Chapter 3

Antenna Systems
3.1-3.6 (4th week)
3.7-3.11 (5th week)
 3.1 Introduction
• A key component for wireless system
• Reciprocal device
• Serve as a receiving and transmitting device
• Design for maximum radiation

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 Types of Antennas
• Shapes or geometries:
– Wire antenna: dipole, loop, helix
– Aperture antenna: horn, slot
– Printed antenna: patch, printed dipole, sprial
• Gain:
– High gain: dish
– Medium gain: horn
– Low gain: dipole, loop, patch
• Beam shapes:
– Omnidirectional: dipole
– Pencil beam: dish
– Fan beam: array
• Bandwidth:
– Wide band: log, spiral, helix
– Narrow band: patch, slot
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Various Antennas

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 3.2 Isotropic Radiation and Plane Waves
• TEM wave
• Constant phase wave front
• Power density: Pd  Pt
4R 2
• E & H fields are obtained
from Helmholtz eq.
• Wave impedance of
free space : 377 W

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 Electric and Magnetic Fields for Plane
Waves in Free Space
• Helmholtz equation :  2 E  k0 E  0, where k0  2 / 0
2

• Solution for electric field : E  E 0 exp( j k 0  r )

• M agnitude field H can be obtained using M axwell equation
1 0
H E  nˆ  E
j0 0
• Wave impedance of free space
E 0
0    120
H 0
• Power density (using Poyntingvector)
1 * 1 E2 Pt 60Pt
Pd  E  H   E  2 Erms 6
2 2 0 4R 2
R
 3.3 Far-Field Region
• Radiation pattern: far-field
• Distance: R
• Antenna dimension: D

• R>>Dl
– >R=D2/(8 Dl)
• R>2D2/ 0
2D 2

D2 
 Dl  0
0 8Dl 16
– (phase error 6%)
• R>4D2/0
– (phase error 3%) 7
 3.4 Antenna Analysis
• Solve the Helmholtz equation:

• A: vector potential:

• Free-space Green’s function

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 3.5 Antenna Characteristics and
Parameters
• Input VSWR and input impedance
– Typical VSWR <2
• Bandwidth
– VSWR
– Gain
– Efficiency
– Patterns

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 Radiation Pattern
• E- and H-plane pattern
– With co- and cross polarization
– Half-power beamwidth
– Sidelobe levels
– Gain

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 Half-power Beamwidth (HPBW) and
Sidelobe Levels (SLLs)
• Also shown is FNBW, the first-null beamwidth

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 Directivity, Gain & Efficiency
• Directivity:
S  ,  
D ,   
Pt / 4R 2

maximum of S  ,  
Dmax 
Pt / 4R 2
1

where S  ,    Re E  H
2
*

• Gain & Efficiency:
Gain  G  Dmax
Prad Prad
  efficiency  
Pin Prad  Ploss
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Gain Comparison

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• Polarization & cross-polarization level
– Linear polarization (LP) or circularly polarization
(CP)
– Tip of E-field as time progresses
• Effective area
– Normally proportional to physical area of antenna
• Beam efficiency
• Back radiation
– Radiation in the backside of antenna
• Estimation of high gain antenna
– Some convenient formulas for making quickly
estimates of the characteristics of high-gain antenna 14
Circularly Polarization Antennas

Omnidirectional
Antenna type
Frequency range 87.5-108 Mhz
MAX Power handling 500 Watts(each)
Impedance 50 Ohms
Gain (1xPLC5) -1.5dBd
Gain (2xPLC5) +1.5dBd
VSWR better than 1.35 (88-108MHz) 15
Connector N-type
 Example 3.1
• Gain: 11.4
• HPBW: 22.2°
• Cross-polarization
radiation level > 26 dB
• First SLL: 14 dB
• Max. back radiation @
135° with a level of 13
dB below the main-
lobe peak
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3.6 Monopole and Dipole Antennas
• Use for broadcasting, cellular phone, wireless
communications
• Omnidirection
• When l=1/20: half-wave dipole (or quarter-
wavelength monopole, input impedance is
about 73 W with an antenna gain of 1.64
• When l<<1/20: short dipole, input impedance
is small and difficult to match with low
antenna gain of smaller than 1.5
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Examples of Dipole and Monopole Antennas
• Omnidirective
• /2 dipole
• /4 monopole
• Short dipole/monopole
• Cellular (900MHz /4=8cm)
• TV 48-880 MHz
– 48MHz /4=156cm

• AM/FM
– FM: 107MHz /4=70cm
– AM: 550kHz /4=136m

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 Cellular Antennas Nokia 5800

Ericsson T28
quarter of a wavelength
Motorola
StarTAC half of a wavelength
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 Flexible Antenna

Polyimide Flexible Circuit

Polymer Thick-Film Antennas

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Radiation Pattern of Dipole and
Monopole Antennas

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Long Dipole & Coax Monopole

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Folded Dipoles and Monopoles

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Sleeve Antenna

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Inverter L & F Antennas

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 Inverted F

Metal Strip Antennas

(Bluetooth, one-way pager)

Planar Inverted “F” Antenna (PIFA)

RFID
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 Example 3.2 AM Station
• 600 kHz (0=500 m), 100 kW
• 0/4=125 m
• E-field at 100 km:
– Pd,max=Gain(Pt/4R2)
=1.64x(100e3W)/[4(100e3m)2 ]=1.31e-6
W/m2
– Pd=E2rms/377W, Erms=22.2mV/m

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 3.7 Horn Antennas
• Use as a feed to a parabolic dish antenna
• A gain standard for antenna gain measurement
• Compact medium-gain antennas for various
systems
• Gain accuracy: within 0.1 dB

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Design Parameters for Rectangular Waveguide

• Ex.: A=9 in & B=4 in @10

GHz
• Gain: 22.2 dB

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Design Parameters for Circular Waveguide

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Example of Horn Antenna

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 Len Corrected Antenna
• Linear and circular polarization application
• Low side lobes, high gain

Twist waveguide

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 3.8 Parabolic Dish Antennas
• High-gain antenna
• Use for point-to-point satellites and wireless
links

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• Ideal effective area:
–
– where D is the diameter of dish
• The illumination efficiency: 55 ~ 75%
–
• Antenna gain (from Eq. (3.24)):
–

• Half-power beamwidth (from Eq. (3.25)):

–

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 Feed Methods
• Front feed, Cassegrain, Gregorian, and offset-feed

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• Illumination efficiency of front feed is only
55-60% due to the aperture blockage, the
sidelobe and cross-polarization level
• Cassegrain method: shorter connection line
• Gregorian method: 55-60% illumination
efficiency by using an elliptical subreflector
• Offset method: no aperture blockage, smaller
sidelobe, smaller overall size with the same
gain
• At UHFs (300 MHz ~ 3 GHz): portion of the
dish (metal mesh).
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Example of Parabolic Dish Antenna

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 3.9 Microstrip Patch Antennas
• Widely use
• Highly efficient, structurally compact, and
conformal
• Most common type: rectangular patch

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 Rectangular Patch Antenna
• Thickness of the dielectric substrate h is
designed to be ≤0.02 g

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 Analysis and Design of Microstrip
Patch Antenna
• Transmission line model [10]:
– The rectangular patch is simply a very wide
transmission line terminated by the radiation
impedance
– Predict properties only approximately
• Cavity model [11]
– Assumes the rectangular patch to be essentially a
closed resonant cavity with magnetic wall
– Predict all properties with high accuracy
– Much more computation effort 42
 Transmission Line Model

• Patch as a very wide

transmission line
• E field is invariant
along the width W of
the patch
• The radiation comes
from fields leaking out
along the width
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• Radiation conductance:

• Radiation susceptance [12]:

– where
– with

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• Radiation impedance:

• At resonance :

• W is not critical but can be selected as

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 Microstrip Patch Antenna Feed
Methods
• Coaxial probe feed, microstrip-line feed
• EM coupled microstrip line feed, aperture-
coupling feed, slot line feed, CPW feed

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 Radiation Patterns
• Typical HPBW: 50°~ 60 °
• Typical gain: 5 ~ 8 dB

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Circularly Polarization Square Patch
Antennas

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 Planar Antenna

Coil on Chip

Printed Circuit Board Antennas (WLAN) 52

Ceramic Patch Antenna

Bluetooth, two-way pagers, and GPS units.

(generally 10mm x 5mm x 5mm),

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3.10 Antenna Arrays and Phase Arrays
• Single antenna are limited for many
applications due to a large HPBW and a lower
gain
• Features of antenna arrays and phase arrays
– High-gain, narrow pencil beam
– Focus the RX or TX of energy in a particular
direction, which increases the useful range of a
system

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One-Dimension Linear Array

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• HPBW in degrees:

• Antenna array gain:

• 2-D array factor:

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 Radiation Pattern of Antenna Array

N 1
AF   e  jn ( kd cos kd sin0 ) D. Parker and D. Zimmermann,
“Phased Arrays—Part I: Theory and Architectures”
n 0 IEEE Trans. MTT march 2002
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Antenna Array Feeding Methods

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 Passive/Active Phase Array
• Passive array • Active array

• Hybrid array

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 3.11 Antenna Measurements
• Indoor antenna chamber, or outdoor antenna
range
• Antenna under test (AUT) is located at far-
field region
• Near-field and compact indoor ranges are also
available for some special purposes

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Measurement Setup

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Standard Indoor Anechoic Chamber

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