Proceedings of the 40th European Microwave Conference

New Method for Back Lobe Suppression of Microstrip Patch Antenna for GPS
Won-Gyu Lim #1 , Hyeong-seok Jang 2 , Jong-Won Yu 3
#

Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) Daejeon, 305-333, Korea

1

wglim@kari.re.kr

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Daejeon, Korea
3

janghs@kaist.ac.kr drjwyu@ee.kaist.ac.kr

Abstract A new method for back lobe suppression of microstrip patch antenna with a small ground is proposed and investigated for GPS receiver at 1.575 GHz. To reduce back lobe radiation, we use the slotted ground choke by etching slots on the corner of the ground plane. Experiment results show that the back lobe radiation is reduced lower than -35 dBi and the front-to-back ratio more than 40 dB.

I. I NTRODUCTION Global Positioning System (GPS) is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) to determine the instantaneous location, the time and the velocity information almost anywhere on or above the surface of the earth at any time. Despite continuing improvements in GPS receivers, multipath signal propagation has remained a dominant cause of error in differential positioning. Multipath refers to the existence of signals reected from objects in the vicinity of a receivers antenna that corrupt the direct line-of-sight signals from the GPS satellites, thus degrading the accuracy of both code-based and carrier phase-based measurements. The multipath signals can be mitigated by using a low back lobe antenna. A conventional approach to mitigate the multipath interference is to use a choke ring ground plane [1]. Choke ring ground plane consists of multiple concentric ring shorted at the bottom and open at the top. The choke ring ground plane effectively reduces the multipath signals; however it signicantly increases the antenna size, making its adoption difcult in applications that need small form factor antennas. Alternative technologies have been pursued using the Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) structures [2], articial magnetic conductor [3] and vertical choke ring [4]. In this paper, we present a new compact structure, the slotted ground choke, to reduce the back lobe of the microstrip patch antenna. The slotted ground choke is as effective as a conventional choke ring ground plane and the increase of the antenna size is kept minimal. II. A NTENNA D ESIGN Circular polarization is required for GPS applications. Circularly polarized patch antennas can be constructed using various structures and congurations such as slot-loaded patches,

Fig. 1. The geometry of the proposed microstrip patch antenna with slotted ground choke in (a), side view in (b) and top view in (c)

near-square patches, square patches with orthogonal feeding, etc. In this study, in order to get circular polarization, a double feed is used which allows to excite two orthogonal TM01 mode on the square patch by feeding the two inputs 90o out of phase. Fig.1 shows the geometry and dimensions

978-2-87487-016-3 2010 EuMA

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28-30 September 2010, Paris, France

Fig. 2. The simulated radiation patterns of microstrip patch antenna on the nite ground plane with/without slots (Wg =Lg =90mm, Wa =La =82.4mm, Ha =5mm, Ls =30mm,Ws =5.8mm)

of the proposed patch antenna with slotted ground choke. A rectangular patch is designed to operate at frequency f = 1.575GHz and is fabricated with copper plate ( t=1mm and Wa =La =82.4mm). It is fed directly by using copper wire with 1mm diameter and height Ha =5mm above the FR4 substrate (Hd =0.6mm,Wg =Lg =90mm and relative permittivity 4.6). The slotted ground choke is created by etching four slots at the corner of the ground plane of the FR4 substrate and the quadrature hybrid coupler is designed on the other side of the ground plane. Backward radiation is generated at microstrip patch antenna on the nite ground plane due to the ground plane edge diffraction. To reduce backward radiation, we insert four slots in the corner of the ground plane with Ls =30mm and Ws =5.8mm. Fig. 2 shows the simulated radiation patterns of the microstrip patch antenna on the nite ground with slots and without slots. It shows that the backward radiation from the microstrip patch antenna with slotted ground choke can be dramatically reduced about 45dB more than without slots. The simulations are performed using the CST Microwave Studio Package which utilizes the nite integration technique for electromagnetic computation. Fig. 3 shows the simulated radiation patterns for different length (Ls ) and different width (Ws ) of the slotted ground choke. If Ls is 30mm and Ws is 5.8mm, the backward radiation is decreased considerably about -45dBi at =180o . Fig. 4 shows the simulated surface current distribution on the slotted ground plane at 1.575GHz. We can see more and stronger surface current is concentrated around the edge of slots and is oppositely directed between the interior and exterior of the slot. This causes the slotted ground to operate in a transmission-line-like mode, which transforms the nearly zero impedance (short circuit) at the edge of the slot to nearly high impedance(open circuit) at the edge of the ground plane.

Fig. 3. The simulated radiation patterns for different length (Ls ) and Ws =5.8mm in (a) and for different width (Ws ) and Ls =30mm in (b)

Fig. 4. The simulated surface current distribution on the slotted ground plane at 1.575GHz

The high impedance leads to the desired high attenuation of

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Fig. 7.

The measured peak gain and axial ratio of the proposed antenna

Fig. 5.

A photograph of the fabricated antenna

Fig. 8. The measured radiation pattern of the proposed antenna at 1.575GHz Fig. 6. The measured return loss of the proposed antenna

IV. C ONCLUSION edge diffraction and cut off backward radiation. III. M EASUREMENTS Fig.5 shows a photograph of the fabricated microstrip patch antenna with slotted ground choke. Fig. 6 shows the measured return loss of proposed antenna. The impedance bandwidth dened by -10 dB return loss about 400 MHz centered at about 1.575 GHz is observed, which is due to the wide bandwidth characteristic of the feed network . The measured peak gain and axial ratio are shown in Fig. 7. The proposed antenna has a good axial ratio under 0.5 dB and peak gain about 6dBi at 1.575 GHz. Fig. 8 shows the measured radiation pattern. We can see that forward and backward gain are 6dBi and -35dBi, respectively. By using the slotted ground choke, we can get the high front-to-back ratio about 41dB. The slotted ground choke is proposed to reduce the backward radiation of microstrip patch antenna with nite and small ground plane. The simulated and experimental results show that the back lobe can be successfully reduced below -45dBi and -35dBi, respectively. The proposed antenna offers good circular polarization and uniform hemispherical gain pattern for the operating band, and provides an excellent multipath rejection characteristic. The new structure effectively suppresses back lobe without an increase in the size of the ground plane. R EFERENCES
[1] Tranquilla, J.M., Carr, J.P. and Al-Rizzo, H.M. Analysis of a choke ring groundplane for multipath control in Global Positioning System (GPS) applications IEEE Transcations on Antennas and Propagation,vol.42,no.7,pp. 905 - 911, July, 1994.

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[2] Baggen, R., Martinez-Vazquez, M., Leiss, J., Holzwarth, S., Drioli, L.S. and de Maagt, P., Low Prole GALILEO Antenna Using EBG Technology,IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 56, no.3, pp. 667-674, March, 2008. Page(s):667 - 674 [3] McKinzie, W.E., III, Hurtado, R.B., Klimczak, B.K. and Dutton, J.D., Mitigation of multipath through the use of an articial magnetic conductor for precision GPS surveying antennas, IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, vol.4, pp. 16-21, June, 2002. [4] Yoonjae Lee, Ganguly, S. and Mittra, R., Multi-band L5-capable GPS antenna with reduced backlobes, IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 1A, pp. 3-8, July, 2005.

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