Design of Beam Steering Antenna for ISM Band III

Using Corporate Feed Network

Amit Abhishek1, Ankur Utsav2, Ritesh Kr. Badhai3, P. Suraj4
1,2,3,4
Department of Electronics and Communication
Birla Institute of Technology, Patna Campus - 800014, India
1
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] 4
[email protected]

Abstract— In this paper a single band beam steering CP beam steering antenna [7]. Without using phase shifter
antenna is designed using corporate feed network and feed this beam steering is also possible by using three-element phase
network at the output ports of the branch line coupler and it array antenna, the center or driven patch is fed by an RF
obeys the property of phase shifting of the radiation pattern in source and two neighboring antennas are excited through the
both positive and negative direction. A microstrip patch
mutual coupling from the center antenna [8]. Silicon based
antenna is designed at Industrial Scientific and Medical ISM
Band III (24 GHz) which is an unlicensed band and at the same electronic integrated circuits (EICs), Photonic integrated
resonance frequency coupler is also designed using Roger RT- circuits (PICs) and antenna-on-chip (AoC) is another
Duroid 5880 substrate having relative permittivity (єr) of 2.2 advanced process involves in beam-steering [9].
and its dissipation factor (tan∆) is 0.0009. After feeding the
corporate feed network at output ports of coupler the phase of In this paper, we design a rectangular microstrip antenna
the beam is varying to ± 55° after feeding excitation at port 1 which operates at 24 GHz and a Branch Line Coupler at the
and port 2 simultaneously. All design and simulations have same band. Basically, we need to steer the beam so we
performed in HFSS software tools. design a beam forming network. The designed antenna is
Keywords— Beam Steering, Corporate Feed Network,
used to form a corporate feed network and at the output
Branch Line Coupler (BLC), Antenna Array, ISM Band III. ports of the coupler is feeded. Different phase is obtained by
exciting each port alternatively. Beam steer antenna is
broadly used in a current communication network such as
I. INTRODUCTION Radar network, point to point or multipoint networks and as
well as in satellite communication. This beam steering
Beam steering is all about changing the pattern of the beam antenna is highly efficient for the ISM Band III applications.
at the respective phase angle. It is achieved by different
methods such as by using a phase shifter method and
switching it by using PIN diode[1], by using branch line II. ANTENNA DESIGN
coupler beam forming network i.e. BFN [2] is designed and As the defined band is ISM band III i.e. 24 GHz and at that
assigning feed at input port one by one and phase is varying frequency, we proposed an antenna which is a rectangular
at some extent angle. The Beam also steer mechanically by microstrip patch antenna having feed line and its dimension
implementing drivers and motors in the system which steers is calculated at 50 ohm impedance value.
the antenna and beam starts steering respectively in earlier
days. Now we design the system which steers the beam
electronically where driver elements are used to steer the
beam. A new approach to create beam steering for the
circularly polarized (CP) antenna array without phase-shift
circuits is recommended [3]. It is found that in a spherical
coordinate system (r, θ, φ), for any constant r and θ, as φ
varies from 0 to 2π, the phase of the CP antenna’s co-
polarized far field will progress linearly by 2π, and the
magnitude is constant [3]. All-metal beam steering antenna
founded on the concept of Risley prism is presented in this
communication. The antenna is composed of a feed antenna
and two metal lenses. A Mechanically rotate two lenses
along the same axis independently can steer the radiation Fig. 1. Designed antenna for ISM Band III
beam in both azimuth and elevation planes [4]. If we design The proposed antenna is shown in Fig 1.with its simulated
an antenna for a band and by changing the size of the patch response in Fig 2. The detailed dimension of the proposed
at different frequencies it will operate, so we steer the beam antenna parameters are tabulated Table I. The radiation
by this method also [5]. The circular array beam steering pattern for the designed antenna is shown in Fig.3 at phi =0
scheme using Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) to deg. The reflection coefficient (│S11│) for the designed
resolve the different challenges by providing means to steer antenna is -46.07 dB and total dimension of the antenna is
an axial beam using RF phase-shifters and RF hybrid 5.74mm ˟ 3.9mm (L ˟ W) and designed at the height of 0.79
couplers [6].The beam is also steered by using Linear mm using Roger RT-Duroid 5880substrate. The peak Gain
Polarized (LP) metalines and Circular Polarized (CP)
metalines for discerning the LP beam steering antenna and

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2019)
IEEE Conference Record # 45898; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-1261-9

TABLE I. ANTENNA PARAMETERS GHz it becomes very small and there is an overlap between
the arms. We simulate the Coupler at 9 GHz and its
Parameter Values
simulated result in Fig. 8(a) and after switching it to 24 GHz
the
Pl 3.55mm
Pw 3.9mm
Fl 2.19mm
Fw 0.5mm

of the single feed antenna is 7 dB and beamwidth of single

feed antenna is 58.45° at -3dB down.

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.

.
simulated result is shown in Fig. 8 (b). The phase shift
Fig. 3. Radiation Pattern for the designed antenna occurs at output ports i.e. Port 2 and port 3 and simulated
phase changes is shown in fig. 7 with │S21│ for port 2 and
│S31│ for port 3 respectively. The simulated response for
the same coupler at 9 GHz and 24 GHz is not similar, the
III. BRANCH LINE COUPLER DESIGN response of coupler at 9 GHz obeys the defined
Branch Line Coupler is also called the quadrature coupler characteristic of the coupler means at output ports
and having one input port, two output port, and an isolated transmission coefficient is same as │S21│ and │S31│ as
port as shown in Fig. 4. As branch line coupler has two shown in Fig. 7(b) and for 24 GHz │S21│ and│S31│ are
output ports and there is a phase shift of 90° so, it is used to totally different from the simulated response for 9 GHz and
shift the phase of the beam at some angle. The Coupler is it happens because the higher frequency is putting at a lower
designed at the ISM Band III for proper matching with frequency designed coupler.
antenna and it is shown in Fig. 5. The parametric table for
this coupler is shown in Table II and all values derive at 50
ohm characteristic impedance (Z0) value. The value that we
calculated for the performed mode of Coupler design for 9
GHz which also resonate of higher order mode at 24 GHz
because Coupler having large Bandwidth (B.W) so we
design any coupler at lower band and make it also to
resonate at a higher frequency. The reason to do so because
when we calculate the values of arms of the coupler at 24

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Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2019)
IEEE Conference Record # 45898; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-1261-9

TABLE II. COUPLER PARAMETERS IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

By using branch line coupler and 2×4 corporate feed
Parameter Values
networks a beam forming network is designed with different
Length [L1] (Z0= 50Ω) 4.49mm
feed lines. At Z0=50Ω a feed line is designed and another
Width [W1] (Z0= 50 Ω) 2.34mm one is designed at Z0=70.7Ω.The designed beam forming
Length [L2] (Z0/√2 =35.35Ω) 4.41mm network is shown in fig.9. At port 1 excitation is given and
Width [W2] (Z0/√2 =35.35Ω) 3.81mm

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

Fig. 9. Beam forming network design

terminating the port 2 the radiation pattern is formed at

+55°. After exciting port 2 and terminating port 1 the beam
is forming at -55°. The simulated reflection coefficient for
each port is similar and it is shown in fig.10. The simulated
value of S11 is -14.86dB for port 1 and port 2 respectively.
The single microstrip antenna can also feed at the output
ports and beam-steering may occur but the gain of the
antenna is also desirable. The simulated response at each
port is not wide means bandwidth is narrow. The purpose to
design this beam forming network is to increase the antenna
gain and increase the bandwidth. Without corporate feed
network antenna’s peak gain is 7dB but with corporate feed
network antenna’s peak gain is 11 dB. The radiation pattern
at port 1 is shown in fig.11 (a) and at port 2 is shown in
Fig. 8 (a). Simulated response at 9 GHz. fig.11 (b).

.
Fig. 8 (b). Simulated response at 24

GHz Fig.10. Simulated reflection Coefficient at each port

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2019)
IEEE Conference Record # 45898; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-1261-9

Fig. 11 (a). Radiation pattern at port 1

Fig.12(a). Current density distribution at port 1

Fig.11(b). Radiation pattern at port 2

The current density distribution at each port is observed at

designed network. For port 1 simulated response of current
distribution is shown in fig. 12(a) and for port 2 is fig. 12(b).
The current density distribution shows the intensity of
current flowing from excited port to the feeded antennas. At Fig.12(b). Current density distribution at port 2
each port the intensity of current is good and it shows the
distributed power in the designed beam forming network.

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IEEE Conference Record # 45898; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-1261-9

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