369

Design of Beam Steering Antenna for ISM Band III

using Branch Line Coupler
Amit Abhishek1 , Ritesh Kr. Badhai2 , and Priyadarshi Suraj3
1,2,3 Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology
Patna Campus, Patna 800014, India
1 [email protected] 2 [email protected] 3 [email protected]

Abstract—In this paper a single band beam steering antenna is

designed using branch line coupler and it obeys the property
of phase shifting of the radiation pattern in both positive and
negative direction. A microstrip patch antenna is designed at
Industrial Scientific and Medical ISM Band III (24 GHz) which is
an unlicensed band and at the same resonance frequency coupler
is also designed using Roger RT-Duroid 5880 substrate having
relative permittivity (r ) of 2.2 and its dissipation factor (tan) is
0.0009. After feeding the antennas in an array of two antennas at
output ports of coupler the phase of the beam is varying to ± 50◦
after feeding excitation at port 1 and port 2 simultaneously. All
design and simulations have performed in HFSS software tools.
Index Terms—Beam Steering, Branch Line Coupler (BLC),
Antenna Array, ISM Band III.
Fig. 1. Designed antenna for ISM Band III.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Beam steering is all about changing the pattern of the metalines for discerning the LP beam steering antenna and
beam at the respective phase angle. It is achieved by dif- CP beam steering antenna [7]. Without using phase shifter
ferent methods such as by using a phase shifter method and beam steering is also possible by using three-element phase
switching it by using PIN diode [1], by using branch line array antenna, the center or driven patch is fed by an RF
coupler beam forming network i.e. BFN [2] is designed and source and two neighboring antennas are excited through the
assigning feed at input port one by one and phase is vary- mutual coupling from the center antenna [8]. Silicon based
ing at some extent angle. The Beam also steer mechanically electronic integrated circuits (EICs), Photonic integrated cir-
by implementing drivers and motors in the system which cuits (PICs) and antenna-on-chip (AoC) is another advanced
steers the antenna and beam starts steering respectively in process involves in beam-steering [9].
earlier days. Now we design the system which steers the In this paper, we design a rectangular microstrip
beam electronically where driver elements are used to steer the antenna which operates at 24 GHz and a Branch Line Coupler
beam. A new approach to create beam steering for the circu- at the same band. Basically, we need to steer the beam so
larly polarized (CP) antenna array without phase-shift circuits we create a system in which the designed antenna is feed at
is recommended [3]. It is found that in a spherical coordi- the output ports of the coupler and after simulation by giving
nate system (r, θ , ϕ), for any constant r and θ , as ϕ varies excitation at the input port of coupler pattern at different phase
from 0 to 2π , the phase of the CP antenna’s co-polarized is obtained. Beam steer antenna is broadly used in a current
far field will progress linearly by 2π , and the magnitude is communication network such as Radar network, point to point
constant [3]. All-metal beam steering antenna founded on the or multipoint networks and as well as in satellite communi-
concept of Risley prism is presented in this communication. cation. This beam steering antenna is highly efficient for the
The antenna is composed of a feed antenna and two metal ISM Band III applications.
lenses. A Mechanically rotate two lenses along the same axis
independently can steer the radiation beam in both azimuth
and elevation planes [4]. If we design an antenna for a band II. A NTENNA D ESIGN
and by changing the size of the patch at different frequencies As the defined band is ISM band III i.e. 24 GHz and at
it will operate, so we steer the beam by this method also [5]. that frequency, we proposed an antenna which is a rectangular
The circular array beam steering scheme using Orbital Angular microstrip patch antenna having feed line and its dimension is
Momentum (OAM) to resolve the different challenges by pro- calculated at 50 ohm impedance value.
viding means to steer an axial beam using RF phase-shifters The proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1.with its simulated
and RF hybrid couplers [6].The beam is also steered by using response in Fig. 2. The detailed dimension of the proposed
Linear Polarized (LP) metalines and Circular Polarized (CP) antenna parameters are tabulated Table I. The radiation pattern

978-1-5386-9279-0/19/$31.00 2019
c IEEE
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TABLE I
A NTENNA PARAMETERS

Fig. 5. The basic structure of branch line coupler.

Fig. 2. Simulated response of the designed antenna.

Fig. 6. Designed Branch Line Coupler for ISM Band III.

Fig. 3. Radiation Pattern for the designed antenna.

TABLE II
C OUPLER PARAMETERS

Fig. 7. Phase Vs Freq response at port 2 and port 3.

for the designed antenna is shown in Fig. 3 at phi = 0 deg. III. B RANCH L INE C OUPLER D ESIGN
The reflection coefficient (|S11|) for the designed antenna is Branch Line Coupler is also called the quadrature coupler
-46.07 dB and total dimension of the antenna is 5.74mm × and having one input port, two output port, and an isolated
3.9mm (L × W) and designed at the height of 0.79 mm using port as shown in Fig. 4. As branch line coupler has two out-
Roger RT-Duroid 5880substrate. The peak Gain of the single put ports and there is a phase shift of 90◦ so, it is used to shift
feed antenna is 7 dB and beamwidth of single feed antenna is the phase of the beam at some angle. The Coupler is designed
58.45◦ at -3dB down. at the ISM Band III for proper matching with antenna and it
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Fig. 9. System design for steering the Beam.

(a)

Fig. 10. Simulated response for port 1 and port 2.

(b)
in Fig. 7(b) and for 24 GHz |S21| and|S31| are totally dif-
Fig. 8. (a) Simulated response at 9 GHz. (b) Simulated response at 24 GHz.
ferent from the simulated response for 9 GHz and it happens
because the higher frequency is putting at a lower frequency
designed coupler.

is shown in Fig. 5. The parametric table for this coupler is

shown in Table II and all values derive at 50 ohm character- IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
istic impedance (Z0 ) value. The value that we calculated for The aim is to steer the lobe at some angle, to overwhelm
the performed mode of Coupler design for 9 GHz which also this a single band beam steering antenna is designed com-
resonate of higher order mode at 24 GHz because Coupler posed of a branch line coupler and two similar microstrip patch
having large Bandwidth (B.W) so we design any coupler at antenna. Both antenna are feed at distance of Z (Z = λ/2 +
lower band and make it also to resonate at a higher frequency. 0.5 mm + λ/4) which posses a microstrip line configuration
The reason to do so because when we calculate the values derived at 50ohm characteristic impedance with the coupler
of arms of the coupler at 24 GHz it becomes very small and it is shown in Fig. 9.
and there is an overlap between the arms. We simulate the When we excite the voltage at the input port 1 and
Coupler at 9 GHz and its simulated result in Fig. 8(a) and input port 2 simultaneously to the proposed beam-steering
after switching it to 24 GHz the simulated result is shown in antenna the simulated response of reflection coefficient (|S11|)
Fig. 8 (b). The phase shift occurs at output ports i.e. Port 2 and is shown in Fig. 10. The lobes of the radiation pattern for
port 3 and simulated phase changes is shown in Fig. 7 with the proposed antenna is conformed at 0◦ and +50◦ while
|S21| for port 2 and |S31| for port 3 respectively. The sim- exciting the port 1 and terminating port 2. If we invert the
ulated response for the same coupler at 9 GHz and 24 GHz process means exciting port 2 and terminating port 1 the
is not similar, the response of coupler at 9 GHz obeys the lobes conforms at 0◦ and -50◦ . The resultant radiation pat-
defined characteristic of the coupler means at output ports tern after exciting port 1 and port 2 is shown in Fig. 11(a)
transmission coefficient is same as |S21| and |S31| as shown and Fig. 11(b) respectively. The peak gain of the antenna is
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V. C ONCLUSION
The paper presented the design and simulation of a rect-
angular patch antenna for ISM Band III and at same band,
Branch Line Coupler is also designed for feed purpose. The
good impedance matching is observed on resonance band
i.e. 24 GHz with a reflection coefficient of -46.04 dB with
a peak gain of 7 dB. The Branch Line Coupler shows the
good reflection and transmission coefficient at a band of
interest. By switching feed at the input of the Branch Line
Coupler antenna shows the Beam Steering at ±50◦ . The gain
of the antenna after feeding at the output port and exciting
the port 1 and port 2 simultaneously is 6.3 dB. Beam shift-
ing is directly applicable in the telecommunication system
(a) and satellite communication. we can easily steer the beam at
a respected angle.

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