DESIGN OF COMPACT MEANDER LINE ANTENNA FOR

ORTHOPAEDIC IMAGING

A MINOR REPORT

Submitted by

JANGAM VIJAYA MAHESH

LATTUPALLY SAI LAXMI

NANDANAVANAM BHANU PRAKASH

Under the Guidance of

Dr.HARIKRISHNA PAIK

in partial fulfillment for the award of the degree

of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

in

ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

OCTOBER 2022
 BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

Certified that this Minor Project report entitled ”DESIGN OF COMPACT MEAN-
DER LINE ANTENNA FOR ORTHOPAEDIC IMAGING” is the bonafide work of JANGAM
VIJAYA MAHESH(Reg. No. 19UEEC0194),LATTUPALLY SAI LAXMI(Reg. No.
19UEEC0288),NANDANAVANAM BHANU PRAKASH(Reg. No. 19UEEC0379) who
carried out this work under my Supervision.

SUPERVISOR HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT

Dr.HARIKRISHNA PAIK Dr.P.ESTHER RANI

Associate Professor Professor
Department of ECE Department of ECE

Submitted for Evaluation of Minor Project held on:−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−−

INTERNAL EXAMINER EXTERNAL EXAMINER

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We express our deepest gratitude to our respected Founder President and Chancellor COL. Prof.
VEL. Dr. R. Rangarajan, Foundress President Dr. Sagunthala Rangarajan, Chairperson
Managing Trustee and Vice President for their immense support in all our endeavors.

We would like to express our gratitude to our Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. S. Salivahanan for his
kind cooperation and encouragement.

We obligated to our beloved Registrar Dr. E. Kannan for providing immense support in all our
endeavours. We thankful to our esteemed Dean Academics Dr. M. J. Carmel Mary Belinda for
providing a wonderful environment to complete our work successfully.

We are extremely thankful and pay our gratitude to our Dean Dr. V. Jayasankar for his valuable
guidance and support on completion of this Minor Project.

It is a great pleasure for us to acknowledge the assistance and contributions of our Head of the De-
partment Dr. P. Esther Rani, Professor for her useful suggestions, which helped us in completing.
the work in time and we thank her for being instrumental in the completion of fourth year(7th sem)
with her encouragement and unwavering support during the entire course.

We extremely thankful and pay our gratitude to our Supervisor Dr.HARIKRISHNA PAIK , As-
sociate Professor for his valuable guidance and support on completion of this Minor Project.

JANGAM VIJAYA MAHESH

LATTUPALLY SAI LAXMI

NANDANAVANAM BHANU PRAKASH

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT vi

LIST OF FIGURES vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix

1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 ROLE OF ANTENNA IN MEDICAL FIELD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Wireless Capsule Endoscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 Microwave Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 ANTENNA FOR MEDICAL IMAGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.1 Quantitative Imaging Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.3 MEANDER LINE ANTENNA FOR MEDICAL IMAGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3.1 Flexible Meander-Line Antenna Array for Electromagnetic Head Imaging . . . 13
1.3.2 MICS/ISM Meander-Line Antenna Encapsulated in Oblong-Shaped Pod for
Gastrointestinal Tract Diagnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4 ADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS OF MEANDER LINE ANTENNA . . . . . . 17
1.4.1 An Effective SAR Reduction with Compact Meander Line Antenna . . . . . . 17
1.4.2 In-Depth study of Dielectric Properties of Tissues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.4.3 Convenient Imaging Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.5 MOTIVATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2 LITERATURE SURVEY 23
2.1 OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.2 OVERVIEW ON THE USAGE OF ANTENNAS IN MICROWAVE IMAGING . . . . 24
2.2.1 Miniaturized Multiband Microstrip Antenna for Medical Imaging . . . . . . . 24
2.2.2 Microwave wideband PIFA antenna for brain tumor imaging applications . . . 25
2.2.3 Compact Meander Line Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3 INTRODUCTION TO HFSS 30
3.1 MATHEMATICAL METHOD IN HFSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

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 3.2 BOUNDARIES AND EXCITATIONS IN HFSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3 DRIVEN SOLUTION SETUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.1 Frequency Sweeps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.4 HFSS POST-PROCESSING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.4.1 Plotting S-parameter results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.4.2 Plotting Antenna Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.4.3 Plotting Field Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

4 DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 36

5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 39

6 CONCLUSION 45

REFERENCES 45

v
 ABSTRACT

A wide variety of antennas with different geometry operating over wide frequency range
have been used for medical imaging applications. In this minor project, a meander line antenna im-
plementing rectangular loop structure operating in between 1.15-1.20 GHz is designed. The antenna
is designed on an FR4 substrate with an overall size of 60mm*90mm*1.6mm using HFSS simulation
software. The simulation results show that the proposed antenna resonates at 1.18 GHz and has a
bandwidth of 200 MHz. The radiation characteristics shows that the antenna has endfire behaviour
in E-plane and isotropic in H-plane.

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Capsule placement in the Human Body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Internal structure of the capsule. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Basic setup for Microwave Imaging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Components of Microwave Imaging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 Microwave Imaging setup for Head. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.6 The field scattering effect during microwave imaging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7 Setup used in Radar-based Imaging. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.8 Geometry of antenna. (a) Front view, (b) 3D view, and (c) simulation setup on head
model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.9 MICS/ISM meander-line microstrip antenna encapsulated in an oblong-shaped pod,
together with the base station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.10 : (a)percentage change in the relative permittivity(b)percentage change in the conduc-
tivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.11 Microwave Imaging Using Antennas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.1 Damage to DNA by ionizing radiation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2.2 Miniaturized Multiband Microstrip Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.3 PIFA Antenna for Head Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4 Compact Meander Line Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5 Shape of Meander Line Antenna (MLA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.6 Equivalent Model of meander line sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.7 Electric Current Magnitude Plot for the MLA. Drawing on the left is the current on the
upper traces. Drawing on the right is of the current on the ground plane. One can see
that the large magnitude of the currents on the vertical sections of the meander line.
These are essentially the only sources of radiation when the ground plane is enlarged . 29

3.1 Ansys Electronic Suite work environment window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3.2 HFSS Boundary Assignment and HFSS Excitation Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3 HFSS Frequency Sweep Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.4 Creation of S parameter plots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.5 Far field Radiation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

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3.6 Creation of Far field Radiation Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

4.1 Schematic view of Initial Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

4.2 Schematic view after implementing Meander line loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3 Schematic view of proposed Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.4 Optimized Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

5.1 S11 plot for Design 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

5.2 S11 plot for Design 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.3 S11 plot for Proposed Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.4 Parametric analysis effect of W1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.5 Effect of L1 feed length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.6 Effect of W2 Meander Line Patch Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.7 Effect of L2 Meander line Limb Thickness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.8 Effect of L3 Meander line Limb Thickness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
5.9 Radiation pattern E-Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.10 Radiation pattern H-Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
5.11 Surface Current Distribution at 1.18 GHz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

viii
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

MIST Microwave Imaging in Space-Time

MUSIC Mutiple Signal Classification
CT Computerized Tomography
MRI Magnetic Resonance Imaging
US Ultra Sound
UWB Ultra WideBand

ix
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 ROLE OF ANTENNA IN MEDICAL FIELD

An interesting and very purposeful use of antenna is in medical science. A few such applica-
tion is Wireless Capsule Endoscopy (WCE) system to capture the images of the human digestive tract
and also Microwave Imaging (MWI) used in breast cancer screening and head hemorrhage detection.
Antenna is the key element of the microwave imaging system that radiates and receives signals to or
from nearby scattered objects. Many medical antennas have been designed and realized over the years.
Some are patented, some are successful while others have never had the spread that was intended.
Antenna technology for imaging applications is a major research field.

1.1.1 Wireless Capsule Endoscopy

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a non-invasive diagnosis method that allows record-
ing a video as the capsule travels through the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The practical drawback is
producing a long clinical video in which the review process by an experienced specialist is tedious.
Automated summarisation methods can reduce the evaluation time by experts as well as errors in
manual interpretation. The approach consists of three main steps as follows: First, an adaptive slid-
ing window singular value decomposition is employed to extract representative video frames. Then,
adaptive contrast diffusion is utilised to increase the visibility of WCE frames. At the end stage, a
novel knowledge-based method is developed to segment video frames into four topographic zones of
GI tract, which are oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. The authors have eval-
uated the proposed framework in the presence of 30 local datasets as well as publicly available KID
database. The average recall and precision were estimated by 0.86 and 0.83, and by 0.82 and 0.83 for
KID database, respectively. Their results reveal that significant reduction in the review time is feasible
using the proposed technique. Quantitative results of summarisation show that the proposed method
is more effective than three methods in the literature. It is generally used to record images of the diges-
tive tract for medical applications. The main purpose for this method is to examine the area of small
intestine which are not very well explored by the traditional types of endoscopy, like colonoscopy and

1
esophago gastroduodenoscopy. These traditional techniques are painful and quite time consuming,
while WCE is non-invasive and painless. Here a small capsule is need to be swallowed by the patient
consisting a tiny camera onto the capsule. This camera moves along the intestinal tract and takes
images, which are then transmitted to the receiver unit out of the patient’s body.The Antenna used
in capsule transmitter and on-body receiver are important components in WCE. Embedded antennas
are put in the capsule cavity. While the other components are placed in the interior cavity of the
capsule. The range of frequency between 400 to 600 MHz do the minimum harm to human tissue,
while serving our purpose of endoscopy. For the capsule antenna to be insensitive to the human tissue
magnetic antennas are preferred over electric antennas.

Figure 1.1: Capsule placement in the Human Body.

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a rapidly advancing area of non-invasive imaging specifically
designed for gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This technology can reach small intestine of GI tract and
reduce the level of patients’ discomfort. During the WCE procedure, a large video data is obtained,
however, a limited amount of this data is useful for diagnosis. Medical specialist annotates each exam
and labels important video frames which are added to the patient case report. In other words, video
datasets are redundant, thus unstructured data streams should be processed to obtain valuable in-
formation. The process of removing redundant frames is called summarisation or frame reduction.
Summarisation tools will allow the clinicians to quickly get an idea of the overall content and to search
for possible diseases.Several methods for processing of videos from capsule endoscopy procedure have
been proposed. These methods involve transformation of video to remove redundant and noisy frames
or automatic detection of lesions. Tsevas et al. proposed a method based on non-negative matrix

2
factorisation to reduce the number of frames. Their results were promising in a controlled dataset con-
sisting of a single video sequence.A video summarisation-based tele-endoscopy service was proposed
to estimate key frames from the perspective of gastroenterologists. The authors introduced a method
based on the fusion of image moments, curvature and multi-scale contrast to calculate the saliency
map of each frame. Iakovidis et al. presented an unsupervised mining-based video summarisation
method and achieved the reduction rate of 85 percent in maximum screening time. However, they
did not consider spatial property of video data as well as different views of an abnormal or distinct
object in different regions may be neglected. Zhao et al. presented a framework based on statistical
methods using hidden Markov models (HMMs) . Handcrafted features were extracted and encoded
as the observations for the HMM model. This approach summarised the WCE video into multiple
classes including poly and.The results were promising; however, the method is heavily dependent on
the quality of frames.Chen et al. proposed an adaptive approach for frame reduction by considering
temporal correlation and feature similarity between adjacent frames. Temporally correlated images
with certain similarity were grouped into the same clip and K-means clustering algorithm was adopted
to consider gradient varying characteristic in one clip. In a capsule video summarisation framework
using sparse coding and dictionary learning in feature space was proposed. Video frames were clus-
tered into super frames based on power spectral density, and cluster representative frames were used
for video summarisation. The approach was utilised to discriminate between informative and non-
informative frames in a WCE sequence. To select the most representative frames from endoscopy video
sequence, Wang et al.formulated the problem of video summarisation as a dictionary selection issue.
Their model was adopted to high definition videos and presented the similar-inhibition constraint to
reinforce the diversity of selected key frames via the attention cost. In efficient domain-specific visual
attention-driven framework was proposed for summarising endoscopy videos. Multi-scale contrast,
texture,curvature and motion-based saliency features of each frame were fused by a linear weighted
fusion scheme to acquire a final saliency map. Another framework based on decomposing each frame
into saliency maps was introduced in. The accumulated responses from each map provided a three-
dimensional (3D) time series of saliency variation as a multivariate auto regressive process with hidden
Markov states. A representative key frame was extracted from each state based on the highest state-
conditional probability of the corresponding saliency vector. Al-Shebani et al. proposed a frame
reduction system based on various colour models using Bayer images for colour texture and a modi-
fied local binary pattern for structural information. This approach reduced reviewing time by omitting
the images with high similarity of information.Designing an algorithm for automated annotation and
summarisation of WCE is a challenging task due to several reasons. First, in WCE, two-dimensional
(2D) projections of 3D space are provided and video frames produced by capsule endoscopy suffer
from uneven illumination, low resolution, high compression ratio and variable focal sharpness. In fact,
automated annotation algorithm has to deal with a large number of variations.Secondly, non-lesion
frames can depict misleading structures such as bubbles, intestinal juices etc. An effective computer-
aided diagnosis procedure can reduce the workload of expert diagnosis;this is the main motivation of

3
this paper.According to gastroenterologists, designing an integrated system for automatic detection
and visualisation of representative video frames is clinically very important. To the best of our knowl-
edge, there is no existing automatic system that can sufficiently address this problem. This is the
main clinical impact of this research. For this purpose, engineering and mathematical integrations
are essential.Owing to the capability of adaptive singular value decomposition, we have developed
an effective framework for summarisation and visualisation of WCE videos. To this aim, the feature
matrix is factorised using sliding window singular value decomposition. By estimating the rank of
feature matrix and eliminating the singular values that exceed a predefined threshold,only key frames
are selected. In the next step, adaptive contrast diffusion filtering is employed to enhance the visibility
of the frames. This task is demanding due to low contrast and complicated environment in GI tract.
In the last stage, an automatic method is developed to segment frames into four topographic zones
of GI tract, i.e. oesophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine. This procedure will help
clinicians to easily browse and navigate the required segment.Furthermore, the expressiveness of the
summarised video is boosted. The rest is organised as follows. In Section 2, we first describe algorithm
for video summarisation in capsule endoscopy.Afterwards, we briefly introduce the methods utilised
for contrast enhancement and segmenting frames into four topographic zones. Antenna is looped

Figure 1.2: Internal structure of the capsule.

patterned on 100 micro meter thick flexible substrate, which allows bending and wrapping around
the capsule. Copper of 19micro meter thickness is used as a conductor material on substrate. The
antenna does not have a ground plane in order to avoid strong mirror current, which reduces antenna
efficiency. It is quite impossible to control the orientation of the capsule during endoscopy, so the
orientation is taken to be random. The result that the capsule orientation does not have a significant
impact on antenna’s transmission.

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1.1.2 Microwave Imaging

Microwave imaging is mainly used in medical imaging which is used to visualize the interior
of the body of both healthy and diseased subjects through a non invasive method. Generally imaging
of the body is done for clinical analysis and detection of any abnormality. The most common examples
of medical imaging are imaging done in different phases of cancer management, imaging for detecting
bone fracture, and identifying tumors. Depending upon the application, clinical data for imaging
can be obtained through a variety of techniques like xrays, magnetic resonance imaging, computed
tomography, ultrasound, and positron emission tomography. These techniques provide images with
different resolutions. Some of the techniques like MRI are costly due to the high maintenance and
implementation cost of the equipment where a 50,000 times of the magnetic field is generated. So
most of the equipment is large in size and is not portable which cannot be used for regular monitoring
purposes. Some of the techniques use ionizing radiations that may damage the healthy tissues. For
example, MRI can provide images with high resolution which can be used for various applications
such as brain imaging for tumor detection. But the problem with this MRI is the equipment which is
costly and has high maintenance costs. Similarly, CT produces images with a good spatial resolution,
but uses x-rays which are highly ionized and capable of ionizing and effecting the molecular bonding
of healthy tissues, posing a possible health risk. So it cannot be used reliably for imaging. Positron
emission tomography is said to provide more information when it comes to tissue imaging or providing
functional information, but it suffers from poor spatial resolution.

Microwave Imaging is an imaging technique using non ionizing electromagnetic (EM) signals
in the frequency range of hundreds of megahertz to a few gigahertz. It is emerging as an alternative
imaging technique to the aforementioned medical imaging techniques due to several advantages. As
it uses non-ionizing, low power EM signals, it is a low health-risk method. Moreover, the microwave
imaging equipment consists of a microwave source, a receiver, an antenna-array for transmitting the
signals, and a radio frequency switch to switch between different antenna elements in the antenna-
array.

Microwave imaging equipment which costs very less a fraction of the cost of the equipment
for other diagnostic methods, making microwave imaging a cost effective technique. Moreover, the
equipment is portable and can fit inside an ambulance for fast diagnosis of life-threatening conditions,
like stroke while a patient is still on the way to the hospital.However, there are some disadvantages
and challenges for medical microwave imaging. The biggest disadvantage is that the images obtained
from microwave imaging are low spatial resolution images. Over the years, medical microwave imaging
has advanced significantly with the development of robust imaging algorithms and simple, but fast
data acquisition hardware supported by the advancements made in microelectronics, material science,
and embedded systems. To this end, proof of concept of medical microwave imaging for various
applications has been reported in the literature. Imaging for various pathological conditions that have

5
been investigated are brain imaging for strokes, cerebral edema, breast cancer, bone imaging, heart
imaging , and joint tissues. The physical basis of medical microwave imaging is the tissue-dependent
dielectric contrast that is used to reconstruct signals and images using radar-based or tomographic
imaging algorithms. Different tissues have different dielectric properties that are characterized by
relative permittivity and conductivity. Moreover, tissue of the same kind, if tumorous, will have
different dielectric properties. Due to this difference, the interaction of the EM signals will be different
for different tissues. It can be exploited by different reconstruction algorithms to construct a map or an
image, either in D or D, that shows different tissue dielectric properties or the location of a tumor inside
the body. Further, the reconstruction algorithms can be categorized into quantitative and qualitative
imaging algorithms. A map or the image of the distribution of the various tissues with the values of
dielectric properties in the body can be generated by quantitative imaging algorithms. Quantitative
algorithms are usually based on the inverse EM scattering problem. On the other hand, qualitative
imaging algorithms use radar-like techniques for image generation to differentiate the tumorous tissues
from the normal tissues. Tumorous or the malignant tissues usually scatter EM signals stronger than
other normal tissues and can be detected by qualitative imaging algorithms.

Figure 1.3: Basic setup for Microwave Imaging.

It uses the concept of monostatic or multi static radar-type measurements Medical Microwave
Imaging (MMWI) typically comprise two stages. The first stage aims at eliminating the strong back
reflection from the skin that masks the response from the embedded tumors. This is called the skin
artifact removal. The second stage aims at reconstructing the reflectivity of the inner tissues.
Antennas play an important role and strongly influence both stages of the imaging process,
especially because they need to operate in close proximity of the body for link budget reasons. In
fact, the faint scattered signals from tumors are additionally attenuated by the body penetration loss,
while SAR considerations limit the maximum incident power. The extreme proximity of the antenna
to the body requires that some otherwise overlooked antenna characteristics be properly accounted in
the imaging signal post-processing.

6
 To highlight the relevance of the near-field antenna characterization for MMWI, it makes
sense to define a MMWI scenario as an example. We consider a breast cancer-screening scenario, where
patient is laying in prone position, on the examination bed. It takes monostatic single antenna setup
that scans around the breast. The image generated by the antenna is constructed from the antenna’s
reflection coefficients measured at these antenna positions versus frequency, using a Vector Network
Analyzer (VNA) For Head and Brain Strokes this technique is used for of detection of any blood clots

Figure 1.4: Components of Microwave Imaging.

in the brain with the help of antennas. Ten identical slot bowtie antennas are placed wall of antenna
array holder. The advantage of this antenna element design is suppressed radiation outside the imaging
area, symmetry of radiated field, mechanical stiffness, and easy, and repeatable production. The front
side of the realized antenna and the modules of measured reflection coefficients of all 10 antenna
elements laid on the surface of a liquid head phantom. In the MBI system, a semi-circular head
model was utilized by simulation technique to detect brain tumor. Authors have used a symplectic
finite-difference time-domain algorithm to reconstruct the brain images. The approach presented a
reconstructed image with a single tumor object, but they used simulated data to reconstruct the
image. Also, the approach showed the irregular shaped tumor object instead of regular shaped tumor
and it is able to detect the tumor nearby the skull. In24, the MBI system was proposed to identify
the single target tumor object. The proposed system used a twelve-metamaterial-loaded spear-shaped
wideband antenna array to reconstruct the brain tumor image. The dimension of the antenna was
32×24 mm2, and the operating band was 0.75–1.6 GHz. The system was tested by using the SAM
(Specific Anthropomorphic Mannequin) head phantom model, including bone, brain, and blood clot as
a tumor. However, the system produced the image with the target tumor. But the reconstructed image

7
 Figure 1.5: Microwave Imaging setup for Head.

was noisy, and tumor location identification is very difficult due to low gain and radiation directivity. A
single EBG-based patch antenna for brain tumor detection in the MBI system. The spherical simulated
head phantom model verified the system via scattering parameters, and no experimental analysis was
explained. The reconstructed image was blurry due to the low gain of the antenna and achieved a
maximum SAR of 0.922 W/kg. The system cannot detect the tumor in-depth location, and difficult
to localize the tumor in a blurry image. A twelve GCPW (ground coplanar waveguide) wideband
antenna array-based head imaging system was discussed in26 to diagnose a brain tumor.The system
by utilizing a Hugo head model and analyzed the simulated data, but no imaging result was presented.
The maximum SAR was 0.00233 W/Kg.In a three-dimensional (3D) directive wideband antenna was
proposed to identify brain tumor in the human brain. The overall dimension was 40×25×10 mm3 and
obtained operating band was 1.67–1.74 GHz with 5.2 dBi gain. The simulated system was performed
by two antenna setups and reconstructed the brain images, but the generated image was noisy. A 3D
slot-rotated wideband antenna was reported in to identify the brain tumor. The antenna’s dimension,
operating band, and gain are 50×34×25, 1.41–3.57 GHz, and 2.6 dBi, respectively. The imaging
system consists of a large platform, a rotated SAM head phantom model with a single antenna for
scanning the whole area. The reconstructed image showed healthy image and a malignant tumor-based

8
image but localize the target tumor is difficult for non-expert physicians due to blurry image and no
SAR calculation are presented. In a thirteen-antenna array based experimental head imaging system
for identifying the tumor object. The system was examined by using a tissue simulating fluid as a head
model and reconstructed the images. The system detected a single tumor object as an abnormality of
the brain. A unidirectional 3D wideband antenna was presented for detecting tumor in the microwave
head imaging system30. The system was designed by two antenna array setups as a simulation model
and used simulated phantom model. Later, the raster scanning process collects scattering data and
reconstructs brain images to detect the malignant tumor. A portable head imaging system with a 16
antenna array was proposed for the diagnosis of a brain tumor31. The system reconstructed images
with a single target tumor, but the equipment is costly and needs a large platform for imaging. A
metamaterial based multi-layered UWB patch antenna was proposed for microwave imaging (MWI) to
detect tumor. The antenna achieved maximum gain of 5 dBi with an operating bandwidth of 7 GHz.
However, the antenna was investigated using a simulated phantom model to identify the tumor. No
experimental analysis was presented in the study. Another UWB patch antenna was proposed in for
MWI to identify the tumor cell in breast. The antenna was compact dimension with high bandwidth,
but the gain of the antenna is only 3 dBi. However, the antenna was investigated using a simulated
phantom model to identify the tumor cell. The authors did not present experimental analysis in the
paper. A low-cost MWI system using side slotted tapered slot antenna was presented in34 to identify
the tumor cells. The authors in34, used the iteratively corrected delay-and-sum (IC-DAS) algorithm
for reconstructing the tumor images. The antenna was investigated by employing a tumor-based
phantom model. However, the reconstructed images were blurry and noisy.

9
1.2 ANTENNA FOR MEDICAL IMAGING

Microwave Imaging algorithms can be divided into two categories, namely, quantitative and
qualitative. Quantitative imaging algorithms generate the image with the distribution of the electrical
properties of the body. On the other hand, qualitative imaging algorithms generate the image of the
intensity of the scattered signal that shows the location of the strong scatterer as the tumor.
Microwave radar-based technology has been a focus of current research that is applied to head imaging
systems for detecting head diseases such as stroke and intracranial hematomas. This technology has
the benefit of being low-cost, lightweight and non-ionising, compared to other methods. The main
principle of microwave medical imaging and detection systems is that there are differences in the di-
electric properties between healthy and unhealthy human tissues. For instance, a hemorrhagic stroke
is a medical condition where a blood clot is formed inside the human brain. By measuring reflected
signals from the head, collected data can be processed and analysed to generate an image of the head
that indicates the location of the stroke. Two types of active microwave imaging techniques have
been previously proposed for detecting brain diseases, such as strokes, tumors, and other anomalies:
tomography and UWB radar techniques. The goal of microwave tomography is to obtain the dielectric
profile of the brain from measurements of narrow band microwave signals transmitted through the
head. Although results are promising, the solution of this nonlinear inverse- scattering problem re-
quires challenging and computationally intensive reconstruction algorithms. In addition, tomographic
techniques generally require several transmitting and receiving antennas to be distributed around the
object of interest, which complicates the imaging of brain volumes and tissues near the skull, where
blood clots can occur .

In contrast to tomography, UWB radar techniques do not attempt to reconstruct the dielectric-
properties profile, but instead seek to identify the presence and location of significant backward scatters
5in the brain. MIST beamforming, which falls under this class of techniques, offers significant improve-
ment over the previously reported techniques of simple time-shifting and summing of backscattered
signals to create a synthetically focused signal. A recent study showed the potential of detecting and
imaging millimeter-sized strokes or blood clots in an anatomically realistic head model using the sim-
pler approach known as confocal microwave imaging. In order to achieve high resolution and accurate
imaging results, more complex radar-based algorithms are implemented such as Microwave Imaging
in Space-Time (MIST) and Mltiple Signal Classification algorithm (MUSIC) . This increases the com-
putational requirement and makes the execution time longer, which is not suitable for applications
that require detecting objects in real-time.The filter weights are chosen to minimize the residual signal
over the initial portion of the received data, which is dominated by the reflection from the skin- head
interface.

10
1.2.1 Quantitative Imaging Algorithms

Quantitative imaging is also called tomography. The microwave tomography problem is

formulated in terms of electric fields. To formulate the problem, two domains are defined : bounded
domain (D) and the measurement domain (). The bounded domain is a domain in which the body
to be imaged is enclosed. The antennas are located on the measurement domain. Three electric
fields are defined for the purpose: the incident field Einc on D, the total field Etotal in D, and the
scattered field Escatt on S. Microwave imaging, like X-ray tomography, obtains images of a biological

Figure 1.6: The field scattering effect during microwave imaging.

object’s material properties by measuring the influence on an applied wave. By using X-rays the tissue
density is imaged, whereas in the microwave case the dielectric properties are imaged.In case of X-
rays, the wavelength is very small compared to the size of the object and a linear-path ray-propagation
assumption is valid. However, an electromagnetic wave, in the microwave spectrum, has a wavelength
in the same range as the size of the object. Thus, the diffraction effects can not be neglected.In order to
produce a tomographic image of an biological object by using microwave imaging an inverse scattering
problem has to be solved, where the object’s dielectric properties are deduced from the measured
scattered field radiated by the object and the known applied incident field. Due to multiple paths
through the object a nonlinear relation between the scattered field and the dielectric properties of the
object exists. This can be solved by linearizing the problem with several approximations or by solving
the nonlinear inverse scattering problem with an iterative algorithm.However, the nonlinear inverse
scattering problem is an ill-posed problem. The conditions of existence, uniqueness and stability of
the solution are therefore not ensured at once.
Qualitative imaging algorithms are similar to radar-based algorithms where the objective

11
is to detect strong scattering objects. In case of medical microwave imaging, the malignant or the
tumorous tissue is a strong scatterer due to higher dielectric properties than the surrounding tissues.
Various radar-based imaging algorithms to focus the tumor, such as confocal microwave imaging,
beam forming, and tissue sensing adaptive radar are used. Ultrawideband (UWB) signal is used for
qualitative imaging to have a good time resolution. In qualitative imaging, each antenna transmits
a short pulse at a time (UWB in frequency domain),and the backscatter response is received by the
same antenna. The backscatter response consists of the tumor response, scatter from the skin, and
backscatter from other tissues. Signal processing is used to reduce the effect of the skin and the
backscatter from other tissue, to enhance the signal backscattered by the tumor. For example, in con-
focal microwave imaging, the processed backscattered waveform at each of the antennas is integrated
over time to obtain Bt integrated waveforms, where t is the number of the transmit antennas. The
reconstructed image is then created by time-shifting and summing data.

Figure 1.7: Setup used in Radar-based Imaging.

Radar-based MWI can be done in the frequency domain or time domain. During the early
years of research, radar imaging was done by the frequency approach. Many of the systems built using
this approach have now matured towards clinical trials. The time domain-based systems on the other
hand started coming up in the recent years. They are more cost effective and offer notably reduced
scan time. Frequency-domain acquisition: The frequency-domain signal acquisition procedure involves
the collection of S-parameter measurements by devices like the VNA. The signals which are reflected
from the breast surface are collected by sweeping frequencies. The team from Bristol University
performed pioneering work in this domain. The first prototype was built in 2009 named MARIA
(Multistatic Array Processing for Radiowave Image Acquisition) composed of 31 UWB slot antennas.
The array was thereafter expanded to hold 60 antennas elements (MARIA5) and used with an eight-
port VNA and 60-way switch matrix to obtain a reduced scan time of just 10 seconds. Another major
contribution came from the University of Calgary team with the development of the Tissue Sensing
Adaptive Radar (TSAR) . This TSAR system is currently being perfected by the team through various
clinical trials for actual clinical practice. In 2019, Islam et al. developed a portable breast imaging
unit comprising nine side-slotted tapered slot antennas . The Iteratively Corrected Delay Multiply

12
and Sum (IC-DAS) algorithm played a decisive role in the reconstruction. In 2019, Alqadami et al.
reported a wearable imaging system employing flexible wideband antenna array with a metamaterial
unit cells reflector.

1.3 MEANDER LINE ANTENNA FOR MEDICAL IMAGING

1.3.1 Flexible Meander-Line Antenna Array for Electromagnetic Head Imaging

In the past two decades, electromagnetic (EM) imaging technique for biomedical applications
have attracted significant attention from numerous research groups owing to their advantages such as
low-cost,non ionizing, rapid diagnosis, with the potential to be light-weight and portable. One of the
potential applications of electromagnetic imaging systems is initial stroke detection and monitoring.
For such systems, the imaging antenna array is one of the essential elements that define the system’s
performance. The fundamental features of imaging antennas are the wideband operational frequency
at the lower microwave frequency band, preferably at 0.5-3.5 GHz, the unidirectional radiations at
the near field region, and the low-profile and compact size. The wideband feature is required for
reconstructing an image with a satisfactory resolution, particularly when utilizing a beam forming
imaging algorithm. Meanwhile, the low microwave frequency band and unidirectional radiations can
significantly enhance signal penetration inside the lossy head.
Furthermore, the low-profile and compact size of the imaging antennas, without compromis-
ing their performance, enable utilizing more antennas in the system for more information and thus
better detection accuracy. Numerous types of antennas for EM head imaging applications are re-
ported in the literature. These antennas are proposed for free-space head imaging systems and mostly
depend on metal reflectors and 3D-topology to obtain the wideband and unidirectional radiations fea-
tures.Nevertheless, the utilization of such antennas in a light-weight and portable head imaging system
is quite challenging due to the large sizes, complexity of the structures, and rigidity of the dielectric
substrates. Moreover, some of the reported antennas operate at a relatively high microwave frequency
band, which limits the penetration of the EM wave inside the head. Another challenge with free-space
based antennas is the severe mismatch that occurs at the interface between the low-permittivity air
and high-permittivity skin. This requires complicated calibration techniques to overcome that effect.

Alternatively, on-body imaging matched antennas that operate directly in contact with the
human skin. These types of antennas provide good impedance matching with human body tissues,
eliminating the mismatch that occurs due to air-skin interface in case of free-space imaging antennas.
However, some of these antennas utilize rigid substrates, which restrict the practical implementation
for an irregular round shape like the human head. Meanwhile, the flexible antenna reported in
has omni-directional radiation and operates at high frequency (2-4 GHz), limiting the level of EM
wave penetration. The enhanced wideband and compact flexible meander-line antenna for wearable
EM head imaging systems. The antenna is designed and fabricated on a 4-mm thick RTV silicone

13
substrate. The measured performance on a human volunteer demonstrates 155 percent of fractional
bandwidth (0.45-3.6 GHz). Moreover, the antenna has unidirectional radiation in the near field region
with at least 9 dB front-to-back ratio. The sensing efficacy of the proposed antenna is numerically
and experimentally verified on a 3D MRIderived head model and homogenous head phantom with
different sizes of bleeding targets. The reconstructed numerical and experimental images show the
potential usability of the proposed antenna in a light-weight and compact wearable EM head imaging
system. In summary, the practical advantages of the proposed antenna array over existing imaging

Figure 1.8: Geometry of antenna. (a) Front view, (b) 3D view, and (c) simulation setup
on head model.

antennas include the more compact width and lower cut-off frequency (0.45 GHz). The smaller width
of the antenna allows the possibility of employing 22 elements in an array that can enclose an average
human head size, which enables the collection of more information from the interior head tissues and
hence increases the detection accuracy. Besides, the lower operating frequency band of the antennas
increases signal penetration into the head, owing to the inverse relationship between the operating
frequencies and penetration depth. Compared to the existing EM head imaging system, the proposed
conformal imaging platform, which utilizes the proposed antenna array, is 75 percent smaller in size
with a tremendously light-weight structure. The proposed antenna is matched to the body tissue and
there is no problematic air-skin interface, which exists in, and thus limits the detection range of, the
antennas to shallow and large targets, resulting in a better detection capability, particularly when a

14
bleeding target is in the center of the head, as validated from the experimental imaging results of both
systems.
A wideband and compact flexible meander line antenna for wearable EM head imaging
systems has been presented. The antenna is designed on a 4-mm-thick robust and flexible RTV
silicone substrate. The antenna consists of a shorted meander line, full ground plane, and 50 coaxial
connector. The antenna exhibited 155 percent of impedance bandwidth over the frequency band
of 0.45-3.6 GHz when measured on the front-side of a human head. The antenna demonstrates
unidirectional radiations with at least 9 dB front-torear ratio, and low SAR values below 0.2 W/Kg
using an input power of 10 dBm. A 16-element antenna array was fabricated and utilized in a 3D head
imaging system for verification and validation. The generated images of a different bleeding target
inside the homogenous head model indicate good detection capability and thus confirms the potential
of the antenna array to be utilized in a wearable head imaging system.

1.3.2 MICS/ISM Meander-Line Antenna Encapsulated in Oblong-Shaped Pod for

Gastrointestinal Tract Diagnosis

In light of the growth in demand for multiband antennas for medical applications, this re-
search proposes a MICS/ISM meander-line microstrip antenna encapsulated in an oblong-shaped pod
for use in diagnoses of the gastrointestinal tract. The proposed antenna is operable in the Medical
Implant Communication System (MICS) and the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands. The
antenna structure consists of a meander-line radiating patch, a flipped-L defected ground plane, and
a loading resistor for antenna miniaturization. The MICS/ISM microstrip antenna encapsulated in an
oblong-shaped pod was simulated in various lossy-material environments. In addition, the specific ab-
sorption rate (SAR) was calculated and compared against the IEEE C95.1 standard. For verification,
an antenna prototype was fabricated and experiments carried out in equivalent liquid mixtures, the
dielectric constants of which resembled human tissue. The measured impedance bandwidths (—S11—
10 dB) for the MICS and ISM bands were 398–407 MHz and 2.41–2.48 GHz. The measured antenna
gains were 38 dBi and 13 dBi, with a quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern. The measured SAR
was substantially below the maximum safety limits. As a result, the described MICS/ISM microstrip
antenna encapsulated in an oblong-shaped pod can be used for real-time gastrointestinal tract diag-
nosis. The novelty of this work lies in the use of a meander-line microstrip, flipped-L defected ground
plane, and loading resistor to miniaturize the antenna and realize the MICS and ISM bands.

There are four universal microwave frequency bands for wireless communications in the
health and medical domains: the Medical Implant Communication System (MICS, 401–406 MHz);
the Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS, 1427–1432 MHz); the Wireless Body Area Network
(WBAN, 2360–2400 MHz); and the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands (2.4–2.5 GHz). In
practice, medically implantable and/or ingestible antennas should be small, operable at the medical
frequency bands, and harmless to humans.

15
Figure 1.9: MICS/ISM meander-line microstrip antenna encapsulated in an oblong-
shaped pod, together with the base station

In the diagnosis, a patient orally ingests a pod which courses through the digestive tract
and is excreted with the feces. The sensing camera captures images inside the gastrointestinal tract
and the data are transmitted in real-time using the MICS band. Specifically, data are transmitted
using the MICS band and the ISM bands are used to activate the pod from sleep mode. Sleep
mode was incorporated to ensure efficient battery usage, since it usually takes 6 h after ingestion for
food intake to reach the small intestine.The oblong-shaped pod contains the proposed MICS/ISM
microstrip antenna, a sensing camera, a microcontroller unit (MCU), and a button cell battery. The
pod is designed for intestinal tract diagnosis with minimal damage to the small intestines, which is
prone to occur with conventional gastrointestinal tract radiography. As the sensor is used in vitro,
the glass pod will not be broken. Besides, the focus of the study is the performance of the MICS/ISM
meander-line microstrip antenna.
In addition, the electromagnetic properties of the surrounding environment have an effect on
the in-body antenna characteristics. In the analytical results for a Hertz dipole embedded in a lossy
multilayer spherical body were presented. The dyadic theory of Green’s function was employed. The
proposed method can be used for in-body antennas with spherical boundaries. A low-profile, confor-
mal microstrip antenna has been proposed for in-body capsule applications. This proposed conformal
antenna is operable at the center frequency of 434 MHz, with a bandwidth of 16 MHz. The experi-
mental results validated the impedance detuning caused by the high permittivity of the surrounding
biological environment. In the stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) technique and dielectric-loaded
with ceramic shell and pure water inner filling were employed to miniaturize the antenna. It was
simulated in a body model containing nine dispersive tissues. Detuning effects were found in this pro-
posed antenna. An inward-directed antenna for the gastrointestinal, operable at a center frequency of
2.45 GHz

16
1.4 ADVANTAGES AND APPLICATIONS OF MEANDER LINE ANTENNA

1.4.1 An Effective SAR Reduction with Compact Meander Line Antenna

The issue of SAR in addition to bandwidth enhancement for wearable antennas. A symmet-
rical dual meander line antenna having a T-shaped junction and truncated ground plane is proposed.
CPW feeding technique with reduced ground plane is used in order to obtaina horizontal monopole
like bidirectional radiation beam when being placed over human body. Most of the previous designs
used PEC ground plane, meta-material ground and AMC ground for reducingthe exposure of radiation
over human body. However, in our design, initially a single resonant mode is generated with a simple
T-shaped structure at the end of the antenna. A pair of symmetrical stubs is added near the feed line
so that higher order mode is generated. Thereafter, meandering the stub results into miniaturization
in higher mode of the antenna. The miniaturization of the higher-order mode and merging with the
lower mode results into realization of a wideband antenna.
Finally, a SAR reduction technique with variation in the geometry of the ground plane in or-
der to reduce the effects of highE-field regions through field cancellation technique is presented. The
SAR reduction technique is achieved by keeping bidirectional radiation pattern and other antenna
parameters in order. The validation of SAR reduction is confirmed by simulating the antennas in two
solvers that are COMSOL Multiphysics using the head model and ANSYS High Frequency Structural
Simulator (HFSS) with thehand model The demand for health technology is increasing rapidly espe-
cially in telemetry applications. These applications generally use implanted antennas to be utilized for
data transfer from patients to another reader device. This procedure can make the health care more
efficient, since it provides fast diagnosis and treatment to the patient. This work presents a design of
telemetry antenna to be used in Pacemaker application in Medical Implant Communication Services
(MICS) (401 MHz-406 MHz). By introducing Compact Meander Line Telemetry Antenna (CMLTA),
length (Ls) and width (Ws) of substrate have been reduced by 36.84 and 40 percent respectively. The
proposed antenna offers advantages of easy fabrications, low cost and light weight with a 133 MHz
bandwidth.
The medical industry has revealed massive innovations and modernizations in recent years.
With the advancements of technologies, real time monitoring of patients is now possible from distant
places through wireless communication. An antenna is a major module in any wearable system which
determines the overall performance of the system. Therefore, the design of a proper antenna for ef-
fective communication link is of prime importance. The principal constraints in designing wearable
antennas are frequency detuning, impedance mismatch, radiation effect over human body, bandwidth
degradation,moisture absorption and bending effects. Human tissue is lossy in nature. Due to its
high permittivity value, the resonant frequency of the antenna shifts, and the radiation pattern gets
distorted further.The requirement of high transmission rate at short ranges signifies the need of wide-
band feature withrespect to wearable antenna. Several bandwidth enhancement techniques have been
implemented usingrigid substrates such as parasitic coupling and inductive loading, asymmetrical

17
slots with CPW feed and microstrip feed and with non-rigid substrates. The wideband antenna in-
corporates a T-shaped monopole antenna with parasitic elements for bandwidth enhancement.Since
wearable antennas work in close vicinity of human body, the associated health hazards with electro-
magnetic (em) waves have also been reported earlier. For reduction of em wave exposure, variousSAR
reduction techniques have been used in the past viz. the use of ferrite sheets to reduce the surface
currents, meta-material ground to act as stopband in the operating frequency range and integrating
electromagnetic band gap structures to behave as reflectors in reducing the SAR. In the use of metal
rods to generate anti-phase fields with the antenna was found effective in SAR reduction where the
lateral size of the system was increased. R-cards were used in where SAR reduction was achieved
with degradation of radiation efficiency. Recently, magneto-dielectric nano composite materials as
substrate were used in to reduce the SAR

1.4.2 In-Depth study of Dielectric Properties of Tissues

The fundamental notion of usage of Meander line antenna in microwave imaging is the tissue
dependent dielectric contrast that is used to reconstruct images using radar-based or tomographic
imaging techniques. So before going to the details of the microwave imaging setup and algorithms
it is better to know how dielectric properties of tissues help in Imaging. Different types of tissues,
including both normal and malignant tissues of the same kind, have distinct electrical properties.
The dielectric properties of the tissue consist of the relative permittivity and the conductivity. The
difference occurs primarily due to the difference in the water content in the tissue. For example, fat
is a low water content tissue having low relative permittivity and conductivity. On the other hand,
muscle is a high water content tissue having high relative permittivity and conductivity at microwave
frequencies. Further, a tumorous or a malignant tissue has a higher rate of metabolism, resulting in
more blood flowing through it. This changes the electrical properties of the tissue from its normal
healthy kind. Apart from the difference in the water content in healthy and malignant tissues, a
variety of other factors have been found that explain the difference in electrical properties between
healthy tissues and malignant tissues. These include necrosis and inflammation causing breakdown
of the cell membrane, charging of the cell membrane, change in the dielectric relaxation time, and
difference in the sodium content. This difference in the electrical properties of the tissues results in
the variation in the scattered field by the different tissues. This forms the basis of the microwave
imaging.
Percentage change in the dielectric properties of malignant tissues with respect to the healthy
tissue from 50 to 900MHz.But there are some problems with the dielectric properties of the tissues.
For example, for some tissues, the difference between the normal and malignant tissue may be low.
This may result in a very small difference in the scattered field from the normal and malignant tissues.
For example, there exists a large contrast between cancerous breasts and healthy fatty tissues. This
difference is small when the cancerous tissue is compared with the healthy glandular or the fibro-
connective breast tissue. Hence, the detection of cancerous tissue in a close vicinity of the glandular

18
Figure 1.10: : (a)percentage change in the relative permittivity(b)percentage change in
the conductivity

tissue may be a challenging task with microwave imaging. Moreover, the presence of multiple tissues
with different properties results in a complex scattering environment. To solve these challenges, either
use of a high dynamic range system is required to capture the small difference in the scattered field
or the use of contrast agents is proposed to enhance the electrical properties of the malignant tissues.

1.4.3 Convenient Imaging Setup

This section analyzes the overall imaging setup in the simulation environment along with
E-field, H-field, and specific absorption rate (SAR) distribution. The overall scanning setup of the
imaging system with its top and perspective view. Nine antennas are set adjacent to each other that
surrounds the Hugo head model to verify the antenna performances in terms of scattering parameters
and mutual coupling effects. Despite the placement with head proximity, the receiving antennas show
reflection coefficient below 20 dB, which indicates the stable and comparable performance of scattering
parameters and mutual coupling effects within the frequency regime. The scattering parameters in
terms of different size and locations are depicted. Hemorrhages with six different sizes and locations
have been considered analyzed with antennas that are placed in four different positions. The relative

19
 Figure 1.11: Microwave Imaging Using Antennas.

permittivity and conductivity of the region are similar to the electrical properties of blood.

20
1.5 MOTIVATION

Today, cancer is a major society health problem. Swedish statistics report tumors as the
second most common cause of death, after vascular diseases. 25 percent of yearly deaths are caused
by tumors, where breast cancer is the most common tumor among women with around 30 deaths in
a population of 100,000. Similar figures have been reported in North America, Europe, Australia,
Polynesia and Western Africa, On a worldwide basis breast tumor is by far the most frequent tumor
among women with 23 percent of all cancers. In 2015, 1.15 million new cases were reported, giving
the overall second rank after lung cancer when both sexes are considered. Noteworthily, the survival
rate of breast cancer is 65 percent in global average for a five year period after the first detection.
So breast cancer has a rather good survival rate compared to other tumors. One reason is probably
the major screening programs carried out in the developed countries established to find early invasive
tumors. However, still breast tumors are the leading cause of tumor mortality for women with 411,000
annual deaths reported in 2020 . Incidence rates of breast cancer are increasing in most countries,
and the growth is usually great where rates were previously low. With an estimated growth about
3 percent in East Asia and 0.5 percent in the rest of the word, the world total in 2025 would be 1.5
million breast cancers. These figures only motivates all research in this domain.The motivation for
major screening programs is the strong correlation between the outcome of a breast tumor and its size
at the time of detection and are able to calculate the chance of survival from the size of the tumor,
independent from the detection methods. In world’s most developed areas all women undergo this
program with frequent radiology visits.

Today, imaging techniques take an important role in the detection of malignant breast tu-
mors, where X-ray mammography is the dominant technique. X-ray mammography fulfills almost
all the requirements to be an efficient imaging tool. An imaging tool must have high specificity and
sensitivity to malign breast tumors, it must also be resource effective in manpower, time and money,
and should also be non-invasive . Today, X-ray mammography is widely used and in general anac-
cepted method. However, mammography suffers from several limitations. The sensitivity in false rate
has been reported by Elmore et. al. and by Huynh et. al. X-ray mammography has a false-positive
rate between 2.8 percent to 15.9 percent and a false-negative rate between 4 percent to 34 percent.
The false rate is mainly dependent of the of radiologist. Moreover, it has a reported limitation in the
specificity. As a matter of fact, during the extensive mammography screening programs 10-50 percent
patients often need a breast biopsy to verify the findings in their mammogram. The general number of
undetected breast tumors is estimated between 5-15 percent. One major reason of the this high rate
is the difficulty to image breasts with highly content of fibrous and glandular tissues, radiographically
dense breasts. In this case, a very low contrast is achieved between the malign breast tissue and the
fibroglandular tissues using X-ray mammography, and alternative imaging techniques must be used.
Beside those detection limitations, mammography uses ionizing X-rays and needs a sometimes painful
breast compression. The radiation is kept on low levels in today’s mammography equipments, but

21
there is still a small risk that the exposure of ionizing rays produces breast cancer. Women who
undergo X-ray mammography screening for 10 years have an estimated rate of mortality of eight out
of 100,000 women. However, this is still a quite high figure as compared to the total risk of mortality
due to breast tumor. Complementary non-ionizing imaging methods exists today, the most important
ones are Ultrasound imaging and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) with contrast enhancement.
However, none of those techniques are suitable for large scale screening programs. They have taken
an important role in the later diagnosis to verify the malignity of the breast tissue and in situations
of dense breasts.

Other imaging techniques have a very small role in breast tumor detection today. At the
moment the highest breast tumor detection rates are reported in the high developed areas around the
world, where the screening programmes have been established. However, in many under developed
countries, in e.g. Africa, reporting similar rates of mortality from breast tumor while the detection
is fairly low compared to high developed countries. Therefore, a cheap and high specificity and sen-
sitivity solution must be found to solve global mortality from breast tumors. These considerations
underline the fact that there is a need for complementary and/ or alternatively imaging modalities in
order to decrease the global mortality related to breast tumors.

Microwave imaging may be one of the needed imaging modalities in the future, at least for
two reasons. First, high dielectric contrast can be observed between malignant breast tumor tissues
and normal breast tis- sues in the microwave spectrum . Second, because of major research effort
from different research groups, microwave imaging has become an efficient imaging modality for non-
invasively visualizing complex dielectric properties. Those reasons set a very interesting knowledge
platform to establish new imaging modalities using microwaves applied to breast tumor detection,brain
tumour detection,Bone fracture imaging.

22
 CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE SURVEY

2.1 OVERVIEW

In the last decades, microwave imaging has been a new area of research due to its many
advantages over current imaging systems. Microwave imaging system is used for in-depth inspection
of biological tissues. The test provides the identification of morphological changes in these biological
tissues, as well as their locations. The emerging Ultra-Wideband (UWB) microwave imaging gives
better result with the main advantage of using non-ionizing radiation. In these systems, antennas
play a very important role, and as such, their optimization has become a very important topic be-
cause the device is placed close to the human body. Thus, many aspects are of great importance in
the design of the antennas starting from the material with which it is constructed, its dimensions,
operation bandwidth, human body influence on the antenna parameters, short-pulse propagation,
etc. Recent research has shown several efforts in improving the electromagnetic sensors used in these
systems, either as individual or array elements and UWB high directivity sensors used in microwave
imaging systems. Regardless of the different types of clinical imaging tests, X-ray is used more as

Figure 2.1: Damage to DNA by ionizing radiation.

it provides more reliable diagnostic.X-rays are radiations of high-energy electromagnetic waves, and

23
although ionizing radiation has been shown to have several beneficial applications for humans, it can
also produce detrimental effects even when X-rays are a diagnosis test. The interaction of radiation
with cells is a function of probability, i.e., there may or may not be interaction, and if the interaction
occurs, damage may or may not occur . Thus, its use on biological tests increases the probability to
produce permanent changes in the cells which will trigger cell mutation until its death as shown in
Figure 2.1.

Due to the reasons mentioned above, in recent years, many efforts have been dedicated to find
a reliable cancer diagnostic tool avoiding the use of ionization energy. In that sense, some techniques
based on microwave signals using image reconstruction algorithms have been investigated. Compared
to X-rays, microwave imaging can be safely repeated more frequently because it is free from ionizing
radiation.

2.2 OVERVIEW ON THE USAGE OF ANTENNAS IN MICROWAVE IMAGING

2.2.1 Miniaturized Multiband Microstrip Antenna for Medical Imaging

A miniaturized microstrip antenna to be used in medical implantation and imaging. The

antenna consists of a radiating patch with two T shaped slots. A partial ground with two L shaped
sleeves and a few square slots has been used to obtain better results. The various parameters of the
antenna have been analyzed. Multiple frequency bands have been obtained.The use of Microstrip
antenna now-a-days is growing exponentially. Due to their various features like less weight, small size,
low capital investment in manufacturing and relative ease of integration, these antennas are now pre-
ferred to be used in various applications. However, the traditional microstrip patch antennas,vastly
suffers from very narrow bandwidth, an approximate 5 percent bandwidth with respect to central
frequency. One of the areas, where microstrip antenna has found a high growth in usage, is the field of
medical sciences. These applications include medical implantation, imaging systems etc. As the size of
the devices reduce upon a regular basis due to the higher rate of integration of electronics, the antenna
thus occupies a significant space, hence the need to use the microstrip antennas. Medical applications
involving the use of microstrip antennas make use of microwaves, hence it is essential for the antennas
to have a good parameter values essential for the respective applications. There are numerous and well
known method to increase the bandwidth of antennas, that include increase of substrate thickness,
the use of low dielectric substrate etc.In the last few years, a variety of antenna designs for medical
implantation and microwave imaging have been considered by the concerned professionals.These de-
signs include spiral and serpentine shaped antennas. The authors have considered and simulated the
performance of the said antennas based on an approximation of the muscle materials etc.

24
 Figure 2.2: Miniaturized Multiband Microstrip Antenna

2.2.2 Microwave wideband PIFA antenna for brain tumor imaging applications

Head imaging technique plays a vital role in the detection of an affected brain, such as
strokes cancerous tumours caused by trauma. Current systems require the patient to be transported
to the imaging device which increases the time taken to apply treatments, which leads to the patient’s
conditions to be worsen. The antenna is designed in 3-D dimension with a wideband and unidirec-
tional properties. The lower microwave frequencies are used in the antenna to detect size, location
and intensity of the tumour.Existing techniques such as MRI,X-ray,CT Scan which has more radia-
tion which harm the tissues. The system utilizes combination of a software defined and solid state
switching network to collect the imaging data. It can capture the input signals, which is suitable for
detecting realistic brain deficiency. This microwave imaging technique will not harm the tissues. The
concept has been validated through experimental data collection in image generation, and is capable
of capturing images in less than a minute. A simplified head phantom was developed gathering the
data and proved that the system was capable of locating targets with dielectric properties similar to
brain tumors and bleeds.Brain tumor is a mass growth of abnormal cells of the brain. It ruins life of
the people where treatment for the tumor becomes very difficult and the equipment is very precious
and cause so, many side effects. The present imaging techniques like Computed tomography(CT) and

25
Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI), shown in figure , used for tumor detection creates lots of distur-
bance to the patient and the radiation intensity is more on the body. The number of brain tumor
cases around the world is increasing at an alarming rate, with more than 700,000 affected people living
in the US and 80,000 people diagnosed for brain tumor in 2020 alone. Though in India, the number
of brain tumor cases are low, it could increase in the near future due to change in food habits and
life style. Microwaves widely used in various medical applications. Most commonly microwave energy
is used to create localized dielectric heating in order to desiccate human tissue known as microwave
ablation. Microwaves play a crucial role in shape against cancer providing a new way of treating a
disease. It is used to detect the tumors of the body by Specific absorption rate (SAR) and used to
find the size and intensity of the tumor. The major advantages of microwaves is flexibility with wide
ranges of frequencies(1-300GHZ) and these frequencies are selected depends upon the application.
The frequency band used for brain tumor detection caused by trauma is1–3GHZ. It provides a pene-
tration of the waves into the human head and provides high resolution image of the tumor. A neatly
packed patch antenna is used for human head imaging application. It is wideband, unidirectional
antenna and folding technique is used to achieve resonant frequency for brain tumor analysis. The
three dimensional wide band antennas consists of various shapes of patches and shoring wall that is
extended up to ground plane of the antenna.

The antenna is the key element in the analysis of brain tumor and to penetrate microwave
signals into the human skull. The three dimensional wide band antenna converts electrical signals in to
electro- magnetic signals and results in providing microwave radiations for these medical applications.
The resonant frequency used for head imaging is 2.65 to 2.91 GHZ. The entire antenna is made up of
copper. Since, it is less in cost and has higher conductivity compared to aluminum and steel . More
of the RF energy will get excited, not be trapped creating heat energy. More efficient radiation also
means that you can run higher powers with the copper compared to other materials.

Figure 2.3: PIFA Antenna for Head Imaging

26
2.2.3 Compact Meander Line Antenna

Figure 2.4: Compact Meander Line Antenna

In light of the growth in demand for multiband antennas for medical applications, this re-
search proposes a MICS/ISM meander-line microstrip antenna encapsulated in an oblong-shaped pod
for use in diagnoses of the gastrointestinal tract. The proposed antenna is operable in the Medical
Implant Communication System (MICS) and the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) bands. The
antenna structure consists of a meander-line radiating patch, a flipped-L defected ground plane, and
a loading resistor for antenna miniaturization. The MICS/ISM microstrip antenna encapsulated in an
oblong-shaped pod was simulated in various lossy-material environments. In addition, the specific ab-
sorption rate (SAR) was calculated and compared against the IEEE C95.1 standard. For verification,
an antenna prototype was fabricated and experiments carried out in equivalent liquid mixtures, the
dielectric constants of which resembled human tissue. The measured impedance bandwidths (—S11—
10 dB) for the MICS and ISM bands were 398–407 MHz and 2.41–2.48 GHz. The measured antenna
gains were 38 dBi and 13 dBi, with a quasi-omni directional radiation pattern. The measured SAR
was substantially below the maximum safety limits. As a result, the described MICS/ISM microstrip
antenna encapsulated in an oblong-shaped pod can be used for real-time gastrointestinal tract diag-
nosis. The novelty of this work lies in the use of a meander-line microstrip, flipped-L defected ground
plane, and loading resistor to miniaturize the antenna and realize the MICS and ISM bands.The
meander-line antenna can be in a lambda/2 dipole or lambda/4 ground plane format. The idea is to
fold the conductors back and forth to make the overall antenna shorter. It is a smaller area, but the
radiation resistance, efficiency and bandwidth decease. The parameters of meander shape, for example
H, La, Lb and Lc shown as in the figure 2.5 will affect the antenna performance parameter. In order
to find the best antenna solution, different values of meander width are simulated and studied.

27
 Figure 2.5: Shape of Meander Line Antenna (MLA)

A meander-line antenna can be realized by bending the conventional linear monopole antenna
to decrease the size of antenna. The influence of the meander part of the antenna is similar to a load
and the meander line sections are considered as shorted-terminated transmission lines as shown in
Figure 2.6. The meander line section can be modeled as an equivalent inductor. In the far-field
pattern, in the result of the cancellation of magnetic fields, the transmission lines of a meander line
antenna do not radiate fields. The radiation fields will be radiated from the vertical pars of MLA. The
currents’ intension of vertical parts can be clearly seen In a meander line antenna (also called rampart

Figure 2.6: Equivalent Model of meander line sections

line antenna), the radiating element consists of a meandering micro strip line formed by a series of
sets of right angled compensated bends, as shown in Figure 2.7 The fundamental element in this case
is formed by four right angled bends and the radiation mainly occurs from the discontinuities (bend)
of the structure. The right angle bends are chamfered or compensated to reduce the right angled
discontinuity susceptance for impedance matching. The current directions are changing in every half
wavelength and there are more than four half wavelength changes in this design. The radiations from

28
the bend add up to produce the desired polarization depending on the dimensions of the meander line
antenna. The electrical small antenna defines as the largest dimension of the antenna is no more than
one-tenth of a wavelength. Meander antenna is electrically small antenna .The design of meander line
antenna is a set of horizontal and vertical lines. Combination of horizontal and vertical lines forms
turns. Number of turns increases efficiency increases. In case of meander line if meander spacing is
increase resonant frequency decreases. At the same meander separation increase resonant frequency
decreases.

Figure 2.7: Electric Current Magnitude Plot for the MLA. Drawing on the left is the
current on the upper traces. Drawing on the right is of the current on the ground plane.
One can see that the large magnitude of the currents on the vertical sections of the
meander line. These are essentially the only sources of radiation when the ground plane
is enlarged

29
 CHAPTER 3

INTRODUCTION TO HFSS

Ansys HFSS is a 3D electromagnetic (EM) simulation software for designing and simulating
high-frequency electronic products such as antennas, antenna arrays, RF or microwave components,
high-speed interconnects, filters, connectors, IC packages and printed circuit boards.

Figure 3.1: Ansys Electronic Suite work environment window

3.1 MATHEMATICAL METHOD IN HFSS

The numerical technique used in HFSS is the Finite Element Method (FEM). In this method
a structure is subdivided into many small subsections called finite elements. In HFSS these finite
elements are in the form of tetrahedra. The entire collection of tetrahedra constitutes the finite
element mesh. A solution is found for the fields within these tetrahedra. These fields are interrelated
so that Maxwell’s Equations are satisfied across inter-element boundaries yielding a field solution for

30
the entire original structure. Once the field solution is found, the generalized S- matrix solution is
determined.
Solution Types: The following solution types are available: (a) Driven Modal (b) Driven
Terminal (c) Transient (d) Eigen mode For most HFSS simulations, the Driven Modal solution type is
used. For simulations that deal with signal integrity, Driven Terminal solution type is preferred; such
problems generally include transmission lines with single as well as multiple conductors. Simulations
that use the driven modal solution type yield S-matrix solutions that are expressed in terms of the
incident and reflected powers of transmission line modes. The S-matrix that is produced by the driven
terminal solution type, however, is expressed in terms of terminal voltages and currents.

3.2 BOUNDARIES AND EXCITATIONS IN HFSS

Figure 3.2: HFSS Boundary Assignment and HFSS Excitation Assignment

The purpose of using boundary conditions in HFSS is to define the behavior of the elec-
tromagnetic field on the object interfaces and at the edges of a problem region. Defining boundary
conditions reduces the electromagnetic or geometric complexity of the model. A closed model repre-
sents a structure or a solution volume where no energy escapes except through an applied port. For
an Eigen mode simulation, this closed model represents a cavity resonator and for a driven modal
or terminal solution, the model can be a waveguide or some other fully enclosed structure. An elec-
tromagnetically open model allows energy to emanate or radiate away. Common examples include
an antenna, a printed circuit board, or any structure that is not enclosed within a closed cavity. By
default HFSS treats any given model as closed since all outer surfaces of the solution space are cov-
ered with a perfect electric conducting boundary. In order to create an open model, you must specify
a boundary on the outer surfaces that overwrites the default perfect electric conducting boundary.
Boundary conditions are assigned on 2D sheet objects and surfaces of 3D objects. Commonly used

31
boundary conditions are discussed below. (a) Lumped RLC The Lumped RLC Boundary is used to
model ideal lumped elements like resistors, inductors or capacitors. This boundary can be used to
model single elements or multiple R, L, or C in a parallel combination. The following figure shows a
capacitor Microstrip model showing the RLC boundary applied to a plane internal to the capacitor
body. (b) Perfect Electric Conductor Assigning a perfect electric boundary condition on a surface
of an object causes the tangential component of the electric field to be zero. This type of boundary
models a perfectly conducting surface in a structure that forces the electric field to be normal to the
surface. (c) Radiation Boundary The Radiation Boundary is used to create an open problem in HFSS
that allows electromagnetic waves to radiate infinitely far into space as in the case of antenna designs.
HFSS absorbs the wave at the radiation boundary, essentially ballooning the boundary infinitely far
away from the structure.
In HFSS, excitations are sources of electromagnetic fields in a design. There are many types of ex-
citations in HFSS. They are listed below: (d) Wave Ports (e) Lumped Ports (f) Floquet Ports (g)
Terminal (h) Incident Wave (i) Linked Fields (j) Current Sources (k) Voltage Sources (l) Magnetic
Bias Sources All excitation types provide field information, but only the wave port, lumped Port,
and Floquet port provide S- parameters. The use of the magnetic bias source allows you to model a
magnetic bias acting on a ferrite material. (a) Wave Ports: Wave ports are used to excite transmission
lines like micro strip, strip line, coplanar waveguides, and hollow waveguides. A wave port represents
the region through which electromagnetic energy enters or exits the solution space. In HFSS a wave
port is treated as if it were a semi infinitely long waveguide or transmission line of the exact same
cross section attached to the model where it’s excited. (b) Lumped Ports:Lumped Ports are commonly
used excitation types in HFSS. A lumped port is analogous to a current sheet source and can also
be used to excite commonly used transmission lines. Lumped ports are also useful to excite voltage
gaps or other instances where wave ports are not applicable. Lumped ports yield S,Y,Z parameters
and fields, but they do not yield any gamma or wave impedance information. The results of a lumped
port cannot be de-embedded but can be renormalized. Unlike wave ports, lumped ports can support
only a single mode. A lumped port can be defined on any 2D object that has edges in contact with
two conducting objects. The boundary that is applied to all edges that do not touch a conductor is
a perfect H, which ensures that the normal electric field is equal to zero on those edges.(c) Floquet
Ports: A Floquet port in HFSS is exclusively used for planar-periodic structures. Typical examples
are planar phased arrays and frequency selective surfaces when these may be idealized as infinitely
large. The analysis of the infinite structure is accomplished by analyzing a unit cell. When you define
a Floquet port, a set of modes known as Floquet modes represent the fields on the port boundary.

3.3 DRIVEN SOLUTION SETUP

A driven solution setup is defined for a modal or a terminal project. Defining a solution
setup enables HFSS to compute a solution for a design. You can define multiple solution setups for
the same design.For most antenna simulations, the solution frequency should be set to the operating

32
frequency of the antenna. For simulations of filters, the solution frequency should be set to the center
of the bandpass frequency.

3.3.1 Frequency Sweeps

Figure 3.3: HFSS Frequency Sweep Window

HFSS has three sweep types: the discrete sweep, the fast sweep, and the interpolating
sweep. Depending on the needs of a user, a particular sweep type may be preferred. The fast sweep
is useful when many frequency points are desired over a limited frequency range and it also yields the
field information. The interpolating sweep is most useful when solving problems from DC to a high
frequency; however, interpolating sweep does not provide field information. For both the interpolating
and fast sweeps, the number of displayed frequency points is not related to the time it takes to generate
the frequency sweep results. The discrete sweep generates field solutions at specific frequency points
in the desired frequency sweep. The discrete sweep solution time is directly dependent on the number
of frequency points desired. The more frequency steps a user requests, the longer HFSS needs to
complete the frequency sweep.

3.4 HFSS POST-PROCESSING

3.4.1 Plotting S-parameter results

One of the most important outputs from HFSS is the S-parameter. Once a simulation has
finished, S-parameters can be plotted at a single frequency or over a frequency sweep. To create an
S-parameter plot, right-click Reports on the Project manager window and select the option Create
Modal Solution-¿Data Report -¿ Rectangular Plot. This command opens the Report dialog box. Select
the desired Solution under the Context panel and then from the Category, Quantity, and Function

33
panels, select the S-data to be plotted. HFSS generates S-parameters with matched loads. Matched
load essentially means that the port is loaded by its characteristic port impedance.

Figure 3.4: Creation of S parameter plots

3.4.2 Plotting Antenna Results

Far field antenna patterns are easily generated by HFSS using the Reports Editor. The
procedure is similar to plotting the standard circuit parameters. But the model should include either
Radiation or PML boundaries, and a Far Field Setup must be defined before Far Field quantities can
be plotted. The specified far field radiation sphere setup is selected from the Geometry drop down
menu of the Report dialog box. This report dialog box is generated by right-clicking Results in the
Project Manager window and selecting Create Far Fields Report -¿ Radiation Pattern.

3.4.3 Plotting Field Results

HFSS can produce a plot of any standard electromagnetic quantity, such as the electric field,
magnetic field, Poynting vector, or current density. Generally, fields are displayed on 2D objects, faces
of 3D objects, or on coordinate system planes. Plots can be scalar quantity plots or vector quantity
plots. HFSS can produce a plot of any standard electromagnetic quantity, such as the electric field,
magnetic field, Poynting vector, or current density. Generally, fields are displayed on 2D objects, faces
of 3D objects, or on coordinate system planes. Plots can be scalar quantity plots or vector quantity
plots.

34
 Figure 3.5: Far field Radiation Setup

Figure 3.6: Creation of Far field Radiation Pattern

35
 CHAPTER 4

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION

The approach was to design Meander Line antenna with sufficient bandwidth and minimum
losses to produce the notch at central frequency of 1.2 GHz for bio-medical applications. The strategy
for designing this antenna can be summarized as follows:

Figure 4.1: Schematic view of Initial Design

First Step:The antenna shown in Figure 4.1 is a U-shaped microstrip patch antenna and
consists of two vertical sections and one horizontal section of the patch. The substrate material used
for the antenna design is FR4 with dielectric constant of 4.4 and loss tangent of 0.002. The thickness
t of the substrate is 1.6 mm, and the overall dimension is L * W t mm3(90*60*1.6 mm3)

36
 Figure 4.2: Schematic view after implementing Meander line loop

Second Step:A Meander line loop is made at tip of the vertical sections of the U-Shaped patch
antenna with a partial ground plane is made which resembles as the open-loop configuration of Mean-
der line structure as shown in the figure 4.2 to improve the various parameters like Bandwidth,Return
Loss,Rdaiation Pattern and to acheive the desired central frquency of 1.2GHz.However, the accuracy
of measured results and antenna size still remains the major issue to be resolved in antenna design.

37
 Figure 4.3: Schematic view of proposed Antenna

Third Step:Another Pair of meander line loops are made at the vertical sections of the
antenna which made the antenna into a new closed loop configuration and with several optimized
dimensions of design parameters as shown below figure 4.4.

Figure 4.4: Optimized Results

38
 CHAPTER 5

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 5.1: S11 plot for Design 1

The structure above resonates at about 1.15 GHz with about less than –3 dB return loss as
shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.2: S11 plot for Design 2

The Return loss of -10 dB is obtained centered at 1.15 GHz for the above design in Figure 5.2.

39
 Figure 5.3: S11 plot for Proposed Antenna

The proposed antenna resonates at 1.2 GHz with -26 dB return loss and fractional bandwidth
of 3.3 percent.

Figure 5.4: Parametric analysis effect of W1

The effect of Feed width(W1) on antenna performance shows that at W1 = 3 mm, S11 of the proposed
design is satisfactory and about -22.50 dB of S11 has been achieved.

40
 Figure 5.5: Effect of L1 feed length

The feed length is varied between 27-29 mm It is seen that at L1= 27 mm, the antenna
resonates at 1.18 GHz with S11 of about -25 dB.

Figure 5.6: Effect of W2 Meander Line Patch Width

It can be observed from the plot that at W2 = 51 mm, the antenna exhibits high S11 which is about
-16 dB, while at W2 = 50, S11 of -22.50 dB has been realized.

41
 Figure 5.7: Effect of L2 Meander line Limb Thickness

The meander line Limb thickness is varied between 1.5-3mm It is depicted that at a value of
L2= 2.5 mm, the antenna S11 is good with a value of about -23 dB in the desired frequency.

Figure 5.8: Effect of L3 Meander line Limb Thickness

It can be seen from the plot that the antenna performance is satisfactory at L3 = 59 mm, hence the
optimized value of L3 is assumed to be 59 mm.

42
 Figure 5.9: Radiation pattern E-Plane

Figure 5.10: Radiation pattern H-Plane

The radiation characteristics at two typical frequencies of 0.4 and 1.18 GHz are shown, which
indicates that at lower frequency, the antenna shows Figure of Eight in the E-plane and omnidirectional
in H-plane.However, at higher frequencies, distortion occurs due to mutual coupling between the
meander line limbs and cross polarization effect.

43
 Figure 5.11: Surface Current Distribution at 1.18 GHz

It is shown that majority of the current is concentrated at the feed and inner portion of
mender line limb which indicates that directional behaviour of the antenna along the direction of
radiation.

44
 CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

A meander line antenna operating in the frequency band from 1.15-1.20 GHz has been
designed. The effects of various antenna parameters on its performance have been presented. It is
verified that the proposed antenna resonates at 1.18 GHz with -10 dB impedance bandwidth of 200
MHz. It has been shown that the antenna has figure of eight behaviour in E-plane and omnidirectional
in H-plane.

45
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