The Impact of Substrate Materials to the Design of UWB Modern Antennas

Gerard Rushingabigwi,Yuxing He,Yongjie Li,Mengying Zhu,Jean De Dieu Ntawangaheza,Liguo Sun

doi:10.4236/jcc.2016.43004

Abstract

The theory of microstrip antennas has motivated us to design a highly improved gain antenna under this category. It is a microstrip monopole antenna characterized by omni-directional radiation as well as a high radiation gain. A review of different methodologies to designing antennas with broad/ultra-wide band performance for various applications is enriched by our original antenna design. This is an original model analyzed over different substrate materials and finally optimized for the bandwidth of (3.3 - 5.8) GHz just below −10 dB of return loss (RL). The antenna is judged for high gain when the ground plane size is reduced to nearly half that of substrate. The impact of the substrate materials is discussed in this article. The master design tool is Ansoft High Frequency Simulator Structure (HFSS), one of Finite Element Method (FEM) based software tools. The antenna would be printed on a 1.524 mm thick Rogers (RO3003C) substrate; overall size of 33.4 × 33.4 squared millimeters. At the optimal resonance frequency of 3.8 GHz, simulation results perfectly agree with the standards of UWB antennas, with a high radiation gain and impedance matching status.

Highlights

Printed circuit board (PCB) microstrip antennas belong to the family of Modern antennas; a category that undoubtedly remains very useful in multiple engineering areas such as aircraft, missiles, rockets, spacecraft [1]-[3]; not forgetting commercial areas like mobile satellite communications, global positioning system, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WIMAX), Radar Applications, Telemedicine Applications, military systems [4]-[12], etc
A transmitted signal is UWB if the return loss (RL) absolute bandwidth exceeds 500 MHz [13] or the fractional bandwidth is more than 20% at −10 dB; noting that UWB utilization was authorized by the Federal Communications
A three dimensional solver high frequency simulator structure (HFSS) based on Finite Element Method (FEM) [23] is the software tool selected for the present research

Summary

Introduction

Printed circuit board (PCB) microstrip antennas belong to the family of Modern antennas; a category that undoubtedly remains very useful in multiple engineering areas such as aircraft, missiles, rockets, spacecraft [1]-[3]; not forgetting commercial areas like mobile satellite communications, global positioning system, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WIMAX), Radar Applications, Telemedicine Applications, military systems [4]-[12], etc.A transmitted signal is UWB if the RL absolute bandwidth exceeds 500 MHz [13] or the fractional bandwidth is more than 20% at −10 dB; noting that UWB utilization was authorized by the Federal CommunicationsHow to cite this paper: Rushingabigwi, G., Sun, L.G., He, Y.X., Zhu, M.Y., Li, Y.J. and de Dieu Ntawangaheza, J. (2016) The Impact of Substrate Materials to the Design of UWB Modern Antennas. (2016) The Impact of Substrate Materials to the Design of UWB Modern Antennas. According to [15] [16], printed monopole antennas have many possibilities for UWB performance; the present research focus is put on UWB antennas in theory and practice. 2. UWB Antennas’ State of the Art. Some UWB signals were emitted by Hertz in 1887 [17], but the year 2002 awakened both academic and industrial research attention that is continually paid on UWB antennas [18]-[20]. Designers of monopole antennas look forward to reducing ground planes. According to the surveyed UWB antenna designs together with the history of UWB antennas, the reality is that UWB antennas existed for a couple of centuries ago [21] [22]

Methods

Results

Conclusion