Design and Performance Analysis of Step

Graded Dielectric Profile High Gain Flexible

Textile Antennas for Radiolocation Military
and Aeronautical Radio Navigation
Applications

Kirtan Kaur1, Sneh Kanwar Singh Sidhu2, Aman Nag3,

Raveena Bhatoa2, and Ekambir Sidhu4(&)
1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Punjabi University, Patiala, India
2
Department of Computer Engineering, Punjabi University, Patiala, India
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Punjabi University, Patiala, India
4
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
esidh097@uottawa.ca

Abstract. This paper emphasizes on the analysis of stacking different dielectric

materials forming step graded profile along the thickness of the substrate in the
microstrip patch antenna design. The different step graded dielectric profiles
have been employed to design antennas and the performance of proposed
antennas have been analyzed in terms of gain (dB), directivity (dBi), return loss
(dB), VSWR, half power beam width (degrees), total efficiency (dB), side lobe
level (dB) and impedance bandwidth (MHz). The stacking of three flexible
textile materials namely fleece, felt and curtain cotton having dielectric constant
of 1.04, 1.35 and 1.47, respectively have been used as substrate material to
obtain six step graded dielectric profile antenna configurations which are P1, P2,
P3, P4, P5 and P6. It has been concluded that the profile P3 having staircase
dielectric profile is the best suited antenna configuration due to effective return
loss, high gain, directivity and HPBW. The step graded dielectric profile antenna
designs have been practically fabricated employing copper material as patch,
feedline and ground having conductivity of 5.96  107 S/m. The performance
of fabricated antennas has been analyzed practically by employing E5071C
network analyzer and anechoic chamber. It has been observed that practical
results intently match with the simulated results of the proposed antenna con-
figurations. The proposed antenna configurations can be suitably employed for
Military Radiolocation and Aeronautical Radio navigation applications as the
proposed antenna configuration is resonant at 16.262 GHz which matches with
the corresponding resonant frequency range of 15.6–16.6 GHz.

Keywords: Directivity
Flexible antenna
Gain
HPBW
Return loss
SLL

Step graded dielectric profile
Textile antenna
VSWR

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018

S.M. Thampi et al. (eds.), Advances in Signal Processing and Intelligent
Recognition Systems, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 678,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-67934-1_7
 Design and Performance Analysis of Step Graded Dielectric Profile 71

1 Introduction

Microstrip patch antenna is a necessary and critical component of communication

systems and a popular choice due to their ease of design, low profile and a compact
structure. The important design aspect of microstrip antenna is that its bandwidth can
be very easily varied by changing the shapes and thickness of substrate as well as by
using multilayer substrate which is not possible in any other antenna [1]. Because of
microstrip patch antenna’s many unique and attractive properties there seems to be little
doubt that it will continue to find many applications in the future. Its properties include,
light weight, low profile, easy fabrication, compact and conformability to mounting
structure [2, 3]. A simple microstrip patch antenna consists of conducting patch and
ground plane with substrate of specific dielectric constant placed between them. The
dimensions of microstrip patch antenna depends on the resonant frequency and value of
dielectric constant of substrate. For good antenna performance, a thick dielectric
substrate having a low dielectric constant is desirable since this provides better effi-
ciency, larger bandwidth and better radiation [4]. The conventional patch antenna aches
from a very serious intrinsic limitation of narrow bandwidth which has been thwarting
its application in wide range of areas of wireless communication systems [5]. The
multiple patches with one feeding patch and other parasitic patch result in multiple
resonance frequencies [6]. A proper selection of patch geometry and gaps between the
multiple patches can results in superimposing of adjacent frequency bands and thus
providing large bandwidth [7].
The miniaturization can affect antenna efficiency characteristics like bandwidth
(MHz), gain (dB), radiation efficiency (dB) and polarization purity [8]. The minia-
turization approaches are based on either geometric manipulation (the use of bend
forms, meandered lines, PIFA shape, varying distance between feeder and short plate,
using fractal geometries [9–12].
The Defected Ground Structure (DGS) is one of the methods, which is used to
miniaturize the size of microstrip antenna. The DGS is basically etching of a simple or
complex shape in the ground plane for the better performance [13].
In this work, the microstrip patch antenna of substrate consisting of three different
textile stacked materials having different dielectric constants have been designed and
the effect of the stacking of dielectric materials in various antenna configurations on
antenna parameters like gain, bandwidth, half power beam width, directivity, total
efficiency and side lobe level have been observed. This research article covers various
sections where proposed antenna geometries have been discussed in Sect. 2 while
simulated results, experimental verification and conclusion have been discussed in
Sects. 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

2 Antenna Geometry

The proposed step graded dielectric profile antennas have been designed and simulated
using Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave Studio 2016. The antenna
has been fabricated using three different materials as substrate i.e. fleece, felt and
curtain cotton having relative permittivity of 1.04, 1.35, 1.47 respectively and thickness
72 K. Kaur et al.

Fig. 1. Top view of the proposed antenna design

Fig. 2. Bottom view of the proposed antenna design

Fig. 3. Side view of the proposed antenna design

 Design and Performance Analysis of Step Graded Dielectric Profile 73

of 0.3 mm, 0.4 mm and 0.1 mm respectively as shown in Fig. 3. The proposed antenna
design is compact size 40  33.4 mm2. The Fig. 1 represents the top view of the
proposed textile microstrip patch antenna in which the geometry of substrate and patch
has been illustrated. The Fig. 2 shows the bottom view of the proposed antenna design
in which shape and size of extended ground been illustrated. The Fig. 3 depicts the side
view of the antenna design where thickness of various substrate has been shown. The
copper material of thickness 0.1 mm having conductivity of 5.96  107 S/m has been
used for radiating patch, feedline and ground.
The ground plane of the proposed antenna design has been extended to improve
antenna bandwidth and return loss. The patch has been fed by a microstrip feed line of
6 mm width.
The feed line is adjusted so that the impedance of the antenna should closely match
with the input impedance of SMA connector having impedance of 50 X. The
dimensions of proposed antenna designs have been illustrated in Figs. 1, 2 and 3. The
green color represents the fleece, red color indicates the felt and yellow color represents

Fig. 4. (1) Side view of the proposed antenna configuration P1. (2) Side view of the proposed
antenna configuration P2. (3) Side view of the proposed antenna configuration P3. (4) Side view
of the proposed antenna configuration P4. (5) Side view of the proposed antenna configuration
P5. (6) Side view of the proposed antenna configuration P6
74 K. Kaur et al.

Fig. 4. (continued)

the curtain cotton in the Fig. 3. The stacking of three flexible textile materials have
been done to obtain six step graded dielectric profile antenna configurations which have
been designated as P1, P2, P3, P4, P5 and P6 this paper. The different profiles obtained
by varying the position of stacked layers have been shown in Fig. 4.

3 Simulated Results

The novel concept of stacked substrates using three textile materials such as fleece, felt
and curtain cotton have resulted in six profiles named P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6 which
have been tested for impedance matching (ohms), return loss (dB), directivity (dBi),
resonant frequency (GHz), VSWR, HPBW (degree) and their bandwidth (GHz) which
can be elaborated from the Table 1 and Fig. 5. This table consists of all the simulated
results of these profiles for the proposed antenna, where the red colored numerals
indicates the highest value of the characteristic among the profiles while the green
numerals indicates the lowest value of the characteristic among the profiles. This table
ease our purpose to choose the best of the profile to be P3 as it has fascinating results
 Design and Performance Analysis of Step Graded Dielectric Profile 75

Table 1. Comparison of different step graded dielectric profile antennas

Profiles Return Gain Directivity Bandwidth HPBW Efficiency
loss (dB) (dB) (dBi) (MHz) (degrees) (dB)
P1 −36.20 8.31 8.38 533 28.3 −0.064
P2 −34.64 8.54 8.66 444 29.5 −0.126
P3 −46.17 8.59 8.70 455 29.5 −0.103
P4 −33.45 8.54 8.65 434 29.5 −0.116
P5 −32.96 8.51 8.66 445 29.5 −0.148
P6 −41.19 8.48 8.60 496 28.7 −0.122
Optimum −46.17 8.59 8.7 533 28.3 −0.064
results

Fig. 5. Comparison of return loss plot of various step graded dielectric profile antenna
configurations @ 16.26 GHz using CST Microwave Studio 2016

among the other profiles and with respect to P1 which is a single material substrate,
specifically designed to distinguish our purpose of using different materials as a sub-
strate. It can be comprehended from the results that P3 dishes us the prominent results

Fig. 6. Bandwidth of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using CST
Microwave Studio 2016
76 K. Kaur et al.

Fig. 7. Return loss plot of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using
CST Microwave Studio 2016

Fig. 8. Smith chart of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using CST
Microwave Studio 2016

Fig. 9. Gain of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using CST
Microwave Studio 2016
 Design and Performance Analysis of Step Graded Dielectric Profile 77

Fig. 10. Directivity of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using CST
Microwave Studio 2016

Fig. 11. VSWR plot of the simulated antenna design configuration P3 @ 16.26 GHz using CST
Microwave Studio 2016

Fig. 12. Half power beam width (HPBW) plot of the simulated antenna design configuration P3
@ 16.26 GHz using CST Microwave Studio 2016
78 K. Kaur et al.

in majority of our parameters as can be analyzed that it is resonant at the frequency of

16.262 GHz covering a bandwidth of 455.69 MHz in the frequency range of 16.039–
16.495 GHz offering the return loss of −46.179792 dB as can be seen from the sim-
ulated results plot in Figs. 6 and 7. It can also be analyzed that it provides the
prominent high gain of 8.597 dB and directivity of 8.7 dBi at the resonant frequency of
16.262 GHz. It has been perceived that the impedance of the designed antenna is
49.94 X which closely matches the desired SMA port impedance of 50 X as shown in
Fig. 8 thus ensuring maximum power transfer from port to antenna and vice versa. The
gain and directivity plots of the proposed antenna can be viewed in Figs. 9 and 10.
The VSWR plot in Fig. 11 also indicates its proficiency as it lies in the maximum

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

Fig. 13. (a–f) Top and bottom view of the step graded dielectric profile fabricated antenna
configuration P1, P2, P3, P4, P5 and P6, respectively
 Design and Performance Analysis of Step Graded Dielectric Profile 79

acceptable range of less than 2 at the resonant frequency. The half power beam width
(HPBW) plot in Fig. 12 indicates that the designed antenna has HPBW of 29.5°.
The proposed step graded dielectric profile antenna design P3 can be effectively
employed for radiolocation (ECA36), radiolocation (military) and radio navigation
applications (15.6–16.6 GHz).

4 Experimental Verification

The prototype of various step graded dielectric profile antenna have been fabricated and
tested by deploying E5071C network analyzer and anechoic chamber. The top view
and bottom view of the various contrived antennas along with their dielectric constant
patterns is shown in the Fig. 13 below. Although the tested and simulated results show
reasonable agreement through the entire band but the little discrepancy has been
observed due to feed point radiations and reflection losses. The practical results of the
fabricated antenna designs have been shown in the Fig. 14.

(a) (b) (c)

(d) (e) (f)

Fig. 14. (a–f) Return loss plot of step graded dielectric profile fabricated antenna configuration
P1, P2, P3, P4, P5 and P6, respectively

5 Conclusion

In this work, a flexible step graded dielectric microstrip patch antenna has been
designed and simulated using CST microwave studio 2016. The stacking of three
textile materials namely fleece, felt and curtain cotton having dielectric constant of
1.04, 1.35 and 1.47 respectively have been used as substrate material. The aim was
targeted at observing the variations in the microstrip patch antenna characteristics
which are gain (dB), directivity (dBi), return loss (dB), half power beam width
80 K. Kaur et al.

(degrees), total efficiency (dB), side lobe level (dB) and impedance bandwidth
(MHz) by varying the stacked substrate layers of three different textile materials. The
six different configurations have been designed and analyzed by varying the position of
three stacked layers in the substrate. The performance analysis of six configurations
have been obtained by varying positions of felt, fleece and curtain cotton used as
substrate materials. It has been concluded that profile P3 is the best suited antenna
configuration due to effective return loss, high gain, directivity and HPBW. The pro-
posed antenna configurations have been designed for Military radiolocation applica-
tions and for radiolocation (ECA36) applications.

Acknowledgement. My deep gratitude goes to Assistant Professor Ekambir Sidhu, who

expertly guided me through the research work and his direction helped me to form the structure
of this research project. His unwavering enthusiasm for electronics steered our way throughout
and we thank him for the guidance and at the last but not the least my appreciation also extends to
our colleagues to keep a constant check on our progress.

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