IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO.

4, APRIL 2012 2101

Wideband High Directive Aperture Coupled Microstrip

Antenna Design by Using a FSS Superstrate Layer
Abbas Pirhadi, Hadi Bahrami, and Javad Nasri

Abstract—in this communication a high directive electromagnetic

bandgap (EBG) antenna operating in wide frequency band for both return
loss (RL) and directivity is examined. In this EBG antenna an aperture
coupled microstrip antenna (ACMA) is used as a feeding source and a
frequency selective surface (FSS) is used as a superstrate layer. Suitable
use of the superstrate layer, microstrip patch and coupling aperture simul-
taneously, leads to produce separate resonance frequencies and therefore
the wide frequency band for RL. Also, high directivity is achieved only
by using the superstrate layer that has been made by the FSS layer with Fig. 1. Geometry of EBG antenna fed by aperture coupled microstrip patch.
square loop elements. At first, a wideband ACMA is designed to operate
in x-band. In this step appropriate design of coupling aperture is of a
great importance. Secondly, after the design of optimum superstrate layer
by the FSS structure, it is added to the ACMA in order to increase both various feeding sources that have been used, microstrip antennas, be-
bandwidth and directivity. cause of their low profile and easy construction are very desirable. The
Index Terms—Electromagnetic bandgap, frequency selective surface authors in [20], beside the enhancement of directivity, have studied the
(FSS), microstrip antennas, superstrate layer. effect for the FSS superstrate layer on the return loss of a probe-fed
microstrip antenna and have exhibited how the FSS superstrate layer
can improve the bandwidth of such antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
In this communication by using an aperture coupled microstrip an-
Electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures are periodic structures tenna (ACMA) as the feeding source and an FSS layer as the super-
that can be used to control and manipulate the propagation of electro- strate, the EBG antenna will be studied. The return loss of ACMA has
magnetic waves. The high directive resonator antenna is an example of the widest frequency bandwidth among the single fed microstrip an-
antenna application of EBG structures which is also called EBG an- tennas. This phenomenon is obtained by the suitable design of coupling
tenna [1]–[3]. The EBG antenna consists of a feeding source and some aperture configuration, but the directivity of antenna decreases in this
superstrate layers. By suitable design of the superstrate layers it is pos- frequency band. The FSS superstrate layer is used to solve this problem.
sible to obtain a high directive antenna. There are several configurations In addition, beside the directivity, a wide frequency band for the return
for the design of superstrate layer. In low profile antenna applications loss by a suitable design of the FSS superstrate layer is obtained.
this layer must be compact, easy to fabricate and commercially avail- In Section II, the FSS superstrate layer and ACMA are designed sep-
able [4]–[7]. To this purpose, frequency selective surfaces (FSS) can arately and in Section III, the combination of ACMA and FSS super-
be good candidates. Various configurations such as ring, patch, square strate layer are studied. In this section the most effective parts that in-
loop, strip and slot shapes have been used to design of the FSS super- fluence the radiation characteristics and the bandwidth of antenna, are
strate layer [8]–[10]. examined parametrically. In Section IV, the leaky modes in the EBG
By using the FSS superstrate layer singularly, or its combination antenna which are excited due to the surface current of the patch, are
with a reactive surface, the bandwidth, polarization and radiation pat- studied. Also, in this section a suitable circuit model for the antenna is
tern characterizations such as side lobe level (SLL) can be controlled proposed. Finally, the simulations are verified with experimental re-
[11]–[15]. Beside the enhancement of directivity, the FSS superstrate sults. All simulations have been done by ANSOFT HFSS software
layer can be used as a polarizer. In this case, it is possible to obtain based on FEM.
circular polarization by using a single source [16], [17].
One of the most important challenges in the design of the EBG
II. DESCRIPTION OF ANTENNA CONFIGURATION
antenna is its frequency bandwidth for the return loss and maximum
directivity. These characteristics depend on the FSS superstrate layer The antenna structure is composed of three sections including cou-
and feed source. Most of the works that have been done emphasize on pling aperture, radiating patch and the FSS superstrate layer (Fig. 1).
achieving wide-frequency band or multi-frequency band by a suitable
design of FSS superstrate layer [6], [11], [14], [15], [18], [19]. A few A. Design of the FSS Superstrate Layer
works have been done on the feeding source of the EBG antennas, espe-
There are different configurations and methods to design the super-
cially for the bandwidth of the return loss of the EBG antenna. Among
strate layer. In fact, this layer acts as a partially reflecting surface. Near
its resonance frequency where the reflection coefficient of surface is
Manuscript received December 13, 2010; revised April 25, 2011; accepted about unit, the radiating source and the superstrate layer produce reso-
November 05, 2011. Date of publication January 31, 2012; date of current ver- nance condition in which the directivity of the antenna increases con-
sion April 06, 2012.
A. Pirhadi is with the Cognitive Telecommunication Research Group, Depart-
siderably [6], [10].
ment of Electrical Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University G.C (SBU), Tehran, The resonance frequency of the FSS superstrate layer has to coincide
Iran (e-mail: a_pirhadi@[Link]). in operating frequency.
H. Bahrami and J. Nasri are with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Tar- In this communication the square loop elements have been used to
biat Modares University (TMU), Tehran, Iran (e-mail: hadi_b_m@[Link]; design the FSS superstrate layer. The square loop has symmetrical ge-
javad_nasri@[Link]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail- ometry and can be used in dual polarize and dual band applications.
able online at [Link] Also, compared with the patch element it has a more compact size and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2186230 a more controllable resonance frequency.

0018-926X/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

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 2102 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 4, APRIL 2012

Fig. 2. Magnitude and phase of reflection coefficient of FSS.

Fig. 4. Configuration of ACMA.

Fig. 3. (a) Unit cell of the whole structure (b) Phase of the reflection coefficient
for the resonance condition of unit cell.

Fig. 2 shows the amplitude and phase of reflection coefficient of the

FSS superstrate layer . Because of the periodicity of the FSS superstrate
layer, to determine its reflection coefficient, it is enough to analyze just Fig. 5. Return loss and directivity of ACMA fed by H shape slot and
one cell. dielectric height = 3 mm.
Fig. 3 shows how the FSS superstrate layer in combination with an
aperture coupled microstrip antenna is used to produce resonance con-
dition. In this configuration, there are three layers that are important in One of the useful features of this antenna is its capability to obtain
producing resonance condition. These layers are the ground plane in wide bandwidth by suitable design of its coupling aperture. This phe-
which the coupling aperture of ACMA has been placed, the dielectric nomenon is obtained by using a cross-shaped coupling slot, two or-
layer in which the patch has been placed, and the FSS superstrate layer. thogonal offset slots and so on. In this communication the H shape slot
The reflection coefficient of the ground plane for horizontal electric
fields is (01). The dielectric layer reflects and transmits the EM fields
is used [24]. By using this structure, two resonance frequencies due to
the patch and slot are adjusted so that a wide frequency band for re-
with coefficients proportional to the thickness and dielectric properties turn loss is obtained. Fig. 5 shows the directivity and return loss of an
of the layer and finally as mentioned the FSS layer reflects and transmits ACMA feeding by H shape slot, operating in x-band. The antenna is
the EM fields according to the Fig. 2. Among these layers, only the FSS designed on PCB microwave board (Rogers RO3003) with "r = 3:38
layer can be adjusted. This layer must be adjusted so that all of the EM and the thickness = :782 mm.
fields in outer region of the structure are added constructively. In this By using the H shape slot the resonance frequency of coupling aper-
case, the reflection coefficient phase of the whole structure in Fig. 3 is ture moves next to the resonance frequency of the patch.
2n and the resonance condition takes place [24].
The most important parameters to adjust the resonance frequency are
the height of the FSS layer, the periodicity of the FSS elements, and III. DESIGN OF THE WIDEBAND HIGH DIRECTIVE ACMA AND
their dimensions. In the next section the effects of these parameters on EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
the antenna characteristics are studied.
A. Circuit Model of EBG Antenna
B. Design of Wideband Aperture Coupled Microstrip Antenna
Combination of the ACMA and FSS superstrate layer leads to en-
The configuration of ACMA is shown in Fig. 4. Many useful features hancement of both directivity and bandwidth of antenna. In fact the
of this type of antenna attract designers to use it for various applications FSS superstrate layer acts as a parasitic load in multilayer stack patch
[21]–[23]. antennas with low profile configuration. Based on the references [20],
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 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 4, APRIL 2012 2103

Fig. 6. Circuit model for the ACMA with the FSS superstrate layer.

[25], circuit model for the ACMA with superstrate layer can be demon-
strated as follows.
As it is seen in the circuit model, the coupling aperture and the FSS
superstrate layer are modeled by resonating circuits. The patch antenna
has been depicted by three ports network which has been terminated
by these resonating circuits. Therefore, it is expected to have three res-
onance frequencies due to coupling aperture, the FSS layer, and the
Patch. Length of the patch, dimensions of the coupling aperture, height
of the FSS layer, dimensions and period of the FSS elements are the
important parameters to control the different resonance frequencies.
Hence, this configuration has a good potential to achieve the wideband
operating frequency, especially for return loss.

B. Parametric Study of Antenna

In this section the effects of important parameters such as the height Fig. 7. Effect of FSS height (a) Return loss of EBG antenna (b) Directivity of
and dimensions of the FSS layer on both of the RL and directivity of EBG antenna.
the antenna are studied. By varying the height of the FSS the resonance
frequency of the EBG antenna is displaced. Moreover, to keep the res-
onating condition in the EBG antenna, it is necessary to modify the di- the excitation current in the EBG and also the leakage surface current
mensions of FSS elements. This modification is considerable for large from the EBG antenna. According to [27], [28], to have a broadside
variations of the height of FSS but it is negligible for small variations. radiation pattern from the 2D LW antenna, it is necessary to excite
In the following the effects of the height of FSS superstrate layer on the suitable horizontal current in the EBG antenna. In this case both
the RL and directivity of antenna are shown. To this purpose the EBG TE and TM modes of cavity will be excited. The excitation current
antenna is simulated for the different values of FSS superstrate layer in our EBG antenna is the surface current on the patch antenna. This
[Link]. 7(a) depicts that increasing the height of the FSS, leads horizontal surface current is directed along the feeding transmission
to the movement of the 2nd resonance frequency toward the lower fre- line of ACMA.
quency and also, from Fig. 7(b) the maximum directivity of the antenna Fig. 9 shows the surface current on the patch to excite TE and TM
move to lower frequency. modes of the EBG antenna and also the leakage current on the FSS
Another important parameter in the design of EBG antenna is the superstrate layer which produces the radiating Fields . The FSS super-
FSS dimensions. In this case the antenna is considered as a leaky wave strate layer is 9 2 9 elements. The periodicity of the FSS elements is
antenna (LWA) in which the leaky waves propagate toward the edges 7 mm and the width of square loops of the FSS are 5 mm with 0.2 mm
of FSS and produce radiating current distribution on the FSS layer. thickness. The simulation of this structure has been done with HFSS
Increasing the dimensions of FSS layer, leads to the increase of the software with about 50000 meshes generated by a 2.4 GHz, Quad-Core
radiating aperture of the antenna. Processor. As it is seen this current is tapered toward the edges of the
In the 2-D LWAs which are constructed using the FSS surface, the cavity. For our design the surface current at the edges of the FSS is
leakage current is tapered toward the edges of the FSS [25], [26]. There- about 0.1 of its maximum in the middle of the FSS.
fore, the dimensions of the FSS superstrate layer must be chosen such
that, the reflected wave from the edges of FSS can be neglected. To ex- IV. FINAL DESIGN OF ANTENNA AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
amine the effects of the FSS dimensions, the FSS superstrate layer is Fig. 10 shows the simulation and experimental results of the op-
studied with different number of cells. Fig. 8 depicts the RL and direc- timized structure to produce three resonance frequencies and conse-
tivity of the antenna for the FSS with different number of cells . Sim- quently, the wide frequency band.
ulation results show that enhancing the dimension of FSS more than There are three resonance frequencies in the return loss of the an-
7 2 7 elements, has a little effect on the RL < 010 dB and width. tenna where the first and third resonance frequencies are due to the cou-
To show how the leaky wave propagates in the EBG antenna and also pling aperture and patch antenna and the second resonance frequency
to detect the different modes in the EBG antenna it is necessary to study is due to the FSS superstrate layer. In the Fig. 11 the simulation and
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 2104 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 4, APRIL 2012

Fig. 10. Return loss of ACMA in the presence of the FSS layer.

Fig. 11. Directivity of ACMA in the presence of FSS layer.

Fig. 8. Effect of the FSS with different cell number (a) return loss of EBG
antenna and (b) directivity of EBG antenna.
The bandwidth of the RL < 010 dB of ACMA in Fig. 5 is
(8.7–10.5) GHz while this frequency band for the designed EBG
antenna in Fig. 10 is (8.6–11) GHz. Therefore, compared with ACMA
the bandwidth of the EBG antenna has increased about 5%. Also, at
center frequencies the directivity of the EBG antenna is about 15 dBi
while the directivity of ACMA is about 9 dBi that shows the directivity
of the ACMA antenna has increased about 70% by using the FSS
superstrate layer.
The antenna configuration is shown in Fig. 12. In the final design,
the air gap between the substrates of the slot and radiating patch is
3.5 mm and the distance of the substrate of the FSS from the patch is
14.75 mm. Also the periodicity of the FSS elements is 7 mm and the
width of square loops of the FSS is 5 mm with 0.2 mm thickness.
The Co and Cross polarization radiation pattern of the EBG an-
tenna for different frequencies in E-Plane and H-Plane are shown in
the Fig. 13.
The high back lobe level of the antenna is mostly due to the cou-
pling aperture (H shape slot in the ground plane) and can be reduced
by putting an absorber material or metallic reflector plate behind the
Fig. 9. Current distribution on the patch surface and FSS surface of antenna.
antenna.

V. CONCLUSION
experimental results of the antenna gain has been depicted. The fre- In this communication, the FSS layer has been used as the superstrate
quency shift between the experiment and simulation results in Figs. 10 layer for ACMA antenna. Because of the controllable performance of
and 11 may be due to the fabrication error and experimental effects, but the FSS, it is possible to design the microstrip antenna with more pa-
it must be noticed that the expected behavior of the simulation and ex- rameters to adjust the antenna characteristics such as return loss and
perimental results are completely achieved in the operating frequency directivity. In the conventional microstrip antennas with dielectric su-
band. perstrate cover, only the dielectric properties of the superstrate and its
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 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 4, APRIL 2012 2105

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank the Antenna Lab of the MUT University for the
support of the measurements of this work.

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Synthesis of Array Radiation Pattern Footprints synthesis method. In previous work, this target has been synthesized by
Using Radial Stretching, Fourier Analysis, and Hankel the Woodward-Lawson (WL) method (with iteration of ES-WL cycles)
Transformation [4], or by least-squares optimization of the excitations of an irregular
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transformation.
Abstract—For the synthesis of radiation patterns using antenna arrays
with thousands of elements, the combination of direct methods with non-
stochastic optimization can be more efficient than stochastic optimization.
Here we describe an efficient method for the synthesis of footprint pat- II. METHOD
terns that combines Hankel transformation with Fourier analysis following
angle-dependent homothesis (i.e., radial stretching and/or shrinking) of an Given an ideal footprint defined by a contour C that is star-shaped
axisymmetric Elliott-Stern pattern for a circular aperture. The new method with respect to the zenith  = 0 of spherical coordinates (; ) (i.e.,
can in principle be applied to arrays of radiating elements with arbitrary any point of C can be joined to the zenith by a straight line that does not
locations and element patterns. pass through any other point of C ); given a planar array of maximum di-
Index Terms—Antenna arrays, antenna radiation pattern synthesis, foot- ameter 2a that is to generate the footprint; and given specifications Rd ;
print patterns. SLLd and DRRd for the ripple R and sidelobe level SLL of the pat-
tern and for the dynamic range ratio of the array (DRR = jImax =Imin j,
I. INTRODUCTION where Imax and Imin are respectively the greatest and least excitation
The advent or anticipation of antenna arrays with hundreds, thou- amplitudes of the array elements); we proceed as follows.
Step 1. We begin by deforming C to a circle C 0 around the origin:
sands or even millions [1] of elements has changed the priorities of
(; ) ! (0 ; ), where sin 0 = h()sin  for some positive function
h defined on [0; 2 ). To minimize distortion introduced by subsequent
array synthesis methodology. Whereas not long ago designers gener-
ally strove to elicit the maximum performance from a limited number
of elements by means of sophisticated stochastic optimization tech- operations, C 0 should be as close to C as possible.
niques [2], satisfactory performance can now often be obtained basi- Step 2. We apply the ES method [3] to obtain a -symmetric footprint
of contour C 0 , maximum tolerable peak-to-trough ripple Rt (for some
Rt such that jRt j  jRd j) and maximum tolerable sidelobe level SLLt
cally by simply increasing the number of elements, so long as this is

Manuscript received May 11, 2011; revised August 06, 2011; accepted (for some SLLt  SLLd ) that could be generated by a circular aperture
November 26, 2011. Date of publication February 03, 2012; date of current of radius a. That is, we find tn and sn such that the required circular
version April 06, 2012. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of footprint FES is given by a scaled distortion of J1 , the Bessel function
Education and Science under Project TEC2008-04485 and by Xunta de Galicia
under Project 09TIC006206PR. of the first kind and order 1:
The authors are with the Radiating Systems Group, Department of Applied
Physics, Faculty of Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 San-
FES (t; ) = 2 J1 (t)
tiago de Compostela, Spain (e-mail: [Link]@[Link]; [Link]@[Link]; t
[Link]@[Link]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
M
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