole antenna at frequency 1800 MHz. 310
-10
50
300 -20 60
290 70
The measured radiation patterns are shown in Fig. 7 to 280
-30
80
Fig. 10. To give clear illustration on the antenna radiation 270 -40 90
pattern, the pattern is depicted by assuming antenna is 260 100
mounted on ceiling and in the center of room area, so the 250 110
coverage area of the space or room below. The nature of 240 120
dipole antenna has omnidirectional pattern, while the 230 130
measurement results show that the downward patterns are 220 140
higher than upwards in both E-plane and H-plane. It 210
200190
150
170160
concludes that proposed reflector can work well to adjust the 180
antenna patterns. Simulation, 2300 MHz
Measurement, 2300 MHz

Figure 10. H-plane radiation pattern of dual band printed

dipole antenna at frequency 2300 MHz.

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 2018 10th International Conference on Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ICITEE)

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2nd International Conferences on Informaction Technology,
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conducted to printed dipole antenna for indoor base station Yogyakarta, Indonesia, November, 2017.
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