Circular microstri patch antennas on glass for vehicle a plications

L. Economou R.J.Langley

Indexing terms: Circular patch untennas, Autoniotive communication.r,

icrostiip auteimas

Abstract: The performance of circular patch antennas attached to a laminated automotive windscreen is described. Experimental work and results computed from a spectral domain analysis investigate the input impedance, radiation patterns, and the effect of surface wave propagation within the glass. The overall efficiencies of several combinations of substrates and superstrates are presented. Variations in the dimensions of the laminate are discussed as they have a significant effect on patch performance.

retical study of circular patch antennas attached to a laminated car windscreen. We examine the problems caused by surface wave excitation and due to the losses in the glass itself which is a poor microwave dielectric material. Measurements were made at frequencies of 26GHz covering the satellite telephone bands and up to the 5.8GHz band favoured for tolling applications in Europe. Circular microstrip patch antennas were studied, both discs and annular rings. In this paper, we concentrate on the performance of the fundamental TM1, mode. although several other modes have been studied.

Introduction
glass layer 1 DJrO 0 substrate patch

Most modern cars have little onboard communications equipment except a radio and in some cases a mobile telephone. However, this is set to change very rapidly as the car becomes part of a sophisticated electronic control system. Traffic information, route guidance systems based on GPS, emergency calls on GPS/GSM telephones, digital audio broadcasting, satellite telephones, automatic toll collection and many other telematics systems will become commonplace. Manufacturers are planning to incorporate at least some of these systems into the majority of cars within a few years. This will result in a multiplicity of antennas on vehicles which, for aesthetic and security reasons, it will be necessary to hide from view as far as possible. One area of the car that may be used is the front or rear screen. For microwave systems, microstrip patch antennas are attractive since they are conformal and cheap to produce. Little has been published about the performance of such antennas printed on glass. Lowes et al. [l] have reported on rectangular patch antennas with a laminated glass superstrate, where surface waves introduced significant ripples into the radiation patterns. We have previously reported [2] on the input impedance of ring patch antennas with glass superstrates including the fundamental TM,, mode and the higher order TM,, mode. Phang and Hall [3] have reported on a largely experimental study of glass-based rectangular patches and slots using flat laminates. In this paper, we present an experimental and theo0IEE, 1998
IEE Proceedi71gs online no. 19982250 Paper first received 30th October 1997 and in revised form 12th June 1998 The authors are with the Electronic Engineering Laboratory, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NT, UK
416

groundplane a

I
I

TI
\patch
b

I glass layer
plastlc layer glass groundplane

EM coupled

feed line

a coaxial probe fed patch with glass superstrate

U

Fig. 1 Geometry of circular patch antennas on wind.ween

= patch innei- radius, b = outer radius b electromagnetically coupled patch within laminated glass

Two approaches can be used to manufacture the antennas. The complete antenna may be made on conventional dielectrics and the assembly attached to the windscreen with adhesive. In this study, these antennas were printed on RT Duroid (relative permittivity = 2.33, thickness = 0.7874") on a circular ground plane, 12cm in diameter. The patches were placed in the centre of the screen, 5cm from the top, where the rear view mirror might be attached. This method of fixing allows the antenna to be removed and repositioned onto a new windscreen, should a breakage occur. Fig. l a shows this geometry. The alternative (Fig. 16) is to print the entire antenna within the laminated windscreen, fed by an electromagnetically coupled
IEE Proc.-Micr.on, Antennus Propug., Vol. 145, No 5, October 1998

microstrip feed line. This restricts the antenna design, due to the fixed thickness and electrical properties of the windscreen, and increases the replacement cost if a breakage occurs. This investigation concentrates on the first method, due to the difficulties in manufacturing patches within a commercial windscreen. Nevertheless, the second method was simulated and some results are presented. The feed can be either a coaxial connector or an electromagnetically coupled microstrip line; the overall performance of the antenna is similar for either feed technique. The electrical properties of the glass layers are E,., = 6.75, tan 6 = 0.03 nominally 2.5"~ thick, 0.05 and for the plastic laminate E , . ~ = 2.9, tan 6 nominally 0.7" thick. A Triplex XXX (model F10773) Ford Escort front windscreen was used in all measurements. The dimensions of the screen are nominal as they vary considerably in practice, and the effect of tolerances is discussed in Section 3.3. Note that, in our experimental work, with patches adhered to glass, a full size car windscreen was used, We briefly describe a CAD model developed for the study, based on the spectral domain approach [4-61. We also discusse the performance of circular patches attached to the windscreen with a thin adhesive layer. In practice, these antennas are likely to be manufactured as active modules that may sit slightly adrift of the glass (about lmm) to reduce the effects of rain, ice and snow. This has no effect on the radiation patterns, but if the spacing from the glass is increased, a degradation of the radiation pattcrns occurs. The change in resonant frequency and input impedance are reported, together with a discussion on the bandwidth implications. Losses due to the poor performance of the glass at microwave frequencies and the contribution of surface waves are important considerations. Measurements of radiation patterns illustrate the loss in gain and radiation of surface waves.
2
Model spectral domain analysis

Patches attached onto windscreen

3. I

Resonant frequency and bandwidth

Fig. 2 plots the measured and calculated input impedances for a TM,, mode circular disc patch, 40" in diameter, when attached to laminated glass. This was a sample section of flat float glass, 60cm square with high tolerances on dimensions. The windscreen was not presented at this point due to the known dimensional tolerance problems (discussed below). The aim here was to gain confidence in the modelling software. A glue layer 0.2" thick was assumed, with E, = 2.5. The disc resonated at 2.79GHz without a cover, but when attached to the glass it falls to 2.63GHz. The calculated values for the input impedance were in very good agreement with the measurements; the resonant frequency was in error by about 1% in both cases. The real and imaginary values of the input impedance were also accurately predicted. Many other calculations and measurements gave similarly good agreement, giving confidence in the model. The feed position at 5mm from the centre of the ring was not optimised for the glass cover and consequently the real part of the input impedance was only 20Q.

30

r-----l
I

A spectral domain method of moments analysis was used to model the antennas. The basic method is well known and is not repeated here. The multi-layer configurations were handled by extending the analysis, based on the method used by Fan and Lee [5, 61. The method was formulated in the Hankel domain and was applied to disc and annular ring patches. The Greens functions were derived for each layer, relating the tangential electric field components on each dielectric and the electric surface currents on the patches; a matrix formulation allowed the multi-layer configuration to be modelled. Galerkin's method was used to solve the unknown currents and the resonant frequencies. The following microstrip antenna configurations can be handled by the model: multi-layered substrates and superstrates simultaneously, dielectric losses, conductor losses, stacked and concentric patch configurations., efficiency and the contribution of surface waves. Some comparisons with experiments are presented below. However due to the difficulties of fabricating patches in the glass, much of the initial design work relied heavily on using the model. The software was tested extensively for various patch/dielectric combinations, including multi-layer substrates and superstrates, to prove its accuracy and provide confidence in the CAD model.
I E E Proc.-Micro~vAntcnnii, Propug, Vol. 145, No. 5, Ocrohrr 1098

-101

"

"

"

'

'
2850

2350

2450
m m

2550

2650

2750

frequency, MHz

edunte R + JXfor ciitular patch 40mm in dianwtei attuclmed to 6nimf;oat glary lunzinute

Fig.2 Input

~- l a t e d - mcd5ured ~dl~u

Patches were then mounted onto the windscreen with thin adhesive. Fig. 3 shows the measured input impedances for a 16" diameter disc before, and after, it was attached to the glass laminate; computed values were in close agreement. The patch was fed 6mm from the centre. The bandwidth for the patch alone was initially 1.87'0, and this increased to 6.8% when attached to the glass; the input impedance fell from 58Q to 47Q respectively. This is a useful improvement in bandwidth, particularly a, communication systems often need bandwldths exceeding 5%. This increase in bandwidth has been reported previously [1-3] and is due to the thick high dielectric constant cover, rather than losses in the glass.
417

60 I
50 -

6400 frequency, MHz

6800

-20

-30

Measured input ivipedunce of circulur patch antennu 1 6 n m in diameter (a) with and (hi without glass superstrate attached

Fig.3

is increased back radiation. No significant differences were noted for the patch spaced lmm from the glass. Figs. 5 and 6 show that spacing the antenna 5 and 10 mm, respectively, behind the screen produced far more ripples in the patterns due to direct reflection from the screen. Both principal planes are plotted. The back radiation increases accordingly. There are fewer ripples and back radiation for the H plane patterns. Reducing back radiation into the vehicle is important, both to avoid EMC problems and to allay public concern over human radiation absorption; hence, it is better to attach the antenna either directly to the glass, or within 1 mm of the surface. Further work has been carried out on higher order modes, and these produce similar radiation pattern changes. Cross-polarisation patterns have not been presented, but are typically 10-15dB below the copolar patterns and are acceptable for current applications.
goo

3.2 Radiation patterns

Attaching the patches to an electrically thick superstrate is expected to increase surface wave propagation and radiation. The most obvious effects of this are likely to appear as deep ripples in the radiation patterns. A study has been made at 3.8 and 5.8GHz to examine the patterns for the antennas attached to a full windscreen. In practice, there was little difference between the results at each frequency. Therefore, we concentrate on the radiation patterns at the higher frequency.
goo

-10.

60'

270 Fi . 5 Measured radiation patterns oj 16mm disk antenna patch " 5 he2ncl g / a s
~

H-plane (0") -

E-plane (90")

2 4 0 ' 1

1 3 0 0 '

H-plane ~- no glass,

Fig.4

270' Measured radiation patierns of16 innz disk antenna

~ ~ ~

attached directly to glass

Radiation patterns measured in an anechoic chamber are plotted in Figs. 4-6 for three positions of the patch with respect to the glass. In Fig. 4a the patch is directly in contact with the glass. For clarity, the reference radiation patterns for the patch alone are also shown for comparison, in the 0" plane only. Most of the ripples appearing in Figs. 4-6 were due to the finite ground plane, 12cm in diameter. The loss measured through the windscreen was typically 2dB, whereas Lowes et al. [I] have measured 3.2dB. The amplitude ripple on the windscreen patterns was of the order of 2dB over the main forward lobe, but entirely acceptable otherwise with no significant distortions. Some broadening of the pattern is seen compared to the patch alone, and there
418

270'

be2nd glass __ H-plane (0") - - E-plane (90")

~

Fi . 6

Meusured rudiation patterns of 16mm

disk antenna patch I O m m

3.3

Tolerances

Automotive glass is designed to be low cost, rather than manufactured to the high dimensional tolerances required for electrical design considerations. Optically, changes in the thickness of the constituent layers of up
IEE Proc -Microw Anlennas Propag , Vol. 145, No. 5, October 1998

to 15% are not apparent to the driver, but they may have a crucial effect on the performance of patch antennas at microwave frequencies. In addition, the chemical composition, and hence dielectric properties, of glass vary from batch to batch and country to country due to the local silica available. We have attempted to investigate the effect of material and dimensional variations in the glass superstrate on the performance of patch antennas. A circular patch was used as the reference antenna: 1 " 6 in diameter, printed on Duroid, with a permittivity of 2.33 and height 0.787mm. The resonant frequency is a key item of interest, but bandwidth and input resistance are also important. Table 1 summarises the effects of changing glass dimensions and material properties on the resonant frequency j;., input resistance R,, and bandwidth. Tolerances of under 10% in material properties but 25% (0.5") in thickness have been assumed. Case 1 was taken as the reference. Changing the permittivities of the glass layers (antennas 1-3) by +/- 7.5% changes the resonant frequency by lSOMHz, which is about 3%. Corresponding variations in bandwidth and ,U, are 30MHz and 9Q, respectively. For Case 4, the lpermittivity of the plastic laminated layer was reduced by 1796, which had a negligible effect on the frequency characteristics. Antenna 5 reduced the outer glass layer The resonant frequency height from 2.5 to 2.0". remained the same but the bandwidth increased by 2SMHz and the input resistance by 7Q. In Case 6, the inner glass layer height was also reduced to 2.01nm (as was the outer layer) and compared with values for Cases 1 and 5 ; even though the resonant frequency decreased the band by only 30MHz, R, increased significantly to 65Q, thus reducing the bandwidth to 335MHz. On the other hand, increasing the gla:;s layer thickness to 3.0" (Case 7) results in the same resonant frequency as for the 2.0" glass, but much less change in either the input resistance or bandwidth (7 Q and IOMHz, respectively). These results suggest that the inner glass dimensions and permittivity have the greatest impact on the antenna frequency characteristics, which is to be expected, and that increasing the inner glass layer thickness beyond about 2.5" has no significant effect on the patch performance. The plastic laminate layer has little effect on performance in this context. Finally, a more random variation in the parameters was calculated in Case 8. The resonant frequency dropped by 6SMHz and R, by 7Q compared to the reference.

Summarising the above study, the overall variation in resonant frequency is 150MHr around 5.33GHz (about 3%), with the bandwidth varying overall by 1.7%. This, is significant and comparable with the narrow bandwidth characteristics of the patch antenna. It would be even more significant taken with the possible difficulty of maintaining high tolerances when screen printing the conducting patches within the glass.
4

Efficiency

Table 2 summarises the efficiencies computed for the patches attached to a vehicle windscreen. Measurements in Section 3 confirm the efficiency calculated here of about 68%. Owing to difficulty in producing patches within the screen for measurements, a second set of results calculated for a patch situated within the laminate (Fig. lb) is shown for comparison. Note that for the D uroid-based antenna the glass-covering layer was the full laminated screen, whereas for the glassbased patch the cover was the thin (2.5") upper layer of thLe glass laminate.
Table 2:Efficiencies computed for patches attached t o a vehicle windscreen
Efficiency (%) Substrate Duroid Automotive glass no cover 91 54 glass cover 69 60 !glass cover, iio loss surface wave loss
('0)

'79
'72

12 20

For the patches attached to the screen, the efficiency was only 69Y0 compared with over 90% for the patch alone. The losses in the glass reduced the efficiency by lo%, with surface waves due to Ihe glass contributing another 12% reduction according to the model. Consequently, riipples on the radiation patterns would not be expected to be very significant, confirming the relatively low ripples measured in the copolar radiation patterns of Fig. 4. From the simulations, printing the glass on a glass substrate 2.5" thick reduces the efficiency to 54'%; this appeared to be due to trapped waves in the glass substrate. Matters improved on incorporating the patch into the full screen laminate (Fig. 16); efficiencies of 72% were predicted, very close to the Duroid-based patch glued to the screen. Surface wave excilation was increased to 20%.

Table 1: Resonant frequency for windscreen tolerances

Case Glass layer 1
Er1

Plastic layer
Er

Glass layeir 2
Er2

Dimensions ( m m )

Bandwidth

fr

Bin

hl
2.5 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.0 3.0 2.8

h2

MHz
-

MHz 5335 5420 5270 5355 5335 5365 5315 5270

Q 45

1 2 3 4
5

6.75 6.25 7.15 6.75 6.75 6.75 6.75 7.0

2.9 2.9 2.9 2.4 2.9 2.9 2.9 2.7

6.75 6.25 7.15 6.75 6.75 6.75 6.75 6.25

0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.5

2.5 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.0 2.0 3.0 2.4

400 41 5 385 415 425 335 390 385

50 41 45 52 65 38 38
419

6 7 8

IEE Pr.oc.-Microw Antennas Propag , Vol 145, No. 5, October. 1998

Conclusions

Microstrip antennas attached to laminated glass automotive windscreens have received little attention. In this paper, we have shown that a model based on the spectral domain method of moments analysis gives good agreement with experimental results for input impedance, and provides an insight into surface wave excitation within the glass up to 6GHz. Circular patches printed on RT Duroid were used, with glasslaminated superstrates which excited surface waves of between 10%1and 2034 of the input power. This resulted in ripples of about 2dB in the radiation patterns, but these did not significantly reduce the efficiency or usefulness of the patches. An increase in back radiation into the car was also noted. Losses in the glass, which is a poor microwave dielectric, were typically lo% for a structure 6mm thick. Overall efficiencies were nearly 70% Antennas printed within the laminate were modelled, and lower efficiencies than those attached to the glass were found, with increased surface wave radiation and material losses. The glass improved the bandwidth of the patches significantly, from under 2% to about 7%1, due to the thick high-permittivity glass superstrate. However, variations in the dimensions of the glass in production are significant, up to 15%. The effect of such dimensional tolerances was to change the resonant frequency by about 3%,, and the bandwidth also varied

by about 1.790. Screen printing patches and microwave circuits within the glass laminate will introduce even more uncertainty into the resonant frequency and bandwidth. Overall, this could be a significant problem for microstrip antennas on automotive glass where communication bands demand bandwidths of 5% and above.
6
Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Onassis Foundation in Greece.

References
LOWES, P., DAY, S.R., KOROKIEWICZ, E., and SAMBELL. A.: Performance of microstrip patch antenna with electrically thick laminated glass superstrate, Electron. Lett., 1994, 30, (23), pp. 1903-1905 ECONOMOU, L., and LANGLEY, R.J.: Performance of patch antenas with glass superstrates, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 1996, 11, (l), pp. 8-10 PHANG. Y.H.. aiid HALL. P.S.: Vehicle oatch and slot antennas for 5.8 GHa communication systems. ?CAP97 Conf., 1997, IEE Conf. Publ., Vol. 436, pp. 1.370-373 LEE, J.-H. , and RA, J.-W::^ Full wave calculation of the radiation impedance of microstrip excited magnatic surface waves, Microw. Opt Technol. Lett., 1993, 6 , (7), pp. 441-443 FAN, Z . , and LEE, K.-F.: Input impedance of annular-ring microstrip antennas with a dielectric cover, IEEE Truns., 1992, AP-40, (8), pp. 992-994 FAN, Z., and LEE, K.-F.: Analysis of electromagnetically coupled patch antennas, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 1993, 6 , (7), pp. 436-440

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