Resonant Frequency and Sensitivity Analysis of

Hilbert Curve Fractal Antennas for DRM

Communications
Keping Wang#1, Zhigong Wang#2, Xuemei Lei#3, Mingzhu Zhou#4
#
Institute of RF-&OE-ICs, Southeast University
2 Sipailou, Nanjing, China
1
wkptom@seu.edu.cn
2
zgwang@seu.edu.cn
3
nmglxm@sohu.com
4
zhoumingzhu@seu.edu.cn

Abstract In this paper, the resonant frequency and sensitivity
characteristics of Hilbert curve fractal antennas is presented.
Several fractal-shaped Hilbert monopoles have been constructed,
based on theoretical calculation, EM simulation and
measurement. The formulation on resonant frequency of the
Hilbert antennas is derived and verified. Experimental results
show that compared with the receiving antenna for DRM (Digital
Radio Mondiale) system provided by a professional company,
our receiving antenna has a high enough receiving sensitivity but
a reduced size.
I. INTRODUCTION
The rapid proliferation of digital radio broadcasting such as
DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) has created a strong demand
for small internal antennas for portable radio receivers. The
required antennas need to hand the signals with the input
curve fractal antennas are given and discussed. In section IV,
the conclusions are given.
II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY AND THEORY
A. Antenna Geometry
The Hilbert curves for the first several iterations are shown
in Fig. 1. The plane-filling nature is evident by comparing the
first several iteration stages. It is obvious that as the iteration
order increase, the total length of the line segments is
increased in almost geometric progression if the outer
dimension is kept fixed. For a Hilbert curve antenna with side
dimension L and order n, the total segment length S(n) can be
calculated as follows:
22 n 1  1
frequency ranging from 148 kHz to 27 MHz. Conventional S n L (1)
antenna choices for such applications as well as analog
2n  1
FM/AM radio receivers include whip antennas and ferrite rod
antennas, all of which are space-wasting.
Fractal-shaped antennas have some unique characteristics
that are linked to the geometrical properties of fractals. As it
was thoroughly discussed in [1]-[4], the self-similarity
property of fractals makes them especially suitable to design
multi frequency antennas. Some fractal shapes have complex (a) (b) (c)
and convoluted shapes that can enhance radiation when used
as antennas. For instance, some fractal loops can be designed
to enclose a finite surface with an arbitrarily large perimeter.
Certain monopoles can be design to have an arbitrarily large
length, although they can be constrained to fit a given volume.
Therefore, it is possible to design small antennas that occupy
the same volume than other Euclidean counterparts, but much
longer.
In this paper, the behaviour of different Hilbert curve
(d) (e)
monopoles is presented. While some preliminary results were
discussed by authors in [5]-[6], this paper provides an in-depth Fig. 1 (a) Hilbert 1; (b) Hilbert 2; (c) Hilbert 3; (d) Hilbert 5; (e) Hilbert 6.
insight to the behaviour of the antenna. In section II, the The Hilbert curve fractal antennas are etched on an FR4 substrate
algorithms for generating the Hilbert curve is reviewed, the B. Theory of Resonant Frequency
Hilbert fractal curve monopole antenna is described and its
parameters are shown. In section III, experimental results The resonant frequency theory has been reported in [7]. In
about the resonant frequency and the sensitivity of the Hilbert this approach, the inductance of the turns of the Hilbert Curve
is calculated, considering them as short circuit parallel-two-
______________________________________
978-1-4244-2193-0/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE


wire lines. The self inductance of an straight line connecting
all these turns is then added to this to get total inductance.
This is then compared with the inductance of a regular half
wavelength dipole. Since the dipole antennas with
approximately half wavelength are resonant, and assuming
that the input capacitive reactance for a dipole antenna
remains unchanged by reducing its apparent length by
introducing turns, the resonant condition for this antenna is
derived.
For a Hilbert curve fractal antenna with the outer dimension
L, the order of fractal iteration n and the diameter of each
segment b, the characteristic impedance of a parallel wire
transmission line can be given by:
K 2L
Z0 log
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT
According to the theory of section II, high iteration order
Hilbert curve fractal antennas were designed to achieve lower
resonant frequency and higher sensitivity for DRM receivers.
Fig. 2 shows the photographs of the proposed Hilbert curve
fractal antennas. The antennas were fabricated on the
100mmu100mm FR4 substrate with the thickness (h) of 1 mm
and relative permittivity (Hr) of 2.65.
(2)
S b  2n  1
where K is the intrinsic impedance of the free space, This can
be used to calculate the input impedance at the ends of the line,
which is purely inductive: (a) (b)
Z0 EL Fig. 2 The photograph of proposed Hilbert curve fractal antennas. (a) iteration
Lin tan (3) order 5; (b) iteration order 6.
Z 2 1
n

there are 4n-1 such sections. The self inductance due to the A. Resonant Frequency
straight line is as follow: The proposed Hilbert curve fractal antennas were tested
P0  2  1 L 8  22 n 1  1 L
2 n 1 using a calibrated vector network analyser Agilent E5071B.
Ls log (4) Fig. 3 shows the measured resonant frequency characteristic
S 2n  1 b  2n  1

of the antennas. The frequency span is from 100 kHz to 1
GHz, the measured S11 shows that the high iteration order
Substituting Eq. (2) in Eq. (3) and connecting with Eq. (4), the Hilbert curve fractal antennas have multi resonant frequency
total inductance is given by: property. This kind of antennas can be used in wideband or
P0 8S K 2d multi-band radio receiver like DRM.
Ltotal S log  1  4 n 1 log tan E d (5) The hand calculated, EM simulated and measured first
S b SZ b
resonant frequencies of Hilbert curve fractal antennas are
where: shown in Table I. The measured first resonant frequency at

S
2 2 n 1

1 L iteration order 5 is well fit to the calculated result by Matlab
and the EM simulated result by CST Microwave Studio. But,
2 1
n
when the iteration order increases to 6, the calculated result is
L smaller than the EM simulated and the measured result,
d because the theory in section II ignores the high order effects.
2 1
n

To find the resonant frequency of the antenna, the total

inductance from above equations is equal to that of a resonant
half-wave dipole antenna. Therefore the first few resonant
frequencies of the Hilbert curve fractal antennas can be
obtained as follows:
kO 8 kO S
log  1 S log  1
4 b 4 b
(6)
K 2L L
 4n1 log tan E n1
PoZ b  2  1
n 1
 2 1
It may be noted that S, b, L and n are antenna dimension
related parameters. Thus, from above analysis one can easily
get the resonant frequency of Hilbert curve fractal antennas by (a)
hand calculation. But, this expression does not account for
high order effects and hence may not accurate at high resonant
modes.


 The measured results show that the sensitivity of the
proposed Hilbert curve fractal antennas is higher than the
Himalaya DRM2009 receiving antenna. If the normalized
power received by Himalaya DRM2009 receiving antenna
is set to be 1, the normalized power received by Hilbert curve
fractal antenna with iteration 5 is almost two times. Also, the
normalized power of the Hilbert curve fractal antenna with
iteration 6 is 2.544.
TABLE II
NORMALIZED POWER

Antennas Categories Dimension Size Normalized

(mm2) Power
(b) Loop Antennas 150u100 1
Fig. 3 Measured result of S11. (a) iteration order 5; (b) iteration order 6. Hilbert 5 (d=0.5 mm) 100u100 1.899
Hilbert 5 (d=1.0 mm) 100u100 1.950
TABLE I
Hilbert 6 (d=0.5 mm) 100u100 2.544
FIRST RESONANT FREQUENCY

Iteration Calculated EM simulated Measured IV. CONCLUSIONS

order results results
5 84.7 MHz 83 MHz
6 53.8 MHz 66 MHz
B. Sensitivity
The frequency band of the DRM communication system is
from 148 kHz to 27 MHz. It is hard to get the radiation
patterns in laboratory condition due to the electrically small
property of the antennas in such low frequency. In this
experiment, the sensitivity of the antennas was tested in DRM
frequency band compared to the loop antennas of Himalaya
DRM 2009 radio receiver provided by Hong Kong Himalaya
Electronic Company. The standard loop antennas size is
150mmu100mm with 6 turns. Fig. 4 shows the RMS voltage
received by four kinds of receiving antennas under the same
field strength produced by the transmitting antenna.
Normalized values of the power received by 4 kinds of
receiving antennas are presented in Table II.
35
Hilbert 6 (d=0.5mm)
30 Hilbert 5 (d=1.0mm)
Hilbert 5 (d=0.5mm)
"Himalaya DRM2009" Loop Antenna
25
RMS Voltage (mV)
results In this paper, the resonant frequency and sensitivity of
87 MHz
Hilbert curve fractal antennas are discussed by theoretical
60 MHz
analysis, EM simulation and measurement. An approximate
formulation is derived to calculate the resonant frequency of
the Hilbert curve fractal antennas, and then, the theory is
verified by EM simulation and measurement. Moreover, the
sensitivity of these kinds of antennas is tested in the DRM
frequency range. The measured result shows that compared to
the loop antennas used in Himalaya DRM2009 receiver the
proposed Hilbert curve antennas have much higher sensitivity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their appreciation to
Hong Kong Himalaya (Power) Electronic Co., Ltd for the
support of the Himalaya DRM2009 receiver and antennas.
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Fig. 4 RMS voltage received by 4 kinds of receiving antennas