IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 46, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 1998

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A Novel Integrated Antenna for Millimeter-Wave Personal Communications Systems

K. Hettak, G. Delisle, and M. Boulmalf

Abstract This paper presents the design and experimental results of a coplanar waveguide (CPW) aperture-coupled patch antenna for the extremely high frequency (EHF) band around a center frequency of 37 GHz. The antenna is implemented on a high dielectric constant substrate ("r = 9:9), which is close to the dielectric constant of GaAs and demonstrates the feasibility of integration of such an antenna structure into monolithic circuits. The major advantage of this conguration is that the reverse side of the antenna can be used for the active and feed components. The antenna structure combines the advantages of CPW with the those of the aperture-coupled microstrip antenna and simplies the structure of the antenna by reducing the number of metallization level, from three down to two. In addition, this type of coupling is advantageous when applied to millimeter-wave monolithic phased arrays. A unique feed design eliminates the competition for surface space between the antenna elements and the feed network. In addition, the ground plane shields the antenna half-space from spurious radiation emitted by feed lines and active devices. Finally, aperture coupling avoids problems associated with probe feeds at millimeter-wave frequencies, such as complexity of construction and large probe self reactances. This new type of antenna opens the ways to a large number of a new possibilities such as active antennas for millimeter-wave personal communications using monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) on the same substrate and a combination of optical and radio transmission. Index Terms Coplanar waveguides, microstrip antennas.

Fig. 1. Layout of the test-patch antenna and feeder network.

I. INTRODUCTION The development of appropriate antennas and associated technology will be important to the success of millimeter-wave wireless personal communication systems. Research in these areas and also on the processes of indoor propagation has been carried out [1] with particular emphasis on integrating antennas with multifunction GaAs monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The choice between antenna and circuit type depends on many factors such as the intented application, the type of device being used and considerations involving unwanted radiation from the circuit elements and the signicance of substrate surface modes. As it is well known, planar antennas consisting of patches, dipoles or slots, fed by a microstrip transmission line, are extremely useful due to their low cost, light weight, and exibility of design. In general, a combination of slot and patch antennas lead to convenient geometries. Of these the most likely candidate for integration with GaAs MMICs is the coplanar waveguide (CPW) aperture-coupled patch antenna that uses a single substrate. Indeed, for components including active devices, in particular, MMICs, the popularity of CPW has increased signicantly in recent years because the advantages of CPW like wider bandwidth, smaller mutual coupling between two adjacent lines, and easier integration with solid-state active devices on one side of the planar substrate, thus avoiding via hole connections. Over the past few years, a considerable number of studies have been carried out on the linearly polarized antennas, loop antennas, and slot antennas [2], but only a few attempts have so far been made at realizing antenna patch fed by CPW in the millimeter-wave region. In light of this, considering
Manuscript received November 4, 1997; revised July 13, 1998. The authors are with the Personal Communication System Group, INRSTelecommunications, Ile des Soeurs, Quebec, H3E 1H6 Canada. Publisher Item Identier S 0018-926X(98)08904-2.

the recent development that shows that microstrip patch antennas can be coupled with CPW transmission lines [3][7] via a slot in the ground plane, a new structure of the printed antenna fed by CPW that conjugates the advantage of aperture-coupled microstrip antenna and the wide range of exibility is proposed using the innovation that uniplanar technology offers. Indeed, the patch antenna is an extremely useful conguration for millimeter-wave wireless applications. When the patch is excited by CPW, a CPW to slotline junction is required to ensure the antenna works at high efciency. The paper proposes the use of the CPW stub patterned on the center conductor to obtain optimum matching. It is important to note that the design of CPW coupled microstrip patch antenna with the CPW series stub within the center conductor leads to greater eld connement resulting in suppression of spurious radiation emitted by this stub and provides both low loss and longitudinal symmetry whose eliminates the need for air bridges. This arrangement provides additional degrees of freedom compared to classical topologies resulting in extremely compact conguration. The feasibility of integrating this novel antenna topology on high-dielectric constant substrate ("r = 9:9), which is close to the dielectric constant of GaAs in millimter wave region is also demonstrated. The measured results shows the usefulness of the proposed antenna conguration and the effectiveness of uniplanar technology both in terms of performance and cost. II. ANTENNA TOPOLOGY As the popularity of the CPW transmission line has increased signicantly in recent years, antenna elements that are suitable for CPW feed conguration have also become important. In light of this, design guidelines for the CPW-fed patch antenna is presented herein. The conguration of the proposed slot-coupled planar antenna is illustrated in Fig. 1. A rectangular microstrip patch is placed on one side of the substrate, while a slot fed by a coplanar line is arranged opposite to the patch in the ground plane on the other side of the substrate. A CPW stub patterned in the ground plane is used as matching network. Furthermore, the design of the aperture-coupled patch elements involves the following steps: rst, the dimensions of the antenna patch are determined by a cavity model [2] to be resonant at the operational frequency of 38 GHz. The side length of the squared patch is found to be 1.1 mm. The width of the aperture (slot) is chosen to be 0.1 mm. It has to be large enough to

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 46, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 1998

Fig. 2. Experimental results for CPW-fed microstrip antenna with CPW stub patterned in the center conductor.

enable good electromagnetic coupling through the slot. The length has been chosen to be less than s=2 (s is the wavelength in the slot) in order to get a low level of back radiation because the radiation due to the slot increases as its length Ls approaches s =2. For maximum coupling, the patch should be centered over the slot on one side and, on the other, the feed should be positioned perpendicular to the slot at its center. The tuning stub with a CPW open circuited stub patterned in the center conductor is used to tune the excess reactance of the slot-coupled patch [2]. The stub length is approximately 0.25 g . The length of the CPW opened stub is found to be 0.8 mm. The proposed antenna is optimzed using electromagnetic simulator (momentum tools from HewlettPackard). The antenna structure developed in the paper combines the advantages of CPW with the advantages of aperture-coupled microstrip antenna and simplies the structure of the antenna by reducing the number of metallization level, from three down to two, thereby making easier the integration of the active devices. The proposed feeding system has been experimentally investigated and the coupling between of a CPW feed line and radiating element is accomplished with slotline resonator. This type of coupling is advantageous when applied to millimeter-wave monolithic phased arrays. This feed design eliminates the competition for surface space between the antenna elements and the feed network. In addition, the ground plane shields the antenna half-space from spurious radiation emitted by feed lines and active devices. Finally, aperture coupling avoids problems associated with probe feeds at millimeter-wave frequencies, such as complexity of construction and large probe self-reactances. In the past, electromagnetic coupling was achieved through an aperture in the common ground plane separate the microstrip feed-line and patch-antenna circuits [2]. This required separate substrates, which led to more complex construction, heavier circuits, and difculty in MMIC implementation, which typically uses only one GaAs substrate.

most promising aspects of the new antenna consists in the capability of matching the input impedance with a compact CPW stub printed on the center conductor to get better performance in one hand and, on the other hand, the feasibility of integrating this antenna structure on high-dielectric constant substrate "r = 9:9, which is close to the dielectric constant of GaAs. IV. CONCLUSION Printed active antennas is a particularly exciting topic, which opens new horizons for integrated systems. The proposed antenna demonstrates the efciency of the approach based upon CPW series stub within a center conductor in order to get better performance and compactness. It has been shown that the use of CPW series stub printed on the center conductor is potentially effective to ensure the antenna works at high efciency in millimeter waves. In addition, several other advantages can be gained from this kind of antenna as pointed out in the introduction. The measured results demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed antenna conguration for application in the eld of personal communications as a phasedarray antenna using MMICs with microwave device. This design is straightforward to implement in MMIC and MIC circuits and allow for easy insertion of printed antennas for a multitude of applications where a large number of systems such as short-range communications for people and vehicles as well as short-range millimetric sensors will become possible. REFERENCES
[1] L. Talbi and G. Delisle, Experimental characterization of EHF multipath indoor radio channels, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 14, pp. 431440, Apr. 1996. [2] D. M. Pozar, Microstrip AntennasThe Analysis and Design of Microstrip Antennas and Arrays. New York: IEEE Press, 1995. [3] W. Menzel and W. Grabher, A microstrip patch antenna with coplanar feed line, IEEE Microwave Guided Wave Lett., vol. 1, pp. 340342, Nov. 1991. [4] R. L. Smith and J. T. Williams, Coplanar waveguide feed for microstrip patch antennas, Electron. Lett., vol. 28, pp. 22722274, Dec. 1992. [5] S. M. Deng, M. D. Wu, and P. Hsu, Analysis of coplanar waveguidefed microstrip antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 43, pp. 734737, July 1995. [6] L. Giauffret, J. Laheurte, and A. Papiernik, Study of various shapes of the coupling slot in CPW-fed microstrip antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 642647, Apr. 1996. [7] J. C. Cheng, N. I. Dib, and L. P. B. Katehi, Theoretical modeling of cavity-backed patch antennas using a hybrid technique, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 43, pp. 10031013, Sept. 1995.

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The circuit was implemented on high-dielectric constant substrate "r = 9:9, h = 0:254 mm and to demonstrate the feasibility of integrating this antenna structure into monolithic circuits. The novel CPW-fed patch antenna operates at 36.84 GHz. The measured return loss and normalized input impedance as a function of the frequency of this structure are shown in Fig. 2. A fairly good matching is obtained, namely S11 = 042 dB at f1 = 36:84 GHz. The bandwidth at the resonance frequency is around 1 GHz for VSWR < 2. One of the