IJEEE, Vol.

1, Issue 1 (Jan-Feb 2014)

e-ISSN: 1694-2310 | p-ISSN: 1694-2426

DESIGN OF A RECTANGULAR
PATCH ANTENNA
Amandeep Bath1, Abhishek Thakur2, Jitender Sharma3, Prof. Basudeo Prasad4
1,2,3,4

Electronics & Communication Department, IGCE, Punjab, India

[email protected], [email protected],[email protected]

Abstract- This paper presents the idea of recent

developments and advancements in the field of wireless
technology to realize high speed communications which
is performed in wideband technology .In this paper the
wideband patch antenna is designed and fabricated. A
patch antenna is a narrowband, wide beam antenna
which is fabricated by etching the antenna element
pattern in metal trace bonded to an insulating dielectric
substrate, such as a printed circuit board, in which a
continuous metal layer bonded to the opposite side of
the substrate and it produces a ground plane. The
simulation is done using ANSOFT HFSS simulation
software.
Index Terms- Ultra Wide Band (UWB); Wireless
Local Area Network (WLAN); Industrial, Scientific,
and Medical Band (ISMB).
I. INTRODUCTION
In radio telecommunications, among the antenna
designs there are many different categories of micro
strip antennas which are also known by the name printed
antennas) the most common of which is the micro strip
patch antenna or patch antenna. A patch antenna (also
known as a rectangular micro strip antenna) is a type of
radio antenna with a low profile, which can be
constructed on a flat surface. It consists of a flat
rectangular metallic sheet or "patch" of metal, mounted
over a larger metallic sheet called a ground plane. The
assembly is usually covered by a plastic radome, which
saves the antenna structure from damage. Patch
antennas are very simple to be fabricated and easy to be
modified and customized. They are the original type of
micro strip antennas which were given by Howell in the
year 1972 in which the two metal sheets together
produce resonance and form a resonant piece of micro
strip transmission line with a length which is around one
half wavelength of the radio waves. The radiation
process arises from discontinuities or irregularities at
each truncated edge of the micro strip transmission line.
The radiation produced at the edges causes the antenna
to act slightly bigger electrically than its actual physical
dimensions, so in order for the antenna to be a
resonanting piece of element, a length of micro strip
transmission line slightly lesser than one half a
wavelength at the frequency is taken. A dielectric
substrate is used for the construction of patch antenna,
using the same. The easiest and most simple patch
antenna uses a patch which is one half wavelength long,
created at a precise distance above a larger ground
plane, using an intermediary such as a spacer made of a
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dielectric material between them. Electrically large

ground planes produce very rugged and stable patterns
and lower environmental sensitivity but of course
increase the size of the antenna. It isnt uncommon for
the ground plane to be only slightly larger than the
active patch. When a ground plane is near to the size of
the radiator it can have the phenomenon of coupling and
produce currents along the edges of the ground plane
which also radiate. The antenna pattern is created as the
combination of the two sets of radiating metallic
elements. The current which flows is along the direction
of the feed wire, so the magnetic vector potential and
also the electric field follow the current. A simple and
easiest patch antenna of this category radiates a linearly
polarized wave. The radiation can be considered as
being produced by a number of the radiating slots at
top and bottom, or simultaneously as a result of the
current flowing on the patch and the ground plane.
Commonly made micro strip antenna shapes are square,
rectangular, circular and elliptical, but any continuous
shape is possible and can be created. Some patch
antennas do not use a dielectric substrate and instead are
made by using a metal patch mounted above a ground
plane using dielectric spacers; the resulting structure is
less rugged but the bandwidth is much wider. Now as
such antennas have a very low profile, are mechanically
rugged and can be shaped and designed to conform to
the curving skin of a vehicle, they are often mounted on
the exterior of aircraft and spacecraft, or are
incorporated and operated into electronic devices such
mobile radio communication equipments.[1-6]
Antenna's features such as frequency, radiation
pattern and polarization are reconfigured to achieve the
demands for agile radio applications. A lot of researches
focus on frequency reconfiguration as future
communication systems such as cognitive radio needs
an antenna that can do spectrum sensing and
communication. In designing of reconfigurable
frequency antennas, recently a reconfigurable wide-band
to agile narrowband frequencies, using a printed log
periodic dipole array antenna, was developed. A
wideband slotted antenna has been produced using
multifunctional reconfigurable frequency characteristics
for various applications such Wireless LAN, WIMAX,
Ultra wideband and UMTS has been proposed in a
frequency reconfigurable antenna, made up of two
structural elements ; one is an ultra-wide band (UWB)
and other is a frequency reconfigurable triangular
shaped antenna, is proposed for cognitive radio
applications

International Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engineering

1) Ultra-wide band antennas have already been used in

applications such as satellite communication, remote
sensing, ultra wide band radar technology and so on.
Currently, the wireless area network (WLAN) in the 2.4GHz (2.4-2.485 GHz) and 5-GHz (5.l5-5.875 GHz) bands is
the most renowned networks for accessing the internet and
also the antenna for an AP not only requires dual band
operation but also needs to have an appropriate radiation
profile in both bands, namely equal gain, wide beam width,
and high front-to-back ratio. Wireless communications is
enjoying exponential growth in Industrial, Scientific, and
Medical (ISM) band. The future generation wireless
networks require systems with broad band capabilities in
various environments to satisfy numerous applications as
smart grid, personal communications, home, car, and office
networking .On the other hand, many modern wireless
communication systems such as radar, navigation, satellite,
and mobile applications use the circular polarized (CP)
technology and radiation pattern. For the best UWB
performance, the transmitter and receiver (T/R) antennas
should have flat and high directive gain, narrow beam low
side and back lobes over the operational frequency band; to
achieve the largest dynamic range, best focused illumination
area, lowest T/R coupling, reduced ringing and uniformly
shaped impulse radiation.UWB has generally offers high
data rates at short distances with low power, primarily due to
high resolution bandwidth.[7-11]
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND CONFIGURATION
The geometry and configuration of the proposed antenna
is shown in the figure. Initially the design properties are
selected by adjusting the local variables such as the substrate
thickness, height, material, transparency and position as
well. As shown in the figure the proposed antenna consists
of a substrate on which a cylindrical coax of Teflon is
developed. The cylindrical coax pin is made up of the
material pec. Also the height and radius of the coax are
16.67mm and 0.283mm respectively. The feed pin is also
cylindrical with a radius of 0.083mm and the height of
62mil. Before covering the design with a radiation air box
the circular wave port on the substrate with a radius of
0.283mm is made. Finally the design is covered with a
vacuum air box before the simulation and analysis.

Fig. 1: Rectangular patch antenna

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Fig. 2: Air box over the antenna

The impedance bandwidth of a patch antenna is strongly

influenced by the spacing between the patch and the
ground plane. As the patch is moved closer to the
ground plane, less energy is radiated and more energy is
stored in the patch capacitance and inductance: that is,
the quality factor Q of the antenna increases.
A patch printed onto a dielectric board is often more
convenient to fabricate and is a bit smaller, but the
volume of the antenna is decreased, so the bandwidth
decreases because the Q increases, roughly in proportion
to the dielectric constant of the substrate. Patch antennas
utilized by industry often use ground planes which are
only modestly larger than the patch, which also alters
their performance.[12-13]
A. Rectangular patch
The most commonly designed micro strip antenna
is a rectangular patch. The rectangular patch antenna is
around a one half wavelength long strip of rectangular
micro strip transmission line. When air is taken as the
antenna substrate, the length of the rectangular micro
strip antenna is approximately one half of a free space
wavelength. Antenna is loaded with a dielectric
substrate. The length of the antenna reduces as the
relative dielectric constant of the substrate element
increases. The resonant length of the antenna is slightly
lesser because of the increased electric "fringing fields"
which increase the electrical length of the antenna
slightly. An old model of the micro strip antenna is a
section of micro strip transmission line with equivalent
loads on either end to represent the radiation loss.
B. Planar inverted F antenna
Another category of patch antenna is the Planar
Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) common in cellular phones
with built-in antennas. (The Planar Inverted-F antenna
(PIFA) is highly used in the mobile phone market. The
antenna is resonant at a quarter-wavelength (thus
decreasing the required space needed on the phone), and
also typically has good SAR properties. This antenna
resembles an inverted F, which explains the PIFA name.
The Planar Inverted-F Antenna is renowned because it
has a low profile and an Omni directional pattern. These
antennas are produced from a quarter wave half patch
antenna. The shorting plane of the half-patch is
decreased in length which decreases the frequency of
resonance. Often PIFA antennas have multiple branches
for resonating at the multiple cellular bands. On some
phones, grounded parasitic elements are applied to
improves the radiation bandwidth characteristics. [1416]
C. Advantages
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Micro strip antennas are comparatively inexpensive

to manufacture and fabricate because of the easy 2
dimensional physical construction and geometry. They
are usually employed at UHF and other higher
frequencies because the size of the antenna is directly
related to the wavelength at the frequency of resonance.
A single patch antenna gives a maximum directive gain
of around 6bB to 9dB. It is relatively easy to print an
array of patches on a single (large) substrate and
lithographic techniques are used for this. Patch arrays
can give much higher gains than a single patch at little
additional expense; matching and adjustment of phase
can be performed with printed micro strip feed
structures, again in the same operations that produces
the radiating patches. The capability to create high gain
arrays in a low-profile antenna is one reason that patch
arrays are commonly used on airplanes and in other
military applications. Such an array of patch antennas is
an easy way to design a phased array of antennas with
dynamic beam forming capability. An advantage
inherent to patch antennas is the skill to have
polarization diversity. Patch antennas can easily be
fabricated to have vertical, horizontal, right hand
circular (RHCP) or left hand circular (LHCP)
polarizations or different kinds of polarizations, using
multiple feed points, or a single feed point with
asymmetric patch structures. This unique feature enables
patch antennas to be used in many types of
communications links that may have varied
requirements.
III. PATCH ANTENNA DESIGN CONSIDERATION
Wideband antenna are designed and fabricated for
smart grid applications with a frequency bandwidth of
40% and gain of 3db to 4db . The antenna design and
simulation was carried out using ANSYS HFSS that is
the high frequency structure simulator software which is
the industry standard simulation tool for the simulation
of 3D full wave electromagnetic field. The most
commonly employed micro strip antenna is a
rectangular patch. The rectangular patch antenna is
around a one half wavelength long strip of rectangular
micro strip transmission line. When air is kept as the
antenna substrate, the length of the rectangular micro
strip antenna is approximately one half of a free space
wavelength. The length of the antenna reduces as the
antenna is loaded with a dielectric as its substrate as
well as the relative dielectric constant of the substrate
highly increases. The resonant length of the antenna is
slightly lesser because of the incerased electric "fringing
fields" which improve the electrical length of the
antenna a little. An old model of the micro strip antenna
is a strip of micro strip transmission line with equal
loads on either end to represent the radiation losses.

Fig. 3: Patch antenna design

It is possible to fabricate patch antennas that radiate

waves which are circularly polarized. One approach is to
excite a single square patch using two feeds, with one
feed with a phase difference of 90 with respect to the
other. This drives each transverse mode and with equal
amplitudes and the required 90 degrees out of phase.
Each mode radiates separately and combines to produce
circular polarization. This feed condition is often
available using a 90 degree hybrid coupler. When the
antenna is fed in this manner, the vertical current flow is
maximized and is high as the horizontal current flow
becomes zero, so the radiated electric field will be
vertical; one quarter cycle later, the situation will have
reversed and becomes opposite and the field will be
horizontal. The radiated field rotates in time, producing
a circularly polarized wave. An alternative is to use a
single feed but introducing some sort of asymmetric slot
or other feature on the patch, causing the current
distribution to be completely displaced. A square patch
which has been perturbed slowly to produce a
rectangular micro strip antenna can be driven along a
diagonal and create circular polarization. The aspect
ratio of this rectangle is chosen so each orthogonal mode
is both non resonant. At the driving point of the antenna
one mode is +45 degrees and the other -45 degrees and
it is required to produce the 90 degree phase shift for
circular polarization.[16-20].
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Now In this section the rectangular patch antenna is
designed and the numerical and experimental results
regarding the radiation characteristics are presented and
discussed. The simulated results are obtained by using
the Ansoft simulation software high frequency structure
simulator. The measured and simulated characteristics
of the antenna are shown from the far field report of the
rectangular plot, the 3D polar plot and radiation
characteristics.

Fig. 4: Return loss of antenna

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A diagrammatic radiation pattern for a linearlypolarized 900MHz patch antenna is presented below.
The figure shows a cross-section of a horizontal plane;
the pattern in the vertical plane resembles though it is
not exactly identical. The scale is logarithmic, so the
power radiated at 180 (90 to the left of the beam
center) is about 15 dB less than the power in the center
of the beam. The beam width is around 65 and the gain
is approximately 9dB. An infinitely-big ground plane
prevents any radiation which comes to the back of the
antenna (angles from 180 to 360), but the actual
antenna has a fairly short ground plane, and the power
which comes in the backwards direction is only around
20 dB down from that in comparison to the main beam.

Fig. 7:ff_2D_Gain total of antenna

Fig. 8: Return loss of antenna

As the length of the patch, half a wavelength, is

about the similar as the length of a resonating dipole, we
get about 2 dB of gain out of the directivity relative to
the vertical axis of the patch antenna. If the patch is
completely square, the pattern in the horizontal plane
will be directional, somewhat as if the patch were a pair
of dipoles which were separated by a half-wave; this
counts for about another2-3 dB. Finally, the addition of
the ground plane removes most or all radiation behind
the antenna, decreasing the power averaged over all
directions by a factor of around 2 (and thereby
increasing the gain by a factor of 3 dB). Summing this
all up, we get about 7-9 dB for a square element patch,
in good agreement with more recognized approaches

Fig. 5: Radiation pattern of antenna

Fig. 6: Input impedance of antenna

Unlike other antennas mentioned in literature to

date, the proposed antenna presents a good Omni
directional radiation pattern even at the very high
frequencies. The designed antenna has a very small size
and even the return loss is low and radiation pattern
characteristics are obtained in the frequency band which
is used. The simulated and experimental results gives
the idea how that the proposed antenna could be a good
candidate for UWB applications.

International Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Fig. 9: 3D polar plot of antenna

V. CONCLUSSION AND FUTURE WORK

With the rapid development of wireless
technology in recent years, various wireless systems
such as GSM, WCDMA/UMTS, Bluetooth, WLANs,
and GPS have been highly integrated into the mobile
equipments, and in order to fulfill the RF system
requirements using the different frequency band,
antenna technology is required to wideband
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characteristics .On the other hand, many modern

wireless communication systems such as radar,
navigation, satellite, and mobile applications use the
circular polarized (CP) radiation pattern. The attractive
features of the CP antenna are existed as follows.
Firstly, since the CP antennas transmit and receive in all
planes all around, it is strong for the reflection and
absorption of the radio signal. In the multi-path fading
channel environment, the CP antenna overcomes out of
phase problem which can create dead-spots, decreased
throughput, reduced overall system performance.
Further advancements could be done by using antenna
substrates with higher dielectric constants in order to
minimize the size a broad band wide beam circular
polarization micro strip antenna. The configuration of
the antenna is the simplest and easiest to be fabricated
as compared with conventional micro strip antenna, the
radiation beam is broadened a lot. Further research on
circularly polarized wideband micro strip antenna is
required as it gives the best performance and overall
improvement of antenna parameters.
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[5] F. Ghanem, P. S. Hall and J. R. Kelly, Two port
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[7] E. Ebrahimi, J. R. Kelly and P. S. Hall, A
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AUTHORS
First Author Amandeep Batth
M. Tech. in Electronics and
Communication
Engineering
from
Punjab
Technical
University, MBA in Human
Resource Management from
Punjab Technical University ,
Bachelor in Technology (BTech.)from Punjab Technical University . Six years of
work experience in teaching. Area of interest: Antenna
Design and Wireless Communication. International
Publication: 1, National Conferences and Publication: 4.
Working with Indo Global
College of Engineering
Abhipur, Mohali, P.B. since 2008.
Email address: [email protected]
Second
Author
Abhishek
Thakur: M. Tech. in Electronics
and Communication Engineering
from
Punjab
Technical
University, MBA in Information
Technology from Symbiosis
Pune,
M.H.
Bachelor
in
Electronics (B.E.) from Shivaji
University Kolhapur, M.H. Five
years of work experience in teaching and one year of
work experience in industry. Area of interest: Digital
Image and Speech Processing, Antenna Design and
Wireless Communication. International Publication: 7,
National Conferences and Publication: 6, Book
Published: 5 (Microprocessor and Assembly Language
Programming, Microprocessor and Microcontroller,
Digital Communication and Wireless Communication).
Working with Indo Global College of Engineering
Abhipur, Mohali, P.B. since 2011.
Email address: [email protected]
International Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Third Author Jitender Sharma: M. Tech. in

Electronics and Communication Engineering from
Mullana University, Ambala, Bachelor in Technology
(B-Tech.)from Punjab Technical University . Five years
of work experience in teaching. Area of interest:,
Antenna Design and Wireless Communication.
International Publication: 1 National Conferences and

International Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Publication:6 and Wireless Communication). Working

with Indo Global college since 2008
E-mail address:[email protected]

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