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Design of Microstrip Antenna with Modied Annular-ring Slot for GPS Application
C. F. Tseng, S. C. Lu, and Y. C. Hsu Department of Electronic Engineering, National United University, Taiwan

Abstract A circularly polarized annular ring slot antenna with broadband impedance and
circularly polarized bandwidth characteristics has been presented in this paper. By introducing proper asymmetry in the annular ring slot structure in the form of two pairs of slits, and feeding the ring slot using a 50 microstrip line, the bandwidth is increased, and the circularly polarized antenna is also formed for GPS application. The measured results agree with the simulation, showing that the proposed antenna has a wide return loss and AR bandwidth (AR < 3 dB) of more than 40% referred to the resonant frequency 1.575 GHz. The measured radiation patterns are stable and symmetric with respect to the broadside direction. Moreover, a prototype antenna with an average gain of 3.2 dBi over a CP bandwidth is shown. 1. INTRODUCTION

Circularly polarized (CP) antennas have an advantage in reducing the loss caused due to polarization misalignment between signals and receiving antennas. A well-known method of generating circular polarization is by creating dierent shapes of radiating elements with a single feed, such as a square patch with truncated corners or a circular patch with notches [15]. These antennas have a 10 dB impedance bandwidth of only about 3%, which tends to become less than 1% for 3 dB axial-ratio (AR) bandwidths. In comparison with microstrip antennas, the printed ring slot antennas not only have low prole, light weight and wide impedance bandwidth, but are also easy to manufacture and have wider circular polarization bandwidth. Many ring slot antenna designs producing CP radiation have been proposed. In [6], a square-ring slot antenna with 38.7% impedance bandwidth and 12.9% 3 dB AR bandwidth is presented. In [7], a printed slot antenna is excited by an L-shaped strip and has CP and impedance bandwidths of approximately 44% and 38% respectively, referred to the resonant frequency. This antenna has a simple structure and is easy to implement. In this paper, the geometry of the antenna was developed from the designs described in [2] and [8]. The ring slot antenna in [8] has an asymmetric ring slot structure, feeding the ring slot using a microstrip line at 45 from the asymmetry. In our design, the annular ring slot design with two pairs of slits is proposed. By adjusting the length of slits, the impedance and CP bandwidths can be improved. The designed antenna is successfully implemented and the experimental results are presented.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The geometry of the proposed microstrip line fed CP annular-ring slot antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The total area of antenna is 70 50 mm2 with an FR4 dielectric substrate, which has relative permittivity 4.4, loss tangent 0.02 and thickness 1.6 mm. On the top of the substrate is the ground plane, etched to form an annular ring slot, which has an inner radius R1 = 17 mm, outside radius R2 = 23.5 mm and two slots. The fundamental resonant frequency of the annular-ring slot antenna can be calculated according to the following [8]: fr = c (R1 + R2 ) 1 + r 2r (1)

where c is the speed of light in free space; (R1 + R2 ) is the mean circumference of the annular ring slot around the patch; the second term in (1) is the correction factor considering the presence of dierent dielectric media on either side of the slot antenna. To excite two orthogonal neardegenerate resonant modes for CP radiation, the annular ring has a pair of truncated slots of dimensions 4.25 6.72 mm. Moreover, the slots are placed along the line that is 45 away from the vertical line, as shown in Fig. 1. To improve impedance bandwidth and CP bandwidth, two pairs of opposite slits are introduced in the annular ring slot. All the slits are 1.5 mm wide. The lengths of slits 1 and slit 2 are a and b

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Figure 1: Geometry of the annular ring slot antenna.

Figure 2: Measured return loss and input impedance on a Smith chart for the proposed antenna.

Figure 3: Simulated return loss for dierent lengths of a and b.

Figure 4: Simulated input impedance on Smith chart for dierent lengths of a and b.

mm respectively. A 50 microstrip feed line with a widened square stub of length 6.5 mm is placed on the bottom of the substrate. The optimized dimensions for the proposed antenna are as shown in Fig. 1. The characteristics of the ARSA were calculated by Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software and measured by Agilent N5230A network analyzer. Fig. 2 shows the measured return loss and input impedance on a Smith chart for the proposed antenna. It is clearly observed that a very small loop is formed at approximately 1.575 GHz and occurs close to the center of the Smith chart obtained. This characteristic usually indicates that two resonant modes are excited at close frequencies [9], creating CP radiation. The impedance bandwidth (S11 10 dB) is more than 640 MHz (or about > 40.6%), around the center frequency f = 1.575 GHz. To study further the eect of the added slits 1 and 2, the simulated return losses of the proposed antenna are shown in Fig. 3 and Table 1; the table also shows dierent values of a and b, the lengths of the two pairs of slits. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna without use of the two pairs of slits (a = 0, b = 0; case 1) is only about 455 MHz. Large variations are observed in the excited resonant mode for case 2, and the resonant modes are shifted to lower frequency by using slit 1 only, as compared with that case 1. On the other hand, the frequency modes of case 3 are only slightly shifted. With the addition of slit 2, the lowest resonant frequency moves toward lower frequency, and the second resonant frequency moves toward higher frequency. The results verify that cutting slit 2 in the radiator can increase impedance bandwidth. From Fig. 3 and Table 1, it appears that the impedance bandwidth is the largest from 1.44 to more than 2 GHz as b = 5.5 mm. However, the obtained CP bandwidth cannot cover the GPS band for the antenna. According to

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these study results of a and b, the resonant frequency is mainly controlled by a, and the impedance bandwidth is mainly controlled by b. Therefore, the widest bandwidth for GPS application can be obtained by combining slits 1 and 2 and properly tuning a and b. Figure 4 presents the simulated input impedance for various a and b on the Smith chart. It is noted that the loop of Smith curve is condensed due to introduction of the slits. By cutting slits 1 and 2, the frequency at the loop can be shifted to approach 1.575 GHz and the loop size of impedance loci can be decreased as two degenerate modes get close to each other. The resultant CP axial ratios against frequency are shown in Fig. 5. From the simulated results, it can also be observed that CP bandwidth (dened as 3 dB AR) increases by more than 340 MHz when ARSA cuts the two-pair slits. The measured and simulated antenna gain over the entire operation region is shown in Fig. 6. The obtained gain in CP bandwidth range varies from 2.8 to 3.5 dBi. It is also observed that, within
Table 1: Performance of the proposed antenna with dierent values of a and b in Fig. 1.

Figure 5: Simulated and measured axial ratio versus frequency for dierent lengths of a and b.

Figure 6: Measured and simulated antenna gain versus frequency for the proposed antenna.

(a) x-z plane

(b) y-z plane

Figure 7: Measured radiation patterns of proposed antenna at 1.575 GHz. (a) x-z plane, (b) y -z plane.

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the 3 dB AR bandwidth, the antenna gain variations are less than 1.0 dBi, with peak antenna gains of approximately 3.5 (measured) and 3.2 dBi (simulated). The measured radiation patterns of the proposed ARSA at frequency 1.575 GHz in the two principal planes are plotted in Fig. 7, demonstrating that the bi-directional radiation with opposite polarization is achieved. It can be observed that the antenna operates in a right-hand CP mode, with more than 15 dB isolation between the right-hand and left-hand elds in the main beam direction ( = 0 ).
3. CONCLUSIONS

A CP annular ring slot antenna with broadband impedance and CP bandwidth characteristics has been presented in this paper. To improve impedance and CP bandwidths, the annular ring slot with the use of two pairs of slits is investigated. The measured results agree with the simulation, showing that the proposed antenna has a wide return loss and AR bandwidth (AR < 3 dB) of more than 40% referred to the resonant frequency 1.575 GHz. The measured radiation patterns are stable and symmetric with respect to the broadside direction. Moreover, a prototype antenna with an average gain of 3.2 dBi over a CP bandwidth is shown.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by National Science Council of the Republic of China under NSC 972221-E-239-006-MY2.
REFERENCES

1. Kim, S. M., K. S. Yoon, and W. G. Yang, Dual-band circular polarization square patch antenna for GPS and DMB, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., Vol. 49, 29252926, 2007. 2. Chen, H. M. and K. L. Wong, On the circular polarization operation of annular-ring microstrip antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 47, 12891292, 1999. 3. Wong, K. L. and Y. F. Lin, Circularly polarized microstrip antenna with a tuning stub, Electron. Lett., Vol. 34, 831832, 1998. 4. Row, J. S., Dual-frequency circularly polarized annular-ring microstrip antenna, Electron. Lett., Vol. 40, 153154, 2004. 5. Wong, K. L., W. H. Hsu, and C. K. Wu, Single-feed circularly polarized microstrip antenna with a slit, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., Vol. 18, 306308, 1998. 6. Chang, K. M., R. J. Lin, C. Deng, and Q. X. Ke, A novel design of a microstrip-fed shorted square-ring slot antenna for circular polarization, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., Vol. 49 16841687, 2007. 7. Tseng, L. Y. and T. Y. Han, Microstrip-fed circular slot antenna for circular polarization, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., Vol. 50, 10561058, 2008. 8. Wong, K. L., C. C. Huang, and W. S. Chen, Printed ring slot antenna for circular polarization, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 50, 7577, 2002. 9. Wong, K. L. and T. W. Chiou, Broad-band single-patch circularly polarized microstrip antenna with dual capacitively-coupled feeds, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 49, 4144, 2001.