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2016 URSI Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference

August 21-25, 2016 / Seoul, Korea

Measurement
Gain and Analysis
Enhancement of Weather
of Microstrip Phenomena
Grid Array Antenna
with
forK-Band Rain Radar
5G Applications
1 3,4
W.A.W. Muhamad, 2R. Ngah M.F. Jamlos, 5P. J. Soh, 6H. Lago
1,2 Jun-Hyeong Park Ki-Bok Kong3,5,6 Seong-Ook Park
Wireless Communication Centre (WCC), Advanced Communication Engineering Centre
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Development team Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, (ACE),
KAIST Kukdong Telecom KAIST
DaeJeon, Republic
Skudai, Johor.
of Korea
School of Computer & Communication
Nonsan, Republic of Korea
Engineering,
DaeJeon, Republic of Korea
1
gongchan_89@yahoo.com
bdsfh0820@kaist.ac.kr Kbkong@kdtinc.co.kr 4 Universiti Malaysia Perlis.
soparky@kaist.ac.kr
2
razalin@fke.utm.my Faculty of Mechanical Engineering,
Universiti Malaysia Pahang,
Abstract—To overcome blind spots of an ordinary weather wall exists between the Pekan, Malaysia.
transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx)
radar which scans horizontally at a high altitude, a weather 3,4
antennas to improve isolation between them. With these
mohdfaizaljamlos@gmail.com
radar which operates vertically, so called an atmospheric profiler, methods, leakage power
5 between Tx and Rx could be reduced.
pjsoh@unimap.edu.my
is needed. In this paper, a K-band radar for observing rainfall Fig. 1 shows manufactured
6 antennas and the separation wall.
vertically is introduced, and measurement results of rainfall are herwansyahlago@yahoo.com
shown and discussed. For better performance of the atmospheric
B. Design of Tranceiver
profiler, the radar which has high resolution even with low
Abstract—
transmitted A single
power patch microstrip
is designed. grid array
With this radar, antenna
a melting layer is Fig. 2 array
Grid shows antenna
a block diagram
consists ofcombination
the K-band rain of radar.
many
presented.
detected andThe
someproposed antenna
results that is designed inofrectangular
show characteristics the meting Reference signals for all PLLs in the system
rectangular loop grid cells. In this paper, the grid cells and clock signals
are
diamond
layer shape withwell.
are measured dimension of 34 mm x 35 mm in width and for every digital
rectangular in shape chip
andinformed
basebandby a are pairgenerated
of long and by short
four
length respectively. Rogers 5880 with a low relative permittivity frequency synthesizers. In the Tx baseband module, a field
sides, see Fig.1.
of 2.2 is used as substrate
Keywords—K-band; with therain
FMCW; thickness
radar;of low
0.508transmitted
mm. The programmable gate array (FPGA) controls a direct digital
proposed
power; highmicrostrip
resolution;grid arraymelting
rainfall; antenna successfully enhanced
layer synthesizer (DDS) to generate an FMCW signal which
the antenna gain up to 11.32 dBi compared to existing silicon decreases with time (down-chirp) and has aGrid center frequency
dioxide antenna, 2.99 dBi and 10.35 dBi for existing stacked
short side ,s
I. INTRODUCTION of 670 MHz. The sweep bandwidth is 50 MHz which gives the
patch antenna arrays. The reflection coefficient, S11 is -24.08 dB high range resolution of 3 m. Considering the cost, 2.4 GHz
A weather
at frequency radar With
of 28 GHz. usually
ease of measures meteorological
fabrication and low-profile, signal used as a reference Grid clock input
conditions
the proposed ofantenna
over a iswide area atbe
potentially a implemented
high altitude.inBecause
future 5Git long side, of
l the DDS is split and
used for a local oscillator (LO). the FMCW signal is
observes weather phenomena in the area, it is mainly used for
applications. Fig.1. Rectangular
transmitted toward loop unit cell.with the power of only 100 mW.
raindrops
weather forecasting. However, blind spots exist because an BeatThe frequency which hasl isdata of the asrange and the radial
Keywords—microstrip
ordinary grid horizontally,
weather radar scans array antenna;
whichrogers;
results 5G
in long side length, function a transmission line
application. velocity
while short side, s is a transmission line and applied
of raindrops is carried by 60 MHz and radiator.toThe the
difficulties in obtaining information on rainfall at higher and input of the
lower altitudes than the specific altitude. Therefore, a weather short side is Rxablebaseband
to provide module.
a phaseIndelay
the Rx of baseband module,
360˚ at resonance
quadrature
to ensure alldemodulation is performed
the radiation elements by a [9].
are in-phase digital down
radar that covers the blind spots is required.
I. INTRODUCTION converter (DDC). Thus, detectable range can be doubled than
Microstrip
A weathergrid array
radar thatantenna
scansisvertically
proposed by Contisolve
could et. al.the
in 28 Two
usual. GHz Dimensional-Fast
band which is within rangeTransform
Fourier of 21.65 GHz to 29.5
(2D-FFT) is
1981 as This
problem. a broadside beam radar,
kind of weather antenna with high
so called gain [1].
an atmospheric GHz is allocated for the applications
performed by two FPGAs. Because the 2D FFT is performed in UWB radar and
However,points
profiler, the initial
towards publication
the sky and on observes
the grid meteorological
array antenna communication
with 1024 beat systems
signals, the[10].radar
Thiscan frequency bandresolution
have high also can be of
presented byaccording
conditions Kraus et al. to [2]
thein height
1964 but hasAlso,
[1]. not received
becausemuch the usedradial
the for future
velocity. fifthFinally,
generation
data of(5G) [11]. Several
raindrops types of
are transferred to
attention. But,profiler
atmospheric in early 1990s,operates
usually the gridcontinuously
array antennaatobtained
a fixed aantennas
PC withhave localbeen
LANreported
via theworking
an UDPinprotocol.
these bands.
TABLEFor I.
numerousitattention
position, by researchers
could catch the suddendue to itsoflow
change profile,inhigh
weather the example,
shows mainAlina et. al. of
specification presented
the system. a Composite Right/Left
in gain,area.
specific and easy to fabricate [1-9]. For example, the Handed (CRLH) antenna operating at 28 GHz. Silicone
investigation on functioning microstrip grid array antenna with dielectric substrate is used to achieve micro-sized antenna
In this of
technique paper, K-band rain radar
integral-equation momentwhich has low
in 1993 transmitted
is reported by with gain of 2.99 dBi [12]. Another work on LTCC substrate
power and high resolutions
Hildebrand and McNamara [3]. of the range and the velocity is using a 2x2 stacked patch antenna array attained a realized
introduced. The frequency modulated continuous wave gain of 10.35 dBi [13]. It is observed that those antenna
Furthermore,
(FMCW) technique H. is
Nakano
used toandachieve
his colleagues have been
high sensitivity and structures are complex in fabrication process, besides having
involvedthein cost
reduce designing
of thevarieties
system. ofIngrid array meteorological
addition, antennas since low radiation efficiencies.
early 1990s
results until 2000sReflectivity,
are discussed. [4-8]. For instance, in 1997,
a fall speed ofH.raindrops
Nakano
withDoppler
and T. Kawano investigated
spectrum measured the radiation characteristics
when it rained when
are described, Therefore, this paper proposed a single patch microstrip
the feeder
and port is of
characteristics fedthe
from the center
melting port
layer are of the as
analyzed grid array
well. grid array antenna for 28 GHz applications with significant
antenna [4]. Then in 1999, they explored the radiation enhancement on gain and simple fabrication. This paper is
characteristic of grid array antennas [6], and in year of 2000, organized as follows. Section II describes the antenna design
II. DEVELOPMENT OF K-BAND RAIN RADAR SYSTEM
they clarified that the radiation characteristics of cross mesh and its initial calculation. Results and discussion is presented
array antenna are based on current distribution in order to in Section III and finally the conclusion in Section IV.
A. Antenna
investigate a dual linearly-polarized waves [7]. Fig. 1. Manufactured antenna and separation wall.
To suppress side-lobe levels and increase an antenna gain,
offset dual reflector antennas are used [2]. Also, separation

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1 978-1-4673-8801-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
II. SINGLE PATCH MICROSTRIP GRID ARRAY ANTENNA
Fig. 2(a) and 2(b) shows the proposed fabricated grid array
antenna with full ground plane. Here, the proposed antenna is 0

designed with dimension of 34x35 mm2 for the width and

Reflection Coefficient, dB
-5
length respectively. Rogers 5880 is used as dielectric
substrate. Rogers 5880 has low permittivity of 2.2, loss -10

tangent of 0.0009 and thickness of 0.508 mm. Meanwhile, in -15


Fig. 2(c) and 2(d) is illustrated the simulated proposed grid
array antenna. -20

----S11=-24.08 dB
-25

-30
27.5 28.0 28.5 29.0 29.5 30.0
Frequency, GHz

(a) (b)

(a) (b)

(c)
Fig.3. (a) Reflection coefficient, (b) 3D (c) Gain of different antennas
operating at 28 GHz band.

The gain of the proposed antenna is 11.32 dBi, which is


(c) (d) 73.59% higher compared to [12] and 9.37 % to [13] as shown
Fig.2. Single Patch Grid Array Antenna (a) Fabricated Front view (b) in Fig. 3(c). Fig. 4 shows the E-field current distribution of the
Fabricated Back view and (c) Simulated Front view (d) Simulated Back view. antenna. It is noticed that current flows at the grid's long sides
are out-of-phase whereas on the short sides of the grid, the
current is fundamentally in-phase [14]. The current
The long side length, l, is functioned as full guided distributions on long side of the grids changed their phases in
wavelength, (l = λg). Meanwhile, short side length, s is half of the middle of the structure with full wavelengths. Conversely
the guided wavelength where s = λg /2 [13]. Based to the at this location, the current on the short sides of the grid are in-
equation, each of rectangular loop is calculated for its l and s phase. Therefore, this behavior on the short sides of the grid
dimension. Thus, the value of l is 7.9 mm and s is 3.95 mm. dominantly contributed to the far-field radiation pattern
The width of the long sides, wl is 1 mm and width of the short compared to the long sides.
sides, ws is 1.25 mm. The 14 optimized rectangular loops is
clearly shown in Fig. 2(a). It is consist of 25 short sides, s as
well as 25 radiating elements since the short sides also acted
as radiator.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION


In this section, the performances of proposed grid array
antenna in term of reflection coefficient, radiation pattern,
gain and current distribution are discussed. Fig. 3(a) shows the
reflection coefficient, S11 of -24.08 dB operating at frequency
of 28 GHz. The 3D radiation pattern is illustrated in Fig. 3(b).
The radiation pattern shows that the proposed antenna owns a
unidirectional or end-fire pattern at 0˚ angle. Such pattern is
important to achieve a maximum gain, see Fig. 3(c) as well as
reducing unwanted signals at 28 GHz. Fig.4. E-Field current distribution of the SP-microstrip grid array antenna.

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IV. CONCLUSION [5] T. Kawano, H. Nakano, "Grid Array Antenna with C-Figured E
lements," in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Antennas and Propagation, June
This paper proposed a single patch microstrip grid array 1998, pp. 1154-1157.
antenna for 5G application. The proposed antenna consists of [6] T. Kawano, H. Nakano, "Cross-Mesh Array Antennas for Dual LP and
14 optimized rectangular loops with 25 radiating elements. CP Waves," in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Antennas and Propagation, July
The grid cells are formed by two line types of long and short 1999, pp. 2748-2751.
side of the grid. The simulated S11 at 28 GHz is -24.08 dB, [7] T. Kawano, H. Nakano, "Dual Polarized Cross Mesh Array Antennas,"
while the gain is 11.32 dBi compared to the previous work: in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Antennas and Propagation, July 2000, pp. 522-
525.
2.99 dBi in [12] and 10.35 dBi in [13]. Due to enhanced
[8] H. Nakano, T. Kawano, H. Mimaki, Yamauchi, "A Fast MoM
performance, the proposed antenna potentially serves as a CaIculation Technique Using Sinusoidal Basis and Testing Funetions for
good option for 5th Generation Wireless Systems (5G) which a Wire on a Dielectric Substrate and Its Application to Meander Loop
requires a high gain and low profile topology. and Grid Array Antennas," IEEE Trans. Antennas and Propag., vol. 53,
October 2005, pp. 3300-3307.
[9] Xing Chen, Guosheng Wang, Kama Huang, "A Novel Wideband and
Acknowledgment Compact Microstrip Grid Array Antenna," IEEE Trans. Antennas and
Propag., vol. 58, No. 2, February 2010, pp. 596- 599.
The authors acknowledge the contributions of Universiti [10] Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission,
Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor (UTM) and Universiti "Requirements for Devices Using Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) Technology
Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP). Our gratitude also goes to grant of Operating In The Frequency Bands of 30 MHz to 960 MHz, 2.17 GHz to
UniMAP’s special fund (9007-00187). 10.6 GHz, 21.65 GHz to 29.5 GHz and 77 GHz to 81 GHz," 5 December
2013.
[11] Theodore S. Rappaport, Robert C. Daniels, Robert W. Heath, James N.
Murdoc, "Introduction to Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications,"
References book of Milimeter Wave Wireless Communication, Pearson Education,
Oct 6, 2014.
[1] R. Conti, Toth, T. Dowling, Weiss, "The Wire-Grid Microstrip
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pp. 157-166. CRLH Antenna on Silicon Substrate," Proceedings of the 41st European
Microwave Conference, 2011, pp. 579-582.
[2] John D. Kraus, "A Backward Angle-Fire Array Antenna," IEEE Trans.
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S. Fu and Shuh-Han Chao, "28-GHz Patch Antenna Arrays with PCB
[3] L.T. Hildebrand and D. A. McNamara, "Experimental Verification of
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Wireless Technology Conference, July 26-30, 2011, pp. 355-358 .
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pp. 1494-1497. [14] B. Zhang and Y. P. Zhang, "Analysis and Synthesis of Millimeter-Wave
[4] H. Nakano, T. Kawano, "Grid Array Antennas," in Proc. IEEE Int. Microstrip Grid -Array Antennas," IEEE Antennas and Propagation
Symp. Antennas and Propagation, July 1997, pp. 236-239. Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 6, December 2011, pp. 42-55.

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