Lotfollah Shafai

Bandwidth enhancement and size reduction of microstrip slot antennas

Reduced size microstrip monopole slot antennas with different slot shapes-straight, L and inverted T, and placed on a small ground plane, are investigated. The ground plane size is 50 mm/spl times/80 mm, which is about the size of a typical PC Wireless card. Detailed simulation and experimental investigations are conducted to understand their behavior and optimize for broadband operation. It is shown that, the variation in the slot shape, from straight to L and T shapes, helps in generating additional resonances, which when coupled to the original resonances of the slot, further increases impedance bandwidths. The bent shapes of the L and T slots reduce their height and provide more space on the ground plane for electronics. A mirror image dual L-slot antenna, placed at two adjacent corners of the ground plane, is also investigated and optimized for the polarization diversity. They provide an impedance bandwidth of 87%, with near orthogonal radiation characteristics. The measured impedance bandwidths (S/sub 11/=-10 dB) of up to 60%, 84%, and 80% are achieved for these straight, L and inverted T slots respectively, by suitably selecting their design parameters. The simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data considering several practical issues.

Different formulations for numerical solution of single or multibodies of revolution with mixed boundary conditions

A numerical method for determining the electromagnetic field in the presence of one or several bodies of revolution is presented. The objects can be made of conductors, dielectrics or their combinations. The excitation is assumed to be due to a plane wave or infinitesimal electric dipoles located within or outside the dielectric. Several formulation types are considered and used to investigate the scattering by different objects. It is found that for moderate values of the dielectric constant, all formulation types give satisfactory results. However, for small or large relative permittivities the solution accuracies depend on the formulation type. As an application of the method to practical problems, two special cases of dielectric rod and microstrip antennas are considered. These antennas have widespread applications and the proposed method can be used to investigate their performance accurately.

Investigation of wide-band microstrip slot antenna

This paper presents the simulation and experimental investigations of a printed microstrip slot antenna. It is a quarter wavelength monopole slot cut in the finite ground plane edge, and fed electromagnetically by a microstrip transmission line. It provides a wide impedance bandwidth adjustable by variation of its parameters, such as the relative permittivity and thickness of the substrate, width, and location of the slot in the ground plane, and feed and ground plane dimensions. The ground plane is small, 50 mm/spl times/80 mm, and is about the size of a typical PC wireless card. At the center frequency of 3.00 GHz, its width of 50 mm is about /spl lambda//2 and influences the slot impedance and bandwidth significantly. An impedance bandwidth (S/sub 11/=-10 dB) of up to about 60% is achieved by individually optimizing its parameters. The simulation results are confirmed experimentally. A dual complementary slot antenna configuration is also investigated for the polarization diversity.

Investigation Into the Effects of the Patch-Type FSS Superstrate on the High-Gain Cavity Resonance Antenna Design

Results of modeling, design, simulation and fabrication are presented for a high-gain cavity resonance antenna (CRA), employing highly-reflective patch-type superstrates. In order to determine the resonant conditions, the antenna is first analyzed using the transverse equivalent network (TEN) model, as well as the well known simple ray-tracing method. Prior to that, a highly-reflective patch-type frequency selective surface (FSS) is designed in order to be employed as the superstrate layer of the CRA. Next, a 2.5-D full-wave analysis software package, based on the method of moments (ANSOFT Designer v4.0), is utilized to analyze the antenna structure. Using this full-wave analyzer, the input impedance properties of an actual antenna are investigated as well. Then, a 3-D full-wave analyzer, based on the finite element method (ANSOFT HFSS), is used to extract the directivity and radiation patterns of the CRA, taking into account the finiteness of the substrate, superstrate and ground plane. Some previously unaddressed issues, such as the effects of the FSS superstrate on the input impedance characteristics of the probe-fed microstrip patch antenna, acting as the excitation source of the CRA are also studied. The effects of the highly-reflective FSS superstrate size on the CRA directivity, and explicitly its aperture efficiency, are investigated as well. A comparative study is also performed between CRAs with patch-type FSS and high permittivity dielectric superstrates. Measurement results are provided to support the modelings and simulations.

Dual-band dual-polarized perforated microstrip antennas for SAR applications

For dual-band dual-polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) applications a compact low-profile design is investigated. The operating frequencies are in the L and C-bands, centered about 1.275 and 5.3 GHz, respectively. Since the C-band frequency is larger by a factor of four, its array elements and inter-element separations are smaller by the same ratio. Thus, to allow similar scan ranges for both bands, the L-band elements are selected as perforated patches to enable the placement of C-band elements within them. Stacked-patch configurations were used to meet the bandwidth requirements, especially in the L-band. The C-band element was designed numerically, but the perforated L-band one required final experimental optimization. Also, in the latter case of L-band, a balanced transmission line feed was used to minimize cross polarization. For the C-band elements, slot coupling was used and, to simplify the feed, symmetric parasitic slots were incorporated to minimize cross polarization. No vertical connections were utilized, and electromagnetic couplings resulted in a compact low-profile design, with an electrically and thermally symmetric geometry.

Characteristics of single- and double-layer microstrip square-ring antennas

A method for miniaturization of microstrip patch antennas without degrading radiation characteristics is investigated. It involves perforating the patch to form a microstrip square-ring antenna, which is investigated numerically and experimentally. The ring geometry introduces additional parameters to the antenna that can be used to control its impedance, resonance frequency, and bandwidth. For a single square ring increasing the size of perforation increases its input impedance, but decreases the resonance frequency and bandwidth. It has a small effect on directivity of the antenna. To match the antenna to a transmission line and also enhance its bandwidth, the ring is stacked by a square patch or another square ring. The computed results are compared with experimental data and again good agreement is obtained.

Dielectric‐Loaded Antennas

The sections in this article are 1 Dielectric Lens Antennas 2 Effect of Lens on Amplitude Distribution 3 Aberrations 4 Zoned Lenses 5 Reflection from Lens Surface 6 Lenses with n < 1 7 Constrained Lenses 8 Inhomogeneous Lenses 9 Dielectric Loaded Horns 10 Dielectric Loaded Waveguides 11 Microstrip and Dielectric Resonators 12 Insulated Antennas 13 Medical and Biological Antennas

A Wideband Microwave Tomography System With a Novel Frequency Selection Procedure

In this paper, we describe a 2-D wideband microwave imaging system intended for biomedical imaging. The system is capable of collecting data from 3 to 6 GHz, with 24 coresident antenna elements connected to a vector network analyzer via a 2 × 24 port matrix switch. As one of the major sources of error in the data collection process is a result of the strongly coupling 24 coresident antennas, we provide a novel method to avoid the frequencies where the coupling is large enough to prevent successful imaging. Through the use of two different nonlinear reconstruction schemes, which are an enhanced version of the distorted born iterative method and the multiplicative regularized contrast source inversion method, we show imaging results from dielectric phantoms in free space. The early inversion results show that with the frequency selection procedure applied, the system is capable of quantitatively reconstructing dielectric objects, and show that the use of the wideband data improves the inversion results over single-frequency data.

Investigation Into the Application of Artificial Magnetic Conductors to Bandwidth Broadening, Gain Enhancement and Beam Shaping of Low Profile and Conventional Monopole Antennas

The reflection coefficient phase is investigated for several different artificial magnetic conductors (AMCs) having canonical FSS-type shapes. Three of them are selected, each representing a different class, and fine tuned to exhibit identical resonant frequency. Polarization and angular dependence as well as the effects of losses on these structures are studied. Next, a low-profile inverted L-shape monopole antenna (ILSMA) is placed horizontally above the ground plane. Vertical monopole antenna (VMA) is also placed above them. It is shown that using some of the aforementioned AMCs, the input impedance of both ILSMA and VMA can not only be matched, but also the input impedance bandwidth enhancement as wide as 27% and 35% are obtained, respectively. The VMA study on AMC ground planes which reveals a counter-intuitive phenomenon has not been explored in the literature, previously. It is revealed that the broadband characteristics can also be achieved for smaller size of the AMC ground planes, which enables the antenna to be designed in compact size. It is also illustrated that reflection characteristics of the AMC is not sufficient to evaluate AMC performance when it is used as an antenna ground plane. This is illustrated through extensive simulation and measurement results.

Small reflector antenna with low sidelobes

A prime focus low sidelobe parabolic reflector antenna with self-supported feed is designed for low sidelobe applications. The parabolic reflector diameter is between nine and twelve wavelengths. A simple design is achieved to satisfy the required first sidelobe level. The design is performed numerically using a computer code for bodies of revolutions (AKBOR2). The measured radiation patterns of 18 inch and 24 inch reflector systems at 5.75 GHz. are presented. Good agreement between computed and measured radiation patterns is obtained.