JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 14, ISSUE 1, MAY 2012 1

Design of Dual Feed Dual Polarization Printed Slot Antenna

A.R. Mallahzadeh and M.H. Amini
Abstract A dual polarized printed slot antenna is proposed. By means of dual feed one in the form of coplanar waveguide (CPW) and another microstrip transmission line, dual orthogonal linear polarizations are achieved. The radiator consists of a square ring patch located on the upper surface of a substrate. The patch is electromagnetically exited through the microstrip feed line for vertical polarization and CPW feed for horizontal one. To have a bidirectional radiation pattern, the ground plane is defected by a square slot. The antenna is designed to cover 2.4 GHz band that is suitable for wireless local area network. The reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna is simulated and good results is achieved. Far field radiation pattern of the antenna is also simulated and symmetrical radiation patterns is obtained through this design. The simulation results are carried out by commercially available software package HFSS. Index Terms Coplanar waveguide, Orthogonal, Polarization, Ring slot, Bidirectional.

1 INTRODUCTION
rinted antennas with Polarization diversity have attracted many attentions over the past few years. A phenomenon every communication system may deal with is multipath fading. Through polarization diversity this fading can be improved. Dual polarized antennas can also increase the channel capacity. A quadric-polarization switchable microstrip antenna is reported in [1], where by two PIN diodes, the polarization is switched among LHCP, RHCP, and two orthogonal linear polarizations. In [2] a compact U-slot microstrip patch antenna with recon- figurable polarization is proposed. PIN diodes are properly positioned to change the length of the U-slot arms, which causes polarization diversity. A CPW-fed square slot antenna is also proposed in [3]. By using two PIN diodes the polarization is switchable between LHCP and RHCP. Several dual feed designs providing polariza- tion diversity have been designed, and their characteris- tics were published in recent papers [4][11]. In [4] by means of two folded dipoles, two orthogonal polariza- tions is provided. However the antenna has a wide bandwidth but it has a large dimensions. By means of two orthogonal feeds with spacial structures, The sense of polarization is varied between circular and linear polari- zations [5]. But the feeding mechanism are somewhat complex. A tripolarization antenna was

Fig 1. The geometry of the proposed antenna.

The authors are with the Electrical and Electronic Engineering department at Shahed University, Tehran, IRAN.

proposed in [6], but isolations between some ports were not sufficient and were hence unacceptable in high- performance applications. In resent research, several techniques have been published in [7][9] to improve iso- lations in similar antenna applications. Square patch an- tennas fed by a pair of coupled microstrip lines through a pair of crossed slots to excite two orthogonal modes for dual polarization were reported [7]. An air bridge, which is utilized in the cross part of two feedings for high isola- tion, was also proposed in [7], [8]. Different feed mecha- nisms were used in [9] for high input isolation. It should be emphasized that in much of the earlier work [7][9], dual feeding structures were used to excite dual- polarization, thus making the feed structure quite com-

Fig. 2. The current distribution over surface of the square ring. (a) feed #1 is active (b) feed #2 is active.

plex. Even the use of the air bridge in [7] and [8] brought insertion loss and occupied more space. In order to sim- plify the feeding structure and save space, a coplanar waveguide (CPW) approach, which supports two orthog- onal modes, was adopted in [10]. Two different radiators were utilized, one was a monopole and the other was an equivalent dipole. The isolation reported in this paper was -15 dB, which is sufficiently acceptable in some prac- tical applications. In[11] the authors were proposed a du- al polarized loop antenna. Two orthogonal linear polari- zations were excited by one CPW feed structure, but the overall size of the antenna is 4053 mm2 that is large. It is well-known that antennas with dual polarizations, wide bandwidth, good port isolation, and compact dimension are highly desirable for modern wireless communication applications. All above technics are somewhat complicat- ed and makes their dimentions relatively large. In this paper we introduce a dual polarized antenna with an easy structure which provides good isolation and small dimentions. The antenna consists of a square ring patch electromagnetically fed through two orthogonal feeds: CPW and transmission line. The CPW structure provides horizontal polarization while the microstrip line can ex- cite vertical polarization. The antenna operates over 2.4- 2.44 GHz that is suitable for wireless local area networks (WLANs). The simulation results are carried out by commercially available software package HFSS.

upper surface of the substrate. The ring is fed through two orthogonal feeds, one is microstrip line and another coplanar waveguide (CPW). The transmission line can excite vertical polarization while with CPW feed horizon- tal polarization can be achieved. In order to assess the performance of antenna, we initially assume that the feed #1 is active. Microstrip feed line is able to transmit the energy from the feeding point to the lines end without approximately any losses. As we know, a microstrip transmission line has fringe fields at its edges. The effect of these fringe fields on the square-ring would excite two vertical arms. In effect, the square-ring is fed electromag- netically from transmission line. Fig. 2a, in which the ex- citement of two vertical arms is obvious, shows the distri- bution of current flow on the rings surface. This type of current flow causes vertical polarization to be created. To excite the ring effectively, we must have:

Lpatch=

2 ANTENNA DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed dual polar- ized antenna. The antenna is printed on FR4 substrate with a size of 3233 mm2, thickness of 1mm and relative permitivity of 4.4 with loss tangent of 0.02. The radiating element consists of a square ring-patch located on the

(1) ! where Lpatch is the total length of the ring and eff is effec- tive wavelength of the structure. Another polarization is excited as the ring is fed through CPW. In this case, similar to what was said about microstrip feed line, the effects of fringe fields of the feed line on the square-ring results that this polarization gets excited. In this situation, by generation of a strong current flow in two horizontal arms, the vertical polarization is obtained. In order to excite horizontal polarization ap- propriately, as mentioned above, the length for the patch must be in accordance with equation (1). Fig. 2b indicates the current distribution over surface of the ring. It can be found from this figure that the horizontal polarization is excited carefully. In order to create a bi-directional pat- tern, a square slot should be created in the ground plane. The absence of this slot would lead radiation pattern be- comes uni-directional. It is worth mentioning that over expansion of the surface of this slot would weaken the current flow over vertical arms as well as horizontal arms

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2012 JOT www.journaloftelecommunications.co.uk

(a) Fig. 3. (a) The impact of parameter S1 on isolation and reflection coefficient and (b) that for parameter L4. (b)

of the ring; thereby, the performance of the antenna would be diminished. Matching of port 1 depends on the value of parameter S1. In fact, the smaller this parameter is, the bigger the energy amount coupled from transmis- sion line to the patch will be which is followed by the in- tensification of current flow on the vertical arms of the patch. Moreover, this parameter determines the isolation between two ports so as its increase causes the isolation improvement. Accordingly, in order to achieve a good reflection coefficient as well as a reasonable isolation, it is required to decide an optimal amount for the parameter S1. Matching of port 2 is also possible by means of L4 length. Fig. 3 shows the impact of parameters L4 and S1 changes. The optimum amounts of these parameters are listed in Table 1. Fig. 4 depicted the reflection coefficient of the structure. As shown in this figure, the antenna has reflection coefficient of about -24 dB and-27 dB at center frequency of 2.44 GHZ for port #1 and#2 respectively. It is necessary to mention that the length of horizontal and vertical arms of the patch are optimal for the desirable resonance frequency for both ports, thus the length of the vertical arms has become slightly more than the horizon- tal one and the mentioned loop looks rather rectangular. In Fig. 5 the normalized simulated far field radiation pat- terns of the antenna are shown. The half power beam widths for each feed are about 70 degrees and 88 degrees in the E-plane (feed #1) and H-plane (feed #2) respective- ly. It is apparently that good omnidirectional patterns is obtained through this design.

TABLE 1 DESIGN SIZE OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

Parameter Value (mm) Parameter Value (degree) Parameter Value (mm)

L1 33 L3 16 W3 16

L2 30 32 53 S1 .2

L3 20 W2 2

Fig. 4. Reflection coefficient of the proposed dual feed antenna.

(a) Fig. 5. Far field radiation pattern of the antenna. (a) vertical pol. and (b) horizontal pol.

(b)

CONCLUSION

A dual feed, dual polarization printed antenna is pro- posed. The radiator element consists of a square ring- patch located on the upper surface of FR4 substrate. The ring is fed by two orthogonal feeds: CPW and microstrip transmission line. Two orthogonal linear polarizations are excited and agreeable radiation patterns are obtained through this design. The isolation between two ports is about -19 dB at 2.44 GHz. The antenna has the reflection coefficient of about -24 dB and -27 dB at center frequency for vertical and horizontal polarizations respectively.

signer. His research interests include printed antennas and leakywave structures, slotted waveguide antennas and multiband radiators.

REFERENCES
[1] R.-H. Chen and J.-S. Row, Single-fed microstrip patch antenna with switchable polarization, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 922926, Apr. 2008. [2] Pei-Yuan Qin, Andrew R. Weily, Y. Jay Guo, and Chang-Hong Liang, Polarization Reconfigurable U-Slot Patch Antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 10, Oct 2009. [3] Y. B. Chen, Y. C. Jiao, and F. S. Zhang, Polarization reconfigu- rable CPW-fed square slot antenna using pin diodes, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 49, pp. 12331236, Jun. 2007. [4] S. Daoyi, J. J. Qian, Y. Hua, and D. Fu, A novel broadband polarization diversity antenna using a cross-pair of folded di- poles, IEEEAntennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 4, pp. 433435, 2005. [5] H. Zhong, Z. Zhang, W. Chen, Z. Feng, and M. F. Iskander, A tripolarization antenna fed by proximity coupling and probe, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 465467, 2009. [6] P. Mousavi, Multiband multipolarization integrated monopole slots antenna for vehicular telematics applications, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 8, pp. 31233127, Aug 2011. [7] M. Barba, A high-isolation, wideband and dual-linear polari- zation patch antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 5, pp. 14721476, May 2008. [8] K.-M. Mak, H. Wong, and K.-M. Luk, A shorted bowtie patch antenna with a cross dipole for dual polarization, IEEE Anten- nas wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 126129, 2007. [9] Y.-X. Guo, K.-M. Luk, and K.-F. Lee, Broadband dual polariza- tion patch element for cellular-phone base stations, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 251253, Feb. 2002. [10] X. Wang, W. Chen, Z. Feng, and H. Zhang, Compact dual- polarized antenna combining printed monopole and half-slot antenna for MIMO applications, in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., Charleston, SC, 2009, pp. 14. [11] Y. Li, Z. Zhang, Z. Feng, and M. F. Iskander, Dual-mode loop antenna with compact feed for polarization diversity, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 9598, 2011. A. R. Mallahzadeh received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1999 and the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, in 2006. He is a member of academic staff, Faculty of Engineering, Shahed University, Tehran. He has participated in many projects relative to antenna design, which resulted in fabricating different types of antennas for various companies. Also, he is interested in numerical modeling and microwaves. M. H. Amini is a student in communication engineering from Shahed University, Tehran, Iran. He also has experience as an antenna de-