2017 International Conference on Promising Electronic Technologies

Design of Efficient Microstrip Linear Antenna Array

for 5G Communications Systems

Mohammed Abu Saada1, Talal Skaik2 Ramadan Alhalabi

Electrical Engineering Department University College of Applied Sciences
Islamic University of Gaza, P.O. Box 108 Gaza, Palestine
Gaza, Palestine ralhalabi@gmail.com
1
anass303@hotmail.com, 2talalskaik@gmail.com

Abstract—This paper presents design of an efficient
microstrip antenna array for 5G communication systems. The
antenna operates at 28 GHz and it is formed of 16 elements of
rectangular patches arranged in a linear configuration. The
single element has gap-coupled feeder and the antenna is
designed on low-loss Teflon based RT/duroid 5880 substrate with
dielectric constant of 2.2 and substrate thickness of 0.381 mm. A
defected ground structure (DGS) in the form of rectangular slots
is employed in the array design to reduce the mutual coupling
between adjacent elements. The antenna is simulated using CST
microwave studio and the results show that the 16-element array
has a 10-dB bandwidth greater than 2 GHz and a maximum gain
of 17.4 dBi at 28.4 GHz. The performance of the proposed
antenna satisfies the requirements of 5G communications
systems in terms of high gain, high radiation efficiency and
adequate bandwidth.
(2.08 dBic). Several reported antennas were focused on
designing an antenna array to satisfy high gain requirement of
5G communications [10-13]. Those antennas are formed of
four elements [10], six elements [11] and eight elements
[12,13].
Here in this paper we propose an efficient antenna array
operating at 28 GHz and it consists of sixteen elements of
microstrip rectangular patches arranged in a linear
configuration. The proposed design achieves the 5G system
requirements in terms of bandwidth, gain and efficiency. A
defected ground structure (DGS) is employed in the antenna
array structure to reduce the mutual coupling between adjacent
patch elements. A high gain of 17.4 dBi is achieved in the
design and a bandwidth greater than 2 GHz is reached.

Keywords—5G communications, antenna array, defected II. SINGLE ELEMENT DESIGN

ground structure (DGS), microstrip, rectangular patch. A single element patch antenna is designed on a low loss
Teflon-based RT/duroid 5880 substrate with a dielectric
I. INTRODUCTION constant İr=2.2, thickness of 0.381 mm and loss tangent tan į
The standard mobile generations are developed to serve the = 0.0009. The top view of the single element antenna is
current and future demands of the mobile users. However, the depicted in Fig. 1 where Lp is the length, Wp is the width. The
mobile traffic is escalating exponentially each year and this antenna length and width according to known design
increase is expected to continue in the future [1]. Due to equations of rectangular patches are Lp= 3.27 mm, Wp =
spectrum limitation in the conventional microwave bands, 4.343 mm and feeder width is 1.187 mm (50 ȍ).
additional spectrum band has been determined within
millimeter wave (mm-wave) bands for 5G cellular networks
[2]. In 5G requirements, the antenna should at least have a gain
of 12 dBi and bandwidth more than 1 GHz [3]. Several mm-
wave planar antenna configurations have been proposed in
literature for 5G communication systems. A microstrip grid
array antenna on an FR4 substrate in a standard PCB
technology was presented in [4]. However, using lossy material
as FR4 leads to low radiation efficiency. A 28 GHz mesh-grid
antenna array is presented in [5] and it is implemented on a 10-
layer FR4 PCB. However, using multilayer technology in
mobile antenna design leads to complexity in design and
fabrication. Dual band antennas operating at 28 GHz and 38
GHz have also been proposed for 5G communications but only
single element design is presented [6,7]. Dual-polarized Fig. 1. single element geometry with gap coupled feeding
antenna array with peak realized gain of 10.2 dBi has been A. Feeding Technique
proposed with complicated multilayer structure [8]. Moreover,
As known, Microstrip antenna can be fed by different
circularly-polarized antenna has also been proposed for 5G
techniques: inset feed, aperture-coupling feed and quarter-
communication systems [9] but with low peak realized gain

978-1-5386-2269-8/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE 43

DOI 10.1109/ICPET.2017.14
wavelength transmission line. Another feeding technique is
gap coupled feed (see Fig. 1) that is similar to inset feed
technique but the feeder does not touch the antenna. The
feeding here is indirect by a very small gap it is a suitable
choice since it gives wider bandwidth when compared to
inset-feeding.
B. Parametric Study
To achieve a good matching for the antenna two variables
(gap and d ) are considered in design. A parametric study is
carried out to select the best values for gap and d such that best
matching, wider bandwidth and efficient radiation are
achieved. Tables I and II present antenna parameters for gap Fig. 2. Simulated antenna S11 vs. frequency
values of 0.1 mm and 0.03 mm, respectively. In Table I gap is
fixed at 0.1 mm and simulation has been run for different
values of d while in Table II gap is fixed at 0.03 mm. The
choice for the proposed design is gap=0.1 mm since this
distance is more suitable for fabrication and the results at this
gap meet the requirement of 5G systems. From Table I we can
choose the parameter d=1.35 mm that achieves a bandwidth of
1245 MHz and radiation efficiency of 91.8% at 28 GHz.
TABLE I
PARAMETRIC STUDY FOR INSET LENGTH ON ANTENNA PARAMETERS WITH
GAP=0.1 MILLIMETER.
Impedance Fractional Antenna
gap = 0.1 matching absolute bandwidth (%) radiation Fig. 3. Simulated radiation efficiency vs. frequency
mm bandwidth (MHz) efficiency (%)
@ 28 GHz
d =0.9 1040 3.7 90
d =1.0 1110 3.96 91
d =1.2 1234 4.4 91.8
d =1.35 1245 4.44 91.8
d =1.45 1226 4.38 91.9
d =1.5 1216 4.34 91.8

TABLE II
PARAMETRIC STUDY FOR INSET LENGTH ON ANTENNA PARAMETERS WITH
GAP=0.03 MILLIMETER

gap = 0.03 Impedance Fractional Antenna radiation

mm matching absolute bandwidth efficiency (%) @
bandwidth (MHz) (%) 28 GHz
d=0 1285 4.58 91.3
d =0.07 1376 4.91 91.8
d =0.08 1396 4.98 91.8 Fig. 4. 3D radiation pattern (realized gain)
d =0.09 1410 5.03 91.7
d =0.1 1416 5.06 91.6 IV. ANTENNA ARRAY DESIGN
d =0.2 1471 5.25 91.2
d =0.3 1485 5.3 90.1
A. Mutual Coupling Reduction
d =0.4 1427 5.1 89.3
Different methods have been presented in literature to enhance
the isolation between antenna array elements such as using:
III. SINGLE ELEMENT SIMULATION RESULTS
electromagnetic band gap (EBG) in the substrate as in [14],
In this work, CST Microwave studio software is utilized to waveguide metamaterials as in [15], I-shaped resonators as in
design the antenna. The single element simulation results are [16] and defected ground structures (DGS) as in [17].
shown in Fig. 2 to Fig. 4. The simulated S11 in Fig. 2 shows a In this work, DGS is adopted in array design to reduce the
good return loss with a 10-dB bandwidth of 1245 MHz. A mutual coupling between adjacent radiating elements. DGS
good simulated radiation efficiency is illustrated in Fig. 3 while can be defined as an etched lattice shape in the ground plane
the 3D radiation pattern is presented in Fig. 4. It can be noticed of planar circuits such as shown in Fig. 5 (a). The DGS
that the maximum gain of the single element antenna is 7.95 lumped element equivalent circuit is represented as
dBi. capacitance and inductance as given in Fig. 5 (b) [17].
The separation distance between two adjacent elements was
studied firstly without using any mutual reduction method.
Different values of inter-element space from center to center

44
(d) were considered in simulation. The antenna length is 3.19 TABLE III
mm and its width is 4.232 mm, while the gap between feeder INTER-ELEMENT SPACE IMPACT ON MUTUAL COUPLING
and patch is gap=0.1 mm and the width of the feeder is 1.187 Physical spacing Space between S21 (dB)
mm (50ȍ transmission line width at 28 GHz). (d) in (mm) adjacent elements
4.819 0.45Ȝ -9.5
5.355 0.5Ȝ -12.5
6.42 0.6Ȝ -17
7.497 0.7Ȝ -21
8.032 0.75Ȝ -23
8.568 0.8Ȝ -24.7
9.639 0.9Ȝ -28.3
10.71 Ȝ -31.2

The employment of defected ground structure is a good

choice to reduce mutual coupling between adjacent patches.
The structure in Fig. 5 is now simulated with separation
distance between centers of elements of d=5.355 mm (0.5Ȝ)
and with rectangular slot in the ground between them. The
dimensions of this rectangular slot were optimized in order to
obtain the best isolation value. The simulation results show
that a mutual coupling (S21) of less than -20 dB was achieved
for slot dimensions of (8.3*0.8) mm2. The results are
compared to those without DGS in Table IV and in Fig. 6 to
Fig. 8. The results in Table IV show that the application of the
DGS has improved the isolation, the bandwidth and the
radiation efficiency. Fig. 6 presents the simulated return loss
S11 with and without DGS and it is clear that the addition of
the DGS has improved the matching and the bandwidth. The
mutual coupling simulated results with and without DGS are
depicted in Fig. 7 and it can be noticed that the isolation has
improved by more than 10 dB at 28 GHz when using DGS.
Furthermore, the radiation efficiency for both cases (with and
without DGS) is simulated and presented in Fig. 8 that shows
enhancement in efficiency when applying the rectangular slot.
Fig. 5. (a) Two adjacent antennas with DGS (b) L-C equivalent of DGS
TABLE IV
COMPARISON BETWEEN SIMULATED RESULTS WITH AND WITHOUT DGS
It can be noted from Table III that as space (d) increases the
mutual coupling (S21) decreases. The mutual coupling can be Performance Parameter Without DGS With DGS
S21 at 28GHz -12.12 -24.5
regarded as acceptable at values lower than -20 dB. From the
results, a separation distance of d=0.7 Ȝ seems to satisfy this Bandwidth (MHz) 1285 1426
condition, however, this distance does not satisfy the condition
in (1) [11] to obtain the largest scanning angle without Radiation efficiency (%) 88 91.1
appearance of grating lobes (in case the antenna is further
developed for scanning), which requires a space ” 0.5 Ȝ.

λ
d< (1)
1 + cos θ 0

where Ȝ is free space wavelength and ș0 is the main beam

pointing angle with respect to the line of the array
corresponding to the largest scan angle off broadside [18].

Fig. 6. Simulated antenna S11 vs. frequency between two adjacent elements
with and without DGS, slot dimensions of (8.3*0.8) mm2

45
Fig. 7. Simulated antenna S21 vs. frequency between two adjacent elements
with and without DGS, slot dimensions of (8.3*0.8) mm2
Fig. 8. Simulated radiation efficiency for two adjacent elements with and
without DGS, slot dimensions of (8.3*0.8) mm2
B. 16-Element Antenna Array Design
A 16x1 linear microstrip antenna array is designed and the top
view of the final structure is presented in Fig. 9. The ground
plane of this array has rectangular slots between the radiating
elements as detailed in previous section. The feeding network
of the array is formed of micrsotrip T-junction power dividers
and Ȝ/4 impedance transformers to eventually obtain input
impedance of 50 ȍ at the input port of the array. The
simulated S11 of the array is presented in Fig. 10 and it can be
noticed that the 10-dB bandwidth is greater than 2 GHz. Fig.
11 presents 3D radiation pattern of the array and it can be seen
that the proposed antenna has a maximum simulated gain of
17.4 dBi at 28.4 GHz. Moreover, the simulation results show
that the array has half power beamwidth (HPBM) of 6.4
degree and 26.9 degree in the E and H planes, respectively.
Fig. 9. 16x1 linear antenna array
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Fig. 10. Simulated antenna S11 vs. frequency for 16x1 linear antenna array
Fig. 11. 3D radiation pattern for 16x1 linear antenna array pattern (realized
gain)
V. CONCLUSION
An efficient antenna array is proposed here for 5G
communication systems. The array is formed of 16 elements
of microstrip patches arranged in linear configuration. A
defected ground structure (DGS) is employed in the antenna
array to reduce the mutual coupling between the adjacent
radiating patch elements. The feeding of the single element is
gap-coupled feed to obtain wider bandwidth when compared
to inset-feed. The simulation results prove that the antenna
performance satisfy the requirements of 5G communication
systems. The maximum gain of the antenna array is 17.4 dBi
at 28.4 GHz and the 10-dB bandwidth is greater than 2 GHz.
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