FEBRUARY 2012 VOLUME 60 NUMBER 2 IETPAK (ISSN 0018-926X)

PART II OF TWO PARTS

PAPERS

Antennas and Resonators

A Broadband VHF/UHF Double-Whip Antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X. Ding, B.-Z. Wang, G.-D. Ge, and D. Wang 719
Wideband Dielectrically Guided Horn Antenna with Microstrip Line to H-Guide Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Wong, A. R. Sebak, and T. A. Denidni 725
CPW-Fed Cavity-Backed Slot Radiator Loaded With an AMC Reflector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Joubert, J. C. Vardaxoglou, W. G. Whittow, and J. W. Odendaal 735
The Use of Simple Thin Partially Reflective Surfaces With Positive Reflection Phase Gradients to Design Wideband,
Low-Profile EBG Resonator Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. Ge, K. P. Esselle, and T. S. Bird 743
Omnidirectional Linearly and Circularly Polarized Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. M. Pan, K. W. Leung, and K. Lu 751
Substrate Integrated Composite Right-/Left-Handed Leaky-Wave Structure for Polarization-Flexible Antenna
Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. Dong and T. Itoh 760
Design and Characterization of Miniaturized Patch Antennas Loaded With Complementary Split-Ring Resonators . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. Dong, H. Toyao, and T. Itoh 772
Dual-Band Circularly Polarized Microstrip RFID Reader Antenna Using Metamaterial Branch-Line Coupler . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y.-K. Jung and B. Lee 786
Small-Size Shielded Metallic Stacked Fabry–Perot Cavity Antennas With Large Bandwidth for Space Applications . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. A. Muhammad, R. Sauleau, and H. Legay 792
A Simple Technique for the Dispersion Analysis of Fabry-Perot Cavity Leaky-Wave Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Mateo-Segura, M. García-Vigueras, G. Goussetis, A. P. Feresidis, and J. L. Gómez-Tornero 803
Analyzing the Complexity and Reliability of Switch-Frequency-Reconfigurable Antennas Using Graph Models . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Costantine, Y. Tawk, C. G. Christodoulou, J. C. Lyke, F. De Flaviis, A. Grau Besoli, and S. E. Barbin 811
Free Space Radiation Pattern Reconstruction from Non-Anechoic Measurements Using an Impulse Response of the
Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Koh, A. De, T. K. Sarkar, H. Moon, W. Zhao, and M. Salazar-Palma 821
Electric Field Amplification inside a Porous Spherical Cavity Resonator Excited by an External Plane Wave . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. A. Bernhardt and R. F. Fernsler 832

(Contents Continued on p. 717)

(Contents Continued from Front Cover)

Arrays
A 76 GHz Multi-Layered Phased Array Antenna Using a Non-Metal Contact Metamaterial Waveguide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . H. Kirino and K. Ogawa 840
Beam Switching Reflectarray Monolithically Integrated With RF MEMS Switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O. Bayraktar, O. A. Civi, and T. Akin 854
Design and Implementation of a Closed Cylindrical BFN-Fed Circular Array Antenna for Multiple-Beam Coverage in
Azimuth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N. J. G. Fonseca 863
Rapidly Convergent Representations for Periodic Green’s Functions of a Linear Array in Layered Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Van Orden and V. Lomakin 870
A Novel Strategy for the Diagnosis of Arbitrary Geometries Large Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Buonanno and M. D’Urso 880
Predicting Sparse Array Performance From Two-Element Interferometer Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. A. Nessel and R. J. Acosta 886
Linear Aperiodic Array Synthesis Using an Improved Genetic Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . L. Cen, Z. L. Yu, W. Ser, and W. Cen 895
Beamformer Design Methods for Radio Astronomical Phased Array Feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Elmer, B. D. Jeffs, K. F. Warnick, J. R. Fisher, and R. D. Norrod 903
Experimental Results for the Sensitivity of a Low Noise Aperture Array Tile for the SKA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E. E. M. Woestenburg, L. Bakker, and M. V. Ivashina 915
Direction Finding With Partly Calibrated Uniform Linear Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. Liao and S. C. Chan 922
Numerical and Inverse Techniques
Calculation of MoM Interaction Integrals in Highly Conductive Media . . . . . . . . . J. Peeters, I. Bogaert, and D. De Zutter 930
Electromagnetic Scattering From General Bi-Isotropic Objects Using Time-Domain Integral Equations Combined With
PMCHWT Formulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Z.-H. Wu, E. K.-N. Yung, D.-X. Wang, and J. Bao 941
Efficient Surface Integral Equation Using Hierarchical Vector Bases for Complex EM Scattering Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L. P. Zha, Y. Q. Hu, and T. Su 952
Accelerated FDTD Analysis of Antennas Loaded by Electric Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. Watanabe and H. Igarashi 958
An Angle-Dependent Impedance Boundary Condition for the Split-Step Parabolic Equation Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. R. Sprouse and R. S. Awadallah 964
A Nested Multi-Scaling Inexact-Newton Iterative Approach for Microwave Imaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G. Oliveri, L. Lizzi, M. Pastorino, and A. Massa 971
Fast and Shadow Region 3-Dimensional Imaging Algorithm With Range Derivative of Doubly Scattered Signals for
UWB Radars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. Kidera and T. Kirimoto 984
High-Resolution ISAR Imaging by Exploiting Sparse Apertures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . L. Zhang, Z.-J. Qiao, M.-D. Xing, J.-L. Sheng, R. Guo, and Z. Bao 997
Nondestructive Material Characterization of a Free-Space-Backed Magnetic Material Using a Dual-Waveguide Probe . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. W. Hyde, M. J. Havrilla, A. E. Bogle, and E. J. Rothwell 1009
Evaporation Duct Height Estimation and Source Localization From Field Measurements at an Array of Radio Receivers . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X. Zhao 1020
Extrapolation of Wideband Electromagnetic Response Using Sparse Representation . . . . . . .. . . . . . . H. Zhao and Y. Zhang 1026
Wireless
A Wearable Two-Antenna System on a Life Jacket for Cospas-Sarsat Personal Locator Beacons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. A. Serra, P. Nepa, and G. Manara 1035
Analysis of Cellular Antennas for Hearing-Aid Compatible Mobile Phones . . . . . . . . . . . . . P. M. T. Ikonen and K. R. Boyle 1043
A Mobile Communication Base Station Antenna Using a Genetic Algorithm Based Fabry-Pérot Resonance
Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D. Kim, J. Ju, and J. Choi 1053
Development of Novel 3-D Cube Antennas for Compact Wireless Sensor Nodes . . . . . . . . . . I. T. Nassar and T. M. Weller 1059
Influence of the Hand on the Specific Absorption Rate in the Head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C.-H. Li, M. Douglas, E. Ofli, B. Derat, S. Gabriel, N. Chavannes, and N. Kuster 1066
Demonstration of a Cognitive Radio Front End Using an Optically Pumped Reconfigurable Antenna System (OPRAS) . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Y. Tawk, J. Costantine, S. Hemmady, G. Balakrishnan, K. Avery, and C. G. Christodoulou 1075
Evaluation of a Statistical Model for the Characterization of Multipath Affecting Mobile Terminal GPS Antennas in
Sub-Urban Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. Ur Rehman, X. Chen, C. G. Parini, and Z. Ying 1084
A Mixed Rays—Modes Approach to the Propagation in Real Road and Railway Tunnels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F. Fuschini and G. Falciasecca 1095
Optimum Wireless Powering of Sensors Embedded in Concrete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. Jiang and S. V. Georgakopoulos 1106
Portable Real-Time Microwave Camera at 24 GHz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . M. T. Ghasr, M. A. Abou-Khousa, S. Kharkovsky, R. Zoughi, and D. Pommerenke 1114
Is Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Based Radio Communication an Unexploited Area? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O. Edfors and A. J. Johansson 1126

(Contents Continued on p. 718)

(Contents Continued from p. 717)

COMMUNICATIONS

A Circularly Polarized Ring-Antenna Fed by a Serially Coupled Square Slot-Ring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T.-N. Chang, J.-M. Lin, and Y. G. Chen 1132
A Pseudo-Normal-Mode Helical Antenna for Use With Deeply Implanted Wireless Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . O. H. Murphy, C. N. McLeod, M. Navaratnarajah, M. Yacoub, and C. Toumazou 1135
A Novel Folded UWB Antenna for Wireless Body Area Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C.-H. Kang, S.-J. Wu, and J.-H. Tarng 1139
Hybrid Mode Wideband Patch Antenna Loaded With a Planar Metamaterial Unit Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. Ha, K. Kwon, Y. Lee, and J. Choi 1143
Explicit Relation Between Volume and Lower Bound for Q for Small Dipole Topologies . . . . .. . . . G. A. E. Vandenbosch 1147
On the Generalization of Taylor and Bayliss n-bar Array Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . S. R. Zinka and J. P. Kim 1152
Amplitude-Only Low Sidelobe Synthesis for Large Thinned Circular Array Antennas . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . W. P. M. N. Keizer 1157
Power Synthesis for Reconfigurable Arrays by Phase-Only Control With Simultaneous Dynamic Range Ratio and
Near-Field Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . G. Buttazzoni and R. Vescovo 1161
Design and Experiment of a Single-Feed Quad-Beam Reflectarray Antenna . . . . P. Nayeri, F. Yang, and A. Z. Elsherbeni 1166
Oblique Diffraction of Arbitrarily Polarized Waves by an Array of Coplanar Slots Loaded by Dielectric Semi-Cylinders . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. L. Tsalamengas and I. O. Vardiambasis 1171
Analysis of Radiation Characteristics of Conformal Microstrip Arrays Using Adaptive Integral Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W.-J. Zhao, L.-W. Li, E.-P. Li, and K. Xiao 1176
Generalized Multilevel Physical Optics (MLPO) for Comprehensive Analysis of Reflector Antennas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Letrou and A. Boag 1182
Fast Dipole Method for Electromagnetic Scattering From Perfect Electric Conducting Targets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X. Chen, C. Gu, Z. Niu, and Z. Li 1186
An Efficient Hybrid GO-PWS Algorithm to Analyze Conformal Serrated-Edge Reflectors for Millimeter-Wave Compact
Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Muñoz-Acevedo and M. Sierra-Castañer 1192
Time-Domain Microwave Imaging of Inhomogeneous Debye Dispersive Scatterers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . T. G. Papadopoulos and I. T. Rekanos 1197

CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Antennas and Propagation at Millimeter and Sub-millimeter Waves . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 1203
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ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE
S. R. BEST, President T. S. BIRD, President Elect J. S. TYO, Secretary-Treasurer
2012 2013 2014 2015
Y. M. M. ANTAR M. ANDO* R. D. NEVELS* M. SALAZAR PALMA*
J. T. BERNHARD* D. B. DAVIDSON D. ERRICOLO
S. MACI M. EL-SHENAWEE L. JOFRE
M. MARTINEZ-VÁZQUEZ S. K. RAO C. PICHOT
D. F. SIEVENPIPER M. W. SHIELDS N. RILEY
Honorary Life Members: R. C. HANSEN, W. R. STONE
*Past President
Committee Chairs and Representatives
Antenna Measurements (AMTA): S. SCHNEIDER EuRAAP Representative: W. ROSS STONE Publications: T. S. BIRD
Antennas & Wireless Propagation Letters Editor-in-Chief: Fellows Nominations Committee: L. C. KEMPEL Region 8 Representative: B. ARBESSER-RASTBURG
G. LAZZI Finance: J. S. TYO Region 9 Representative: S. BARBIN
Applied Computational EM Society (ACES): A. F. PETERSON Gold Representative: Region 10 Representative: J. L-W. LI
AP-S/URSI Joint Meetings Committee: J. L. YOUNG Historian: K. D. STEPHAN
Awards: C. G. CHRISTODOULOU IEEE Press Liaison: R. J. MAILLOUX Sensor Council: A. I. ZAGHOUL, T. S. BIRD, M. W. SHIELDS
Awards Coordinator: C. A. BALANIS IEEE Public Relations Representative: W. R. STONE Standards Committee—Antennas: M. H. FRANCIS
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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2186330

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Broadband VHF/UHF Double-Whip Antenna
Xiao Ding, Bing-Zhong Wang, Member, IEEE, Guang-Ding Ge, and Duo Wang
Abstract—This paper presents a broadband VHF/UHF
double-whip antenna with one lossless matching scheme com-
bining two methods, embedded transmission line matching
method and lumped-distributed hybrid matching method. By
adjusting the length of the embedded transmission line, the com-
bination of double-whip antenna and the transmission line can
achieve resonance, thus realize a coarse matching. By adding a
lumped-distributed hybrid matching network at the feeding point
of the double-whip antenna, we can further improve the matching
for the double-whip antenna. Moreover, based on the two-step
matching scheme, a double-whip antenna has been designed
and fabricated. Measured results show that, the VSWRs of the
double-whip antenna, with the electrical lengths of and
at the minimum operation frequency respectively, are less
than 2 over a 17:1 octave bandwidth, and the horizontal gains of
the antenna are between 4.2 dB and 6.8 dB. Thanks to its high
gain, broadband and low reflection, the proposed double-whip
antenna in this paper is ideal for application in vehicle wireless
communication.
Index Terms—Broadband matching network, double-whip an-
tenna, VHF/UHF antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
F EATURING of its characteristics like small size, simple
structure and omni-direction, whip antenna have been
widely used in ultra-short wave, shortwave, and VHF/UHF
wireless communication. Actually, one distinctive character-
istic of whip antenna lies in its very small radiation resistance
and very large negative reactance in low frequency. Con-
sequently, it gains a large Q factor and a narrow working
bandwidth, and causes most of the energy difficult to radiate
and only oscillating around the antenna instead. Under this
circumstance, direct feeding to the antenna from feed line
would make the receiver or transmitter in system front-end
fail or even breakdown because of large reflection. To solve
this practical problem of over-reflection, or mismatch indeed,
many methods have been discussed by scholars. One proposal
uses lumped or distributed load on antenna to improve the
current distribution on the surface of the antenna. In [1], a LR
loaded wire monopole with a matching network achieves a 20:1
bandwidth, VSWR less than 3.0 and system gain greater than
Manuscript received March 02, 2011; revised July 07, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 26, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the High-Tech Re-
search and Development Program of China (No. 2008AA01Z206), in part by
the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No.
20100185110021), and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 61071031), and Project 9140A01020110DZ0211.
The authors are with the Institute of Applied Physics, University of Elec-
tronic and Science Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China (e-mail:
dx_000217@yahoo.com.cn; bzwang@uestc.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173141
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
719
dBi. Another idea takes embedded broadband matching
network consisting of some lumped components to eliminate
the imaginary part of the antenna impedance. In [2], a 2-meter
broadband whip antenna with electronically switching three
different matching networks could operate over the frequency
range of 23–60 MHz with VSWR less than 3.5 and system
gain greater than dB. Reference [3] simultaneously uses
load technology and “on-body” matching network to realize a
VHF/UHF whip antenna with VSWR less than 2 and system
gain greater than 0 dBi. A third one utilizes fractal technique for
the improvement of the impedance characteristics of a variety
of VHF/UHF antennas [4]. And in recent years, the emergency
of the study on metamaterial has inspired some scholars to
design VHF/UHF metamaterials antennas [5]. Moreover, [6]
matches a conical antenna with the aid of transmission line.
By adding a section of the transmission line to form a resonant
structure with the conical antenna, more efficient operation
at low frequencies is obtained. However, all above methods
have more or less specific deficiencies in implementation. For
example, the load will inevitably reduce the antenna radiation
efficiency and its structural strength; the broadband matching
networks of lumped components would sacrifice system gain
for bandwidth matching; and the cost of the metamaterials is
usually far too high.
In order to get higher gain, wider bandwidth and lower reflec-
tion, this paper researches a VHF/UHF double-whip antenna
and two lossless matching methods. Two individual whips,
which are connected by two sections of transmission lines as
a double-whip antenna, work in the upper and lower bands of
30–520 MHz, respectively. By adjusting the length of the em-
bedded transmission lines, the whip and the transmission line
could get resonant, and the antenna can approximately meet the
engineering requirement for impedance matching. This method
provides a coarse impedance match for the double-whip an-
tenna. In order to further match the double-whip antenna, two
matching networks are designed respectively. A traditionally
lumped matching networks and a new lumped-distributed
hybrid matching network are added at the feeding point of the
antenna separately. These two matching networks working over
different frequency bands can get a higher gain and better im-
pendence matching for the double-whip antenna. The designed
double-whip antenna with those two lossless matching methods
has a good performance in VHF/UHF frequency bands.
II. COARSE IMPEDANCE MATCH OF THE DOUBLE-WHIP
ANTENNA
A. Double-Whip Antenna
The structure of the double-whip antenna is shown in
Fig. 1(a). It consists of two whip antennas with heights
m and m respectively, and their diameters
720 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. (a) Element 2. (b) Equivalent circuits of (a).

B. Elements Design
In the following theoretic analysis, we take Element 2 as an
example, and Fig. 2 depicts its configuration.
From Fig. 2(b), the input impedance of Element 2 at the joint
port is

(2)

where is
the reflection coefficient at the port of the whip with length .
For the purpose of matching, must be real in (2) and
the exponent must satisfy the condition ,
( .). So the solutions to is given by

(3)

Because the electrical length of the embedded transmission line

can not be negative, and the periodicity of the with ,
Fig. 1. (a) Double-whip antenna. (b) Equivalent circuit of (a). so one solution to is

(4)
are both 2.5 cm. Two embedded transmission lines with lengths
and and diameters and are used to connect these Because the input impendence varies with fre-
whips and the distances between the embedded lines and the quency, from (4) we can notice that: for any whip antenna, in
ground plane are and , respectively. The joint point of the order to match it with the aid of the embedded transmission
two embedded lines is connected to two matching networks line, the electrical length of the embedded line should
through an electrical switch. At the other ports of the matching be variable as the working frequency changes. However, as a
networks is the feeding point. Fig. 1(b) shows the equivalent matter of fact, the length of the embedded line must be fixed
circuits of the double-whip antenna in Fig. 1(a). is the in engineering design. In other word, for a given length and
input impedance of the whip antenna of height and the characteristic impedance of an embedded transmission line, it
whip of is the input impedance at the joint point, and can only match the whip antenna in a narrow band. In order to
and are the characteristic impedances of the embedded give attention to broadband matching, we can take an average
transmission lines of lengths and , which can be calcu- value of over the whole matching bandwidth as the length
lated by the following formula of parallel-wire conductor line of the embedded transmission line, so that we can obtain an
approximate matching for the element.
Fig. 3 gives the input impedance of the whip antenna
(1) m, whose first resonance frequency is at 250 MHz. Fig. 3
can give more apparent illustration about the impedance varia-
tion in broadband range: from the first resonance frequency, as
The double-whip antenna can be viewed as two parallel ele- frequency increases, the fluctuation of the real part of the input
ments connected at the joint point in Fig. 1(a), where Element impedance almost becomes moderate in a certain range of 29
1 consists of a whip antenna with the height and one em- while its imaginary part approaches zero. Accordingly,
bedded transmission line with the length ; Element 2 consists we set the characteristic impendence of the transmission
of a whip antenna with the height and one embedded trans- line to be 29 , and take the result of into (3). Then
mission line with the length . we could calculate the theoretic solution to the transmission line
DING et al.: A BROADBAND VHF/UHF DOUBLE-WHIP ANTENNA
Fig. 3. 0.3 m whip antenna impedance .
Fig. 4. Comparison of reflection coefficients before and after embedding the
transmission line for element 2.
electrical length after taking the average value processing
over the bandwidth, which is . In the practically en-
gineering design, we determine the physical length at the
center frequency MHz and get cm from
. Further, if the radius of embedded line is set as
cm, we can work out the distance between the con-
nection embedded line and the ground from (1) as
cm. Fig. 4 shows the reflection coefficients before and after em-
bedding this embedded transmission line between the whip and
a 50 feeding line. As shown in the solid line with circular, in
the frequency range of 180–410 MHz, VSWR is less than 3 and
in the frequency range of 410–520 MHz, VSWR is less than 3.5.
And when the frequency is below 150 MHz, Element 2 would
reflect all the feeding current. In order to make the double-whip
antenna work below 150 MHz, the design of Element 1 should
give main concerns to work over the lower frequency band.
Fig. 5 gives the input impedance of the whip antenna
m, whose first resonance frequency is at 46.8 MHz. In the
frequency range of 30–150 MHz, the real part of the input resis-
tance shakes around ohms from 30 to 55 MHz and from
100 to 140 MHz, but changes acutely between 55 MHz and 100
MHz. In order to get a fixed physical length of embedded line
from (3) and considering the whole band’s coarse matching, we
721
Fig. 5. 1.6 m whip antenna impedance .
Fig. 6. Comparison of reflection coefficients before and after embedding the
transmission line for element 1.
take 42 ohms as the characteristic impedance of the embedded
line, i.e., ohms. Then we calculate (3) and take the
average value of . In the practically engineering
design, we determine the physical length at the center fre-
quency MHz and get m from .
Fig. 6 shows the reflection coefficients before and after embed-
ding the transmission line between the whip and a 50 feeding
line. From Fig. 6, after embedding the matching transmission
line, the VSWR2:1 bandwidth increases and the first resonance
frequency decreases to about 30 MHz.
C. Double-Whip Design
From Fig. 4, we know that Element 2 would reflect all the
feeding current as the frequency below 150 MHz and partially
reflect feeding current as the frequency above 150 MHz. From
Fig. 6 the first resonance frequency of Element 1 has decreased
to about 30 MHz. Based on the analysis in the above element
design, we parallel connect the two elements in the arrange-
ment as shown in Fig. 1(a), and the actual antenna can be ob-
tained as shown in Fig. 7. In Fig. 7, two embedded transmission
lines with black and white coating respectively are shown on
the top of the ground and two ivory-white plastic fixed parts at
the bottom of the monopole are used to connect the quadrate
metal pedestals which are below the ground. Finally, we put the
722
Fig. 7. Double-whip antenna.
Fig. 8. Comparison of measure reflection coefficients before and after the
matching transmission line.
latter two matching networks into the quadrate metal pedestal.
At the joint point of the two embedded transmission line, when
lower frequency signal is coming, it will be reflected by Ele-
ment 2 and flow to Element 1 primarily. On the other hand,
Element 1 will reflect higher frequency signal and Element 2
will pass higher frequency signal mainly. Fig. 8 shows the com-
parison of measured reflection coefficients, in which the dotted
line stands for the whip antenna of 1.6 m-height without the em-
bedded transmission line, the triangular-solid-line for the whip
antenna of 0.3 m-height without the embedded transmission
line and the solid line is for the double-whip antenna with two
embedded matching transmission lines. From the comparison,
we can see that by simply using lossless transmission lines for
coarse matching, more than 50% of the frequencies sampled
over the band of 30–520 MHz have VSWRs less than 2, and
more than 75% of the frequencies have VSWRs less than 3.
At present, the double-whip antenna with two lossless
embedded transmission lines can work from 30 MHz to 520
MHz. But as shown in Fig. 8, the matching results cannot
yet meet practical project needs, such as , espe-
cially at the lower frequencies. In order to further improve the
impedance matching performance of the double-whip antenna,
two lumped-distributed hybrid matching networks are added
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 9. Absolute vale of a 47 pF monolithic ceramic capacitor impedance as a
function of frequency.
below the joint port, as shown in Fig. 1(a) and analyzed in the
next section.
III. FURTHER IMPROVEMENT ON BROADBAND MATCHING
Traditional method of broadband matching often loads with
lumped components and treats them independent of frequency.
So this method could match the real part of the impedance to
50 and the imaginary part to zero with several LC matching
networks. However, this traditional method ignores the fre-
quency variability of lumped components, which does exist in
practical design and would cause a lower gain and a narrower
matching bandwidth. Reference [7] announces this phenom-
enon. Example 1–4 in [7, p. 19] shows that the capacitance
from a real capacitor strictly obeys the rule in the
frequency range from DC to several hundred MHz. However,
when frequency increases further, the capacitance would not
obey . And for a real inductor in Example 1–5
in [7, p. 25], the situation is the same. A 47 pF monolithic
ceramic capacitor which is made in China and used in our
design, is measured by a Network Analyzer E5071C to obtain
its capacitor impedance. Fig. 9 gives the absolute vale of the
impedance of this capacitor as a function of frequency. In
Fig. 9, when the frequency increases to about 100 MHz, the
test capacitance will not obey .
Considering the above characteristics of lumped and dis-
tributed electronic components at VHF/UHF band, traditional
matching method would not be effective at the whole operation
band. So, we design two matching networks in this paper which
work at 30–120 MHz and 120–520 MHz respectively. For the
30–120 MHz matching network, the impedance characteristic
of the lumped components has not changed yet, shown as in
Fig. 9. A traditional lumped matching network is implemented.
And in the frequency range of 120–520 MHz, an effective
matching method of “lumped-distributed hybrid matching” is
implemented. The topology structures of the two matching
networks are presented in Fig. 10. Fig. 10(a) is the broadband
lumped matching network for the range of 30–120 MHz, which
shares the same principle as traditional matching networks.
Fig. 10(b) gives the proposed “lumped-distributed matching”
DING et al.: A BROADBAND VHF/UHF DOUBLE-WHIP ANTENNA 723

TABLE I
VALUES OF THE ELEMENTS IN 30–120 MHZ MATCHING NETWORK

TABLE II
VALUES OF THE ELEMENTS IN 120–520 MHZ MATCHING NETWORKS

Fig. 10. Topology structure of matching network, (a) 30–120 MHz broadband
matching network, (b) 120–520 MHz broadband matching network.

PCB Layout for the range of 120–520 MHz. It consists of six

parts: and are distributed capacitors; is a third-order
ladder impedance converter, which, together with , forms one
parallel multi-level impedance matching circuit. This matching
circuit, functioning as the multi-level damping network of
lumped components, can assuage the fierce fluctuation of an-
tenna impedance in low frequency; is one LC low-frequency
filter circuit which can filter out part of the input signal with
frequency lower than 120 MHz; is the blocking capacitors,
and is the 50 matching line for input and output ports.
The “lumped-distributed hybrid matching” approach owns at
least following advantages: (1) lossless matching to improve
the system efficiency; (2) distributed components are used to
achieve a broadband matching because their characteristics
would not vary with frequency; (3) simple matching network
structure can avoid electromagnetic compatibility problems
from complicated lumped matching circuit; and (4) planar
microstrip line structure of matching networks is easy for
conformal design.
Both matching networks are printed on microstrip board
with dielectric constant 2.2 and thickness 1 mm. Table I shows
the values of the lumped electronic components in 30–120
MHz matching network and Table II shows the dimensions
and values of the distributed electronic components in 120–520 Fig. 11. Measured reflection coefficients of the double-whip antenna, (a)
MHz “lumped-distributed” matching network. 30–120 MHz, (b) 120–520 MHz.
The final measurement results for the antenna structure are
presented in Figs. 11–13. The reflection coefficients at the
feeding port are depicted in Fig. 11. After further matching IV. CONCLUSION
with “lumped-distributed hybrid network”, the reflection coef- This paper proposes a VHF/UHF double-whip antenna with
ficients over the whole frequency bandwidth are generally less two lossless matching methods. This antenna system has merits
than dB . Finally, we give the test results of as follows. First, it has a very small size, which is convenient
horizontal gain of the double-whip antenna shown in Fig. 12, for vehicular concealment. The electrical lengths of the two
and the measured radiation patterns in E-plane and H-plane at whips are and at the minimum operation frequency,
frequencies of 45, 170, 330, 500 MHz shown in Fig. 13. respectively. Second, it has a very wide operation band that
724 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

[3] X. Ding, B.-Z. Wang, G. Zheng, and X.-M. Li, “Design and realiza-
tion of a GA-optimized VHF/UHF antenna with ‘on-body’ matching
network,” IEEE Antenna Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 9, pp. 303–307,
2010.
[4] J. M. González-Arbesú, S. Blanch, and J. Romeu, “Are space filling
curves efficient small antennas,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag.
Lett., vol. 2, pp. 147–150, 2003.
[5] H. Lizuka and P. S. Hall, “Left-handed dipole antennas and their
implementations,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 5, pp.
1246–1253, 2007.
[6] S. Sheldon and W. P. K. Ronold, “Compact conical antenna for wide-
band coverage,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 42, no. 3, pp.
436–439, 1994.
[7] L. Reinhold and B. Pavel, RF Circuit Design: Theory and Applica-
tions. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Xiao Ding was born in Sichuan Province, China,

May, 1982. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in communication engineering and electromagnetic
Fig. 12. Measured horizon gains of the double-whip antenna. field and microwave engineering, respectively,
from Guilin University of Electronic Science and
Technology (GUET), China. He is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree at the University of Elec-
tronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC),
Chengdu, since 2009.
His research interests include short-wave, ul-
trashort-wave wire antennas and its broadband
matching technology, millimeter-wave antenna and phased array.

Bing-Zhong Wang (M’06) received the Ph.D.

degree in electrical engineering from the University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 1988.
He joined the UESTC in 1984 where he is cur-
rently a Professor. He has been a Visiting Scholar at
the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Research
Fellow at the City University of Hong Kong, and a
Visiting Professor in the Electromagnetic Commu-
nication Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University,
University Park. His current research interests are
in the areas of computational electromagnetics, antenna theory and technique,
electromagnetic compatibility analysis, and computer-aided design for passive
microwave integrated circuits.

Fig. 13. Measured radiation patterns of the double-whip antenna at different

frequencies, (a) 45 MHz, (b) 170 MHz, (c) 330 MHz, (d) 500 MHz. Guang-Ding Ge is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree in the Institute of Applied Physics,
University of Electronic Science and Technology of
China, Chengdu, China.
covers VHF and UHF band from 30 to 520 MHz with mea- His main research interests include microwave cir-
sured VSWRs less than 2. Third, compared to other ways of cuits, antenna theory and design, time reversal tech-
lossy matching, our lossless matching methods result in rela- nique, compact and wideband antennas and arrays for
wireless communications systems.
tively higher horizontal gains, which are between 4.2 to 6.8 dBi
in the operation band.
This designed antenna can be widely used in vehicular, ship-
board and civil mobile communication with high gain, wide
band and low reflection.
Duo Wang was born in 1986 in Chongqing, China.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from the
REFERENCES University of Electronic Science and Technology
[1] S. D. Rogers, C. M. Butler, and A. Q. Martin, “Design and realization of of China, in 2008 and 2011, respectively. He is
GA-optimized wire monopole and matching network with 20:1 band- currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Institut
width,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 493–502, National des Sciences Appliquées de Rennes,
Mar. 2003. France.
[2] K. Yegin and A. Q. Martin, “Very broadband loaded monopole an- His current research interests include the technique
tennas,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., Mon- of Electromagnetic Time Reversal and the design of
treal, QC, Canada, Jul. 1997, vol. 1, pp. 232–235. microwave antenna.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Wideband Dielectrically Guided Horn Antenna with
Microstrip Line to H-Guide Feed
Michael Wong, Member, IEEE, Abdel Razik Sebak, Fellow, IEEE, and Tayeb A. Denidni, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—The design, simulation, and measurement of a com-
plete microstrip line-fed dielectrically guided horn antenna are
presented. The proposed antenna achieves similarly high gains as
compared to traditional air-filled horn antennas, is simpler than
a typical array design, and can easily be fabricated using typical
two dimensional substrate machining processes. An H-guide,
operating in the fundamental TE
00 mode, slowly tapers into a
“gapped” H-guide, or dielectrically guided horn, where a large air
gap separates the center dielectric and metallic plates. A wideband
Bézier shaped microstrip to H-guide transition feeding structure
is fabricated using a low loss Rogers 5880 substrate and integrated
with the proposed antenna. The fabricated prototype operates
from 8 to 16 GHz with a peak gain of approximately 16 dBi.
Index Terms—Aperture antennas, dielectric waveguides, feeds,
microstrip transitions, millimeter wave antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
ORN antennas appear in many different forms, such as
H dielectric-filled horn antennas [1], metamaterial-lined
horn antennas [2], corrugated circular horn antennas [3], or
even our recently proposed Substrate Integrated Waveguide
(SIW) planar slot antenna [4]. Typically, metallic air-filled
horn antennas are formed using expensive machining processes
to obtain the precise angles required for highly predictable
antenna patterns. Gain standard horns are typically made in this
fashion using metallic walls on the top, bottom, and sides.
In the design proposed in this paper, however, waves are
mostly guided by the dielectric near the mouth of the horn, or
aperture, thus reducing the dependence upon the horn angles
and precise dimensions, and removing the need for metallic
sidewalls. As is shown in this paper, such control can allow the
design of a high gain wide bandwidth antenna, while reducing
diffracted fields by concentrating the fields away from metallic
edges. Such reduction in diffracted fields immediately reduces
spill-over radiation and consequently lowers the sidelobe levels.
In addition, by using this dielectric wave guiding property, the
Manuscript received November 18, 2010; revised April 05, 2011; accepted
July 25, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
M. Wong is with Research in Motion (RIM), Kanata, ON, Canada (e-mail:
mich_won@alumni.concordia.ca).
A. R. Sebak is with Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and with
Prince Sultan Advanced Technological Research Institute (PSATRI), King Saud
University, 11451 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: abdo@ece.concordia.ca).
T. A. Denidni is with INRS-EMT, Montreal, QC H5A-1K6, Canada (e-mail:
Tayeb.Denidni@emt.inrs.ca).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173123
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
725
magnitude and the phase of the electric fields over the aperture
can be controlled. Neglecting fringing effects due to metallic
edges, this control of the near field pattern allows some control
of the far field radiation pattern.
To achieve these very desirable properties, a wide bandwidth,
single mode, thin H-guide is used as a feed mechanism to ex-
cite the horn, which is in turn fed by a microstrip to H-guide
transition. We have briefly discussed the H-guide horn antenna
concept in a conference paper [5] for a slightly different design.
While the H-guide has existed for many years [6], it is only re-
cently that the miniaturization of such dielectric waveguides, for
the example, in the form of the Non-Radiative Dielectric (NRD)
waveguide [7], or the Dielectric Image Guide (DIG) [8] has be-
come of interest. In addition, the excitation of waves within sub-
strates has recently been proposed in the form of surface wave
launchers [9], SIW horns [4], or other methods to form compact,
high gain antennas. The fence guide [10] has been used to form
horn antennas as well.
Other recent research in the area of horn antennas aims to
reduce the sidelobe level through the use of periodic structures,
or metamaterials along the metallic walls of the horn [2]. These
structures reduce the magnitude of the electric fields close to the
edges, thus reducing fringing effects at the mouth of the horn
and consequently reducing the sidelobe levels.
This paper begins with a description of a thin microstrip-fed
H-guide design, where the metallic plate separation is close to
. Theoretical, simulated, and measured results for an 8 to
18 GHz back-to-back Bézier shaped microstrip to H-guide tran-
sition using Rogers 5880 substrate are then presented. We have
previously discussed a low frequency (3 to 7 GHz) transition
using FR4 in [11]. Finally, theoretical, simulated, and measured
results for the H-guide horn antenna and its aperture are then
presented.
II. H-GUIDE
The goal of this section is to describe the parameters for
the H-guide to be used in the proposed microstrip line-fed di-
electrically guided horn antenna. In this case, the dimensions
are chosen to force a single mode, where all other propagating
modes are lossy, or evanescent. The design, fabrication, and
testing of the thin H-guide are made possible through the use
of a low profile microstrip to H-guide transition, which is dis-
cussed in the next section.
Consider the H-guide [6] shown in Fig. 1. The electric field
lines of the dominant mode are shown, where the elec-
tric field is directed in the y-direction for z-propagation. Cut-off
726
Fig. 1. Side view of the H-guide structure operating in the fundamental mode.
The size of the arrows represents the magnitude of the electric field. Propagation
is in the z direction.
Fig. 2. Two dimensional view of the fields for the a) TE00 vs the b) TE10
modes.
frequencies can be found for various modes using equations in
this section. A comparison with the next higher mode is
shown in Fig. 2.
The distance “ ” between the plates is made small, so that the
electric field parallel to the plates is forced to zero as shown in
Fig. 1. The magnetic field for this mode will then exist in the xz
plane for propagation in the z direction.
The guide wavelength for even TE modes in the H-guide can
be found by solving the following equations for , the
solution to the [6] and [12]
where variable is the width of the dielectric as shown in Fig. 1,
is the transverse wavenumber inside the dielectric, and
is the first transverse wavenumber outside the dielectric. is the
relative dielectric constant, and is the propagation constant in
free space.
is then substituted into the characteristic equation inside
the dielectric to find , the guide wavelength for the solu-
tion as follows:
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 3. Insertion loss over a 10.0 cm long, 62 mil (1.575 mm) thick substrate
for an H-guide that is 10 mm wide for the TE00 and TE10 modes. The cutoff
frequency is marked with a dotted line at 13.7 GHz.
For this design, an H-guide made of a 10 mm wide section
of dielectric is formed out of 62 mil (1.575 mm thick) Rogers
5880 . The guide wavelength, , for even TE modes
within a single H-guide can be found by solving the equations
for , the allowed even mode following procedures in [6],
[12], using (1), where at 13.7 GHz, found to be equal to 16.4
mm. Since the distance between the top and bottom metallic
plates of the substrate is only 1.575 mm , higher order
modes in the vertical direction ( , , etc.) are highly
evanescent. Consequently, TM modes, where the electric fields
are parallel to the metallic plates, are also highly evanescent.
The waveguide is therefore predominantly single-mode
up to the cutoff frequency of the second mode ( , ,
odd) at 13.7 GHz as estimated by the expression [12]
(3)
where is the speed of light in free space.
Using Ansoft HFSS numerical simulation software [13], it is
possible to plot the attenuation curves for the first two modes,
and over a length of 10 cm, as shown in Fig. 3.
In the figure, above a frequency of approximately 15 GHz, the
is attenuated only slightly, which confirms that the cal-
culation of the cutoff frequency of 13.7 GHz is reasonably ac-
(1) curate. Note, however, that the cutoff frequency is not as well
defined as for a rectangular metallic waveguide, where bound-
aries conditions end abruptly at metallic sidewalls.
III. BÉZIER-CURVE SHAPED MICROSTRIP TO H-GUIDE
TRANSITION
An obvious choice of common transmission lines to excite
the single mode in the thin H-guide is the microstrip line,
because of the small vertical dimension of 1.575 mm
proposed in the previous section. Transitions such as those pro-
posed in [14] and similar transitions are intended for Non-Ra-
diative Dielectric (NRD) structures, cannot excite the intended
(2)
H-guide mode, require two separate low-loss substrates,
WONG et al.: WIDEBAND DIELECTRICALLY GUIDED HORN ANTENNA WITH MICROSTRIP LINE TO H-GUIDE FEED
Fig. 4. (a) Top view of the Wedge Radial Waveguide with metallic side walls.
Cylindrical waves are the preferred modes. (b) Top view of the Wedge Radial
Waveguide with air walls. Cylindrical waves are the preferred modes.
and are inherently narrowband because of their resonant be-
havior. The solution proposed here is a non-resonant, wideband,
low-loss Bézier-curve shaped microstrip to H-guide transition
using a low-loss Rogers 5880 substrate, previously discussed in
[11] using a low-cost FR4 substrate.
Consider the air-filled metallic wedge radial waveguide
shown in Fig. 4(a). On the left and right walls, metallic
boundaries, or perfect electric conductors (PEC), enforce the
tangential electric fields to be zero. The dominant mode in
such a structure is a radial mode [12]. A line of equal phase
is shown as a dotted line in the figure for propagation in the
direction. For the design of a transition to the fundamental
H-guide mode as shown in Fig. 1, this is not an efficient
choice, since both the microstrip line and the H-guide do not
have side metallic walls. The transition from the mouth of this
transition to and H-guide would therefore be very abrupt.
Now, consider the same waveguide-based transition, with a
height of 1.575 mm and filled with air, except with virtual per-
fect magnetic conductors (PMC) instead of PEC for walls, as
shown in Fig. 4(b). The virtual PMC boundaries enforce the
magnetic fields to be zero, and hence again, radial waves are
the preferred modes of operation. The lines of equal phase will
be identical for propagation in the direction, however, no
727
Fig. 5. Profiled horn antenna shape.
metallic side edges are needed, thus improving the transition
from the microstrip to the H-guide. Only a fraction of the waves
that are leaving the mouth of the transition, however, are prop-
agating in the desired direction towards the H-guide. Most
waves propagate at an angle to that axis, which is energy that
will be lost at the transition.
The profiled transition shape shown in Fig. 5 that is discussed
in [11] is used as a solution to encourage the propagation of
planar, equal phase waves at the mouth of the transition, as op-
posed to radial waves. Planar waves, as opposed to radial waves,
are less lossy at the mouth of the transition because the rectan-
gular waveguide shape in this region prefers planar waves. The
smooth transition from radial waveguide to rectangular wave-
guide requires a profiled shape, as shown in Fig. 5.
To form the required profiled shape, several different for-
mulas have been presented [15], such as sine squared, exponen-
tial, hyperbolic, or polynomial curves. In this design, however,
a class of cubic spline curves, called the Bézier curve, is used.
The Bézier curve is flexible enough to approximate various dif-
ferent curves while maintaining a smooth shape and allows the
specification of the slope, or direction, at both sides of the tran-
sition.
The parametric form of the cubic Bézier curve [16] using a
3rd degree Bernstein polynomial over points P0 through P3 is
given by
(4)
where the parameter, , varies between 0 and 1
To examine the direction of the curve at its endpoints, con-
sider the derivative of B with respect to
(5)
728
Fig. 6. Control points for Bezier curve.
Fig. 7. A microstrip to H-guide transition with tapered dielectric.
We see that at the endpoints, where the parameter t is 0 or
1, the direction of the Bézier curve can be found by taking the
difference between the two points, P0 and P1, or P2 and P3, re-
spectively. Consequently, as shown in Fig. 6, by putting P0 and
P1 in line with the axis, the beginning of the curve becomes
parallel to the axis. The same property is applied to points
P2 and P3 as shown in the same figure.
To form a smooth transition from a microstrip line to an
H-guide, it is proposed that the transition be considered in
several stages as shown in Fig. 7. The microstrip line tapers
slowly into a wide microstrip line in Section I. To maintain a
smooth transition, the slope in this section is enforced to be
parallel to the direction of the microstrip line. In Section II,
the microstrip line crosses over the dielectric and the profiled
“radial” waveguide as described in Fig. 5. Section III is the
H-guide. At the beginning of this section, the slope of the tran-
sition is enforced to be parallel to the direction of the H-guide
to form the rectangular waveguide section of the transition.
In addition, Sections I to II are smoothed by slowly tapering
the air gap in the dielectric as compared to the abrupt air gap
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 8. (a) Dimension of the Bezier transition top sheet. Bézier curve control
points P0 (2.425, 90.0), P1 (2.425, 62.0), P2 (25.0, 62.0), and P3 (25.0, 40.0)
are shown, where units are in mm. b) Dimension of the Bezier transition board
cutouts. Bézier curve control points P0 (6.6, 90.0), P1 (6.6, 65.25), P2 (30.0,
55.3125), and P3 (35.0, 47.0) are shown, where units are in mm.
originally proposed in [11]. Dimensions for the inner and outer
curves are shown in the caption in Fig. 8. A simulated plot of
the magnitude of the electric fields are shown in Fig. 9.
For this prototype, the actual top sheet is cut from a thin brass
sheet and has finite thickness. The brass layer touches the mi-
crostrip line. For the middle layer, the board is made out of
Rogers 5880 with a microstrip line for testing the connectors
before the final assembly. The bottom layer is formed out of a
copper-plated FR4 sheet, where the metallic copper layer must
touch the middle layer. A photograph of the assembled pro-
totype and measurements of the insertion and return loss are
shown in Fig. 10.
WONG et al.: WIDEBAND DIELECTRICALLY GUIDED HORN ANTENNA WITH MICROSTRIP LINE TO H-GUIDE FEED
Fig. 9. Magnitude of the electric fields within the back-to-back microstrip to
H-guide transition.
Fig. 10. Photograph of the assembled prototype.
Fig. 11. Comparison of simulated vs. measured insertion and return loss.
The prototype shown in Fig. 10 was tested and measured. The
insertion and return loss are plotted in Fig. 11.
The match is fairly good up to 15 GHz, however, the measured
insertion loss tends to fall away as 18 GHz approaches. The dis-
crepancies between measured and simulated results are due to
some additional loss due to the coaxial to microstrip connectors
and their soldering on the board that was not taken into account
in the simulation. The same connector also causes degradation
in the return loss from roughly 25 dB to 15 dB.
IV. ANTENNA DESIGN
Using the Bézier shaped microstrip to thin H-guide transi-
tion discussed in the previous section, the antenna design be-
comes relatively straightforward. One possible design has been
discussed in [5], where the usage was proposed over a small
bandwidth only. In this design, we show through simulation that
this antenna exceeds a return loss of 10 dB from 8 to 18 GHz
729
Fig. 12. Gapped H-Guide. The magnitude and direction of the electric field is
represented by arrows. The effective dielectric constant in region I is higher than
that of region II.
while achieving a gain that varies between 12 and 18 dBi. How-
ever, due to manufacturing imperfections the fabricated proto-
type achieves a maximum of about 16 dBi at only 16 GHz.
Some advantages of this design are that the wave exiting the
aperture is nearly planar, and is mostly concentrated in the di-
electric, away from metallic edges in the vertical direction, and
with no metallic side walls required. The concentration away
from metallic edges in the vertical direction reduces sidelobes,
as does the absence of metallic side walls.
Let us first consider the groove guide as proposed in [17].
If an air gap is added between the dielectric and top metallic
plate, the effective dielectric constant of the dielectric is simply
reduced, so that guided propagation is still possible. We have
briefly discussed this property in [5]. Now, consider the case
where an air gap is added above and below the dielectric so that
the dielectric floats between the two metallic plates and propa-
gation is still possible. The proposed dual air gap configuration
is shown in Fig. 12. The width of the dielectric slowly increases
to compensate for the loss in effective dielectric constant as the
air gap widens.
A rough approximation for the reflection coefficient seen at
the input can be formulated as shown in Fig. 13. If Section I
approaches a propagation constant that is equal to an H-guide
, then . Each subsequent section then has an ef-
fective propagation constant, , and length . The reflection
coefficient, with reference to the start of the taper, is then given
as [18]
(6)
The contribution of each discrete reflection in (6) is not a
simple task and planned for discussion in future studies. For this
paper, a numerical simulation is, therefore, shown in Fig. 14,
where the angle is varied, while the taper in the dielectric
remains constant.
In this parametric study, the radiation boundary is placed at
the aperture of the horn, so that the effects of the aperture on
730 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 13. Segmentation of an H-guide taper. Each section has an effective prop-
agation constant,  , and length l .
Fig. 14. Variation in angle of metallic plates. Inner dielectric tapers from 10
mm to 30 mm for each run. The horn angle is measured from the horizontal
plane to the plane of one of the metallic plates.
the reflection coefficient are removed. The variations in Fig. 14
are therefore due only to the change in metallic plate angles. We
can conclude that for an optimal angle for operation from 6 to 18
GHz, where a return loss of 10 dB or better is required, is equal
to 8 degrees in the vertical plane, close to the H-guide to gapped
H-guide transition. This corresponds to a dielectric taper from
10 mm to 30 mm, given that Rogers 5880 is used as a substrate,
and the H-guide plate separation distance is equal to 1.575 mm.
A two-stage design, with a smaller angle to improve the
return loss, and a large angle, is used to widen the aperture
and thus improve the gain. Finally, to speed up the wave at the
aperture and thus adjust the phase, a curved shape with radius
HW/2 is cut into the dielectric. The top and side views of the
antenna are shown in Fig. 15.
Fig. 15. Improved dual air gap H-guide aperture horn antenna design using
= 10 mm = 1 575 mm SX = 100 mm
1.575 mm thick Rogers 5880. a ,b : , ,
PH1 = 50 mm PH2 = 50 mm HW = 32 mm RH = HW 2 = 16 mm
, , , = ,
 = 15 = 18
, .
V. ANTENNA PROTOTYPE SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT
In this section, the antenna prototype fabrication, return loss,
and radiation pattern measurements are discussed. The antenna
was first simulated using a waveport that directly feeds the
H-guide in HFSS as shown in Fig. 16. This type of feeding
forces the fundamental mode and therefore allows the full
potential of the antenna design to be seen. The simulation was
then performed using the microstrip to H-guide transition as
discussed in previous sections as shown in Fig. 17. This is a
more realistic case for comparison with measured data, since
the thin H-guide must be fed in some way. At lower frequen-
cies, all modes higher than the fundamental are evanescent,
and therefore, any higher order modes that are introduced by
the transition are naturally attenuated through the structure.
However, at higher frequencies, other modes may propagate
freely, so the that modes that may be introduced by the tran-
sition or fabrication imperfections may propagate and affect
the radiation pattern. These effects are most notable in the
sidelobes. Finally, the assembled prototype is shown in Fig. 18.
The return loss plots for the three cases are shown in Fig. 19.
When comparing the return loss of two simulated results, it can
be seen that the transition is so effective that is does not intro-
duce any significant penalty in the return loss. When comparing
the measured results with the simulated ones, it can be con-
cluded that the transition has been reasonably well fabricated
since the variations and trends in the return losses are all sim-
ilar.
Radiation patterns in azimuth and elevation for simulated and
measured data are shown in Figs. 20through 25 for 9, 12, and 15
GHz. The sidelobes have been degraded once the microstrip to
WONG et al.: WIDEBAND DIELECTRICALLY GUIDED HORN ANTENNA WITH MICROSTRIP LINE TO H-GUIDE FEED
Fig. 16. a) Antenna Simulation using waveport. b) Electric fields within an-
tenna at 15 GHz in the horizontal plane within antenna simulation using a wave-
port. c) Electric fields at 15 GHz in the vertical plane within antenna simulation
using a waveport.
731
Fig. 17. (a) Antenna simulation using microstrip to H-guide transition. (b)
Electric field at 15 GHz within antenna simulation.
Fig. 18. Photograph of antenna prototype including microstrip to H-guide tran-
sition.
H-guide transition has been introduced, however, the measured
data matches the simulated data reasonably well if the transi-
tion is included. Some additional degradation in the sidelobes
is visible at 15 GHz in the elevation pattern, however, this is
mostly due to unexpected additional leakage from the microstrip
to H-guide transition.
The transition from coaxial connector to microstrip line,
which is not included in the simulation, caused many small
sidelobes to appear at 15 GHz. We have shown this to be the
732 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
0
Fig. 19. Return loss ( S11) for the measured prototype compared to the sim-
ulations using a waveport, and using the microstrip to H-guide transition.
Fig. 20. Azimuth pattern at 9 GHz.
Fig. 21. Elevation pattern at 9 GHz.
cause of these ripples by covering this transition with foam
and aluminum foil, which significantly reduced these sidelobe
levels in subsequent measurements. Because of the crudeness
of this approach, these results were not included. In future
designs, a shielded transition may be used.
Simulated data for 18 GHz is shown in Figs. 26 and 27 using a
waveport only. A simulation that includes the transition was not
possible at 18 GHz due to memory limitations in the computer
being used. The measured data at 18 GHz showed non-ideal
Fig. 22. Azimuth pattern at 12 GHz.
Fig. 23. Elevation pattern at 12 GHz.
Fig. 24. Azimuth pattern at 15 GHz.
sidelobe levels as compared to simulated results and therefore
have not been shown here. The sidelobe levels at 18 GHz using
the waveport, however, show promising results.
The peak measured gain is approximated by first subtracting
the power received from a gain stardard horn antenna from
the power received with the H-guide horn antenna, where the
transmit antenna is a dual-ridged horn antenna. This delta,
as shown in Fig. 28, is then compared to the known gain
WONG et al.: WIDEBAND DIELECTRICALLY GUIDED HORN ANTENNA WITH MICROSTRIP LINE TO H-GUIDE FEED
Fig. 25. Elevation pattern at 15 GHz.
Fig. 26. Simulated azimuth pattern with waveport at 18 GHz.
Fig. 27. Simulated elevation pattern with waveport at 18 GHz.
standard’s gain. The peak measured gain as shown in Table I
exceeds the simulated results partly because the higher order
modes created by the transition change the fields at the aperture,
causing a narrower main beam. Errors can also partly be due to
measurement and calibration errors.
The simulated gain with the transition is slightly higher than
the gain with the waveport due to the distortion of the beam
as seen in Figs. 20to 25. A gain table in Table I outlines these
results.
733
Fig. 28. The actual measured power received from a gain standard metallic
air-filled horn antenna is compared to the power received from the H-guide horn
antenna in 0.1 GHz steps as shown above. The power received is at the bore
sight (center) without any re-pointing where the transmit antenna is a wideband
dual-ridged horn antenna.
TABLE I
GAINS
Measured gain is approximated by comparing received power with a gain
standard horn antenna and applying the difference to the known gain. Gain
is approximated 12 GHz because the received power of the gain standard
was not available.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new wideband high gain H-guide horn
antenna, and a microstrip to H-guide transition have been
presented and discussed. The proposed new antenna has some
unique advantages compared to traditional horn antennas, such
as lower dependence upon precise angles, similar gains, and
simpler designs. This antenna also successfully demonstrates
that the thin single H-guide is a useful transmission line. Mea-
sured data including return loss and radiation patterns have
confirmed that simulated results are reasonably accurate.
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank all the technicians who as-
sisted in the fabrication and measurement of prototypes dis-
cussed in this paper. Namely, J. Landry from Concordia Uni-
versity, and T. Antonescu and M. Thibault from Ecole Poly-
technique in Montreal, QC, Canada. A. R. Sebak would like
to thank the King Saud University and the National Plan for
Sciences and Technology (NPST) for funds through Research
Grant 09ELE858-02.
734 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
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dielectric resonator antenna array fed by dielectric image guide with
low cross polarization,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 3,
pp. 697–705, Mar. 2010.
[9] H. F. Hammad, Y. M. M. Antar, A. P. Freundorfer, and S. F. Mahmoud,
“Uni-planar CPW-fed slot launchers for efficient TM0 surface wave
excitation,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 51, no. 4, pp.
1234–1240, Apr. 2003.
[10] F. J. Tischer, “Domino-type microwave and millimeter-wave systems,”
in Proc. 15th European Microwave Conf., Oct. 1985, pp. 721–725.
[11] M. Wong, A. R. Sebak, and T. A. Denidni, “Wideband Bézier curve
shaped microstrip to H-guide transition,” Electron. Lett., vol. 45, no.
24, pp. 1250–1252, Nov. 19, 2009.
[12] R. E. Collin, Field Theory of Guided Waves, 2nd ed. Piscataway, NJ:
IEEE Press, 1991, pp. 712–716.
[13] Ansoft HFSS ver. 10.1.2, Ansoft Corporation. Pittsburg, PA, Build,
Sep. 28, 2006.
[14] L. Han, K. Wu, and R. G. Bosisio, “An integrated transition of mi-
crostrip to nonradiative dielectric waveguide for microwave and mil-
limeter-wave circuits,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 44, no.
7, pt. 1, pp. 1091–1096, Jul. 1996.
[15] A. D. Olver and B. Philips, “Profiled dielectric loaded horns,” in Proc.
Eighth Int. Conf. Antennas and Propagation, 1993, vol. 2, pp. 788–791.
[16] W. C. Song, S. C. Ou, and S. R. Shiau, “Integrated computer graphics
learning system in virtual environment: Case study of Bezier, B-spline
and NURBS algorithms,” in Proc. 2000 IEEE Int. Conf. Information
Visualization, Jul. 19–21, 2000, pp. 33–38.
[17] F. J. Tischer, “The groove guide, a low-loss waveguide for millimeter
waves,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 291–296,
Sep. 1963.
[18] M. Wong, A. R. Sebak, and T. A. Denidni, “Analysis, simulation, and
measurement of square periodic H-guide structures,” IET Microw., An-
tenna. Propag., to be published.
Michael Wong (S’05–M’10) received the B.Sc.
degree in electrical engineering from Queen’s
University, Kingston, ON, Canada, in 1997 and
the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, both in electrical
engineering, from Concordia University, Montreal,
QC, Canada, in 2006 and 2010, respectively.
From 1998 to 2004, he was a Systems Engineering
Associate with Mobile Satellite Ventures (now Light-
Squared), Ottawa, ON, Canada, working on traffic
engineering for mobile satellite telephony with the
MSAT satellites. During this time, he also performed
consulting work with Telesat, a Canadian satellite operator, to study the ef-
fects of interference from solar effects and terrestrial services on fixed satellite
services. He is currently with Research in Motion (RIM) working on calibra-
tion software for board level testing with the next generation Blackberry smart-
phones.
Abdel Razik Sebak (F’10) received the B.Sc.
degree (with honors) in electrical engineering from
Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, , in 1976 and the
B.Sc. degree in applied mathematics from Ein
Shams University, Cairo, in 1978. He received the
M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, in 1982 and
1984, respectively, both in electrical engineering.
From 1984 to 1986, he was with the Canadian Mar-
coni Company, working on the design of microstrip
phased array antennas. From 1987 to 2002, he was a
Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of
Manitoba. He is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia
University, Montreal, QC, Canada. His current research interests include phased
array antennas, computational electromagnetics, integrated antennas, electro-
magnetic theory, interaction of EM waves with new materials and bio-electro-
magnetics.
Dr. Sebak received the 2000 and 1992 University of Manitoba Merit Award
for outstanding Teaching and Research, the 1994 Rh Award for Outstanding
Contributions to Scholarship and Research, and the 1996 Faculty of Engineering
Superior Academic Performance. He is a Fellow of IEEE. Dr. Sebak has served
as Chair for the IEEE Canada Awards and Recognition Committee (2002–2004)
and the Technical Program Chair of the 2002 IEEE-CCECE and 2006 ANTEM
conferences.
Tayeb A. Denidni (M’98–SM’04) received the B.Sc.
degree in electronic engineering from the University
of Setif, Setif, Algeria, in 1986, and the M. Sc. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Laval
University, Quebec City, QC, Canada, in 1990 and
1994, respectively.
From 1994 to 1996, he was an Assistant Professor
with the engineering department, Université du
Quebec in Rimouski (UQAR), Quebec, Canada.
From 1996 to 2000, he was also an Associate
Professor at UQAR, where he founded the Telecom-
munications laboratory. Since August 2000, he has been with the Personal
Communications Staff, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS),
Université du Quebec, Montreal, QC, Canada. He founded the RF laboratory,
INRS-EMT, Montreal, for graduate student research in the design, fabrication,
and measurement of antennas. He possesses ten years of experience with an-
tennas and microwave systems and is leading a large research group consisting
of two research scientists, five Ph.D. students, and three M.S. students. Over
the past ten years, he has graduated numerous graduate students. He has served
as the Principal Investigator on numerous research projects on antennas for
wireless communications. Currently he is actively involved in a major project
in wireless of PROMPT-Quebec (Partnerships for Research on Microelec-
tronics, Photonics and Telecommunications). His current research interests
include planar microstrip filters, dielectric resonator antennas, electromag-
netic-bandgap (EBG) antennas, antenna arrays, and microwave and RF design
for wireless applications. He has authored over 100 papers in refereed journals.
He has also authored or coauthored over 150 papers and invited presentations
in numerous national and international conferences and symposia.
From 2006 to 2007, Dr. Denidni was an associate editor for IEEE ANTENNAS
AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS. From 2008 to 2010, he served as an
associate editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION.
He is a member of the Order of Engineers of the Province of Quebec, Canada.
He is also a member of URSI (Commission C).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
CPW-Fed Cavity-Backed Slot Radiator
Loaded With an AMC Reflector
Johan Joubert, Senior Member, IEEE, J. (Yiannis) C. Vardaxoglou, Senior Member, IEEE, William G. Whittow, and
Johann W. Odendaal, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A low profile coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed printed
slot antenna is presented with uni-directional radiation properties.
The slot antenna radiates above a closely spaced artificial magnetic
conducting (AMC) reflector consisting of an array of rectangular
patches, a substrate and an electric ground plane. The electromag-
netic bandgap (EBG) performance of the cavity structure between
the upper conducting surface in which the slot is etched, and the
ground plane at the bottom of the reflector, is investigated using an
equivalent waveguide feed in the place of a half-wavelength section
of the slot antenna. From the reflection coefficient of the equivalent
waveguide feed one can determine the frequency band where min-
imum energy will be lost due to unwanted radiation from the cavity
sides. The dimensions of the cavity were found to be very important
for minimum energy loss. Experimental results for the final an-
tenna design (with a size of ), mounted
on a back plate, exhibit a 5% impedance band-
width, maximum gain in excess of 10 dBi, low cross-polarization,
and a front-to-back ratio of approximately 25 dB. This low-profile
antenna with relatively high gain could be a good candidate for a
2.4 GHz WLAN application.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic bandgap materials, periodic
structures, slot antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
S LOT radiators are suitable candidates for portable units and
unobtrusive base stations of mobile communications sys-
tems, because of their compactness, flush-mounting and simple
structure [1]. Slot radiators are also attractive when an antenna
has to be integrated into a metallic surface eg. as single ele-
ments or arrays conformal to an airborne structure for electronic
warfare applications [2]. When a slot is printed on one side
of a substrate, the element will radiate bidirectionally, and an
electric conducting surface has to be added at a distance of a
quarter-wavelength below the slot as a reflector to achieve op-
timum uni-directional radiation. If the reflector distance is re-
duced to achieve a lower profile, which is highly desirable for
conformal antennas in most cases, parallel plate modes will be
excited that can cause significant energy leakage. A fair amount
of work was published on so-called conductor-backed CPW-fed
Manuscript received May 05, 2011; revised July 15, 2011; accepted August
16, 2011. Date of current version February 03, 2012.
J. Joubert and J. W. Odendaal are with the Centre for Electromagnetism, Uni-
versity of Pretoria, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engi-
neering, Pretoria 0002, South Africa (e-mail: jjoubert@up.ac.za; wimpie.oden-
daal@up.ac.za).
J. C. Vardaxoglou and W. G. Whittow are with the Centre for Mobile Com-
munications Research, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, U.K. (e-mail: j.c.vardax-
oglou@lboro.ac.uk, w.g.whittow@lboro.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173152
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
735
slot antennas, where single or multiple dielectric layers were in-
serted between the upper conducting surface containing the slot
and the reflector [3]–[6]. Energy leakage between the parallel
plates because of unwanted modes remains a problem for con-
ductor-backed slot radiators and special techniques have to be
used to overcome this, eg. the use of closed cavities behind the
slot [1], the placement of shorting pins around the slot [2], or the
use of twin slot configurations for phase cancellation [5], [6].
This paper presents results of an investigation of a CPW-fed
slot radiator above a metamaterial-based AMC surface as a re-
flector. The intention was to investigate a single radiating el-
ement with a low profile and compact lateral dimensions, in
order to improve on results for a similar structure investigated in
[7]. Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed structure. It can
also be described as a cavity-backed (with open sides) slot ra-
diator loaded with an AMC reflector. An alternative description
would be that the radiation is due to the “structural resonance
mode” [8] of the entire slot-fed cavity structure loaded with a
high-impedance surface. The most important design considera-
tions are:
1) the reflection phase of the AMC reflector—at the centre
frequency it should ideally be 0 , and minimum variation
as function of frequency will ensure optimum bandwidth
of the antenna—the basic principle being that the reflected
wave from the reflector should add sufficiently in phase
with the resonant slot field in order to achieve a radiation
resistance that can be matched to the CPW feed line;
2) the EBG performance of the physical structure between the
upper conducting surface in which the slot is etched, and
the ground plane at the bottom of the AMC—the propa-
gation of any modes between the two conducting surfaces
(which effectively form the parallel plate cavity structure),
and subsequent radiation from the edges of the structure,
should be minimized over the bandwidth of operation.
Results from a number of studies related to the topic of low
profile slot antennas with a metamaterial-based reflector to
achieve uni-directional radiation have been published in the
open literature by other researchers, all reporting some level of
success. One has to distinguish between compact cavity-backed
slot antennas and single slot radiators embedded in a laterally
large parallel plate environment. The effectiveness of the EBG
structure used between the plates should be a direct function
of the size of the surface area over which the structure is
employed around the radiating slot—the larger the area the
more effective the EBG surface. As far back as 1999 Shumpert
et al. [9] published results of a conductor-backed folded slot
(fed with a coaxial transmission line) with an EBG structure
consisting of an array of square dielectric cylinders between
736
Fig. 1. Printed CPW-fed slot antenna above an AMC reflector; (a) 3-D view,
(b) top view, and (c) front view.
the plates. They achieved uni-directional radiation for a single
folded slot with a front-to-back ratio of 15 dB and a frequency
bandwidth of 7.5%. The dimensions of the structure were
—so the thickness of the antenna was still
more than , and several wavelengths of the EBG structure
were used to achieve significant suppression of the dominant
TEM mode between the parallel plates.
Elek et al. [10] published results for a uni-directional ring-
slot antenna. A primary focus of this work was the design of
a suitable EBG surface to minimize radiation leakage between
the parallel plates of the structure. They opted to use the pop-
ular “mushroom” periodic surface (small rectangular patches
with vias connecting the centre of all the patches to a common
ground plane) proposed by Sievenpiper et al. in [11]. This work
[10] contains interesting details of an experimental setup to de-
termine the EBG stopband. They effectively measure/simulate
the transmission coefficient through a section of parallel plate
waveguide with and without the EBG surface between the par-
allel plates, and show conclusively that the inclusion of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
EBG surface dramatically suppresses the propagation of the un-
wanted TEM-mode between the plates. The EBG surface that
is closely spaced (much closer than a quarter-wavelength) to
the ground plane in which the ring-slot is cut also acts as a
quasi-artificial magnetic reflector (independent analysis of the
structure has indicated a reflection phase close to 90 at the
centre frequency), which allows for a low profile structure with
uni-directional radiation. The final ring-slot antenna design had
overall dimensions of , but they used
an EBG surface of centrally located behind the
slot. The overall structure was still quite large laterally (with
the slot asymmetrically spaced relative to the antenna ground
plane without any motivation), and achieved a good front-to-
back ratio of 21 dB, and a gain improvement between 2.5 and
2.9 dB (compared to a ring-slot antenna without a reflector) over
a 5% impedance bandwidth.
Niyomjan and Huang [12] theoretically (no experimental re-
sults were presented) investigated a suspended microstrip fed
slot antenna on a high impedance surface (HIS), which is just
an alternative description of an artificial magnetic conductor.
Similar to [10], they also employed the Sievenpiper [11] “mush-
room” periodic surface. Their final design had lateral dimen-
sions of approximately , and they used a relatively
large gap of 4 mm ( at 10 GHz) between the slot
substrate and the AMC surface, which together with the two
substrate thicknesses results in a final antenna that is not sig-
nificantly lower in profile than what can be achieved with a
quarter-wavelength spaced electric conducting surface.
An example of a compact cavity-backed (with open sides)
slot antenna (offset-fed with a microstrip line) with an etched or
so-called “uni-planar compact photonic band-gap” (UC-PBG)
reflector was introduced by Park et al. [7]. The UC-PBG re-
flector, consisting of a lattice of square pads, capacitive gaps
and narrow lines connecting each cell was also designed to act
as a magnetic reflector at the resonant frequency. The dimen-
sions of the structure were very compact and extremely thin
. The measured performance of
this antenna was however not very good, with a small exper-
imental frequency bandwidth of 1.33%, a front-to-back ratio in
the vicinity of 10 dB, poor cross polarization, and only a 1 dB
gain improvement with reference to a slot antenna without a re-
flector.
It was decided to design the newly proposed low profile slot
antenna with an AMC reflector for a practical frequency band
(2.4–2.484 GHz)—that for WLAN base stations. Section II
gives details on the design of the AMC reflector consisting of an
array of rectangular patches, a substrate and an electric ground
plane. The cavity-backed CPW-fed slot antenna design and the
EBG performance of the cavity structure (between the upper
conducting surface in which the slot is etched and the ground
plane at the bottom of the reflector) are discussed in Section III.
The EBG performance is investigated using an equivalent
waveguide feed for one half-wavelength section of the slot
antenna. From the waveguide reflection coefficient a designer
can determine the frequency band where minimum energy will
be lost due to unwanted modes radiating from the cavity sides.
The dimensions of the cavity were found to be very important
JOUBERT et al.: CPW-FED CAVITY-BACKED SLOT RADIATOR
Fig. 2. 3D and front view of unit cell for determining of the resonant frequency
(with 0 reflecting phase) of the AMC surface.
for minimum energy loss. Simulated and experimental results
for the whole structure are presented in Section IV.
II. AMC REFLECTOR DESIGN
Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) is the name that was
established for the complex EBG structures (the “mushroom”
periodic surface above a conducting ground) initially presented
as High Impedance Structures (HIS) in [11] because of the spe-
cific property that the reflection of plane waves from such a sur-
face occurs such that the reflected wave is in phase with the
incident wave. This property would be exhibited by a magnetic
conductor (dual of the perfect electric conductor).
Different types of AMC reflectors have been investigated
since the publication of [11], eg. in [13] a comparative study
was performed on four types of AMC surfaces, including the
“mushroom” EBG, uniplanar compact EBG, Peano curve, and
Hilbert curve. The study shows that the “mushroom” surface has
the best bandwidth of the four types considered. Another pop-
ular type of AMC is the Jerusalem Cross-based structure [14],
but our own simulations have shown that the bandwidth of this
structure (implemented on the same substrate) is also substan-
tially less than that of the “mushroom” AMC. A modification
of the “mushroom” AMC was proposed in [15]—the vias were
removed between the patches and the ground because vias com-
plicate the fabrication of AMC surfaces—the effect of this was
negligible on the AMC performance of the structure for normal
incidence, but the EBG typically shifts to higher frequencies. In
[15] the AMC and EBG characteristics of this new patch array
AMC were investigated and a new technique presented to tailor
the spectral position of the AMC operation and the EBG.
Because of the bandwidth advantage, and the simplicity of
fabrication it was decided to use the patch array AMC proposed
in [15] for the antenna in this paper—a unit cell of the pro-
posed metasurface is shown in Fig. 2. The performance of an
infinite repetition of this basic cell has been simulated using
CST Microwave Studio applying the proper boundary condi-
tions (PEC’s on the planes normal the polarization of the in-
cident field, and PMC’s on the planes parallel to the polariza-
tion of the incident field) to the unit cell and under normal inci-
dence. The total structure thus comprises of a metal backed di-
electric substrate with an array of metal square patches arranged
in a periodical form. Design by repetitive analysis resulted in
final dimensions for the structure: mm, mm
(which implies mm, referring to Fig. 1)
and substrate thickness mm (RO4003, , gins to reduce dramatically for
). The design aim was to get zero reflecting
phase at a resonant frequency of 2.45 GHz.
737
Fig. 3. The simulated reflecting phase response for a patch AMC and a “mush-
room” AMC. In both cases the dimensions were mm, mm
mm and mm (on substrate RO4003, ,
).
The reflection phase of the unit cell is shown in Fig. 3. If
one includes a metallic via embedded inside the dielectric sub-
strate connecting the metal square patch to the ground plane the
well known “mushroom” type AMC is obtained [10], [11]. This
structure was also analyzed and the result is also shown in Fig. 3.
The reflection phase response of the patch AMC and the “mush-
room” AMC were found to be very similar. The reflection phase
of the structure is 0 at 2.45 GHz and between in the fre-
quency range from 2.28 GHz to 2.64 GHz (approximately over
a 15% bandwidth). The magnitude of the reflection coefficient
is close to . The bandwidth of the structure can be improved
if one uses a thicker substrate or a substrate with a lower permit-
tivity, but the overall antenna structure will then be thicker (less
low-profile), or the unit element size will have to be increased.
III. CAVITY-BACKED SLOT ANTENNA DESIGN
The CPW-fed cavity-backed slot antenna loaded with
the AMC reflector designed in the previous section (see
Fig. 1) was designed to operate in the WLAN frequency band
(2.4–2.484 GHz). The radiating element basically consists
of two half-wavelength slots radiating in phase and in close
proximity to each other—each slot fed by one of the slot-
lines of the CPW feed line. It is sometimes referred to as a
full-wavelength printed slot radiator, and this type of element
(without the AMC reflector) has previously been characterized
in [16], [17]. The design of the final antenna was performed
with the assistance of CST Microwave Studio. The radiating
slot element substrate was chosen as Rogers RO4003, with
, and mm. The antenna
design process involved the determination of suitable values
for some inter-dependant parameters, specifically , and
, and and (all of them indicated in Fig. 1).
A. Gap—The Distance Between the Slot Substrate and the
AMC Reflector
Simulations indicated that the bandwidth of the antenna be-
mm. This probably hap-
pens because the AMC reflector performance begins to change
drastically as the slot substrate comes closer in proximity to
738 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. EBG performance test setup consisting of a dielectric-filled rectangular
waveguide (in the position of one of the radiating slots) feeding the parallel
plate cavity formed by the finite slot ground plane, antenna substrate and AMC
reflector.
the AMC structure (the AMC reflector was designed for an
air medium in front of the reflector). A final value of
mm was used. The overall height of the final an-
tenna was mm , with the free-space wave-
length at 2.45 GHz.
B. and —The Lateral Cavity Dimensions
and , (the lateral cavity dimensions of the antenna),
and also the number of patches used to construct the AMC re-
flector were chosen to minimize the power radiated from the
sides of the cavity structure, which contribute towards high side-
lobes and a high backlobe in the radiation pattern. This effective
EBG performance was found to be strongly influenced by the
lateral cavity dimensions (for a specific value of ). The EBG
stop band was initially determined using the method proposed
in [10], where the slot is removed from the top conducting sur-
face (and replaced with a PEC), and two ports on either side of
the parallel plate cavity are defined, and the transmission coef-
ficient then determined. The two remaining sides of the cavity
were designated as perfect magnetic walls. The results showed
that the stop band did not coincide with the AMC reflector band,
with high transmission levels predicted within the 2.4–2.5 GHz
band. Upon further investigation it was soon realized that this
method does not necessarily determine the EBG performance
of our finite cavity structure very accurately—the excitation of
parallel plate modes by a slot in the top conducting surface of
the finite cavity structure might be very different to that of the
structure with the magnetic walls as described in [10]. A new
EBG performance test setup was devised, consisting of a di-
electric-filled waveguide feeding the finite parallel plate cavity
formed by the slot conducting surface, the antenna substrate and
the AMC reflector, as shown in Fig. 4. The assumption is that the
waveguide aperture will excite parallel plate modes in the cavity
very similar to a slot. The simulated reflection coefficient of the
waveguide port will then be indicative of the EBG performance
of the structure.
The dimensions and location of the waveguide feed were
chosen to be the same as one half-wavelength of the ra-
diating slot element, and then suitable compact cavity
dimensions were determined through repetitive analysis.
The EBG performance of three representative cases (see
Fig. 5) are discussed: (a) Case#1—5 5 patch array AMC
Fig. 5. Three different test cases for which the EBG performance were inves-
tigated; (a) Case#1—5 5 patch array AMC mm , (b)
Case#2—5 4 patch array AMC mm mm , and (c)
Case#3—5 3 patch array AMC mm mm .
mm , (b) Case#2—5 4 patch array AMC
mm mm , and (c) Case#3—5 3
patch array AMC mm mm . The basic
difference between Case#1 and Case#2 is the cavity dimension
in the -direction. Case#2 and Case#3 have exactly the same
cavity dimensions, but the patch array sizes are different in the
two cases, and in all cases mm was used.
The waveguide port was excited with a dominant waveguide
mode and the reflection coefficient calculated. From Fig. 6 one
can see that the difference in the reflection coefficient is sig-
nificant for Case#1 and Case#2—illustrating the significance of
the cavity dimensions. The difference in reflection coefficient is
less significant between Case#2 and Case#3, for different array
sizes but the same cavity dimensions. Case#3 has the largest
reflection coefficient over the 2.4–2.5 GHz band, which is an
indication that the waveguide aperture radiates into a very high
impedance for that particular structure, thus limiting significant
leakage of power between the cavity side walls. Case#3 was
chosen for the final antenna design — mm ,
mm , and a 5 3 patch array AMC. For a
compact cavity-backed slot antenna like this the cavity dimen-
sions are the primary parameters that have to be determined to
ensure minimum energy leakage. Because of the small cavity
size and the close proximity of the slots to the cavity edges,
and hence the small surface area around the slot where an EBG
surface can be employed, the mode suppression by the periodic
structure of the AMC reflector does not seem to play a signif-
icant role. For larger structures like those in [7], [9], [10], the
mode suppression of the periodic structure of the AMC will play
a more significant role, and the newly devised EBG test setup
will also be suitable for future designs of such structures.
C. and —The Slot Dimensions
and , the slot length and width were determined that will
provide an impedance match to a 50 CPW feed line. For the 50
CPW feed line the gap between the slotlines was determined
as mm and the slotline width as mm.
The slot width primarily determines the radiation resistance, and
the slot length primarily determines the resonant frequency. The
final antenna design slot dimensions were determined as
mm and mm.
IV. REFERENCE ANTENNA DESIGN
For the purpose of gain and bandwidth comparisons a ref-
erence antenna without an AMC reflector was also designed
using the same substrate and the same lateral dimensions
mm and mm. If the final antenna design slot
JOUBERT et al.: CPW-FED CAVITY-BACKED SLOT RADIATOR
Fig. 6. Simulated magnitude of for the waveguide port—for the three test
cases shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 7. Simulated magnitude of for the waveguide port—for an infinite
PEC reflector spaced at mm.
dimensions as determined in the previous section are used and
the antenna simulated without the AMC reflector, the radiation
resistance of the slot is approximately doubled, and the resonant
frequency increases. The final reference slot dimensions can be
obtained by decreasing the slot width (to mm), for a
radiation resistance 50 , and by increasing the slot length (to
mm), for resonance at 2.45 GHz. The reference antenna
above an infinite PEC reflector spaced at mm was also
analyzed. The antenna was still reasonably well matched, but
the E-plane radiation patterns were seriously distorted because
of significant energy leakage from the sides of the antenna. To
confirm the EBG test procedure (in Fig. 4) was performed for
the antenna above the PEC reflector, and the waveguide port re-
flection coefficient is shown in Fig. 7—the level of dB at
the design frequency is a clear indication of significant energy
leakage.
V. RESULTS OF FINAL DESIGN AND DISCUSSION
To validate the simulations the slot antenna with the AMC
reflector was manufactured and measured. A photograph of the
final antenna is shown in Fig. 8. The different layers were fixed
with four plastic screws with 3 mm spacers.
739
Fig. 8. Photograph of the manufactured final antenna design.
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured reflection coefficient for the final an-
tenna design.
A comparison between the simulated and measured reflection
coefficient is shown Fig. 9. The two sets of data correspond well,
and the impedance bandwidth ( dB return loss) was found to
be close to 5%. It has to be mentioned that the impedance band-
width of the reference slot antenna without any reflector was
more than 20%. The much lower bandwidth achieved with the
reflector is due to the limited bandwidth of the AMC surface in
terms of reflection phase. The overall bandwidth of the final an-
tenna roughly corresponds to the bandwidth of the AMC surface
where the reflection phase is between . The electromag-
netic bandgap of the structure is significantly broader (define as
2.2–2.6 GHz, from Fig. 6), so if one can improve the reflection
phase bandwidth an antenna with better overall bandwidth will
be possible.
The E- and H-plane radiation patterns of the final antenna
design were measured at 2.45 GHz. The simulated and mea-
sured patterns are shown in Figs. 10 and 11. The cross-polar-
ization was found to be very low (more than 20 dB down),
and the front-to-back ratio acceptable—in the region of 18 dB.
To improve the front-to-back ratio the final antenna design was
mounted on a back plate with a size mm
mm. Fig. 12 shows a photograph of the final antenna de-
sign mounted on the back plate. Simulations have shown that
the back plate added to the structure does not affect the EBG
properties or the matching of the antenna significantly—the
was still lower than dB for the entire WLAN band. The
740
Fig. 10. Simulated and measured E-plane radiation patterns for the final an-
tenna design.
Fig. 11. Simulated and measured H-plane radiation patterns for the final an-
tenna design.
back plate does however change the radiation direction of the
small amount of leaked energy from the cavity sidewalls—with
less energy being radiated towards the back and sides of the an-
tenna. The simulated and measured E- and H-plane radiation
patterns are shown in Figs. 13 and 14. The front-to-back ratio
improved to about 25 dB.
The realized gain was simulated and measured for the slot an-
tenna without an AMC reflector, the final antenna design (with
an AMC reflector and lateral dimensions of 125 mm 100 mm)
and the same design mounted on the back plate,
and the results are shown in Fig. 15. Good correlation between
the simulated and measured values can be observed. The gain of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. Photograph of the manufactured final antenna design mounted on a
back plate.
Fig. 13. Simulated and measured E-plane radiation patterns for the final an-
tenna design mounted on a back plate.
the final antenna design is approximately 3 dB higher than the
gain of the antenna without a reflector, and the gain improved
by another dB for the final design mounted on the larger back
plate. The measured gain of the final antenna mounted on the
back plate varied between 9.8 and 10.3 dB within the 2.4–2.5
GHz band. Also evident in Fig. 15 is the more constant gain
over a wider bandwidth (close to 6 dBi) of the reference antenna
which has a much larger bandwidth because of the absence of
the effect of the AMC reflector.
The simulated radiation and total efficiencies of the final an-
tenna mounted on the back plate are shown in
Fig. 16—the radiation efficiency is better than 95% and the total
efficiency better than 85% for the entire 2.4–2.5 GHz band.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
A low profile CPW-fed cavity-backed printed slot antenna
is presented with uni-directional radiation properties. The slot
JOUBERT et al.: CPW-FED CAVITY-BACKED SLOT RADIATOR
Fig. 14. Simulated and measured H-plane radiation patterns for the final an-
tenna design mounted on a back plate.
Fig. 15. Simulated and measured antenna gain for the reference slot antenna
without a reflector, the final antenna design with an AMC reflector, and the final
antenna design with an AMC reflector mounted on a back plate.
antenna radiates above a closely spaced artificial magnetic con-
ducting reflector consisting of an array of rectangular patches,
a substrate and an electric ground plane. The basic AMC re-
flector design was based on an infinite structure, but the final
dimensions of the metamaterial based reflector cavity was de-
termined on the basis of a newly devised EBG performance test
for the finite structure. The EBG performance was evaluated
with an equivalent waveguide feed in place of one half-wave-
length section of the slot antenna. From the waveguide reflection
coefficient one can determine the frequency band where min-
imum energy will be lost due to unwanted modes propagating
between the parallel plates and radiating from the cavity sides.
Experimental results for the final antenna design (with a size of
), mounted on back
plate, exhibit a 5% impedance bandwidth, maximum gain in ex-
cess of 10 dBi, low cross-polarization, and a front-to-back ratio
741
Fig. 16. Simulated radiation and total efficiencies of the final antenna mounted
on the back plate.
of approximately 25 dB. This antenna is simple to manufacture
using simple photolithography (no vias or solid sidewalls are
necessary), and can be used as a flush-mounted single radiator.
This low-profile antenna with relatively high gain could be a
good candidate for a 2.4 GHz WLAN application. Future inves-
tigations will include the design of arrays of printed slots above
an AMC reflector, for which the newly devised EBG test proce-
dure will be a valuable design tool.
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by a very thin cavity,” Microw. Opt. Tech. Lett., vol. 49, no. 1, pp.
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[5] J. P. Jacobs, J. Joubert, and J. W. Odendaal, “Radiation efficiency and
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[6] M. Qiu and G. V. Eleftheriades, “Highly efficient unidirectional twin
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[7] J. Y. Park, C.-C. Chang, Y. Qian, and T. Itoh, “An improved low-pro-
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[8] A. O. Karilainen, J. Vehmas, O. Luukkonen, and S. A. Tretyakov,
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[9] J. D. Shumpert, W. J. Chappell, and L. B. Katehi, “Parallel-plate mode
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[11] D. Sievenpiper, L. Zhang, R. F. J. Broas, N. G. Alexopoulos, and E.
Yablonovitch, “High-impedance electromagnetic surfaces with a for-
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no. 11, pp. 2059–2074, Nov. 1999.
742 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
[12] G. Niyomjan and Y. Huang, “A suspended microstrip fed slot antenna
on high impedance surface structure,” in Proc. EuCAP, Nice, France,
Nov. 2006.
[13] J. R. Sohn, K. Y. Kim, and H.-S. Tae, “Comparative study on various
artificial magnetic conductors for low-profile antenna,” PIER, vol. 61,
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[14] M. Hosseini and M. Hakkak, “Characteristics estimation for Jerusalem
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Prop. Lett., vol. 7, pp. 58–61, 2008.
[15] G. Goussetis, A. Feresidis, and J. C. Vardaxoglou, “Tailoring the
AMC and EBG characteristics of periodic metallic arrays printed on
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54, no. 1, pp. 82–89, Jan. 2006.
[16] A. Nešić, “Slotted antenna array excited by a coplanar waveguide,”
Electron. Lett., vol. 18, pp. 275–276, 1982.
[17] H.-C. Liu, T.-S. Horng, and N. G. Alexopoulos, “Radiation of printed
antennas with a coplanar waveguide feed,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 43, no. 10, pp. 1143–1148, Oct. 1995.
Johan Joubert (M’86–SM’05) received the B.Eng.,
M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering
from the University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South
Africa, in 1983, 1987, and 1991 respectively.
From 1984 to 1988 he was employed as a Research
Engineer at the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research, Pretoria. In 1988 he joined the Department
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Uni-
versity of Pretoria, where he is currently a Professor
of Electromagnetism. From July to December 1995
he was Visiting Scholar with the Department of Elec-
trical and Computer Engineering, California State University, Northridge. From
July to December 2001 he was Visiting Scientist at Industrial Research Lab-
oratories in Wellington, New Zealand. From July to December 2006 he was
Visiting Scholar at the Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik, Uni-
versität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany, and from July to September 2010 he visited
Loughborough University, U.K., for a collaborative research project on meta-
materials. His research interests include antenna array design and computational
electromagnetism.
Prof. Joubert is a registered Professional Engineer in South Africa.
J.(Yiannis) C. Vardaxoglou (M’87) received the
B.Sc. degree in mathematical physics in 1982 and the
Ph.D. degree in electronics in 1985 at the University
of Kent, Kent, U.K.
He joined Loughborough University as a Lecturer
in 1988 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in
1992 and Professor or Wireless Communications
in 1998. He is currently Dean of the School of
Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering
at Loughborough University. He established the
Wireless Communications Research (WiCR) group
at Loughborough University and heads the Centre for Mobile Communications
Research. He has pioneered research, design and development of frequency
selective surfaces (FSS) for communication systems, Metamaterials and low
SAR antennas for mobile telephony and has commercially exploited a number
of his innovations. He has served as a consultant to various industries, holds
6 patents and is the Technical Director of Antrum Ltd (a University spinout
company). He has attracted research funding from industry and has been
awarded 18 EPSRC research grants. He has published over 160 refereed
journals and conference proceeding papers and has written a book on FSS.
Prof. Vardaxoglou was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the IET’s
Antennas and Propagation Professional Network in the UK and chaired the
IEEE’s distinguish lecturer program of the Antennas and Propagation Society
(APS) for 5 years. He was the General Chair of EuCAP’2007. He has chaired
numerous IEE/IET events and has been on the Steering Committee of the Euro-
pean Conference on Antennas and Propagation, EuCAP since 2006. He founded
the Loughborough Antennas and Propagation Conference (LAPC), which has
been running since 2005.
William G. Whittow received the B.Sc. degree in
physics from The University of Sheffield, Sheffield,
U.K. in 2000 and the Ph.D. degree from the Electrical
and Electronics Engineering Department, University
of Sheffield, in 2004.
He is currently employed as a Research Associate
at Loughborough University, U.K. He has published
over 60 peer reviewed journal and conference papers
in topics related to electromagnetic materials, wear-
able antennas, VHF antennas, Specific Absorption
Rate, FDTD, bioelectromagnetics, phantoms and
Genetic Algorithms.
Dr. Whittow has been the Coordinating Chair of the Loughborough Antennas
& Propagation Conference (LAPC) since 2007.
Johann W. Odendaal (M’90–SM’00) received the
B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in electronic en-
gineering from the University of Pretoria, Pretoria,
South Africa, in 1988, 1990, and 1993, respectively.
From September 1993 to April 1994, he was a
Visiting Scientist with the ElectroScience Labora-
tory at the Ohio State University. From August to
December 2002, he was a Visiting Scientist with
CSIRO Telecommunications and Industrial Physics
in Australia. Since May 1994, he has been with
the University of Pretoria, where he is currently a
Full Professor. His research interests include electromagnetic scattering and
radiation, compact range measurements, and signal processing. He is also
Director of the Centre for Electromagnetism at the University of Pretoria.
Prof. Odendaal is a member of the Antenna Measurement Techniques Asso-
ciation (AMTA) and is registered as a Professional Engineer in South Africa.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
The Use of Simple Thin Partially Reflective Surfaces
With Positive Reflection Phase Gradients to Design
Wideband, Low-Profile EBG Resonator Antennas
Yuehe Ge, Member, IEEE, Karu P. Esselle, Senior Member, IEEE, and Trevor S. Bird, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—Partially reflecting surfaces (PRS) with positive re-
flection phase gradients are investigated for the design of wide-
band, low-profile electromagnetic band gap (EBG) resonator an-
tennas. Thin single-dielectric-slab PRSs with printed patterns on
both sides are proposed to minimize the PRS thickness and to sim-
plify fabrication. Three such surfaces, each with printed dipoles on
both sides, have been designed to obtain different positive reflection
phase gradients and reflection magnitude levels in the operating
frequency bands. These surfaces, and the EBG resonator antennas
formed from them, are analyzed theoretically and experimentally
to highlight the design compromises involved and to reveal the re-
lationships between the antenna peak gain, gain bandwidth, the
reflection profile (i.e., positive phase gradient and magnitude) of
the surface and the relative dimensions of dipoles. A small feed an-
tenna, designed to operate in the cavity field environment, provides
good impedance matching ( dB) across the oper-
ating frequency bands of all three EBG resonator antennas. Ex-
perimental results confirm the wideband performance of a simple,
low-profile EBG resonator antenna. Its PRS thickness is only 1.6
mm, effective bandwidth is 12.6%, measured peak gain is 16.2 dBi
at 11.5 GHz and 3 dB gain bandwidth is 15.7%.
Index Terms—Broadband, electromagnetic band-gap (EBG),
Fabry–Perot, frequency selective surface (FSS), high-gain, meta-
material, partially reflecting surface (PRS), resonator antenna,
wideband.
I. INTRODUCTION
M ETAMATERIAL-BASED structures have sparked con-
siderable interest in recent years. The novel properties
exhibited by metamaterials, such as electromagnetic band gap
(EBG), artificial magnetic conductor behavior and negative
refractive index, have been studied as a means of enhancing the
performance of microwave and millimeter-wave components
including antennas [1]–[12]. Among them, one practically
useful application is the use of an EBG structure as a partially
Manuscript received September 29, 2010; revised May 31, 2011; accepted
September 14, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current ver-
sion February 03, 2012. This work was supported by the Australian Research
Council.
Y. Ge is with the College of Information Science and Engineering, Huaqiao
University, Xiamen 361021, China (e-mail: yuehe@ieee.org).
K. P. Esselle is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Faculty of
Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia.
T. S. Bird is with Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia and
also with the CSIRO ICT Centre, Epping, NSW 1710, Australia.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173113
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
743
but highly reflecting surface to construct an EBG resonator
antenna.
A typical EBG resonator antenna is formed by creating an
air-filled resonant cavity between an EBG structure, which be-
haves as a partially reflecting surface (PRS), and a total reflector.
The cavity is fed using a small feeding antenna or an array.
An early version of EBG resonator antennas uses appropriately
spaced multiple dielectric layers to achieve a high gain [1], [12].
Transmission line theory proved sufficient for such designs [12].
Later, more complicated EBG structures were devised to en-
hance the gain of small antennas [2]–[10]. The structures studied
in the past few years include high-permittivity covers [2], 3-D
woodpile structures [3], 2-D dielectric rods [4], 2-D metallic
rods [2], 2-D dielectric grids [4], 2-D metallic grids [4], [5],
2-D frequency selective surface (FSS) [6]–[10] and magneto-di-
electric structures [11]. Among these EBG-resonator antennas,
those based on multiple dielectric layers and FSSs have the ad-
vantages of structural simplicity and ease of fabrication and
mounting.
An inherent disadvantage of EBG resonator antennas, how-
ever, is the narrow bandwidth due to their typically narrow-
band resonant cavity. To overcome this, an active reconfigurable
PRS antenna [13] was developed to operate in a wide frequency
range, from 5.2 to 5.95 GHz. Using a slot antenna array as the
excitation of an EBG resonator antenna [14], an improved band-
width, up to 13.2%, was achieved while maintaining a high gain.
However, the changes employed in these approaches [13], [14]
to increase bandwidth make the design and fabrication compli-
cated, losing many of the advantages of simplicity and low cost
of EBG resonator antennas over conventional array antennas.
According to the analysis in [6], a wideband EBG resonator an-
tenna can be realized if the reflection phase of the PRS increases
linearly with frequency. Based on this observation, PRSs with
positive phase gradients have been realized using two dielec-
tric slabs with an air-gap spacing to make wideband EBG res-
onator antennas [15]–[19]. Subsequently single-slab PRSs with
a positive phase gradient have been proposed for the same pur-
pose [20], [21]. EBG resonator antennas so designed have the
advantages of standard passive EBG resonator antennas whilst
providing a wider bandwidth.
In the present paper, we investigate simple, thin PRSs that
can offer positive reflection phase gradients, and provide the
wideband performance required by EBG resonator antennas.
The PRSs investigated here is composed of a single dielectric
slab with two-dimensional arrays printed on both surfaces. The
objective is to make the antenna low-profile with the antenna
744 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. Geometry of the EBG resonator antenna.
height only slightly greater than the cavity height. Here, dipole
arrays are considered as an example. The antennas designed by
this approach have the advantages of simplicity, low profile, low
cost and ease of fabrication and assembling. By appropriately
selecting the parameters of the two dipole arrays according to
the proposed design method, the PRS exhibits positive reflec-
tion phase gradients within a designated frequency band, and
hence a wideband EBG resonator antenna could be realized.
A monopole antenna, which provides wideband impedance
matching ( dB) over the entire bandwidth, has been
designed to excite the cavity. This is a crucial step in designing
wideband EBG resonator antennas because typical wideband
feed antennas (matched in free space) become mismatched
when placed in the cavity. Without a wideband feed antenna
that is well-matched within the cavity, one can achieve only
wideband directivity but not wideband gain.
In the next section, we describe the design strategy of a PRS
for wideband low-profile EBG resonator antennas. The design
approach and the realization of the proposed PRSs are demon-
strated in Section III. The design methodology is summarized
in Section IV. In Section V, the measured performance of three
EBG resonator antenna prototypes are presented with the reflec-
tion characteristics of the three PRSs used for them. A wideband
feed antenna—an essential feature—is also described. The re-
sults are discussed in Section VI. Finally, Section VII concludes
the paper with observations.
II. PRS DESIGN STRATEGY FOR WIDEBAND
LOW-PROFILE ANTENNAS
The proposed EBG resonator antenna configuration is shown
in Fig. 1. It consists of a small feed antenna, a thin slab PRS with
double-sided printing and a PEC ground plane. The PRS forms a
resonant cavity between itself and the PEC ground plane. At all
frequencies in the band, the resonance condition [6] is satisfied.
The antenna has a high directivity, provided that the reflection
coefficient magnitude of the PRS is sufficiently large.
Usually the cavity resonates only at one frequency, resulting
in a narrowband EBG resonator antenna. To build a wideband
EBG resonator antenna that maintains the resonance condition
over the operating frequency band, the reflection phase of the
PRS should increase with frequency, as described in [20]. The
reflection phase of a conventional PRS, on the other hand, de-
creases with frequency. Our first objective in the present work
was to design a PRS with a positive reflection phase gradient.
Fig. 2. Directivity versus reflection magnitude of PRSs.
The gain of the antenna is mainly determined by the cross-
section of the PRS, the reflection coefficient of the PRS, the
cavity height , and the feed antenna. If the PRS and the feed
antenna are fixed, the cavity height determines the operating
frequency and the antenna gain. To obtain a high gain or di-
rectivity, a highly reflective PRS is required. A PRS, made out
of a 0.8 mm thick Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 slab, with square
copper patch array printed on its bottom surface, was initially
considered to investigate the variation of directivity with the re-
flection magnitude of the PRS. Changing the side length of the
patch changed the PRS reflection magnitude. As illustrated by
the results in Fig. 2, the antenna directivity increases with the re-
flection magnitude of the PRS until the reflection level is about
dB. Also, a directivity dBi can normally be achieved
as long as the reflection is above about dB. Also for the
same investigation we considered a single dielectric slab, and
changed the permittivity of the dielectric to change its reflection
magnitude. A similar directivity variation trend was obtained,
although the directivity was slightly lower than that shown in
Fig. 2. In summary, when the reflection magnitude of the PRS
is greater than about dB, an acceptable antenna directivity
and possibly gain can be expected.
III. REALIZATION OF A SIMPLE PRS WITH POSITIVE
REFLECTION PHASE GRADIENT
It is known that objects exhibit significantly different elec-
tromagnetic properties at resonance. For example, metamate-
rials exhibiting an overall negative permittivity or permeability
can be realized using resonant rings [22]. The reflection coeffi-
cient of a FSS varies significantly in the frequency band around
the FSS resonance frequency [20], [23]. Although the reflection
phase of a conventional FSS decreases with frequency at most
frequencies, it can be made to increase with frequency over a
frequency band that is close to the FSS’s resonance frequency
[20]. We take the advantage of this phenomenon to design PRSs
with increasing phase over a selected frequency band. All the
PRSs we investigated for wideband EBG resonator antennas
were composed of a single dielectric slab, with arrays of pe-
riodic elements printed on both surfaces. Several element ge-
ometries, such as dipoles, slots, patches, rings, etc., have been
investigated for this purpose.
GE et al.: USE OF SIMPLE THIN PARTIALLY REFLECTIVE SURFACES WITH POSITIVE REFLECTION PHASE GRADIENTS
Fig. 3. (a) Proposed PRS structure; (b) a transparent unit cell; (c) characteriza-
tion model of the PRS.
Fig. 4. Computed reflection magnitude and phase at Surface 1 for unit cells
with two same or different dipoles.
The proposed PRS, shown in Fig. 3(a), has two periodic
dipole arrays printed on the two sides of the dielectric slab. A
transparent unit cell with a surface size of is shown in
Fig. 3(b). The dimensions of two dipoles, printed on the two
sides of the unit cell, are and , respectively.
The characterization of the entire PRS can be reduced to
that of a single unit cell as a result of the periodicity. Periodic
boundary conditions can be applied to the four side walls of
a unit cell [24], as shown schematically in Fig. 3(c). For sim-
plicity only normal incidence was considered and the incident
electric field is polarized along the direction of the dipole.
Therefore, the boundaries 1 and 3 were set as perfect electric
conductors (PEC) and 2 and 4 were set as perfect magnetic
conductors (PMCs). The commercial software package, CST
Microwave Studio, was used to characterize the PRS.
Two PRSs, with the same unit cell dimensions: mm and
mm, are studied. Both PRSs use Rogers RT/Duriod 5880
material that has a dielectric constant of 2.2 and a thickness of
1.6 mm. Two sets of dimensions for the two dipoles are applied
to the investigation: mm and mm,
mm, respectively. In both cases, mm. Computed
reflections for Port 1 are plotted in Fig. 4. The phase is refer-
enced at surface 1 where dipole 1 resides. It can be seen that
there is a strong resonance at 11.95 GHz when the dipoles on the
two sides are identical (i.e., ) and a less strong resonance
at 12.35 GHz when they are different (i.e., ). The reflec-
tion phase has a sharp drop at the dipole resonance frequency
when [24]. Interestingly, it exhibits an increase with
frequency within a frequency band around 12.35 GHz when
. have a lower resonance frequency. Design the elements
745
From our investigations, it was found that, when , the
PRS resonance frequency is empirically given by
(1)
where a is a constant in the range 0.9 to 1, is the dipole length,
is the PRS resonance frequency and is the substrate dielec-
tric constant. The constant is determined by several factors,
such as the thickness of the PRS, the size of the unit cell, the
dipole width, etc.
The effect of changing the parameters of the unit cell and the
dipoles on the resonance frequency of the PRS has been studied.
These parameters include the dimensions of the unit cell and the
dipoles. A large number of simulations were carried out using
CST Microwave Studio for two identical dipoles. For brevity
here we will not show the complete results but only present
our conclusions. These are: the resonance frequency of the PRS
decreases with increasing dimensions of the unit cell, the
width of the dipoles and the thickness of the dielectric
layer. These effects cannot be directly obtained from formula
(1) but the constant in (1) decreases when l, w, or the
thickness of the unit cell increases.
We have found that when the lengths of the two dipoles are
different, the resonance becomes weaker. As a result, the min-
imum PRS reflection magnitude increases and the reflection
phase exhibits a positive gradient at frequencies close to the PRS
resonance frequency, as shown in Fig. 4. The frequency band
within which the phase increases with frequency can be esti-
mated from the resonance frequencies of the two dipoles (ob-
tained from (1) by setting and , respectively).
This local inversion of the phase gradient can be uti-
lized to design PRSs for wideband EBG resonator antennas, as
described in Section II. We also found that the closer the two
dipole resonance frequencies are, the stronger the resonance and
the larger the positive gradient of the phase curve. This charac-
teristic affects the performance of the corresponding EBG res-
onator antenna, as will be demonstrated in Section IV.
In addition, we found that the reflection phase at Surface 2 on
which dipole 2 is located (found from Port 2 shown in Fig. 3(c))
still decreases with the frequency. In other words, the reflection
phase increases only at the surface on which the dipole with a
lower resonance frequency is located. For example, if
and , or and , Surface 1 resonates
at a lower frequency. Then the reflection phase at Surface 1
increases with frequency but the phase at Surface 2 decreases
with frequency as usual.
IV. DESIGN METHODOLOGY
A methodology to design a simple thin PRS with a positive re-
flection phase gradient, , and the corresponding antenna,
is as follows:
1) Layout two 2-D arrays on both sides of a dielectric slab of
suitable material. The unit cells can have the same dimen-
sions.
2) Select the elements for the 2-D arrays. Element geometries
can be dipoles, slots, patches, rings, etc. They should have
different dimensions. Elements on the lower surface should
746 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
such that each resonates close to an edge of the operating
band. If dipoles are chosen, resonance frequencies can be
estimated using formula (1).
3) Analyze the reflection phase and magnitude of the surface
and fine tune the elements if required. Ensure that the re-
flection magnitude is sufficiently large at all operating fre-
quencies.
4) Simulate the antenna with the PRS and check the direc-
tivity versus frequency. An elementary Hertzian feed an-
tenna may be used at this stage.
5) Design a feed antenna and test the performance of the com-
plete antenna (gain, input matching, pattern etc.)
V. WIDEBAND EBG RESONATOR ANTENNA
DESIGN AND RESULTS
Three PRSs were designed for potential use in wideband EBG
resonator antennas by means of the methodology described in
Section IV. It was expected that a weaker composite resonance
of the PRS would simultaneously produce a positive phase gra-
dient and a sufficiently large reflection minimum. The results
in Fig. 4 for were promising but the minimum reflec-
tion was still too small. It was obvious that a strong resonance
leads to an undesirable dip in the reflection magnitude, as in-
dicated by the curve in Fig. 4. Indeed the strength of
the resonance, positive gradient of the reflection phase and the
minimum reflection magnitude are related. In this section, we
explore this relationship using examples, with an aim to find
the right combination to form a wideband yet low-profile EBG
resonator antenna.
A. Three PRSs and the Corresponding EBG Resonator
Antennas
The positive gradient of the increasing phase curve, shown
in Fig. 4, will vary with the dimensions of the unit cell and
the dipoles. Three PRSs have been designed and made on 1.6
mm Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 to illustrate this vari-
ation. Then they are used to construct three EBG resonator an-
tennas to understand the connection between antenna perfor-
mance and PRS reflection characteristics. The dimensions of the
three unit cells and the three dipole-pairs that were designed are
as follows:
PRS1: mm mm, mm,
mm, mm.
PRS2: mm mm, mm,
mm, mm.
PRS3: mm mm, mm,
mm, mm.
The computed reflection coefficients of the three PRSs, ob-
tained using the cavity model in Fig. 3(c) and CST Microwave
Studio, are plotted in Fig. 5. Each of the PRSs exhibits positive
reflection phase gradients over different parts of the Ku-band.
The three frequency ranges are 11.25–12.46 GHz, 11.3–12.6
GHz, and 11.5–12.7 GHz corresponding to PRS1, PRS2, and
PRS3, respectively. It is also noted that PRS1 has the strongest
resonance and the largest positive gradient, whereas PRS3 has
the weakest resonance and the smallest positive gradient. The
reflection magnitudes of the three PRSs at 12 GHz are 4.8 dB,
3.8 dB and 2.8 dB, respectively. The conclusion from this is
Fig. 5. Computed reflection magnitude and phase for the three PRSs.
that the closer the resonance frequencies of the two dipoles, the
stronger the resonance, the smaller the minimum reflection mag-
nitude and the larger the phase gradient of the increasing phase.
By comparison, the optimal reflection phase (of an ideal wide-
band antenna that would operate from 11.5 GHz to 12.5 GHz)
is also plotted in Fig. 5, obtained from the Fabry–Perot reso-
nance condition [6], [20] and assuming a cavity height of
mm. Note that the phase of PRS2 is almost ideal when it
has a positive gradient.
The three PRSs have been fabricated and used to construct
three EBG resonator antennas. In these antenna prototypes, all
PRSs have overall dimensions of 110 110 mm (about
at 12 GHz). The two dipole arrays printed on the two sides
of PRS1 includes 12 13 dipoles and those on PRS2 and PRS3
have 12 18 dipoles. The unit cell dimensions are 9 8 mm
for PRS1 and 9 6 mm for PRS2 and PRS3. The dipole di-
mensions are (8.2 1 mm , 7.2 2 mm ), (8.2 1 mm ,
7 2 mm ) and (8.2 1 mm , 6.5 2 mm ) for the three
cases. The thickness and the dielectric constant of the Rogers
RT/Duroid 5880 slabs are 1.6 mm and 2.2, respectively. Each
antenna has a large 295 295 mm ground plane. The cavity
heights are 12.8 mm for PRS1 and 13.2 mm for both PRS2
and PRS3.
B. Feed Antenna and Input Matching
A well-designed feed antenna is crucial to the performance
of wideband EBG resonator antennas. We designed a monopole
antenna, composed of a copper strip printed on the upper sur-
face of a small Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate and fed by
a probe, as shown in Fig. 1, to operate over a wide frequency
band inside the resonance cavity. This feed antenna is placed
2.4 mm above the ground and has dimensions of 36 36 0.8
mm (the substrate in Fig. 1 has been deliberately shrunk for
better visualization). The dimensions of the copper strip are 10
4 mm .
The reflection coefficient of the three EBG resonator antenna
prototypes have been measured with a network analyzer and
their magnitudes are plotted in Fig. 6. The 10-dB return-loss
bandwidths are 11.28–15 GHz for the Antenna 1 with PRS1,
11.45–15 GHz for Antenna 2 with PRS2 and 11.7–15 GHz for
Antenna 3 with PRS3. The results beyond 15 GHz are not shown
because the gain is expected to be low at such frequencies. The
reflection coefficient of the feed antenna without the PRS top
(i.e., without cavity) is also plotted in Fig. 6 to illustrate the
GE et al.: USE OF SIMPLE THIN PARTIALLY REFLECTIVE SURFACES WITH POSITIVE REFLECTION PHASE GRADIENTS 747

Fig. 6. Measured input reflection coefficient magnitude of the three EBG res-
onator antenna prototypes and the feeding antenna.

loading effect of the cavity on the feed antenna. While inter-

acting with the strong cavity field, the feed antenna successfully
operates over a wide frequency band that encompasses the op-
erating bands of all three PRSs.

C. Radiation Measurements
The three antenna prototypes were measured in a spherical
near-field test range to obtain radiation patterns and the gain.
The measured antenna directivities and gains for the three an-
tennas are plotted in Fig. 7(a)–(c), respectively. It is seen from
Fig. 7(a) that Antenna 1 with PRS1 offers two possible oper-
ating frequency bands over the frequency range of 11–13 GHz.
The measured radiation patterns of Antenna 2 are plotted in
Fig. 8 at 11.1 GHz, 11.6 GHz, 12 GHz, and 12.4 GHz. It can be
seen that consistent radiation patterns are achieved at these four
frequencies. However the sidelobe levels may be unsatisfactory
for some applications when the frequency exceeds 12.6 GHz,
as indicated by the radiation pattern at 12.7 GHz as shown in
Fig. 8(d). Hence the effective 3-dB antenna bandwidth can be
considered as 11.1–12.6 GHz, i.e., 12.6%. This antenna demon-
strates the advantages and the limitations of the design method
presented here.
The radiation patterns of Antenna 3 have the similar prop-
erties to those of Antenna 2, whilst a higher peak gain and a
narrower effective bandwidth are obtained, which are 18.4 dB
and 6.4%, respectively.

VI. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
In this section, we discuss the results given in the previous
section. First, although the reflection phase of the PRS1 in-
creases with frequency from 11.25 to 12.46 GHz with the largest
positive gradient, its stronger dipole resonance and resulting
smallest reflection magnitude minimum of 5 dB around
12 GHz (see Fig. 5) lead to a lower directivity and gain around
12 GHz. At the same time, relatively larger directivities and
gains are achieved at frequencies where reflection is stronger,
and consequently a dual-band antenna instead of a wideband
one is obtained. In general, an antenna produced from such a
PRS with a positive reflection gradient and a relatively weak
minimum reflection magnitude may operate in two frequency
Fig. 7. Measured gains and directivities of three trial EBG resonator antennas
with: (a) PRS1; (b) PRS2; and (c) PRS3.
bands. This character can be exploited to design dual-band
EBG resonator antennas operating in close frequency bands.
On the other hand, PRS2 has a smaller, close-to-ideal posi-
tive reflection phase gradient from 11.3 GHz to 12.6 GHz and
a larger reflection magnitude at 12 GHz, compared to PRS1.
As expected, Antenna 2 with PRS2 achieves a wide 3-dB gain
bandwidth, from about 11.1 GHz to 13 GHz, i.e., a bandwidth
of 15.7%. From Fig. 7(b), we can see that the directivity band-
width obtained is even greater. The gain drops sharply at fre-
quencies below 11.5 GHz. This is because the antenna input is
748
Fig. 8. Measured radiation patterns of the antenna with PRS2 at: (a) 11.1 GHz;
(b) 11.6 GHz; (c) 12 GHz; (d) 12.4 GHz; 12.7 GHz.
mismatched at such frequencies, as shown in Fig. 6. The peak
gain is 16.2 dBi at 11.5 GHz. Although a wide bandwidth is
achieved in this case, the side-lobe levels within the bandwidth
are not consistent when the operating frequency is increased
beyond a limit. The increase in the sidelobe levels with fre-
quency has been observed with many wideband EBG resonator
antennas [16]. This is because at such frequencies the phase dif-
ference between the incident wave and the first reflective wave
is more than 180 . The more the frequency changes, the higher
is the sidelobe level. This is consistent with beam splitting oc-
curring in EBG resonator antennas at higher frequencies.
PRS3 has the smallest positive phase gradient and the largest
reflection magnitude around 12 GHz. The Antenna 3 with PRS3
has a 7.4% 3-dB gain bandwidth, from 11.85 GHz to 12.72 GHz.
The measured peak gain is 18.4 dBi at 12.3 GHz. Again the side-
lobe levels degrade at frequencies above 12.6 GHz and therefore
the effective 3-dB bandwidth is about 6.4%. Compared with An-
tenna 2, this antenna exhibits a narrower bandwidth but has a
higher gain over this bandwidth.
Compared with a previously designed EBG resonator antenna
[9], which has an intentionally high peak gain of 22.15 dBi and
a narrow bandwidth of 2.2%, the present antennas with surfaces
PRS2 and PRS3 exhibit a similar gain-bandwidth product.
It is a common feature in EBG resonator antennas that greater
bandwidth is accompanied by a relatively lower peak gain.
The example antennas presented here further demonstrates that
one needs to compromise between the gain and the bandwidth
when designing an antenna using the present method. The
cavity heights of the three antennas are 12.8 mm, 13.2 mm,
and 13.2 mm, respectively. A small change in the cavity height
results in a minor change of the antenna performance. The
cavity heights of 12.4 mm and 13.6 mm were also tested in
the measurements. When the heights are smaller than the
desired values, higher peak gains and narrower bandwidths are
obtained, and vice versa.
There is about a 1 to 1.5 dB difference between the measured
gains and directivities of these antennas within the matched ra-
diation bandwidth. This is due to antenna loss, primarily in the
dielectrics. The Wheeler Cap Method was used to determine the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
loss of Antenna 3 at 12.3 GHz, and it was found to be about 1 dB,
which confirms the difference.
A good feed antenna is crucial to the design. The monopole
feed antenna used here is well-matched, has a return loss greater
than 10 dB over the entire radiation bandwidths of the three
antennas when placed inside the strong cavity field. This helps
to reduce the gap between the gain and directivity to the low
levels mentioned above, in the operating bands.
When designing the two resonant elements on the surfaces
of the PRS, identical unit cell sizes can be maintained on both
surfaces for ease of modeling and design. In addition to the PRS
with two dipole arrays, a dielectric layer with two cross-dipole
arrays, two slot arrays [21], two cross-slot arrays, two square
patch arrays, etc., can also provide similar reflection magnitude
and phase properties. The design principle is similar, that the
reflection phase at the lower surface, which has elements whose
dimensions lead to the lower resonance frequency, should have a
positive, close-to-optimal phase gradient and a sufficiently large
reflection magnitude. The reflection phase gradient on the other
surface can still be negative. This approach is now being applied
to several other antennas to obtain a wide bandwidth.
VII. CONCLUSION
A simple PRS with printed patterns on both sides of a dielec-
tric slab can provide a positive phase gradient over a band of
frequencies, to assist with the design of a low profile, wideband
EBG resonator antenna. By appropriately designing the reso-
nant elements of the PRS, the positive phase gradient can be
optimized to obtain a useful antenna bandwidth (greater than
10%). In the low-profile antenna prototypes presented here, the
total thickness of the PRS is only 1.6 mm, or 0.064 (at mid-
band 12 GHz), and hence the antenna height is almost equal to
the cavity height. By comparison, the PRS thickness of earlier
wideband antenna designs based on spaced double-slab PRSs
are much greater ( .)
The minimum value of the reflection coefficient magnitude
is another crucial factor in the PRS design because a too low
reflection, say below dB, weakens the spreading effect of
the PRS, creating a dip in the gain versus frequency curve. This
happens when the resonance frequencies of the two elements are
too close and hence the overall resonance of the composite PRS
is relatively strong. On the other hand, too different elements
produce a weak composite resonance and a weak positive gra-
dient; the result then is higher gain but narrower gain bandwidth.
When the two elements are appropriately designed to keep the
minimum reflection above dB and the positive phase gra-
dient close to the optimal value, good gain can be obtained over
a wide bandwidth. One such example presented here has a peak
gain of 16.2 dBi and an effective bandwidth of 12.6%. When
the elements widely differed in geometry, the peak gain rose to
18.4 dBi but the effective bandwidth reduced to 6.4%. When the
geometry was closer, the result was a dual-band antenna.
The method described in this paper has been used to control
the strength of the PRS composite resonance and hence the re-
flection phase gradient and the minimum reflection magnitude.
By following the proposed method, a positive reflection phase
gradient was successfully realized using a single slab with two
GE et al.: USE OF SIMPLE THIN PARTIALLY REFLECTIVE SURFACES WITH POSITIVE REFLECTION PHASE GRADIENTS
dipole arrays printed on its surfaces. Three such PRSs were de-
signed and subsequently utilized to construct and compare EBG
resonator antennas. Measurements of these antennas demon-
strated the feasibility of the design principle presented in the
paper and the compromises involved in antenna design. They
further confirm the advantage offered by the positive phase gra-
dient when attempting to increase the bandwidth of EBG res-
onator antennas.
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Yuehe Ge (S’99-M’03) received the Ph.D. degree in
electronic engineering from Macquarie University,
Sydney, Australia, in 2003.
Currently, he is a Professor of the College of
Information Science and Engineering, Huaqiao
University, Xiamen, China. Previously, he was a
Research Fellow in the Department of Electronic
Engineering, Macquarie University. Before joining
Macquarie University, he was an Antenna Engineer
at Nanjing Marine Radar Institute, Nanjing, China.
His research interests are in the areas of antenna
theory and designs for radar and communication applications, computational
electromagnetics and optimization methods, metamaterials, and their appli-
cations. He has authored and coauthored over 90 journal and conference
publications and two book chapters.
Dr. Ge received several prestigious prizes from China State Shipbuilding
Corporation and China Ship Research and Development Academy, due to his
contributions to China State research projects. He received 2000 IEEE MTT-S
Graduate Fellowship Awards and 2002 Max Symons Memorial Prize of IEEE
NSW Section, Australia, for the best student paper. He is the cowinner of 2004
Macquarie University Innovation Awards-Invention Disclosure Award. He has
served as a technical reviewer for over ten international journals and confer-
ences.
Karu P. Esselle (M’92–SM’96) received the B.Sc.
degree in electronic and telecommunication engi-
neering (with first class honors) from the University
of Moratuwa, Moratuwa , Sri Lanka, and the M.A.Sc.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
As a Professor in electronic engineering, Mac-
quarie University, Sydney, he currently heads the
department. He is the Immediate Past Associate
Dean—Higher Degree Research and the Founding
Director of Postgraduate Research Committee in the
Division of Information and Communication Sciences. He held these positions
from 2003 to 2008 and was also a member of the Division Executive. He has
authored over 300 scientific publications, including six invited book chapters
and over 16 invited conference presentations. Since 2002, he was involved
with research grants and contracts worth about five million dollars. His Ph.D.
students have received scholarships worth over 2 million dollars in the same
period and his research team members attracted further grants worth about a
million dollars. His research interests include periodic and electromagnetic
band gap structures including frequency-selective surfaces, metamaterials,
broadband and multi-band antennas, biomedical devices, on-body and
through-body wireless communication, millimeter-wave and MMIC devices,
antenna and EBG applications in mobile and wireless communication systems,
ultra-wideband systems, theoretical methods, and lens and focal-plane-array
antennas for radio astronomy. His research activities are posted on the web
at http://www.engineering.mq.edu.au/research/groups/celane/. He served in
all Macquarie University HDR-related committees at the highest level. He is
the Director of Electromagnetic and Antenna Engineering, and the Deputy
Director of the Research Center on Microwave and Wireless Applications,
which was recently expanded after recognized as a Concentration of Research
Excellence. He has been invited to serve as an international expert/research
grant assessor by several overseas nationwide research funding bodies from
the Netherlands, Canada, Finland, Hong-Kong, and Chile. He has been invited
by Vice-Chancellors of other universities to assess applications for promotion
to full professor level. He has been invited to assess grant applications sub-
mitted to Australia’s most prestigious schemes such as Australian Federation
Fellowships and Australian Laureate Fellowships. His industry experience
includes full-time employment as Design Expert by the Hewlett Packard
750 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Laboratory, and several consultancies for local and international companies,
including Cisco Systems (USA), Cochlear, Optus Networks, Locata (USA)/QX
Corporation, ResMed, FundEd, and Katherine-Werke (Germany) through
Peter-Maxwell Solicitors. He was an Assistant Lecturer at the University of
Moratuwa, a Canadian Government laboratory Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at
Health Canada, a Visiting Professor of the University of Victoria and a Visiting
Scientist of the CSIRO ICT Center. He is an Editor of the International Journal
of Antennas and Propagation.
Prof. Esselle’s recent awards include the 2009 Vice Chancellor’s Award for
Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision (the first such award ever of-
fered in Macquarie University) and 2004 (Inaugural) Innovation Award for best
invention disclose. The CELANE, which he founded, has provided a stimulating
research environment for a strong team of researchers including six postdoc-
toral fellows. His mentees have been awarded six extremely competitive post-
doctoral fellowships. Nine international experts who examined the theses of his
recent five Ph.D. graduates ranked them in the top 5% or 10% in the world.
He has served in technical program committees or international committees for
many international conferences. He cochairs the Technical Program Committee
of APMC 2011; he was the Publicity Chair of the APMC 2000. He is the Chair
of the IEEE New South Wales (NSW) MTT/AP Joint Chapter, Foundation Ed-
itor of MQEC, the past Chair of the Educational Committee of the IEEE NSW,
and a member of the IEEE NSW Committee.
Trevor S. Bird (S’71–M’76–SM’85–F’97) received
B.App.Sc., M.App.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from the
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
From 1976 to 1978, he was a Postdoctoral Re-
search Fellow at Queen Mary College, University of
London, London, U.K., followed by five years as a
Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering
at James Cook University of North Queensland.
During 1982 and 1983, he was a consultant at
Plessey Radar, U.K., and in December 1983 he
joined CSIRO in Sydney, Australia. He held several
positions with CSIRO, including Chief Scientist, ICT Center. He is currently a
CSIRO Fellow and Principal of Antengenuity, a specialist consulting firm, an
Adjunct Professor at Macquarie University and a Guest Professor of Shanghai
Jiao Tong University.
Dr. Bird is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological and En-
gineering Sciences, the Institution of Electrical Technology (IET), and an Hon-
orary Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, and also Queens College,
University of Melbourne. He received the John Madsen Medal of the Institution
of Engineers, Australia, in 1988, 1992, 1995, and 1996 for the best paper pub-
lished annually in the Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Aus-
tralia. In 2001, he was corecipient of the H. A. Wheeler Applications Prize
Paper Award of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He was awarded
a CSIRO Medal in 1990 for the development of an Optus-B satellite spot beam
antenna and again in 1998 for the multibeam antenna feed system for the Parkes
radio telescope. He received an IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000 for
outstanding contributions to the IEEE New South Wales Section. He received
project awards from the Society of Satellite Professionals International (New
York) in 2004, the Engineers Australia in 2001, and the Communications Re-
search Laboratory, Japan, in 2000. In 2003, he was awarded a Centenary Medal
for service to Australian society in telecommunications and was also named Pro-
fessional Engineer of the Year by the Sydney Division of Engineers Australia.
Since 2006, his biography has been listed in Who’s Who in Australia. He was
a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society from
1997 to 1999, Chair of the New South Wales joint AP/MTT Chapter from 1995
to 1998, and again in 2003, Chairman of the 2000 Asia Pacific Microwave Con-
ference, Member of the New South Wales Section Committee from 1995 to 2005
and was Vice-chair and Chair of the Section in 1999 to 2000 and 2001 to 2002,
respectively, Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION from 2001 to 2004, a member of the Administrative Committee
of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society from 2003 to 2005, a member
of the College of Experts of the Australian Research Council (ARC) from 2006
to 2007 and Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION from 2004 to 2010. He has been a member of the technical com-
mittee of numerous conferences including JINA, ICAP, AP2000, IRMMW-THz
and the URSI Electromagnetic Theory Symposium. Currently, he is a member
of the Editorial Boards of the IET Microwaves Antennas and Propagation and
the Journal of Infrared, Millimeter and Terahertz Waves, and also Chair of the
IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society’s Publication Committee.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Omnidirectional Linearly and Circularly Polarized
Rectangular Dielectric Resonator Antennas
Yong Mei Pan, Member, IEEE, Kwok Wa Leung, Fellow, IEEE, and Kai Lu, Student Member, IEEE
Abstract—The rectangular dielectric resonator antenna (DRA)
centrally fed by a probe is investigated. Its operating mode is anal-
ogous to the 011 mode of a cylindrical DRA. The DRA radiates
like an electric monopole, generating omnidirectional linearly po-
larized (LP) fields. Based on this LP design, a novel omnidirectional
circularly polarized (CP) DRA is studied for the first time. Slots
are introduced to the sidewalls of the DRA, exciting a degenerate
mode for the generation of CP fields. To demonstrate the idea, an
omnidirectional CP DRA was designed for WLAN (2.4–2.48 GHz)
applications. The reflection coefficient, axial ratio (AR), radiation
pattern, and antenna gain are studied, and reasonable agreement
between the measured and simulated results is observed.
Index Terms—Circular polarization (CP), dielectric resonator
antenna (DRA), omnidirectional antenna, slot, TM mode.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N THE past two decades, the dielectric resonator antenna
(DRA) has received tremendous attention due to a number
of attractive features such as its small size, light weight, low
loss, wide bandwidth, and ease of excitation [1]–[4]. The shape
of the DRA can be hemispherical, cylindrical, or rectangular.
Among these shapes, the rectangular one has the largest number
of design parameters (width, length, and height), facilitating the
antenna design. Okaya and Barash [5] divided the modes of the
rectangular DRA into two categories, namely the and
modes. The fundamental mode has been investigated by
different researchers extensively [6]–[9]. It produces a radiation
pattern which is similar to that of a magnetic dipole, with the
strongest radiation found in the boresight (broadside) direction.
It is known that the fundamental omnidirectional modes of the
hemispherical and cylindrical DRAs are the [10] and
[11], [12] modes, respectively, with their mode indices
referring to field variations along the spherical/cylindrical coor-
dinate variables. Both of the modes are excited by a centrally fed
probe and radiate like an electric monopole. However, little or
no information of the analogous mode was found for the rect-
angular DRA. In this paper, a rectangular DRA with a square
cross section is operated in the mode for the first time. It
Manuscript received November 10, 2010; revised March 22, 2011; accepted
July 20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported by a GRF grant from the Research
Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project
116911).
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves and De-
partment of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
SAR (e-mail: yongmpan@cityu.edu.hk; eekleung@cityu.edu.hk; kailu2@stu-
dent.cityu.edu.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173122
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
751
was found that its radiation pattern is omnidirectional in the hor-
izontal plane as similar to that of an electric monopole.
As compared with the linearly polarized (LP) system, the
circularly polarized (CP) system allows a more flexible orien-
tation between the transmitter and receiver. Also, it can sup-
press the multipath problem due to reflections from the building
wall and ground surface [13]. As a result, the CP antenna has
been used in modern wireless systems extensively. Various CP
DRAs were investigated, such as the cross-slot coupled circular
disk DRA [14], strip-loaded hemispherical DRA [15], and aper-
ture-fed rectangular stair-shaped DRA [16]. All of these CP
DRAs have broadside radiation patterns. However, the omni-
directional CP radiation pattern is sometimes needed because it
helps stabilize the signal transmission [17]. Also, it permits the
maximum freedom of choice of antenna location and, thus, can
cover a larger service area [17]. These features have attracted
certain research efforts on investigating the omnidirectional CP
antennas. Examples include the vertical sleeve dipole antenna
combined with three pairs of tilted parasitic elements [13], the
normal mode helical antenna [18], the slotted ring antennas [19],
[20] and the conical patch antennas [21], [22]. However, either
a balun [13] or a complex radiating element [19]–[21] is needed
for these CP antennas. Designing a simple omnidirectional CP
antenna is still a challenging problem today.
In general, an LP wave can be changed into an elliptically or
circularly polarized wave by using a wave polarizer. It should
therefore be possible to obtain an omnidirectional CP antenna
by adding a wave polarizer to an omnidirectional LP antenna.
However, adding an external polarizer will inevitably increase
the size and complexity of the antenna. An interesting CP cylin-
drical DRA has been proposed in [23], which has slots fabri-
cated on its top for exciting a broadside CP radiation mode.
In this paper, similar inclined slots are fabricated on the side-
walls of the omnidirectional LP DRA to obtain a novel com-
pact omnidirectional CP DRA. To demonstrate the idea, an om-
nidirectional CP DRA operating at around 2.4 GHz was de-
signed for WLAN applications. For each of the LP and CP rect-
angular DRAs, the reflection coefficient, axial ratio (AR) (CP
DRA only), radiation pattern, and antenna gain were simulated
using Ansoft HFSS. Measurements were done and reasonable
agreement between the measured and simulated results was ob-
tained. It is worth mentioning that since the basic characteris-
tics of the DRA are independent of its shape, in principle the
proposed idea can also be applied to the cylindrical and hemi-
spherical DRAs, although fabricating a slot on a curved surface
is much more difficult than for a flat surface.
The organization of this paper is as follows. A study of
the centrally probe-fed omnidirectional LP DRA is given
752
Fig. 1. Configuration of the probe-fed rectangular DRA. (a) Front view. (b)
Bottom view.
in Section II. A design example of the proposed CP DRA
for WLAN applications is demonstrated and discussed in
Section III. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in Section IV.
II. LP RECTANGULAR DRA OPERATING IN MODE
Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the rectangular DRA with
a length of , a width of , and a height of . The DRA is cen-
trally fed by a coaxial probe of length and radius . It is ex-
tended from the inner conductor of a SMA connector, which has
a square flange acting as the (small) ground plane of the antenna.
The side length of the flange is given by mm. No ad-
ditional ground plane is added so that the maximum radiation
can be enabled around the direction. Otherwise, more
radiation toward the upper region will result, lifting up the beam
from the horizontal plane [3].
The vertical current flowing along the probe will generate a
circular -field , with . Therefore, the DRA is
excited in its TM mode. For symmetry, the two side lengths of
the rectangular DRA are set equal (i.e., ).
A centrally probe-fed rectangular DRA was designed at
2.4 GHz using Ansoft HFSS. The DRA has a dielectric
constant of and dimensions of mm,
mm. Fig. 2 shows the simulated reflection coefficient
as a function of frequency for different probe lengths of 15,
16, and 17 mm. With reference to the figure, the DRA resonates
(minimum ) at around 2.43 GHz for all of the probe
lengths, showing that the resonance is caused by the dielectric
resonator, not by the coupling probe. Fig. 3 shows the simulated
resonant - and -fields inside the DRA. As can be observed
from the figure, the -field is circular around the -axis
whereas the -field is vertical and strongest along the -axis.
The field pattern is very similar to that of the well-known
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
=
Fig. 2. Simulated reflection coefficient of the DRA for l 15, 16, and 17 mm:
a = = 39
b mm, " = 15 = 33
,h mm, g = 12 7: mm, and r = 0 63
: mm.
Fig. 3. Simulated resonant H -field and E -filed inside the LP DRA. (a) H -field.
(b) E -filed.
mode of the cylindrical DRA [24], where the first,
second, and third indices refer to the azimuthal, radial, and
axial directions, respectively. Fig. 4 compares the return loss of
our rectangular DRA with that of a cylindrical DRA with the
same cross-sectional area and dielectric constant. Both of them
are axially fed by the same probe. With reference to the figure,
the resonance frequencies of the two DRAs are close to each
other. Their radiation patterns were simulated and were found
to be almost the same. As a result, our mode is named as the
quasi- mode. Since our rectangular DRA has a square
cross section, it can be regarded as a perturbed cylindrical
DRA. Other dimensions and dielectric constants were used for
the DRA and similar phenomena were observed. Furthermore,
no other resonant modes could be found below this mode. Thus,
it can be concluded that the excited mode is the fundamental
PAN et al.: OMNIDIRECTIONAL LINEARLY AND CP RECTANGULAR DRAs
Fig. 4. Simulated reflection coefficients of the rectangular DRA and cylindrical
DRA with same cross-sectional area and dielectric constant.
Fig. 5. Measured and simulated reflection coefficients of the rectangular DRA
with l= 15 mm. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 2.
TM mode of the antenna. It should be emphasized that since
the is strongest at as shown in Fig. 3(b), the
probe should be placed at the center of the DRA to obtain the
strongest excitation of the mode.
A prototype of the rectangular DRA was fabricated and
tested. The measured and simulated reflection coefficients of
the prototype are shown in Fig. 5 and reasonable agreement
between them is observed. The discrepancy is caused by exper-
imental tolerances and imperfections including the inevitable
airgap between the probe and the hole. With reference to the
figure, the measured and simulated 10-dB impedance band-
widths dB are given by 10.1% (2.34–2.59 GHz)
and 10.4% (2.28–2.53 GHz), respectively. The measured reso-
nance frequency is 2.46 GHz, which agrees very well with the
simulated (2.43 GHz) value. Fig. 6 shows the measured and
simulated field patterns of the TM mode. It can be seen from
the radiation patterns that the DRA is a good omnidirectional
antenna. In the plane, the co-polarized field is stronger than
the cross-polarized counterpart by dB in the
direction, whereas the former is also stronger than the latter by
more than 20 dB in the plane. The -plane field pattern
was also simulated and measured. It was found that the results
are similar to that of the plane, which is expected because
of the symmetry of the structure. Fig. 7 shows the measured
and simulated antenna gains of the omnidirectional DRA. With
reference to the figure, the antenna gain varies between 0.49 dBi
753
Fig. 6. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of the rectangular DRA. The
parameters are the same as in Fig. 5.
Fig. 7. Measured and simulated antenna gains of the rectangular DRA. The
parameters are the same as in Fig. 5.
and 2.04 dBi across the impedance passband (2.34–2.59 GHz).
The measured maximum antenna gain is 2.04 dBi, which is
close to that of the half-wave dipole (2.15 dBi).
III. SLOTTED OMNIDIRECTIONAL CP DRA
It is shown in [23] that loading an LP DRA with strategically
oriented slots can excite a degenerate mode and, thus, generate
CP fields. This idea is used to design our omnidirectional DRA.
Similar inclined slots are introduced to the LP rectangular DRA
to obtain a novel compact omnidirectional CP DRA. Since the
radiation field excited by the probe is predominantly vertically
polarized, the slots should be fabricated on a sidewall of the
DRA, as shown in Fig. 8. To obtain an omnidirectional antenna,
the slots are also fabricated on the three other sidewalls. It was
found that it is sufficient to fabricate only a single slot on each
sidewall to obtain a good omnidirectional CP antenna. Fig. 9
shows the proposed design for the first time.
To demonstrate the idea, an omnidirectional CP DRA for the
2.4-GHz WLAN system was designed and fabricated. Fig. 10
shows two photographs of the prototype. The CP design is based
on the LP DRA studied in Section II, and the parameters were
tuned to optimize the CP performance, with mm,
mm, and mm. Other design parameters are
the same as before. A slot with a width of mm and a
depth of mm was fabricated on each sidewall of the
DRA. The inclination angle of the slots can be determined
754 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 8. Dielectric block with inclined slots on its sidewall.
Fig. 9. Configuration of the proposed omnidirectional CP DRA. (a) Perspective
view. (b) Front view.
Fig. 10. Prototype of the proposed omnidirectional CP DRA. (a) Photograph
showing the top face and sidewalls. (b) Photograph showing the bottom face
of the DRA. The launcher is inserted into the hole drilled at the center of the
bottom face.
from the DRA and slot dimensions as , result is very desirable. Fig. 13 shows the measured and simu-
which was found to be 48 in our prototype. It should be men-
tioned that the optimal angle that maximizes the bandwidth is
dependent on the dielectric constant of the DRA. Again, the
Fig. 11. Measured and simulated reflection coefficients of the omnidirectional
CP DRA:, a = 39 4
: mm, h = 33 4
: mm, w= 94 : mm, d = 14 4: mm,
l= 12 4: mm, r = 0 63
: mm, and g = 12 7: mm.
Fig. 12. Measured and simulated ARs of the omnidirectional CP DRA in the
+ x direction. The parameters are the same as in Fig. 11.
flange of the SMA connector is used as the (small) ground plane
and no external ground plane is added. This CP DRA will gen-
erate left-hand CP (LHCP) fields, and right-hand CP (RHCP)
fields can be obtained by aligning the slot with the other diag-
onal of the sidewall.
Fig. 11 shows the measured and simulated reflection co-
efficients of the proposed CP DRA. With reference to the
figure, reasonable agreement between the measured and sim-
ulated results is observed. The measured and simulated 10-dB
impedance bandwidths are 24.4% (2.30–2.94 GHz) and 20.3%
(2.34–2.87 GHz), respectively. Fig. 12 shows the measured
and simulated ARs of the CP DRA in the direction
. Almost the same results were obtained
for other values of with . From the figure, it can
be found that the measured 3-dB AR bandwidth is given by
7.3% (2.39–2.57 GHz), which agrees reasonably well with the
simulated value of 8.2% (2.34–2.54 GHz). The bandwidth is
more than enough for the 2.4-GHz WLAN band. It is noted that
the entire measured AR passband falls within the impedance
passband and, thus, the entire AR passband is usable. This
lated ARs as a function of the horizontal angle in the
plane. With reference to the figure, the measured result is not
as flat as the simulated one due to experimental tolerances and
PAN et al.: OMNIDIRECTIONAL LINEARLY AND CP RECTANGULAR DRAs 755

Fig. 15. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of the omnidirectional CP

Fig. 13. Measured and simulated ARs as a function of the horizontal angle  in
0 111111111
DRA. The parameters are the same as in Fig. 11.
the x y plane. The parameters are the same as in Fig. 11 Measured
(2.46 GHz) ——— Simulated (2.44 GHz).

Fig. 14. Measured and simulated antenna gains of the omnidirectional CP

DRA. The parameters are the same as in Fig. 11.

imperfections. Nevertheless, both the measured and simulated

results are below 1.5 dB across the entire range of , showing
that it is a good omnidirectional CP antenna.
Fig. 14 shows the measured and simulated antenna gains,
which are similar to those of the LP case. With reference to
the figure, good agreement between the measured and simu-
lated results is observed. The measured antenna gain varies
between 0.91 dBic and 1.60 dBic across the AR passband
(2.39–2.57 GHz). Fig. 15 shows the radiation patterns of the
xz and xy planes and very good omnidirectional performance Fig. 16. Measured ARs and gains of the omnidirectional CP DRA with dif-
can be observed. Similar results were obtained for the yz-plane =
ferent cable lengths: lc 16 mm, 24 mm, and 33 mm. (a) AR. (b) Gain.
pattern as expected and are therefore not included here for
brevity. It can be seen from the figure that the LHCP fields are
stronger than the crosspolarized (RHCP) fields by about 20 dB, and 33 mm) were used for the proposed antenna. The measured
only except for a small region around the axis. The radiation ARs, antenna gains for these three cases are shown in Fig. 16.
patterns were studied at other frequencies and found to be very With reference to the figure, similar results are found for all of
stable across the entire passband. the three cases. The radiation patterns of the three cases were
It should be mentioned that since the SMA flange (ground also examined. It was observed that they are very similar to one
plane) is very small, it could be suspicious that there may be another, but the results are not included here for brevity. It is
currents excited on the outer conductor of the feed structure, shown from the study that it should be needless to minimize
resulting in unwanted radiation. In order to check whether it is the outer current or add any choke structure to the proposed CP
the case, three cables of different lengths ( 16 mm, 24 mm, antenna.
756 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 17. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
=
DRA as a function of frequency for different DRA widths of a 37.4, 39.4,
and 41.4 mm. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 11. (a) Reflection coef-
ficient. (b) AR.
A parametric study of the proposed DRA was carried
out using HFSS. The effect of the DRA size is discussed
first. Fig. 17 shows the reflection coefficient [Fig. 17(a)]
and AR [Fig. 17(b)] as a function of frequency for different
DRA widths of 37.4, 39.4, and 41.4 mm. With reference
to the figure, both the impedance and AR passbands shift
downward with an increase of , which is expected because
a larger DRA should have a lower resonance frequency.
The effect of the height of the DRA was also studied.
It was found the changes of the reflection coefficient and
AR are relatively mild as varies, showing that can
be used as a fine-tuning parameter. Next, the effect of the
slot is investigated. Fig. 18 shows the reflection coefficient
[Fig. 18(a)] and AR [Fig. 18(b)] for different slot depths of
10.4, 12.4, and 14.4 mm. With reference to the figure,
both the impedance and AR passbands shift upward as
increases because of a decrease in the effective dielectric
constant. When increases from 10.4 mm to 14.4 mm, the AR
bandwidth substantially increases from 3.7% to 8.2%, with
the optimum AR value desirably decreasing from 1.74 dB
to 0.33 dB. It was found that the value of depends on
the dielectric constant of the DRA; the larger the dielectric
constant, the smaller the value of is needed. Fig. 19 shows
the effect of slot width on the reflection coefficient and
Fig. 18. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
=
DRA as a function of frequency for different slot depths of d 10.4, 12.4, and
14.4 mm. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 11. (a) Reflection coefficient.
(b) AR.
AR. As can be observed from the figure, the effect of is
similar to that of .
Fig. 20(a) and b) shows the reflection coefficient and AR as a
function of frequency for different probe lengths, respectively.
From the figure, it can be observed that while the reflection co-
efficient changes significantly as increases from 11.4 mm to
13.4 mm, the AR remains almost unchanged. It suggests opti-
mizing the AR first by changing the DRA and slot sizes, then
tune to obtain good match without the need to worry about the
AR. This is a very favorable result that can greatly facilitate the
design of the CP DRA.
The effect of the flange (ground plane) size of the SMA
connector is studied. Fig. 21(a) and (b) shows the reflection
coefficient and AR, respectively, as a function of frequency
for different side lengths of 12.7, 22.7, 32.7, and 42.7 mm.
With reference to the figure, as increases from 12.7 mm to
32.7 mm, the impedance and AR bandwidths decrease from
20.3% to 10.6% and from 8.2% to 4.2%, respectively. It can
be observed that the AR deteriorates with an increase of .
When exceeds a certain value, say 42.7 mm, the entire AR
curve is even above the 3-dB level. It is because the boundary
condition requires that the tangential -field component be
zero on the surface of a (perfect) conductor and only the
perpendicular -field component remains. It results in a poor
PAN et al.: OMNIDIRECTIONAL LINEARLY AND CP RECTANGULAR DRAs
Fig. 19. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
=
DRA as a function of frequency for different slot widths of w 8.4, 9.4, and
10.4 mm. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 11. (a) Reflection coefficient.
(b) AR.
AR since two orthogonal components are required to generate
CP fields.
Finally, the effect of the dielectric constant of the DRA is
investigated. Three omnidirectional CP DRAs with 10,
15, 25 were designed for the WLAN system. In each case, the
DRA size and probe length were tuned to optimize the input
impedance and AR. Fig. 22(a) and (b) shows the reflection
coefficients and ARs of the DRAs, respectively. It can be
observed from the figure that the 10-dB impedance bandwidth
decreases from 22.1% to 11.0% as the dielectric constant
increases from 10 to 25. The result is reasonable because using
a larger dielectric constant should give a higher Q-factor and,
thus, a narrower bandwidth. However, as can be seen from
Fig. 22(b), using a low dielectric constant gives a poor AR. It
is due to the fact that the difference between the velocities of
the two orthogonal components will decrease with a decrease
of , making it difficult to obtain the required phase difference
of 90 . As a compromise, a medium dielectric constant in
the range of 12–20 is suggested for the proposed CP design.
Fig. 22(b) shows that a good AR with a reasonable bandwidth
can be obtained by using a medium dielectric constant of
. Table I shows the optimized antenna dimensions and
bandwidths. With reference to the table, a larger DRA is needed
for a smaller dielectric constant, which is to be expected.
757
Fig. 20. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
=
DRA as a function of frequency for different probe lengths of l 11.4, 12.4,
and 13.4 mm. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 11. (a) Reflection coef-
ficient. (b) AR.
In addition, the slot size decreases as the dielectric constant
increases, which has been discussed before.
IV. CONCLUSION
The centrally probe-fed omnidirectional LP rectangular DRA
has been studied and its fundamental omnidirectional mode has
been identified as the quasi cylindrical mode. Based on
this LP antenna, a novel omnidirectional CP rectangular DRA
has been proposed and investigated. Inclined slots have been
fabricated on the sidewalls of the LP DR, giving a very com-
pact omnidirectional CP antenna. Due to the perturbation of the
slot, the omnidirectional LP field excited by the probe can be
resolved into two orthogonal components with different veloci-
ties. By tuning the slot size, the two orthogonal field components
can be made equal in magnitude but different in phase by 90 .
As a result, an omnidirectional CP wave can be obtained. Both
the LP and CP DRAs were simulated with HFSS. To verify the
simulations, the two DRAs were fabricated and tested. Reason-
able agreement between the measured and simulated results has
been observed for each case. It has been found that the measured
10-dB impedance bandwidth of the LP DRA is 10.1%. For the
CP DRA, the measured impedance bandwidth is 24.4%, but the
antenna bandwidth is limited by the measured AR bandwidth of
7.3%.
758 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE I
COMPARISON OF DIMENSIONS AND BANDWIDTHS OF THE DRAS USING DIFFERENT DIELECTRIC CONSTANTS
Fig. 21. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
DRA as a function of frequency for different side lengths of the SMA flange.
Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 11. (a) Reflection coefficient. (b) AR.
A parametric study of the CP DRA has been done and the
effects of various design parameters were examined. It has
been found that the DRA and slot sizes affect both the input
impedance and AR considerably, whereas the probe length pri-
marily alters the input impedance only. It has also been found
that the AR bandwidth is narrow when the dielectric constant
of the DRA is high. However, the dielectric constant cannot be
too low or an unsatisfactory AR would result. Therefore, it is
suggested using a medium dielectric constant between 12 and
20. In addition, it has been shown that the CP performance can
be destroyed if a large ground plane is used. Since the small
flange of a SMA connector is used as the ground plane, the CP
design is very compact.
The design guideline of the CP DRA is given as follows. First,
design the dimension of the DRA for a chosen dielectric con-
stant to obtain the required resonance (operating) frequency. It
is followed by designing the slot to give a good AR. It may
Fig. 22. Simulated reflection coefficient and AR of the omnidirectional CP
DRA as a function of frequency for different dielectric constants of  =10,
15, and 25. The DRA dimensions and probe lengths are given in Table I. (a)
Reflection coefficient. (b) AR.
need to retune the dimension of the DRA to keep the resonance
frequency unchanged. Finally, the probe length is adjusted to
match the impedance. Since the AR is virtually not affected by
the probe length, the proposed CP DRA can be designed very
easily and straightforwardly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their valu-
able comments.
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759
Yong-Mei Pan (M’11) was born in Huangshan,
Anhui Province, China, in 1982. She received the
B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from the University of Science and Technology of
China (USTC), Hefei, in 2004 and 2009, respectively.
She is currently a Research Fellow at City Univer-
sity of Hong Kong. Her research interests include di-
electric resonator antennas, leaky wave antennas, and
metamaterials.
Kwok Wa Leung (S’90–M’93–SM’02–F’11) was
born in Hong Kong in 1967. He received the B.Sc.
degree in electronics and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tronic engineering from the Chinese University of
Hong Kong in 1990 and 1993, respectively.
From 1990 to 1993, he was a Graduate Assistant
with the Department of Electronic Engineering, the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1994, he joined
the Department of Electronic Engineering at City
University of Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor.
Currently, he is a Professor and an Assistant Head
of the Department. From January to June, 2006, he was a Visiting Professor in
the Department of Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University,
State College, PA. His research interests include RFID tag antennas, dielectric
resonator antennas, microstrip antennas, wire antennas, guided wave theory,
computational electromagnetics, and mobile communications.
Prof. Leung was the Chairman of the IEEE AP/MTT Hong Kong Joint
Chapter for the years of 2006 and 2007. He was the Chairman of the Technical
Program Committee, 2008 Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference, Hong Kong,
the Co-Chair of the Technical Program Committee, 2006 IEEE TENCON,
Hong Kong, and the Finance Chair of PIERS 1997, Hong Kong. He was
an Editor for HKIE Transactions and a Guest Editor of IET Microwaves,
Antennas and Propagation. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor for
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION and received Transac-
tions Commendation Certificates twice in 2009 and 2010 for his exceptional
performance. He is also an Associate Editor for IEEE ANTENNAS WIRELESS
PROPAGATION LETTERS. He received the International Union of Radio Science
(USRI) Young Scientists Awards in 1993 and 1995, awarded in Kyoto, Japan
and St. Petersburg, Russia, respectively. He received Departmental Outstanding
Teacher Awards twice in 2005 and 2010. He is a Fellow of HKIE.
Kai Lu (S’11) was born in Laoting, Hebei Province,
China. He received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees
in electronic engineering from the Harbin Institute
of Technology (HIT), Harbin, China, in 2006 and
2008, respectively. He is currently working toward
the Ph.D. degree at City University of Hong Kong.
From August 2008 to July 2009, he was an An-
tenna Engineer with Beijing Skyway Technologies
Co., Ltd., Beijing, China. His research interests in-
clude dielectric resonator antennas, Fabry–Perot res-
onator antennas, Cassegrain antennas, microstrip an-
tennas, and millimeter wave imaging technology.
760 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Substrate Integrated Composite Right-/Left-Handed
Leaky-Wave Structure for Polarization-Flexible
Antenna Application
Yuandan Dong, Student Member, IEEE, and Tatsuo Itoh, Life Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—An effective development of a composite right–/left-
handed (CRLH) leaky-wave (LW) structure for polarization- flex-
ible antenna applications is presented. The proposed leaky trans-
mission line (TL) is a planar passive circuit built using the substrate
integrated waveguide technology. It consists of two symmetrical
waveguide lines loaded with series interdigital capacitors which ra-
diate orthogonal 45 linearly polarized waves. Its dispersion, Bloch
impedance and radiation characteristics are extracted by applying
a comprehensive analysis on the unit cell. Its backfire-to-endfire
beam-steering capability through frequency scanning due to the
CRLH nature is demonstrated and discussed. It is able to generate
arbitrary different polarization states by changing the way of exci-
tation, including linear polarization (LP) and circular polarization
(CP). This leaky TL is fabricated by the standard printed-circuit
board process. Two broadband couplers are also designed and fab-
ricated for the specified excitation purpose. Six different polariza-
tion states, including four LP cases and two CP ones, are experi-
mentally verified. The propagation and radiation parameters, in-
cluding the S-parameters, radiation patterns, gain, and axial ratio
(for CP states) are presented for these modes. Measured results are
consistent with the simulation. The proposed LW structure shows
some desirable merits, such as the simplicity in design, low-cost
fabrication, and beam-steering and polarization-flexible capabili-
ties, providing a high degree of flexibility for the real application.
Index Terms—Composite right/left handed (CRLH), leaky- wave
antenna (LWA), polarization-flexible antenna, substrate integrated
waveguide (SIW).
I. INTRODUCTION
C OMPOSITE right-/left-handed (CRLH) transmis-
sion-line (TL) metamaterials are understood as arti-
ficially engineered and structured media that exhibit some
unique electromagnetic (EM) properties. They have received
significant attention and have enabled numerous applications
over the past decade [1]–[4], especially for the radiated-wave
devices. Various CRLH leaky-wave (LW) antennas have al-
ready been studied and developed based on different techniques
[5]–[12]. They all possess a full-space beam-steering capability
by varying the frequency.
Manuscript received November 23, 2010; revised June 16, 2011; accepted
August 05, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported by Honeywell through the UC
Discovery Project.
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of
California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA (e-mail: yddong@ee.
ucla.edu; itoh@ee.ucla.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173124
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Polarization is an important parameter for antennas. Multi-
polarized antennas are able to change their polarization state
dynamically depending on the requirement. They can be used to
mitigate the multipath fading effect encountered in the wireless
communication systems and increase the channel capacity.
Their polarization can be tailored for specific applications.
Many antennas with this function have already been studied
in various literature, such as the polarization-agile antennas
[13]–[16], reconfigurable antennas [17]–[19], dual-polarized
antennas [20]–[22], and polarization diversity antennas [23],
[24]. Substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) has been a very
popular candidate to realize low-loss, low-cost, and low-profile
planar waveguide components and antennas [25]–[30]. In
[31], a post-wall, or SIW array for dual polarization has been
proposed. A millimeter-wave LW antenna with quad polariza-
tion has also been successfully implemented in [32] using the
half-mode SIW.
In this paper, a CRLH LW structure based on the SIW scheme
is developed for the polarization-agile antenna application. The
proposed antenna can be mounted on board or other different
vehicles providing flexible radiation directions and polarization
states. The CRLH feature is achieved by periodically loading
the series interdigital capacitors on the waveguide surface. The
polarization-flexible functionality is obtained by symmetrically
aligning two leaky TLs with orthogonal linear polarizations
excited by different inputs. It is noted that previous research
[33] was done, explaining the realization of the circular polar-
ization. Some conventional SIW circularly polarized antennas
have also been studied in [34]–[36]. Here, substantial work has
been added into this research. The proposed structure possesses
an ability to generate arbitrary polarization states. Six specific
cases among them, including four linear types and two circular
types, are experimentally verified. Its main beam can be steered
continuously from backward to forward while maintaining a
pure polarization state.
This paper is organized as follows. The configuration of the
proposed LW structure and its polarization-flexible working
scheme are illustrated in Section II. The design procedure is
demonstrated in Section III, including the designs of the single
unit cell, two-element unit cell, leaky TL, and the excitations.
Sections IV–VII present their applications to CRLH SIW LW
antennas with some different polarization states. Specifically,
they are two orthogonal 45 linear polarizations, horizontal
(X-directed) polarization, vertical (Y-directed) polarization,
and two circular polarizations (left handed and right handed).
Section VIII draws the conclusion.
DONG AND ITOH: SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED COMPOSITE RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED LEAKY-WAVE STRUCTURE 761

II. PROPOSED STRUCTURE AND WORKING PRINCIPLE

A. Geometrical Layout
The geometric configuration of the proposed LW structure
is shown in Fig. 1, where the layout of the unit-cell elements
[Fig. 1(a) and (b)] and the prototype of the entire LW structure
with its orientations in the coordinate system [Fig. 1(c)] are dis-
played. As shown, the unit cell is surrounded by vias on the two
sides which are connected to a solid metallic ground. The inter-
digital slots etched on the waveguide surface are 45 inclined
compared to the propagation direction (X-directed). Two sym-
metrical leaky TLs are side by side arranged and separated with
a small distance to improve the isolation as depicted in
Fig. 1(b) and (c). Each of them carries 14 interdigital slots which
are periodically etched on the broad wall. They can generate two
orthogonal linearly polarized waves. The slot acts like a series
capacitor, which, along with the waveguide inherent shunt in-
ductor provided by the vias, creates the necessary condition to
support the CRLH operation. A piece of 50- microstrip line
along with a taper line for impedance matching is placed at the
end of each waveguide to facilitate the outside connection. This
LW structure is fabricated on a substrate of Rogers 5880 with
a thickness of 50 mils and a relative permittivity of 2.2. Gener-
ally, a thick and low dielectric constant substrate can be used to
reduce the loss. The metallic via holes are chosen to have a di-
ameter of 0.8 mm and a center-to-center pitch around 1.5 mm.

B. Polarization-Flexible Capability
The polarization of an EM wave is defined as the orienta-
tion of the electric-field vector. The polarization-agile opera-
tion scheme for the proposed structure can be explained using
Fig. 1(b) and (c) and Fig. 2(a). The two leaky lines radiate
two orthogonally polarized waves. The total electric field is the
vector addition of the two waves. When only Port 1 (left line) Fig. 1. Configurations of the proposed structures. (a) Single CRLH-SIW radi-
ating element. (b) Two-element unit cell of the whole structure. (c) Overall LW
is excited, a guided wave will be transmitted along the left line
antenna prototype.
which produces the linearly polarized wave in the di-
rection. It should be noted that the orthogonal wave will also
be generated but in a very weak manner, which is called the
cross-polar component. When Port 4 (right line) is fed alone,
only the linearly polarized wave along the direction
will be produced. When they are illuminated by two equal and
in-phase signals simultaneously, the X-polarized (horizontal di-
rection) wave will be produced. Similarly, Y-polarized (ver-
tical direction) waves can be obtained with two inputs of the
same magnitude and 180 out of phase. They form a pair of
orthogonal linearly polarized modes. When the two lines are
equally excited with phase difference, a circularly po- Fig. 2. (a) Operation principle of the polarization-flexible antenna. (b) Circuit
larized mode can be generated. Depending on their phase rela- model of the CRLH-SIW element shown in Fig. 1(a).
tion (phase delay or advance), left-handed circular polarization
(LHCP) or right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) can be
implemented. As shown in Fig. 2(a), the feeding control circuit Y-directed linearly polarized waves; and 3) RHCP and LHCP
is required in order to implement the desired polarization. And radiating waves.
it is noted that arbitrary polarization, including linear, circular,
and elliptical types, can be achieved depending on the phase and III. DESIGN PROCEDURES
magnitude relation of the two input excitations. To give a better The design process to physically implement this radiating
explanation, Table I summarizes the operation principle of six structure with a polarization-flexible function is outlined in this
specific polarization states. They can be generalized into three section. Design procedures for the unit cell, traveling-wave
orthogonal pairs: 1) linearly polarized waves; 2) X- and lines, and the feeding circuits, including a 90 half-mode
762 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE I
SUMMARY OF SIX SPECIFIC POLARIZATION STATES UNDER DIFFERENT INPUT EXCITATIONS
SIW directional coupler and a two-section rat-race hybrid, are
discussed in sequence. All of the full-wave simulations are
carried out using Ansoft’s High Frequency Structure Simulator
(HFSS) software package.
A. Single Unit-Cell Analysis
The proposed TL is basically a CRLH structure working in
the fast-wave region with a small periodicity compared to the
free-space wavelength. The design can be started from ana-
lyzing the unit cell. Fig. 2(b) shows the equivalent circuit of the
CRLH-SIW unit cell as presented in Fig. 1(a). The surface and
the ground can be modeled as a two-wire TL with distributed se-
ries inductance and distributed shunt capacitance. The vias pro-
vide the shunt inductance. The interdigital capacitor has been
introduced into the model as to obtain CRLH behavior.
The left-handed (LH) contribution comes from the series ca-
pacitor and the shunt inductance . To obtain a continuous
beam-scanning performance, the balanced condition is usually
required. Note that the series interdigital slot, which is rotated
by 45 , also plays the role of a radiating element. Here, a radia-
tion resistor can be introduced in parallel to the series capacitor
[37]. Increasing the width and length of the slot could make the
radiation more efficient.
The dispersion diagram for the proposed unit cell is then
investigated carefully based on the HFSS simulation. Two
approaches are commonly adopted to extract the disper-
sion curve. One is based on the -parameters from the fast
driven-mode simulation [38]. The other one rests on the
eigenmode simulation by applying the periodic boundary
condition [39]. For comparison, Fig. 3(a) plots the dispersion
curves for the CRLH-SIW unit cell using both of the two
methods. The unit-cell dimensions are listed in the caption.
Reasonable agreement is obtained. It should be pointed out
that the eigenmode simulation shows that actually a very small
bandgap (from 8.085 to 8.2 GHz) exists between the LH and
right-handed (RH) regions. Also, it is noted that the eigenmode
simulation approach is believed to be more accurate although
time-consuming. Rich information can be obtained from this
figure. The LH and RH regions are separated by the transition
frequency (or the bandgap). The air line plotted in the figure
gives rise to two distinct regions: the radiating region (fast
wave) below it and the guiding region (slow wave) above the
line. Fig. 3(b) presents the simulated Bloch impedance of the
unit cell extracted from the -parameters. For a symmetric
CRLH unit cell shown in Fig. 2(b) without considering the
radiation resistor, the Bloch impedance takes the form [1]
(1)
where
(2)
It is seen that and correspond to a zero and a pole of
. The balanced condition satisfies when . Other-
wise, the zero and pole always exist on the Bloch impedance re-
gardless of how is close to . This is consistent with what
we observed in Fig. 3(b) where a zero is closely followed by a
pole. Note that it is difficult to eliminate this rapid change near
the transition frequency. The Bloch impedance value gives some
useful information for the final impedance matching. Fig. 3(c)
shows a loss analysis for the unit cell, which is calculated using
the equation shown in the inset of Fig. 3(c). The normalized
leakage constant is also included in the figure. Due to a wave-
guide propagation mode and a relatively thick (50 mils) and
low-permittivity substrate, the dielectric and conductor losses
are very small and almost negligible as indicated in the figure.
Good radiation efficiency can be envisioned.
B. Investigation on Two-Element Unit Cell
When symmetrically aligning two leaky TLs to form an an-
tenna with specified polarization, the distance between them is
an important factor which ultimately determines the isolation,
cross-polarization level, and the grating lobe performance. To
this end here, we did some analysis on the radiation characteris-
tics in the plane to obtain an optimal value of the distance
between the two leaky TLs. And this information can be
DONG AND ITOH: SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED COMPOSITE RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED LEAKY-WAVE STRUCTURE
Fig. 3. (a) Dispersion diagram calculated from the driven-mode and eigen-
mode simulations for the CRLH-SIW unit cell shown in Fig. 1(a). (b) Bloch
impedance obtained using the driven-mode simulation. (c) Calculated different
losses and the normalized leakage constant for the unit cell. The parameters of
the unit cell are 0.545 mm, 0.4 mm, 12.4 mm, 9.1 mm,
3.1 mm. (The interdigital capacitor has nine fingers.)
obtained at an early stage by investigating the two-element unit
cell as shown in Fig. 1(b). Here, the structure is replotted in the
inset of Fig. 4(a) for convenience. The radiation boundary con-
dition is applied on a big enough air box containing this two-el-
ement unit cell. By changing the separation , varied isola-
tion between the ports and different radiation characteristics can
be observed. As shown in Fig. 4(a), when is increased, the
isolation between Port 1 and Port 3 is also enhanced. Also, the
isolation at upper frequencies is larger than that at lower fre-
quencies because of the smaller wavelength at upper frequen-
cies. The isolation between port 1 and port 4 is also shown for
the 10.2-mm case. It is interesting to note that due to the
backward coupling in the LH region, the isolation between port
763
Fig. 4. Simulated results for the two-element unit cell with different .
(a) Isolation between different ports. (b) The plane radiation patterns for
the in-phase excitation case (left) and 180 out-of-phase excitation case (right)
at the transition frequency. (c) AR observed in the plane. The other
unit-cell dimensions are the same as those shown in the Fig. 3 caption.
1 and port 4 is weaker at lower frequencies and higher at the
upper frequencies compared to that between port 1 and port 3.
Fig. 4(b) shows the simulated radiation patterns in the
plane at the transition frequency for the in-phase (left figure)
and out-of-phase (right figure) excitation cases. It reveals that
when is larger, the undesired cross-polarization level is in-
creased and the grating lobe occurs. The mutual coupling as in-
dicated by Fig. 4(a) is not significant due to its traveling-wave
nature for which the field is not resonating strongly. However
it can still slightly deteriorate the axial ratio (AR) for the cir-
cular polarization when this separation is small. Fig. 4(c)
shows the simulated AR by exciting the two-element unit cell
with 90 phase difference. A larger enables better AR at the
764 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 5. Detailed input-matching structure for the leaky TL.

main beam direction. The AR at different frequencies is also

plotted for the 10.2-mm case. Circular polarization scan-
ning with the main beam is also observed. Bear in mind that
the radiation characteristics for this two-element unit cell are
different from those of the whole leaky-wave antenna. The iso-
lation could be decreased when the number of unit cells is in-
creased due to more slot couplings. Therefore, the AR is also
different for the whole leaky-wave antenna. Nevertheless, it is
still able to provide some useful information which can be used
to predict the final performance and guide the design.
The aforementioned results show that the choice of the sepa-
ration should be a compromise between the isolation and cross-
polarization. From the simulation, we find that there is an op-
timal range for , which could match the needs of the isolation
and cross-polarization. However, as shown in Fig. 4(b), the de-
sired polarization (co-polarization) only works in the region of
20 to 20 in the plane for both of the two cases. Outside
this region, the cross-polar component becomes dominant. This
is an important feature of this proposed antenna.

C. Design of the LW Line

The entire line is a fast-wave radiating structure which can be
built by simply cascading the unit cell described in Fig. 3 and
viewed as a uniform LW structure essentially. However, con-
necting with the outside circuits matching network is necessary
since the impedance of the unit cell is not simply 50 . From the
Bloch impedance shown in Fig. 3(b), the average real part con-
sidering the entire fast-wave region is around 40 . The imag-
inary part appears as capacitive in the LH region and zero in
the RH region. For the real part, we use a simple taper line as
shown in Fig. 5, converting the impedance from 40 to 50 . For
the imaginary part, we can tune the waveguide length between
the taper line and the first unit cell ( as indicated by Fig. 5) to
match the circuit. At the low frequency (LH region below the
waveguide cutoff), the vias provide a shunt inductance which
can be used to compensate the initial capacitive value. However,
at the frequency above the cutoff (RH region), the vias form an
electric wall which supports the propagation of the mode.
Thus, by slightly extending the waveguide length before con-
necting the taper line, the matching in the LH region can be im-
proved and in the RH region, it almost remains the same.
D. Coupler Designs for Excitations
In order to realize the input excitations listed in Table I, two
broadband couplers are designed and fabricated covering the
frequency range of interest. The first one is a two-section 3-dB
rat-race hybrid providing inphase and 180 out-of-phase outputs
Fig. 6. Measured and simulated performance for the two-section rat-race cou-
pler. (a) Measured -parameters for the out-of-phase case. (b) Measured -pa-
rameters for the in-phase case. (c) Measured and simulated phase performance.
The structure is shown in the inset. Port 1 is excited for 180 out-of-phase op-
eration. Port 4 is the input port for the in-phase case.
[40]. The second one is a 90 3-dB directional coupler designed
on the half-mode SIW scheme [41]. Their detailed design pro-
cedures are shown in [40] and [41].
The two-section rat-race hybrid is fabricated on the Rogers
5880 substrate with a thickness of 20 mils. A photo is shown
in the inset of Fig. 6(b). It consists of three vertical and
four horizontal lines whose impedances are optimized to
have good wideband matching from 7 to 11 GHz. Specifically,
they are 52.9 74.1 30.8
56.7 66.1 , and 50 . Fig. 6 shows the
experimental results for the coupler, including magnitude and
phase responses for the out-of-phase and in-phase cases. Over
the interested frequency band, small reflection (below 10 dB),
DONG AND ITOH: SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED COMPOSITE RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED LEAKY-WAVE STRUCTURE
Fig. 7. Measured and simulated performances for the 3-dB HMSIW directional
coupler. (a) Measured -parameters. (b) Measured and simulated phase perfor-
mance. The structure is shown in the inset. Port 1 is the input port and Port 4 is
isolated.
good amplitude imbalance (less than 0.4 dB), small phase vari-
ation (less than 6 ), and large isolation (better than 24 dB) are
achieved.
The fabricated prototype of the half-mode SIW directional
coupler is shown in the inset of Fig. 7(b). It is employed to re-
alize the feedings with 90 phase difference and equal power
division. The coupling area is an aperture on the via wall. This
coupler is implemented on the Rogers 5880 substrate with a
thickness of 50 mils. The measured results are shown in Fig. 7.
Good reflection and isolation (below 13.5 dB), balanced out-
puts, and expected phase difference are achieved covering a fre-
quency band from 7 to 10 GHz.
IV. -POLARIZED LW ANTENNA
Based on the procedures shown before, a single traveling-
wave antenna with 14 unit cells depicted in Fig. 3 is designed
and optimized. Fig. 8 shows a photograph of the LW antennas
with the parameters shown in the caption. Two identical LW
lines are symmetrically aligned along the X-direction. We fab-
ricated and measured these antennas in our laboratory. Fig. 9
shows the measured -parameters for each of the two antennas.
Basically, they are in agreement with the simulation (gray dash
line). The LH and RH regions are separated by the transition fre-
quency of 8.2 GHz. As observed, the entire TL is not perfectly
balanced which is in agreement with eigenmode simulation on
the unit cell. The small difference is due to this being a finitely
765
Fig. 8. Photograph of the fabricated LW antennas. Parameters are 4 mm,
5.2 mm, 5.8 mm, 3.9 mm, and 10.2 mm.
Fig. 9. Measured -parameters of the fabricated antennas shown in Fig. 11.
The gray line shows the simulated results for comparison.
Fig. 10. Measured radiation patterns in the plane for co-polarization at
different frequencies.
long leaky line which cannot guarantee a periodic boundary
condition for the unit cell. The matching in the RH region is
better than the LH region which is consistent with the Bloch
impedance analysis.
Fig. 10 shows the normalized radiation patterns of the second
antenna measured in a far-field chamber. It is important to bear
in mind that its co-polar direction is 45 rotated with respect to
the plane (scanning plane or co-polarization plane). In the
measurement, the standard linearly polarized horn antenna as
the transmitter is rotated by 45 to match the co-polar direction
of the LW antenna. Its full-space beam-steering performance by
frequency scanning is verified experimentally. The beam width
is larger at the lower frequencies due to the larger leakage con-
stant and decrease of the antenna equivalent aperture size.
To check the directivity and efficiency, we also measured this
antenna in a near-field chamber in our High-Frequency Center.
Fig. 11 compares the normalized broadside patterns at 8.2 GHz
766 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 11. Comparison of the simulated and measured radiation patterns in the
plane at 8.2 GHz. Measured patterns include the results obtained from
the far-field chamber and the near-field chamber.

Fig. 12. Simulated and measured directivity, gain, and the measured efficiency
for the second linearly polarized antenna.

obtained from the simulation, the far-field measurement and the

near-field measurement. The cross-polarization is also plotted.
A reasonable agreement is observed. The cross-polar level is
15 dB in the measurement and 23.5 dB in the simulation.
Fig. 12 shows the simulated and measured directivity, realized
gain, and measured efficiency. The measured efficiency is low
at 8.2 GHz and 10 GHz because of the large reflection and
termination loss. When it radiates completely, this antenna
Fig. 13. Simulated patterns in terms of realized gain for the X-polarized an-
should be able to provide an average efficiency around 80% as tenna in the plane in the (a) LH region, (b) broadside, and (c) RH region.
that obtained at 7.8 and 8.7 GHz. By improving the impedance
matching and increasing the number of unit cells, better effi-
ciency can be achieved. The realized maximum gain in the plane is 10 dB in the
LH region and 12 dB in the RH region approximately.

V. X-POLARIZED LW ANTENNA B. Experimental Results

A. Simulation
The X-polarized wave is obtained by equally feeding the two
leaky lines with in-phase excitations. In the simulation setup,
two identical signals are directly applied at port 1 and port
4 [Fig. 1(c)], respectively. To avoid handling large structures
using HFSS, the coupler here is not included in the simulation.
Fig. 13 shows the simulated gain pattern in the plane (scan-
ning plane), including both co-polarization and cross- polariza-
tion. Low cross-polar level and beam scanning are observed.
To measure the antenna performance under the X-polarized
condition, we cascaded the fabricated rat-race hybrid and the
two-element LW antenna as the prototype shown in the inset of
Fig. 14. The -parameters are first measured using an Agilent
8510C network analyzer. The whole structure is fed at port 4,
and Fig. 14 presents the measured -parameters. As predicted,
low reflection coefficient and good isolation are achieved.
Fig. 18 shows the normalized radiation patterns at five different
frequencies obtained from the near-field measurement. The
main polarization is in the plane and the cross-polarization
level is higher than that observed in the simulation which is due
DONG AND ITOH: SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED COMPOSITE RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED LEAKY-WAVE STRUCTURE 767

Fig. 14. Measured -parameters of the X-polarized LW antenna.

Fig. 16. Simulated patterns in terms of the realized gain for the Y-polarized
antenna in the plane in (a) the LH region, (b) broadside, and (c) RH
region.

to the fact that the coupler performance is not ideal. Also, the
two fabricated radiating TLs are not identical. The measured
gains at 7.5, 7.8, 8.2, 8.7, and 10 GHz are 9.72, 9.48, 7.76, 11.1,
and 11.75 dBi, respectively. Overall, the experimental results
are consistent with the simulation.

VI. Y-POLARIZED LW ANTENNA

A. Simulation
Fig. 16 shows the simulated gain patterns which are polarized
in the Y-direction. Two signals with 180 out of phase are di-
rectly applied at port 1 and port 4 [Fig. 1(c)] without including
Fig. 15. Measured and normalized radiation patterns for the X-polarized an-
tenna in the plane in (a) the LH region, (b) broadside, and (c) RH region.
the coupler. The -plane coincides with the plane (scan-
ning plane), and full-space beam scanning is also observed.
768 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 17. Measured -parameters of the Y-polarized LW antenna.

Fig. 19. Measured and simulated radiation patterns in the plane at

8.2 GHz for (a) the X-polarized LW antenna and (b) the Y-polarized LW
antenna.

B. Experimental Results
Fig. 17 shows the measured -parameters. In this case, the
entire structure, as indicated in the inset of Fig. 17, is fed at port
1, and other ports are terminated with the 50- load. Its radia-
tion patterns are measured in the near-field chamber, and Fig. 18
shows the normalized results. The increase of the cross-polar-
ization level is also found in the measurement after introducing
the rat-race hybrid. The measured gains at 7.5, 7.8, 8.2, 8.7, and
10 GHz are 8.21, 10.8, 10.01, 11.78, and 11.13 dBi, respec-
tively. It is interesting to find that at the broadside (8.2 GHz),
the gain for the Y-polarized wave is higher than that observed
in the X-polarized case. To find the reason, we checked the sim-
ulated and measured patterns in the plane at 8.2 GHz for
both of the two cases. They are plotted in Fig. 19, together with
the 3-D patterns, in the inset. It is seen from the 3-D radiation
patterns that the beam in the plane for the X-polarized case
is much wider than that in the Y-polarized case. The reason is
that the cross-polar component is more significant for the X-po-
larized case. This result is in good agreement with the analysis
on the two-element unit cell shown in Fig. 4(b).

VII. CIRCULARLY POLARIZED LW ANTENNA

Fig. 18. Measured and normalized radiation patterns for the Y-polarized an- The circular polarization is achieved by exciting two orthog-
tenna in the plane in (a) the LH region, (b) broadside, and (c) RH region. onally polarized radiating lines with 90 phase difference. For
DONG AND ITOH: SUBSTRATE INTEGRATED COMPOSITE RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED LEAKY-WAVE STRUCTURE
Fig. 20. Measured -parameters of the entire circularly polarized LW antenna.
Fig. 21. Measured radiation patterns of the circularly polarized antenna in the
plane in (a) the LH region, (b) broadside at 8.2 GHz, and (c) RH region.
simplicity here, only some measured results are provided. The
detailed analysis and performance can be found in [33]. In the
769
Fig. 22. Measured AR of the circularly polarized antenna in the plane in
(a) the LH region, (b) broadside at 8.2 GHz for different , and (c) RH region.
measurement, the half-mode SIW 90 directional coupler is
connected with the leaky lines to provide the required excita-
tion. The whole structure, as displayed in the inset of Fig. 20,
is fed at port 1, resulting in an RHCP. It is worth noting that
LHCP can also be obtained by feeding the whole structure at
port 4. The measured -parameters are shown in Fig. 20. It
is seen that the total reflection is below 11 dB in the
entire region. The isolation experiences a peak around
8.2 GHz and deteriorates below 7.2 GHz. This is reasonable
since the reflected waves from the two leaky lines arrive at
port 1 with 180 phase difference; thus, they cancel each other.
However, they are in-phase when arriving at port 4; thus, it is
the superposition of the two waves due to the 90 directional
coupler. Therefore, the behaves similar to the reflection of
the single radiating line.
770 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 22 shows the normalized radiation patterns measured
in the near-field chamber at five different frequencies. Both
the co-polarization (RHCP) and cross-polarization (LHCP) are
provided. Beam scanning is verified. The measured directivity
is 10.45 dBi at 7.5 GHz, 10.71 dBi at 7.8 GHz, 11.52 dBi at
8.2 GHz, 13.22 dBi at 8.7 GHz, and 14.556 dBi at 10 GHz. The
directivity in the RH region is higher than that in the LH region
due to the lower leakage constant shown by Fig. 3(c) and the
decrease of the wavelength, which lead to a more effective and
larger aperture. The measured AR at the aforementioned fre-
quencies is plotted in Fig. 22. We also plotted the simulated AR
for different separations between the two TLs in Fig. 22(b)
in order to give a comparison with the AR obtained from the
two-element unit-cell simulation shown in Fig. 4(c). Overall,
the simulated AR for the entire LW antenna deteriorates a little
compared to the unit-cell simulation because of the increased
slot coupling. This adopted distance is an optimal value for the
entire structure. It is seen that at the main beam direction, the
obtained AR is always below 3 dB. Discrepancy is observed
between the simulated and measured AR which is predictable
since the 3-dB coupler is not perfect and bandlimited. Also, the
fabrication error could result in two different leaky lines which
would affect the AR. In general, the antenna performance is
satisfactorily characterized by high directivity, low cross-polar
level, and good circular polarization.
VIII. CONCLUSION
We have implemented a frequency-scanning CRLH leaky TL
structure used for polarization-agile traveling-wave antenna ap-
plications. It is a low-loss passive component which can be re-
alized on a planar substrate by a low-cost printed-circuit board
(PCB) process. Depending on the input excitation, it can sup-
port arbitrary polarization states. We experimentally verified six
specified cases, including two pairs of orthogonal linearly po-
larized modes and one pair of orthogonal circularly polarized
modes. The measured and simulated results show that full-space
beam steering through frequency change is achieved including
the broadside direction. Good efficiency is also observed. This
structure can be a potential candidate for wireless communica-
tion applications requiring polarization diversity.
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Yuandan Dong (S’09) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in radio engineering from Southeast Univer-
sity, Nanjing, China, in 2006 and 2008, respectively,
and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering at the University of California at
Los Angeles (UCLA).
From 2005 to 2008, he was studying in the State
Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast Uni-
versity. Since 2008, he has been a Graduate Student
Researcher with the Microwave Electronics Labora-
tory, UCLA. He is serving as a reviewer for several
771
IEEE and IET journals including the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE
THEORY AND TECHNIQUES and IEEE TRANSACTION ON ANTENNAS AND
PROPAGATION. His research interests include the characterization and develop-
ment of RF and microwave components, circuits, antennas, and metamaterials.
Mr. Dong was the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award in 2010 from the
Asia Pacific Microwave Conference, Yokohama, Japan. He has authored more
than 20 journal and conference papers.
Tatsuo Itoh (S’69–M’69–SM’74–F’82–LF’06)
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1969.
After working for the University of Illinois, SRI
International in Menlo Park, and University of Ken-
tucky, Lexington, he joined the faculty at The Univer-
sity of Texas at Austin in 1978, where he became a
Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1981. In 1983,
he was selected to hold the Hayden Head Centen-
nial Professorship of Engineering at The University
of Texas at Austin. In 1991, he joined the University
of California, Los Angeles, as Professor of Electrical Engineering and Holder
of the TRW Endowed Chair in Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics
(currently Northrop Grumman Endowed Chair).
Dr. Itoh is a member of the Institute of Electronics and Communication En-
gineers of Japan, and Commissions B and D of USNC/URSI. He was Editor
of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES from 1983
to 1985 and was President of the Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT)
Society in 1990. He was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MICROWAVE AND GUIDED
WAVE LETTERS from 1991 to 1994. He was elected as an Honorary Life Member
of the MTT Society in 1994. He was the Chairman of Commission D of Interna-
tional URSI for 1993–1996. He serves on the advisory boards and committees
of a number of organizations. He served as Distinguished Microwave Lecturer
on Microwave Applications of Metamaterial Structures of the IEEE MTT-S for
2004–2006. He received a number of awards, including IEEE Third Millennium
Medal in 2000 and the IEEE MTT Distinguished Educator Award in 2000. He
was elected to member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2003. He has
many journal publications and refereed conference presentations. He has also
written many books/book chapters in the area of microwaves, millimeter waves,
antennas, and numerical electromagnetics. He has graduated 70 Ph.D. students.
772 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Design and Characterization of Miniaturized
Patch Antennas Loaded With Complementary
Split-Ring Resonators
Yuandan Dong, Student Member, IEEE, Hiroshi Toyao, and Tatsuo Itoh, Life Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—An investigation into the design of compact patch an-
tennas loaded with complementary split-ring resonators (CSRRs)
and reactive impedance surface (RIS) is presented in this study.
The CSRR is incorporated on the patch as a shunt LC resonator
providing a low resonance frequency and the RIS is realized using
the two-dimensional metallic patches printed on a metal-grounded
substrate. Both the meta-resonator (CSRR) and the meta-surface
(RIS) are able to miniaturize the antenna size. By changing the
configuration of the CSRRs, multi-band operation with varied po-
larization states can be obtained. An equivalent circuit has been
developed for the CSRR-loaded patch antennas to illustrate their
working principles. Six antennas with different features are de-
signed and compared, including a circularly-polarized antenna,
which validate their versatility for practical applications. These an-
tennas are fabricated and tested. The measured results are in good
agreement with the simulation.
Index Terms—Circular polarization, complementary split-ring
resonator (CSRR), flexible polarization, metamaterial, microstrip
antennas, miniaturized antennas, multi-frequency antennas, reac-
tive-impedance surface (RIS).
I. INTRODUCTION
E LECTROMAGNETIC metamaterials have been a field
of intense research activity with remarkable progress
witnessed over the past decade [1]–[4]. Use of metamaterials
for antennas is one of the most important applications currently
being investigated, including both the resonant-type small
antennas and the transmission-line type leaky-wave antennas
[5]–[16]. Split-ring resonator (SRR) and its dual, comple-
mentary split-ring resonator (CSRR), have been the popular
resonators which are widely used to synthesize metamaterials
[4], [17]–[21]. CSRRs, originally introduced by Falcone et
al. in 2004, have been proven to exhibit negative permittivity
[21]. Their applications to miniaturize microwave devices
and various antennas were widely investigated and presented
[22]–[30].
Manuscript received November 02, 2010; revised April 05, 2011; accepted
July 20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
Y. Dong and T. Itoh are with the Electrical Engineering Department, 63-129
ENGR-IV, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095
USA (e-mail: yddong@ee.ucla.edu; itoh@ee.ucla.edu).
H. Toyao is with the System Jisso Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation,
Sagamihara Kanagawa 211-8666, Japan (e-mail: h-toyao@bc.jp.nec.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173120
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
As a sub-field of metamaterials, meta-surface has also drawn
increasing attention in recent years, finding widespread applica-
tions in microwave circuits and antennas [31]–[38]. There are
several different types of meta-surfaces, such as the reactive
impedance surface (RIS) composed of periodic metallic patches
[31]–[34], the mushroom-like high-impedance or artificial mag-
netic surface (AMS) [35], [36], and the UC-PBG surface [37],
[38]. The AMS is able to suppress the surface wave as well as
to provide a zero reflection phase. It is shown in [31] that the
RIS can be utilized to miniaturize the antenna size and improve
the radiation performance.
This paper presents a comprehensive investigation into the
patch antennas loaded by CSRRs over an RIS based on some
preliminary research shown in [30]. The CSRR is embedded on
the top surface as a high-quality factor resonator which can
couple the field to the antenna patch and make it radiate. The
structure of the adopted CSRR and its equivalent-circuit model
are depicted in Fig. 1. The CSRR is modeled as a shunt LC res-
onator tank [19] which can be excited by the orthogonal electric
field. It can be equivalent to an electric dipole placed along the
ring axis [19]. As a dipole it essentially generates wave propa-
gating along the plane of ring surface and relies on the edges of
patch for radiation. The coupling between the CSRR and patch
mainly comes from the capacitive coupling through the ring slot
and the magnetic coupling through the split of the outer ring.
By properly feeding the antenna, the inherent half-wavelength
patch resonant mode can still be well excited. It is interesting to
note that the interaction between the CSRR-inspired resonance
and the patch resonance is very weak when they are orthogo-
nally polarized. Under this condition circular polarization (CP)
is attainable when they share the same operating frequency with
a 90 phase delay in excitation. In addition the interaction is
strong when they are polarized in the same plane, which gives
rise to two mixed modes. The RIS is employed to further de-
crease the resonance frequency and improve the antenna radi-
ation performance. When it works as an inductive surface it is
able to store the magnetic energy and increases the inductance
value of the patch type resonance. The resonance frequency of
the patch, which is inherently a parallel RLC resonator [39], is
shifted down in this way resulting in the antenna miniaturiza-
tion. It is shown that the antenna polarization state can be easily
changed by altering the configuration of the CSRRs. Dual- and
triple-band operations can also be achieved by appropriately ex-
citing the CSRRs and the microstrip patch. A circularly-polar-
ized antenna has also been developed by exciting two orthogo-
nally-polarized modes with a 90 phase difference. Six different
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS 773

Fig. 1. (a) Topology and (b) its equivalent circuit model of the CSRR [19].
Gray zone represents the metallization.

antennas are fabricated and measured to verify the simulation

based on the multi-layer PCB process. The proposed antennas
show advantages in terms of the compact size, low-fabrication
cost, low-cross polarization level and the multi-band operation
with flexible polarization states. In the following parts the six
antennas will be studied and presented in each different sec-
tion with a detailed analysis provided to the first antenna in
Section II. Here the simulation is performed using Ansoft’s High
Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software package.

II. PATCH ANTENNA LOADED WITH CSRRs AND RIS

In this section, the characters of the CSRR-loaded patch an-
tenna over an RIS will be investigated and discussed in de-
tail using an antenna model loaded with two CSRRs which are
face-to-back oriented. An equivalent circuit for the proposed
structure is derived to gain an insight into the working principle.
The design of CSRRs is summarized. The features and influence
of the RIS is also presented. It is noted that the major results pre-
sented in this section have already been published in [30].

A. Configuration
Fig. 2 shows the geometrical layout of the proposed antenna
with two CSRRs face-to-back oriented with respect to the direc-
tion of the ring split. This configuration is chosen here since it
is simpler than the side-by-side configuration which will be dis-
cussed later. A coaxial probe-feeding is utilized and placed in
the center of the microstrip patch. Due to this center feeding no
patch resonances can be excited. Also the alternative cases with
two CSRRs either face-to-face or back-to-back oriented could
not radiate well due to a symmetrical structure which cancels
all the radiation from the patch edges. Under those conditions
the main radiation should come from the ring slot of the CSRR.
However, as explained later the CSRR is a high- resonator in-
stead of a good radiator. To verify this conclusion we also simu-
lated these two cases and found that the resonance could still be
excited at a little higher frequency but the radiation efficiency
for both of the two cases is below 0.7%. Face-to-back case is a Fig. 2. Configurations of the proposed CSRR-loaded patch antenna over an
good option since the patch can radiates well. The RIS, which is RIS. The CSRRs are face-to-back oriented and the feeding probe is in the center.
composed of a periodic array of metallic square patches printed (a) Perspective view, (b) top view, and (c) side view.
on a metal-backed dielectric substrate, is introduced below the
top surface. It is a three-layer structure where the top and bottom
dielectric substrate is “MEGTRON 6” with a relative permit- quency [39], [40]. The series inductor represents an inductive
tivity of 4.02 and a measured loss tangent of 0.009 at 2.4 GHz. probe feeding. The structure of Fig. 2(a) can be roughly repre-
sented by the circuit model shown in Fig. 3(b). The CSRR is
B. Equivalent Circuit Model modeled as a high- shunt-connected RLC resonator tank ( ,
Fig. 3(a) shows the circuit model of a conventional probe-fed and ) which has been designed to exhibit a lower reso-
microstrip patch antenna. The input impedance of the patch an- nance frequency compared with microstrip patch. denotes
tenna is modeled as an RLC resonator near its resonance fre- the losses including both the conductor and dielectric losses.
774
Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit model for (a) conventional probe-fed patch antenna,
and (b) proposed patch antenna loaded with CSRRs as shown in Fig. 1.
The probe inductance is represented by . Due to the equiva-
lence to an electric dipole, the wave generated by the CSRR is
mainly propagating along the plane inside the substrate
and radiates when it arrives at the edges of the patch. The CSRR
itself has little radiation since the radiation from the ring slot
would cancel itself. To verify this viewpoint we have created
a model with the CSRR etched on a rectangular cavity. Unlike
other cavity-backed slot antennas, little radiation through the
ring slot is detected and most of power is dissipated by the loss,
which demonstrates that the CSRR itself is not a good radiator.
The field can be coupled from the CSRR to the patch and radi-
ates away using the radiation resistance of the microstrip
patch. It is noted that this coupling is a combination of the in-
ductive and the capacitive couplings, where the former comes
from the connection through the split of the outer ring and the
latter comes from slot coupling. The same situation applies to
the coupling between the feeding probe and the CSRR. Here
it is also pointed out that this circuit model is just a simplified
approximation where we have neglected the direct coupling be-
tween the two CSRRs on the two sides. Since the structure is not
symmetrical, the coupling for the two CSRRs is different. The
series inductance is relatively larger when the ring split is far
away from the feeding probe on the other side. Since the value
of the coupling elements is different, the resonance frequency
looking into circuit also varies. Therefore, two resonances could
be observed on the input impedance which will be shown later
in Fig. 11(a).
C. CSRR
It would be helpful to know the characters and design
methodology for the CSRRs while designing the proposed
CSRR-loaded patch antennas. The CSRR can be represented
by an LC resonator tank as shown in Fig. 1 when the loss is
neglected. Its inherent resonance frequency is determined by
where the capacitance of the CSRR is approximately equal to
that corresponding to a metallic disk surrounded and backed by
the ground plane [19]. Here the inductance can be calculated
based on a CPW structure with an equivalent perimeter of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. An investigation into the features of the CSRR inherent resonance fre-
quency based on HFSS eigen-mode simulation. The initial CSRR is etched on
the surface of a rectangular cavity and resonates at 3.075 GHz. (a) Field distri-
bution at the CSRR resonance frequency; (b) the resonance frequency versus
the substrate thickness ; (c) the change of the resonance frequency with dif-
ferent CSRR geometries ( is fixed here); (d) the variation of reso-
nance frequency for different slot width . (e) Simulated resonance frequency
versus the strip width . The parameters are: mm, mm,
mm, mm and mm.
CSRR, strip width , and slot width . The detailed properties
for the CSRR is presented in [19], including the analytical calcu-
lation of the resonance frequency. However those equations are
lengthy and calculation would become extremely difficult for
irregular CSRR structures. Here we adopted an approach based
on the eigen-mode simulation to quickly obtain the resonance
frequencies. In this setup, the CSRR is etched on the surface
of a dielectric-filled rectangular cavity. Note that cavity itself
is resonating at a much higher frequency. First we simulated
an example given in [19] and found a good agreement. Then
based on this method we extracted the resonance frequency for
the rectangular CSRRs used in our antennas. Fig. 4(a) shows
the field distribution from eigen-mode simulation for the CSRR
used in this design. A series of simulations has been carried out
by changing the parameters to investigate the properties of the
CSRR. The results are displayed in Figs. 4(b) to (e).
(1) Fig. 4(b) shows the influence of the substrate thickness to
the resonance frequency. The decrease of thickness corresponds
to an enhancement of the capacitance which leads to a de-
crease of the resonance frequency. Fig. 4(c) shows how the
variation of the geometry affects the resonance frequency. The
perimeter is set to be fixed. It is seen that the CSRR
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS 775

resonance frequency has a very small variation when the ge-

ometry changes. It has a minimum value for a square shape.
This is predictable since this shape gives the maximum area
resulting in a maximum and finally a minimum resonance
frequency. It is worth noting that for the CSRR-loaded patch,
the coupling can be adjusted by the change of the CSRR ge-
ometry since the CSRR frequency is almost not affected. When
slot width is reduced, the capacitance is increased and the
resonance frequency is decreased. Fig. 4(d) verifies this conclu- Fig. 5. Unit-cell and its equivalent circuit of the RIS bounded with PEC and
sion. Fig. 4(e) shows the increase of inductance , achieved PMC walls and illuminated by a normal incident plane wave.
by reducing the strip width g, could also decrease the resonance
frequency. Other parameters, such as the dielectric constant and
CSRR size, may be used to control the frequency as well. Note
the above results are obtained without the consideration of RIS.

D. RIS
The RIS is first proposed and studied in [31]. Here a brief in-
vestigation about the features is presented. As shown in Fig. 2
it is composed by two dimensional periodic metallic patches
printed on a grounded substrate. The periodicity of the metallic
patches is much smaller than the wavelength. Considering a
single cell illuminated with a TEM plane wave, PEC and PMC
boundaries can be established around the cell as shown in Fig. 5
[31]. The resulting structure can be modeled as a parallel LC
circuit displayed in Fig. 5. The edge coupling of the square
patch provides a shunt capacitor and the short-circuited dielec-
tric loaded transmission line can be modeled as a shunt inductor.
The impedance then can be obtained as

(2)

where

(3)

The calculation of and has been detailed in [31].

The variation of the patch size and slot width mainly changes
the capacitor value while the substrate thickness and dielec-
tric constant mainly affects the inductance value, all of which
can be used to control the resonance frequency. Either an in-
ductive RIS (below the PMC surface frequency) or a capaci-
tive RIS (above the PMC surface frequency) can be obtained
depending on the geometry and the operating frequency [31].
Note that since the near field generated by the patch antenna is
not a uniform plane wave and the meta-surface is size-limited
far from being periodic, the thinking or design of a radiating
patch over the meta-surface (RIS) using the unit-cell analysis
shown in Fig. 5 is just an approximation to qualitatively explain
its working principle. To better explain the role played by RIS
an analysis into the near field interaction would be more mean-
ingful and essential. As demonstrated in [31] and [36], due to
the matching difficulty and loss problem, PMC surface is not
a proper choice. An inductive RIS is able to store the magnetic
energy which thus increases the inductance of the circuit. There-
fore, it can be used to miniaturize the size of a patch type antenna
which is essentially an RLC parallel resonator. At the same time
it is shown in [31] the inductive RIS is also able to provide a
Fig. 6. A parameter study on the RIS for the proposed antenna shown in Fig. 2.
It shows the different simulated reflection coefficients by (a) varying while
keeping fixed (3 mm). (b) Varying while keeping mm.
All the other parameters are the same as shown later in Fig. 10.
wider matching bandwidth therefore it is more suitable for an-
tenna application.
E. Simulated and Measured Results
Based on HFSS commercial software package, this antenna
loaded by CSRR and RIS as shown in Fig. 2 is designed and op-
timized at a working frequency of 2.4 GHz. To have more design
information about the RIS, a parametric study is first performed
by changing the slot width between the RIS patches and the RIS
thickness. The result is shown in Fig. 6. Note that here in all
these simulations the ground size is assumed to be 34 mm 34
mm and the patch size is 12.4 mm 19.2 mm. It is seen that the
resonance frequency can be pushed down by either increasing
the equivalent capacitance of the RIS or increasing the equiv-
alent inductance. To provide a better understanding about the
776 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 7. A comparison of for the proposed antenna with different RIS

unit-cell numbers. All other parameters remain unchanged in the simulation.

function of the RIS, Fig. 7 shows the variation of antenna reso-

nance frequency by changing of the RIS unit-cell numbers. It is
seen that for the case without the RIS, the resonance frequency
is 2.75 GHz shown by both the simulation and measurement. By
adding the RIS, the resonance frequency has been moved down
to 2.4 GHz. It is important to note that as long as the RIS covers
the mircostrip patch size (minimum 3 5 unit-cells in this case),
the increase of the unit-cell number only poses a very weak in-
fluence on the resonance frequency. The reason is that outside
the microstrip patch region the field is weak. It is also observed
that further reducing the unit-cell number could change the reso-
nance frequency distinctly. Fig. 8 shows a parameter analysis on Fig. 8. Simulated reflection coefficients by (a) varying while keeping the
other parameters unchanged, and (b) varying (the size of patch).
the size of the CSRR and the microstrip patch. It is seen that the
resonance frequency is mainly determined by the CSRR while
the patch size also affects it but in a weaker manner.
Fig. 9 shows a photograph of the fabricated antenna. The
patch size is around , which is very com-
pact. The sizes of the RIS and ground are and
, respectively. The reflection coefficient of
the antenna is measured and plotted in Fig. 10, compared with
the results from the circuit simulation and full-wave simulation
using both HFSS and CST. A good agreement between them
is observed. It is also important to bear in mind that since the
circuit simulation cannot include the radiation for an antenna
and it is simplified for the couplings and the losses, this is just
a rough approximation used to explain its working principle.
The values for those lumped elements are listed in the caption. Fig. 9. Photograph of the fabricated patch antenna loaded with face-to-back
Two resonance frequencies are observed which are exactly from CSRRs and the RIS.
the two circuit branches shown in Fig. 3(b). The designed res-
onance is found to be at 2.406 GHz in the measurement and
it exhibits an impedance match better than 20 dB. The mea- CSRRs have the same inherent resonance frequency. However,
sured relative bandwidth is 1.04%. The second resonance at 2.84 the appeared resonance frequencies here are not from the CSRR
GHz is not matched as predicted by the input impedance shown only but from the whole circuit. Because of the different orien-
in Fig. 11(a). The simulated radiation pattern at this frequency tation, the couplings are also different which leads to different
indicates that this second resonance is also polarized in resonance frequencies shown in Fig. 10. The equivalent circuit
plane. The field distribution at the two resonance frequencies is shown in Fig. 3(b) is developed in order to provide a clear pic-
plotted in Fig. 11(b). It is clearly seen that the field is coupled ture about this working mechanism.
to the microstrip patch and radiated from the two patch edges. The radiation patterns are measured in a far-field anechoic
The CSRRs are resonating separately at each of the resonance chamber and are plotted in Fig. 12. It is noted that the antenna is
frequencies. Due to the poor matching for the second resonance polarized in plane as shown in Fig. 11(b). The measured
the field is only strong along the lower part of the patch and gain and front-to-back ratio at 2.406 GHz are 2.02 dBi and
it is not well radiating. It should be pointed out that the two 6.5 dB, respectively, which agree with the simulation. Since the
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS 777

Fig. 12. Measured and simulated far-field patterns in -plane ( plane)

and -plane ( plane) at the resonance frequency. The scale is 5 dB per
division.
Fig. 10. The measured reflection coefficient compared with the results from cir-
cuit simulation and full-wave simulation using HFSS and CST. The equivalent
circuit parameter values are: nH, , nH,
, nH, , nH, with the antenna without the RIS, the patch antenna with RIS
, nH, , nH, nH, but without the CSRR, and the simple patch antenna without
, , The geometrical param- the RIS or CSRR. For the patch antennas without the CSRR we
eters are: mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, excited the direction resonance by changing probe po-
mm, mm and mm. sition, which means that they have the same polarization and
patch size. Table I shows the comparison on the resonance fre-
quency, simulated gain and radiation efficiency.

III. DUAL-BAND DUALLY-POLARIZED ANTENNA

Fig. 11. (a) Input impedance from HFSS full-wave simulation and equivalent
circuit model shown in Fig. 3, and (b) electric field distribution at the two res-
onance frequencies. The two resonances are polarized in plane which is
indicated by their radiation patterns.
antenna is electrically small a relatively low gain is expected.
The measured and simulated radiation efficiency is 22.54% and
25.5%, respectively. Here all the measured radiation efficiency
is obtained using the gain/directivity (G/D) method. And the an-
tenna directivity is measured in the near-field chamber in our de-
partment. The relatively low radiation efficiency is also due to
the high dielectric loss of the substrate. Finally, it is interesting
to give a comparison for the proposed CSRR-loaded antennas
WITH FACE-TO-BACK CSRRs
The antenna shown in the previous section is excited by a
probe fed in the center and is polarized in plane. By
moving the probe off the center along -direction, the original
2.4 GHz resonance still exists only with the matching a little af-
fected, while a conventional microstrip patch resonance can be
excited simultaneously, which is polarized in plane. Note
that when the antenna is fed in the center no half-wavelength
patch resonance can be excited due to a symmetrical structure
requiring a symmetrical field distribution. Also since this patch
resonance is orthogonally polarized compared with the CSRR-
inspired resonance, their interaction is relatively small. Fig. 13
presents the detailed structure and a photograph of the fabri-
cated antenna. It is noted that this antenna has exactly the same
dimensions as the first antenna except the difference in the probe
feeding position.
Fig. 14 shows the simulated and measured reflection coeffi-
cient of the antenna. The two bands are measured at 2.41 GHz
and 3.82 GHz. Fig. 15 shows the electric field distribution at
the two resonance frequencies. The simulated and measured
radiation patterns are plotted in Fig. 16. As expected the two
resonances have orthogonal polarizations. The first resonance
is polarized in plane while the second one is polarized
in plane. The measured gain at the two resonance fre-
quencies is 2.13 dBi and 5.04 dBi, respectively. The mea-
sured bandwidth for the two bands is 0.91% and 1.76%. The
front-to-back ratio is 5.17 dB at the first frequency and 12.87
dB at the second frequency. The corresponding radiation effi-
ciencies are 25.3% and 80.2% in the simulation, and 22.8% and
74.5% in the measurement. The low efficiency at the first band
is due to the high conductor and dielectric losses. The CSRR
is essentially a high- resonator which induces strong current
and field along the ring position. This strong current would take
away considerable power resulting in a reduced efficiency. By
778 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE I
A COMPARISON FOR THE ANTENNAS WITH THE SAME SIZE BUT WITH DIFFERENT LOADINGS
Fig. 13. (a) Perspective view and (b) a photograph of the proposed dual-band
dually-polarized antenna with face-to-back CSRRs. Parameter value are the
same as the first one, mm.
Fig. 14. Measured and simulated reflection coefficient for the dual-band an-
tenna loaded with face-to-back CSRRs.
Fig. 15. Electric field distribution at the two operating frequencies: 2.4 GHz
and 3.79 GHz.
employing low-loss material the efficiency can be substantially
increased.
IV. DUAL-BAND EQUALLY-POLARIZED ANTENNA
From the antenna discussed in Section II, it is seen that the
polarization of the antenna resonance excited by the CSRRs is
mainly determined by their orientations. In this section a dual-
band antenna with the same polarization is designed by utilizing
Fig. 16. Measured and Simulated far-field patterns at (a) 2.4 GHz, and
(b) 3.79 GHz. The -plane is plane for the first band and plane
for the second band. The display scale is 5 dB per division.
this feature. Two CSRRs are side-by-side equally placed on the
patch as shown in Fig. 17. It is worth noting that all the an-
tennas designed here use the same substrate as the first antenna
indicated by Fig. 2(c). The CSRRs are embedded in the middle
of the patch along the -direction. A photograph of the fabri-
cated antenna is displayed in Fig. 17. In terms of the wave-
length of the first resonance frequency, the patch size is around
, and the sizes of the RIS and ground are
and , respectively. Fig. 18
shows the measured and simulated reflection coefficient. It is
seen that two resonances are excited with a good impedance
matching. The resonance frequencies are simulated at 2.37 GHz
and 2.93 GHz, and are measured to be 2.386 GHz and 2.958
GHz. The measured 10 dB bandwidth is 1.32% for the first
band and 2.68% for the second band. It is also noted that the
patch resonance by removing the CSRR occurs at 2.88 GHz.
The initial patch and the CSRRs couple to each other generating
two mixed modes polarized in the same direction. The coupling
is through both the electric and magnetic couplings. Since the
orientation of the CSRR coincides with the patch antenna po-
larization plane, which facilitates the interaction between them,
the coupling is substantially enhanced. Fig. 19 shows the field
distribution for the two resonances. It is observed that the field
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS
Fig. 17. (a) Perspective view, (b) a photograph, and (c) top view of the pro-
posed dual-band equally-polarized antenna with side-by-side CSRRs. The ge-
ometrical parameters are: mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm mm, mm,
mm, mm and mm.
Fig. 18. Measured and simulated reflection coefficient for the dual-band
equally-polarized antenna loaded with side-by-side CSRRs.
is strong along the left edge of the patch for the first resonance,
meaning a strong slot coupling and a large coupling inductor
(weak inductive coupling due to a large distance). While for
the second resonance the field is strong along the right edge,
meaning a smaller coupling inductor due to a small distance.
Fig. 20 gives a parametric study on the size of the CSRR and
the patch. It is seen that both of them can be used to control the
antenna resonance frequencies, which indicates that the patch
and the CSRR are mixed giving rise to two resonating modes.
Fig. 21 shows the measured and simulated radiation patterns
for the antenna. The cross polarization level is too low to be ob-
served in the plot. The gain at the two resonance frequencies
is simulated to be 0.1 dBi and 2.99 dBi, which correspond
779
Fig. 19. Electric field distribution at the two operating frequencies: 2.37 GHz
and 2.93 GHz.
Fig. 20. Simulated by (a) varying where , and (b) varying
(the length of the patch). Other parameters remain the same.
to 40.7% and 63.8% simulated radiation efficiencies. The mea-
sured gain is 0.21 dBi and 3.13 dBi, corresponding 38.5% and
59.3% measured radiation efficiencies. The measured front-to-
back ratio is 8.16 dB and 14 dB, respectively.
V. DUAL-BAND DUALLY-POLARIZED ANTENNA
WITH SIDE-BY-SIDE CSRRs
In this section we show that dual-band antenna with or-
thogonal polarizations can also be obtained by side-by-side
reversing the orientation of the CSRRs. The structure and
photograph of the fabricated antenna is shown in Fig. 22. In
terms of the wavelength of the first resonance frequency, the
patch size is around , and the sizes of the RIS
and ground are and ,
respectively. The CSRRs are side-by-side reversely placed
in the center of the patch. It is to be noted that due to the
780 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 23. Electric field distribution at the two operating frequencies: 2.27 GHz
and 2.78 GHz.

Fig. 21. Measured and Simulated far-field patterns at (a) the first resonance
frequency, and (b) the second resonance frequency. The -plane is plane
for both of the two resonances. The display scale is 5 dB per division.

Fig. 24. Simulated reflection coefficients by (a) varying (the CSRR size)
where , and (b) varying (the patch size) where .

previous antenna, for this case the field can be coupled from
one CSRR to the other one directly. The coupling between two
CSRRs has also been studied in [26]. The resonance generated
here by the CSRRs is polarized in which is along
the diagonal line of the square patch. Another resonance,
Fig. 22. (a) Perspective view, (b) a photograph, and (c) top view of the pro- which is the inherent patch resonance, is excited along the
posed dual-band, orthogonally-polarized antenna with side-by-side CSRRs. The perpendicular direction as shown in Fig. 23, which is similar to
geometrical parameters are: mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm mm,
the corner-truncated or corner-fed dually polarized patch an-
mm, mm, mm and mm. tennas [41]. This pair of resonances is generated independently
with little interference. Fig. 24 shows a parametric study by
changing the patch and the CSRR. It is obviously seen that the
configuration the two CSRRs reach the electric field maximum first resonance is mainly determined by the CSRRs while the
with a phase difference of 180 , which means that the positive second one is mainly controlled by the microstrip patch. Fig. 25
maximum for one CSRR corresponds to the negative maximum shows measured and simulated reflection coefficient, where the
for the other one. This is also indicated by the field distribution two resonances are observed at 2.27 GHz and 2.78 GHz in the
shown in Fig. 23. Unlike the symmetrical configuration of the simulation, and 2.31 GHz and 2.83 GHz in the measurement. A
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS
Fig. 25. The measured and simulated reflection coefficients for the dual-band,
orthogonally-polarized antenna loaded with side-by-side CSRRs.
Fig. 26. Measured and simulated far-field patterns at (a) the first resonance
frequency, and (b) the second resonance frequency. The -plane is at
for the first band and for the second band.
little frequency shift is observed which is probably due to the
change of the dielectric constant and the fabrication error. The
measured 10 dB bandwidth for the two bands is 1.38% and
3.29%. It should be pointed out that there is another resonance
around 2.97 GHz which is brought by the CSRRs. However it
is not matched and appears to be very weak.
Fig. 26 shows the measured and simulated radiation patterns.
The measured front-to-back ratio for the two bands is 8.33 dB
and 14.4 dB, respectively. The gain is simulated to be 3.14
dBi and measured as 2.09 dBi for the lower resonance. For
the second one it is simulated as 3.13 dBi and measured to be
3.85 dBi. Considering the patch size is only,
the antenna efficiency is relatively low, which is simulated to be
22% for the first resonance and 69.2% for the second resonance.
The measured antenna radiation efficiency for the two bands
781
Fig. 27. (a) The perspective view and (b) a photograph of the proposed and fab-
ricated circularly-polarized antenna with side-by-side CSRRs. The geometrical
parameters are: mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm and mm.
Fig. 28. The measured and simulated reflection coefficients for the circularly-
polarized antenna loaded with side-by-side CSRRs.
is 24.45% and 71.8%, respectively. The discrepancy is mainly
caused by the shift of the resonance frequency and probably a
smaller loss tangent for the real material.
VI. CIRCULARLY-POLARIZED ANTENNA
Based on the dual-frequency, orthogonally-polarized antenna
proposed in the above section, a circularly-polarized antenna
is designed here. The principle is to overlap the two working
frequencies and excite these two resonances with a 90 phase
difference. Since the probe feed is in the center and the wave
goes to the two diagonal lines oppositely with 45 phase delay,
the 90 phase difference can be automatically introduced. The
reason is that at the resonance frequency, the wave travels from
one edge to the opposite edge with 180 phase delay. Now the
wave propagates from the probe to the diagonal plane covering
an angle of only 45 , which give rise to 45 phase delay. Here
only the impedance matching needs to be improved, which is the
-position of the probe feed. The size of the CSRRs is scaled
down in order to push up its resonance frequency. The final
structure, as well as a photograph of the fabricated antenna, is
shown in Fig. 27. This antenna has a patch size of
, an RIS size of , and a ground size
of . The measured and simulated reflection
coefficient is shown in Fig. 28. The center frequency is 2.8 GHz
and the 10 dB bandwidth is 5.03% in the simulation. And in
the measurement they are 2.824 GHz and 4.9%.
782 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 29. Measured and simulated far-field patterns at the center frequency in
plane and plane. The display scale is 5 dB per division.
Fig. 30. Measured and simulated AR and the realized gain for the CP antenna.
Fig. 31. Simulated AR at the center frequency in two different planes.
The radiation characters of the CP antenna are tested in the
UCLA spherical chamber. The measured and simulated radia-
tion patterns in and plane are shown in Fig. 29.
The discrepancy is mainly due to the interference of the testing
equipment. The measured and simulated gain and axial ratio
(AR) are shown in Fig. 30. The measured and simulated AR at
center frequency in plane and plane is also provided
in Fig. 31. The bandwidth for AR less than 3 dB is observed as
1.60% in the simulation and 1.68% in the measurement. Fig. 32
shows the measured three-dimensional AR and radiation pat-
terns. It is seen that a CP radiation is retained in a very wide
region and the pattern is very similar to a traditional patch an-
tenna. This antenna radiation efficiency is observed to be 80%
in the simulation and 74.1% in the measurement.
Fig. 32. Three-dimensional (a) radiation pattern and (b) AR measured in a
spherical near field chamber at the center frequency.
Fig. 33. (a) Perspective view, (b) a photograph, and (c) top view of the pro-
posed triple-band antenna with different polarizations. The geometrical param-
eters are: mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm and mm.
VII. TRIPLE-BAND ANTENNA WITH VARIED POLARIZATIONS
In this section a triple-band antenna with different polariza-
tion states is developed. The structure, as shown in Fig. 33, is
similar to the previous two antennas. Two CSRRs are side-by-
side reversely embedded on the top surface. They are shifted
from the patch center by . Also the patch itself is not a square
patch. This structure is able to generate three resonances at same
time with a proper feeding. Two of them, the first and the third
one, come from the CSRRs and the second one is mainly excited
by the microstrip patch. This is justified by comparing it with
the inherent patch resonance frequency and checking the field
distribution. We also found that compared with the other two
resonances the CSRR size is not very influential to the second
resonance frequency. Fig. 33(b) shows a photograph of the fab-
ricated antenna. “MEGTRON 6” with a relative permittivity of
4.02 is also used here as the substrate. In terms of the wave-
length of the first resonance frequency, this antenna exhibits a
DONG et al.: DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MINIATURIZED PATCH ANTENNAS 783

Fig. 34. Measured and simulated reflection coefficient for the triple-band an-
tenna loaded with side-by-side CSRRs.

Fig. 35. Electric field distribution at the three operating frequencies: 2.4 GHz,
2.8 GHz and 3.4 GHz.

patch size of , an RIS size of ,

and a ground size of .
Fig. 34 shows the simulated and measured reflection coef-
ficient. As seen the three bands are well matched to be below
22 dB. The measured 10 dB bandwidth for the three bands
Fig. 36. Measured and simulated far-field patterns in their principle -plane
is 1.61%, 3.27%, and 3.08%, respectively. Fig. 35 shows the and -plane at (a) 2.426 GHz, (b) 2.845 GHz, and (c) 3.373 GHz. The display
field distribution at the three resonance frequencies. Clearly they scale is 5 dB per division.
have different polarization angles. The CSRRs are strongly res-
onating in the first and third resonances. The second resonance
should mainly come from the patch itself. To verify this we cal-
culated and found that the inherent patch resonance (without
CSRRs) in -direction occurs at 2.78 GHz, which is very close
to the resonance frequency of this second mode. Their -planes
are located at , 54 , and 160 , respectively. To confirm
this, a near field measurement was performed in the spherical
near field chamber which directly verifies the polarization an-
gles from simulation. Fig. 36 shows the measured pattern from
a far-field measurement, compared with the simulated data. It is
noted that they are measured in their own -plane and -planes
independently. The measured front-to-back ratio for the three
bands is 6.5 dBi, 8.3 dBi and 13.0 dBi. The gain measured at
these three resonance frequencies is 0.27 dBi, 3.31 dBi, and Fig. 37. The variation of the principle -plane angles by changing ( -po-
4.45 dBi, respectively. Their corresponding measured efficien- sition of the CSRRs). Other parameters remain unchanged.
cies are 43.7%, 69.8% and 75.5%, which are very close to the
simulated efficiencies: 41.9%, 68.5% and 77.62%.
Finally, it is interesting to note that their principle polariza- variation is that the split of the CSRRs plays an important role in
tion angles can be steered simply by changing the position of the wave coupling which affects the polarization angle. The po-
the CSRRs ( : the x-distance between the patch center and the sition of the CSRRs also affects the patch resonance since they
CSRR center). Fig. 37 shows the simulated -plane angle vari- block the original wave propagation and lead to the modifica-
ations for all the three modes. It is seen they are rotated together tion of the field pathway. Table II summarizes the influencing
as the CSRRs move along the -direction. The reason for this factors on polarization for the different CSRR-loaded antennas.
784 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE II
POLARIZATION INFLUENCING FACTORS FOR A CSRR-LOADED PATCH
ANTENNA WITH FIXED CSRR AND PATCH CONFIGURATION
Note that besides the above factors, the patch geometry and feeding position
are also capable of changing the polarization of the resonances.
VIII. CONCLUSION
A comprehensive study on the CSRR-loaded patch antennas
over an RIS has been presented in this paper. The employ-
ment of the meta-resonator and the meta-surface enables the
antenna miniaturization. These antennas can be designed to per-
form specified functions, such as the circularly-polarized radia-
tion, dual- and triple-band operation with the same or different
polarizations. The antenna radiation characteristics can be easily
controlled by changing the configuration of the CSRRs. Wide-
band operation by combining different resonances is also fea-
sible which is under our current investigation. These CSRR-
loaded patch antennas are compact, simple in structure, but ver-
satile in applications.
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[1] C. Caloz and T. Itoh, Electromagnetic Metamaterials: Transmission
Line Theory and Microwave Applications. New York: Wiley-IEEE
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Yuandan Dong (S’09) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees from Southeast University, Nanjing, China,
in 2006 and 2008, respectively. He is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree in the department
of electrical engineering, University of California at
Los Angeles (UCLA).
From September 2005 to August 2008, he was
studying in the State Key Lab. of Millimeter Waves
in Southeast University. Since September 2008,
he has been a Graduate Student Researcher with
the Microwave Electronics Laboratory in UCLA.
He has authored more than 20 journal and conference papers. His research
interests include the characterization and development of RF and microwave
components, circuits, antennas and metamaterials.
Mr. Dong is serving as a reviewer for several IEEE and IET journals in-
cluding the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
and IEEE TRANSACTION ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION. He is the recipient
of the Best Student Paper award from 2010 Asia Pacific Microwave Confer-
ence, Yokohama, Japan.
785
Hiroshi Toyao received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
physics from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo,
Japan, in 2000 and 2006, respectively.
In 2006, he joined NEC Corporation, Japan, where
he has been engaged in research on high-speed in-
terconnection and electromagnetic compatibility. His
current interests include EBG structures, metamate-
rials and antennas.
Tatsuo Itoh (S’69–M’69–SM’74–F’82–LF’06)
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1969.
After working for University of Illinois, SRI and
University of Kentucky, He joined the faculty at
The University of Texas at Austin in 1978, where
he became a Professor of Electrical Engineering
in 1981. In September 1983, he was selected to
hold the Hayden Head Centennial Professorship of
Engineering at The University of Texas. In January
1991, he joined the University of California, Los An-
geles as Professor of Electrical Engineering and holder of the TRW Endowed
Chair in Microwave and Millimeter Wave Electronics (currently Northrop
Grumman Endowed Chair). He has 400 journal publications, 820 refereed
conference presentations and has written 48 books/book chapters in the area of
microwaves, millimeter-waves, antennas and numerical electromagnetics. He
generated 70 Ph.D. students.
Dr. Itoh received a number of awards including IEEE Third Millennium
Medal in 2000, and IEEE MTT Distinguished Educator Award in 2000. He
was elected to a member of National Academy of Engineering in 2003. He is
a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Institute of Electronics and Commu-
nication Engineers of Japan, and Commissions B and D of USNC/URSI. He
served as the Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND
TECHNIQUES for 1983–1985. He was President of the Microwave Theory and
Techniques Society in 1990. He was the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE MICROWAVE
AND GUIDED WAVE LETTERS from 1991 through 1994. He was elected as an
Honorary Life Member of MTT Society in 1994. He was the Chairman of
Commission D of International URSI for 1993–1996, the Chairman of Com-
mission D of International URSI for 1993–1996. He serves on advisory boards
and committees of a number of organizations. He served as Distinguished
Microwave Lecturer on Microwave Applications of Metamaterial Structures
of IEEE MTT-S for 2004–2006.
786 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Dual-Band Circularly Polarized Microstrip RFID
Reader Antenna Using Metamaterial Branch-Line
Coupler
Youn-Kwon Jung and Bomson Lee, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A dual-band circularly polarized aperture coupled
microstrip RFID reader antenna using a metamaterial (MTM)
branch-line coupler has been designed, fabricated, and measured.
The proposed antenna is fabricated on a FR-4 substrate with rela-
tive permittivity of 4.6 and thickness of 1.6 mm. The MTM coupler
is designed employing the provided explicit closed-form formulas.
The dual-band (UHF and ISM) circularly-polarized RFID reader
antenna with separate Tx and Rx ports is connected to the de-
signed metamaterial (MTM) branch-line coupler. The maximum
measured LHCP antenna gain is 6.6 dBic at 920 MHz (UHF) and
RHCP gain is 7.9 dBic at 2.45 GHz (ISM). The cross-polar CP
gains near broadside of the RFID reader antenna are approxi-
mately less than compared with the mentioned co-polar
CP gains in both bands. The isolations between the two ports are
about 25 dB and 38 dB, at 920 MHz and 2.45 GHz, respectively.
The measured axial ratios are less than 0.7 dB in the UHF band
(917–923 MHz) and 1.5 dB in the ISM band (2.4–2.48 GHz).
Index Terms—Circular polarization, dual-band, metamaterial,
RFID reader antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology
that uses communication via radio waves to exchange data
between a reader and an electronic tag attached to an object, for
the purpose of identification and tracking. The current RFID
technology is employed in the fields of medicine, security, trans-
portation, logistics, defense, and so on. The frequency bands
assigned to RFID are 125–135 kHz (ISO 18000-2), 13.56 MHz
(ISO 18000-3), 433.92 MHz (ISO 18000-7), UHF 860–960 MHz
(ISO 18000-6), and ISM 2.45 GHz (ISO 18000-4). There is an
increasing need to develop a dual-band RFID reader antenna and
tag to accommodate two frequency bands in one structure. Cir-
cular polarization (CP) is also an important aspect of the RFID
reader antenna. It is for signal reception regardless of the phys-
ical orientation of the tag. One more requirement for the RFID
reader antenna is sufficient isolation between the Tx and Rx
ports. Although there have been some commercial RFID reader
Manuscript received March 03, 2011; revised June 08, 2011; accepted July
15, 2011. Date of publication September 15, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported by a Mid-career Researcher
Program through a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant (No.
20100027006) funded by the Korea government (MEST).
The authors are with the Department of Electronics and Radio Engineering,
College of Electronics and Information, Kyung Hee University, Yong-in, Korea
(e-mail: bomson@khu.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2167943
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
with separate Tx and Rx antennas, a two-port Tx/Rx one-body
reader antenna is certainly a favorite. To realize a dual-band
circularly-polarized RFID reader antenna with separate Tx and
Rx ports is not an easy task. Research papers for this goal is
rare, although there have been some partial efforts. In [1], a lin-
early-polarized aperture-coupled two-layered dual-band RFID
reader antenna was designed with a 2:1 VSWR bandwidth of
17% in the UHF band 31% in the ISM band. Circularly-polarized
RFID reader antennas for a single UHF band have been exten-
sively studied [2]–[6] and there are already some commercial
products from various manufacturers. A dual-band (1227 MHz
and 1575 MHz) and circularly-polarized stacked microstrip
antenna was first proposed in [7] employing an aperture-coupled
type feeding. It is fed by a sequentially rotated feed line through
crossed slots on the ground plane. Its drawback is narrow band-
width due to the difference of the electrical lengths of the feed
line at each band. Besides, the frequency ratio of the two bands
must not be very far for a proper operation of the stacked patches.
In [8], a dual-band circularly polarized RFID reader antenna
was proposed with separate Wilkinson power divider networks
for the two small and large stacked patches. This reader antenna
shows a fair performance. However, it can be used for the Tx or
Rx only operation. In [9], another dual-band circularly polarized
RFID reader antenna was realized by feeding a cross-shaped
patch with a dual-band branch-line coupler [10] for UHF (900
MHz) and ISM (2.45 GHz) bands. The cross-shaped patch is
connected with the coupler outputs using the two vertical pins.
Its 10 dB return losses and port isolations are reported to be
reasonable: 20.1% (805–985 MHz), 8.9% (2.290–2.504 GHz),
22 dB (885 MHz), and 38 dB (2.46 GHz), respectively. The 3 dB
axial ratio (AR) bandwidth performance about the ISM center
frequency of 2.45 GHz is very poor. This poor AR performance
at the ISM band seems to come from the effects of the radiating
patch resonance occurring at the third harmonic frequency of
2700 MHz. The use of the vertical pins for feeding the radi-
ating patch is also an inconvenience for mass production. The
antenna gains are not reported in [9]. The use of the dual-band
branch-line coupler [10] requires more space compared with
the conventional coupler since four open quarter-wavelength
or short half-wavelength stubs must be employed additionally.
In this work, a metamaterial (MTM) branch-line coupler
[11]–[14] is adopted for a compact design. The MTM tech-
nology has drawn much attention since it can be used to show
unusual characteristics such as negative phase constants. Series
inductance and shunt inductance of a conventional transmission
line, typically in the positive region, can now be effectively
JUNG AND LEE: DUAL-BAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED MICROSTRIP RFID READER ANTENNA 787

Fig. 2. Geometry of branch-line coupler. (Unit: mm).

composite right- and left-handed transmission line (RLH-TL)

can be constructed [12]. The requirements for a segment con-
Fig. 1. Conceptual schematics of dual-band branch-line coupler. (a) UHF band.
(b) ISM band. sisting of N unit cells with length are given by [12], [13]

achieved and further controlled in the negative region. The

expansion of the region for effective series inductance, or (1)
permeability, and shunt capacitance, or permittivity, has lead to
many new applications.
In this paper, a dual-band (UHF: 917–923 MHz, ISM:
2.4–2.48 GHz, in Korea) circularly-polarized RFID planar (2)
reader antenna with separate Tx and Rx ports is proposed. A
single rectangular patch is fed by the two output lines of the (3)
designed meta-structured branch-line coupler through the near
orthogonally positioned slots. The near orthogonally positioned
(4)
slots significantly help to maximize isolation between the Tx
and Rx ports [14]. In II, based on the methodology in [13] for where is the angular frequency , is the char-
general dual-band operations, more explicit design formulas are acteristic impedance of a conventional host transmission line,
provided for convenience of users. Then, a metamaterial-based is the speed of light, and is the relative effective permittivity
dual-band branch-line coupler for 920 MHz and 2.45 GHz is of the line. Simultaneously solving the five equations given by
designed using the provided formulas. Finally, a dual-band CP [1]–[4], we obtain the closed-form solutions expresses as
antenna is designed and connected to the coupler. In III, the
metamaterial-based coupler is evaluated in terms of S-parame- (5)
ters and phase balance. Besides, the antenna combined with the
coupler with separate Tx and Rx ports is evaluated in terms of (6)
its impedance bandwidth, isolation, antenna gains, axial ratios,
and so on. The paper is concluded in IV.
(7)

II. THEORY AND REALIZATION OF METAMATERIAL-BASED

(8)
DUAL-BAND CP RFID ANTENNA
The required characteristic impedances and phase shifts of a (9)
dual-band branch-line coupler are shown in Fig. 1(a) and (b).
The reference impedance of the four ports is . where
A conventional branch-line coupler with four quarter-wave-
length segments is well known to show the phase shifts of (10)
and at the fundamental and third harmonic frequencies,
respectively, as seen in Fig. 1. Thus, it is basically a dual-band (11)
device. The phase shifts of and of the segment
at arbitrarily chosen two frequencies ( and ) can be real- The microstrip line on an FR-4 substrate with a relative per-
ized using the metamaterial techniques in [12], [13]. The con- mittivity of 4.6 and a height of 1.6 mm has the relative ef-
ventional transmission lines, which usually support TEM waves fective permittivity of . The required dual frequen-
and follow the right-hand rule, have been characterized by the cies are , and . For
distributed series inductance (given in unit of H/m) and shunt and , , ,
capacitance (given in unit of F/m). By adding a lumped-type , , and . For
series capacitance and shunt inductance periodically in a and , , ,
unit cell with its size much smaller than the wavelength, the , , and .
788 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. Fabricated dual-band branch-line coupler.

TABLE I
CALCULATED AND EM-SIMULATED VALUES

Fig. 2 shows the geometry of the metamaterial dual-band cou-

pler. It is constructed using microstrip lines on a FR-4 substrate.
The diameter of the via for the shunt inductors is 0.5 mm. The
coupler is designed by EM simulation based on the calculated Fig. 4. Schematics of proposed antenna. (a) Radiating patch. (b) Feeding cir-
cuit. (c) Side view.
values using (5)–(9). The total size of the coupler is approxi-
mately 50 55 mm. The other dimensions are as seen in Fig. 2.
We summarize the calculated values (obtained using (5), (6) TABLE II
and (7)) and the actual values adjusted by EM simulation in DIMENSIONS OF DESIGNED ANTENNA (UNIT: mm)
Table I. Fig. 3 shows the fabricated MTM dual-band branch-line
coupler.
Fig. 4 shows the schematics of the proposed dual-band
(UHF and ISM) circularly polarized aperture-coupled RFID
microstrip patch antenna. The radiating patch antenna (a) is
fed by the two output lines of the designed dual-band MTM
branch-line coupler through two slots (b). A cross slot is
implemented at the center of the radiating patch to enhance
isolation. An aperture coupled antenna is usually constructed
with a single slot. However, the proposed antenna is specifically
constructed with two slots. The reason why the two slots are
employed will be explained shortly. The slots on the ground be 90 in the UHF band and 270 in the ISM band. Based on the
plane of the antenna are positioned in a T-shape in order to phase difference of and magnitude difference of ,
increase the isolation between them [12]. When the port 1 is the bandwidth of the coupler is 896 to 934 MHz (4.1%) and
excited, a left-handed circular polarization (LHCP) is generated 2380 to 2480 MHz (4.1%).
in the UHF band and right-handed CP (RHCP), in the ISM In Fig. 6, ’s are compared for different numbers of slots
band. When the port 2 is excited, the opposite is true. The (N) and distances between the two slots (See Fig. 4). With
dimensions of the designed antenna are summarized in Table II. one slot, the resonances are observed at the fundamental fre-
quency of 920 MHz, its second, and third harmonic frequency
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION of about 2.9 GHz. With increasing ’s ( , 31 mm,
Fig. 5 shows the S-parameters of the coupler. The S-parame- and 36 mm) in case of two slots, the third harmonic frequency
ters are compared among the circuit, EM, and measured results; of 2.9 GHz is shown to shift to a lower one. With ,
the magnitudes of the S-parameters are compared in (a) and (b), the required dual frequency of 920 MHz (UHF) and 2.45 GHz
and the phase balance as a function of frequency (ISM) is obtained.
is compared in (c). The results are shown to be reasonably con- In Fig. 7, the effect of the cross slot on the patch is shown in
sistent. The phase difference between and is shown to terms of the isolation . It is observed that the patch antenna
JUNG AND LEE: DUAL-BAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED MICROSTRIP RFID READER ANTENNA 789

Fig. 7. Simulated isolation of the antenna with cross slot on the patch and con-
ventional antenna (without cross slot on the patch).

Fig. 8. Fabricated dual-band circularly polarized antenna. (a) Top view.

(b) Bottom view.

Fig. 5. S-parameters of dual-band branch-line coupler. (a) Magnitudes of

and . (b) Magnitudes of and . (c) - .

Fig. 6. Comparison of with different number of slots.

without a cross slot presents isolations of 18 dB in each band,

whereas the antenna with a cross slot on the patch presents iso-
lation of 25 dB at 920 MHz and isolation of 38 dB at 2.45 GHz.
The cross slot is useful for more desirable current flows in two
perpendicular directions. Fig. 8 shows the top and bottom views
of the fabricated antenna.
Fig. 9. S-parameters of proposed antenna. (a) UHF band. (b) ISM band.
The S-parameters of the antenna are shown in Fig. 9. The S-
parameters are compared between the results of EM-simulation
790 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 10. CP Gain patterns of proposed antenna in YZ plane. (a) At 920 MHz
(UHF band). (b) At 2.45 GHz (ISM band).
and actual measurements. The magnitudes of and are
presented in UHF band (a) and in ISM band (b). The results are
shown to be fairly consistent. The measured 10 dB bandwidth
of the antenna is 3.4% (908–939 MHz) at 920 MHz and 7.0%
(2.37–2.54 GHz) at 2.45 GHz.
Fig. 10(a) and (b) show the CP gain patterns of the proposed
antenna in the YZ plane at 920 MHz and 2.45 GHz, respectively,
based on EM simulations and measurements when the port 1 is
excited. The proposed antenna is shown to generate a LHCP
at 920 MHz and RHCP at 2.45 GHz. The measured gains are
shown to reasonably agree with the EM-simulated ones. The
maximum measured CP gain is 6.6 dBic at 920 MHz (UHF)
and 7.9 dBic at 2.45 GHz (ISM). The cross-polar gains near
the broadside of the RFID reader antenna are observed to be
approximately less than compared with the co-polar
ones. Due to the symmetry of the structure, the antenna gains in
the XZ plane are similar to those in the YZ plane and thus are
not shown here.
Fig. 11 shows the axial ratios (AR) of the antenna in the UHF
and ISM bands, respectively. The EM-simulated and measured
AR’s are maintained simultaneously below 3 dB from 0.87 GHz
up to 0.99 GHz (4.4%), and from 2.38 GHz up to 2.58 GHz
(8.2%). The measured AR’s are about 0.5 dB at the two design
frequencies of the proposed antenna. The measured AR’s are
shown to reasonably agree with the EM-simulated ones.
Fig. 11. Axial ratios of proposed antenna at UHF and ISM bands.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A dual-band, circularly polarized, aperture-coupled mi-
crostrip RFID reader antenna with separate Tx and Rx ports has
been proposed with a dual-band metamaterial branch-line cou-
pler. Both the EM simulation and actual measurement results
of the antenna have been provided. The measured performance
has been found to be fairly consistent with the simulated per-
formance. The proposed antenna presents isolation of 25 dB
at UHF frequency and isolation of 38 dB at ISM frequency.
The maximum measured LHCP gain is 6.6 dBic at 920 MHz
(UHF) and RHCP gain is 7.9 dBic at 2.45 GHz (ISM). The
cross-polar gains near the broadside of the proposed RFID
reader antenna are approximately less than compared
with the co-polar gains. Besides, the measured AR’s are less
than 0.7 dB in the UHF band (917–923 MHz) and 1.5 dB in
the ISM band (2.4–2.48 GHz). The proposed antenna is a good
candidate for a dual-band RFID reader for both UHF and ISM
band applications.
REFERENCES
[1] Z. Xu and X. Li, “Aperture coupling two-layered dual-band RFID
reader antenna design,” Proc. IEEE ICMMT, pp. 1218–1221, Feb.
2008.
[2] D. Yu, Y. Ma, Z. Zhang, and R. Sun, “Circularly polarized aperture-
coupled patch antenna for RFID reader,” in Proc. Wireless Communi-
cations, Networking and Mobile Computing, 2008, pp. 1–3.
[3] Nasimudin, Z. N. Chen, and X. Qing, “Asymmetric-circular shaped
slotted microstrip antennas for circular polarization and RFID applica-
tions,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 12, pp. 3821–3828,
Dec. 2010.
[4] Z. N. Chen, X. Qing, and H. L. Chung, “A universal UHF RFID
reader antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 5, pp.
1275–1282, May 2009.
[5] Z. Wang, S. Fang, and S. Fu, “A lowcost miniaturized circularly po-
larized antenna for UHF radio frequency identification reader applica-
tions,” Microw. Opt.Tech. Lett, vol. 51, no. 10, pp. 2382–2384, Oct.
2009.
[6] S. Maddio, A. Cidronali, and G. Manes, “A new design method for
single-feed circular polarization microstrip antenna with an arbitrary
impedance matching condition,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol.
59, no. 2, pp. 379–389, Feb. 2011.
[7] D. M. Pozar and S. M. Duffy, “A dual-band circularly polarized aper-
ture-coupled stacked microstrip antenna for global positioning satel-
lite,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 45, no. 11, pp. 1618–1625,
Nov. 1997.
[8] D. Shin, P. Park, W. Seong, and J. Choi, “A novel dual-band circularly
polarized antenna using a feeding configuration for RFID reader,” in
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[9] H.-Y. A. Yim, C.-P. Kong, and K.-K. M. Cheng, “Compact circularly
polarized microstrip antenna design for dual-band applications,” IEE
Electron. Lett, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 380–381, Mar. 2006.
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[10] K. Cheng and F. L. Wong, “A novel approach to the design and Youn-Kwon Jung (M’09) received the B.S. degree
implementation of dual-band compact 90 branch-line coupler,” IEEE in radio communication engineering and the M.S.
Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 2458–2463, Nov. degree in electronics and radio engineering from
2004. Kyung Hee University, Yong-in, Korea, in 2008 and
[11] G. V. Eleftheriades, A. K. Iyer, and P. C. Kremer, “Planar negative re- 2011, respectively, where he is currently working
fractive index media using periodically L-C loaded transmission lines,” toward the Ph.D. degree. His fields of research
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 2172–2702, include small antennas, passive devices, RFID
Dec. 2002. reader antennas, wireless power transmission, and
[12] T. Kim and B. Lee, “Modelling and analysis of radiation effects for metamaterials.
one-dimensional metamaterial-based transmission lines,” IET Microw.
Antennas Propag., vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 278–295, Mar. 2010.
[13] I.-H. Lin, M. DeVincentis, C. Caloz, and T. Itoh, “Arbitrary dual-band
components using composite right/left-handed transmission lines,”
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1142–1149, Bomson Lee (M’96) received the B.S. degree in
Apr. 2004. electrical engineering from Seoul National Uni-
[14] X. Q. Lin, R. P. Liu, X. M. Yang, J. X. Chen, X. X. Yin, Q. Cheng, and versity, Seoul, Korea, in 1982, and the M.S. and
T. J. Cui, “Arbitrarily dual-band components using simplified struc- Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
tures of conventional CRLH TLs,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 1991 and 1995,
vol. 54, no. 7, pp. 2902–2909, Jul. 2006. respectively.
[15] B. Lee, S. Kwon, and J. Choi, “Polarization diversity microstrip base From 1982 to 1988, He was with the Hyundai En-
station antenna at 2 GHz using T-shaped aperture-coupled feeds,” IEE gineering Company Ltd., Seoul, Korea. In 1995, he
Proc. Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 148, no. 5, pp. 334–338, Oct. joined the faculty at Kyung Hee University, where
2001. he is currently a Professor with the Department of
Electronics and Radio Engineering. He was an Ed-
itor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engi-
neering and Science in 2010. He is an Executive Director (Project) in the Korea
Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering & Science (KIEES). His research ac-
tivities include microwave antennas, RF identification (RFID) tags, microwave
passive devices, wireless power transmission and metamaterials.
792 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Small-Size Shielded Metallic Stacked Fabry–Perot
Cavity Antennas With Large Bandwidth
for Space Applications
Shoaib Anwar Muhammad, Ronan Sauleau, Senior Member, IEEE, and Hervé Legay
Abstract—New configurations of small-size shielded metallic
Fabry–Perot (FP) antennas with improved performance over a
large frequency band are presented in -band for space missions.
The bandwidth enlargement is obtained by stacking two FP
cavities of different size, each of them presenting a low quality
factor. Their radiating apertures measure around and 2 , lead to heavy and bulky structures.
respectively. Concentric corrugations are also introduced between
both cavities to control the higher-order modes that are excited
systematically in shielded small-size FP antennas due to lateral
resonances. The obtained results are compared to those of a
single-stage FP cavity antenna with the same aperture size. Sev-
eral prototypes have been fabricated and measured. An aperture
efficiency higher than 70%, a reflection coefficient smaller than
15 dB, and sidelobe levels lower than 20 dB have been obtained
experimentally, over a wide frequency band (2.4–2.66 GHz). These
characteristics make stacked FP cavity antennas very attractive
to replace global coverage horn antennas, or to be used in feed
clusters of multiple-beam antennas, especially in - and -bands,
where they lead to more compact and less bulky solutions com-
pared to classical feed horns.
Index Terms—Compact feeds for space applications, corru-
gations, Fabry–Perot (FP) antennas, horn antennas, partially
reflecting surfaces (PRSs).
I. INTRODUCTION
H ORN antennas are widely used for global coverage
antenna systems [1], [2] for telemetry, tracking, and
control (TT&C), and as feed clusters for multiple-beam
antennas (MBAs) [3], [4] for space missions. The main
requirements for these antennas are the following: high aper-
ture efficiency, low return loss, low sidelobe level (SLL)
and cross-polarization level, purely metallic structure (no
dielectrics) especially for power applications, stable and ax-
isymmetrical radiation patterns, and small aperture size. These
requirements are defined to ensure an effective illumination
of the main dish and a high beam overlapping level for multi-
beam applications. For global coverage antennas, the emphasis
Manuscript received January 05, 2011, revised June 28, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 03, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was performed using HPC resources from GENCI-
IDRIS under Grant 2010-050779. This work was carried out under a Ph.D.
thesis at the Institut d’Electronique et de Télécommunications de Rennes, IETR
France, under a project supported by CNRS and Thales Alenia Space, France.
S. A. Muhammad and R. Sauleau are with the IETR, UMR CNRS 6164, Uni-
versity of Rennes 1, 35042 Rennes, France (e-mail: shoaib.muhammad; ronan.
sauleau@univrennes1.fr).
H. Legay is with the Thales Alenia Space, France, 31037 Toulouse Cedex 1,
France (e-mail: herve.legay@thalesaleniaspace.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173133
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
is especially to obtain high aperture efficiency over a large
bandwidth.
Traditional horn antennas provide excellent performance for
the above-mentioned applications (e.g., [5]–[9]), but they often
Several alternative solutions with radiating aperture size
comprised between 1.5 and 2.5 have been proposed
in the literature to bypass these limitations. A patch antenna
loaded with parasitic elements printed on a superstrate [10] can
provide equivalent performances with a considerable reduction
of size and weight, but its use is limited in terms of maximum
size and power-handling capability due to the presence of
dielectric materials. More recently, it has been shown that
short backfire antennas [11], [12] with parasitic wires can
also produce axially symmetric radiation patterns. However,
these antennas do not provide good performance for radiating
apertures larger than 2 .
After several seminal studies published in the late 1990s
(e.g., [13]–[15]), there has been a very strong renewed interest
since 2001 in electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) resonator and
Fabry–Perot (FP) cavity antennas [15]. In this frame, we can
identify two possible FP solutions for feed clusters of MBA.
1) Use of an EBG material or a frequency selective
surface (FSS) over an array of interlaced multiple
feeds [17]–[20]. This technique enables to reduce the
spillover loss. The superstrate is often oversized and is not
shielded.
2) Use of small-size individual elements without interlacing.
In these cases, each element is shielded [21]; it can be de-
signed independently and is isolated from the neighboring
elements. The major problems encountered up to now are
the following: narrow operational bandwidth, excitation of
parasitic modes, and strong deterioration of the radiation
pattern quality (no axial symmetry, high SLL).
In this paper, we focus our attention on the second solution
and propose new techniques to improve its performance in terms
of beam axis symmetry, aperture efficiency , impedance
bandwidth, and radiation bandwidth. These issues are discussed
step by step, where we restrict our review to FP/EBG antenna
structures.
A standard FP cavity antenna [15], [22] consists of a par-
tially reflecting surface (PRS) placed at a distance of about
[13], [23] over a metallic PEC ground plane. The antenna
can be fed by a patch element (e.g., [24] and [25]) or a wave-
guide opening (e.g., [15] and [26]). These antennas can provide
high gains with low-profile structures, but inherently suffer
MUHAMMAD et al.: SMALL-SIZE SHIELDED METALLIC STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH
from narrow operational bandwidths and possible excitation of
parasitic cavity modes.
Several studies have been carried out to improve their per-
formance in terms of: 1) profile reduction; 2) improvement;
and 3) bandwidth enlargement techniques [25]. One attractive
solution to reduce their height down to subwavelength profiles
has been proposed in [26]–[30]. The idea consists in
using the negative phase value of the reflection coefficient of a
capacitive FSS [31] in order to ensure that the resonance con-
dition [15], [22] is satisfied for a physical height much smaller
than . Although attractive, this solution cannot be used to
reach high aperture efficiencies because the energy is not dis-
tributed uniformly inside the entire cavity [26].
Nonuniform FSSs (or PRSs) [32], [33] have been proposed to
improve the aperture efficiency of FP antennas. This approach is
very powerful, but suffers from several weak points: 1) the an-
tenna bandwidth is reduced significantly [33]; 2) it is difficult to
obtain a good impedance matching level; and 3) high sidelobe
levels might be observed [33]. Another promising solution to
reach high values consists in designing quasi-TEM FP res-
onators using either artificial magnetic conductor side walls [34]
or hard walls [35]. These techniques enable to achieve a better
energy distribution over the antenna aperture, but lead again to
narrowband FP antennas.
To improve the bandwidth of FP antennas excited by a
single feed, two-layer FSS structures have been introduced
in [36] and [37]. This technique has been applied only to
large-size overdimensioned resonators, and its applicability
is questionable when dealing with small-size FP antennas
due to the impact of higher-order modes [38].
An innovative approach combining the EBG/FP structure
with the transmitarray and reflectarray concepts is reported
in [39] for an antenna aperture of around 2.7 . A combined
dB radiation and dB impedance bandwidth of
about 8% has been measured, but the radiation pattern quality
is not suitable for space applications.
To our knowledge, only a few studies have been carried out on
metallic shielded FP cavity antennas with small aperture sizes
, e.g., [21]. In this work, and in contrast to large, di-
rective FP antennas, the authors showed that, for a given an-
tenna size, there exists an optimum value of FSS reflectivity
(defined as the square of the magnitude of the reflection coeffi-
cient) leading to the largest bandwidth and the maximum gain
level. Design guidelines were also proposed. However, such an-
tennas suffer from a narrow bandwidth and a poor impedance
matching at frequencies where the antenna directivity reaches
its maximum value.
In this paper, we describe new configurations of FP an-
tennas with improved characteristics in terms of radiation and
impedance bandwidth, level, and radiation pattern quality.
The proposed concept consists of stacking FP resonators with
different -factors. It is very different from the solutions
previously proposed in [36] and [39] because the antenna con-
figurations studied here have a small aperture size
and are shielded, which requires to accurately control the cavity
modes and find solutions to generate axisymmetrical beams.
To this end, we propose several simple techniques to obtain
a good impedance matching and axially symmetric radiation
793
TABLE I
SPECIFICATIONS OF FEED ANTENNAS FOR MBA APPLICATIONS IN -BAND
patterns over the entire bandwidth. All numerical results have
been obtained using HFSS (ver. 12).
The antenna specifications in -band are provided in Table I.
They have been defined by Thales Alenia Space, France, for
global coverage applications. Our objective is to satisfy these
performance parameters by proposing a compact metallic solu-
tion replacing large-size horns. In this paper, the global band-
width is defined as the frequency band (in gigahertz or in per-
cent) over which the directivity (or gain) variation is less than
1 dB, the aperture efficiency is greater than a given value (70%),
and the reflection coefficient and the SLL are lower than prede-
fined values ( 15 and 20 dB, respectively).
This paper is organized as follows. We study in Section II a
single-stage small-size FP cavity antenna in order to quantify its
performance and highlight its limitations both numerically and
experimentally. Section III deals with the study of stacked FP
cavity antennas. We describe the antenna geometry and charac-
teristics, and we provide design guidelines. An optimized con-
figuration is proposed and validated experimentally. Moreover,
we show in Section IV that the performance of stacked config-
urations can be improved further using concentric corrugations.
These results are also validated experimentally. Finally, conclu-
sions are drawn in Section V.
II. SINGLE-STAGE FP CAVITY ANTENNA
A. Geometry
The geometry of a typical square FP cavity antenna is pre-
sented in Fig. 1. A 2-D inductive grid [40] is placed over a
shielded cavity at a distance above the ground plane. The
mesh period and strip width are labeled and , respectively.
The inductive FSS grid was chosen over the complementary ca-
pacitive FSS [31], [41] principally to avoid the use of dielectric
substrates, as required by Thales Alenia Space. A cylindrical
waveguide with diameter is used to excite the antenna. This
choice is made due to the possible use of an orthomode trans-
ducer (OMT) to excite the antenna. The impedance matching
system is based on the combination of a waveguide penetra-
tion and a circular iris. The lateral size of the FP resonator
is about 2 . The other antenna dimensions are defined in
Fig. 1(b).
B. Impact and Control of Higher-Order Modes
The impact of higher-order cavity modes, especially lateral
resonances, has almost never been investigated in the litera-
ture since the wide majority of papers on FP resonators deal
with nonshielded oversized cavities, e.g., [15]. Two solutions
794 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. Control of the cavity modes by choosing the optimum lateral size for
the antenna. Gray dashed line: mm . Black solid line:
mm .

aperture efficiency . In this paper, the aperture efficiency is

defined as follows:

Fig. 1. Single-stage small-size FP cavity antenna. (a) 3-D view. (b) Cross-sec-
tion view. (2)

where is the operating frequency, is the antenna

have been proposed to control them: use of metallic bars on the
ground plane of an FP cavity [42], selection of the optimum
cavity size [33].
As the FSS mirror is highly reflective in practice [13]–[15],
the cutoff frequency of a given mode can be approximated
assuming the FP cavity behaves as a closed PEC resonator
(1)
where is the speed of light in vacuum. This relation can be used
to determine which modes can be excited within the antenna
bandwidth. Therefore, the value of can be slightly changed
to reject these modes outside the operational bandwidth. The im-
pact of lateral resonant modes is illustrated in Fig. 2, where the
directivity curves of two single-stage FP antennas are compared.
The antenna dimensions are the same in both cases, except their
lateral size , which is equal either to 223 or to 244 mm.
We can see in Fig. 2 that the cavity mode excited at
2.42 GHz is shifted to higher frequencies (around 2.63 GHz),
when is reduced from 244 to 223 mm. For a cavity size
of 223 223 mm , we observe a pure mode inside the
cavity over the 1-dB radiation band (2.4–2.56 GHz). Therefore,
we select this cavity size in the following in order to prevent
parasitic modes from spoiling the radiation band.
C. Optimization of the Antenna Dimensions
For a given lateral size, the design procedure of single-stage
small-size FP antennas consists in two steps. First, the optimum
FSS power reflectivity is determined by tuning the grid
parameters and [13], [40] in order to obtain the largest
possible 1-dB radiation bandwidth with a sufficiently high
directivity, is the maximum directivity of a uniform
radiating aperture of same area , and is the
wavelength in free space. The second step consists in opti-
mizing the impedance matching level over the antenna radiation
bandwidth.
As explained below, and in contrast to the well-estab-
lished design rules for large and directive FP cavities and
antennas (e.g., [15] and [43]), parametric studies based on
full-wave simulations need to be carried out for the design of
small-size shielded FP antennas. Indeed, the standard resonance
condition [13], [22]
(3)
cannot be applied in a straightforward way because the phase
values and (at the resonance frequency ) of the reflection
coefficients of the upper (FSS) and lower (ground) reflecting
mirrors are significantly affected by two major effects: 1) the
finite size of the FSS, and 2) the size of the waveguide aper-
ture , which cannot be neglected compared to the ground
plane size , respectively. In practice, for a given cavity
size and for a predefined value of FSS reflectivity (i.e.,
a given pair ), the cavity height must be tuned
to make the FP antenna resonate at . This design procedure
is then much more time-consuming than for classical FP an-
tennas for which (3) provides immediately very accurate results
(e.g., [13]).
Here, for mm at GHz , we have
found that the optimum value of the FSS reflectivity is 74%.
The dimensions of the metallic mesh are given in Table II. Note
that standard tabulated values and equivalent circuit models
(e.g., [40] and [44]) cannot be used directly here because of the
nonnegligible grid thickness mm .
MUHAMMAD et al.: SMALL-SIZE SHIELDED METALLIC STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH 795

Fig. 3. Antenna performance (directivity and reflection coefficient ) before

and after the introduction of the impedance matching system. Black dashed line: Fig. 4. Measured gain (black solid line) and reflection coefficient (gray solid
directivity before matching. Black solid line: Directivity after matching. Gray line) for the single-stage FP cavity antenna. Comparison with the simulation
dashed line: before matching. Gray solid line: after matching. results (dashed lines).

TABLE II
OPTIMIZED DIMENSIONS FOR THE SINGLE-STAGE FP CAVITY ANTENNA

The other dimensions of the optimized prototype are also

given in Table II, including the values of the iris width
mm and penetration of the waveguide within the cavity
mm . Each conductor thickness has been chosen with
mechanical engineers to ensure a good mechanical rigidity of
all antenna parts.
Fig. 5. Measured radiation pattern for the single-stage FP cavity antenna at 2.49
The impact of the matching system upon the antenna direc- GHz. Black solid line: . Gray solid line: . Dashed line:
tivity and reflection coefficient is represented in Fig. 3. In pres- . Dash-dotted line: X-pol at 45 .
ence of an iris penetrating inside the cavity, a better impedance
matching is achieved over the entire radiation bandwidth. How-
ever, the latter is reduced from 190 MHz (before matching) to (2.49 GHz). Over this frequency band, the aperture efficiency
only 90 MHz (after matching). The maximum directivity level varies between 60% and 70%.
is also decreased by about 0.4 dB. This comes from the slight The radiation patterns at the central frequency are shown in
difference between the field distributions inside the cavity for Fig. 5. High sidelobe levels dB are observed in the
the two configurations (not shown here for brevity). E-plane cut-plane . The cross-polarization component
in the diagonal plane is also presented in Fig. 5. Its
level remains below 18 dB. We do not provide the measured
D. Experimental Results
values in the and planes since they are much
A prototype has been fabricated and measured in -band. lower.
The measured gain and reflection coefficient are plotted in To conclude, single-stage small-size shielded FP cavities can
Fig. 4. The gain has been determined with the comparison be used only for narrowband applications bandwidth .
method using a 12-dBi standard horn. The simulation results To increase their bandwidth, less reflective FSSs are required
are also included for comparison. We obtain a close agreement (well-known). However, this leads to lower aperture efficien-
between the simulation and measured data. A slight frequency cies because the energy is not spread over the entire cavity sur-
shift is observed, which is principally due to the manufacturing face. On the contrary, to achieve acceptable gain or aperture effi-
errors and problem of alignment for the FSS over the FP cavity. ciency, FSS grids with higher reflectivity should be used. How-
A maximum gain of 14.8 dB has been obtained at 2.48 GHz. ever, this results in the possible excitation of higher-order para-
The 1-dB radiation bandwidth and 15-dB reflection co- sitic modes due to lateral resonances between opposite cavity
efficient bandwidth equal 112 MHz (2.4–2.512 GHz) and side walls, which reduces the antenna bandwidth. Therefore,
only 32 MHz (2.474–2.506 GHz), respectively. Therefore, by single-stage FP cavities cannot be employed to meet the spec-
adopting the definition given in Section I, the global band- ifications of Table I. The solution proposed to overcome these
width equals only 32 MHz, i.e., 1.28% of the center frequency limitations is described in Section III.
796
Fig. 6. Stacked FP cavity antenna. (a) 3-D view. (b) Cross-section view.
III. STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS
A. Geometry and Operating Principle
Two square FP cavity antennas with different lateral
sizes and are stacked on top of each other [45]
(Fig. 6). The idea is that the smaller cavity placed
at the bottom serves as an impedance matching intermediate
stage that excites a larger cavity on the top
behaving as a compact radiating element. The objective behind
this configuration is to permit us to use two cavities, each
of them exhibiting a low -factor. In this way, we expect to
achieve larger radiation bands with sufficient gain levels and
simultaneously minimize the effects of higher-order modes that
degrade cavity bandwidth (Section II-D).
In addition, compared to single-stage antennas, we can ob-
serve that there is no iris in the stacked configuration. The reason
for this is that the iris is a narrowband impedance-matching so-
lution that is eligible only for single FP cavity antennas because
of the presence of a highly reflecting grid (Section II). When
designing stacked configurations, it has been observed that no
iris is required, and only a simple waveguide penetration is suf-
ficient to match the antenna over a large bandwidth.
B. Design and Performance
One of the key design steps consists in finding the best pair
of power reflectivities for both FSS, i.e., the grid di-
mensions , 1 and 2. By analogy with single-stage
FP cavity antennas (Section II and [21]), for each pair , the split-off condition. These results tend to demonstrate that
the cavity heights and must be optimized through a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Flowchart describing the design procedure of small-size stacked FP
cavity antennas bandwidth .
full-wave parametric study, so as to achieve the largest possible
bandwidth. In this end, two main constraints must be taken into
account:
1) the resonance frequency shift due to the cumulative effects
of the cavity walls and the small aperture size [21];
2) the hybrid nature of the bottom planes for both cavities. In-
deed, the phase of their reflection coefficient (3) is tricky
to define because: a) the ground plane of cavity #2 is a
combination of a small-size FSS and a PEC frame sur-
rounding ; and b) the bottom plane of cavity #1 con-
sists of a large circular aperture (the waveguide diameter)
in a small-size ground plane.
For these reasons, an iterative design procedure is necessary
in contrast to stacked FP antennas of larger size [36], [37] whose
design rules are straightforward. The proposed flowchart is rep-
resented in Fig. 7. The lateral size for both cavities is chosen
to avoid exciting parasitic modes inside the frequency band of
interest (Section II-B). For a given reflectivity pair, the cavity
heights are optimized one after the other in order to achieve a
10% radiation bandwidth.
The conclusion of this parametric study is that the largest ra-
diation bandwidth is obtained for and .
The dispersion relation for the optimized case has also been
studied. An in-house code has been developed (based on the
work in [20]) in order to track the leaky-wave poles for an
infinite two-layer antenna with the optimized FSS reflectivity
values . The results (not shown here
for brevity) confirmed the existence of several strongly attenu-
ated TE/TM leaky waves inside the antenna operating close to
the proposed stacked configuration can be considered as an FP
MUHAMMAD et al.: SMALL-SIZE SHIELDED METALLIC STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH
Fig. 8. Stacked FP cavity antenna. Simulation results for the directivity and re-
flection coefficient before and after the introduction of the impedance matching
system. Black dashed line: Directivity before matching. Black solid line: Direc-
tivity after matching. Gray dashed line: before matching. Gray solid line:
after matching.
TABLE III
OPTIMIZED DIMENSIONS FOR THE STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNA
antenna and not a three-stage waveguide. However, a detailed
study should be made to understand the contribution of each
leaky pole to the radiation mechanism of this antenna, as done
in [20].
After having identified the best FSS reflectivity pairs, the final
stage before prototyping is to optimize the impedance matching
bandwidth. To this end, a simple impedance matching system is
implemented, namely a waveguide penetration inside the lower
cavity [Fig. 6(b)]. The final optimized dimensions are provided
in Table III. The upper cavity has of course the same size as
the single-stage cavity mm . The upper FSS is
thicker mm than the lower one mm to
avoid any grid bending after manufacturing. It should be noted
that the initial design was first based on zero FSS thickness
mm, for 1 or 2). Then, these FSSs were re-
placed by thick ones, and their width and period were
changed in order to keep the same reflection and transmission
coefficients.
The simulated antenna directivity and reflection coefficient,
before and after impedance matching, are plotted in Fig. 8. Com-
pared to Fig. 3, we can now notice that the 15-dB band-
width (2.3–2.675 GHz) has been enlarged by more than 90%,
and that it coincides now with the radiation bandwidth. This was
not the case for the single-stage FP cavity as shown in Fig. 4.
The antenna directivity varies very slightly with frequency, and
the 1-dB radiation bandwidth spans from 2.35 to 2.675 GHz
(after matching), which corresponds to a relative bandwidth of
12.1%.
797
Fig. 9. Purely metallic stacked FP cavity antenna for operation in -band.
Fig. 10. Stacked FP cavity antenna. Measured gain (black solid line) and re-
flection coefficient (gray solid line). The measured gain of the single-stage FP
antenna is represented in black dashed line.
To conclude, the use of stacked FP cavities and the intro-
duction of a simple impedance-matching structure enable to
improve the antenna performance, both in terms of directivity
levels and impedance-matching bandwidth. This is opposed to
single-FP-cavity configurations where the performance of the
antenna has to be degraded (by using less reflective mirrors) in
order to obtain better impedance-matching levels.
C. Experimental Results and Discussions
A prototype has been fabricated (Fig. 9). The total antenna
height, without the feed waveguide, is around , i.e., twice the
height of the single-stage counterpart.
The measured gain and reflection coefficient are represented
in Fig. 10 in solid lines. The gain curve measured for the
single-stage cavity is also plotted (dashed line) for comparison
purposes. A 1-dB radiation bandwidth of 11.48% is ob-
tained for a maximum gain of 15.5 dB. The global bandwidth
equals 10.28% (2.4–2.66 GHz). Over this band, the aperture
efficiency (2) varies between 63% (at 2.66 GHz) and 81% (at
2.4 GHz).
The radiation patterns measured over the global bandwidth
are shown in Fig. 11 in three vertical cut-planes ( 0 , 45 ,
and 90 ) to better appreciate the pattern quality. Nearly axi-
ally symmetric beams with SLL lower than 17 dB are ob-
tained over nearly the entire frequency band, except in the lower
part of the global bandwidth [Fig. 11(a)]. In addition, slight
shouldering effects are observed in the E-plane in
798
Fig. 11. Measured radiation patterns for the stacked FP cavity antenna at
three frequency points and in three cut planes. Black solid line:
solid line: . Dashed line: . Dash-dotted line: X-pol at 45 .
(a) 2.4 GHz. (b) 2.53 GHz. (c) 2.66 GHz.
Fig. 11(b) and (c). The cross-polarization level remains below
18 dB over the entire bandwidth.
As a summary, small-size stacked FP cavities exhibit much
better performance than their single-stage counterpart. The pro-
posed design nearly fulfills all specifications (Table I), except
the aperture efficiency threshold of 70%, the SLL, and the beam
symmetry at the lower edge of the antenna bandwidth. These
remaining defects are due to higher-order resonant modes still
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. Concentric corrugations. (a) Top view. (b) Cross-section view.
Fig. 13. Stacked FP cavity antenna with corrugations. For clarity, only one
corrugation is represented here.
present in the upper cavity. We show in Section IV that the
antenna performance can be further improved using circular
corrugations.
IV. IMPROVEMENT OF THE ANTENNA CHARACTERISTICS
USING CIRCULAR CORRUGATIONS
A. Concept and Background
Circular corrugations (Fig. 12) have been widely used
(e.g., [46] and [47]) to stop the propagation of surface waves
and reduce the sidelobe level and backward radiation of
monopole or horn antennas. Their typical size is given by
, , and .
Here, we propose to introduce corrugations in the antenna
design to better control the energy distribution in cavity #2. The
corresponding geometry of the modified stacked FP cavity is
. Gray represented in Fig. 13. The corrugations are introduced only in
the top cavity for two main reasons: 1) this cavity is the radiating
element; 2) it is more sensitive to parasitic modes due to its
larger lateral size. In addition, integrating the corrugations in the
available space between cavities #1 and #2 does not increase the
total antenna size, which is crucial for -band space antennas.
The corrugation dimensions ( , , and ), their number,
and their location have been optimized using HFSS. It is im-
portant to note here that only the corrugation parameters were
varied; the other antenna dimensions are fixed (Table III). The
numerical results have shown that only one corrugation is nec-
essary. Its dimensions are the following: mm,
mm, and mm.
MUHAMMAD et al.: SMALL-SIZE SHIELDED METALLIC STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH
Fig. 14. Purely metallic stacked FP cavity antenna with concentric corrugation.
Fig. 15. (a) Stacked FP cavity antenna with corrugation. Measured gain (black
solid line) and reflection coefficient (gray solid line). The measured gain and re-
flection coefficient of the stacked FP cavity antenna without corrugation are rep-
resented in dashed black and grey lines, respectively. (b) Comparison between
the aperture efficiency before (gray solid line) and after (black solid line) the
introduction of the corrugation. The aperture efficiency of an equivalent pyra-
midal horn (dash-dotted line) is also shown for comparison.
B. Numerical and Experimental Results
The new antenna configuration described in Section IV-A has
been fabricated (Fig. 14). It has the same dimensions as the
prototype without corrugation (Table III). The measured gain
and reflection coefficient are provided in Fig. 15(a). The exper-
imental results obtained without corrugation are also shown in
dashed lines. By comparing the gain curves of both configu-
rations, we can notice a substantial enlargement of the radia-
tion bandwidth with a slight gain increase beyond 2.5 GHz. Al-
though the impedance matching is slightly degraded, it remains
799
Fig. 16. Measured radiation pattern of the stacked FP cavity antenna with cor-
rugation at three frequency points and in three cut planes. Black solid line:
. Gray solid line: . Dashed line: . Dash-dotted line:
X-pol at 45 . (a) 2.40 GHz. (b) 2.53 GHz. (c) 2.66 GHz.
below 15 dB over a large frequency band. With the corruga-
tion, the antenna gain is maximum at 2.6 GHz (15.9 dB). The
measured global bandwidth (10.28%) is the same as for the case
without corrugation. The aperture efficiency [Fig. 15(b)] has
been improved over the whole bandwidth ( without
corrugation, and with the corrugation).
In addition, the aperture efficiency of an equivalent pyramidal
horn antenna is also compared. This horn has the same aperture
size and height as that of the proposed stacked FP cavity con-
figuration. We can see that the horn antenna has a maximum
aperture efficiency of only 61%. Additional results have shown
that the pattern quality of the equivalent horn are significantly
degraded (no axisymmetry, higher sidelobes and cross polariza-
tion). This is principally due to the fact that the E-field magni-
tude is higher at the horn corners, while in the case of the FP
800
Fig. 17. Comparison between the measured radiation patterns (E-plane only)
over the global bandwidth for the stacked FP cavity antenna. Black solid line:
2.4 GHz. Gray solid line: 2.53 GHz. Dashed line 2.66 GHz. (a) With corrugation.
(b) Without corrugation.
cavity the E-field is concentrated at the center and negligible at
the edges of the antenna. These results further demonstrate the
relevance of the stacked configuration.
The radiation patterns measured in three cut-planes are
plotted in Fig. 16. We can now notice that the SLL remains
below 20 dB for all the observation planes over the entire
frequency band. The measured peak cross-polarization level is
below 20 dB.
The radiation patterns in E-plane over the entire bandwidth
for both stacked configurations, with and without corrugations,
are represented in Fig. 17(a) and (b), respectively. We can see
that the shouldering effect present over the entire frequency
band for the case without corrugation [Fig. 17(b)] is completely
removed by introducing one corrugation inside the top cavity
[Fig. 17(a)]. In addition, with corrugation, the SLL remains
below 20 dB, and the radiation patterns are very stable over a
10% frequency band.
C. Mutual Coupling Between Stacked Cavities
To evaluate the mutual coupling between stacked FP cavity
antennas used as a feed cluster for focal arrays, a simple con-
figuration, namely a 2 1 array in the E-plane has been simu-
lated. In this case, only one cavity is excited, the other one being
loaded by a matched load. The numerical results (not given)
show that the single element and the 2 1 array present a similar
directivity level. Their -parameters are compared in Fig. 18.
We can see that the array and single element present almost the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 18. -parameters for the 2 1 array (HFSS simulations). One of the ele-
ments is excited, and the other is terminated with a matched load. Comparison
with a single element.
TABLE IV
COMPARISON AMONG THE MEASURED PERFORMANCE OF THE SINGLE-STAGE
FP CAVITY, STACKED FP CAVITY (WITH AND WITHOUT CORRUGATIONS),
AND AN EQUIVALENT PYRAMIDAL HORN ANTENNA (SIMULATIONS)
same reflection coefficients ( and , respectively). In
the array case, the mutual coupling in copolarization
and cross polarization is very low dB . The re-
flection coefficient in cross-polarization is lower than
24 dB over the operational bandwidth. These results demon-
strate low coupling coefficient in an array configuration.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed new configurations of
small-size shielded metallic FP antennas with
improved characteristics compatible with feed specifications
of global coverage antennas and multiple-beam antennas in
-band for space missions. In this context, we have shown that
classical small-size single-stage FP cavity antennas cannot be
used because reaching high aperture efficiency values requires
using highly reflecting mirrors; this leads to narrowband res-
onators whose performance is strongly affected by higher-order
MUHAMMAD et al.: SMALL-SIZE SHIELDED METALLIC STACKED FP CAVITY ANTENNAS WITH LARGE BANDWIDTH
cavity modes. A modified configuration consisting of two
stacked FP cavities with different lateral sizes and -factors
has been proposed. The lower cavity behaves as a smooth
transition between the feed waveguide and the upper radiating
cavity. This configuration exhibits much better performance,
especially in terms of radiation and impedance bandwidth,
since it allows using much less reflecting FSS. The aperture
efficiency and radiation pattern quality, especially its axisym-
metry, have been further enhanced using a circular corrugation
in the top cavity. Good results in an array configuration with
low coupling have also been shown.
All numerical results have been validated experimentally.
Table IV summarizes the main experimental results obtained
with the single-stage FP antenna and both stacked configu-
rations. The performance obtained with an equivalent horn
antenna of same size is also provided. This table shows that
only the stacked antenna with corrugations fulfils the require-
ments specified in Table I.
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Shoaib Anwar Muhammad received the Bachelor
of Electrical Engineering degree from the National
University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad,
Pakistan, in 2005, the Master’s degree in telecom-
munications, RF, and microelectronics from Univer-
sité de Nice, Sophia Antipolis, France, in 2007, and
the Ph.D. degree in signal processing and telecom-
munications from the IETR, Université de Rennes 1,
Rennes, France, in 2010.
Currently, he is working as a Post-doc Fellow with
the IETR. His research interests include electromag-
netic band-gap antennas, Fabry–Perot cavity antennas, frequency selective sur-
faces, and leaky-wave antennas for space applications.
Ronan Sauleau (M’04–SM’06) graduated in
electrical engineering and radio communications
from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées,
Rennes, France, in 1995. He received the Agrégation
degree from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de
Cachan, Cachan, France, in 1996, and the Doctoral
degree in signal processing and telecommunications
and the “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherche”
degree from the University of Rennes 1, Rennes,
France, in 1999 and 2005, respectively.
He was an Assistant Professor and Associate Pro-
fessor with the University of Rennes 1 between September 2000 and November
2005 and between December 2005 and October 2009. He has been a Full Pro-
fessor with the same University since November 2009. He has received four
patents and is the author or coauthor of 95 journal papers and more than 220
contributions to national and international conferences and workshops. His cur-
rent research fields are numerical modeling (mainly FDTD), millimeter-wave
printed and reconfigurable (MEMS) antennas, lens-based focusing devices, pe-
riodic and nonperiodic structures (electromagnetic band-gap materials, meta-
materials, reflectarrays, and transmitarrays), and biological effects of millimeter
waves.
Prof. Sauleau received the 2004 ISAP Conference Young Researcher
Scientist Fellowship (Japan) and the first Young Researcher Prize in Brittany,
France, in 2001 for his research work on gain-enhanced Fabry–Perot antennas.
In September 2007, he was elevated to Junior member of the “Institut Univer-
sitaire de France”. He was awarded the Bronze medal by CNRS in 2008.
Hervé Legay was born in 1965. He received
the Electrical Engineering Degree and the Ph.D.
degree from the National Institute of Applied Sci-
ences (INSA), Rennes, France, in 1988 and 1991,
respectively.
For two years, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow
with the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB.
Canada, where he developed innovating planar an-
tennas. He joined Alcatel Space, Toulouse, France,
in 1994, which is now Thales Alenia Space. He
initially conducted studies in the areas of military
telecommunication advanced antennas and antenna processing. He designed
the architecture and the antijamming process of the Syracuse 3 antenna. He
is first author of 21 patents. He currently leads research projects in integrated
front ends and reflectarray antennas and coordinates the collaborations with
academic and research partners in the area of antennas.
Dr. Legay is a co-prize-winner of the 2007 Schelkunoff prize paper award.
He received the Gold Thales Awards in 2008, rewarding the best innovations in
the group Thales.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 803

A Simple Technique for the Dispersion Analysis of

Fabry-Perot Cavity Leaky-Wave Antennas
Carolina Mateo-Segura, Member, IEEE, Maria García-Vigueras, Student Member, IEEE,
George Goussetis, Member, IEEE, Alexandros P. Feresidis, Senior Member, IEEE, and
Jose Luis Gómez-Tornero, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A simple analysis technique to extract the complex

dispersion characteristics of thin periodic 2-D Fabry-Pérot leaky
wave antennas (LWA) is presented. The analysis is based on a
two-stage process that dispenses with the need for root-finding
in the complex plane. Firstly, full-wave MoM together with
reciprocity is employed for the estimation of the LWA radiation
patterns at different frequencies from which the phase constant
is calculated. Employing array theory the phase constant is sub-
sequently used to estimate the radiation patterns for different
values of the leakage rate. The correct value for the leakage rate is
identified by matching the corresponding radiation pattern to that
obtained using the full-wave method. To demonstrate this tech-
nique, we present results for half-wavelength and sub-wavelength
profile LWAs. Unlike the transverse equivalent network method,
the proposed technique maintains its accuracy even for antennas
with low profile.
Index Terms—Frequency selective surface (FSS), leaky-wave an-
tenna (LWA), periodic structures, resonant cavities.

I. INTRODUCTION

H IGH gain antennas consisting of a 2-D periodic metal-

lodielectric array suspended above a ground plane at a
distance of approximately half-wavelength have been presented
in the past [1] and have recently received increased attention
Fig. 1. a) Layout of the resonant cavity leaky-wave antenna formed by metal-
[2]–[7]. They offer a simple solution for achieving highly di-
lodielectric PRS and AMC with excitation source inside the cavity b) Unit cell
rective patterns from a single low-directivity source. To a first of a square patch PRS array and c) AMC array.
approximation, their operation can be modeled by a Fabry-Pérot
resonant cavity formed between the periodic array acting as a
partially reflective surface (PRS) and the fully reflective ground directive beam on the other side of the PRS. Antennas of this
plane [2]. The resonance condition ensures that the radiation type have been also realized using stacks of uniform dielectric
emitted by a point source inside the cavity is converted into a layers of different thickness [8]–[10]. However, periodic met-
allodielectric PRS, which are compatible with commonly em-
Manuscript received February 23, 2010; revised March 22, 2011; accepted ployed printed circuit techniques, minimize the number of re-
June 02, 2011. Date of publication September 15, 2011; date of current ver-
quired layers and offer increased design flexibility.
sion February 03, 2012. The work of G. Goussetis was supported by the Royal
Academy of Engineering under a five-year research fellowship. More recently, planar 2-D periodic metallic arrays printed on
C. Mateo-Segura is with the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, a grounded dielectric substrate have been presented as artificial
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K. (e-mail: c.mateo@ieee.
magnetic conductors (AMC). Such structures exhibit a high sur-
org).
M. García-Vigueras and J. L. Gómez-Tornero are with the Departamento de face impedance for incident plane waves within a specific fre-
Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones, Technical University of quency range [11]–[14], so that the average tangential magnetic
Cartagena, Antiguo Hospital de Marina, Cartagena 30202, Spain (e-mail: maria.
field is small and the electric field large along the surface [15].
garcia@upct.es; josel.gomez@upct.es).
G. Goussetis was with the Institute for Integrated Systems, Heriot-Watt Uni- Due to this unusual boundary condition, AMC structures re-
versity, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K. He is now with the Institute of Electronics flect incident plane waves in-phase to the incident field and can
Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), Queen’s University
be used as ground planes for low-profile antennas. Employing
Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT3 9DT, U.K. (e-mail: G.Goussetis@ieee.org).
A. P. Feresidis is with the Wireless Communications Research Group, De- this type of ground plane (Fig. 1), Fabry-Pérot type LWAs with
partment of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, quarter wavelength [16] and sub-wavelength [17] profiles have
Leicestershire LE11 3TU, U.K. (e-mail: a.feresidis@lboro.ac.uk).
been reported.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Several techniques have been proposed for the analysis and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2167900 design of infinite Fabry-Pérot Leaky Wave Antennas (LWAs).

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

804 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
An approximate ray-optics model was employed in [1] to ex-
tract the radiation pattern and the resonance condition. In [8] a
transmission line model was introduced in order to predict the
radiation characteristics and resonance conditions of antennas
formed using multiple layers of dielectrics. More recently,
the radiation patterns of Fabry-Pérot antennas formed by 2-D
periodic metallodielectric arrays as PRS have been extracted
using rigorous full-wave Method of Moments (MoM) and
invoking reciprocity [4], [18]; however, this technique stops
short of obtaining the complex propagation constant, which
is useful for the design of antennas with tailored radiation
patterns.
The radiation characteristics of infinite LWAs can also be
obtained by the complex wavenumber of the associated leaky
mode [7], [9]. The wavenumber dispersion allows estimation of
the antenna radiating aperture profile, which in turn can be used
to obtain the far-field radiation patterns, their beamwidths and
associated bandwidths, as well as the variation of the antenna
pointing angle with frequency [19]. Knowledge of the complex
dispersion relation is also helpful in the synthesis of practical
LWAs. For example, the leakage rate allows estimation of the
power radiated within a finite antenna length, which is essen-
tial in designing finite LWAs with high radiation efficiency. The
complex wavenumber is also required for the systematic design
of a non-uniform LWA, which can produce tapered illumina-
tion patterns that avoid phase aberration [19]–[21], leading to
far-field patterns with reduced side-lobes and antenna systems
prone to reduce interference.
The complex dispersion of Fabry-Pérot LWAs with a PRS
consisting of 2-D periodic metallodielectric arrays was first
extracted in [22] employing a Transverse Equivalent Network
(TEN) and a pole-zero method to estimate the equivalent
impedance of the array. Since a single mode TEN is employed,
the accuracy of this technique is reduced for sub-wavelength
profile antennas. Although it is possible to produce multiport
TEN [23] and other formulations of the eigenvalue problem
to obtain the complex dispersion of bound and leaky modes
of 2D periodic structures using full-wave techniques, such
as MoM [22], the associated eigenvalue equations, zeros of
the impedance matrix equation, typically take non-canonical
form [24], [25], which is cumbersome to solve numerically in
the complex plane. Techniques based on the Finite-Difference
Time-Domain (FDTD) method have also been developed in
order to extract the dispersion of the complex wavenumber for
this type of antennas [26], [27]. These techniques can be time
consuming and, particularly for very small or large values of
the leakage rate, have limited accuracy.
In this paper, we propose a new simple technique for the es-
timation of the complex dispersion of thin periodic 2-D LWAs
in the leaky wave region. The technique combines for the first
time array theory as well as periodic MoM with reciprocity. An
overview of the method is given in Section II. Subsequently,
the technique is applied in Section III in order to study three
different antenna designs, namely a half-wavelength, a quarter-
wavelength and a sub-wavelength profile 2-D LWAs. The
radiation patterns and the complex dispersion are derived em-
ploying the proposed method and compared with those obtained
using a TEN.
II. DISPERSION OF FABRY-PEROT LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNAS
The complex wavenumber, , of a leaky-mode in general
takes the form:
(1)
where is the phase constant and is the leakage rate. The
complex nature of expresses the decrease of the amplitude
of the leaky wave as it propagates due to radiation. In the ab-
sence of other sources of radiation, the phase constant, , de-
termines the pointing angle, , of the antenna’s main lobe and
the leakage rate, , determines the illumination of the radiating
aperture. Significantly, the radiation pattern of a LWA can be
obtained analytically for a uniform LWA with a given complex
wavenumber [19], [28]. The method that we propose here is
based on the following procedure; the radiation pattern of a par-
ticular infinite-size LWA is initially obtained using full-wave
periodic MoM and invoking reciprocity [4]. Subsequently an it-
erative procedure is employed based on array theory [28], [29]
in order to reproduce this pattern from pairs of and . Since
the calculations involved in this iterative process are analytical,
and since prior knowledge of the propagation constant, , can
be obtained by the angle of maximum radiation, the proposed
technique is fast and computationally efficient. In the following
we present the method and the analytical expressions involved
in the calculation of the radiation patterns.
A. Spectral Domain Periodic MoM and Reciprocity
Reciprocity suggests that the far-field radiated at a certain di-
rection by an antenna fed by a point source is proportional to
the relative excitation of the near fields at an observation point
upon plane wave incidence from the same direction. Hence, by
scanning the relative field strength at an observation point in-
side the antenna cavity for plane waves incident with all pos-
sible angles at a fixed frequency, the radiation pattern of the an-
tenna at this frequency can be obtained [4], [18]. This method
can be efficiently applied employing the spectral domain pe-
riodic MoM for the full-wave modeling of LWAs such as the
one depicted in Fig. 1. The Electric Field Integral Equation
(EFIE) is determined by applying the boundary condition on the
metallic elements that compose the array (here assumed perfect
conductors), and subsequently solved using the Galerkin MoM.
For simple array element geometries, such as the one shown
in Fig. 1, the currents can be modelled using zero-ended entire
domain sinusoidal basis functions [30], [31], yielding fast and
accurate results. The details of this method are described else-
where and therefore not repeated here [4], [30].
B. Array Factor Approach
The array factor (AF) approach serves as an alternative
method to calculate the radiation characteristics of periodic
LWAs [28], [29]. The array factor for a 2-D planar array is
given by the following expression [29]:
(2)
MATEO-SEGURA et al.: A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE FOR THE DISPERSION ANALYSIS OF FABRY-PEROT CAVITY LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNAS
where is the periodicity and is the number of
unit cells along the - -axis respectively. For an infinitely long
antenna there is no contribution to the radiation by edge effects.
The phase in (2) represents the relative phase shift of the
excitation for the order element referenced to the element
at the origin. Assuming that all higher Floquet space harmonic
(FSHs) are evanescent and only the fundamental can radiate,
then the relative phase shift is determined by the propagation
constant, , of the fundamental FSH in the - - directions:
(3)
The relevant excitation strength of the array ele-
ment, in (2), can be obtained from the attenuation rate,
, due to the leakage, as well as the magnitude of the ref-
erence element, . Since for a uniformly periodic array the
leakage rate, , is constant along the antenna, the excitation
strength drops exponentially for elements away from the exci-
tation point. To a step approximation, we can therefore write for
the element along the - -axis:
(4)
The radiation pattern of the antenna under consideration can be
obtained as the product of the array factor with the radiation
pattern of the PRS array element. In this example we assume
a free-standing PRS consisting of square patches with edge
(Fig. 1) whose radiation intensity, , at every can be ob-
tained using Babinet’s principle from that of a rectangular aper-
ture [29]:
(5)
where is the free space wavenumber, is the intrinsic
impedance and is a constant. By combining (2) and (5), the
radiation pattern of a LWA such as the one depicted in Fig. 1
can be analytically obtained for a given wavenumber .
C. Derivation of the Complex Propagation Constant
As shown above, the estimation of the radiation pattern fol-
lowing an array factor approach requires prior knowledge of
both the real, , and imaginary, , part of the wavenumber, . In
order to reduce the complexity of the problem, the former can
be obtained by tracking the angle of maximum directivity in the
full-wave radiation pattern. In particular, in order to extract the
dispersion of the propagation constant in a particular direction
the radiation pattern if the antenna under consideration is ob-
tained at different frequencies. The angle, , corresponding to
the direction of maximum directivity for each frequency is then
related with by means of simple trigonometry [19] (Fig. 2):
(6)
805
Fig. 2. Estimation of the propagation constant from the angle of maximum gain
at the H-plane and the E-plane for a LWA.
where is the free-space wavenumber. In the following we
assume that the antenna of Fig. 1 is excited by a Hertzian dipole
polarized along the -axis. In this case, correspond to the
phase constants along the H-/E-plane and can be obtained by
varying the angle of the incident wave along the - -planes
respectively.
Subsequently, the AF approach is employed to obtain the dis-
persion of the leakage rate, . This can be estimated using an
inverse and iterative procedure. For each frequency point, we
use the corresponding value of the propagation constant, , and
the radiation pattern is successively estimated according to (2)
for different values of the leakage rate, . For each value of ,
the corresponding radiation pattern is compared with the one de-
rived using full wave MoM [30] and reciprocity [4]. This is done
by calculating an error function which is expressed as the mean-
square error between the two normalized patterns. The value of
for which the error function is minimized corresponds to the
actual value of the leakage rate at the particular frequency. For
a new frequency point, estimations of the leakage rate at nearby
frequencies can be used as starting values, also considering that
higher frequencies typically produce lower leakage rates. Since
the calculations involved in the iterative procedure are analyt-
ical, the proposed method is fast and efficient.
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section we initially demonstrate the application of the
proposed method in working examples of resonant cavity an-
tennas with a single periodic array (PRS) and half-wavelength
profile. This refers to the structure shown in Fig. 1 where a Per-
fect Electric Conductor (PEC) at is used instead of an
AMC. Subsequently, we extend this technique to the case of an-
tennas with two periodic arrays (PRS and AMC) and sub-wave-
length profile; structure shown in Fig. 1 where is either or
. The results from the proposed technique are compared with
those from a TEN, where a pole and zero method is employed
for the estimation of the effective impedance of the arrays. The
latter is very well described in [32], [33] and therefore applied
here directly.
A. Half-Wavelength Antennas
The structure under consideration involves a PRS consisting
of square patches with edge 8.0 mm arranged in a square lat-
tice with periodicity 9.0 mm and printed on a dielectric slab of
thickness, , equal to 1.5 mm and relative permittivity 2.55.
This PRS is located at a distance, , equal to 9.82 mm above
a ground plane. This corresponds to approximately half-wave-
length at 14 GHz, where the antenna produces a broadside pat-
806 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. Radiation pattern a) H-plane and b) E-plane of the LWA formed with a
Fig. 4. Normalized wavenumber versus frequency for a) the TE mode along
square patch PRS with dimensions (in mm) , , ,
(H-plane) and b) the TM mode along (E-plane) as obtained by the proposed
and .
technique and a Transverse Equivalent Network for the LWA with dimensions
as in Fig. 3.

tern. The excitation is assumed to be a Hertzian dipole polarized

along y and placed in the middle of the cavity (e.g., ).
Periodic MoM in the spectral domain is employed to obtain
the y-polarized fields at the center of the unit cell and
(observation point). On the calculation of the near fields an
optimized number of 40 FSH is considered for convergence
better than 1%, [34]. The H- and E- plane radiation patterns
for this LWA are obtained by the full-wave method discussed
in Section II-A for a range of frequencies between 14 GHz and
16.5 GHz for the H-plane and between 14 GHz and 18 GHz
for the E-plane. Some examples of these results are presented
in Fig. 3. Tracking the angle of maximum, , and using (6), the
dispersion of the phase constant is readily obtained.
In agreement with previous studies of 2-D LWA Fig. 3 shows
that at broadside a pencil beam is produced with equal 3 dB
beamwidth in the H- and E-plane [35]. The patterns in the E-
and H-plane are increasingly different at higher angles towards
endfire. Further observation of this figure shows that as the Fig. 5. a) H- and b) E-plane radiation pattern at 14.4 GHz for the half-wave-
beam angle increases, the peak field amplitude increases in length antenna of Fig. 3 as obtained by full-wave Method of Moments and Array
the H-plane. The opposite is happening in the E-plane. These Factor theory.
observations are in agreement with [35]. Furthermore, the inset
in Fig. 3 shows the presence of grating lobes that correspond to
the from 14.4 GHz onwards in the H- and the E-plane. superimposed the phase constant values as obtained from a TEN
The dispersion diagrams as obtained from the patterns of model [33]. A comparison of the values for indicates a
Fig. 3 in the frequency range studied are shown in Fig. 4. Based very good agreement between the two techniques.
on (6), the H-plane pattern provides the phase constant of Fig. 5 shows the radiation pattern calculated according to
a TE mode along , and the E-plane pattern gives corre- full-wave MoM together with that estimated using the AF ap-
sponding to a TM mode along y [32]. This figure also shows proach assuming an infinitely long antenna with the obtained
MATEO-SEGURA et al.: A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE FOR THE DISPERSION ANALYSIS OF FABRY-PEROT CAVITY LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNAS
Fig. 6. Normalized leakage rate versus frequency, a) H-plane and b) E-plane
as obtained by the proposed technique and a Transverse Equivalent Network for
the LWA with dimensions as in Fig. 3.
leakage rate, . Since the AF calculation is based on the as-
sumption of a single radiating Floquet space harmonic, it cannot
predict the side lobes that emerge as a result of higher Floquet
space harmonics in Fig. 5(b). Therefore, in the calculation of ,
the error function will only include the portion of the radiation
pattern that is occupied by the main lobe, neglecting the higher
values of , which correspond to side lobes.
The computed values of the normalized leakage rate, , at
the H- and E-plane as calculated using the proposed technique
as well as the TEN model are shown in Fig. 6. The agreement
between both techniques is good for the given range of frequen-
cies. As common with LWAs [19], the normalized leakage rate,
, decreases towards endfire direction. The interference of
the side lobes with the main lobe limits the applicability of the
proposed technique at higher frequencies.
B. Quarter Wavelength Antennas
Antennas with sub-wavelength profile can be produced intro-
ducing a second periodic array in close proximity to the ground
plane [15], [16]. To a ray optics approximation, this can be at-
tributed to the reduced reflection phase of the AMC ground
plane. Here we employ a working example of an antenna such as
the one shown in Fig. 1. The PRS employed previously is now
located at a distance above an AMC array, which
consists of patches with edge, and is printed
807
Fig. 7. Normalized wavenumber versus frequency for the H- and E-plane as
obtained by the proposed technique and a Transverse Equivalent Network for
the sub-wavelength antenna of Fig. 1, with dimensions (in mm) ,
, for the PRS: square patches , and
and for the AMC: square patches , and
operating at 14 GHz.
on a dielectric slab of thickness, and relative
permittivity 2.2. The height of the cavity, , has been designed
for the antenna to produce a broadside pattern at 14 GHz.
A similar study as the one performed for the half-wavelength
antenna is carried out. In order to apply the periodic MoM com-
mensurate periodicities are assumed ensuring that the set of FSH
is suitable for expanding the fields at both arrays. For thinner
cavities, higher order evanescent FSH can increasingly interact
and therefore become increasingly important in the calculation
of the near fields and thus in the estimation of the patterns. For
this example 60 FSH in the - and - direction are considered
for a convergence better than 1%, [34].
The dispersion of the phase constants are shown in Fig. 7 for
a range of frequencies between 14 GHz and 15.6 GHz for the
H- and between 14 GHz and 16.5 GHz for the E-plane. This
figure also shows superimposed the phase constant values as
obtained from a TEN. The computed values of the leakage rate
at the H- and E-plane are also depicted in Fig. 8 between 14
GHz and 15 GHz for the H- and E-plane. The TEN utilized
in the calculations only accounts for a single mode, therefore
when the antenna profile decreases the accuracy of the method
is also reduced. Consequently, as is evident in Figs. 7 and 8,
the agreement between the two methods for this antenna is re-
duced compared to the half-wavelength antenna, particularly in
the H-plane.
C. Thin Antennas
Thin antennas with sub-wavelength profile can be pro-
duced employing an AMC with reflection phase lower than
0 in the configuration of Fig. 1. Due to the low profile, the
interaction of higher order evanescent modes between the
two arrays significantly increases. The accuracy of the single
mode transverse equivalent network model gradually reduces
compared to the half-wavelength profile LWA. The technique
proposed here can be directly applied for thin antennas without
loss of accuracy. Here we demonstrate this by means of an
example involving an antenna with profile . The PRS is
the same as in the previous studies and is located at a distance
above an AMC array, which consists of
808 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 8. Normalized leakage rate versus frequency for the H-plane and E-plane Fig. 10. Normalized wavenumber versus frequency for the H-plane and
as obtained by the proposed technique and a Transverse Equivalent Network for E-plane as obtained by the proposed technique and a Transverse Equivalent
the sub-wavelength antenna of Fig. 7. Network for the LWA of Fig. 9.

Fig. 11. Normalized leakage rate versus frequency for the H-plane and E-plane
as obtained by the proposed technique and a Transverse Equivalent Network for
the LWA of Fig. 9.

at broadside at the frequency of 14 GHz. However, a narrower

beamwidth is obtained in the E-plane attributed to a lower value
of the leakage rate at this plane. The dispersion diagrams for the
H- and E-plane are shown in Fig. 10 for frequencies between
14–14.6 GHz and 14–16.5 GHz, respectively. The interference
of the side-lobes with the main lobe impedes the application of
the proposed technique in this case beyond 14.6 GHz for the
H-plane and beyond 16.5 GHz for the E-plane. The computed
values of the leakage rate are also depicted in Fig. 11 between
14–14.6 GHz and 14–15.1 GHz for the H- and E-plane, respec-
Fig. 9. Radiation pattern a) H-plane and b) E-plane of the LWA with dimen- tively. In both figures, the resulting dispersion parameters as ob-
sions (in mm) , , for the PRS: square patches ,
tained using TEN are depicted clearly showing how the accu-
and and for the AMC: square patches ,
and operating at 14 GHz as obtained using full-wave racy of the method has reduced even more for the antenna,
MoM and array factor procedure. particularly at the H-plane.

IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

patches with printed on a dielectric slab of
thickness, and relative permittivity 2.2.
The H- and E- plane radiation patterns of the LWA at different
frequencies are determined in order to extract the phase constant
in either plane. A total number of 120 FSH in each direction
has been taken into account for convergence better than 1%.
The radiation patterns at both planes as obtained using MoM as
well as an AF approach at different frequencies are presented
in Fig. 9 showing a good agreement between both techniques
that validate the AF model accuracy. A pencil beam is obtained
The antennas under investigation have been designed to op-
erate at 14 GHz using the same PRS but different AMCs, so
that the profile of the antenna reduces as the dimension of the
lower array (AMC) is increased. By observation of Figs. 6, 8 and
11 one can conclude that higher values of the leakage rate are
obtained for antennas with reduced profile and the same PRS.
This leads to less directive radiation patterns for thinner an-
tennas. For angles away from broadside (frequency higher than
14 GHz) the difference between the values of the leakage rate
for antennas with different profiles becomes smaller. Figs. 5, 7
MATEO-SEGURA et al.: A SIMPLE TECHNIQUE FOR THE DISPERSION ANALYSIS OF FABRY-PEROT CAVITY LEAKY-WAVE ANTENNAS
and 10 further demonstrate that as the profile reduces, the phase
constant varies more rapidly with frequency in both the H-
and E- plane. Moreover, the phase constant at the H- and
E-plane take similar values for half-wavelength antenna
(Fig. 5(a) and (b)). However, for thinner antennas the values of
the phase constant for angles away from broadside (frequency
higher than 14 GHz) increasingly differ being always larger at
the H-plane, than at the E-plane, .
In conclusion, a simple technique for the dispersion analysis
of high-gain planar leaky-wave antennas employing either one or
two periodic surfaces (PRS and AMC) has been presented. MoM
together with reciprocity as well as an array factor approach have
been used to estimate the complex propagation constant of these
antennas. The proposed technique was firstly applied to the anal-
ysis of a LWA with half-wavelength profile and subsequently
extended to antennas with lower profile. The radiation patterns
for the E- and H- plane at different frequencies were obtained
using MoM in order to extract the phase constant. The produced
dispersion diagrams were in good agreement with those derived
by a TEN. Reactive interaction between adjacent layers due to
evanescent higher-order Floquet harmonics limits the validity
of the single mode TEN, which is based on equivalent imped-
ances of the PRS and AMC arrays and single mode circuits. The
proposed technique overcomes this problem, so that low-profile
LWAs can be accurately and efficiently analyzed. The main lim-
itation of the proposed technique is due to the appearance of
grating lobes, which limit the applicability of the technique.
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C. Mateo-Segura (S’08–M’10) was born in Va-
lencia, Spain, in 1981. She received the M.Sc.
degree in telecommunications engineering from the
Polytechnic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain,
in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree, jointly awarded be-
tween the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt
University, Edinburgh, U.K., in 2010.
In 2006, she joined the Security and Defence
Department of Indra Systems, Madrid, Spain, as
a Junior Engineer. In 2009, she was a Research
Associate in the Wireless Communications Research
Group, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, U.K. In December 2010,
she joined the Antennas & Electromagnetics Research Group, Queen Mary,
University of London, as a Research Associate where she worked on the
electromagnetic modelling and design of novel metamaterial antennas for
high power applications. She is currently with the School of Engineering
and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K. Her research
interests include the analysis and design of frequency selective surfaces,
artificial periodic electromagnetic structures with applications on high-gain
array antennas and medical imaging systems.
Dr. Mateo-Segura was awarded a prize studentship from the Edinburgh Re-
search Partnership and the Joint Research Institute for Integrated Systems to join
the RF and Microwave group at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland,
U.K in 2006.
Maria García-Vigueras (S’09) was born in Murcia,
Spain, in 1984. She received the Telecommunica-
tions Engineer degree from the Technical University
of Cartagena (UPCT), Spain, in 2007, where she is
currently working towards the Ph.D. degree.
In 2008, she joined the Department of Commu-
nication and Information Technologies, UPCT, as
a Research Assistant. She has been a visiting Ph.D.
student at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh
(Scotland, United Kingdom), at the University of
Seville (Spain) and in Queen’s University of Belfast
(Northern Ireland, United Kingdom). Her research interests focus on the
development of equivalent circuits to characterize periodic surfaces, with
application to the analysis and design of leaky-wave antennas.
George Goussetis (SM’99–M’02) graduated from
the Electrical and Computer Engineering School,
National Technical University of Athens, Greece,
in 1998, and received the B.Sc. degree in physics
(first class) from University College London (UCL),
U.K. and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Westminster, London, U.K., both in 2002.
In 1998, he joined the Space Engineering, Rome,
Italy, as an F Engineer and in 1999 the Wireless
Communications Research Group, University of
Westminster, U.K., as a Research Assistant. Between
2002 and 2006, he was a Senior Research Fellow at Loughborough University,
U.K. Between 2006 and 2009, he was a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) with
the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, U.K. He joined the Institute of Electronics Communications and
Information Technology, Queen’s University Belfast, U.K, in September
2009, as a Reader (Associate Professor). In 2010, he was a Visiting Professor
at UPCT, Spain. He has authored or coauthored over 100 peer-reviewed
papers three book chapters and two patents. His research interests include the
modelling and design of microwave filters, frequency-selective surfaces and
periodic structures, leaky wave antennas, microwave heating as well numerical
techniques for electromagnetics.
Dr. Goussetis received the Onassis foundation scholarship in 2001. In
October 2006 he was awarded a five-year research fellowship by the Royal
Academy of Engineering, UK.
Alexandros P. Feresidis (S’98–M’01–SM’08) was
born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1975. He received
the Physics degree from Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1997, the M.Sc.(Eng) in
radio communications and high frequency engi-
neering from the University of Leeds, U.K, in 1998,
and the Ph.D. degree in electronic and electrical
engineering from Loughborough University, U.K.,
in 2002.
During the first half of 2002, he was a Research As-
sociate and in the same year he was appointed Lec-
turer in Wireless Communications in the Department of Electronic and Elec-
trical Engineering, Loughborough University, UK, where, in 2006, he was pro-
moted to Senior Lecturer. He has published more than 100 papers in peer re-
viewed international journals and conference proceedings and has coauthored
three book chapters. His research interests include analysis and design of arti-
ficial periodic metamaterials, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures and
frequency selective surfaces (FSS), array antennas, small/compact antennas,
numerical techniques for electromagnetics and passive microwave/mm-wave
circuits.
José Luis Gómez-Tornero (M’06) was born in
Murcia, Spain, in 1977. He received the Telecom-
munications Engineer degree from the Polytechnic
University of Valencia (UPV), Valencia, Spain, in
2001, and the Ph.D. degree (laurea cum laude) in
telecommunication engineering from the Technical
University of Cartagena (UPCT), Cartagena, Spain,
in 2005.
In 1999, he joined the Radio Communications De-
partment, UPV, as a research student, where he was
involved in the development of analytical and numer-
ical tools for the automated design of microwave filters in waveguide technology
for space applications. In 2000, he joined the Radio Frequency Division, In-
dustry Alcatel Espacio, Madrid, Spain, where he was involved with the devel-
opment of microwave active circuits for telemetry, tracking and control (TTC)
transponders for space applications. In 2001, he joined the Technical University
of Cartagena (UPCT), Spain, as an Assistant Professor. From October 2005 to
February 2009, he held de position of Vice Dean for Students and Lectures af-
fairs in the Telecommunication Engineering Faculty at the UPCT. Since 2008,
he has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and
Information Technologies, UPCT. In February 2010, he was appointed CSIRO
Distinguished Visiting Scientist by the CSIRO ICT Centre, Sydney. His current
research interests include analysis and design of leaky-wave antennas and the
development of numerical methods for the analysis of novel passive radiating
structures in planar and waveguide technologies.
Prof. Gómez Tornero received the national award from the foundation
EPSON-Ibérica to the “best Ph.D. project in the field of technology of
information and communications (TIC),” in July 2004 and the Vodafone
foundation-COIT/AEIT (Colegio Oficial de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación)
award to the best Spanish Ph.D. thesis in the area of “advanced mobile
communications technologies,” in June 2006. This thesis was also awarded the
“best thesis in the area of electrical engineering,” by the Technical University
of Cartagena, in December 2006.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 811

Analyzing the Complexity and Reliability of

Switch-Frequency-Reconfigurable Antennas
Using Graph Models
Joseph Costantine, Member, IEEE, Youssef Tawk, Member, IEEE, Christos G. Christodoulou, Fellow, IEEE,
James C. Lyke, Senior Member, IEEE, Franco De Flaviis, Senior Member, IEEE, Alfred Grau Besoli, Member, IEEE,
and Silvio E. Barbin, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper addresses the functional reliability and the
complexity of reconfigurable antennas using graph models. The
correlation between complexity and reliability for any given recon-
figurable antenna is defined. Two methods are proposed to reduce
failures and improve the reliability of reconfigurable antennas. The
failures are caused by the reconfiguration technique or by the sur-
rounding environment. These failure reduction methods proposed
are tested and examples are given which verify these methods.
Index Terms—Complexity, graph theory, reconfigurable an-
tennas, reliability, switches.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE incorporation of switches into reconfigurable antenna
structures increases their complexity which in turn dimin-
ishes the reliability of the antennas. In particular, the reliability
of reconfigurable antennas is of upmost importance in unknown
and unpredictable environments. The design of switching ele-
ments is highly dependent on environmental conditions. For in-
stance, if the reconfigurable antennas were deployed in space,
the environment is unpredictable and the antenna structure is
difficult to access.
Various publications discuss certain environmental effects
on different types of switches which are used in antennas to
achieve reconfiguration. In [1], RF MEMS capacitive switches
are built on microwave-laminate printed circuit boards (PCBs).
The proposed technology promises further monolithic integra-
tion of switches and antennas on PCBs to form reconfigurable
Manuscript received June 09, 2010; revised June 14, 2011; accepted August
22, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
J. Costantine is with the Electrical Engineering Department, California State
University Fullerton, Fullerton, CA 92834 USA.
Y. Tawk and C. G. Christodoulou are with the Electrical and Computer En-
gineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131
USA.
J. C. Lyke is with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base,
Albuquerque, NM 87117 USA.
F. De Flaviis is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697 USA.
A. Grau Besoli is with Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA 92617 USA.
S. E. Barbin is with the Telecommunications and Control Engineering De-
partment of the Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo, SP 05508-900
Brazil.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173104
antennas without the mismatch problems associated with the
use of discrete switching elements.
In [2] the authors explain that the one-switch membrane
topology of RF MEMS switches used in most designs is
limiting for highly dynamic applications. Such applications
require a great deal of reconfigurability. Three sets of electro-
static actuated RF MEMS switches with different actuation
voltages are used to sequentially activate and deactivate parts of
a Sierpinski fractal antenna. This allows direct actuation of the
MEMS switches through the RF single feed without the need
for individual DC bias lines. The antenna is fabricated on liquid
crystal polymer substrate and constitutes the first integrated RF
MEMS reconfigurable antenna on a flexible organic polymer
substrate.
Air-bridged RF-MEMS switches in single pole single-
through transmission (SPST) configuration are proposed in
[3] for antenna applications. In [4], tunable RF MEMS are
proposed for the development of reconfigurable antennas fab-
ricated on sapphire substrate with a barium strontium titanate
dielectric.
The problem of integrating commercially packaged RF
MEMS into a reconfigurable antenna is discussed in [5],
[6], not only the insertion loss and isolation behavior of the
switches are addressed, but also their impact on the radiation
characteristics of the antenna.
In [7] the effect of carbon contamination on the reliability of
RF MEMS is considered. It is shown that the use of RF MEMS
in many commercial and military applications is limited by poor
reliability [7]. Most publications in this area do not reflect the
reliability of systems relying on switches, and few designers in-
vestigate the environmental effects, as in [7], on the good oper-
ation of the system.
The fundamentals of improving systems reliability is first ad-
dressed by Shannon and Moore, they propose using redundancy
to increase reliability [8]. Another publication [9] discusses re-
liability, where the fundamental mathematics of fault-tolerant
circuit-switching networks is illustrated. These publications [8],
[9] emphasize and recommend redundancy to improve the reli-
ability of any switching circuit. This work [8], [9] is done on
electronic circuits without considering any electromagnetic as-
pects. Finally in [10], [11] a complexity reduction approach for
switch-reconfigurable antennas is developed. This approach re-
duces the number of unnecessary switches.

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

812 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. Example of an undirected graph, and a directed graph with weighted
edges.
In this paper we base our discussion on finding a trade-off
between the reduction in redundancy and the improvement in
reliability. The analysis in [8] is used to study the effect of the
complexity reduction approach [11] on the reliability of a par-
ticular antenna. Even though the number of switches decreases
after the implementation of the approach in [11], the number of
equivalent configurations is proven to be sufficient. The electro-
magnetic behavior is sufficient for reliability while the number
of switches is decreased. We also show that the frequency de-
pendent reliability is inversely proportional to the complexity.
We propose two methods to increase the robustness of recon-
figurable antennas and present a methodology that ensures the
reliability of a reconfigurable antenna system. In the next sec-
tion graphs are presented as a modeling tool for reconfigurable
antennas and equivalent configurations are discussed.
II. GRAPH MODELING OF RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS AND
EQUIVALENT ANTENNA CONFIGURATIONS
Graph modeling is a useful tool for analyzing reconfigurable
antennas as discussed in [10]–[13]. A graph is defined as a col-
lection of vertices connected by lines called edges [10]–[13]. A
graph may be either directed or undirected. In a directed graph,
the edges have a determined direction, while in an undirected
graph edges may be traversed in either direction. Fig. 1 shows
examples of a directed and an undirected graph.
The vertices represent physical entities and the edges indi-
cate the existence of functions relating these entities. In a graph
model of antennas, an edge is created between two vertices
whenever their physical connection represents a meaningful an-
tenna function [13]. Edges can have weights associated with
them in order to represent costs or benefits that are to be mini-
mized or maximized. The directed graph in Fig. 1 is an example
of a weighted graph. A path is an ensemble of edges connecting
two vertices, and its weight is defined as the sum of the weights
of its constituent edges. For example, if a switch connects two
parts of an antenna, then a weight represents the connection’s
distinctive direction.
There are several ways to graph model reconfigurable
antennas. Rules for graph modeling switch-reconfigurable an-
tennas are discussed in [10]. Graph modeling a reconfigurable
Fig. 2. The antenna in [16] with its graph model.
antenna translates this antenna from a bulky device into a
software accessible device. The use of graph models allows
designers to use their algorithms for control and automation
[14]. Graphs also allow a swifter and better implementation of
cognitive radio applications [15] and a reduction in redundant
configurations. Thus, graphs improve the antenna efficiency
and reduce cost and losses.
Graph models are also used to represent equivalent an-
tenna configurations. In a switch frequency reconfigurable
antenna, many switching configurations yield the same antenna
frequency behavior without affecting the other radiation prop-
erties. Equivalent configurations are obtained from simulations.
These equivalent configurations constitute back-up configura-
tions for maintaining the same antenna performance at a certain
frequency.
For example, the antenna shown in Fig. 2 [16], and its graph
model, resonates at 5 GHz for eight different switch configu-
rations. These eight configurations are shown in Table I and a
comparative S11 plot is shown in Fig. 3. These eight configura-
tions allow us options for achieving the desired resonance fre-
quency at 5 GHz while each configuration has different multi-
band characteristics.
It is true that reducing the number of switches decreases the
number of equivalent antenna configurations at each resonant
frequency [10], [11]. However, the number of remaining con-
figurations is sufficient for reliable antenna operation and de-
creases the total “cost” of the antenna.
To demonstrate reduced redundancy without loss of relia-
bility, a previously optimized antenna (in [12], [13]) is studied
below. The optimized antenna is shown in Fig. 4. Some of the
antenna configurations for different antenna resonances are
shown in Table II.
Even after optimization, this antenna has several equivalent
configurations for each resonant frequency. The optimization
technique reduced the number of switches and hence cost
without reducing the reliability of the system at operating
frequencies.
It is also important to point out that certain resonant frequen-
cies are only achievable with a single configuration. There is a
need to develop some methods to improve the efficiency and in-
sure continuous antenna operation. In the next section the com-
plexity and reliability of reconfigurable antennas are formulated
and methods for improving the antenna reliability are proposed.
COSTANTINE et al.: ANALYZING THE COMPLEXITY AND RELIABILITY OF SWITCH-FREQUENCY-RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS
TABLE I
THE DIFFERENT CONFIGURATIONS OF THE ANTENNA IN [15] THAT LEAD TO OPERATION AT 5 GHZ
Fig. 3. S11 plot for the antenna in [16] for the configurations presented in
Table I. (a) Zoomed out and (b) zoomed in at 5 GHz.
813
Fig. 4. Optimized antenna [12], [13].
III. RELIABILITY FORMULATIONS FOR FREQUENCY
RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS
According to Shanon and Moore [8] a switch failure occurs
when:
1) a switch is originally OFF and fails to switch ON upon
request;
2) a switch is originally ON and fails to switch OFF upon
request.
A switching failure heavily affects the reliability of a
switch reconfigurable antenna. These failures are due to the
environment of operation, the aging and corrosion process,
and the frequency of operation. Thus, the reliability of recon-
figurable antennas depends on all the previously mentioned
factors.
With graphs, we can calculate the reliability using models
which represent the different antenna configurations. The relia-
bility is dependent on the number of antenna configurations at
a certain frequency and the probability to achieve these config-
urations. However, it is inversely proportional to the number of
edges needed to create these configurations. The solution is to
814 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

TABLE II
SOME ANTENNA CONFIGURATIONS FOR DIFFERENT RESONANCES (ALL FREQUENCIES ARE IN GHZ)

design reconfigurable antennas with several alternative config-
urations but only a small number of connections. This relation-
ship is shown by (1):
(1)
Assuming the probability that each edge exists in a given con-
figuration is equal to 0.98, this is the probability of success, then
according to (1) (see the equation at the bottom of the page).
Example 2: Let us now consider the same antenna shown
in Fig. 4 but at 1.7 GHz. Let us assume that the probability of
switching success with switch 1 is 0.999, the probability of suc-
cess with switch 2 is 0.998, and the probability of success with
switch 3 is 0.900. According to (1), the reliability at 1.7 GHz is

where:
reconfigurable antenna reliability at a particular
frequency ;
number of configurations achieving the frequency
;
number of edges for different configurations at
the frequency ;
probability of achieving the edge (a
switch failing).
Example 1: Let us consider the antenna shown in Fig. 4. As- The variation of the reliability for different probability values at
sume we want to calculate the antenna’s reliability at 2.9 GHz. a particular frequency is linear and Fig. 5 shows this variation at
According to Table II, at 2.9 GHz the antenna has three equiva- GHz. Here, if no switches are used for achieving a cer-
lent configurations which resonate at this particular frequency. tain reconfiguration, then the reliability is 100%. An example of

%
COSTANTINE et al.: ANALYZING THE COMPLEXITY AND RELIABILITY OF SWITCH-FREQUENCY-RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS 815

Fig. 5. The variation of the reliability for different values of the probabilities
at GHz.

Fig. 6. The antenna in [17].

such a 100% reliable antenna is the antenna in Fig. 4 at 5.2 GHz.
One of the configurations which resonate at this frequency does
not use any switches.

IV. GENERAL COMPLEXITY OF RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS

Increasing the number of edges in a reconfigurable antenna
graph model adds to the complexity of the system. The com-
plexity is based on the size of the graph; i.e., the number of edges
for all possible connections in that graph.

(2)

where NE represents the number of edges for all possible con-

nections.
This definition of complexity is different from other defi-
Fig. 7. Graph models for the required antenna configurations (five different
nitions of complexity, such as computational complexity. Re- modes). Parts in green indicate parts where switches are ON; parts in red indicate
moval of redundant elements results in reduction of the general switches are OFF.
complexity of the hardware used as well as simplification of
software analysis employed to control the reconfiguration tech-
nique. We show below some examples where complexity is de- Example 4: The general complexity of the unoptimized struc-
creased using the optimization technique [10], [11]. ture of Fig. 4 is according to (2) whereas the general com-
Example 3: In [17], a reconfigurable pixeled antenna is pro- plexity of the optimized topology discussed in [13] is .
posed and is shown in Fig. 6. A discussion of the reliability
issues and redundancy minimization is presented in [10]. This
V. CORRELATION OF COMPLEXITY AND RELIABILITY
antenna exhibits five different modes of operation for any fre-
OF RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS
quency between 6 and 7 GHz [17]. Graph models showing the
different antenna configurations based on different switch acti- The redundancy reduction technique presented in [10] and
vation status are shown in Fig. 7. The different sections of the [11] can reduce the general complexity of reconfigurable an-
optimized antenna are shown in Fig. 8. tenna systems. However, since an antenna can have several con-
The antenna is optimized while preserving its core function figurations at different frequencies of operation, we must define
and its topology [11]. One notes that some of the switches are complexity at each particular frequency. Equation (3) defines
not needed to achieve the required functions. This reduction in this frequency-dependent complexity.
switches reduces the complexity of the antenna. The general
complexity of this antenna before optimization is
(3)
, and after optimization C is reduced to .
816 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 8. Different antenna sections as discussed in [10].
where:
represents the complexity of the antenna system at
a frequency ;
NC(f) represents the number of equivalent configurations
at a frequency ;
represents the number of edges at the configuration
for a frequency .
As an example, let us take the antenna shown in Fig. 2. The
different configurations of this antenna at 5 GHz are shown in
Table I. The complexity of this antenna at 5 GHz is calculated
by (3) as
The complexity of the optimized antenna shown in Fig. 4 at
5.2 GHz is calculated by (3) as
The correlation of the complexity of an antenna at a frequency
and its reliability at that same frequency can be derived using
(2), as shown in (4):
(4)
where:
C(f) is calculated in (3);
N C(f) is the number of equivalent configurations at
a frequency without the configuration with
maximum edges.
From (4) we can deduce that the reliability of a reconfigurable
antenna at a frequency is inversely proportional to the com-
plexity of that antenna’s structure at the same frequency .
Example 5: Taking the same antenna from example 1 and re-
calculating the reliability according to (4) reveals (see the equa-
tions at the bottom of the page).
COSTANTINE et al.: ANALYZING THE COMPLEXITY AND RELIABILITY OF SWITCH-FREQUENCY-RECONFIGURABLE ANTENNAS
Fig. 9. Antenna using backup switch for 2.05 GHz equivalent configurations.
Fig. 10. Graph model of the equivalent configuration in Fig. 9.
Fig. 11. The antenna’s reflection coefficient with backup switch S2 and S3 ac-
tivated showing clear operation at 2.05 GHz.
817
VI. INCREASING THE RELIABILITY OF RECONFIGURABLE
ANTENNAS
In this section we propose two methods to improve the reli-
ability of a reconfigurable antenna system. These methods are
based on the presence of antenna redundant configurations even
after the implementation of the redundancy reduction approach
[10], [11]. These redundant configurations are a manifestation
of the antenna electromagnetic behavior under the remaining
switch states. These methods utilize redundant configurations
to improve the reliability of the reconfigurable antenna.
The first method suggests that one should organize the de-
sired frequencies starting from high priority to low priority. If
the first method is not sufficient to increase the reliability of an
antenna at a certain desired frequency then the second method
is applied. This method, based on adding a back-up switch, uti-
lizes the analysis in [8] to improve the reliability of such antenna
as explained below.
Method 1: The No-Switch Configuration: The first method
advises the designer to first prioritize the frequencies needed.
The frequency with the highest priority should have more than
one equivalent configuration. If we look at Table II, we can de-
duce that the frequency with the largest number of equivalent
configurations is GHz. It has seven equivalent configu-
rations, including the no-switch configuration (all switches off).
A good design approach is to design the antenna to operate at the
most important frequency or frequencies with all switches off.
In that case, under the worst possible scenario of all switches
breaking down at the same time, the most important frequency
is always achievable.
Method 2: The Back-Up Switch: This method proposes in-
stalling a back-up switch. The back-up switch can be installed at
any place in the antenna system as long as its presence achieves
the desired frequency. This method is used when a certain fre-
quency is needed at all times; and the design does not include
enough back-up configurations.
Many factors come in play when installing a back-up switch.
We assume that the probability of failure of a switch remains
constant in time and does not change. Thus, the back-up switch
method can be used if and only if, it satisfies the following con-
straints:
1) Its probability of failure is lower than or equal to the lowest
probability of failure among all switches.
2) The sum of probabilities of success in the back-up config-
uration is higher than the sum of probabilities of success in
the original configuration.
Example 6: The optimized antenna in Fig. 4 operates at
2.05 GHz for only one configuration (S1 ON) as shown in
Table II. Installing a back-up switch as shown in Fig. 9 and
activating switches S2 and S3 constitutes a back-up configura-
tion. The graph model of this system is represented in Fig. 10
where P0 is replaced by P’0 since by adding the back-up switch
new vertices appear and the topology of the antenna section
represented by P0 has changed. As stated, the placement of
the switch is up to the designer as long as the presence of that
switch achieves the desired function.
The reflection coefficient plot is shown in Fig. 11. The relia-
bility of this antenna can be increased by applying either or both
of the two methods proposed in this section.
818 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
This antenna originally has only one configuration that
achieves 2.05 GHz, that configuration requires only the acti-
vation of S1. Assuming the probability of switch activation
success is 0.98 for switch 1, 0.985 for switch 2, and 0.999 for
switch 3, then according to (1):
The back-up switch configuration adds a new configuration
possibility to achieve 2.05 GHz by switching ON S2, S3 and
BUS (back-up switch), so calculating the reliability with the
back-up switch ON according to (1) gives us
thus proving that adding the back-up switch not only assures
the continuous functionality of this antenna but also improves
its reliability at that particular frequency.
To overcome a switch failure and thus restore a lost reso-
nance, the following methodology is proposed. This method-
ology identifies the defected switch, specifies the desired fre-
quency and changes the antenna topology to restore the desired
resonance based on the equivalent configuration.
Before applying this approach, the designer creates a library
similar to Table II in which all possible configurations for all de-
sired frequencies are identified. The designer installs switches
or RF components on the antenna structure for the specific pur-
pose of tuning it to a certain frequency or achieving a certain an-
tenna reconfiguration function. Neural networks (NN) can also
be used as in [6] to determine the library of equivalent configu-
rations. The use of NN speeds up the library assembly process
for large structures.
The designer should include in the library the backup switch
configuration if such configuration exists for specific frequen-
cies. The algorithm is described below:
Step 1: Identify defected switch.
Step 2: Identify desired frequency, where the desired fre-
quency is the resonance at which the antenna operation is
required.
Step 3: In the library table, create a pointer at row i corre-
sponding to the desired frequency.
Step 4: In the library table, create a pointer at column j
corresponding to the defected configuration.
Step 5: Move the pointer j to the placement .
Step 6: Search for a possible edge representing a connec-
tion from the defected switch.
Step 7: If no connection is found, use configuration in the
column .
Step 8: If a connection is found repeat step 5 and 6.
Step 9: If no solution is found, declare frequency unachiev-
able.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper we use graph models to study the reliability and
complexity of reconfigurable antenna systems. We analyze the
different reliability and complexity aspects and present methods
for improving the reliability of switch-reconfigurable antennas.
We correlate the complexity and reliability parameters of re-
configurable antennas that are proven to be inversely propor-
tional. Examples are presented and discussed to demonstrate the
validity of the proposed concept. Finally, the continuous func-
tioning of reconfigurable antennas is studied and a methodology
is presented to ensure the reliability of such systems under dif-
ferent conditions.
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[1] H. Chang, J. Quian, B. A. Cetiner, F. De Flaviis, M. Bachman, and G.
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[4] G. Wang, T. Polley, A. Hunt, and J. Papapolymerou, “A high per-
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[5] G. H. Huff and J. T. Bernhard, “Integration of packaged RF MEMS
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[6] D. E. Anagnostou, G. Zheng, M. Chryssomallis, J. Lyke, G. Ponchak,
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tenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Special Issue on Multifunction
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[7] A. Carton, C. G. Christodoulou, C. Dyck, and C. Nordquist, “Investi-
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[8] E. F. Moore and C. E. Shannon, Reliable Circuits Using Less Reliable
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[9] N. Pippenger and G. Lin, “Fault-tolerant circuit-switching networks,”
SIAM J. Discrete Math., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 108–118, June 1994.
[10] J. Costantine, “Design, optimization and analysis of reconfigurable an-
tennas,” Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. New Mexico, Dept. Electr. Comput.
Eng., Dec. 2009.
[11] J. Costantine, S. Al-Saffar, C. G. Christodoulou, and C. T. Abdallah,
“Reducing redundancies in reconfigurable antenna structures using
graph models,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 3, pp.
793–801, 2011.
[12] J. Costantine and C. G. Christodoulou, “Analyzing reconfigurable an-
tenna structure redundancy using graph models,” in Proc. IEEE An-
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[13] J. Costantine, C. G. Christodoulou, C. T. Abdallah, and S. E. Barbin,
“Optimization and complexity reduction of switch-reconfigurable an-
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[14] J. Costantine, S. Al-Saffar, C. G. Christodoulou, K. Y. Kabalan, and A.
El-Hajj, “The analysis of a reconfiguring antenna with a rotating feed
using graph models,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., 2009, ac-
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[15] Y. Tawk and C. G. Christodoulou, “A new reconfigurable antenna de-
sign for cognitive radio,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., pp.
1378–1381, 2009.
[16] J. Costantine, C. G. Christodoulou, and S. E. Barbin, “A new recon-
figurable multi-band patch antenna,” in Proc. IEEE IMOC Conf., Sal-
vador, Brazil, Oct. 2007, pp. 75–78.
[17] A. Grau, L. Ming-Jer, J. Romeu, H. Jafarkhani, L. Jofre, and F. De
Flaviis, “A multifunctional MEMS-reconfigurable pixel antenna for
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Joseph Costantine (M’10) is an Assistant Pro-
fessor at the Electrical Engineering Department in
California State University Fullerton. He received
the Bachelor’s degree in electrical, electronics,
computer and communications engineering from
the second branch of the Faculty of Engineering
in the Lebanese University in 2004. He received
the Masters in computer and communications en-
gineering from the American University of Beirut
in 2006, during which he was awarded a 6 months
research scholarship at Munich University of Tech-
nology (TUM) as part of the TEMPUS program. In 2009 he received the
Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department at University of New Mexico, where he
also completed his Post-Doc Fellowship in July 2010. His research interests
are in the areas of reconfigurable systems and antennas, antennas in wireless
communications, deployable antennas, electromagnetic fields, RF Electronic
Design and communication systems.
Dr. Costantine received many awards during his studies and career. He has
also published many research papers and is a co-author of an upcoming book
on reconfigurable antennas.
Youssef Tawk (M’10) is a Post-Doc fellow at the
University of New Mexico, where he received the
Ph.D. degree from the Electrical and Computer En-
gineering Department in May 2011. He received the
Master degree in computer and communications en-
gineering from the American University of Beirut in
2008 and the Bachelor degree in computer and com-
munications engineering from Notre Dame Univer-
sity, Louaize, Lebanon, in 2006.
His research areas include reconfigurable antenna
systems, cognitive radio, RF electronic design and
photonics.
He has received many awards during his studies. He has published several
journal and conference papers.
819
Christos G. Christodoulou (F’02) received the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from North
Carolina State University in 1985.
He served as a faculty member in the University
of Central Florida, Orlando, from 1985 to 1998. In
1999, he joined the faculty of the Electrical and Com-
puter Engineering Department of the University of
New Mexico, where he served as the Chair of the De-
partment from 1999 to 2005. He is a Fellow member
of IEEE and a member of Commission B of URSI.
He served as the general Chair of the IEEE Antennas
and Propagation Society/URSI 1999 Symposium in Orlando, Florida and the
co-technical chair for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society/URSI 2006
Symposium in Albuquerque.
Currently he is the Director of the Aerospace Institute at the University of
New Mexico, and the chief research officer for COSMIAC (Configurable Space
Microsystems Innovations & Applications Center at UNM). He was appointed
as an IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer (2007–2010) and elected as the Pres-
ident for the Albuquerque IEEE Section in 2008. He served as a associate ed-
itor for the IEEE Transaction on antennas and Propagation for six years, as a
guest editor for a special issue on “Applications of Neural Networks in Elec-
tromagnetics” in the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES)
journal, and as the co-editor of a the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Special
issue on “Synthesis and Optimization Techniques in Electromagnetics and An-
tenna System Design” (March 2007). He is the recipient of the 2010 IEEE John
Krauss Antenna Award for his work on reconfigurable fractal antennas using
MEMS switches, the Lawton-Ellis Award and the Gardner Zemke Professor-
ship at the University of New Mexico. He has published about 400 papers in
journals and conferences, written 14 book chapters and co-authored four books.
His research interests are in the areas of modeling of electromagnetic systems,
reconfigurable antenna systems, cognitive radio, and smart RF/photonics.
James C. Lyke (SM’06) received the B.S.E.E. de-
gree from the University of Tennessee, the M.S.E.E.
degree from the Air Force Institute of Technology,
and the Ph.D. degree from the University of New
Mexico.
He is technical advisor to the Air Force Research
Laboratory’s Space Electronics Branch (Space Vehi-
cles Directorate) and an AFRL Fellow. He has led
over 100 in-house and contract research efforts in-
volving advanced packaging, radiation-hardened cir-
cuits, and scalable, reconfigurable architectures, with
recent emphasis on rapid formation of complex systems (“plug-and-play”). He
has authored over 100 publications, four receiving best paper awards, and has
been awarded eleven U.S. patents. He is a senior member of IEEE and associate
fellow of AIAA.
Franco De Flaviis (SM’07) was born in Teramo,
Italy, in 1963. He received the Italy degree (Laurea)
in electronics engineering from the University of
Ancona, Italy), in 1990.
In 1991 he was an engineer employee at Alcatel
as a researcher specialized in the area of microwave
mixer design. In 1992 he was a Visiting Researcher
at the University of California at Los Angeles
(UCLA) working on low-intermodulation mixers.
He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the Department of Electrical
Engineering at UCLA in 1994 and 1997, respectively.
He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at the University of California Irvine. He has authored and
coauthored over 100 papers in reference journals and conference proceedings,
filed several international patents and authored one book and three book chap-
ters. He is a member of the URSI Commission B. His research interest include
the development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for RF applica-
tions fabricated on unconventional substrates such as printed circuit board and
microwave laminates with particular emphasis on reconfigurable antenna sys-
tems. He also is active in the research field of highly integrated packaging for
RF and wireless applications.
820 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Alfred Grau Besoli (M’07) was born in Barcelona,
Spain, in 1977. He received the Telecommunications
Engineering degree from the Universitat Politècnica
de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, in 2001. He received
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from the Department of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at the University of California at
Irvine (UCI) in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
He is currently a senior scientist with Broadcom
Corporation, Irvine, CA. His interests are in the field
of reconfigurable antennas and software defined
antennas, cross-layer design of channel coding techniques for reconfigurable
antennas, miniature and integrated on-chip antennas, multi-port antennas and
MIMO wireless communication systems, microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) for RF applications, metamaterials, reconfigurable electromagnetics
devices and materials, and computer-aided electromagnetics.
Silvio E. Barbin (SM’04) was born in Campinas,
Brazil, in 1952. He received the B.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Escola Politécnica da Univer-
sidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil, in 1974 and the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the same institution.
He worked for AEG-Telefunken in Germany and
Brazil and served as CTO of Microline RF-Multi-
plexers and Deputy Director of Center for Informa-
tion Technology Renato Archer from the Ministery of
Science and Technology in Brazil. He was a research
scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles,
CA and a research professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque,
NM. He has published more than 90 papers in conferences and journals. In 1987
he joined the Telecommunications and Control Engineering Department at Uni-
versity of Sao Paulo, where he is a Professor in electromagnetics and other re-
lated subjects. His research interests are in the areas of cognitive radio, reconfig-
urable and smart antennas, microwave circuits, and electromagnetic modeling.
Dr. Barbin is a co-founder of the Brazilian Microwave Society and a member
of several other scientific societies. He was honored professor for a number of
times at his university. He is a member-at-large of the Products Services Publi-
cations Board and an Associated Editor for Antennas Wireless and Propagation
Letters, among other functions at the IEEE.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 821

Free Space Radiation Pattern Reconstruction from

Non-Anechoic Measurements Using an Impulse
Response of the Environment
Jinhwan Koh, Arijit De, Student Member, IEEE, Tapan K. Sarkar, Fellow, IEEE, Hongsik Moon, Weixin Zhao, and
Magdalena Salazar-Palma, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—The objective of this paper is to investigate a method-
ology, which can extract approximate results for the free space
radiation pattern from non-anechoic measurements. Using an im-
pulse response both in the time and angular domains of the non-
anechoic measurement environment, the free space pattern of the
device under test is estimated. The purpose of this paper is, as op-
posed to what has been stated in some papers, to show that a de-
convolution based technique is feasible for reflection compensation
in non-anechoic measurements. The proposed method can also be
applied at a single frequency as illustrated in this paper. Simulated
data has been used to illustrate the applicability of this new tech-
nique and its improved performance over the conventional FFT-
based methods.
Index Terms—Angular domain impulse response, antenna mea-
surement, non-anechoic measurement, pattern reconstruction.
I. INTRODUCTION
The objective of this paper is to study methodologies which
may eliminate the undesired reflections measured in non-ane-
choic conditions through further processing of the measured
data. Such a procedure would make antenna measurements
much easier and cheaper.
In the past, several research projects attempted to reduce un-
desired reflections and diffraction contributions from the walls
and objects present inside the chamber [1]–[10].
The traditional methodology to achieve the reduction of re-
flections and diffractions is the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)-
based method, which describes the impulse response of the re-
verberant chamber from its frequency response by using the
Inverse Fourier Transform [1]. In the time domain, the direct
contribution is detected and gated, thus eliminating undesired
late-time echoes. Applying the Fourier Transform to this new
gated time response helps us to obtain only the direct contribu-
tion present in the radiation pattern at the frequency of interest.
However, a major drawback of this methodology is that we need

M EASUREMENTS of antenna patterns are usually

carried out in anechoic chambers to eliminate any
reflected signal component. The purpose of employing an
to determine the amount of time delay, which is the minimum
travel time of the beam from AUT (Antenna Under Test) to the
measurement probe. This is not an easy task especially when
anechoic chamber is to eliminate the reflected field components
multiple reflectors are present in the measurement site close to
emanating from the measurement enclosures so that the mea-
the direct path. The matrix pencil method essentially achieves
sured radiation pattern corresponds to the case when similar
similar goals as the FFT-based method but requires less band-
data can be generated for the antenna in free space condi-
width [2]–[4]. B. Fourestie et al. modeled the measured signal
tions. The reduction of reflected signal can be accomplished
using the Matrix Pencil method and detected resonances in ane-
using appropriate absorbing materials. However, the cost of
choic chambers.
a good anechoic chamber is proportional to the quality of the
P. S. H. Leather and D. Parson described a method to deter-
absorbers used for the construction of the chamber. Hence, on
mine an angle by angle equalization of the non-anechoic en-
a fixed budget it is not possible to have a high quality anechoic
vironment where an antenna is to be tested [5]. But there was
chamber.
neither detailed mathematical formulation supporting the theory
The radiation patterns measured in reverberant or semi-ane-
nor examples.
choic chambers, or even open-area test sites, thus provides a
The purpose of this paper is, as opposed to what has
viable alternative. However, presence of undesired components
been stated in some papers [6], to show that a deconvolu-
will result in inaccuracies in the measured patterns.
tion-based technique is feasible for reflection compensation
in non-anechoic measurements. Other researchers have pre-
Manuscript received October 19, 2010; revised April 04, 2011; accepted July sented techniques of accounting for room scattering in the
02, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
frequency-domain using a test zone field (TZF) compensation
J. Koh is with the Engineering Research Institute, Gyeongsang National Uni- method [6]–[10]. The single-frequency techniques compensate
versity, Jinju 660-701, Korea (e-mail: jikoh@ gnu.ac.kr). for any reflected fields entering the test zone where the AUT
A. De, T. K. Sarkar, H. Moon, and W. Zhao are with Syracuse University,
Syracuse, NY 13214 USA (e-mail: tksarkar@syr.edu).
is located. The proposed approach is computationally more
M. Salazar-Palma is with the Department of Signal Theory and Communica- efficient than the TZF method as the proposed method is a
tions, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés-Madrid 28903, Spain (e-mail: deconvolution based technique. It has been claimed in [6] that
salazar@tsc.uc3m.es).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
a deconvolution based technique may not be the appropriate
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. approach to compensate for the reflections in a non-anechoic
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173117 environment. However, here we illustrate that a deconvolution

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

822
Fig. 1. Multiple reflections of the signal back to the probe.
based method is indeed feasible as the fields are obtained by
convolving the current with the Green’s function [11].
In this paper, we introduce the concept of an impulse response
both in the time and angular domain of the non-anechoic mea-
surement environment. By now performing a deconvolution of
the beam pattern in the angular domain using the beam pattern
of a calibrated device followed by a second deconvolution in
the time domain, one may provide an estimate of the pattern
in an anechoic environment. As shown in Fig. 1, the beam pat-
tern at azimuth angle experiences reflection from Object 1
and Object 2 located in the far-field of the antenna (assumed
for simplicity in the explanation), and multiple reflections be-
tween the two objects. This process can be characterized in the
time domain by an impulse response and will be a unique fea-
ture with respect to every angle . Therefore the non-anechoic
environment can be modeled by a set of impulse responses in
the time domain as a function of the spatial angles. These re-
sponses can easily be estimated by performing deconvolutions
from first carrying out measurements in the environment of in-
terest using two antennas whose ideal patterns are known. Once
we get an estimate of the reference impulse response in time
and angular domains, we can apply the reference responses to
estimate patterns in anechoic environment of the antenna of in-
terest by carrying out measurements in the same non-anechoic
environment.
Section II describes the method used to obtain the data. In
Section III the classical FFT-based method to process the data
is reviewed. In Section IV the new methodology is proposed
for a single frequency of operation and numerical examples are
presented in Section V followed by conclusions.
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE SYSTEM
All the simulations presented in this paper have been carried
out using a spherical-range measurement system without probe
compensation as shown in Fig. 2. The probe and the AUT are
separated from each other by 2 m for the entire series of simu-
lations. The azimuth angle of the AUT was varied from
to 90 with a 5 step. A full-wave Method of Moments based
EM software [12] was used to compute the various electro-
magnetic interactions. The frequency under consideration was
varied from 6 GHz to 12 GHz with a step of 0.05 GHz, to char-
acterize the impulse response of the non-anechoic environment.
A metal plate 0.5 m 0.2 m in size centered with respect to
the probe and the AUT was introduced in the far-field of the
measurement environment. This plate will introduce additional
contributions due to the reflected and diffracted components of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 2. Antenna measurement system with the reflecting plate (AUT is a helical
antenna, probing antenna is a horn antenna).
Fig. 3. Dimensions of the horn antenna (PROBE).
the fields in the measurements. This plate is located at a distance
of 0.5 m from the line of sight between the AUT and the mea-
surement probe.
First we carry out the simulation of this non-anechoic envi-
ronment using a transmitter/receiver system whose character-
istics we know under ideal conditions. The transmitting and re-
ceiving antennas we consider to be standard gain horn antennas,
whose dimensions are shown in Fig. 3. The feeding probe of
length 9.4 mm and diameter 1 mm is located at a distance of
7.5 mm from the end wall of the horn. We measure
between these two known horn antennas in the non-anechoic
environment. We then introduce the AUT, which is a helical an-
tenna, to be characterized. The dimensions of the helical antenna
are shown in Fig. 4. The helical antenna is fed at the junction
of the wire helix and the backing metal plate. The diameter of
the wire constituting the helix is 1 mm and it is backed by a
finite circular PEC backplane. The simulation was carried out
in the frequency domain, by measuring of this trans-
mitter/receiver system which consists of the helical and the horn
antenna. We generated 2 sets of data. One set of data was gener-
ated without the metal plate shown in Fig. 2, the same as would
occur in a true anechoic condition called the reference data. The
other data was generated with the presence of the metal plate.
Because of the presence of the metal plate, the measured radia-
tion pattern differs from the true one. The problem of interest is
whether one can do some post-processing to recover the original
radiation pattern from the measured one in the non-anechoic en-
vironment.
III. PROCESSING USING THE CLASSICAL FFT-BASED METHOD
It is apparent that in an ideal situation, the unique path that ex-
ists between the AUT and the probe is the direct path of propaga-
tion. The channel in the frequency domain is then characterized
by a constant amplitude response, independent of the frequency
and with a linear phase. However, the above is not true anymore
when multi-paths are present due to the metal plate, indicating
KOH et al.: FREE SPACE RADIATION PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION FROM NON-ANECHOIC MEASUREMENTS 823

Fig. 4. Dimensions of the helical Antenna (AUT). Fig. 5. between the helical antenna and the probe.

the influence of the echo contributions both in the amplitude and

phase of the antenna response. The main idea of the FFT-based
method is that there would not be any desired direct path con-
tribution after some time duration. This time duration can be
calculated based on the shortest path from the AUT to the probe
in the presence of the reflector. This has been described in de-
tail in [1]. Here, the various steps of the FFT-based method are
summarized for convenience:
1) Measure the coherent (amplitude/phase) frequency re-
sponse covering the bandwidth of 6 GHz to 12 GHz, i.e.,
between the two antennas in the presence of
the metal plate as shown in Fig. 2. The dimensions of the
AUT and the probing antenna are described by Figs. 3 and
4 respectively. The various reflected and diffracted fields
for the non-anechoic condition are primarily located in the
region covering azimuth angles ranging from . Fig. 6. Time domain response of Fig. 5 using the FFT-based method.
2) Apply the Inverse FFT with respect to the frequency to
, which is shown in Fig. 5, to obtain the temporal
response as shown in Fig. 6.
3) Once in the time domain, the direct ray contribution be-
tween the transmitting and the receiving antenna is approx-
imately retained and the unwanted signals can be approx-
imately gated by truncating the waveform beyond a time
interval of 7.45 nsec as illustrated in Fig. 7. The problem
with the FFT-based method is that there is no clear demar-
cation between the direct path and the reflected rays when
the bandwidth used in the measurement is small. In addi-
tion one needs to have an estimate of this delay time. This
implies that the environment of measurement is known in
detail. Fig. 7. The shortest path would be 2.2361 m which is equivalent to 7.45 nsec.
4) Upon transforming the truncated temporal data to the fre-
quency domain by applying the FFT, one obtains the pro-
cessed frequency domain response as illustrated A problem with the FFT-based method is that one needs to
in Fig. 8. When compared with Fig. 5, one can observe determine the time delay which is the minimum travel time of
that most of the reflected and diffracted fields in the az- the beam from AUT to the probe via the reflector. This is not an
imuth angle range of have been reduced. The easy task especially when multiple paths are present.
amplitude and the phase of the proposed pattern will be Because of the decimation of the data in the time domain, the
described and discussed later in comparison with the pro- reconstructed pattern sometimes has less power than the orig-
posed method. inal signal. An additional normalization process should be ap-
824 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 8. Magnitude response of the helical antenna in the frequency domain for
Fig. 9. Reference of the horn without a reflector.
the FFT-based method.

plied to reduce this problem. The determination of this normal-

izing factor is a problem by itself. Furthermore, the quality of
the result depends on the available bandwidth of the measure-
ment system. For these reasons, we introduce a new method as
described next.

IV. PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION USING THE IMPULSE

RESPONSE CONCEPT
Here, we consider an AUT which can generate a very sharp
pencil beam. As shown in Fig. 1, the beam at angle experi-
ences reflection from Object 1 and Object 2, and multiple reflec-
tions from the two objects. Note that we assume the objects do
not change in time (time invariant). The receiving time domain
signal at the probing antenna, when the AUT is at an angle of
, is unique with respect to the other angles and will not be re-
lated to the response of AUT at . Therefore the time domain Fig. 10. of the horn in presence of the reflector.
response at angle can be described as an impulse response at
or a spatial signature of .
impulse response of the environment with ob-
The measured signal at the probing antenna along with the
jects present when the AUT has a pencil beam pointing
corrupting reflections can be represented as a convolution in
along the angle ,
time with the ideal signal without any reflection and the impulse
frequency domain response of the environ-
response of the AUT at an angle of can be written as
ment with objects present when the AUT has a pencil beam
(1) pointing along the angle .
Note that represents the contribution from the reflec-
or tive stationary environments along the angle independent of
the particular AUT.
(2) In a real situation, the AUT would have a non-ideal beam
pattern which may not be as sharp as a pencil beam. We define
where denotes a time convolution, and
the impulse response of the environment with respect to such
time domain signal at the probing an-
a non-ideal beam pattern of the AUT along the angle , as
tenna from the AUT in the presence of reflections for the
. Then using (2) we have
angle ,
frequency domain signal at the (3)
probing antenna from the AUT in the presence of reflec-
tions for the angle , Here, = frequency domain response with a non-ideal
ideal time domain signal without any re- beam pattern of the AUT at the angle of .
flection from the AUT for the angle , Now, contains information of the beam pattern of
ideal frequency domain signal without any the AUT (here the reference antenna) as well as the spatial sig-
reflection from the AUT for the angle , nature characterizing the environment along . We need the
KOH et al.: FREE SPACE RADIATION PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION FROM NON-ANECHOIC MEASUREMENTS 825

Fig. 12. in dB scale.

Fig. 11. (a) of the horn in dB scale at 9 GHz. (b) Phase of

of horn in radian at 9 GHz. Fig. 13. in dB scale.

impulse response, , which is independent of the beam Thus the impulse response can easily be calculated by
pattern of the AUT. The impulse response with the non-ideal taking the Inverse Fourier Transform of (6). Once is
beam pattern of the AUT can be considered as a convolution in calculated from a reference measurement, the ideal beam pat-
the angular domain of the normalized beam pattern and the true tern, can be obtained for any antenna measured in
impulse response when the AUT has the ideal pencil beam. That the same environment, using (6).
is, Observe that (6) can also be applied at a single frequency.
The FFT based approaches and its variants require broadband
(4) characterization while the present method requires a single fre-
quency measurement, and is independent of the bandwidth of
Here, is the ideal signal without any reflection from the measurement.
the environment at the frequency , and is the convolution The steps of the proposed method are summarized as follows:
operator in the angular domain. Therefore, the beam pattern of i) Measure the reference antenna response,
the AUT in the presence of reflections can be considered as a in an environment with reflection. Also obtain the refer-
convolution in the angular domain of the beam pattern of the ence antenna response .
AUT and the impulse response of the environment. ii) Calculate using (6).
Using (3) and (4) we have iii) Measure the AUT response in the same non-anechoic en-
vironment as described in step (i). Let be the
(5) result.
iv) Obtain the ideal response of AUT, ,
For a general angle of , we have through deconvolution using

(6)
826
Fig. 14. in dB scale at 9 GHz.
Fig. 15. of the helical antenna without a reflector.
In the next section, we simulate three antenna responses, a horn
antenna, a helical antenna, and a Yagi antenna, in the frequency
and angle domains. The response of the horn antenna was set to
be the reference response. We tried to recover the beam pattern
of the helical antenna and the Yagi antenna from the antenna
responses corrupted by the presence of the reflectors.
V. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
Several assumptions are made for the numerical simulations:
i) There is only one signal source which is from the AUT.
ii) The reflectors (environment) do not vary with time.
iii) We only consider 2D pattern measurements (azimuth
angle only, not elevation angle), even though the numer-
ical calculations have been done in 3D.
Under these assumptions, we build an antenna simulation
system as shown in Fig. 2 with the AUT being a horn antenna
instead of a helix. Thus, we use a horn antenna as a reference,
which has a wide radiation pattern, described in Fig. 4, both as
a probe as well as an AUT. The distance between the AUT and
the probing antenna was 2 m. The azimuth angle of the AUT
was varied from 90 to 90 with a step of 5 . We calculate
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 16. (a) Amplitude pattern of the helical antenna in dB scale at 7 GHz.
(b) Phase of helical antenna in radian at 7 GHz.
, of the probing antenna in frequency domain without
any reflector. The frequency response from 6 GHz to 12 GHz
with a step of 0.05 GHz, generates 121 data points. Therefore,
the center frequency corresponds to the measurement at the
frequency of interest of 9 GHz. We have 37 by 121 data points
for the horn as the first reference data. Fig. 9 shows the contour
plot of , without the reflector. Fig. 10 shows the con-
tour plot in the presence of reflected echoes. Fig. 11(a) and (b)
are the comparison of the magnitude and phase of , at
the center frequency of 9 GHz with and without the reflector.
The red-line termed non-ideal is the result in the presence of
the echoes. One can observe that between the angles of 30 to
70 there is a large difference due to the reflection from the
reflector. Magnitude of calculated from (6) is shown in
Fig. 12. The difference is not limited to the 22 34 regions,
which is due to the wide beam pattern of the AUT. If we use
a very narrow pencil beam, the range of angle will be reduced
to 22 34 . Using the deconvolution equation (6), which can
eliminate the effect of the beam pattern, we can get an estimate
of the impulse response from . Fig. 13 represents the
KOH et al.: FREE SPACE RADIATION PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION FROM NON-ANECHOIC MEASUREMENTS
Fig. 17. (a) Amplitude pattern of helical antenna in dB scale at 8.6 GHz.
(b) Phase of helical antenna in radian at 8.6 GHz.
plot of . One can observe that some responses occur
between the angles of 22 34 where the reflector exists.
Fig. 14 is the magnitude of when the frequency is
9 GHz. The deep null is caused by the interference between
the direct wave and the large reflections occurring between
22 34 .
Once the impulse response is obtained, one can apply
this to estimate the pattern of a different antenna in a similar
environment. First, we use a helical antenna as shown in Fig. 4
as an AUT in the antenna measurement system of Fig. 2. Figs. 15
and 5 are the magnitude of at the probe without the
reflector and with the reflector, respectively.
We want to reconstruct the pattern from the data with the
reflector using two approaches: the FFT-based method and
the proposed impulse response-based method. It is important
to point out that the FFT-based method requires data over a
sizeable bandwidth. The proposed method can be implemented
at a single frequency, however we have also applied it over
a frequency band as used in the FFT-based method so that
we can compare the performances between the two methods.
Fig. 6 corresponds to the time domain response of Fig. 5.
827
Fig. 18. Estimate of the reconstruction error for the helix in frequency.
Fig. 19. Antenna measurement system with the reflector (AUT is a Yagi an-
tenna, probing antenna is a horn antenna).
Figs. 16 and 17 plot the comparisons for the various methods
and the reference pattern. Fig. 16(a) represents the magnitude
of the reconstructions at 7 GHz. The proposed method gives
almost identical results to the reference pattern. The FFT-based
method has less power than the others because it decimates the
signal in the time domain. Fig. 16(b) shows the comparison of
the corresponding phases. Fig. 17(a) represents the magnitude
of the reconstructions at 8.6 GHz and both the proposed method
and the FFT-based method give acceptable results. Fig. 17(b)
provides the corresponding phase comparison. It is important to
note that the FFT-based method requires additional information
about the first reflection in the time domain and so one has
to know the placement of the reflectors, whereas this method
does require a non-parametric description of the environment
through the impulse response.
Fig. 18 represents the error in the reconstruction of the two
methods with respect to the frequency. The error is defined by:
(7)
where represents the ideal pattern of the AUT and
represents the processed pattern of AUT. The pro-
posed method performs better than the FFT-based method in
most of the frequency regions.
828 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 20. Dimension of the Yagi antenna (AUT).

Fig. 22. of the Yagi antenna with a reflector.

Fig. 21. of the Yagi antenna without a reflector.

The second example to be considered is a Yagi antenna. The

Yagi antenna has the center frequency of operation at 9 GHz.
Fig. 19 describes the antenna measurement system. Fig. 20
shows the dimensions of the Yagi antenna. The six-element
Yagi antenna consists of one reflector, a feed-element and 4
equi-spaced directors. They are made of PEC wires of diameter
1 mm. The Yagi is center fed at the feed element. The probing
antenna is a horn as shown in Fig. 3. Figs. 21 and 22 are the
magnitude of at the probe without the reflector and
with the reflector, respectively.
We want to reconstruct the ideal pattern from the data with
the reflector using both the FFT-based method and the proposed
impulse response-based method. Fig. 23(a) compares the mag-
nitudes of the reconstructions at 9 GHz. The proposed method
gives good results to the reference pattern. Fig. 23(b) is the com-
parison of their corresponding phases. Fig. 24 represents the
error in the reconstruction of the two methods with respect to the
frequency. The proposed method outperforms the FFT-based Fig. 23. (a) Amplitude pattern of the Yagi antenna in dB scale at 9 GHz.
(b) Phase of the Yagi antenna in dB scale at 9 GHz.
method at most of the frequency bands.
For a more realistic example, we put 4 PEC walls surrounding
the measurement setup as shown in Fig. 25 to introduce more The wall is located 1.25 m away from AUT. The azimuth angle
reflections. The AUT is a helical antenna described in Fig. 4. of the AUT was varied from 180 to 180 with a step of
KOH et al.: FREE SPACE RADIATION PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION FROM NON-ANECHOIC MEASUREMENTS
Fig. 24. Estimate of the reconstruction error for the Yagi antenna in frequency.
Fig. 25. Antenna measurement system with the 4 metal reflecting walls (AUT
is a helical antenna to the right, probing antenna is a horn antenna to the left).
1 . The frequency response at 7 GHz generates 361 data points.
Fig. 26(a) compares the magnitudes of the reconstructions at
7 GHz. The proposed method gives reasonable results to the
reference pattern. It is important to note that in the back lobe of
the actual signal, the true response is 15 dB lower than the non-
ideal one. Fig. 26(b) is the comparison of their corresponding
phases. The proposed method generates acceptable results even
though there exist multiple reflections.
VI. CONCLUSION
The objective of this paper is to investigate a deconvolu-
tion methodology which can extract approximate results from
non-anechoic measurements. Using the concept of an impulse
response both in time and angular domains, the non-anechoic
environment has been successfully described and has a better
performance than the FFT-based methods. However, as illus-
trated, the proposed method can also be applied at a single
frequency. Simulated data has been used to illustrate the ap-
plicability of this new methodology and its improved per-
formance over the conventional FFT-based methods in the
presence of multiple reflections. Work is in progress to apply
the proposed method to 3D measurements, where deconvo-
lution needs to be carried out simultaneously in azimuth and
elevation angles.
829
Fig. 26. (a) Amplitude pattern of the helical antenna in dB scale at 7 GHz. (b)
Phase of the helical antenna in radian at 7 GHz.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Grateful acknowledgement is made to all the reviewers, the
associate editor and the editor for suggesting ways to improve
the readability of the manuscript.
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IEEE Press, 2009.
Jinhwan Koh received the B.S. degree in electronics
from Inha University, Incheon, Korea, and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.
He is now a Professor with the Department
of Electronic Engineering, Engineering Research
Institute, Gyeongsang National University, Jinju,
Korea. His current research interests include radar
signal processing and electromagnetic measurement.
Arijit De (S’04) received the B.Tech. degree (with
honors) in electronics and electrical communication
engineering and a minor in computer science and
engineering, from Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, India, in 2004. He is currently working
towards the Ph.D. degree at Syracuse University,
Syracuse, NY.
In Summer 2003, he was a summer intern with
Center of Excellence Embedded DSP, Tata Consul-
tancy Services, where he was involved with the de-
sign and implementation of 802.11g Wireless LAN.
From 2004 to 2005 he was a Research Consultant in the Advanced VLSI De-
sign Lab., IIT Kharagpur, working on development of next generation Analog
CAD tools for National Semiconductor Corporation, Santa Clara. Since 2005,
he has been a Graduate Research Assistant in the Computational Electromag-
netics Group, Syracuse University. His research interests are in the field of
Computational Techniques applied to electromagnetics and signal processing.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kharagpur, India.
Tapan K. Sarkar (F’92) received the B.Tech. degree
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur,
India, in 1969, the M.Sc.E. degree from the Univer-
sity of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, in
1971, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Syracuse
University, Syracuse, NY, in 1975.
From 1975 to 1976, he was with the TACO
Division of the General Instruments Corporation.
He was with the Rochester Institute of Technology,
Rochester, NY, from 1976 to 1985. He was a Re-
search Fellow at the Gordon McKay Laboratory,
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, from 1977 to 1978. He is now a Pro-
fessor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Syracuse
University. His current research interests deal with numerical solutions of
operator equations arising in electromagnetics and signal processing with
application to system design. He has authored or coauthored more than 300
journal articles and numerous conference papers and 32 chapters in books
and 15 books, including his most recent ones, Iterative and Self Adaptive
Finite-Elements in Electromagnetic Modeling (Artech House, 1998), Wavelet
Applications in Electromagnetics and Signal Processing (Artech House, 2002),
Smart Antennas (IEEE Press and Wiley, 2003), History of Wireless (IEEE Press
and Wiley, 2005), Physics of Multiantenna Systems and Broadband Adaptive
Processing (Wiley, 2007), Parallel Solution of Integral Equation-Based EM
Problems in the Frequency Domain (IEEE Press and Wiley, 2009), and Time
and Frequency Domain Solutions of EM Problems Using Integral Equations
and a Hybrid Methodology (IEEE Press and Wiley, 2010).
Dr. Sarkar is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of New York.
He obtained one of the “Best Solution” awards in May 1977 at the Rome Air
Development Center (RADC) Spectral Estimation Workshop. He received
the Best Paper Award of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC
COMPATIBILITY in 1979 and in the 1997 National Radar Conference. He
received the College of Engineering Research Award in 1996 and the Chan-
cellor’s Citation for Excellence in Research in 1998 at Syracuse University.
He was an Associate Editor for feature articles of the IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Society Newsletter (1986–1988), Associate Editor for the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY (1986–1989),
Chairman of the Inter-commission Working Group of International URSI
on Time Domain Metrology (1990–1996), Distinguished Lecturer for the
Antennas and Propagation Society from (2000–2003) and (2011-present),
Member of Antennas and Propagation Society ADCOM (2004–2007), on
the Board of Directors of ACES (2000–2006), Vice President of the Applied
Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES), and a member of the IEEE
Electromagnetics Award board (2004–2007), and an Associate Editor for the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION (2004–2010). He is
also on the editorial board of Digital Signal Processing—A Review Journal,
Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications, and Microwave and
Optical Technology Letters. He is the Chair of the International Conference
Technical Committee of IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society #
1 on Field Theory and Guided Waves. He is listed by ISI among the top 250
of most referenced authors in this field. He received Docteur Honoris Causa
both from Universite Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France in 1998 and
from Politechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2004. He received
the Medal of the Friend of the City of Clermont Ferrand, France, in 2000. His
website is http://lcs.syr.edu/faculty/sarkar/
Hongsik Moon received the B.S. degree from
Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South
Korea, in 2004, and the M.S. degree from Syra-
cuse University, Syracuse, NY, in 2007, both in
electronics and electrical engineering, where he is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree..
Since 2006, he has been a Graduate Research As-
sistant in the Computational Electromagnetics Group
at Syracuse University. His research interests are in
UWB sensors, scattering scenes and computational
electromagnetic.
Weixin Zhao was born in Wuxi, China. He received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and infor-
mation science from the University of Science and
Technology of China, Hefei, China, in 2007. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering at Syracuse Uni-
versity, Syracuse, NY.
He has been a Research Assistant at Syracuse Uni-
versity since 2007. His current research interest is an-
tenna design and optimization.
Magdalena Salazar-Palma (SM’01) was born in
Granada, Spain. She received the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in Ingeniero de Telecomunicación (Elec-
trical and Electronic Engineer) from the Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain.
She has been Profesor Colaborador and Profesor
Titular de Universidad at the Department of Signals,
Systems and Radiocommunications, UPM. Since
2004, she is with the Department of Signal Theory
and Communications (TSC), College of Engineering,
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Spain,
where she is Full Professor, Co-Director of the Radiofrequency Research Group
and served for three years as Chairperson of the TSC Department. She has
been member of numerous University Committees, both at UPM and UC3M.
She has developed her research in the areas of electromagnetic field theory;
advanced computational and numerical methods for microwave and millimeter
KOH et al.: FREE SPACE RADIATION PATTERN RECONSTRUCTION FROM NON-ANECHOIC MEASUREMENTS
wave passive components and antennas analysis and design; advanced network
and filter theory and design; antenna arrays design and smart antennas; use
of novel materials and metamaterials for the implementation of devices and
antennas with improved performance (multiband, miniaturization, and so
on) for the new generation of communication systems; design, simulation,
optimization, implementation, and measurement of microwave circuits both
in waveguide and integrated (hybrid and monolithic) technologies; millimeter,
submillimeter and THz frequency bands technologies; and history of telecom-
munications. She has authored a total of 490 scientific publications: six books
and 23 contributions (chapters or articles) for books published by international
editorial companies, 13 contributions for academic books and notes, 62 papers
in scientific journals, 234 papers in international conferences, symposiums,
and workshops, 71 papers in national conferences and 81 project reports, short
course notes, and other publications. She has coauthored two European and
USA patents which have been extended to other countries and several software
packages for the analysis and design of microwave and millimeter wave passive
components, antennas and antenna arrays, as well as computer aided design
(CAD) of advanced filters and multiplexers for space applications which are
been used by multinational companies. She has delivered numerous invited
presentations and seminars. She has lectured in more than 50 short courses,
some of them in the frame of Programs of the European Community and others
in conjunction with IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers)
International AP-S (Antennas and Propagation Society) Symposium and IEEE
MTT-S (Microwave Theory and Techniques Society) Symposium and others
IEEE Symposia. She has participated at different levels (principal investigator
or researcher) in a total of 81 research projects and contracts, financed by
international, European, and national institutions and companies, among them:
the National Science Foundation, USA; the European Office of Aerospace
Research and Development of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (one
of the Air Force Research Laboratory Directorates), USA; the European Union;
Spain Inter-ministry Commission of Science and Technology (CICYT), Spain
831
Ministry of Education and Culture, Spain Ministry of Science and Innovation,
and Council of Education of the Regional Government of Madrid.
Prof. Salazar-Palma is a Registered Engineer in Spain. She has received two
individual research awards. She has assisted the Spain National Agency of Eval-
uation and Prospective and the Spain CICYT in the evaluation of projects, re-
search grants applications, and so on. She is member of the Accreditation Com-
mittee of Full Professors in the field of Engineering and Architecture of the
Spanish Agency of Quality Evaluation and Accreditation (ANECA). She has
also served on several evaluation panels of the Commission of the European
Communities. She has been a member of the editorial board of three scientific
journals. She has been associated editor of several scientific journals, among
them, the European Microwave Association Proceedings and IEEE ANTENNAS
AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS. She has been a member of the Tech-
nical Program Committees of many international and national symposiums and
reviewer for different international scientific journals, symposiums, and edito-
rial companies. Since 1989, she has served IEEE under different volunteer po-
sitions: Vice Chairperson and Chairperson of IEEE Spain Section AP-S/MTT-S
Joint Chapter, President of IEEE Spain Section, Membership Development Of-
ficer of IEEE Spain Section, member of IEEE Region 8 Committee, member
of IEEE Region 8 Nominations and Appointments Subcommittee, Chairperson
of IEEE Region 8 Conference Coordination Subcommittee, member of IEEE
Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee, liaison between IEEE WIE Com-
mittee and IEEE Regional Activities Board, Chairperson of IEEE WIE Com-
mittee, member of IEEE Ethics and Member Conduct Committee, member of
IEEE History Committee, member of IEEE MGAB (Member and Geographic
Activities Board) Geographic Unit Operations Support Committee, and member
of IEEE AP-S Administrative Committee. Presently she is serving as member
of IEEE Spain Section Executive Committee (officer for Professional Develop-
ment), member of IEEE MTT-S Subcommittee # 15, and member of IEEE AP-S
Transnational Committee. In December 2009 she was elected 2011 President of
IEEE AP-S Society, acting as Vice President during 2010.
832 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Electric Field Amplification inside a Porous Spherical

Cavity Resonator Excited by an External Plane Wave
Paul A. Bernhardt, Fellow, IEEE, and Richard F. Fernsler

Abstract—A spherical polyhedron constructed from open sur- TABLE I

face polygons is an electromagnetic wave resonator that can be SPHERICAL CAVITY RESONATOR MODES
excited by an external plane wave. The resonant frequencies of
the porous sphere depend on the radius of the sphere and the
area of the openings in the surface of the sphere. The strength of
the internal electric fields varies with the width of the conducting
edges that comprise the polyhedron frame. At the optimum edge
width, the external EM wave field excites the strongest internal
field amplitudes. The WIPL-D EM simulation model is used to
determine the optimum porous resonator for polyhedrons with
180 and 960 vertices. All of the cavity modes for a solid spherical
cavity resonator can be excited in the porous spherical cavity most frequencies; (2) greatly reduced backscatter at selected fre-
resonator (PSCR). With a high resonator Q, an EM plane-wave of quencies from cancellation of the incident and reflected waves;
1 V/m can excite an internal electric field of over 1000 V/m that and (3) excitation of large internal electric fields at resonant fre-
takes finite time for fields to build up. The spherical cavity modes
provide a variety of electric field distributions at the interior of
quencies. The spherical polyhedron mesh, which behaves as a
the PSCR. The PSCR may be used to greatly increase the electric high-Q cavity resonator, can produce localized high power elec-
fields of a high power radio beam in order to produce isolated tric fields when the sphere is imbedded in an external plane
plasma clouds by neutral gas breakdown. wave. Under suitable conditions, the porous spherical cavity
Index Terms—Externally excited spherical resonant cavity, gas resonator (PSCR) can lead to the breakdown of a neutral gas
breakdown, large electric fields. inside the sphere, thereby generating localized plasma clouds
and the emission of light.
The theory of spherical cavity resonators formed by a hollow
I. INTRODUCTION inside a conducting metal block is well known [3], [4]. For an
infinite conducting shell around a spherical region of radius ,
the resonant oscillations are determined for the magnetic (trans-

A large spherical polyhedron with open polygon surfaces

has been examined by Bernhardt et al. [1], [2] for use
as an HF radar calibration satellite. The radius of this sphere
verse electric or TE) and electric (transverse magnetic or TM)
modes, respectively, from the equations

was 5-m and the number of vertices on the polyhedron ranged

from 60 to 1900. The polyhedron surface is composed of poly- (1)
gons, edges, and vertices. The general formula for the number
of vertices in a polyhedron is where where is the wave number in the cavity with
u and v are integers. The number of edges is . dielectric constants and , is the resonant frequency,
Each polyhedron has 12 pentagons and hexagons the prime is the derivative with respect to , and is the
[1]. In this paper, the resonant properties of a 5-m radius sphere spherical Bessel function. The index “s” denotes which zero is
are examined for polyhedrons with 180 and found for the solution to (1).
960 vertices. The properties for other sized spher- The modes are designated by and where the
ical polyhedra can be obtained by scaling the frequencies with indices (s, m, n) denote the variations in the spherical r, , co-
the inverse of the sphere radius. The electromagnetic properties ordinates, r is radius from the center of the sphere, is the az-
of a spherical conducting polyhedron are determined by waves imuth angle from the x-coordinate and is the meridian angle
external and internal to the spherical conductive mesh. The in- from the z-coordinate. The lowest order solutions to (1) are
ternal wave is excited by an incident plane wave impinging on given in Table I. Also listed are the resonant frequencies for a
the sphere. Interactions between the external and internal waves spherical vacuum cavity with a radius . All EM com-
yield: (1) enhanced radar scatter relative to a solid sphere for putations are based on this radius and the resonant frequencies
for other diameter spheres can be scaled by the inverse of the
cavity radius.
Manuscript received January 01, 2011; revised June 15, 2011; accepted July Spherical cavity resonators require excitation through a hole
21, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February in the side of the cavity. Coupling to the cavity through this
03, 2012. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research.
hole may involve: (1) a conducting probe or loop fed by a trans-
The authors are with the Plasma Physics Division, Naval Research Labora-
tory, Washington, DC 20375 USA (e-mail: paul.bernhardt@nrl.navy.mil). mission line; (2) a pulsating electron beam passing through the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173132 gap in the resonator; or (3) attachment of a waveguide to the

U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright.

BERNHARDT AND FERNSLER: ELECTRIC FIELD AMPLIFICATION INSIDE A PSCR EXCITED BY AN EXTERNAL PLANE WAVE 833

hole. The orientation of the internal electric field patterns is de-

termined by the excitation process. The porous cavity resonator
uses a regular pattern of holes in the surface of the sphere for
both excitation and observations. An external plane wave enters
the sphere through the surface mesh and any optical emissions
may be imaged by light passing through the holes. The excita-
tion process is examined in the next section.

II. MODELING OF THE POROUS CAVITY RESONATOR

A. Computing the Near Electric and Magnetic Fields

To compute the fields inside the spherical polyhedron mesh,
the method-of-moments solution of the electric field integral
equations is solved for a conducting structure. The polyhedron
sphere is designed in Mathematica V7.0 using the geometric
algorithm described by Bernhardt et al. [1], [2]. The nodes
and wire map is imported into WIPL-D [5] as a three dimen-
sional object with constant radius, conducting edges. At each
frequency of a range of frequencies, the electric and magnetic
fields are computed in a plane containing the electromagnetic
wave normal and one of the orthogonal axes. The magnitude
of the peak electric field is computed from the complex electric
field vector by
(2)
With this definition, the peak magnitudes of either linearly or
circularly polarized electric fields are correctly computed for all
linear or circular polarized plane waves. Both perfect electrical
conductor (PEC) and finite electrical conductor materials are
considered for the polyhedron edges.
The numerical computations are sorted by largest electric
field amplitudes. With a fixed edge radius, the peak electric
field amplitudes are found at discrete resonant-mode frequen-
cies. The size of the polygons in the surface mesh was chosen
to be much smaller than the radio wavelength. A 960 vertex
polyhedron sphere (V960) with 10 mm radius edges and 5 m
internal radius was found to have sufficient surface tessellation
to have a radar cross section (RCS) that is almost independent
of orientation for frequencies up to 60 MHz [1], [2]. In all test
cases, the spherical mesh is excited by a unit amplitude wave
with right-hand circular polarization (RHCP).
B. Tuning the Openings in the Sphere for Maximum Resonance
Electric Fields
Adjusting both the radii of the edges and the transmitted fre-
quency provides an optimization of the cavity resonance. Using
a 1 V/m RHCP wave, the magnitude of the internal electric fields
is computed numerically using WIPL-D. Fig. 1 illustrates the
effects of increasing the edge radius and reducing the size of
the openings into the sphere for a polyhedron with 180 vertices
(V180). The rotational orientation of the V180 polyhedron has
negligible influence on the RCS up to 36 MHz [2]. The reso-
nant frequency for each edge radius is defined as the frequency
that produces the maximum internal electric field. The optimum
Fig. 1. V180 polyhedron sphere used as a porous cavity resonator with an ex-
ternal plane wave with right-hand-circular polarization and wave amplitude of 1
V/m. The mechanical diagram overlay shows that the conducting edges confine
the internal electric fields and control the resonant mode dimensions.
porous cavity resonator mode frequency, , is the resonant
frequency that produces the largest overall internal electric field.
The excitation of the porous cavity resonator with an external
plane wave involves leakage of the external field into the interior
and leakage of the internally excited field to the exterior. If the
edge radius is too small (Fig. 1(a)), the spherical resonator is not
able to prevent the internal fields from passing through the mesh
and the internal electric fields are small. If the edge radius is too
large as in Fig. 1(c), the incident plane wave cannot efficiently
couple through the surface mesh to excite the interior.
The optimum design for the like-mode (Fig. 1(b))
has the most efficient excitation of the internal electromagnetic
wave and the minimum loss through the surface. In this case, the
maximum internal electric field is 82 V/m. This mode will be
designated as for the porous spherical cavity resonator
(Fig. 1(b)) because it is related in both frequency and electric
field pattern to the same mode for the spherical cavity.
The influence of edge radius and EM excitation frequency is
further illustrated in Fig. 2. The goal of the adjustments is to
yield maximum internal electric field (Fig. 2(a) peak). Precise
construction of the sphere is required to obtain large internal
electric fields. The maximum internal field drops by a factor of
two if the edge radius differs from the optimum value by 0.8
mm (0.36%). As the edge radius is increased, the resonant fre-
quency is also increased, ultimately approaching the spherical
cavity limit (Fig. 2(b)). The location of the maximum electric
field shifts from the near side through the center at resonance
to the far side of the sphere (Fig. 2(c)). Once the edges are ad-
justed for optimum resonance, the Q of the porous cavity sphere
is large (Fig. 2(d)) and an external wave with 1 V/m is amplified
to an internal field greater than 1000 V/m
The electric field patterns in the lowest frequency PSCR
modes excited by a circularly polarized plane wave are shown
in Fig. 3 for spherical meshes with 960 vertices (V960). The
TM101, TM103, TM201, and TE101 mode patterns resemble
the corresponding spherical modes for a solid cavity [3]. The
differences in the cases of the TM102 and TE102 modes result
from a breaking of the meridian plane symmetry present in the
834
Fig. 2. Edge and frequency tuning of the TM101 porous cavity resonator. The optimum edge radius is 225 mm for this mode.
Fig. 3. Electric field magnitudes of the first 6 modes in the externally excited
porous cavity resonator with 960 vertices and optimized edge radii.
spherical cavity modes but not in the externally driven porous
cavity modes.
Other modes of V180 and V960 PCSRs were investigated
with a combination of Mathematica V7.0 and WIPL-D to find
optimum designs and maximum internal electric fields. In each
case, the resonant frequency for the PSCR was slightly less than
that of the spherical cavity resonator. The electric field patterns
were similar for both spherical cavities, but the PSCR had spa-
tial modes that extended outside the surface of the sphere. This
increase in mode size or wavelength is responsible for the de-
crease in the corresponding resonant mode frequency. Leakage
of radiated fields outside the spherical mesh also limits the max-
imum Q of the resonator.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
The mechanical and electrical design parameters for these
spheres are given in Table II. The wave-number times radius
product in each case is smaller than the corresponding mode
values in Table I for a solid-shell, spherical cavity resonator.
The wavelength for the porous resonant cavity mode is slightly
larger than the wavelength for the solid spherical resonators be-
cause of leakage of the electric fields through the porous surface.
The cavity-mode frequencies for the V180 PCSR are always
lower than the frequencies for the V960 conducting polygon.
The optimum edge radius is roughly one-fifth to one-fourth the
edge length. The fraction of non-conducting, free-space surface
on each sphere is then about 50 to 60 percent of the total surface
area.
The electric and magnetic fields for a high order (TM104)
mode are illustrated in Fig. 4(a). The electric fields are confined
by the mesh boundary but significant E and H fields leak to
the exterior of the sphere. The high order meridian modes have
weak fields in the center of the sphere and large fields near the
surface.
The previous calculations of the internal electric fields were
made assuming that the edges of the polyhedron sphere have in-
finite conductivity. In practice, the actual edges are metallic and
the tangential electric field along these edges is not zero. The
computed Q is the resonant curve frequency width at one-half
peak amplitude divided by the resonant frequency. Using the
method of moments code technique with conductivities of
representative of aluminum, only small changes in the
Q of the resonators or of the strength of the internal electric
fields are found (Fig. 4(b)). The results of the simulations hold
up using the WIPL-D model for a wide range of surface conduc-
tivities. With a highly conductive surface, the Q of the porous
BERNHARDT AND FERNSLER: ELECTRIC FIELD AMPLIFICATION INSIDE A PSCR EXCITED BY AN EXTERNAL PLANE WAVE
TABLE II
5-METER CAVITY RESONANCES: V180 AND V960 SPHERES
Fig. 4. Computed electric and magnetic fields for the TM104 mode of the ex-
ternally excited spherical mesh resonator (a) excited by a circularly polarized
wave. The computed peak internal electric fields (b) are only slightly affected
using a metallic conductor such as aluminum (red curve) instead of an idealized
PEC material (blue curve).
resonator is primarily determined by the wave leakage through
the polygon holes in the surface of the conducting spherical
shell.
III. ELECTRIC FIELDS IN THE POROUS CAVITY RESONATOR
The structure of the internal electric fields is governed by
the cavity mode and the polarization of the external driving
wave. The spherical cavity modes for the lowest azimuthal order
have an axis of symmetry. Inside the porous cavity,
this axis is defined by the direction of electric or magnetic field
for a linearly polarized pump wave. Circular or elliptical po-
larization can be decomposed into two orthogonal linearly po-
larized waves with a 90 degree phase shift as given by
where and are real electric field amplitudes
for a wave propagating in the x-coordinate direction. The in-
ternal electric field for a combination of linearly polarized plane
waves is the sum of the natural modes associated with each
linear polarization. The internal electric field modes will be il-
lustrated for the polyhedrons listed in Table II. The magnitude
of the internal electric fields may differ from those computed in
835
Fig. 5. The PSCR is excited along the -x axis shown in green and with linear
(red) or circularly polarized (red and blue) electric field vectors. TM101 mode
excited inside a V960 polyhedron by a 1 V/m plane wave at 25.595 MHz prop-
agating along the -x direction with linear polarization along the (a) y-axis, (b)
the z-axis, and with (c) circular polarization. In all cases, the maximum fields
are located at the center of the 5-m radius sphere. Each electric field magnitude
contour is shown at 70% of the maximum internal electric field.
the previous sections depending on the how close the selected
frequency is to the resonance for each mode.
The effects of polarization on the lowest order TM101 mode
are illustrated in Fig. 5 for a V960 polyhedron with 95.9 mm
radius edges. All the driving plane waves propagate along the
minus x-axis toward the origin. The electric fields inside the
sphere form a contour elongated in the direction of the ini-
tial linear polarization, which is either along the y-axis vector
(Fig. 5(a)) or the z-axis vector (Fig. 5(b)). The induced elec-
tric field forms a spheroid that is rotationally symmetric around
each axis centered at the origin. A circular polarized wave pro-
duces a flattened spheroid that is rotationally symmetric around
the x-axis (Fig. 5(c)). The strength of the internal electric fields
is about the same for all three cases.
The next example is the TM102 mode excited inside a V960
polyhedron with 103.9 mm radius edges. An external linear po-
larization excites a 2 2 matrix of maxima in the plane of the
incident electric field (Fig. 6(a) and (b)). The conducting mesh
836 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. TM102 mode excited inside a V960 polyhedron by a 1 V/m plane wave
at 36.617 MHz propagating along the -x direction with linear polarization along
the (a) y-axis, (b) the z-axis, and with (c) circular polarization. For plane wave
excitation (a and b), the electric field maxima are located at the four vertices of a
rectangle in the plane of the incident electric field. The electric field magnitude
contour is shown at 70% of the maximum internal electric field.
Fig. 7. TE101 mode excited inside a V960 polyhedron by a 1 V/m plane wave
at 42.539 MHz propagating along the -x direction with linear polarization along
the (a) y-axis, (b) the z-axis, and with (c) circular polarization. For excitation by
linear polarization (a and b), the maximum electric fields are located in a ring
around an axis through the center of sphere perpendicular to both the wave-
normal direction and the direction of the incident electric field. For excitation
by a circularly polarized wave, maximum electric fields are found on a spherical
shell centered inside the spherical cavity. The electric field magnitude contour
is shown at 70% of the maximum internal electric field.
modulates the electric fields on the boundary of the polyhe-
dron sphere. The electric field contour for the RHCP excitation
(Fig. 6(c)) shows two rings around the wave-normal axis. The
electric fields interact with the mesh through a radial electric
field component near the spherical mesh surface. As the orien-
tation of the V960 polyhedron is changed relative to the incident
wave direction, the internal electric field amplitudes vary by as
much as 30%, but the basic shape of the structures is maintained.
The higher order polygons like the V960 in Fig. 5 are less sen-
sitive to changes in orientation than the lower order polygons
such as the V180 in Fig. 1. The effect of orientation is most pro-
nounced for electric fields near the surface of the polyhedron.
The transverse electric (TE) modes produce electric fields
that are isolated from the surrounding spherical mesh. The
simplest TE101 mode forms an electric field ring aligned with
the electric field vector for incident plane wave excitation
(Fig. 7(a) and (b)). With a circularly polarized pump wave, the
rings are combined into a shell with a local minimum in electric
field at the center of the V960 mesh.
The next highest order transverse electric field mode (TE102)
yields four local maxima when excited by a linearly polarized
wave (Fig. 8(a) and (b)). These electric field structures are elon-
gated along the coordinate direction of the incident electric field
and form a ring around the center of the sphere. A circular polar-
ized wave causes these structures to combine into a ring around
Fig. 8. TE102 mode excited by a wave at 54.565 MHz propagating along the
-x direction with linear polarization along the (a) y-axis, (b) the z-axis, and with
(c) circular polarization. For excitation by linear polarization (a and b), the max-
imum electric fields are located in four regions. For excitation by a circularly
polarized wave these four regions combine into a ring and two isolated patches
aligned with the incident wave propagation direction. The electric field magni-
tude contour is shown at 70% of the maximum internal electric field.
Fig. 9. TM201 mode excited by a wave at 57.902 MHz propagating along the
-x direction with linear polarization along the (a) y-axis, (b) the z-axis, and with
(c) circular polarization. In all cases, the region of maximum electric fields is
located near the center of the spherical resonator mesh. The electric field mag-
nitude contour is shown at 70% of the maximum internal electric field.
the direction of propagation along with two caps on either side
of the ring (Fig. 8(c)). The composite structure is symmetric
about the incident x-axis.
The last example shows the effects of increasing the order of
the radial variations. The TM201 mode (Fig. 9) resembles the
TM101 mode calculations with the electric fields confined to
a smaller region at the center of the polyhedron. As shown in
Fig. 2, all spherical cavity modes become compressed toward
the center of the sphere as the radial order index “s” is increased.
All of the enhanced electric field patterns take a finite time to
build up inside the porous cavity resonator. This build up time is
the inverse of the resonance band width illustrated in Figs. 2(d)
and 4(b). This time delay is discussed in the next section.
IV. TIME DEPENDENCE FOR EXCITATION
Because of the narrow bandwidth (high-Q) of the PSCR, sub-
stantial time may be required for the generation of the internal
electric fields. As an example, a linearly polarized plane wave
propagating along the -x direction is used to excite a V180
sphere designed for the TM101 mode. The excitation frequency
is at the center of the resonance curve shown
in Fig. 2(d). The half amplitude width of this curve is 1.33 kHz
so the time constant for excitation of the resonator should
be on the order of the inverse of this frequency width or 3/4 ms.
The Fourier transform of the computed frequency response is
used determine the envelope of the resonant oscillations at the
BERNHARDT AND FERNSLER: ELECTRIC FIELD AMPLIFICATION INSIDE A PSCR EXCITED BY AN EXTERNAL PLANE WAVE
Fig. 10. Numerically computed decay response of the V180 sphere with edges
tuned for the TM101 mode.
center of the sphere (Fig. 10). The computed decay time for this
curve is . A symbolic representation of this re-
sponse is
(3)
where is the initial amplitude and U(t) is the unit step at
. The Fourier transform of (5) gives the frequency response
for the resonator as
(4)
This represents a single pole filter for the incident plane waves.
The magnitude of (6) provides an excellent match for computed
frequency responses, such as shown in Figs. 2(d) and 4, of the
PSCR. The decay time constant, , depends how well the poly-
hedron edge radius is tuned for a given cavity mode.
The temporal response of the PSCR to an EM-wave, excita-
tion pulse is computed by multiplying the frequency response of
the TM101 resonator with the Fourier transform of an incident
unit amplitude pulse and then computing the inverse Fourier
transform of this product. The initial pulse waveform and the
resultant envelope of the electric field at the center of the sphere
are illustrated in Fig. 11. The incident pulse is 4.51 ms dura-
tion at a frequency of (Fig. 11(a)). Then as the pulse impacts
the sphere, the internal electric fields grow to 1500 V/m with
a time constant of . After the pulse passes the sphere, the in-
ternal electric fields decay back to zero with the same time con-
stant. The internal wave is a TM101 source field that is approx-
imately isotropic at the center of the sphere. Consequently, the
reradiated wave also tends to be isotropic. The porous spherical
cavity resonator has the remarkable property of radiating a scat-
tered signal long after the incident signal has passed. As a radar
target, the 5-m radius target could resemble a thick object with
a physical size given by where c is the speed
of light.
V. APPLICATIONS FOR GAS BREAKDOWN
Measurements of the internal electric fields are difficult with
probes that can disturb the resonance conditions. However, op-
tical indications of the electric field patterns can be obtained
837
Fig. 11. Time history of the electric field at the center of the V180 sphere tuned
to the TM101 mode. The center of incident pulse (a) intersects the center of the
sphere at . The build-up and decay of the internal electric fields occurs
with a computed time constant of 0.4157 ms. Thus, the PSCR is unusual as both
a device to amplify electric fields and as an extremely high Q radar target.
using glowing gas discharges. The strength of the electric fields
can be estimated from the intensity and locations of the glow
patterns.
Breakdown of gases to form plasma clouds occurs when the
electric field of a wave becomes sufficiently strong to cause an
electron avalanche [6]. In discharges, electrons are created by
gas ionization and destroyed by processes like attachment, re-
combination and diffusion. Breakdown occurs when the ioniza-
tion rate exceeds the total destruction rate. Since the ionization
rate depends far more strongly on the electron temperature
than does the destruction rate, breakdown usually occurs once
exceeds a well-defined threshold. The threshold temperature
in air, for example, is 1.8 eV, nearly independent of experimental
conditions.
The electron temperature is determined by a balance between
electron heating from the applied fields and electron cooling
from inelastic collisions (ionization, excitation, etc.). Like the
ionization rate, the cooling rate is a strong function of ,
whereas the heating rate is determined by the time-average of
; here is the applied electric field and is the elec-
tron velocity. Temporal oscillations in produce a magnetic
field, but that field has little effect on the heating rate to order
. Of greater importance is a strong DC magnetic field
transverse to .
To illustrate, assume is along the x-direction and is along
the y-direction. The equations of motion along the x and z di-
rections are then given by
(5)
and
(6)
respectively. Here is the electron-neutral collision frequency
and is the (fixed) electron cyclotron frequency. If
oscillates at frequency (7) and (8) reduce to
(7)
838 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

and from the high-energy tail of the distribution, and the shape of
the distribution changes somewhat with . Fortunately, those
changes and others are automatically incorporated in the above
(8) model when using swarm data. The momentum-transfer colli-
sion frequency is an exception, however, since it involves an
Accordingly, average over the energy distribution. The method of averaging
depends on the magnitude of relative to and , but because
the collision frequency varies relatively weakly with energy,
(9) the different methods usually give similar values to within 20%
or so. Finally, because the loss rate varies with the experimental
where is the rms electric field and m is the electron mass. conditions, the breakdown strength is not truly constant
The electron temperature is obtained by setting in a given gas. Tabulations of swarm data therefore give the
ionization rate and various loss rates, but not per se.
Nevertheless, experimental values for are easily found
(10) [6], [7], or the values can be computed from the ionization and
where is the gas density and is the reduced collisional loss rates. The values reported for typically vary by less
cooling rate. Similarly , where is the reduced than 10% in a given gas.
electron-neutral collision frequency. varies strongly with , The porous cavity resonator excited by an external electro-
but g varies only as where . The functions magnetic wave provides a new technique for plasma formation.
and can be computed either from first principles (using The intense electric fields reside inside the spherical mesh so
known cross sections) or more easily from swarm data. These an isolated region of plasma will be formed where this field ex-
relationships then give as a function of , , , and ceeds the breakdown field. The TMs01 and all of the TE modes
. produce intense electric fields that do not come in contact with
The behavior of DC discharges is well known from swarm the spherical mesh (Figs. 5, 7, 8 and 9). With such excitation, op-
data in many gases. To utilize this data for RF discharges, use tical displays of glowing plasma with controllable spatial con-
(11) to define an effective electric field, figurations may be produced for viewing through the polygon
holes in the spherical mesh. The sizes of the plasma discharge
clouds are determined by the boundary where the effective elec-
tric field equals the breakdown threshold. According to
(11)
(13), is controlled by adjusting the strengths of the EM
pump wave , the neutral density N, or the magnetic field
Note that when . Similarly, B in the experimental apparatus.
When a high power EM wave is propagated to a high-Q
PSCR, the internal electric fields will build up until a discharge
(12) occurs. If the internal refractive index for the wave is suffi-
if , and ciently changed, the resonance conditions may be disrupted
and the discharge could shut itself off. In addition, the Q of
the system will decrease from the absorption of energy by the
(13) electron collisions in the plasma.
After the breakdown plasma has dissipated, the internal elec-
if . tric field could build up again, triggering another discharge.
The DC breakdown strength is an important discharge This process may repeat as relaxation oscillations. If an equilib-
parameter, and fortunately it is nearly constant for the reasons rium is established with the plasma inside the cavity resonator, a
mentioned earlier. For example, in air , self-sustained discharge may be formed. Gas breakdown within
and at this field strength . Noble gases like argon a PSCR will be addressed with future computational work.
contain few low-lying excited states, so is smaller. Similarly, A single PSCR with fixed edges can be scanned in frequency
is higher in gases like which contain many low-lying to find resonances. The 5-m radius sphere has multiple high-Q
excited states. (The electron attachment rate in SF6 is also much resonances with an edge radius near 89 mm (Table II). The
higher, but this alone does not explain the increase in .) To peak electric field for each mode is dependent on how close
determine the RF electric field needed for breakdown, set the excitation frequency is to the actual resonant frequency.
in (13). The spectrum of peak internal fields (Fig. 12) shows the four
The electron energy distribution is invariably non- strong spherical resonator modes TE101, TE102, TM201, and
Maxwellian when the degree of ionization is low, and therefore TE103 all excited in the same polyhedron. The spectrum also
does not have a unique value or definition. In this work shows three weak modes at 46.75, 56.74, and 66.64 MHz that
is taken to be the characteristic electron energy, a well-defined are predicted by the spherical cavity resonator theory. The in-
experimental parameter in swarm data. Ionization derives only ternal glow structures with the excitation threshold set to 70% of
BERNHARDT AND FERNSLER: ELECTRIC FIELD AMPLIFICATION INSIDE A PSCR EXCITED BY AN EXTERNAL PLANE WAVE
Fig. 12. Computed frequency response and simulated glow patterns inside the
960 vertex polyhedron with a radius of 5 meters and an edge radius of 89 mm.
The excited modes are TE101 at 42.55 MHz with peak field strength of 193
V/m, TE102 at 54.56 MHz with a peak field strength of 212 V/m, TM201 at
57.88 MHz with a peak field strength of 155 V/m and TE103 at 66.15 MHz
with a peak field strength of 193 V/m all driven by a circularly polarized plane
wave with 1 V/m amplitude. The polyhedron mesh is included to illustrate the
optical glow might be viewed from outside the sphere.
the peak field intensities are illustrated by the contour surfaces
in Fig. 12.
Cavity resonators fed by waveguides driven by high power
radio sources have been used to study the effects of pressure on
threshold electric fields for breakdown [7], [8]. Such measure-
ments may also be provided by the PSCR with the added advan-
tage of being able to observe the ionization process from a wide
variety of viewing angles and being able to transport the inter-
nally generated plasma through the mesh of holes in the surface
of the sphere. The magnetic confinement and the stability of iso-
lated plasma clouds can be studied using gas discharges inside
the porous cavity resonator excited by an external EM pump.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In summary, iterative use of Mathematica V7.0 for mechan-
ical structure and WILP-D for electromagnetic fields provides
a powerful tool for simulating the production of large ampli-
tude electric fields inside a porous cavity resonator. The EM
calculations have been tested at NRL by looking for light emis-
sion caused by gas breakdown in the field-enhanced regions
inside the resonator. Argon plasma glow was produced by in-
side at TM101 copper plated PSCR excited by an external elec-
tromagnetic field at 2.45 GHz. The sphere was placed inside a
evacuated chamber with a background argon pressure of 50 mT
and an excitation power of less than 50 W. Without the sphere,
the microwave excitation can be as much as 5 kW without gas
breakdown. The spherical resonator had a measured Q over ,
thereby amplifying the internal electric fields by more than
at the resonant frequency. This test provided strong validation
of the theory in this paper, and other tests are in preparation.
A future experimental paper will provide a complete examina-
tion of the resonant amplifications with a series of porous spher-
ical resonators each designed for a specific cavity mode. The
839
shape of the glow plasma discharge displays will indicate the
excited mode. In addition, a model of gas breakdown is being
constructed which includes the effects of the plasma on the EM
fields. These effects include absorption by the plasma ball to re-
duce the Q of the resonator and changing of the refractive index
inside the sphere to change the resonant frequency.
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[6] H. L. Rowland, R. F. Fernsler, and P. A. Bernhardt, “Breakdown of the
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Paul A. Bernhardt (M’98–SM’01–F’06) received
the B.S. EE degree from the University of California,
Santa Barbara, in 1971, and the M.S. EE and Ph.D.
EE degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA,
in 1972 and 1976, respectively.
He is the Head of the Space Use and Plasma En-
vironment Research Section, Plasma Physics Divi-
sion, Naval Research Laboratory. His primary area of
research is remote sensing of the upper atmosphere
using radio techniques including: (1) computerized
ionospheric tomography (CIT); (2) optical excitation
by high power radio waves; (3) radar diagnostics Space Shuttle engine burns.
He has been Principal Investigator on a number of NASA and DoD sponsored
experiments. His theoretical interests include modeling of non-linear interac-
tions of high-power radio waves in the ionosphere, numerical solutions of par-
tial differential equations for fluids and waves, and reconstruction algorithms
for tomographic imaging. He has published over 120 papers in refereed jour-
nals.
Dr. Bernhardt is past Chairman (1994–1997) for Commission H of the
United States National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science
(URSI), Former Chairman of Subcommission C4/D4 on Active Experiments
of COSPAR Experiments (1998–2004), a member and previous books-board
editor of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Associate Editor for Radio
Science and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).
Richard F. Fernsler graduated from Haverford College, Haverford, PA, in
1966 with a BA in engineering-physics. He received the Ph.D. degree in plasma
physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1976.
He was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Naval Re-
search Laboratory. His principle research areas are plasma sources and plasma
processing, electron beam physics, electrical and laser breakdown, plasma elec-
trodynamics, plasma diagnostics, and air chemistry.
Dr. Fernsler is a member of the American Physical Society and Sigma Xi.
840
A 76 GHz Multi-Layered Phased Array Antenna
Using a Non-Metal Contact Metamaterial Waveguide
Hideki Kirino, Member, IEEE, and Koichi Ogawa, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—A 76 GHz phased array antenna (PAA) using waffle-
iron ridge waveguides with non-metal contacts has been developed.
The non-metal contact technology has the advantage of avoiding
losses due to imperfect metal contacts, and also facilitates the fab-
rication of small-size and multi-layer stacked structures. The prin-
ciple and results of the developed phase shifter, radiator and feed
network are presented. For the feed network, it is shown that the
phase differences between adjacent radiators are the same, which
confirms the validity of the fundamental operation of the PAA. A
PAA combining the feed network and 16 radiators with a size of
62 mm 62 mm 25 mm was realized. The characteristic of the
PAA was evaluated by calculating the directivity using measured
data from the radiator and the feed network. From these consid-
erations, the PAA was found to have the capability of providing a
beam tilt angle of 18 while maintaining a gain of more than 32
dBi.
Index Terms—Antennas, metamaterial, millimetre wave radar,
phased arrays.
I. INTRODUCTION
P REVIOUSLY we have presented a phase shifter, a radiator
and a basic phased array antenna (PAA) using a movable
waffle-iron metal plate [1]–[3] and a waffle-iron ridge wave-
guide (WIRWG) [4], [5]. The WIRWG is categorized as a kind
of “metamaterial” technology, in which an artificial magnetic
wall is formed on the surface of the waveguide.
During the period in which our work was published, P. -S.
Kildal et al. presented a similar structure to the WIRWG, which
they called a “Gap Waveguide”, and for which they evaluated
the dispersion characteristics [6], [7]. Since it is expected that
this newly proposed waveguide will have various derivative ap-
plications, progressive research work undertaken so far has been
presented [8]–[15].
A 76 GHz PAA for use in vehicular radar is one of the unique
applications that utilizes the excellent features of this structure,
for the following reasons. It has been asserted in many papers
[5]–[15] that no metal contact is needed between the upper and
lower conductors in the WIRWG, so that the losses due to im-
perfect metal contacts can be permanently avoided. This advan-
tage implies that the WIRWG has some tolerance to high and
low temperature heat cycles and vibration in long-term vehicle
Manuscript received September 18, 2010; revised April 29, 2011; accepted
July 12, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
H. Kirino is with the Panasonic Healthcare Co., Ltd., Ehime, Japan.
K. Ogawa is with the Toyama University, Toyama, Japan.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173112
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
applications. Moreover a structure with no metal contacts is
suitable for millimetre wave circuits and small-size multi-layer
stacked structures.
To utilize these benefits for vehicular radar, a structure that
is small in size, with an appropriate beam tilt angle and gain
is required. For the realization of such a PAA, the phase dif-
ference between each pair of adjacent radiators should be the
same, which is an unusual condition. This condition is difficult
to realize using a straight-shaped phase shifter as described in
[4], and hence we have proposed a novel structure comprising
a movable waffle-iron metal plate formed in the shape of a cir-
cular disk with phase shifters consisting of concentric arcs [13],
[16].
This paper presents a 76 GHz PAA incorporating a waffle-
iron ridge waveguide. Particular emphasis is placed on detailed
descriptions of the operating principles and the theoretical and
empirical results of the developed phase shifter, radiator and
feed network. For the feed network, it is shown that the phase
differences between all adjacent radiators are identical, which
confirms the validity of the fundamental operation of the PAA.
From the measured phase differences of the feed network and
the measured radiation patterns of the radiator, the overall char-
acteristics of the PAA, such as its beam scanning capabilities
over a specified solid angle in front of a car, are given. Apart
from the input port, which uses a WR10 rectangular waveguide
and a base-plate, the size of the PAA, including a radome, is 62
mm 62 mm 25 mm. With this construction we demonstrate
that the developed PAA has unique features that make it par-
ticularly suitable for vehicular radar applications because of its
well-shaped radiation pattern featuring high directivity.
This paper is organized as follows. First, we explain the con-
figuration and principles of the WIRWG. The basic compo-
nents, including a phase shifter and a radiator, are expanded
on in Section II. The 76 GHz 16-column PAA for vehicular
radar is shown in Section III. Finally, the conclusion is given
in Section IV.
II. BASIC COMPONENTS
A. Waffle-Iron Ridge Waveguide
Fig. 1 shows the structure of the WIRWG. As described in
[5]–[15], the structure contains waffle-iron conductor rods that
are a quarter-wavelength in height, which allows the top sur-
faces of the rods to form an Equivalent Magnetic Boundary
(EMB). Since there is no electric field normal to the EMB,
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE
Fig. 1. Structure of the WIRWG.
Fig. 2. Current distribution on the WIRWG.
Fig. 3. Dispersion diagram of the WIRWG for L2 = g=4.
the transverse electromagnetic (TEM) mode propagating be-
tween the parallel metal plates is suppressed. On the ridge, how-
ever, the condition for the electric boundary is satisfied, so that
electromagnetic waves propagating between the ridge and the
upper metal plate are excited, resulting in the whole structure
becoming a practical waveguide.
Fig. 2 shows the current component in the z-direction of the
coordinate system shown in Fig. 1 for different groove depths
L1 beside the ridge. As shown in the figure, the distance between
the wave-tops of the current on the ridge, which is equal to the
wavelength of the WIRWG, becomes shorter when the depth
L1 is increased from 1/4 to 3/8 of the wavelength in free space.
This means that the relationship between L1 and the wavelength
is similar to that between the height of the ridge and the wave-
length in an ordinary ridge waveguide, shown in the diagram on
the right hand side of Fig. 3.
The wavelength of the WIRWG can be obtained from the
phase difference between the transmission waves arising on two
waveguides of different length, which can be calculated from an
EM-simulator [17], [18]. Fig. 3 shows the dispersion diagram of
the WIRWG as a function of wave number. The parameters in
841
Fig. 3 are chosen to be the depth of the grooves when the surface
of the ridge is at the same height as the tops of the waffle-iron
conductor rods.
It is found from Fig. 3 that the relationship between the
groove depth and the wavelength is similar to that of an or-
dinary ridge waveguide when the structure of the WIRWG is
replaced with that of an ordinary ridge waveguide as illustrated
on the right hand side of Fig. 3, resulting in a similar shape for
the dispersion curves in each case. This fact is supported by
the following considerations; from the dispersion curves shown
in Fig. 3 and the fact that no tangential electrical fields exist
in the small gap that separates the electrical walls between the
upper conductor and the ridge, it is suggested that, in the case
of the WIRWG, the energy propagating along the waveguide
is carried mainly by the TE wave. It should be noted, however,
that there is no cut-off phenomenon in the case of the WIRWG
as observed in a usual metal waveguide supporting the TE
mode, since at low frequencies, transmission waves spread out
in two-dimensions due to the inability of the conductor rods to
confine the electromagnetic energy to the ridge region.
Hereinafter in this paper, the structural parameters are chosen
such that , and , where
is the wavelength at 76.5 GHz. Under these conditions, the
wavelength of the WIRWG is calculated to be .
B. Fundamental Characteristics of the Waveguide
As shown in Fig. 1, the WIRWG has a number of waffle-iron
rods that form a discontinuous and periodic structure. This
might be the cause of fluctuations in transmission factors, such
as changes in the phase constant. A smooth change in the phase
constant is one of the essential requirements for realizing a
phase shifter, as will be mentioned in Section II, and thus,
before applying the waveguide to actual components, the effect
of discontinuities in the waveguide on phase change should be
clarified.
Fig. 4 shows the simulated results of the phase change caused
by a two-way transmission reflected by a short-circuit wall,
where all the metal parts in the simulation model are set to
be Perfect Electrical Conductors (PEC). A schematic diagram
depicting the simulation model is shown in the figure. In Fig. 4,
L3 depicted at the input port is the lateral length measured from
the side wall to the centre of the gap between the ridge and
the waffle-iron rods. L3 is selected to be a quarter-wavelength
in order to minimize the matching condition of the input port.
Adopting this port configuration, a matching condition of less
than for the frequency band to 1.15 was
achieved.
As shown in Fig. 4, when the position of the short-circuit wall
moves from 0.625 to 1.125, which are the values normalized to
, the phase of the reflected wave changes without significant
fluctuations. This result means that the WIRWG can be used
as an ordinary waveguide such as a rectangular waveguide or a
micro-strip-line with a uniform phase constant independent of
the position of the periodic structure.
842
Fig. 4. Phase change caused by two-way transmission reflected by a short-cir-
cuit wall.
Fig. 5. Calculated loss characteristics of the WIRWG at 76.5 GHz.
Fig. 5 shows the calculated transmission loss characteristics
of a WIRWG with the configuration at the input port shown in
Fig. 4, which keeps the matching condition to less than . We now give an explanation of the steps that are required to
As shown in Fig. 5, the transmission losses for the typical metals
copper and aluminium, whose conductivities are 5.8
and 3.8 , are calculated to be around 0.01 dB/mm. The
actual transmission loss can be measured from the phase shifter,
and this is described in Section II-C.
Fig. 6 shows the calculated isolation characteristics of a
WIRWG arranged in a parallel configuration. As shown in the
figure, a pair of WIRWGs are isolated using several lines of
waffle-iron rods, where the number of lines is indicated by N.
The isolation is defined as the ratio of the energy of the escaped
wave to that of the incident wave in the TEM field on the ridge,
where the direction of the incident wave is normal to the ridge
as shown in the figure on the right hand side of Fig. 5. It can
be seen from the figure that if the desirable isolation is defined
as the number of lines that gives an isolation of for
, for , for , and
for , a bandwidth of to 1.1 can be obtained.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
C. Phase Shifter
Fig. 7 shows the structure of the phase shifter. Fig. 7(a) shows
the fundamental configuration, which includes the input and
output ports on the upper and lower metal plates. For port A
on the upper metal plate, there is a plurality of short-ended
choke holes with a depth of a quarter-wavelength separated by a
quarter-wavelength from the port-edge. The input impedance of
the short-ended choke holes is equivalent to an open-circuit, so
that the edge of port A is equivalent to a short-circuit, whereas
for port B on the lower metal plate, there is an open ended
quarter-wavelength choke ridge with a plurality of waffle-iron
rods. The impedance at the end of the choke ridge is equivalent
to an open-circuit, so that the edge of port B is equivalent to a
short-circuit. Due to the effects of these chokes, the transmis-
sion line between the two ports consequently becomes a single
line without any branches. Therefore, the phase of this transmis-
sion line can be varied by changing the distance between the two
ports by sliding the two plates relative to each other.
Fig. 7(b) shows a more practical version of the phase shifter.
This practical phase shifter has two fundamental phase shifters
with their backs mounted together, which creates a new structure
with a mid-plate placed in between the two plates. This struc-
ture permits the mid-plate to slide between the two plates while
fixing the position of the two input ports A and A’, creating a
so-called ’trombone shaped phase shifter’, which yields double
phase changes with respect to the fundamental configuration. In
Fig. 7(b), L is the distance between port A (A’) and port B (B’),
in which when the inner edges of the two ports coincide
with each other; L is used as a variable in the horizontal axes in
Figs. 11–13.
Figs. 8 and 9 show the configurations and calculated matching
characteristics of the port. The best way to widen the frequency
characteristics of the input impedance matching of the phase
shifter is to minimize the individual port-matching of ports A
and B, because the conjugate matching condition is not stable
when the distance between the two ports varies.
widen the matching of each port. Fig. 8(a)–(d) show the steps
needed to improve the matching of port A. Fig. 8(a) shows a
cross-sectional view of a suitable initial structure, since this
structure has a similar field distribution to the WIRWG. Fig. 8(b)
shows an improved version, in which the fields connect gradu-
ally to both WIRWGs in opposite directions beyond the ports.
Fig. 8(c) shows a further-improved version, in which the inner
corners are rounded accommodating the shaven form of the
milling process. Fig. 8(d) shows the final configuration, in which
some depth and width have been added in order to widen the
bandwidth.
Fig. 8(e) and (f) show the steps used to improve the matching
of port B. Fig. 8(e) shows a shape employing an ordinary right-
angled corner. Fig. 8(f) shows an improved version, in which
one corner is cut in a stair-like structure to widen the bandwidth.
Fig. 9 shows the improvements in the characteristics as a result
of implementing the above modifications. It can be seen from
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE 843

Fig. 6. Calculated isolation of the WIRWG as a function of the number of lines of rods.

Fig. 7. Structure of the phase shifter.

Fig. 10. Photograph of the phase shifter.

Fig. 8. Modification of the port configuration to improve the impedance

matching.
Fig. 9. Calculated matching characteristics of the ports.
the figure that bandwidths of 3.9 GHz for port A and 5.2 GHz
for port B are obtained for a reflection coefficient of
Fig. 10 shows a photograph of the developed phase shifter
with the structure shown in Fig. 7(b) and the optimized port
configuration shown in Fig. 8. Figs. 11–13 show the measured
phase change, the insertion loss and the impedance character-
istics. As can be seen in the figures, the phase shifter exhibits
phase changes of more than 1800 and an insertion loss of less
than 1.5 dB at 76 GHz when the mid-plate moves by 12 mm.
Impedance characteristics of less than are obtained be-
tween 75 and 76.5 GHz.
As can be seen from Figs. 12 and 13, the insertion loss and
impedance characteristics have the best performance at 75 GHz,
which is slightly lower than the target frequency of 76.5 GHz. A
possible reason for this result is due to the automatic and coarse
meshing functions of the FDTD-based EM-simulator used in
the simulation, since it is well known that an appreciable dis-
. crepancy for the optimized frequency might occur due to the
844
Fig. 11. Measured phase change of the phase shifter.
Fig. 12. Measured insertion loss of the phase shifter.
Fig. 13. Measured impedance characteristics of the phase shifter.
meshing function. The verification of this assumption and opti-
mization of the port configuration are left for our future work.
The actual transmission loss can be measured from Fig. 12.
However, there are some ripples in the insertion loss in Fig. 12
which are caused by multi-reflection effects due to impedance
mismatching at both ends of the WIRWG. The insertion loss
is considered to be the sum of the mismatch at the ports, con-
ductor losses, and the energy loss due to leakage of EM-waves
out of the waveguide passing though the waffle-iron rods. Since
the loss due to mismatching is constant, the total loss is pro-
portional to the length of the transmission line. Therefore, the
average gradient of the insertion loss indicates the sum of the
conductor and leakage losses in the transmission line. The actual
transmission loss for aluminium at 76.5 GHz is calculated from
the average gradient indicated by the dashed line in Fig. 12. The
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 14. Structure of the radiator.
Fig. 15. Photograph of the radiator.
average gradient is found to be 0.25 dB/12 mm, giving a trans-
mission loss of 0.02 dB/mm.
D. Radiator
Fig. 14 shows the structure of the radiator. Fig. 15 shows a
photograph of the developed radiator. The actual PAA for ve-
hicular radars has plural vertical radiators aligned in columns
in order to sharpen the beam width in the vertical direction for
beam scanning operation. Conventional slot arrays often adopt
a feed network creating a travelling wave along the waveguide
[19]. In this paper, however, a guided feed based on a resonant
transmission line with both terminals open ended, creating a
standing wave in the waveguide, is employed. Furthermore, res-
onant slots inclined by 45 are located at the position of max-
imum current density of the standing wave as shown in Fig. 14.
On the feed line employing standing waves, all of the slots
are excited in phase with the same magnitude, because the slots
cut current of the same phase and magnitude at the position of
maximum current on the transmission line. Therefore, the main
beam is directed toward the bore-site direction with no beam
tilt, which is advantageous compared to conventional slot arrays
adopting a feed line of travelling waves, where the phase and
magnitude of the currents are not the same in all positions on
the line, resulting in a tilted beam [19].
Travelling wave feed lines have the advantage that the
impedance bandwidth is wider than that of standing-wave feed
lines because there is no resonant current on the feed structure.
More specifically, the standing wave feed line has a drawback
in that the impedance bandwidth is narrow. However, the
required bandwidth, including guard bands for vehicular radar
at 76 GHz, is as small as 1.3%, which is much smaller than
the calculated bandwidth of 3.9% for a criterion of
reflection coefficient when using the radiator shown in Fig. 14.
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE 845

Fig. 16. Gain of a single slot with a DR as a function of the height of the DR.

In Fig. 14, the length of the WIRWG is and the number

of slots is 10. As described in Section II-A, the wavelength on
the WIRWG is longer than that in free space. Furthermore, the
spacing between the slots is equal to the wavelength on the
WIRWG, enforcing the in-phase excitation of a standing wave.
These features mean that the spacing between the slots is longer
than the wavelength in free space. Hence, grating lobes of a sig-
nificant level can be created over an angular range of . In
order to suppress these grating lobes and to increase the main
lobe intensity, a dielectric rod (DR) is loaded above the slots
[20], [21]. The DR is fabricated as an integral part of the radome,
which facilitates the assembly of the PAA.
Fig. 16 shows the calculated gain of a single slot loaded with
a DR as a function of the height of the DR. A plan view and a
cross-sectional view of the DR are illustrated on the right hand
side of Fig. 16. The dimensions of the DR in the plan view, D
and W, and the angle of the DR, , are fixed to be 1.2 mm,
2.4 mm and 45 respectively. As shown in Fig. 16, the gain Fig. 17. Calculated directivity of the radiator as a function of DR shape.
of a single slot changes when the height of the DR changes
[20]–[22]. In order that the total antenna thickness is not too
large, an appropriate value for the height, , of the DR is 4 mm, DR, , up to 3.5 mm (not shown in the figure), but does not show
since any increase in gain is substantially saturated beyond this an appreciable change beyond that value, which agrees with the
value. analytical results for a single slot shown in Fig. 16. From these
Fig. 17 shows the calculated directivities Gmax, the 1st side considerations, the size of the DR was chosen to be W 2.0 mm
lobe levels L1 and the grating lobe levels Lg of the radiator D 2.0 mm H 4.0 mm.
shown in Fig. 14 for different DR geometries, where all the To confirm proper excitation in the feed line when using
metal parts in the simulation model are set to be PECs and standing waves, a near-field measurement was conducted using
the loss tangent of the DR is set to be zero. In Fig. 17, the a waveguide proving method. Fig. 18 shows the phase and
upper figure shows the directivity under the condition that magnitude of the fields picked up by a waveguide probe located
, and , whereas the lower table 2 mm above a slot without the DR. It can be seen from the
shows the results for various combinations of different DR pa- figure that the deviations in phase and magnitude are less than 7
rameters. The figure shows that changes in D and W have a dB and 70 respectively, indicating that standing wave feeding
greater effect on L1 and Lg than on Gmax. It is also found from is properly realized with some deviation. A study on the reason
Fig. 17 that the maximum Gmax, and the minimum L1 and Lg for the deviation is left for future work.
are obtained with , and . Fig. 19 shows the radiation patterns measured in an anechoic
However, under these conditions, adjacent DRs overlap each chamber. Fig. 19(a) shows the radiation pattern for the co-polar
other, and thus it is impossible to place DRs using these geo- component in the zx-plane with and without the DR. As can be
metrical parameters. Taking these geometrical restrictions into seen from the figure, enhancement of the main lobe level and
consideration, a possible and practical configuration that pro- suppression of the grating lobe level are achieved due to the
vides the maximum Gmax, and the minimum L1 and Lg was presence of the DR. The main lobe, the grating lobe, and the
determined to be , and . Fur- 1st side lobe level with respect to the main lobe are found to be
thermore, Gmax increases in accordance with the height of the 22.6 dBi, and respectively.
846 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 19(b) shows the radiation patterns for the co-polar com-
ponent in the yz-plane with and without the DR. As can be seen
in the figure, the DR is effective in increasing the gain in the bore
site direction. The figure also indicates that the DR unexpect-
edly increases the gain in the directions. This phenom-
enon may be due to the effect of the radome and investigation
of this is left for further studies.
Fig. 19(c) shows the radiation patterns for the cross-polar
component in the zx-plane with and without the DR. Com-
paring the main lobe level achieved in Fig. 19(c) with those
in Fig. 19(a) and (b), the cross-polar discrimination is found
to be more than 20 dB and the DR does not affect this value.
Fig. 18. Measured phase and magnitude of the fields above the slot without a
DR using a near-field measurement.
Furthermore, it shows that the DR causes little deterioration of
the grating lobes.
It should be noted from Fig. 19(a) that the first side lobe level
is with respect to the main lobe indicating that each
slot is excited at the same magnitude. Furthermore, Fig. 19(a)
shows that the main lobe is directed in the bore-sight direction,
meaning that each slot is excited in phase. It is confirmed from
these results that a feeding method to create standing waves was
successfully realized.
In vehicular radar applications, all instances of unexpected
lobes must be adequately suppressed over the entire angular
region corresponding to the requirement of particular radar
systems. However, this observation is difficult to achieve from
evaluations using ordinary principal cut-plane measurements
(which are commonly executed in an anechoic chamber) such
as the measured data shown in Fig. 19. Hence, we have at-
tempted to obtain a three-dimensional radiation pattern over a
hemispherical region in front of the car by employing a Fourier
transformation of the fields measured by near-field probes on
the plane 5 mm above the surface of the radome.
Fig. 20 shows a three-dimensional picture of the radiation pat-
tern for the radiator with a radome. Fig. 20 indicates that there
are no undesirable lobes in the hemispherical region, suggesting
that the developed antenna can be successfully used for vehic-
ular radar applications.

III. APPLICATION TO A 76 GHZ 16-COLUMN PAA

A. Overall Structure of Feed Network and PAA

Fig. 21 shows the complete structure of a 16-column PAA that
uses WIRWGs for all the components, including the divider,
the phase shifter and the radiator. As shown in the figure, the
PAA has one radome with DRs, five fixed conductor plates #1
to #5 and one rotational plate. All components are formed using
WIRWGs between each of the conductor plates. The DRs are an
integral part of the radome, and they are fabricated simultane-
ously. This structure improves the accuracy of locating the DRs
with respect to the slots fabricated on plate #1, and facilitates
the assembly of the PAA. The functional block comprising the
divider and the phase shifter is hereinafter called the “PAA feed
network”.
Fig. 19. Measured radiation patterns of the radiator at 76.5 GHz. (a) zx plane
(co-polar) (b) yz plane (co-polar) (b) yz plane (co-polar).
The signal applied to the antenna port is guided up to the
radiator though the WIRWGs and via-holes fabricated on each
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE
Fig. 20. Radiation pattern calculated from measured near-field data.
Fig. 21. Overall Structure of the 16-Column PAA.
plate. The structure of the via-holes is similar to that of the port
depicted in Fig. 7(b). The PAA feed network divides the signal
into 16 fragments and controls the phases to realize a 16-column
PAA. To fold a complicated feed network into a smaller size, the
signal path is designed to pass along the route shown in Fig. 21;
in such a way that the signal passes through each phase shifter
three times. Signal turnarounds, for example, are achieved by
passing through the via-hole on plate #3, the WIRWG in Di-
vider2 and the via-hole on plate #3 again.
B. Principle
The principle of operation is explained in the following.
As shown in Fig. 21, there are plural concentric shaped phase
shifters on both sides of the rotational plate. With this config-
uration, the length of the transmission line between the input
and the output ports of the phase shifter is proportional to the
angle of rotation of the rotational plate and the radial position
of the phase shifter. In other words, the phase changes between
847
Fig. 22. Cross-sectional view of the phase shifter.
signals passing through different phase shifters are proportional
to each radius of the phase shifter. This suggests that if all
adjoining phase shifters have the same difference in radius, the
signals delivered to all adjacent columns of the radiators also
have the same difference in phase change.
However, in an actual feed network in the PAA, the phase
shifter cannot be located at the centre of the rotational plate be-
cause the socket of the motor shaft occupies that space. This re-
striction causes a problem in that the phase changes between all
the adjacent columns of the radiator are not the same. To solve
this problem, three types of phase shifters are employed in the
actual feed network in the PAA. The solution is described in de-
tail with reference to Figs. 22–24 in the following.
Fig. 22 shows a cross-sectional view of the phase shifter on
a rotational plate fabricated on two fixed plates #3 and #4 in
a concentric configuration. Fig. 22(a) shows the first type of
phase shifter, where ’R’ denotes the radial position of the phase
shifter and denotes the rotation angle of the rotational plate.
The second type of phase shifter, which is not shown in the
figure, is symmetrical to the one shown in Fig. 22(a). The first
and second types of phase shifters cause phase changes with
opposite signs to each other when the rotational plate rotates
in the same direction. Fig. 22(b) shows the third type of phase
848
Fig. 23. Allocation of the phase shifters on the rotational plate.
Fig. 24. Connections between the phase shifters.
shifter, which has no phase change when the rotational plate is
rotating.
Fig. 23 is an allocation diagram of the phase shifters on the ro-
tational plate, in which the dividers and the radiators are shown
together. As shown in the figure, there are hairpin and crank-
shaped bold lines that indicate the three types of phase shifter
corresponding to the phase shifters illustrated in Fig. 22. In
Fig. 23, the thin dashed lines indicate Divider 1 and the thin
solid lines indicate Divider 2, which are shown in Fig. 21. The
detailed arrangement of the phase shifters is shown in the inset
in Fig. 23 (which corresponds to half the area covered by the
sixteen symmetrically-arranged phase shifters), where de-
notes the difference in radius between adjacent phase shifters.
Fig. 24 shows the connection diagram for the phase shifters.
The equations printed in the blocks in the figure represent
the phase changes obtained when the rotational plate is turned
clockwise by . The dashed and solid lines indicate Divider
1 and Divider 2 respectively, the same as in Fig. 23. In Fig. 24,
the total phase changes from the input port to each radiator are
calculated by summing the equations in the boxes in each path.
Thus, the phase change differences between adjacent signal
paths are found to be from Fig. 24, and this rule can be
applied to all adjacent paths. Thereby, if the feed network of a
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 25. Layer structure of the feed network.
PAA is designed such that all signal paths are in-phase when
the rotational plate is in the centre position, the signal phase
on each radiator varies in the ratio according to each radiator
position. From this principle, the condition required for the
PAA can be satisfied.
The ratio of the differential phase change between adjacent
paths to the rotation angle of the rotational plate is
(1)
where , and the difference in radii between the
phase shifters is set as shown in Fig. 23. For our application
to vehicular radar, and at 76.5
GHz are chosen. From (1) and given in Section II-A, the
ratio is obtained. The beam tilting angle around the
bore site direction in PAA operation, , is calculated from
(2)
where and is the distance between radiators. In
this paper, and are selected, so that
is obtained from (1) and (2).
In an actual system, it is desirable that the rotational plate ro-
tates in one direction in order to achieve low battery consump-
tion and a high scanning speed, which can be realized by using
a uni-directional motor mounted behind fixed plate #5. In such
a structure, the beam scanning is also uni-directional and inter-
mittent rather than the bidirectional beam scanning realized by
a bidirectional motor.
C. Layer and Port Structure in Feed Network
Fig. 25 shows the layer structure for Divider 1, the Phase
Shifter and Divider 2, depicted in Fig. 21, where the figure
shows a cross sectional view of a typical layer structure focusing
on the port configuration. As shown in Fig. 25, the feed network
has three types of port structure A’’, B’’ and C. Ports A’’ and B’’
are derived from ports A and B in Fig. 7, where the sizes are ad-
justed for packing a number of phase shifters into a limited space
on the rotational plate. Figs. 26 and 27 show detailed diagrams
illustrating the sizes of the ports and the impedance matching
characteristics corresponding to the type of port structure, A’’,
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE
Fig. 26. Port structures of the feed network. (a) Sizes of Port A’’ in Fig. 25. (b)
Sizes of Port B’’ in Fig. 25. (c) Sizes of Port C in Fig. 25.
B’’ or C, shown in Fig. 25, where all metal parts in the simula-
tion model are set to be PECs.
In Fig. 26, the coordinate system agrees with that in Fig. 25.
The plan view is shown at the top of the figure, while the cross
sectional view at the line T-T in the plan view is shown at the
bottom. The units used in Fig. 26 are millimetres. As shown
in Fig. 26, there are some additional shapes and changes from
Fig. 8 for each port to give matching improvement under the
restriction of limited packing space.
It is found from Fig. 27 that types B’’ and C have a wide band-
width for a matching condition, which is sufficient for
849
Fig. 27. Matching characteristics of the ports in Fig. 26.
vehicular radar applications, whereas type A’’ has a narrower
bandwidth, which must be adjusted carefully to the centre fre-
quency of the actual radar system. To accomplish a wider band-
width for type A’’ will be the subject of future work.
D. Other Components of the Feed Network
For the realization of a 16-column PAA, some other com-
ponents such as Branches, Bends and Dividers must be pre-
pared. Fig. 28 shows diagrams in a perspective view illustrating
the structure of a T-Branch, a Bend, a Two-Port Divider, and
a Four-Port Divider, respectively. The figures show additional
shapes for matching with the sizes in millimetres. On the top
right hand sides of Fig. 28(a)–(d), plan views are depicted, and
cross sectional views through the line T-T in the plan views are
shown below these.
Fig. 29 shows the matching characteristics of the components
when all the metal parts in the simulation model are set to be
PECs. As shown in Fig. 29, the Four-Port Divider has a rather
narrow bandwidth for a matching condition that must
be adjusted carefully to the centre frequency in an actual radar
system.
E. Layout of Waveguides
Fig. 30 shows the waveguide layout on plates #3, #4 and the
rotational plate. In Fig. 30(a)–(d) (corresponds to the layouts on
plate #4 facing plate #5, on the rotational plate facing plate #4,
on the rotational plate facing plate #3, and on plate #3 facing
plate #2, respectively, where each figure corresponds to the po-
sition indicated on the right hand side of Fig. 25. As shown in
Fig. 30, a number of WIRWGs are arranged in a confined space,
where the waffle-iron rods between ridges are shared not only
by WIRWGs with a parallel configuration but also WIRWGs lo-
cated on the same radius.
Fig. 30(a) shows the arrangement of each component indi-
cated with dashed lines in Figs. 23 and 24. At the top of the
figure, there is a T-Branch that divides the input signal from
WR10 into two signals, and Bends that change the directions
of the waveguides. In the lower part of the figure, there are
the Four-Port Dividers with Bends that divide the four signals
into sixteen. At the end of each waveguide, a type B’’ port is
850
Fig. 28. Structures of other components. (a) T-Branch. (b) Bend. (c) Two-Port Divider. (d) Four-Port Divider.
Fig. 29. Matching characteristics of the feed network components.
mounted, connecting the layer shown in Fig. 30(a) to the phase
shifter layer shown in Fig. 30(b).
Fig. 30(b) and (c) show the arrangements of the phase shifters
indicated with bold lines in Fig. 23. As shown in Fig. 22, each
phase shifter is configured with a pair of waveguides on each
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
side of the rotational plate, and arranged in the shape of con-
centric arcs. In Fig. 30(b) and (c), Ports A’’ and B’’ shown in
Fig. 25 that correspond to Ports A, A’, B, B’ in Fig. 7(b) are
also mounted.
Fig. 30(d) shows the arrangement of each component indi-
cated by the solid lines shown in Figs. 23 and 24. At the top of
the figure, there are the Two-Port Dividers that divide two sig-
nals into four and the Bends that change the direction of the
waveguides. The bottom of the figure shows the waveguides
that conduct the sixteen signals to each radiator. A type B’’
port is mounted at the end of each waveguide, connecting the
layer shown in Fig. 30(d) to the phase shifter layer shown in
Fig. 30(c), and type C ports are mounted, connecting the layer
shown in Fig. 30(d) to the radiator layer.
As shown in Fig. 30(b) and (c), the phase shifters are designed
using cylindrical coordinates in order to facilitate the concentric
arrangement. Therefore, the port shapes, designed previously
in Section III-C using Cartesian coordinates, were adjusted to
accommodate the cylindrical coordinate axes. This adjustment
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE
Fig. 30. Waveguide layouts on the plates. (a) Waveguide layout on plate #4
facing plate #5. (b) Waveguide layout on the rotational plate facing plate #4. (c)
Waveguide layout on the rotational plate facing plate #3. (d) Waveguide layout
on plate #3 facing plate #2.
also restricts the configuration of port B’’ on the layers in
Fig. 30(a) and (d). As shown in Fig. 30(a) and (d), the configu-
rations are modified under this restriction.
851
Employing cylindrical coordinates for the phase shifters also
affects the shape of the waffle-iron rods at the sides of the ridges.
In particular, when this modification is applied to a number of
parallel ridges, the shape of all the rods must agree with the
radial axes, making the arc length of the rods located in the
outer region too long for a proper transmission factor. In order
to prevent such an undesirable result, the shapes of the rods were
adjusted appropriately based on the sizes described in Fig. 1.
Although those adjustments and approximations mentioned
above can cause perturbations of the centre frequency, re-opti-
mization from the values determined in Sections III-C and III-D
was not undertaken because some robustness in the design of
the proposed PAA can be expected due to its large bandwidth
compared to the system requirements for vehicular radar appli-
cations.
F. Measurement
Fig. 31 shows a photograph of a 16-column PAA including
a radome, while the photograph on the right hand side shows
the components of each plate unmounted. The size of the PAA
without the base plate and the input port using a WR10 rect-
angular waveguide is 62 mm 62 mm 25 mm. Each plate
has the same shape as that shown in Fig. 21. The metal plates
#2, #3 and #4 are formed in aluminium by a milling process,
whereas the metal plates #1 and #5 are formed by an etching
process in 0.5 mm thick stainless-steel of. The reason for using
stainless-steel for plates #1 and #5 is that it is difficult to main-
tain a flat surface with aluminium. However, the metal conduc-
tion losses of stainless-steel are larger than those of aluminium,
which causes a transmission loss in the waveguide and the radi-
ation efficiency of the slot antenna to deteriorate. These failings
might be eliminated by coating the stainless-steel with a high
conductivity metal, such as gold or silver; this, however, is left
for a future study. The radome is fabricated from polypropylene
using a milling process.
Fig. 32 shows the measured phase changes of the feed net-
work. The plots are shown to coincide with the origin when the
rotational plate is located at the centre position. Some irregular
behaviour in the lines is observed. The reason for this phenom-
enon is that the PAA was detached from and re-attached to the
measurement instrument each time the angle of the rotational
plate was changed.
In this measurement, sufficient field intensity was detected on
slots A1 to A4 and A13 to A16 in Figs. 23 and 24, whereas the
field intensity detected for slots A5 to A12 was insufficient to
evaluate the phase change operation. A possible reason for this
phenomenon is that there may be some mismatch in the small
radius region near the centre in the feed network since re-opti-
mization was not undertaken as mentioned in Section III-E.
As the structure of the phase shifter is symmetrical, sym-
metrical characteristics can be anticipated, and thus the phase
changes on slots A1 to A4 were measured and are plotted in
Fig. 32. The figure clearly shows that the phase changes are pro-
portional to the angle of the rotational plate, despite the compli-
852 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 31. Photograph of the 16-Column PAA.
Fig. 32. Measured phase changes of A1-A4 Radiators at 76.5 GHz.
cated signal paths. Furthermore, the slope of each line changes
in accordance with the position of the phase shifter for each radi-
ator. It is confirmed from the measurement that the fundamental
requirement for a PAA, in that the phase change between adja-
cent radiators should be the same, is satisfied.
The ratio defined in (1) is found to be from
Fig. 32, which is in good agreement with the designed value of
. This result suggests that a beam tilt angle of
can be anticipated using the proposed PAA system.
Fig. 33 shows the characteristics of the PAA calculated from
the radiation pattern shown in Fig. 19(b) and the phase changes
in Fig. 32. In the calculation, a value of for radiators
A5 to A12 and A13 to A16 was used under the assumption that
all of the radiating elements work properly.
In Fig. 33, the radiation patterns are plotted when the rota-
tional plate rotates over angles from to 10 . The figure
shows that the peak of the main lobe traces the radiation pat-
tern of the radiator shown in Fig. 19(b) while maintaining a
gain of more than 32 dBi, and changes from to 18 . The
figure also shows that the grating lobes emerging at in-
crease as the main lobe is tilted. This phenomenon can be un-
derstood from the fact that an element spacing of more than half
a wavelength generates grating lobes in this direction, and the el-
ement pattern created by the DR, as mentioned in Section II-D,
does not provide a sufficiently narrow beamwidth to suppress
Fig. 33. Directivity of the PAA calculated from the measured element and array
factors.
the grating lobes. In order to overcome this difficulty, it is nec-
essary to optimize the shape of the DR and the radome, and this
will be left for future work.
IV. CONCLUSION
A 76 GHz multi-layered phased array antenna using non-
metal contact metamaterial waveguides has been presented. The
fundamental characteristics of the waveguide, phase shifter, ra-
diator, and other components, such as a T-Branch, a Bend, a
Two-Port Divider, and a Four-Port Divider, required for con-
structing a 16-column PAA are explained in detail. A descrip-
tion of the layout of the waveguides in the feed network is also
given to illustrate the design details.
The phase shifter demonstrates the low loss characteristics in-
herent in the nature of the WIRWG. Furthermore, good linearity
and a wide range of phase changes are confirmed. The radiator
exhibits a high gain characteristic while suppressing the grating
lobes. The feed network of the 16-column PAA demonstrates
the possibility of achieving the phase change characteristics re-
quired for the PAA. The developed PAA has a beam-tilt angle
KIRINO AND OGAWA: A 76 GHZ MULTI-LAYERED PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA USING A NON-METAL CONTACT METAMATERIAL WAVEGUIDE
estimated at while maintaining a gain greater than 32 dBi,
which is sufficient for vehicular radar applications.
It should be emphasized that a 16-column PAA that includes a
radome was successfully constructed with a size of 62 mm 62
mm 25 mm, demonstrating that a small sized PAA with many
columns of radiators can be realized using WIRWG technology.
The measured results show the excellent features of the pro-
posed structure in the high frequency band at 76 GHz. The
non-metal contact structure of the waveguide ensures high re-
sistance to heat cycling over a wide temperature range and long-
term operation under the severe vibrations that are encountered
in vehicle applications. Furthermore, the simple manufacturing
process is conducive to mass production for consumer use.
As mentioned in [6], [7], all of the field energy exists only in
air. Therefore, it is possible to form the WIRWG using metal
plated resin. This means that much lighter microwave and mil-
limetre wave systems can be constructed using the WIRWG than
those made with conventional hollow waveguides. The WIRWG
is a newly proposed waveguide. Hence there may be various
derivative structures to be considered. It is expected that con-
siderable research will soon advance the WIRWG technology,
which will promote the emergence of new applications.
REFERENCES
[1] H. Kirino, K. Ogawa, and T. Ohno, “A variable phase shifter using
a movable waffle iron metal and its applications to phased array an-
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[2] H. Kirino, K. Ogawa, and T. Ohno, “A variable phase shifter using a
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[3] H. Kirino, K. Ogawa, and T. Ohno, “A variable phase shifter using
movable waffle iron metal plate for applications to vehicle millimeter-
wave radar,” Panasonic Tech. J., vol. 54, no. 2, Jul. 2008.
[4] H. Kirino and K. Ogawa, “A ridge waveguide phase shifter using
waffle-iron structure for a 76 GHz slot array,” in Proc. IEICE General
Conf., Mar. 2009, vol. B-1-94.
[5] H. Kirino and K. Ogawa, “A 76 GHz dielectric loaded slot array an-
tenna fed by a ridge waveguide using waffle-iron structure,” in Proc.
IEICE General Conf., Mar. 2009, vol. B-1-171.
[6] P.-S. Kildal, E. Alfonso, A. Valero, and E. Rajo, “Local metamaterial-
based waveguides in gaps between parallel metal plates,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 84–87, 9, Sep. 2009.
[7] P.-S. Kildal, E. Rajo, E. Alfonso, A. Valero, and A. U. Zaman, “Wide-
band, lowloss, low-cost, quasi-TEM metamaterial-based local waveg-
uides in air gaps between parallel metal plates,” in ICEAA2009, Torino,
Italy, Sep. 2009.
[8] E. Alfonso, M. Baquero, A. Valero-Nogueira, J. I. Herranz, and
P.-S. Kildal, “Power divider in ridge gap waveguide technology,” in
EuCAP2010, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2010, vol. C32P1-2.
[9] M. Bosiljevac, Z. Sipus, and P.-S. Kildal, “Efficient spectral do-
main Green’s function analysis of novel metamaterial bandgap
guiding structures,” in EuCAP2010, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2010, vol.
C32P1-3.
[10] A. Polemi, S. Maci, and P.-S. Kildal, “Approximated closed form
characteristic impedance for the bed of nails-based gap waveguide,”
in EuCAP2010, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2010, vol. C32P1-4.
[11] E. Pucci, A. U. Zaman, E. Rajo-Iglesias, P.-S. Kildal, and A. Kishk,
“Losses in ridge gap waveguide compared with rectangular waveguides
and microstrip transmission lines,” in EuCAP2010, Barcelona, Spain,
Apr. 2010, vol. C32P1-5.
[12] A. Kishk and P.-S. Kildal, “Quasi-TEM H-plane horns with wideband
open hard sidewalls,” in EuCAP2010, Barcelona, Spain, Apr. 2010, vol.
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[13] H. Kirino and K. Ogawa, “A 76 GHz phased array antenna using a
waffle-iron ridge waveguide,” in EuCAP2010, C32P2-2, Barcelona,
Spain, Apr. 2010.
[14] A. U. Zaman, P.-S. Kildal, M. Ferndahl, and A. Kishk, “Validation of
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[15] E. Rajo-Iglesias and P.-S. Kildal, “Groove gap waveguide: A rect-
angular waveguide between contactless metal plates enabled by
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[16] J P. Patent applied 2008, PA2008-277969 (PCT/JP09/005087).
[17] MW-Studio [Online]. Available: http://www.cst.com/
[18] Femtet [Online]. Available: http://www.muratasoftware.com/
[19] K. Sakakibara, J. Hirokawa, M. Ando, and N. Goto, “A linearly-po-
larized slotted waveguide array using reflection-cancelling slot pairs,”
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[20] T. Tsugawa and Y. Sugio, “Experimental study on high efficiency di-
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[21] S. Kobayashi, R. Mittra, and R. Lampe, “Dielectric tapered rod an-
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[22] T. Ohno and K. Ogawa, “A sector array using dielectric loaded an-
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IEICE Trans. Commun., vol. J88-B, no. 9, Sep. 2005.
Hideki Kirino (M’10) was born in Ehime, Japan,
on April 25, 1961. He received the B.S. degrees
in electronic engineering from the University of
Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1985.
In 1985, he joined Panasonic Shikoku Electronic
Co., Ltd., Ehime, Japan, where he has been engaged
in research and development on microwave and mil-
limetre wave devices. From 1988 to 1998, he was the
Research Student in the University of Electro-Com-
munications in order to research the waveguides.
Mr. Kirino received the Paper Award from the In-
ternational Symposium on Antenna and Propagation 2007, and also received the
Best Paper Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communi-
cation Engineers (IEICE) Transactions of Japan, in Sep., 2009, both of which
are based on accomplishments and contributions to the phase shifter and the
phased array antenna technologies.
Koichi Ogawa (M’89–SM’06) was born in Kyoto
on May 28, 1955. He received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in electrical engineering from Shizuoka
University, Shizuoka, Japan, in 1979 and 1981, re-
spectively. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology,
Tokyo, Japan, in 2000.
He joined Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.,
Osaka in 1981. Dr. Ogawa is currently a Professor
of the Toyama University, Toyama, Japan. rom 2003
Dr. Ogawa has been engaged as a Guest Professor at
the Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan. In
2005 he was also a Visiting Professor with the Antennas and Propagation Di-
vision, Department of Communication Technology, Aalborg University, Den-
mark.His research interests include compact antennas, diversity, adaptive, and
MIMO antennas for mobile communication systems, electromagnetic interac-
tion between antennas and the human body. His research also includes mil-
limeter-wave circuitry and other related areas of radio propagation.
He received the OHM Technology Award from the Promotion Foundation
for Electrical Science and Engineering in 1990, based on accomplishments and
contributions to millimeter-wave technologies. He also received the TELECOM
System Technology Award from the Telecommunications Advancement Foun-
dation (TAF) in 2001, based on accomplishments and contributions to portable
handset antenna technologies. He also received the Best Paper Award from the
Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE)
Transactions of Japan, in Sep., 2009. He is listed in Who’s Who in the World.
854 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Beam Switching Reflectarray Monolithically
Integrated With RF MEMS Switches
Omer Bayraktar, Ozlem Aydin Civi, Senior Member, IEEE, and Tayfun Akin, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A reflectarray antenna monolithically integrated with
90 RF MEMS switches has been designed and fabricated to achieve
switching of the main beam. Aperture coupled microstrip patch an-
tenna (ACMPA) elements are used to form a 10 10 element recon-
figurable reflectarray antenna operating at 26.5 GHz. The change
in the progressive phase shift between the elements is obtained by
adjusting the length of the open ended transmission lines in the
elements with the RF MEMS switches. The reconfigurable reflec-
tarray is monolithically fabricated with the RF MEMS switches in
an area of 42.46 cm using an in-house surface micromachining
and wafer bonding process. The measurement results show that
the main beam can be switched between broadside and 40 in the
H-plane at 26.5 GHz.
Index Terms—Reflectarray antennas, reconfigurable antennas,
micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) switches, microstrip
antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
R EFLECTARRAYS are mostly planar printed surfaces
that direct the incident electromagnetic field radiated
from a feed horn antenna to a desired direction. Microstrip
reflectarrays have many advantages compared to parabolic
reflectors and electronically scanned phased array antennas.
Microstrip reflectarrays have lower weight and smaller size
compared to parabolic reflector antennas; furthermore, they
allow electronic beam scanning. Reflectarrays do not contain a
complex feed system as in phased array antennas; they employ
feeding through free space which eliminates the losses of a mi-
crostrip feed network that limits the performance of high-gain
millimeter wave arrays [1].
In reflectarrays, the phase of the reflected field from each
element is adjusted so that the main beam can be directed to
a desired direction. In the literature, there are several config-
urations proposed to control the reflection phase [2], such as
patch antennas with variable-length stubs [3], variable-length
Manuscript received March 19, 2010; revised May 18, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 08, 2011. Date of publication October 20, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Scientific and Tech-
nological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK-EEEAG-104E041), by the
Turkish State Planning Organization (DPT), and by the AMICOM (Advanced
MEMS For RF and Millimeter Wave Communications) Network of Excellence
under the 6th Framework Program of the European Union.
O. Bayraktar and O. Aydin Civi are with the Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06800,
Turkey (e-mail: bomer@metu.edu.tr; ozlem@metu.edu.tr).
T. Akin is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Middle East Technical University, Ankara 06800, Turkey, and also with the
METU-MEMS Center, Ankara 06800, Turkey (e-mail: tayfuna@metu.edu.tr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173099
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
cross dipoles [4], and patch antennas with variable size [5].
Most of the reflectarrays available in the literature have fixed
beams. Recently, there is a growing interest to design and imple-
ment beam steering reflectarrays. The electronically beam scan-
ning reflectarrays are obtained by using reconfigurable compo-
nents and materials to control the reflection phase difference
between the antenna elements, such as tunable dielectrics [6],
[7], varactor diodes [8]–[12], PIN diodes [13], [14], and various
micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) structures (such as
micro-motors), or RF MEMS switches [15], [16], [18]–[26]. In
[6] and [7], the dielectric constant of the nematic liquid crystal
under each patch antenna in the reflectarray is changed by ap-
plying a DC voltage to steer the beam. Although there is no
need for a complex biasing network for such a reflectarray, the
response time of a liquid crystal is very slow, limiting its ap-
plications. The phase of the reflected field can dynamically be
adjusted using semiconductor varactor diodes that are placed in
various configurations, such as to control the slot susceptance
of patches [8], to control the surface impedance [9], to load a
transmission line stub in aperture coupled patches [10], to obtain
capacitive loading of hollow patches [11], and to adjust the res-
onant frequency of microstrip patches [12]. The phase of the re-
flected field can also be adjusted using PIN diodes to control the
length of a short circuited stub [13] or using both varactor and
PIN diodes to change the current distribution on a cross shaped
microstrip loop [14].
Recent reconfigurable reflectarrays [15], [16], [18]–[26],
and lens arrays [27] prefer RF MEMS components (such as
switches, varactors, and phase shifters), since electrostati-
cally actuated RF MEMS components provide almost zero
DC power consumption, low insertion loss, high isolation,
and linear characteristics compared to solid state switches.
Although RF MEMS switches and other components have
drawbacks in terms of reliability and low switching speed, as
presented in a detailed discussion on performance comparison
of different switch technologies in [28], they provide several
advantages in mm-wave reconfigurable array applications. The
most important advantage is that RF MEMS switches and other
components can be easily manufactured monolithically with
antennas on the same substrate. The monolithic integration is
very important in the realization of reconfigurable antenna and
array applications especially at mm-wave frequencies, because
hybrid integration would be very complicated due to the size
limitations at the mm-wave frequencies. Furthermore, losses
increase due to the use of several connecting wire bonds in the
case of hybrid integration.
Most of the MEMS reconfigurable reflectarray studies in the
literature are limited by design and implementation of unit cell
BAYRAKTAR et al.: BEAM SWITCHING REFLECTARRAY MONOLITHICALLY INTEGRATED WITH RF MEMS SWITCHES 855

structures. Some examples of unit cells are a stub loaded patch

antenna rotated by micro-machined motors [16], series of half
dipoles connected to the periphery of a circular metal layer by
means of diodes [17] or MEMS switches [18], [19], split ring
elements with MEMS switches to obtain a phase shift by ro-
tation of elements for circular polarization applications, [20],
variable-length dipoles using electrically [21] or optically [22]
actuated MEMS switches, ring elements loaded with MEMS
capacitors [23], and patches loaded by MEMS varactors [24].
In [24], it has been demonstrated that, by using MEMS varac-
tors instead of semiconductor counterparts to load patches in
[12], losses can be reduced significantly, and nonlinear effects
due to semiconductor diodes can be eliminated. There are a few
monolithically fabricated MEMS reflectarray studies in which
whole reflectarray structures have been designed but their pro-
totypes have been fabricated either without MEMS switches, or
with frozen MEMS switches [25], [26]. To the authors’ knowl-
edge, there are no monolithically integrated MEMS reconfig-
urable reflectarrays presented in the literature. Thus, this study
presents the first monolithically fabricated reconfigurable re-
flectarray employing a large number of functional RF MEMS
switches distributed over a large wafer area.
The reflectarray in this study is composed of aperture cou-
pled microstrip patch antenna (ACMPA) elements, and recon-
figurability in the main beam direction is obtained with series
RF MEMS switches placed on open-ended transmission lines
of the ACMPA elements. Section II presents details of the re-
flectarray design. Section III explains design of the series RF
MEMS switch structure in the reflectarray and examines effects
of bias lines on the performance. Section IV describes fabrica-
tion steps of a 10 10 reconfigurable reflectarray antenna mono- Fig. 1. (a) Backside and (b) cross-sectional views of the aperture coupled mi-
crostrip patch antenna element used in the reconfigurable reflectarray.
lithically produced with the RF MEMS switches and discusses
the fabrication challenges and imperfections. Finally, Section V
gives simulation and measurement results.
reflectarray presented in this paper [15], [25]. The reflectarray
cells having a phase shift control mechanism based on reso-
II. RECONFIGURABLE REFLECTARRAY ANTENNA STRUCTURE nance tuning possess very low losses in the operation band ex-
AND DESIGN PROCEDURE
cept around the resonance frequencies of structures [12]. How-
The ACMPA elements shown in Fig. 1 are linearly spaced ever, the reflectarray cells with separate phase shifters have rel-
with half a free space wavelength, , in both directions to atively higher losses due to the insertion loss of a phase shifter,
form a 10 10 reflectarray at 26.5 GHz. Reconfigurability is which is generally larger than the insertion loss of a switch or a
achieved using series RF MEMS switches monolithically in- capacitor. On the other hand, the use of a separate phase shifter
tegrated with the transmission lines of the ACMPA elements. simplifies the design and analysis of a reflectarray, since the ra-
Then, phase center of the pyramidal feed horn antenna having diating structures of all cells are identical.
aperture dimensions 2.212 cm 2.212 cm is positioned at The ACMPA reflectarray configuration has many advantages
cm, cm, and cm with respect to the center of as well as drawbacks over the configuration where the phase
the reflectarray. Using the procedure described in [1], required shifter and antenna are on the same layer. One of the main
reflection phase values from the elements of the reflectarray are advantages is that the microstrip transmission line and patch an-
calculated to direct the main beam toward broadside and 40 in tenna are printed on different substrates separated by a common
the H-plane. For the th element, the reflection phase values to ground plane, and hence, a large space on the microstrip line
direct the main beam to the broadside and 40 are denoted as side is obtained to place bias lines for MEMS switches and/or
and , respectively. Note that, for the ele- some active components if needed. Furthermore, the length of
ments in the first column, because the first column is taken as a each transmission line in the reflectarray can be extended to
reference in the calculation of the progressive phase shifts. obtain several multiples of 360 phase delay to eliminate the
Two mostly used approaches to achieve required phase of re- bandwidth limitation due to differential spatial phase delays
flected field from reflectarray cells in linearly polarized appli- [30] so that the bandwidth of the reflectarray is determined by
cations are (i) tuning of resonance of elements either by ma- the element bandwidth. Another advantage is the flexibility
nipulating dimensions or by reactive loading of the elements of choosing two separate substrates for the patch antenna and
[12], [23], [29] and (ii) using a separate phase shifter, as in the transmission line, for example, a high dielectric substrate for the
856 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
phase shifters can be chosen to obtain large phase shifts, while
the microstrip patch antenna can be printed on a low dielectric
substrate in order to increase the element bandwidth, radiation
efficiency, and steering range without scan blindness. One other
advantage is that the spurious radiation due to the transmission
line, RF MEMS switch, and bias lines is backwards and does
not disturb the radiation pattern. Besides, the spurious radiation,
and hence the power loss, can be eliminated by placing an ad-
ditional ground plane at a specific distance from the microstrip
lines at the back. The final advantage of the multilayer structure
over the single layer structure is the simplicity of the design as
far as the biasing scheme is concerned, as the effects of the bias
lines and RF MEMS switches on the radiation pattern in the
single layer structure should be taken into account in the design
stage. On the other hand, the main drawback of multilayered
reflectarray structures is the fabrication complexity and cost,
which can be tolerated considering their advantages.
The principle of operation of the ACMPA element in the re-
flectarray is as follows. A patch antenna printed on an antenna
substrate receives linearly polarized electromagnetic wave.
Then, the electromagnetic wave couples to the microstrip
line printed on a feed substrate by means of an aperture on
the ground plane between two substrates. Since the microstrip
transmission line is open ended, the wave reflects back and cou-
ples to the patch antenna using the aperture on the ground plane.
The distance that the wave propagates on the transmission line
determines the phase of the reflected field. Hence, two sets of
transmission line lengths are needed for each element in the
reflectarray to switch the main beam between the broadside and
40 , respectively. Therefore, there is one RF MEMS switch per
each element, which corresponds to 1-bit of control resulting in
two beam states. The number of beam states can be increased
by placing 3 or 5 bit MEMS phase shifters on the transmission
lines. This will increase the complexity of the biasing scheme
and the loss; however, the concept of having reconfigurability
using MEMS will still remain valid.
To determine the transmission line length of the element for a
given reflection phase value, the graph that relates the reflection
phase to the transmission line length, namely, the phase design
curve must be obtained. To calculate the phase design curve,
mutual couplings with the neighboring elements are taken into
account by the infinite array assumption. The unit cell has been
simulated as an infinite array using the periodic boundary condi-
tions in the Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS).
The element spacing is half a free space wavelength (
mm) in both directions, thus the unit cell has a dimension
of 5.66 mm 5.66 mm. A glass substrate of thickness
mm, dielectric constant and
is used for both the patch and microstrip line substrates.
Initial dimensions of the reflectarray element are determined by
considering the element as a single radiating antenna, i.e., by
matching the input impedance of a patch to the characteristic
impedance of the transmission line. Then, the reflectarray ele-
ment dimensions are optimized to have a linear phase design
curve at 26.5 GHz by exciting the unit cell with a y-polarized
plane wave normally incident to the array surface and by cal-
culating the phase and magnitude of the field reflected from the
unit cell using HFSS for each value of L incremented in the
direction shown in Fig. 1(a). The ACMPA dimensions are de-
Fig. 2. The phase and magnitude curves of the unit cell for different frequencies
for the normal incidence, and the ideal phase curve @26.5 GHz.
termined as mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm, and mm. Then, for
comparison, the microstrip line of width mm on the
glass substrate is simulated in HFSS to obtain the ideal phase
characteristics of the microstrip line at 26.5 GHz. As seen in
Fig. 2, a very good agreement between the phase design curve
and the ideal phase characteristics of the transmission line is
obtained at 26.5 GHz. The magnitude of the reflected wave
changes between 1.42 dB and 3.64 dB at 26.5 GHz as a func-
tion of L. Hence, the average value of all losses in the unit cell is
2.53 dB where the conductor losses are 0.4 dB and the dielectric
losses are 1.1 dB on average. The remaining 1.03 dB is the back
radiation loss. The main loss mechanisms in the unit cell are
the dielectric and back radiation losses which can be eliminated
by using a lower dielectric constant substrate and by placing an
additional ground plane at the back. Both this non-uniform mag-
nitude response and the amplitude variation of the incident field
affect the radiation pattern, especially the side lobes. As the fre-
quency deviates from 26.5 GHz, the linearity of the phase design
curve is lost, and the range of the magnitude variation increases
as shown by the simulation results in Fig. 2. Since the phase
curves for different frequencies are not parallel to each other, the
operational bandwidth of this reflectarray is narrow. The band-
width of the reflectarray is discussed in detail in Section V using
the measurement results.
The electromagnetic wave radiated from the feed antenna
does not reach all elements of the reflectarray with the same
angle of incidence, and the maximum angle of incidence occurs
for the elements at the edges of the reflectarray. The maximum
value of the incidence angle to an element on the designed
reflectarray surface is 30 , which corresponds to the worst case
illumination in both E and H-planes ( and ,
respectively). In Fig. 3, the phase and magnitude curves are
plotted for the worst case incidence angle in both E and H-planes
and compared with the ones for the normal incidence. It is ob-
served that the magnitude and phase curves are not affected
much with the change in the incidence angle. Hence, the phase
curve for the normal incidence is a good approximation for cal-
culating the transmission line lengths.
BAYRAKTAR et al.: BEAM SWITCHING REFLECTARRAY MONOLITHICALLY INTEGRATED WITH RF MEMS SWITCHES 857

Fig. 3. The magnitude and phase responses of a y-polarized plane wave for
different angles of incidence@26.5 GHz.

Although all the patches on the feed side have the same size, Fig. 4. (a) Top and (b) A-A cross-sectional views of the series RF MEMS
the lengths of the transmission lines are not identical. Once the switch.
transmission line lengths are determined from the phase design
curve, series ohmic contact RF MEMS switches of length
can be implemented between the transmission lines of length
and to switch between two transmission line lengths for
all the elements, which enable the main beam to switch between
the broadside and 40 . For the th element, the transmission line
lengths corresponding to and are denoted as and
in Fig. 1(a), respectively. When we consider
the phase shifter part in Fig. 1(a), the open ended transmission
line of length is connected to the microstrip transmission
line of length through the series capacitance introduced by
the RF MEMS switch. When the RF MEMS switch is in the
up state, the phase shifter has a resonance for some values of
due to imperfect isolation of the RF MEMS switch. Hence,
for those values of , it is impossible to obtain the required
phase shift values by the transmission line of lengths . Fig. 5. The simulation results of the series RF MEMS switch.
For this reason, the RF MEMS switches in the columns 4, 7,
and 10 are kept in the down state, i.e., the overall lengths of
the transmission lines are for those elements, Fig. 5 shows the simulation results of the series RF MEMS
to achieve the phase shift values , while the switches on the switch. The insertion loss of the designed switch is less than
other columns are in the up state. The states of the RF MEMS 0.5 dB, and the isolation is better than 10 dB, which are accept-
switches are reversed to obtain the phase shift values . able results at the frequency of interest. The switch is fabricated
using the process steps given in Section IV. The surface profile
III. SERIES RF MEMS SWITCH AND BIAS LINES measurements on the fabricated switches show that the spacing
We considered both shunt and series switch configurations to between the transmission lines and the wings of the bridge is
change the length of the microstrip line [15]. The series switch not 2 m as designed but 1.3 m, due to the residual stress of
is preferred due to both size considerations and the fact that the metal bridge. To see the effect of reduced spacing on isola-
the unit cell with the series switch results in better phase de- tion, simulations have been performed for a 1.3 m gap height.
sign curve characteristics. The series ohmic contact RF MEMS When the bridge gap becomes a 1.3 m, the isolation is still
switch used in the reflectarray is the bridge with wings type better than 10 dB between 20–28 GHz frequency band as can
structure between two transmission line segments as shown in be seen in Fig. 5. In order to see the effect of the bridge gap in
Fig. 4. When the switch is actuated by an applied DC voltage the design, the radiation pattern simulations of the reflectarray
between the actuation pad and the bridge, it connects two phys- for a 2 m and a 1.3 m gap heights are compared. It is observed
ically separated transmission lines pieces named as Tr. Line1 that only the side lobe levels are affected by a few dB. When the
and Tr. Line2. The width of the interconnection region is re- main beam is directed to the broadside, the largest deviation of
duced compared to the transmission line width to improve the about 4 dB occurs in the side lobe around 40 . This is due to
isolation characteristics. the fact that most of the switches in the broadside operation are
858
Fig. 6. Mask layout of a 10 10 reflectarray with the RF MEMS switches.
in their up states, thus the change in the up state bridge height
becomes significant.
Fig. 6 shows the layout of the overall reflectarray prototype
with bias lines. The bias lines used to actuate the switches have
two parts: one is composed of a sputtered gold (Au) layer and
the other is composed of a sputtered silicon-chromium (Si-Cr)
layer. The actuation mechanism of the series switch can be mod-
eled as a series RC circuit where the Si-Cr layer is modeled
as a resistance, and the path between the bridge and actuation
pad is modeled as a capacitance. In order to have a reason-
able switching time, the time constant should be reduced. So,
the entire bias line scheme can be composed of the sputtered
gold having high conductivity. But this time, the mutual cou-
pling between the Au bias line and microstrip line increases,
and the switch performance is disturbed. In order to avoid these
adverse effects, the Au bias lines are connected to the resistive
bias lines composed of the sputtered Si-Cr at an average dis-
tance of 1500 m before the switch and the transmission line,
and the conductivity of the Si-Cr layer is optimized to
be 10,000 S/m.
To see the effect of the Au bias lines, the phase design curve
and the amplitude response are recalculated when there are both
vertical and horizontal Au bias lines in the unit cell. Then these
results are compared with the ones obtained without a bias line
as shown in Fig. 7. As can be seen in Fig. 7, the Au bias lines
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. The effect of the Au bias lines and the RF MEMS switch on both the
reflection phase and magnitude curves at 26.5 GHz.
have no significant effect on the phase design curve but the am-
plitude of the reflected wave decreases for some values of L.
The phase design curve given in Fig. 2 is obtained by
changing the length of the microstrip line. To calculate the
reflection phase more realistically, the unit cell is simulated
by including the series RF MEMS switch. Fig. 7 shows the
reflection phase values of the reconfigurable unit cell calculated
both for different values and for the up or down states
of the switch [15], which are seen to be slightly deviating from
the phase design curve. Hence, values determined from
the phase design curve in Section II are altered for the fine
tuning of the phases.
IV. FABRICATION OF RECONFIGURABLE REFLECTARRAY
The monolithic reconfigurable reflectarray presented in this
work is produced using the surface micromachining based
process including the wafer bonding step developed at Middle
East Technical University MEMS Center (METU-MEMS
Center). Fig. 6 shows the layout of the reconfigurable reflec-
tarray. The reflectarray has been fabricated using two 500 m
thick glass substrates ( ). Fig. 8 shows
a simplified process flow. Fig. 8(a) shows a cross-sectional
view of the process which can be obtained after a number of
process steps. The process starts by coating each wafer with a
100/8000 thick Ti/Au layer and patterning by wet etching to
construct the aperture on the ground plane. Then, both wafers
are bonded using gold-to-gold thermal compression bonding at
265 C for 1 hour in a vacuum to construct a common ground
plane with the aperture. Next, one side of the bonded glasses
is processed to have the microstrip patch antenna, whereas
the other side is used to construct the transmission lines with
the RF MEMS switches. The microstrip patch antenna is
constructed by sputtering and patterning a 100/8000 thick
Ti/Au layer. The process at the other side of the bonded glasses
starts with a 2000 thick Si-Cr resistive layer deposition by
sputtering and then patterning by wet etching. After that, the
patch antennas are covered with a 0.8 m thick sputtered Ti
layer to protect them while processing the other side of the
wafer. The next step is the sputtering of a 100/6000 thick
Ti/Au layer on the Si-Cr resistive layer; after wet etching, the
BAYRAKTAR et al.: BEAM SWITCHING REFLECTARRAY MONOLITHICALLY INTEGRATED WITH RF MEMS SWITCHES 859

Fig. 8. The standard process flow developed at METU-MEMS Center for the
production of the reconfigurable reflectarray.

transmission lines are formed. Then, again a 100/2500 thick

Ti/Au layer is sputtered on the whole wafer area covering the
previously formed transmission lines. After wet etching of
this layer, the actuation pads are formed, and the height of the
transmission lines is increased with respect to the actuation
pads, which helps to decrease the contact resistance of the Fig. 9. (a) Transmission line and (b) patch antenna side of the reconfigurable
series RF MEMS switch. Then, a 3000 thick Si N layer reflectarray antenna monolithically produced with (c) the series RF MEMS
is coated as a DC isolation layer using the plasma enhanced switches.
chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique and patterned
using the reactive ion etching (RIE) technique, resulting in the
structure shown in Fig. 8(a). Fig. 8(b) shows the cross-section
after the photo definable polyimide, PI 2737, is spin-coated
to form a 2 m thick sacrificial layer and patterned to obtain
hollows for the anchor regions, which is followed by sputtering
a 1 m thick gold layer on the PI 2737. Fig. 8(c) shows the
cross-section after the anchors are strengthened with a 2 m
thick electroplated gold layer inside the regions defined by
a mold photoresist. Then, the photoresist is removed, the
structural layer is patterned, and the Ti layer used to protect
the patch antennas is removed by wet etching. Fig. 8(d) shows
Fig. 10. (a) Microscopy and (b) SEM views of the series RF MEMS switch
the final cross-section after the sacrificial layer is removed by monolithically produced with the reflectarray.
wet etching in an EKC-265 solution, and the wafer is rinsed in
IPA and dried in a supercritical point dryer. Fig. 9 shows the
photographs of the fabricated reflectarray, while Fig. 10 shows rest of the wafer area. The actuation voltage of these switches is
the optical and SEM photographs of the series RF MEMS measured as 35 V. Since the electroplating thickness is not uni-
switch monolithically integrated to the reflectarray. form over the wafer (it increases toward the edge), it is expected
Although the individual process steps are easy, it is a chal- that the actuation voltage of the switches in the reflectarray re-
lenge to obtain the whole reflectarray on a 4 wafer, as the gion is less than 35 V. Hence, 35 V is used as the actuation
reflectarray covers nearly the whole area of the 4 wafer and as voltage in the measurements.
the monolithic integration requires a high yield of RF MEMS
switches distributed over the large wafer area. After a number V. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
of trials and process improvements, a high yield process is The simulations of the full reflectarray, i.e., the reflectarray
achieved to obtain a working reflectarray. surface and the feed horn, are carried out in HFSS to compare
The size of the reflectarray is 6.75 cm 6.29 cm. It is centered with the measurements. First of all, up and down states of the
on the wafer. Individual RF MEMS switches are located on the series RF MEMS switches in the reflectarray are modeled and
860
Fig. 11. The measured radiation patterns and simulation results in the H-plane.
(a) When the switches are actuated to direct the main beam to the broadside.
(b) When the switches are actuated to direct the main beam to 40 .
replaced by series capacitances and inductances. Since the re-
flectarray together with the feed horn antenna is a very large
structure with respect to the wavelength, the problem is divided
into two parts: the feed horn region and the reflectarray surface.
Then, these two parts are related with an HFSS data-link. First,
the near field of the feed horn antenna is calculated by simu-
lations. Then, this near field is taken as the incident field that
illuminates the reflecting surface by using the data-link tool.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the full wave EM simulation plots of the
far fields, in addition to measurement results, as explained later.
To prepare the antenna for the measurements, a PCB card
is attached to the fabricated reflectarray to apply the DC bias
voltage to the switches, as shown in Fig. 9(a). Three wire bonds
are taken from the reflectarray to the PCB card to achieve the
DC connections to the pads GND, SIGNAL1, SIGNAL2 shown
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. The measured radiation patterns in the E-plane when the switches are
actuated to direct the main beam to 40 and the simulation result.
Fig. 13. The measurement setup of the reconfigurable reflectarray.
in Fig. 6. The reflectarray and offset feed horn are assembled on
the foam support structure such that the position of the phase
center of the feed horn antenna with respect to the center of the
reflectarray is as indicated in Section II. Fig. 13 shows a photo-
graph of the complete antenna placed in an anechoic chamber.
All the pattern measurements are taken with a 1 angular reso-
lution. When the actuation voltage is applied between GND and
SIGNAL2, the main beam of the reflectarray is directed to the
broadside as shown in Fig. 11(a); the half power beam width
is determined to be 10 . When the actuation voltage is applied
between GND and SIGNAL1, the main beam of the reflectarray
is switched to 40 in the H-plane as shown in Fig. 11(b) with
the half power beam width of 13 . The measured radiation and
cross polarization patterns in the E-plane for the 40 operation
are presented in Fig. 12. The measured cross polarization level
in the E-plane is found to be better than 20 dB. The measure-
ment results given in Fig. 11 show that there are abrupt changes
especially in the angular region approximately between 90 and
140 where the field is below 20 dB, due to non-ideal char-
acteristics of the rotary joint of the measurement setup at this
frequency range. It is observed from Figs. 11 and 12 that, there
is a good agreement between the measurement and simulation
results. The positions of the main beam, half power beam width,
BAYRAKTAR et al.: BEAM SWITCHING REFLECTARRAY MONOLITHICALLY INTEGRATED WITH RF MEMS SWITCHES
TABLE I
LOSS ANALYSIS FOR 40 OPERATION AT 26.5 GHZ
side lobe levels, and back radiation levels in the simulation are
nearly the same for both the broadside and 40 operations. The
slight deviations in the positions of the side and back lobes and
the levels of some side lobes are mainly caused by the differ-
ences between the simulation and the measurement setup. The
actual interaction of the horn antenna and the reflectarray cannot
be fully taken into account in the simulations due to the very
large electrical size of the overall antenna. Moreover, the coaxial
cable and the connector used to excite the horn antenna are not
included in the simulations.
The maximum back radiation and side lobe levels are around
12 dB, and 10 dB, respectively. This reflectarray is a
proof-of-concept prototype, and the main goal is to demon-
strate the beam switching by an RF MEMS switch control.
Thus, in the design, no special efforts have been spent to
reduce the side lobe levels and back radiation. To reduce the
back radiation, a ground plane can be placed at an appropriate
distance from the back side of the reflectarray.
When we consider both the broadside and 40 operations, the
maximum value of the side lobe levels is around 7 dB and the
maximum deviation in both the half power beam width (HPBW)
values and the main beam directions is 1 within the 26–27 GHz
frequency band. These values are acceptable within 26–27 GHz,
and hence, the bandwidth is 3.77%.
A loss analysis of the reflectarray is performed when the main
beam is directed to 40 and tabulated in Table I. The gain of
the reflectarray is measured as 11.42 dBi by using a standard
gain horn antenna at 26.5 GHz, whereas the gain is calculated
as 11.93 dBi using the simulation results. The directivity of a
10 10 uniform array radiating to 40 is calculated numerically
as 22.47 dB. Using the measured gain, total loss of the reflec-
tarray is estimated as 11.05 dB which corresponds to an antenna
efficiency of 7.85%.
Illumination, cross polarization, and element losses are cal-
culated numerically at 26.5 GHz. The main loss source is the
spillover loss, which is calculated as 6.51 dB. The taper loss is
0.0064 dB, which is very small, because the illuminating horn
antenna has high HPBW values of 34 in the H-plane and 26
in the E-plane, resulting in an almost uniform illumination and
a high spillover loss. By optimizing the focal distance/diameter
(F/D) ratio, the spillover loss can be reduced. The cross polar-
ization loss is calculated as 0.15 dB. The maximum element re-
flectivity loss is 3.64 dB at the normal plane wave incidence,
but it can be reduced by placing an additional ground plane at
861
the back side of the array. The 0.3 dB insertion loss of the series
RF MEMS switch also contributes to the total loss of the re-
flectarray. Calculated losses in Table I add up to 10.61 dB. The
difference between the calculated and measured loss (0.44 dB)
might be caused by several factors, including small errors in the
placement of the phase center of the feed horn at the focal point
of the reflectarray. Furthermore, the ohmic losses are ignored in
the reflectarray radiation pattern simulations, i.e., all the metals
in the full reflectarray structure are assumed to be perfectly con-
ducting and second order interactions of reflecting surface with
the horn are not taken into account in the simulations.
The good agreement between the simulation and measure-
ment results shows that almost all of the switches on the reflec-
tarray are fully functional, i.e., the yield is very high. The yield
is estimated as 88% based on the surface profile measurements
of the reflectarray and RF measurements of the individual RF
MEMS switches from the same wafer.
VI. CONCLUSION
Beam switching of a 26.5 GHz 10 10 reconfigurable reflec-
tarray antenna is achieved using 90 RF MEMS switches in the
ACMPA elements. The progressive phase shift between the ele-
ments is adjusted by the on and off state positions of the series RF
MEMS switches inserted in the transmission line of the ACMPA
elements. The full reflectarray is produced monolithically with
the series RF MEMS switches. Measurement results demon-
strate that the main beam of the reflectarray can be switched
between the broadside and 40 by the help of the RF MEMS
switches. According to the authors’ knowledge, this monolith-
ically integrated MEMS reconfigurable reflectarray is the first
functional prototype that employs a large number of RF MEMS
switches distributed over a large wafer area, demonstrating the
potential of the RF MEMS technology for large scale antennas.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank METU-MEMS Center staff
of Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, for their
support in the fabrication. The authors also thank Dr. Kagan
Topalli and Dr. Mehmet Unlu for the development of the process
and their supervision in the fabrication.
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[16] J. Huang, “Analysis of a Microstrip Reflectarray Antenna for Mi-
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[18] R. J. Richards, “Integrated Microelectromechanical Phase Shifting Re-
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[19] H. Legay, B. Pinte, M. Charrier, A. Ziaei, E. Girard, and R. Gillard,
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Omer Bayraktar was born in Aydin, Turkey, in
1983. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees
in electrical and electronics engineering from the
Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara,
Turkey, in 2005 and 2007, respectively.
Since 2005, he has been working as a research as-
sistant at METU in the Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering. His major research interests
include development, characterization, and integra-
tion of novel RF MEMS structures such as switches,
phase shifters for RF front-ends at microwave and
millimeter-wave, reconfigurable antennas, phased arrays, and reflectarrays.
Özlem Aydin Civi (S’90–M’97–SM’05) received
the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and
electronics engineering in 1990, 1992, and 1996,
respectively, at the Middle East Technical University
(METU), Ankara, Turkey.
She was a research assistant in METU from 1990
to 1996. In 1997–1998, she was a visiting scientist at
the ElectroScience Laboratory, Ohio State Univer-
sity. Since 1998, she has been with the Department
of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, METU,
where she is currently a Professor. Her research
interests include analytical, numerical and hybrid techniques in EMT problems,
especially fast asymptotic/hybrid techniques for the analysis of large finite
periodic structures, multi-function antenna design, reconfigurable antennas,
phased arrays, reflectarrays and RF-MEMS applications. Since 1997, she
has been a national delegate of the European actions COST260, COST284,
COST-IC0603 on antennas. She is a technical reviewer of the European
Community for scientific projects in the fields of antennas and communication.
She has published over 100 journal and international conference papers.
Dr. Civi was a recipient of the 1994 Prof. Mustafa Parlar Foundation Research
and Encouragement award with METU Radar Group and the 1996 URSI Young
Scientist Award. She was the chair of the IEEE Turkey Section in 2006 and
2007, and the chair of the IEEE AP/MTT/ED/EMC Chapter between 2004 and
2006. She is a member of the Administrative Committee of the Turkish National
Committee of URSI. She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION.
Tayfun Akin (S’90–M’97) was born in Van, Turkey,
in 1966. He received the B.S. degree in electrical
engineering with high honors from Middle East
Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1987, and
went to the USA in 1987 for his graduate studies
with a graduate fellowship provided by NATO Sci-
ence Scholarship Program through the Scientific and
Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK).
He received the M.S. degree in 1989 and the Ph.D.
degree in 1994 in electrical engineering, both from
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
He became an Assistant Professor in 1995, an Associate Professor in 1998,
and Professor in 2004 in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engi-
neering at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. He is also the
Director of the METU-MEMS Center which has a 1300 m clean room area for
MEMS process and testing. His research interests include MEMS, microsys-
tems technologies, infrared detectors and readout circuits, silicon-based inte-
grated sensors and transducers, and analog and digital integrated circuit design.
Dr. Akin has served in various MEMS, EUROSENSORS, and TRANS-
DUCERS conferences as a Technical Program Committee Member. He was
the co-chair of the 19th IEEE International Conference of Micro Electro
Mechanical Systems (MEMS 2006) held in Istanbul, and he was the co-chair
of the Steering Committee of the IEEE MEMS Conference in 2007. He is
the winner of the First Prize in Experienced Analog/Digital Mixed-Signal
Design Category at the 1994 Student VLSI Circuit Design Contest organized
and sponsored by Mentor Graphics, Texas Instruments, Hewlett-Packard,
Sun Microsystems, and Electronic Design Magazine. He is a co-author of
the symmetric and decoupled gyroscope project which won the first prize in
the operational designs category of the international design contest organized
by DATE Conference and CMP in March 2001. He is also the co-author of
the gyroscope project which won the third prize of the 3-D MEMS Design
Challenge organized by MEMGen (currently Microfabrica).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 863

Design and Implementation of a Closed Cylindrical

BFN-Fed Circular Array Antenna for
Multiple-Beam Coverage in Azimuth
Nelson Jorge G. Fonseca, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper describes a beamforming network well

adapted to produce evenly distributed multiple-beam coverage
over a full 360 angular range in azimuth. This structure is very
simple, flexible, and compatible with low-cost manufacturing pro-
cesses such as printed technology. The proposed design is based on
balanced power dividers and combiners arranged in such a way to
feed a sector of a circular array antenna with Gaussian amplitude
distribution and in-phase signals. The first characteristic provides
control on the radiation pattern shape, including main lobe shape
and sidelobe level, while the second ensures stable beam pointing
over a wide frequency range. The proposed azimuth beamforming
network is described, and a specific design in microstrip tech- Fig. 1. General topology of a multiple-beam C-BFN.
nology is presented with a center frequency at 6 GHz. Simulation
results are supported by the measurement of several prototypes.
In particular, two designs including the circular array antenna are are attractive because of their low-loss characteristic, the or-
compared to investigate the impact of the circular array antenna thogonal excitation laws produced impose strong constraints
radius on radiation patterns. Despite the assumptions, good corre- on the pattern shape [6], requiring careful optimization of the
lation is found between simulation and measurement results, thus
confirming the properties of the proposed beamforming network design. An alternative solution based on a much simpler design
concept. Integration of phase controls in the feeding network and approach was recently introduced by the author [7], which is
its impact on the overall antenna efficiency are also discussed. a cylindrical adaptation of the planar concept proposed in [8].
Index Terms—Azimuth distribution, circular and cylindrical This BFN naturally produces an in-phase Gaussian-like am-
array antenna, in-phase Gaussian-like amplitude distribution, plitude distribution. This paper provides further insight on the
multiple beamforming network. performance of this new structure, supported by measurement
results. We first review the basic principles of the proposed
I. INTRODUCTION solution and then describe the experimental results obtained for
a BFN alone and BFNs combined with circular array antennas.

M ULTIPLE-BEAM circular or cylindrical array antennas

producing beams evenly distributed in azimuth are of
great interest for terrestrial and space communication systems,
the azimuth beamforming network (BFN) being eventually
combined with an elevation BFN to comply with the appli-
cation’s needs [1], [2]. In this paper, we focus on the design
of the azimuth BFN. The solutions already introduced [1], [2]
are based on Butler matrices [3]. More generally, most of the
solutions found in the literature are based on elementary com-
ponents described by a unitary -parameters matrix, typically
four-port directional couplers, to achieve theoretically lossless
operation (in practice, line losses are introduced by the selected
transmission line technology) [4], [5]. Although these solutions
Manuscript received May 05, 2011; revised June 27, 2011; accepted August
22, 2011. Date of publication November 04, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was supported by CNES.
The author was with the Antenna Department, Centre National d’Etudes Spa-
tiales (CNES), 31400 Toulouse, France. He is now with the Antenna and Sub-
millimetre Wave Section, European Space Agency, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The
Netherlands (e-mail: nelson.fonseca@esa.int).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2174956
Impact of the circular array radius on radiation patterns is
also investigated. We finally discuss the possibility to integrate
phase controls in the BFN and the impact on the overall antenna
efficiency.
II. CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BEAMFORMING NETWORK CONCEPT
DESCRIPTION
The concept of Closed Cylindrical Beamforming Network
(CC-BFN) is a 3-D evolution of the planar concept known as
the Coherently Radiating Periodic Structure Beamforming Net-
work (CORPS-BFN or C-BFN) [8]. The standard C-BFN is il-
lustrated in Fig. 1. It is a connection of successive layers with
a specific arrangement of alternating power combiners (C) and
power dividers (D). This specific arrangement produces at the
output ports (ports on top of the structure in Fig. 2) a Gaussian-
like amplitude distribution and in-phase (true time delay) exci-
tation law per input port (ports on the bottom in Fig. 2). The
power delivered to each input port propagates within a “trian-
gular” area (a typical electrical path per beam is highlighted in
Fig. 1 for the input port 2). This specific arrangement of power
combiners and power dividers to produce tapered amplitude is
not new as Butler used a similar arrangement (using hybrid cou-
plers with one port loaded) in association with Butler matrices to

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

864
Fig. 2. Proposed closed cylindrical multiple beamforming network.
produce a cosine amplitude distribution [3]. A similar arrange-
ment of hybrid junctions serving as combiners and dividers is
used in [9] to feed a linear array with either a cosine amplitude
distribution (one layer design) or a cosine-squared amplitude
distribution (two layers design). The C-BFN provides a gener-
alization of this solution, investigating beam steering capability
of such a structure [8].
C-BFNs described in the literature are limited to planar de-
signs feeding linear array antennas, although this periodic ar-
rangement enables other shapes of both BFN and arrays. There-
fore, as illustrated in Fig. 2, we proposed to close the BFN [7],
resulting in a cylindrical arrangement. The CC-BFN is enclosed
in the dashed area in Fig. 2. The BFN is closed in the sense that
the left side of this dashed area is connected to the right side
of this same dashed area. This is further illustrated in Fig. 2 by
the highlighted electrical paths followed by the signal at input
port 1. The portions of signal reaching the left-end side of the
structure continue on the right side of it. Obviously, this is a
schematic representation. The implementation of this structure
will mainly depend on the selected technology. If realized in
printed technologies, like the usually planar microstrip BFNs,
one may use a soft substrate that can be rolled in a cylindrical
shape and then connect the corresponding electrical paths from
left and right ends to close the structure. If realized in waveguide
or other 3-D technology, the global shape of the BFN is not con-
strained in the same manner and may differ from a cylinder to
make it eventually more compact. Also, the illustration is given
with a limited number of ports and layers, but these parameters
can obviously be adapted to the need. This specific arrangement
avoids the singularity of the edge beams in the planar version:
Every beam has two adjacent overlapping beams, overlapping in
the sense that output ports are shared between adjacent beams.
This peculiarity is well suited for multiple-beam coverage in
azimuth.
The results reported in [10] about C-BFN mathematical de-
scription, efficiency, and possible evolutions to reduce inser-
tion losses can obviously be extended to CC-BFN. Properties
of CC-BFN are further investigated through the specific designs
and experimental validations reported in Section III.
III. CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BEAMFORMING NETWORK
PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION
A. Beamforming Network Design
The design of the beamforming network has to be defined
taking into account the targeted coverage and the associated
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 3. (a) Schematic of a three-layer CC-BFN with reduced overlap and
(b) associated layout in microstrip technology.
circular array antenna. Some of the major parameters influ-
encing the design include the number of beams to be produced
and the crossover level between adjacent beams. Interference
between beams and insertion losses are other parameters that
need to be traded off.
To validate the concept of CC-BFN and the possible use of
printed technology, we designed a BFN with 7 input ports and
14 output ports. Fig. 3(a) shows a schematic representation of a
portion (three input ports, labeled , , and ) of the selected
BFN. It is composed of three layers, with a bottom layer simpli-
fied according to a modification proposed in [10] to reduce in-
sertion losses. In fact, this modification suppresses the 3-dB loss
characteristic of the first layer in a C-BFN (due to unbalanced
power combination), but reduces the overlap between adjacent
beams. This specific design distributes each beam port signal
over four output ports (e.g., distributes the signal toward ,
, , and ) with an overlap of two output ports between ad-
jacent beams (e.g., and share the output ports and ,
while and share the output ports and , but and
share no common output port). The theoretical amplitude level
is 5.51 dB for the two central output ports and 15.05 dB
for the two outer output ports. As already mentioned, the four
output port signals are in phase. The theoretical losses intro-
duced by this design are equal to 2.04 dB.
The elementary component design optimized in [10] to
investigate planar C-BFN characteristics has been reused for
this study assuming that the effect of the substrate curvature
can be neglected. This component is a circular in-phase ring
hybrid with wideband frequency performances [11]. The design
is centered at 6 GHz. Simulation results were obtained with
ADS (from Agilent) using a combination of method-of-mo-
ment-based analyses (at elementary component level) and
scattering-parameters-based network analyses (at BFN level).
FONSECA: CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BFN-FED CIRCULAR ARRAY ANTENNA FOR MULTIPLE-BEAM COVERAGE IN AZIMUTH
Fig. 4. Manufactured prototype of a three-layer CC-BFN with 7 input ports
and 14 output ports.
The substrate (NY9208 from Neltec with a thickness of 0.762
mm and a dielectric constant of 2.08) is soft enough to be rolled
and form a cylinder with the proper diameter. To facilitate the
subsequent integration of the circular array antenna, a compact
design is used as illustrated in Fig. 3(b). Previous results with
planar implementations demonstrated that coupling effects
between components tend to shift in frequency the overall
response of the network (including input matching and trans-
mission coefficients), but due to the wideband operation of the
ring hybrid, little impact is observed at center frequency [12].
Radiating elements will be directly connected to the output
ports, resulting in an array spacing of at 6 GHz. The
BFN diameter is 175 mm.
The manufactured prototype is presented in Fig. 4. The
manufacturing approach, based on planar printed circuit, re-
quires connecting electrical paths at the junction between the
two edges of the printed board. Obviously, the signals passing
through these connections (made with soldering in this specific
implementation) may be affected in amplitude and/or phase
depending on the quality of the connection. Since our purpose
is to validate a design concept and not a specific technological
implementation or manufacturing process, results associated to
the ports having signals passing across the substrate junction
were not investigated. To display the results, the ports are
numbered clockwise as seen from the bottom (input ports side)
starting at the junction. Only ports and are affected by the
junction. Measurements were made using a vector network an-
alyzer. Insertion losses were computed per input port summing
all the relevant transmission coefficients.
Fig. 5 compares measured insertion losses of three of the
seven input ports to the simulated insertion losses. As an-
ticipated with previous results in planar realizations [12], an
overall shift of the response toward higher frequencies is ob-
served. However, in this design, ripples are observed that were
not found in the planar realizations, as well as significantly
higher insertion losses. On average for the five measured ports,
insertion losses at 6 GHz are around 3.45 dB in measurement,
to be compared to 2.37 dB in simulation and 2.04 dB in theory.
Considering the wideband performances of the structure and
865
Fig. 5. Measured insertion losses of the manufactured three-layer CC-BFN
with 7 input ports and 14 output ports.
the better agreement between measurements and simulation
for planar realizations, this discrepancy is understood as being
mainly due to the effect of the curvature. Fig. 6 provides
additional insight on the CC-BFN performance presenting the
amplitude and phase of the transmission coefficients associated
to input port . Due to their lower level, signals toward the
two outer output ports are much more affected by the curvature,
with more important ripples. Measured values at 6 GHz are
6.9 and 18.0 dB, respectively, for the two central output
ports and the two outer output ports, to be compared to 5.82
and 15.51 dB, respectively, in simulations. Fig. 6(b) confirms
that the four output ports are in phase over a wide frequency
range.
B. Combined Beamforming Network and Array Antenna
Design
We discuss in this section the performance of circular array
antennas fed by a CC-BFN. Taking into account the curvature
in the full array antenna design would lead to time-consuming
computations. Consequently, only the array element, a square
patch antenna, has been designed using a 3-D electromagnetic
modeling tool (FEKO from EMSS) to provide a resonance fre-
quency at 6 GHz taking into account the potential effect of the
substrate’s curvature. The array antenna patterns were evalu-
ated using a simplified model based on a Gaussian-like radiation
pattern for the array element (calibrated using the simulation re-
sults) combined with the array factor of a circular array antenna,
resulting in the following electromagnetic field expression in
the azimuth plane for a circular array of radius comprising
equally spaced elements:
(1)
where and characterize the Gaussian-like pattern of the
array element in the azimuth plane, is the angular position
of the array element , and the complex signal provided by
the BFN to this same element. is the wavenumber.
To investigate the impact of the curvature on the antenna
performance, two prototypes were manufactured: one with a
866 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 7. Manufactured prototype of a three-layer CC-BFN with integrated 14-el-

ement circular array antenna.

Fig. 6. (a) Amplitude and (b) relative phase difference with reference to port
of the transmission coefficients associated to the input port .

14-element array antenna and one with a 20-element array an-

tenna. The first design is fed by the CC-BFN presented in the
previous section. The diameter of this first design remains equal
to 175 mm. The second design is fed by a CC-BFN having the
same topology but an increased number of ports, i.e. 10 input
ports and 20 output ports, resulting in a diameter of 250 mm.
The first prototype is presented in Fig. 7.
Fig. 8 shows the measured input matching of several ports
of the 14-element prototype and compares them to the input
matching of a single patch as well as a typical input matching
of the CC-BFN alone. As expected, the input matching fre-
quency bandwidth is mainly driven by the narrow bandwidth of Fig. 8. Measured input matching of the CC-BFN fed 14-element circular array
the array element. Despite coupling effects and manufacturing antenna compared to patch-only and CC-BFN-only results.
errors, the frequency resonance is maintained around 6 GHz
with a peak value showing some discrepancy but better than
20 dB for all ports. Similar performances were measured for the CC-BFN topology is the same for the two prototypes, these
the 20-element circular array prototype. results enable investigation of the impact of the array radius. As
Radiation patterns evaluated with the simplified model are expected, the beamwidth decreases as the radius increases. In-
provided for the two prototypes in Fig. 9. Corresponding mea- terestingly, the crossover level between adjacent beams is quite
sured radiation patterns for some beam ports are also reported in similar for the two designs, with a value of 3 dB below the peak
Fig. 9. These measurements were performed at 6 GHz in the An- directivity. Measured patterns are in good agreement with the
tenna Compact Range available at CNES, Toulouse, France. As simplified model in the main lobe region. The sidelobe levels
FONSECA: CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BFN-FED CIRCULAR ARRAY ANTENNA FOR MULTIPLE-BEAM COVERAGE IN AZIMUTH
Fig. 9. Computed and measured radiation patterns (at 6 GHz) in normalized
field amplitude of the CC-BFN-fed (a) 14-element circular array antenna and
(b) 20-element circular array antenna.
tend to be lower in measurements. For better comparison, Carte-
sian plots comparing the simplified model patterns with mea-
sured results are reported in Fig. 10. Theoretically, a four-ele-
ment linear array with uniform amplitude distribution provides a
gain increase of about 6 dB over the array element, while for the
Gaussian-like distribution of the selected BFN, the gain increase
would be limited to 5.05 dB. The computed gain of the circular
array, over the array element, is found to be 1.37 and 3.15 dB for
the 14-element and the 20-element array antennas, respectively
(the BFN efficiency is not taken into account in these figures).
This degradation is due to the uniform phase distribution. In
fact, (1) clearly indicates that the phase has to be optimized to
achieve maximum gain in the radial angular direction. A dis-
cussion on phase control is presented in Section IV. Still, it is
867
Fig. 10. Radiation patterns measured at 6 GHz for the CC-BFN-fed
(a) 14-element circular array antenna and (b) 20-element circular array antenna
(port in both cases), and comparison to the simplified model patterns
and an equivalent circular antenna fed by BFN providing uniform amplitude
distribution.
interesting to note that a similar array with uniform amplitude
distribution would provide a gain of 0.21 and 3.23 dB for the
14-element and the 20-element design, respectively, over the
single-element gain. Logically, a Gaussian-like amplitude dis-
tribution is more advantageous for smaller radii, as interference
effects due to phase difference are reduced by the predominance
of the signals coming out of the central array elements. Also, as
the radius increases, the array gain tends toward the linear array
case. The antenna gain has been measured to be approximately
7.6 and 8.8 dB for the 14-element and the 20-element array an-
tennas, respectively. The simplified model of (1) has been cal-
ibrated ( and ) using the gain measure-
ment of a single-patch antenna, evaluated around 7.4 dB, but
this value is believed to be underestimated as coupling effects in
an array antenna usually tend to increase the element directivity.
Measurement accuracy for the gain might also partially explain
the discrepancy. In general, we can say that good agreement is
found between measurements and computed results despite the
simplicity of the model. The accuracy achieved is sufficient to
help in the definition of the BFN topology and size of the array.
868 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 11. Schematic of a three-layer CC-BFN with reduced overlap and inte-
grated phase control.

For improved prediction, including sidelobe and cross-polariza-

tion levels, a full-wave simulation tool is clearly recommended.
Fig. 10 also provides the radiation patterns achieved with an
equivalent circular array, but having uniform amplitude distri- Fig. 12. Peak comparison for several CC-BFN topologies as a function of the
bution instead of Gaussian-like amplitude distribution. We must circular array antenna size.
mention that the BFN efficiency is not taken into account, so ab-
solute values should not be given too much attention. The hy-
pothesis of in-phase uniform amplitude distribution results in
nonorthogonal illumination laws; consequently, losses are ex-
pected in the BFN [6], but the resulting losses highly depend on
the BFN topology. For instance, a parallel feeding network with
one power combiner per output port would result in 3-dB inser-
tion loss per beam. Still, it is clear that the proposed CC-BFN
provides better main-lobe shaping and reduced sidelobe level,
which can be beneficial to limit interference level in a mul-
tiple-beam antenna system with frequency reuse.

IV. CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BEAMFORMING NETWORK WITH

INTEGRATED PHASE CONTROL
Finally, it is clear that the main drawback of this structure is
that it provides in-phase output signals; consequently, the signal
combination is not optimal according to (1). This results in a
degraded peak gain when compared to a similar structure with
an optimal phase distribution. Accordingly, we investigated the
possibility to insert phase controls in the structure to correct the
phases so that the respective radiated contributions from each
array element associated to one beam port combine in-phase in
the radial direction defined as the symmetrical axis of the subset
of elements considered. However, it must be mentioned right
away that adding phase controls is not simple with this structure
for two reasons. First, because adjacent beams partially overlap
sharing some common electrical paths, the phase control loca-
tion has to be selected so that it has the desired effect for all the
beams. This means that it has to be located in a nonoverlapping
section of the structure, or must be in the axis of symmetry of
the overlapping section between two adjacent beams. Second,
as the losses occur in the power combiners due to unbalanced
power combinations, inserting phase controls will induce addi-
tional losses due to unbalanced signals not only in amplitude,
but also in phase, as highlighted in [10].
Having in mind these constraints, the first solution investi-
gated is based on the one presented in Section III. The topology
considered is illustrated in Fig. 11. This topology does not affect
the signal reaching the outer elements, but the power transmitted
Fig. 13. Half-power beamwidth comparison for several CC-BFN topologies as
a function of the circular array antenna size.
to the two central elements is lowered. A comparison of perfor-
mance for different circular array designs using this CC-BFN
topology with and without phase compensation is provided in
Figs. 12 and 13. These results, derived from the pattern calcu-
lation described in Section III-B, were achieved assuming that
the distance between radiating elements over the circumference
of the array is constant. As a consequence, the array diameter
is proportional to the number of elements, and corresponding
array physical dimensions can be derived from the two specific
designs presented in this paper. Interestingly, it appears that the
higher directivity achieved with phase control does not com-
pensate for the additional losses in the CC-BFN, as the gain of a
CC-BFN-fed circular array with phase control is always below
the gain of the same structure without phase control. As a com-
parison, a linear array fed by the same BFN topology would
have a gain of 10.41 dB. As expected, the peak gain of the two
considered structures tends toward this value as the size of the
array increases. Actually, the peak gain variation of the structure
with phase control mainly comes from the variation of the losses
FONSECA: CLOSED CYLINDRICAL BFN-FED CIRCULAR ARRAY ANTENNA FOR MULTIPLE-BEAM COVERAGE IN AZIMUTH
in the CC-BFN, as detailed in Fig. 12. Without these losses, the
peak gain would be quite close to the one of a linear array and
mostly independent of the circular array size. As illustrated in
Fig. 13, an interesting feature of CC-BFN with in-phase sig-
nals lies also on the half-power beamwidth (HPBW): It fol-
lows the angular range that needs to cover one beam with a
BFN that produces a number of beams that is half the number
of array elements, which means that this design naturally pro-
duces a good crossover between adjacent beams (around 3 dB).
A CC-BFN with phase control produces much narrower beams.
Actually, the beamwidth is quite independent of the circular
array size, which means that a given crossover level imposes
a minimum size for the CC-BFN (i.e., a 3-dB crossover re-
quires at least a 34-element circular array). The fact that both
peak gain and HPBW are independent of the circular array size
comes mainly from the phase correction that compensates for
the curvature effect, this curvature being directly linked to the
array size with our design hypothesis. This remark also applies
to sidelobe level.
Based on these results, we tried to find a BFN topology that
would enable phase control without increasing the BFN losses.
This can be achieved by removing the top layer in Fig. 11. The
resulting BFN distributes the signal toward three elements in-
stead of four, with an overlap between adjacent beams of one
output port instead of two. Simulation results for this two-layer
CC-BFN topology with and without phase control are compared
to the three-layer topology in Figs. 12 and 13. As the insertion
losses in the BFN are reduced, the peak gain is significantly im-
proved. In that case, adding a phase control to provide optimal
phase combination results as expected in a peak gain that is al-
most independent of the array size and closer to the linear array
case. Fig. 13 indicates that the HPBW converges quickly with
the number of array elements. This is consistent with the fact
that having a reduced number of active elements per beam atten-
uates the effect of the array curvature. A design with a crossover
of about 3 dB is achieved with a 26-element circular array. The
peak gain difference (less than 0.4 dB) with and without phase
control is probably not sufficient to justify the added complexity
of implementing phase shifters.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper has demonstrated through practical implementa-
tion and measurements that the proposed concept of CC-BFN
can be of interest for applications requiring evenly distributed
multiple-beam coverage in azimuth. The proposed concept is
very simple and requires the optimization of only one compo-
nent in the case of a design without phase control. Measure-
ments at BFN and array antenna level proved to be in good
agreement with simulation results despite the assumptions (sub-
strate curvature not considered at BFN level) to reduce com-
putational time. The proposed design of a three-layer CC-BFN
with a modified first layer has an interesting feature as it enables
a crossover below peak gain between adjacent beams of about
3 dB for circular arrays ranging from 14 to 26 elements, giving
some flexibility in the array design. A discussion supported by
simulation results has also demonstrated that the addendum of
phase control to achieve optimal signal combination in radiated
mode is not always beneficial.
869
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank N. Ferrando for his support
on simulations, as well as L. Féat, M. Romier, and D. Belot for
their support on measurements.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Chen, W. Hong, Z. Kuai, J. Xu, H. Wang, J. Chen, H. Tang, J. Zhou,
and K. Wu, “A multibeam antenna based on substrate integrated wave-
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[2] A. M. Polegre, G. Caille, L. Boyer, and A. Roederer, “Semi-active con-
formal array for ESA’s GAIA mission,” in Proc. IEEE Ap-S Int. Symp.,
Jun. 20–25, 2004, vol. 4, pp. 4108–4111.
[3] J. Butler and R. Lowe, “Beamforming matrix simplifies design of elec-
tronically scanned antennas,” Electron. Design, vol. 9, pp. 170–173,
Apr. 1961.
[4] G. E. Evans, “Coupling matrix for a circular array microwave antenna,”
US Patent no. 5,028,930, Jul. 2, 1991.
[5] S. P. Skobelev, “Methods of constructing optimum phased-array an-
tennas for limited field of view,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., vol.
40, no. 2, pp. 39–49, Apr. 1998.
[6] J. L. Allen, “A theoretical limitation on the formation of lossless mul-
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[7] N. J. G. Fonseca and N. Ferrando, “Design of a closed cylindrical beam
forming network fed circular array for space diversity applications,” in
Proc. 4th EuCAP, Apr. 12–16, 2010, pp. 1–4.
[8] D. Betancourt and C. Del Rio Bocio, “A novel methodology to feed
phased array antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 9,
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[9] W. D. White, “Pattern limitation in multiple-beam antennas,” IRE
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[10] N. Ferrando and N. J. G. Fonseca, “Investigations on the efficiency
of array fed coherently radiating periodic structure beam forming net-
works,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 493–502,
Feb. 2011.
[11] G. F. Mikucki and A. K. Agrawal, “A broad-band printed circuit hybrid
ring power divider,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 37, no. 1,
pp. 112–117, Jan. 1989.
[12] N. J. G. Fonseca, “Étude de systèmes micro-ondes d’alimentation d’an-
tennes réseaux pour applications multifaisceaux,” Ph.D. dissertation,
INPT, Université de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, Oct. 15, 2010.
Nelson Jorge G. Fonseca (M’06–SM’09) was born
in Ovar, Portugal, in 1979. He received the Electrical
Engineering degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure
d’Electrotechnique, Electronique, Informatique, Hy-
draulique et Telecommunications (ENSEEIHT),
Toulouse, France, in 2003, the Master’s degree from
the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, QC,
Canada, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree from Institut
National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Université de
Toulouse, Toulouse, France, in 2010.
He worked as an Antenna Engineer successively
with the Antenna Study Department, Alcatel Alénia Space (now Thalès Alénia
Space-France), and in the Antenna Department, French Space Agency (CNES),
Toulouse, France, where he completed his Ph.D. degree in parallel of his pro-
fessional activities. In 2009, he joined his current position with the Antenna and
Sub-Millimetre Wave Section, European Space Agency (ESA), Noordwijk, The
Netherlands. He has authored or coauthored more than 80 papers in journals and
conferences, including two CNES Technical Notes. He holds eight patents and
has two patents pending. His interests cover the telecommunication antennas,
beamforming network theory and design, as well as new enabling technologies
such as fractals, metamaterials, and membranes applied to antenna design.
Dr. Fonseca was a member of the 33rd ESA Workshop on Antennas or-
ganizing committee in 2011. He served or is currently serving as a technical
reviewer for the Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications—Progress
in Electromagnetic Research, MIT, the IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS
COMPONENTS LETTERS and the IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION
LETTERS. He received several prizes including the Best Young Engineer Paper
Award at the 29th ESA Workshop on Antennas in 2007. He is listed in Who’s
Who in the World.
870 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Rapidly Convergent Representations for Periodic
Green’s Functions of a Linear Array in Layered
Media
Derek Van Orden, Student Member, IEEE, and Vitaliy Lomakin, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Green’s function representations are presented to
rapidly compute the fields resulting from a linear (1D) periodic
array of dipole current sources on or near a planarly layered
medium in 2D and 3D space. The representation is formulated
as spectral integral, which accounts for the reflected continuous
spectrum of fields, and a series that accounts for the discrete
spectrum of guided modes. It is exponentially convergent for
observation points on and near the array axis and surface, and for
complex phase shifts between periodic unit cells. It can be defined
on alternate Riemann sheets with respect to any of the diffraction
modes characterizing the array. A complete dyadic Green’s func-
tion is derived to fully account for the reflected fields for all source
current orientations. This Green’s function representation can
greatly accelerate the simulation of printed 1D periodic structures
in optics and microwave engineering.
Index Terms—Computational Electromagnetics, gratings,
Green’s function methods, periodic structures, surface structures.
I. INTRODUCTION
S TRUCTURES comprising linear periodic arrays of ele-
ments near planarly layered surfaces have important ap-
plications in microwave engineering and optics, including an-
tennas, waveguiding structures, frequency selective surfaces,
and metamaterials [1]–[4]. An efficient way to simulate this
class of structures is by solving an integral equation, in which
an unknown surface current distribution in a single periodic
unit cell is convolved with a Green’s function that accounts for
both the structure periodicity and the interactions with the sur-
face. Fast methods to compute such a periodic Green’s function
(PGF) are essential for efficient integral equation solvers for pe-
riodic structures [5], [6]. Efficient computation of the Green’s
function may allow fast analysis of both scattering behavior
and the complex dispersion properties of periodic arrays near
surfaces.
A complete layered media PGF for a linear array can be rep-
resented as the sum of a free-space PGF, , which solves for
a linear periodic structure in free-space, and a reflected fields
Manuscript received November 23, 2010; revised July 09, 2011; accepted
August 04, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the DARPA NACHOS
program and in part by the NSF ERC CIAN Center.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA (e-mail: vlo-
makin@eng.ucsd.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173125
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
PGF, , which accounts for the surface interaction. While sev-
eral techniques have been proposed for the fast computation of
the free-space PGF [7], [8], the problem of fast solvers for the
reflected fields has not been well studied. The PGF may
be represented as a direct spatial summation of single source
(non-periodic) layered media Green’s functions, which may be
found via Sommerfeld integrations. This infinite sum, however,
is very slowly convergent, and diverges when a complex phase
shift is applied between adjacent unit cells. The reflected fields
may also be represented as an infinite sum of diffraction (Flo-
quet) modes, each of which is incorporates the reflection coef-
ficient of the surface. This spectral series, however, converges
very slowly for the important case of observation points close
to the array and the surface. To date, fast methods to accelerate
the computation of for 3D configurations include a series
representation based on perfectly matched layers [9], and an
array-scanning technique that finds from the doubly peri-
odic layered medium Green’s function [10]. For the 2D case,
acceleration schemes include the Ewald method [11], [12] and
a method based on perfectly matched layers [13].
In this paper we present a rapidly converging method for
computing the reflected fields PGF for observation points
close to a 1D array of electric dipole sources placed near a sur-
face. The PGF is formulated in terms of single and double spec-
tral integrals for 2D and 3D configurations, respectively, and a
discrete spectrum of guided wave modes supported by the pla-
narly layered medium. The integrals are regularized to make
them rapidly convergent for fast numerical evaluation. This rep-
resentation can seamlessly handle source and observation points
directly on the surface and array axis, periodicities defined with
complex phase shifts, and is fully applicable to surfaces com-
posed of lossy and gain media.
The bulk of this paper is devoted to solving , the three-di-
mensional reflected fields Green’s function. Section III.A
discusses spectral integral representations for periodic Green’s
functions. Section III.B then shows how such representations
may be used to express in terms of the continuous
spectrum, solved as double integral, and a discrete spectrum
of eigenmodes. Sections IV and V are devoted to the fast
evaluation of the continuous and discrete spectra, respectively.
Section VI discusses the branch cuts of with respect to
the phase shift parameter, and the corresponding Riemann
sheets. Numerical implementation and results are presented in
Sections VII and VIII respectively. Finally, based upon the ap-
proaches for the 3D case, Section IX presents a formulation of
the 2D Green’s function , along with results. Throughout
the paper, a time dependence of is assumed.
VAN ORDEN AND LOMAKIN: RAPIDLY CONVERGENT REPRESENTATIONS FOR PGFs OF A LINEAR ARRAY IN LAYERED MEDIA 871

medium. Section III.A briefly describes this procedure for the

Floquet series representation of PGF for 3D configurations,
which is efficient for observation points far from the surface.
Section III.B describes a new formulation that is efficient close
to the surface.

A. Floquet Series Representation

Consider the Floquet series representation of the free-space
PGF in terms of an infinite sum of cylindrical waves

Fig. 1. A linear array of point dipole sources near a layered medium back- (3)
ground. The fields resulting from the array are found in the unit cell centered at
the origin.

where and are the

diffraction mode wavenumber components parallel to and trans-
II. STRUCTURE CONFIGURATION AND OUTLINE
verse to the array axis, respectively. Each cylindrical diffraction
Consider a linear, infinitely periodic array of electric dipole mode may be expanded into plane waves using an integral ex-
sources with spacing oriented along the axis, on or near a pansion of the Hankel function. The PGF then becomes
planarly layered medium. These are point current sources for
3D configurations, as shown in Fig. 1, and line sources for 2D
configurations. The array and observation point are assumed to
be on or above the interface, separated by a few wavelengths
or less. (Though not presented here, the formulation can be ex- (4)
tended to the case of observation and source points inside the
slab layers.) The free-space wavelength is and the free-space
where . This representation is well
wavenumber is . The electric dipole sources have
suited to finding the reflected fields Green’s function. By ap-
dipole moments , where is a (generally
plying the dyadic operator and inserting the TM reflection co-
complex) phase shift parameter, is an integer counting the
efficient, the component of may be found as
sources, and is the dipole moment of the source in the ze-
roth unit cell of the array, placed at the origin. The top surface
of the medium is parallel to the plane, a distance below the
array. The surface has known transverse electric (TE) and mag-
netic (TM) reflection coefficients and , respectively.
(5)
The reflection coefficients may be expressed as functions of
and the spectral parameter , whose ratio uniquely defines the
angle of incidence for a plane wave. Here, represents the discrete spectrum of guided wave
The electric fields resulting from this system may be ex- poles. It results from the fact that the complete expansion
pressed as with respect to the spectral parameter includes not only the
continuous (plane wave) spectrum but also the discrete (guided
(1) mode) spectrum [14]. The evaluation of the discrete spectrum
is discussed in Section V.
where and are the dyadic Green’s functions accounting This Floquet series is efficient for observation points far from
for the free-space and reflected electric fields for a linear peri- the array and surface, e.g., for the far-field radiation from the
odic system. The goal of this paper is to develop an efficient array. However, it is very slowly convergent for observation
representation of for observation points close to the array points close to the array and surface.
and surface.
B. Alternative Representation
III. INTEGRAL REPRESENTATIONS OF GREEN’S FUNCTIONS The scalar PGF may also be represented as an infinite
spatial sum over unit cells of the periodic system
A spectral representation of a free-space scalar Green’s func-
tion may be used to find the layered medium PGF . The
procedure is to expand into plane waves and find the dyadic (6)
PGF via a dyadic operator
Using the Weyl identity
(2)

with expressed as a plane wave expansion, may be

found as the reflection of each plane wave from the layered (7)
872 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

with in (6) yields an alternative repre- be significantly improved by explicitly excluding from the
sentation of the scalar, free-space PGF expansion a small number of sources in and near the unit cell.
The scalar PGF , from which is derived, may be
reformulated by expressing the 1D periodic Green’s function
as follows:
(8)

where is the scalar PGF in 1D free-space, which

may be found in closed form as a geometric spatial series.

(11)

where the first term accounts for the sources in and

(9) closest to the unit cell, while the second term accounts for the
remaining infinite sources. For most cases of interest may
be chosen as a small number (e.g., 2 or 3), and the contribution
It is clear that has poles at
of the first summation in (11) can be evaluated rapidly using
, corresponding to the diffraction mode wavenumbers.
any fast method [14]–[16]. The second term in (11) may re-
The two terms of in the brackets of (9) repre-
place in the spectral integrals in (10) to improve
sent the contributions of the sources on each side of the origin.
convergence. Note that this term has the same poles (and corre-
By eliminating one of these terms, the Green’s function for a
sponding residues) as , independent of .
semi-infinite periodic system may easily be formulated.
The integral representation (8) may be extended to dyadics B. Steepest Descent Path Integration
and used to find the fields reflected from a surface. For example,
The double spectral integrals used to evaluate the components
the component of may be found from by following
of may further be made rapidly convergent by deforming
the procedure similar to that in [14]:
both integration contours to the steepest descent path (SDP) in
the complex and planes, away from the real axes. This
may be accomplished through the following change of vari-
ables:
(10)

where symmetry has been used to reduce the integration over

to a semi-infinite integral. As in the Floquet series represen- (12)
tation, must be included to account for the discrete spec-
The double integration is then taken along the real axes of the
trum of guided wave modes supported by the layered medium.
complex and planes, and the saddle point of this integra-
Throughout the paper, equations and derivations are given for
tion is located at . With this transformation, the
the dyadic component to demonstrate this alternative repre-
term has exponential decay with respect to both
sentation. However, this method is readily extended to all of the
integration variables, and the spectral integral for the
dyadic components. Their integral representations are given in
component of is expressed as
Appendix A.
The integrands in (10) are highly oscillatory, making the inte-
grals difficult to evaluate numerically. The strong variations re-
sult primarily from , which contains both rapidly
varying exponential terms and poles that may reside close to
the integration contour. The reflection coefficient also contains
variations that complicate numerical integration. Section IV is
therefore devoted to the regularization and fast evaluation of
these integrals, while Section V discusses the evaluation of the
discrete spectrum.

IV. RAPID EVALUATION OF SPECTRAL INTEGRAL

A. Direct Evaluation of Sources Near the Unit Cell

(13)
When evaluating the fields in the unit cell of a periodic
structure, most of the field variations result from those current
sources in and near the unit cell of interest. The convergence of The term clearly shows that
the integral expression for the Green’s function may therefore the integrand has Gaussian decay increasing with . As the
VAN ORDEN AND LOMAKIN: RAPIDLY CONVERGENT REPRESENTATIONS FOR PGFs OF A LINEAR ARRAY IN LAYERED MEDIA 873

periodicity decreases, this decay becomes weaker, requiring wavenumber and the poles of get very close to
larger values of for the same convergence. the saddle point. This case is particularly important to finding
In the process of deforming the integration contours, one or the complex dispersion relations of resonant arrays on surfaces,
more poles of may be crossed. It can be shown that for which the propagation constant for traveling waves may be
this occurs only when has a nonzero imaginary part. In close to . A further regularization of the integral is therefore
this case, the residues of the integrand at these poles must be required.
accounted for. It is easily shown that these poles are found at The resonant behavior resulting from the poles of
, where . (The may be explicitly extracted from the integrand, making it
sign distinguishes the poles resulting from the two terms of slowly varying, and then integrated in closed form. To sim-
in (13).) They exist in the combined space spanning plify the notation, the integrand of may be written
two complex planes, and so the residue must be formulated as as .
an integral in accordance with the residue theorem for higher It is easily seen that the term is singular when
dimension complex functions. It is shown in Appendix B that . Near
the residue of the th pole is a pole singularity, may be well approximated by
, i.e., the residue of the
function divided by its singular component. To extract the
resonant contribution of for a given value of the integer
, one may subtract this term from the integral to regularize
it and then separately integrate the subtracted terms in closed
form

(14)

where and . It may be further

shown that only the poles at can contribute if ,
while the poles at can contribute only if . For
most cases of interest, only one or two poles contribute to the
integral. However, for very large (e.g., greater than 15) the
spectral spacing between the poles becomes small enough that
more may have to be considered.
In general, the guided wave poles of the reflection coefficients
are not crossed in the deformation to the SDP contours if the ob-
servation point is close to the array. If this does occur (e.g., for
(15)
observers removed from the array), however, the contribution
of that pole to the discrete spectrum (see Section V) must be
where erfc denotes the complementary error function, and we
excluded. The leaky wave poles of the reflection coefficients,
have used the fact that is even in to simplify
in contrast, generally are crossed. These poles, which otherwise
the expression. The first term in (15) is the double integral
would not contribute to the discrete spectrum, must now be in-
that does not have variations resulting from the singularities
cluded, although in most cases their contributions are negligibly
at . The second term is the integral of the resonant parts
small.
of , and is represented as a 1D integral over that
The integral formulation of (13) assumes that the observation
displays a Gaussian convergence. For most cases, the contri-
coordinates and are small compared to , in which
bution of only one pair of poles must be extracted, though this
case the saddle point of the SDP integrations lie near and
procedure is easily extended to cases where multiple poles of
, as formulated in (12). As such, the presented integral
are close to the saddle point.
representation is efficient for observation points relatively close
It can also occur that the guided wave poles of are suffi-
to the array and surface (the separation should be smaller than
ciently close to the origin in the plane to slow down the eval-
). For larger values of and , the Floquet mode
uation of , including both the double and single integrals
representations of Section III.A become efficient.
in (15). This is generally the case for the TM reflected fields or
for any “near-cutoff” guided mode. The resonant contribution of
C. Extraction of Resonant Contributions of Poles
these poles may also be extracted to regularize the integrands.
The poles of both the reflection coefficient and the 1D spec- A complete analysis of the general case, in which poles of both
tral PGF still contribute significant variations to the integrand and are close to the saddle point of the inte-
in (13) if they are located near the saddle point of the SDP inte- gral, is somewhat involved technically; a detailed treatment is
gration. These variations can significantly slow down numerical given in Appendix C. As the electrical thickness of the multilay-
integration. This is especially true in the “blind angle” regime, ered medium increases, more poles of must be extracted
where the phase shift parameter approaches the free-space to maintain a good convergence rate.
874 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
V. DISCRETE SPECTRUM
The discrete spectrum of guided modes must be included in
the spectral expansion of the layered medium PGF. The propa-
gation wavenumber of the th TM guided wave mode rep-
resents a pole in the TM reflection coefficient . Such
poles may be found numerically using a pole or root-finding al-
gorithm for complex valued functions. The discrete spectrum of
the th mode is found as the residue of the integral in (10) eval-
uated in the plane at . The complete discrete spectrum
of the component of is then found by summing
this residue over all poles
(16)
where . The integral in (16) may
be expressed in terms of the scalar PGF
for a linear array placed on the axis in 2D free space. The
expression for the discrete spectrum then simplifies to
(17)
where may be computed rapidly by regularizing the spec-
tral integral in (16) [17], or by other methods [7], [18]. Note
that is not evaluated at the free-space wavenumber , but
rather the guided wavenumber component , (18)
indicating that it accounts for radiation into that guided wave
mode.
Although the expression (17) is accurate for the representa-
tion of (10), two important modifications are required for the
accelerated integral representation of (13). First, in deforming
the integration contours to the SDPs, the leaky wave poles are
generally crossed and they must also be included in (17). On
the other hand, if a guided wave mode is crossed, its contribu-
tion to the discrete spectrum must be excluded. Second, when
a small number of sources near the unit cell of in-
terest are excluded from the spectral integration, as described in
Section IV.A, the same must be done for the discrete spectrum.
That is, the computation of must be redefined so as not to
include those source contributions. This may be done, for ex-
ample, by replacing the 1D PGF in (16) by the second term
of (11).
VI. RIEMANN SHEETS OF THE GREEN’S FUNCTION
In studying periodic structures, there is a frequent interest
in identifying traveling wave modes and finding their complex
propagation constants. For a given geometry, these modal prop-
agation constants represent those values of the phase shift pa-
rameter that solve the relevant dispersion equation. (In in-
tegral equation formulations, they lead to a zero value for the
determinant of the impedance matrix.) The dispersion relation
is an implicit equation whose dependence on comes from
the Green’s function. When solving it in the complex plane,
one must account for the branch cuts introduced by the Green’s
function, as some leaky-wave solutions may appear on alternate
Riemann sheets. It is therefore important to be able to compute
the Green’s function on any Riemann sheet.
The branch cuts result from the existence of Floquet
modes. It is clear from the expression (3) that the free-space
periodic Green’s function has an infinite number of
square-root branch cuts in the plane, resulting from its
dependence on the transverse Floquet mode wavenumbers
, where . These
branch cuts must also appear in the representation (4), as well
as in the reflected fields Green’s function (5). The sign of the
square root is typically chosen so that for all ,
corresponding to diffraction modes that are proper, and decay
exponentially away from the array. In this case the Green’s
function is said to be evaluated on the top Riemann sheet in the
complex plane. To define a Green’s function on an alternate
Riemann sheet, one may choose for a small
number of Floquet modes.
The branch cuts in the plane also exist in the spectral inte-
gral formulation of (or any representation of .) Math-
ematically, they result from the discontinuity of the integral in
the plane when the integration contour crosses a pole of the
1D PGF (see Appendix B). Up to this point, this integral repre-
sentation of has been presented for the top Riemann sheet.
To define on the lower Riemann sheet with respect to the
th Floquet mode, one must evaluate on the top Riemann
sheet, then subtract the residue contribution of the th Floquet
mode pole. That is, must be redefined as
where is given in (14).
The discrete spectrum DS also contains square-root branch
cuts, but of the form for the th guided wave
mode. These branch cuts result from the 2D free-space periodic
Green’s function in (17). The discrete spectrum may be
defined on a lower Riemann sheet with respect to any of these
branch cuts through the computation of , which may also
be represented as a Floquet series [7].
VII. NUMERICAL IMPLEMENTATION
This section discusses the numerical evaluation of the double
SDP integrals of (13). The evaluation of the discrete spectrum
via the 2D PGF, and of the contributions of the
sources near the unit cell both have well-known numerical
implementations and are not discussed here. The SDP integral
may be evaluated using a quadrature rule with equally spaced
nodes for both integration variables. One may choose a discrete
set of nodes and (with and integers) in the ranges
and , where and are
the truncation values for each integration. These finite ranges
represent the contribution zones of the integrals, beyond which
the integral has negligible value. The computation of the inte-
gral is then reduced to a discrete double summation, where each
term is simply the integrand evaluated at nodes , then
VAN ORDEN AND LOMAKIN: RAPIDLY CONVERGENT REPRESENTATIONS FOR PGFs OF A LINEAR ARRAY IN LAYERED MEDIA 875

multiplied by corresponding weights . The integration

of (13) then becomes

(19)

where and are number of nodes used in each integra-

tion. The error associated with this numerical integration de-
pends on the number of nodes and used and the trun-
cation values and . Assuming that the exponen- Fig. 2. Error of the field component versus for array on top of a
tial decay dominates at the edge dielectric slab for 3 values of the slab thickness . The array has spacing
, phase shift parameter , and the slab has permittivity
of the contributing zone, the truncation values may be taken as . The fields are observed at .
where
is a dimensionless parameter, e.g., is generally
TABLE I
sufficient for a single precision accuracy. The number of inte- CPU TIMES FOR 200 EVALUATIONS OF THE DIAGONAL COMPONENTS OF
gration nodes and is then chosen to achieve the desired AT , NOT INCLUDING THE CONTRIBUTION OF
accuracy. In our implementation we choose , as THE 5 SOURCES NEAR THE UNIT CELL

the integral over is semi-infinite and requires half as many

quadrature terms.
It should be noted that in addition to the double SDP integral,
a small number of single integrals must be evaluated to find
the residue contributions and for the terms
subtracted from to make it slowly varying (if required).
These terms do not typically contribute significantly to the total
computational cost (approximately 10% for the cases consid-
ered below), and can be evaluated using a similar quadrature
rule, with summation terms.
VIII. NUMERICAL RESULTS
This section presents results showing the accuracy and con-
vergence of the proposed method for finding . The case
considered is an array of dipole sources placed directly on top
of a dielectric slab in free space. Verification to high accuracy
presents some complications, however, as it requires a suitable
reference solution found using either a Floquet series (5) or
a spatial summation of single source Green’s functions. Our
method agrees well with both the Floquet series representation
and spatial summations, assuming that those can be computed.
We found that the Floquet series is only reasonably convergent
for very thin slabs, as the integrals required for the Floquet sum-
mation are problematic to evaluate. Even for thin slabs, single
precision accuracy is hard to achieve. For this reason we choose
as a reference solution a spatial summation of single source
Green’s functions, assuming a small amount of loss in the am-
bient medium. This loss is realized by making complex, with
. Each term in the summation is eval-
uated, using Sommerfeld integration, to accuracy. The
introduced loss permits truncating the sum to 3000 terms, en-
suring a truncation error of or less for all presented cases.
Fig. 2 shows the error of as a function of the number
of quadrature nodes used to evaluate the SDP integral over .
(The total number of summation terms in (19) is then
.) It is shown for the observation point
. Five sources in and near the unit cell are excluded
from the integral and computed using the single source Green’s
function (i.e., ) via the spectral method presented in [14].
The slab has relative permittivity , the array has
spacing , and the dipoles are sequentially phase shifted
with wavenumber . The error is shown for
three different values of the slab thickness : , and
, where is the wavelength in the slab
medium.
It is evident that the convergence is fast for all slab thick-
nesses. The error is small even for very small values of . For
the slab thicknesses , and , the TM reflec-
tion coefficient has 1, 2, and 2 guided wave poles that must be
included in the discrete spectrum, respectively, and 2, 3, and 3
poles whose resonant contribution must be subtracted to regu-
larize the integrand for high accuracy solutions. Although these
results are shown only for , the convergence rates of the
other components of are very similar.
Table I shows the computation times for evaluation of the
3 diagonal components of at 200 observation points (all
taken to be the same as in Fig. 2). The contribution of the 5
sources in and near the unit cell is not included, as its evalu-
ation time is a well-studied problem [19], and is not dominant
compared to the evaluation time of the double integral. The CPU
times are given for the choices of the integration parameters
and (the latter being the number of nodes used to evaluate the
single integrals required for pole extraction). The corresponding
relative errors of the representation are given in Fig. 2. All com-
putations were done on an Intel Xeon X5482 3.2 GHz processor.
876 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

IX. EVALUATION OF 2D REFLECTED FIELDS PGF

This section considers the 2D version of the problem, in
which a periodic array of line sources resides near a surface.
Because the fields have no dependence in the dimension,
only the scalar PGF accounting for TE and TM reflections
need be considered. Furthermore, there is only one dimension
transverse to the periodicity axis, so the spectral representation
involves only a single integral.
The Floquet series representation of the free-space Green’s
function is given by

(20)
Fig. 3. Field components observed on the array axis and slab surface for a
lossless system, plotted over half the unit cell with the source contribution at with and . This
the origin removed. The array has spacing , phase shift parameter
, and the slab has permittivity and thickness may easily extended to the case of an array of line sources near
. a surface. Finding the reflected fields scalar Green’s function
requires simply inserting the reflection coefficient into
each series term, evaluated at the corresponding Floquet mode
wavenumber component

(21)

As with the 3D case, however, this series converges very

slowly when the observation point is close to the array and sur-
face.
An alternative is to use a transverse spectral expansion. This
approach, presented in [17] to find the free-space PGF, may be
Fig. 4. Error of the field component versus for a dense array with extended to find the TE and TM reflected fields from a surface.
on top of a dielectric slab for 3 values of the parameter . The array The resulting integral becomes
has phase shift parameter , and the slab has permittivity
and thickness . The fields are observed at
.

(22)
Fig. 3 shows the , and field components The discrete spectrum for each guided wave mode is found as
over half the unit cell for a lossless version of the system con- the residue of the integral, evaluated at the mode wavenumber
sidered above, with phase shift parameter
and slab thickness . Here the observation points are
taken directly on both the surface and the array axis, and the
source contribution at the origin is excluded to avoid the field
divergence. Unlike , the and components in- (23)
clude both TE and TM fields.
Finally, Fig. 4 shows the convergence of the integral for a The integral in (22) is simply a plane wave expansion of the
dense array with , in order to demonstrate low-fre- fields, with inserted to find the (TE, TM) reflection
quency performance. The error of the PGF is shown at the ob- of each plane wave component. It may be regularized and eval-
servation point for three different uated using the exact same procedures outlined in Section IV.
values of . A larger number of sources near the unit cell must This approach is shown in [17] for the case where no surface
be excluded from the integration and evaluated separately for is present, and detailed derivations are not provided here. The
the integral to achieve the same convergence as shown in Fig. 2. only modification that may be required is accounting for simple
Therefore, the performance of the presented method deteriorates poles in the reflection coefficient that may reside near the saddle
for very small periodicities. It remains reasonably good, how- point of the integration. These poles correspond to guided and
ever, for periodicities from several wavelength down to values leaky wave modes in the surface medium, and their contribution
as small as , thus spanning the range used in most prac- may be extracted and integrated in closed form using the same
tical applications. procedure used for the poles of .
VAN ORDEN AND LOMAKIN: RAPIDLY CONVERGENT REPRESENTATIONS FOR PGFs OF A LINEAR ARRAY IN LAYERED MEDIA 877

APPENDIX A
DYADIC COMPONENTS OF
This section extends (10) to all the dyadic components of .
Each of these integral expressions may be regularized and eval-
uated numerically as described in Sections IV–VIII

Fig. 5. Error of the field components versus for an array on top

of a dielectric slab for 2 values of the slab thickness . The structure has the same
parameters considered in Fig. 2, except is real and .

TABLE II
CPU TIMES FOR 2000 EVALUATIONS OF THE TM REFLECTED FIELDS
AT , NOT INCLUDING THE CONTRIBUTION
OF 5 SOURCES NEAR THE UNIT CELL

To demonstrate the accuracy of this code, we use the Flo-

quet representation (21) as a reference solution, as it can easily
be computed to high accuracy for by taking many se-
ries terms. The integral (22), once regularized, may be evalu-
ated using a simple quadrature rule with summation terms.
Fig. 5 shows the convergence of and for the same
configuration considered in Fig. 2, except the ambient medium
is chosen to be lossless (i.e., real ) and .
Table II shows CPU times for the TM reflected fields for 2000
evaluations at the observation point . The
source contributions of the five sources in and closest to the unit
cell are not included in these timings.

X. SUMMARY (24)
Alternative dyadic PGF representations have been presented
to find the electric fields resulting from an array of electric dipole
sources near a planarly layered medium in two and three dimen- APPENDIX B
sions. They are based on a plane-wave expansion of the scalar RESIDUES OF THE DOUBLE SPECTRAL INTEGRAL
periodic Green’s function, formulated as spectral integral and The simplest way to evaluate the residue of the integrals
a discrete spectrum of guided wave modes. This representation in (10) at the poles of is to change the in-
is accurate for observation points close to and directly on the tegration variables into a polar form through the following
array axis and surface, including surfaces composed of gain and transformation:
lossy media. It is furthermore accurate for complex phase shifts
between sources and may be defined on alternate Riemann sheets (25)
with respect one or more diffraction modes. These properties
make the spectral integral representation particularly well-suited
The integral for the component in (10) then becomes
to finding the complex dispersion relations of traveling wave
modes supported by linear periodic arrays, as well as scattering
by both near and far-field external sources. It has the potential to
greatly accelerate the computational analysis and design of sur-
face traveling wave structures and printed leaky-wave antennas. (26)
878 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

where and . The important

simplification here is that does not depend on ,
and has poles only in the plane. One may simply evaluate the
residue of the integrand in the plane and then integrate this
residue over the angular variable to recover the result given
in (14).
One problem that must be considered is how to determine if
a pole is crossed by the double SDP integral (i.e., when a pole’s
residue contribution should be included). In our formulation the
integration in the plane is done first, but the integration path
depends on through the coordinate transform in (12). This
means that a pole may be crossed in the plane for some values
of , but not others. This transition, for a given pole, repre-
sents a discontinuity of the integrand in the plane (i.e., the
integrand of the second spectral integration). The th Floquet
mode pole therefore has a corresponding pair of branch cuts in
the plane whose path is defined by .
Note that these branch cuts also appear in the Floquet series
representation of (5). The branch cuts have branch points at
. A pole’s residue contribution must
be included if the SDP crosses this pair of branch cuts in the
plane. It may be shown that only the poles at can con-
tribute if , while only the poles at contribute
if .
It is interesting to note that the residue contribution of (26)
may also be derived by finding the residue of the integral
(with treated as a constant) and integrating it in the com-
plex plane. The integration path must start at the branch
point and go to the other branch point
, where it crosses to the lower Riemann
sheet and returns to . In the coordinate
transform to the angular spectrum (25), the integrand does not
explicitly contain these branch cuts, so the residue evaluation is
more straightforward; the result, however, is the same.

APPENDIX C
EXTRACTING THE RESIDUE CONTRIBUTION OF POLES
Suppose that in order to regularize the double integral in (13),
the resonant part of multiple poles of both (found at
) and (denoted by ) must be extracted
from the integrand, then integrated separately. One may begin
this process with (15), in which only the singularities at
are subtracted. Both terms in (15) contain integrals over that
must be regularized with respect to the reflection coefficient.
Following the same procedure, and extending it to the case of (27)
multiple poles of both terms, one obtains (27). This equation
contains, in order, the nonresonant double integral, a single in-
tegral, in which the resonant terms of have been in-
tegrated, a regularized single integral over , and a sum of the REFERENCES
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neering Explorations. Piscataway, NJ: Wiley-IEEE press, 2006.
[5] A. F. Peterson et al., Computational Methods for Electromagnetics.
New York: IEEE Press, 1998.
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[6] B. A. Munk and G. A. Burrell, “Plane-wave expansion for arrays of ar-
bitrarily oriented piecewise linear elements and its application in deter-
mining the impedance of a single linear antenna in a lossy halfspace,”
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[9] H. Rogier, “New series expansions for the 3-D Green’s function of
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tonio, TX, 2002.
[12] G. Valerio et al., “Efficient computation of mixed potential dyadic
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[14] W. C. Chew, Waves and Fields in Inhomogeneous Media. New York:
IEEE Press, 1995.
[15] M. I. Aksun and R. Mittra, “Derivation of closed-form Green’s func-
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[17] D. Van Orden and V. Lomakin, “Rapidly convergent representations
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551–658, 1996.
Derek Van Orden (M’11) was born in San Fran-
cisco, California. He received the B.S. degree in ap-
plied physics from Rice University, Houston, Tx, in
2004 and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
California, San Diego, in 2011.
His research work is in computational and applied
electromagnetics. His interests include periodic sys-
tems, surfaces structures, waveguiding structures and
plasmonics.
Vitaliy Lomakin (SM’08) received the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from Kharkov National Uni-
versity, Ukraine, in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering from Tel Aviv University, Israel, in
2003.
From 1997 to 2002, he was a Teaching Assistant
and Instructor in the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Tel Aviv University. From 2002 to
2005, he was a Postdoctoral Associate and Visiting
Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois
at Urbana Champaign. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of California, San Diego, in 2005, where he currently
holds the position of Associate Professor. His research interests include com-
putational electromagnetics, computational micromagnetics/nanomagnetics,
the analysis of microwave phenomena on structured surfaces, the analysis of
optical phenomena in photonic nanostructures, the analysis of magnetization
dynamics in magnetic nanostructures.
880 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Novel Strategy for the Diagnosis of Arbitrary
Geometries Large Arrays
Aniello Buonanno and Michele D’Urso
Abstract—A general solution strategy for detecting faulty el-
ements in phased arrays of arbitrary geometries is suggested.
The proposed deterministic approach assumes as input data the
amplitude and phase of near-field distributions and allows to
determine the positions of the faulty elements. In particular, the
method is founded on the well known Multiple Signal Classifica-
tion (MUSIC) method, i.e., a spectral estimation technique. The
proposed algorithm is also compared with a recently published
method by the same authors, against experimental and numerical
data. The results fully confirm the usefulness of the proposed
technique, highlighting the advantages and the disadvantages of
both methods.
Index Terms—Antenna measurement, array diagnostics, inverse
imaging, multiple signal classification (MUSIC).
I. INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATIONS
T HE identification of faulty elements in large (hundreds
to thousands of elements) antenna arrays, e.g., radiote-
lescopes and radar, from complex field measurements is a
problem of considerable practical and theoretical relevance
[1]–[6]. The costs associated with maintaining continuous
operation of such a sophisticated systems are rising as the
functionality of the antennas and other equipment degrades as
a result of age. With the ever-increasing sophistication of the
antennas’ electronic subsystems, their life-cycle maintenance
costs (related to per-unit testing and diagnosis cost of a faulty
system and its recovery rate) could in the near future exceed
the corresponding original capital investment. Frequently the
fault detection and isolation tasks are performed by mission
staff on a manual case-by-case basis. Most often, due to
complexity of the system, diagnosis cannot be performed in
real time, resulting in frequent loss of data acquisition. In-
deed, the antenna diagnosis operation can be require multiple
outages from a few minutes to several hours at times. The
impact of such losses of data acquisition potentially could
result in very difficult situations in critical operations (e.g.,
military radar).
In order to know which element or elements are damaged,
active antennas can include calibration systems. These systems
Manuscript received August 23, 2010; revised May 18, 2011; accepted July
20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with the Innovation Team, Intangible Capital Management
Directorate, SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A., I-80014 Giugliano di Napoli,
Napoli, Italy.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173109
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
make an easy control of the system components, but it can fail
if the calibration system is damaged too. Moreover, calibration
systems can be also rejected because its inclusion means a crit-
ical increase in array volume, weight and costs.
Due all this reasons, the necessity of development of an
intelligent, comprehensive fault diagnosis unit becomes in-
evitable. Several deterministic and stochastic techniques have
been developed [1]–[4] in the last years. Among the stochastic
approaches, we point out the learning algorithms based on
examples, such as neural networks [1], [2], and the genetic
algorithms based approaches [3], [4]. These methods have the
advantage to require small amount of samples of the radiated
field and, in many cases, only amplitude data [2], but, due to
the high size of search space, they can have poor performance.
Note the diffused enthusiasm for physically inspired opti-
mization techniques has induced to neglect the fact that all
global optimization algorithms are limited in their perfor-
mances by the computational cost required to get, within a
given precision, the actual solution. This cost grows very
rapidly with the number of unknowns [7], i.e., with the phased
array antenna size. As a consequence, in large scale problems,
due to the necessity of stopping the search after a given amount
of flops, it is likely that only sub-optimal solutions will be
generally achieved, which can be significantly worse than
the actual optimal ones. Moreover, not only general global
algorithms are computationally heavy: they are all essentially
equivalent, as implied by the so called No Free Lunch The-
orems [8]. These theorems state that a truly general-purpose
universal optimization strategy does not exist [8]: on average
the performances of any two optimization algorithms are the
same across all possible optimization problems. Hence, for any
algorithm, an elevated performance over one class of problems
is exactly paid for in performance over another class. Now, for
a given sufficiently general algorithm, neither it is practically
possible to characterize the class of problems to which it is
fitted, nor we can blindly refer to results obtained in a other
area [8]. And so, the only way to devise an effective algorithm
is to exploit the properties of the specific class of problems
under consideration, thus possibly avoiding the use of global
optimization schemes.
In this paper we refer to deterministic methods. Among the
deterministic methods, a simple and fast approach to estimate
the array excitations from near-field measures is the Backward
Transformation Method (BTM) [5], based on a proper exploita-
tion of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm. Unfortu-
nately the method can be only employed to planar arrays and
measurement set-up. A different method has been proposed in
BUONANNO AND D’URSO: A NOVEL STRATEGY FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF ARBITRARY GEOMETRIES LARGE ARRAYS 881

[6] based on sources reconstruction method (SRM). It has been

shown that the method in [6] is usable for arbitrary geometry
source domain and field acquisition over arbitrary shape do-
mains.
In this contribution, we compare the method in [9], where a
distributional formulation is exploited to linearize the problem
and find the solution, with a novel method obtained re-inter-
preting the Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) published in
[10] traditionally used to estimate the direction of arrival (DOA)
of multiple plane waves. The main idea of this method is to as-
sume that the incident signals and noise are uncorrelated. Thus
it is possible to consider the subspace spanned by the noise or-
thogonal to the subspace spaced by the incident signals. We use
the same information to solve the diagnostic problem at hand.
In particular, differently to [9], where we determine the excita-
tion coefficients of each radiating element and detect the failures
Fig. 1. Geometry of the problem showing the th radiating element position
by comparing the reconstructed ones with the nominal currents, and the th measurement position of the probe.
herein we uptake the orthogonal proprieties of the signal and
noise subspaces to estimate the faulty elements’ position. More be regularly spaced. The voltage at the probe output can be
in detail, by neglecting the mutual coupling between the radi- expressed as
ating elements and by calculating the eigenvalues of the covari-
ance matrix of the waveforms measured at the probe, we find the
eigenvectors that belongs to the noise subspace. By calculating
the spatial domain spectrum function, we estimate the position
of each faulty radiating elements. As [9] and differently from (1)
traditional approaches [1], [6], the diagnostic tool herein pro-
posed is free from eventual uncertainties on the measurement
where denotes the usual dot product, is the free-
position due to not using the a priori knowledge of the antenna
space wavenumber, and is the working wavelength. More-
layout.
over, and are the relative angles between the th
Subspace methods in statistical signal processing [11], [12] measurement point and the th element position defined as
are also used for detecting and locating targets from antenna
array data. Moreover, in inverse scattering a comparison be-
tween the two different algorithms has been shown in [13].
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the MUSIC
approaches are briefly recalled and applied to the problem at (2)
hand. In Section III the proposed method is experimentally com-
pared to [9] for the case of a fully active phased array and then
with . Furthermore, we assume the system
numerically tested for the case of a conformal array and spher-
of targets is composed by identical radiating elements, so that
ical measurement system. Conclusions follow.
.
The aim of the problem at hand is to determine the locations
of the faulty elements from a set of samples of amplitude
II. THE PROPOSED METHOD SCHEME and phase near-field radiation pattern, or values of voltages
given by (1).
The classical MUSIC algorithm [10] was proposed to im-
To this aim we rewrite the measured voltage at probe as
prove the resolution of estimated direction of arrival of the inco-
herent waves incident on a linear array antenna system. Schmidt
observed that the space of measured data can be decomposed
into the direct sum , where the signal subspace
is orthogonal to the noise subspace .
In this section we apply the previous consideration to detect (3)
the faulty elements of a fully active phased array.
Let and be the excitation coefficient and the where is the number of correctly working
electric-field radiation pattern of the -the radiating element, radiating elements and is the number of faulty elements in
respectively (Fig. 1). A probe having effective height the investigated phased array. Now, let us consider the matrix
is placed in a known spatial point . We make defined as
no assumptions about the location of the antenna elements
and, in particular, do not require them to lie in a plane or (4)
882 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
where represents the inner product,
and denotes the conjugation transpose. According to [10] we
determine the signal subspace , i.e., the subspace spanned by
the correctly working radiating elements, and the noise subspace
. This subspaces can be revealed, for instance, via the singular
value decomposition (SVD), which has the form
where and are orthogonal matrices. In partic-
ular, as the matrix is an Hermitian one, it can be written
and so . The columns of having
nonzero eigenvalues span the signal subspace while the re-
maining columns span the null subspace . Note that the ma-
trix only has one singular value different from zero, i.e., the
signal subspace is only one-dimensional. This means the signal
and noise subspace are simply distinguished; we a priori know
the mono-dimensional property of the signal subspace, which
is also the reason because we do not show the plot of the sin-
gular values. On the other hand, this is also a limitation in term
of maximum number of detectable sources (disappearance of
some of the sources may happen) or, equivalently, in term of
achievable resolution. This is due to the fact that, increasing the
number of sources the dimensionality of signal subspace does
not increase (only one eigenvector). This means that the con-
tribution of each sources decreases as it is shared by the same
eigenvector representing the signal subspace. In other words,
only a part of the vector representing the signal source is orthog-
onal to the noise subspace (i.e., the signal subspace, spanned by
the “single” eigenvector having nonzero eigenvalue, is combi-
nation of all the signal sources). Nevertheless, for the considered
application, this orthogonality property of the two defined sub-
spaces, can be exploited to provide an implicit characterization
of the faulty element locations. Indeed, observing that the faulty
elements belong to the null subspace , we can detect this ele-
ments by means of the function
(5)
where is a known function defined as
(6)
with
(7)
, , and the spatial domain
containing all the radiating elements. The function defined in the
(5) will peak (theoretically to infinity) at each correctly working
radiating elements position. As the faulty elements belong to the
null subspace this elements will reconstruct lower than the
correctly working radiating elements.
Clearly, due to the model describing the faulty elements, a
radiating element having an excitation coefficient next to null
will be reconstruct with intensity near to the faulty elements.
Fig. 2. The adopted experimental set-up and the considered phased array
layout.
III. TESTING AGAINST EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL DATA
As first example, the proposed diagnostic tool has been tested
for the case of horn elements located as shown in
Fig. 2. The data for the inversion have been collected using a
traditional planar scanning placed at distance from the an-
tenna under test aperture, and a fixed number of radiating ele-
ments have been forced off. The dimensions of the spatial do-
main and of the measurement
plane are input data for the
problem, see Fig. 2. The voltages (amplitude and phase) have
been collected in points. The probe is a small horn
antenna. All the measurement set-up is available at the Research
and Development Department of Selex Sistemi Integrati.
As first step, let us observe the desired and measured radiation
patterns, see Fig. 3. The first one has been achieved by using a
Taylor current distribution such to fulfill the design constraints.
The measured one is obtained by standard near-field far-field
transformation [14] starting from the measured near-field data.
As it can be seen, according to the above hypothesis, the mea-
sured radiation pattern and the theoretical one are sensibly dif-
ferent. The overall pattern shapes and the sidelobes level are
different, and a proper investigation aimed to detect possibly
faulty elements becomes mandatory. To this aim, the measured
near-field data have been first processed by using the method
in [9]. Fig. 4 shows the amplitude distributions of the excita-
tion coefficient. Then, the available data have been processed
by adopting the diagnostic tool herein proposed, see Fig. 5. As
it can be seen for this case (planar geometry and planar measure-
ment system), the two methods obtain the position of faulty ele-
ments. Both the methods allow to identify that the main problem
is an error of the elements of two semi-row of the phased array
antenna under test. More in detail, the herein proposed method
allows to achieve a better resolution than [9] discerning more
clearly the faulty elements of two semi-row, see Fig. 5. It is even
more evident by looking at the central element of the array under
test that is not fed. Indeed, different to Fig. 4, this element can be
clearly discerned in Fig. 5. Nevertheless, differently to the pro-
posed method that “just” allows to localize the faulty elements,
the tool in [9] has the capability of detecting array failure, as
well as the possibility to evaluate the actual currents.
We underline that, in the considered cases and in the proposed
applications, the sources are not strongly correlated being the
BUONANNO AND D’URSO: A NOVEL STRATEGY FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF ARBITRARY GEOMETRIES LARGE ARRAYS
Fig. 3. A comparison between the theoretical radiation pattern (blue solid line)
and the measured one (red dot-line) of the phased array layout in Fig. 2. (a)
Azimuth cut; (b) elevation cut.
Fig. 4. Reconstructed amplitude distributions by using the method in [9].
mutual coupling between the radiating elements is negligible
(the achieved experimental result is very interesting). Of course
the correlation degrades the performance of the proposed algo-
rithm (due to the mono-dimensional property of the signal sub-
space).
883
Fig. 5. Reconstructed faulty elements distributions by using the proposed
method.
Moreover, both Figs. 4 and 5 diagnostic a mismatch along
the -axis between the system reference centered on the AUT
and the system reference centered on the measured domain
proving the robustness against unknown measurement position
errors. Note that according to the previous remarks the external
radiating elements having the lowest excitation coefficient
(Taylor current distribution) are reconstruct with a intensity
level next (not equal) to the faulty ones (see Fig. 5).
With regards to the computational complexity of the herein
proposed algorithm note that the method employs the eigende-
composition of the matrix having elements that means
a complexity order of . Note that also the method pro-
posed in [9] requires the employment of the TSVD factorization.
In particular, in [9] the matrix to factorize has elements
where is the number of measures and is the number of
considered pixels in the investigated domain. This means that,
when the number of considered pixels is less than the number of
measures, the method in [9] has a smaller computational cost.
Note that the number of considered pixels can be chosen only
according to the achievable resolution and the size of the inves-
tigation domain since the position and the number of radiating
elements has been considered unknown. On the base of this con-
sideration, the computational cost of the two methods can be
considered similarly quite expensive but it does not represent,
in both cases, a very relevant drawback considering the overall
time for the array diagnosis.
Different methods that are computationally less expensive
can be considered in the literature. A good example is the
Landweber iterative regularization method, that is character-
ized by a computational complexity of order , where
is the number of iterations. However, differently from the
TSVD based method where the regularization parameter can
be easily chosen, the Landweber based algorithm has some
regularization properties related to the number of iterations
and it is not easy, in general, to estimate a priori the ill-con-
ditioning of the system, especially for conformal arrays. As
consequence, the choice of the best algorithm depends on the
degree of confidence about the regularization parameter, i.e.,
the stopping rule. Also, the Landweber iterative regularization
method requires the estimation of the relaxation parameter that
affects the velocity of convergence of the algorithm.
884
Fig. 6. The adopted measurement configuration (a) and the considered con-
formal phased array layout (b) for the numerical simulation. The red circles
show the position of the forced off radiating elements.
In order to point out the effectiveness of the proposed
approach for generic geometry arrays and measurement sys-
tems, we consider the case of a conformal array composed by
Hertzian dipole located as shown in Fig. 6(b) (the
large black dot). The data for the inversion have been simulated
by using Computer Simulation Technology Microwave Studio
(CST MWS) [15], a commercial full wave 3D electromagnetic
(EM) simulator based on the Finite-Integration Technique. In
particular, the spatial domain is a bounded surface domain of
a cylinder described by equations , ,
and the measurement domain is a bounded
surface domain of a sphere described by equations , the quantitative analysis of the actual currents. The achieved re-
, (see Fig. 6). The voltages
(amplitude and phase) have been collected in
points of the measurement domain . The red circled radiating
elements in Fig. 6(b) have been forced off and the remaining
ones are excited by a unitary current amplitude. The calcu-
lated data have been processed by adopting both [9] and the
proposed diagnostic tool (see Figs. 7 and 8). As it can be
seen, all the turned off elements are well localized for both the
methods. Once more the result fully confirms the capability
of the proposed method to obtain a better resolution than [9]
and the usefulness for more complex geometry arrays and
measurement systems.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Reconstructed amplitude distributions by using the method in [9]. The
red circles show the position of the forced off radiating elements.
Fig. 8. Reconstructed faulty elements distributions by using the proposed
method. The red circles show the position of the forced off radiating elements.
IV. CONCLUSION
A novel and effective deterministic method for detecting
faulty elements in large phased arrays of generic geometry has
been proposed and tested against experimental data measured
at Selex Sistemi Integrati and numerical data obtained using
CST MSW simulation tool. The proposed strategy assumes as
input the amplitude and phase of the near-field distributions
and allows to determine the locations and the number of faulty
elementary antennas. By properly re-interpreting the classical
MUSIC algorithm, the faulty radiating elements are localized
by using their property to belong to the null subspace previously
defined. The method has been compared to [9] showing that it
allows to obtain a better resolution even if it cannot be used to
sults fully confirm accuracy, usefulness and robustness against
noise of the proposed technique. The main disadvantage is the
computational effort required by the technique. However, the
overall computational time required for the examples reported
in this paper does not increase significantly the overall time
required for the array diagnosis taking into account that the
measurement time to collect near-field data is several hours.
For future works, we are developing an extension to resolve
this drawback based on a spatial smoothing procedure that al-
lows to extend the dimension of the signal subspace improving
the achievable performances also in the cases of correlated
sources.
BUONANNO AND D’URSO: A NOVEL STRATEGY FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF ARBITRARY GEOMETRIES LARGE ARRAYS
REFERENCES
[1] A. Patnaik, B. Chowdhury, P. Pradhan, R. K. Mishra, and C.
Christodolou, “An ANN application for fault finding in antenna
arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 775–777,
Mar. 2007.
[2] G. Castaldi, V. Pierro, and I. Pinto, “Efficient faulty elements diagnos-
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[3] B. Yeo and Y. Lu, “Array failure correction with a genetic algorithm,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 823–828, May 1999.
[4] J. A. Rodriguez, F. Ares, H. Palacios, and J. Vassal’lo, “Finding defec-
tive elements in planar arrays using genetic algorithms,” in Progress
in Electromagnetics Research, PIER 29, J. A. Kong, Ed. Cambridge,
MA: EMW Publishing, 2000, ch. 2, pp. 25–37.
[5] J. J. Lee, E. M. Ferren, D. P. Woollen, and K. M. Lee, “Near-field
probe used as a diagnostic tool to locate defective elements in an array
antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 36, no. 6, pp. 884–889,
Jun. 1988.
[6] Y. Alvarez, F. Las-Heras, B. A. Dominguez-Casas, and C. Garcia, “An-
tenna diagnostics using arbitrary-geometry field acquisition domains,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Lett., vol. 8, pp. 375–378, May 2009.
[7] A. S. Nemirovsky and D. B. Yudin, Problem Complexity and Method
Efficiency in Optimization, ser. Interscience Series in Discrete Mathe-
matics. New York: Wiley, 1983.
[8] D. H. Wolpert and W. G. Macready, “No free lunch theorems for opti-
mization,” IEEE Trans. Evol. Computat., vol. 1, pp. 67–82, 1997.
[9] A. Buonanno, M. D’Urso, M. Cicolani, and S. Mosca, “Large phased
arrays diagnostic via distributional approach,” PIER, Progress in Elec-
tromagnetics Research, vol. 92, pp. 153–166, 2009.
[10] R. O. Schmidt, “Multiple emitter location and signal parameter extima-
tion,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-34, pp. 276–280, Mar.
1986.
[11] C. Therrien, Discrete Random Signals and Statistical Signal Pro-
cessing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992, 18.
[12] P. Stoica and R. Moses, Introduction to Spectral Analysis. Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
[13] R. Solimene, A. Buonanno, and R. Pierri, “Comparison between two
methods for small scatterer localization,” presented at the EUCAP 09
Conf., Berlin, Germany, Mar. 23–27, 2009, ISBN 978-3-8007-3152-7.
[14] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1997.
[15] CST Studio Suite 2008. [Online]. Available: http://www.cst.com
Aniello Buonanno received the Electronic Engi-
neering Master degree (summa cum laude) and the
Ph.D. degree from the Second University of Naples,
Italy, in 2005 and 2008, respectively.
He joined the Applied Electromagnetic Group
at the Department of Information Engineering of
Second University of Naples. He is currently with
the Innovation Team of the SELEX Sistemi Integrati,
an International Company working on Homeland
Security and Homeland Defence Systems, as well as
the development of radar for border control systems.
885
He is the author and co-author of more than 40 papers, published on interna-
tional scientific journals or in the proceedings on international conferences.
His scientific interests are devoted to forward and inverse electromagnetic
scattering methods for through wall imaging (TWI), ground penetrating radar
(GPR), and life sign detection (LSD). Recently, he started to work on energy
harvesting problems, integrated systems based on robotics and time domain
antenna array design.
Dr. Buonanno was awarded the EuWiT Young Engineering Prize in 2009.
Michele D’Urso was born in 1976. He received
the Telecommunication Engineering Master degree
(summa cum laude) and the Ph.D. degree from the
University Federico II of Naples, Italy, in 2002 and
2006, respectively.
After graduation, he joined the Applied Electro-
magnetic Group at the Department for Electronics
and Telecommunication Engineering of the Uni-
versity Federico II in Naples, first as an Associate
Researcher and then as a Ph.D. candidate, from
2003 to 2005. From September 2004 to January
2005, he was an intern in the Mathematics and Modelling Department of
Schlumberger-Doll Research, Ridgefield, CT, under the supervision of Prof.
T. Habashy and Dr. A. Abubakar. After 2006 he was an Associate Researcher
at the University Federico II of Naples and then an Associate Professor, first
at the University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria and then at the University
of Cassino, Italy. He is now the Director of a research team, the Innovation
Team, working in SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A, a Finmeccanica Company.
His scientific interests are devoted to forward and inverse electromagnetic
scattering methods, and to innovative strategies and efficient algorithms for
array antenna synthesis problems, including time modulated and timed arrays.
Recently, he started to work on energy harvesting problems, integrated systems
based on robotics platforms. He is author and co-author of more than 100
papers, published on international scientific journals or in the proceedings on
international conferences.
Dr. D’Urso was the recipient of the G. Barzilai Award of the Italian Elec-
tromagnetic Society (SIEM) in 2004. He has also received the Best Young Re-
search Paper Award at the European Wireless Technology Conference (EuWiT)
in 2009. He is also the recipient of the (SELEX Sistemi Integrati) Premio Inno-
vazione (Innovation Award) 2009 and 2010.
886 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Predicting Sparse Array Performance From
Two-Element Interferometer Data
James A. Nessel, Member, IEEE, and Roberto J. Acosta
Abstract—Widely distributed (sparse) ground-based antenna
arrays are being considered for deep space communications
applications with the development of the proposed Next Genera-
tion Deep Space Network. However, atmospheric-induced phase
fluctuations can impose daunting restrictions on the performance
of such an array, particularly during transmit and particularly at
Ka-band frequencies, which have yet to be successfully resolved.
In this paper, an analysis of the uncompensated performance of
a sparse antenna array, in terms of its directivity and pattern
degradation, is performed utilizing real data. The theoretical
derivation for array directivity degradation is validated with
interferometric measurements (for a 2-element array) recorded at
Goldstone, CA, from May 2007—May 2008. With the validity of
the model established, an arbitrary 27-element array geometry is
defined at Goldstone, CA, to ascertain its theoretical performance
in the presence of phase fluctuations based on the measured data.
Therein, a procedure in which array directivity performance can
be determined based on site-specific interferometric measure-
ments is established. It is concluded that a combination of compact
array geometry and atmospheric compensation is necessary to
minimize array loss impact for deep space communications.
Index Terms—Arrays, phase noise, propagation measurements,
sparse array antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
A S the monolithic, large aperture (70-m) antennas of the
Deep Space Network (DSN) are proving costly to op-
erate/maintain and represent single points of failure, the concept
of smaller aperture (34-m and below) ground-based antenna ar-
rays for deep space communications applications is currently
being considered by NASA as a means to offset these high main-
tenance costs, provide a graceful degradation of performance,
and meet the stringent reflector surface accuracy requirements
to realize higher frequency operation (Ka-band). However, the
large separation distances necessary for aperture-based antenna
arrays are subject to the increased influence of phase fluctua-
tions induced by propagation through the atmosphere. This phe-
nomenon is primarily a result of large amounts of inhomoge-
neous distributions of water vapor exposed to turbulent air flow
Manuscript received September 02, 2010; revised March 14, 2011; accepted
June 04, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by NASA’s Space Commu-
nications and Navigation (SCaN) Program under the Space Operations Mission
Directorate (SOMD).
The authors are with the National Aeronautics and Space Admin-
istration Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH 44135 USA (e-mail:
james.a.nessel@nasa.gov; roberto.j.acosta @nasa.gov).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173110
U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright.
conditions in Earth’s upper atmosphere (troposphere), which di-
rectly leads to variations in the effective electrical path length
(phase) of a received signal on spatiotemporal scales [1]–[3].
Such variations are seen as additional ‘phase noise’ and will in-
herently degrade the performance of antenna arrays.
The radio science community has had to deal with this same
issue for quite some time, but whereas radio science applica-
tions impose only receive-mode requirements (i.e., imaging)
and observations are made on the order of minutes to hours
(long integration times), communications applications require
both transmit and receive capabilities, as well as real-time cor-
rections at sub-second time scales. In the receive case, adap-
tive techniques have been utilized by the DSN since the 80’s to
compensate for the atmosphere at frequencies up to X-band [4].
More recently, transmit arraying of a 7.15 GHz signal was suc-
cessfully demonstrated in an experiment with the Mars Global
Surveyor [5]. However, since atmospheric phase noise scales
with frequency, at Ka-band (the frequencies of interest for fu-
ture NASA DSN operations) the problem becomes much more
severe and has yet to be successfully resolved, particularly in the
uplink (transmit) scenario. In this paper, an analysis of the per-
formance of a sparse antenna array, in terms of its directivity and
array pattern degradation, is performed. The theoretical deriva-
tion for array directivity degradation is validated with real in-
terferometric measurements recorded by a 2-element array at
Goldstone, CA. Excellent agreement between theory and mea-
surement is observed for the 2-element array case. With the va-
lidity of the model established, an arbitrary 27-element array ge-
ometry is defined at Goldstone, CA, to predict its performance
based on the measured interferometric phase data.
II. THEORY
A. Array Directivity (With Deterministic Phase Difference)
Consider a widely distributed array of reflector
antennas arbitrarily spaced on a plane whose geometry is de-
fined in Fig. 1, where is a unit vector in the direction of prop-
agation, is the distance from the array origin to the th el-
ement, is the distance the signal travels from the array origin
to the receiver, and is the distance the signal travels from the
th element to the receiver.
Since the results of our analysis are concerned with the evo-
lution of primarily the main pencil beam (small off boresight)
of large (with respect to the wavelength) apertures, from aper-
ture field theory, the far field electric field of a paraboloidal re-
flector element, , can be accurately described by the Fourier
transform of the electric field over the aperture plane [6]. If we
assume, for analytical simplicity, that no blockage occurs and
NESSEL AND ACOSTA: PREDICTING SPARSE ARRAY PERFORMANCE FROM TWO-ELEMENT INTERFEROMETER DATA
Fig. 1. Geometry of a planar array of radiating elements located at arbitrary
positions with arbitrary polarization. Inset: determination of excess path delay
between array elements as a result of array geometry.
that the reflectors are uniformly illuminated by a linearly polar-
ized feed with constant plane amplitude and phase excitation
(1)
where is the complex excitation coefficient of the re-
flector feed, is the wave number, is the radius of the circular
aperture, and the symmetry of the resultant field about is used.
Translating this analysis to an array environment, an array of
identical antennas will produce a far field electric field that will
consist of the superposition of each individual element field plus
a propagation delay, as determined by the geometry, relative to
some specified origin (see inset of Fig. 1). This will result in an
array far field, , which can be represented by the product
of the individual element far field and an array factor [7]
(2)
where,
; reduces to a generalization of the well known Ruze equation [8]
unit vector in direction of propagation;
position vector of element relative to array origin;
.
From the far field array pattern, the radiation intensity,
, and radiated power, , of an array can be deter-
mined, whose ratio defines the array directivity. If we assume
the antenna elements are spaced many wavelengths apart,
and are pointed to zenith , then the peak
array directivity, , as a function of deterministic phase
difference between elements and , given by , can
be exactly described by
(3a)
(3b)
887
From the derivation for the peak directivity of the array, it is
readily observed that for array elements coherently added in
phase, a directivity equal to times the individual element di-
rectivity results, as expected for the case of large separation dis-
tance between elements.
B. Array Directivity in Presence of Random Phase
The above analysis assumes a constant deterministic phase
between elements, but if we now suppose that random phase
fluctuations are present during signal transmission, such as those
induced by water vapor in the atmosphere, the statistical distri-
bution of the random process can be utilized to obtain a closed-
form solution. Let us assume (and later confirm this assump-
tion) that the phase fluctuations induced by the atmosphere are
normally distributed over the time scale of interest with mean
zero and variance . The average peak directivity of an array,
in terms of the statistical ensemble average of the random phase
fluctuations between elements and , assuming independent
distributions, can be determined, in closed form, as
(4a)
(4b)
(4c)
(4d)
where , the classical Eulerian transformation
is employed in (4b), and the odd symmetry of the function
is utilized in (4c). If we take the special case of independent and
identically distributed random phase errors between antenna el-
ements of , as it can be shown that the result in (4d)
where (5a) is derived from the fact that for
and (by baseline) when
(5a)
(5b)
(5c)
(5d)
The average array loss can be described by the difference (in
dB) of the ideal directivity and the actual directivity achieved in
the presence of the phase fluctuations
(6)
888 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

III. VALIDATION

The above theoretical derivation for array loss can be consid-

Fig. 2. Average synthetic array pattern based on a 27-element array with ele-
ment aperture radius
rms phase errors. Array geometry is as defined in Fig. 9(a).
For a two-element
fies to
, spacing , for various
array, the above equation simpli-
ered exact, so long as the original assumption that differential
phase fluctuations induced by the atmosphere are zero-mean,
normally distributed random variables is true. Therefore, before
further analysis can proceed, we first validate this assumption
by investigating the probability density function (PDF) of dif-
ferential phase fluctuations, as measured by a two-element site
test interferometer currently deployed in Goldstone, CA.
The two-element interferometer developed by NASA Glenn
Research Center utilizes a digital I and Q receiver which moni-
tors an unmodulated beacon signal at 20.199 GHZ from a geo-
stationary satellite, Anik F2, with a baseline separation of 256
m and an elevation angle of 48.5 deg. A localized 10 MHz GPS-
disciplined rubidium oscillator provides the reference timing for
all operations and data collection. A more detailed description
of the system hardware and setup can be found in [9]. The signal
is sampled at 3.64 MHz with an integration time of 144 ms and
recorded every second. Since our measurements limit the reso-
lution to which we can observe phase fluctuations to time scales
greater than 1 second, we must make several assumptions as to
the characteristics of these fluctuations at time scales compa-
rable to a symbol period , the time scale of interest
for communications applications.

A. Statistics of Phase Fluctuations

A representative plot of the calibrated differential phase, as

(7a)
(7b)
(7c)
The preceding analysis determines a closed form solution to
the average array loss factor in the direction of signal recep-
tion/transmission. Further insight into array performance may
be gained by investigating how random phase fluctuations af-
fect the evolution of the array directivity pattern, in a statis-
tical sense. To do so, we repeat the previous derivation utilizing
the spatial dependence of . Recognizing that the only
random component of the formulation occurs in the differential
phase term, , we obtain the following relationship
(8)
A plot of the perturbed directivity pattern for various rms
phase errors, as seen in Fig. 2, thus indicates an avg. pattern
which possesses a noticeable broadening of the beamwidth of
the main lobe. This is expected, as the perturbed pattern repre-
sents an average over all possible perturbed beam configurations
based on a zero-mean Gaussian phase distribution.
measured by our two-element interferometer, is shown in Fig. 3
for September 1, 2007 1. We analyze the statistics for a block
of data from 02:00 to 03:00 GMT (where the atmosphere ap-
pears to be mildly turbulent) and 12:00 to 13:00 GMT (where
the atmosphere appears to be calmer) at different time scales.
Fig. 4 shows the PDF at time scales of 1 hr, 30 min, and 10 min
for each of these times. From the plot, the statistics do appear
to follow a zero-mean normal distribution as the analysis is ex-
tended to shorter and shorter time periods, but notice that the
rms of the phase fluctuations as we move towards shorter time
scales does possess some variance. Since the rms phase is the
metric by which array degradation is measured, characterizing
these changes at time scales comparable to a symbol period is
tantamount to determining array performance for communica-
tions applications.
From this analysis, we validate that the distribution of phase
fluctuations induced by the atmosphere is indeed Gaussian for
time scales larger than approximately 10 minutes. Due to the
low sampling frequency, we assume that the trend observed in
the statistics for this process continue to extend to shorter time
scales; that is, at time scales comparable to a symbol period,
the PDF of phase fluctuations remains a zero-mean, normally
distributed process. To truly verify this assumption, the sam-
pling rate of recorded phase data would need to be increased to
sub-second intervals.
1Note: This day was arbitrarily chosen from a set of data blocks that possessed
no erroneous data points. The statistics derived from this data is representative
of all data collected, thus far.
NESSEL AND ACOSTA: PREDICTING SPARSE ARRAY PERFORMANCE FROM TWO-ELEMENT INTERFEROMETER DATA 889

Fig. 3. Differential phase time series measured by the two-element site test interferometer at Goldstone, CA on Sep. 1, 2007.

Fig. 4. PDF’s of phase fluctuations for 1 hr (top left, 1), 30 mins (top right, 2), and 10 mins (bottom center, 6) at (a) 02:00–03:00 GMT and (b) 12:00–13:00 GMT
on 9/1/07.

B. Two-Element Array Loss: Measurement Versus Predicted
To compare the theoretically predicted array loss with the
measured array loss for a two-element array, we assume that the
differential phase statistics (mean, standard deviation, normal
distribution) effectively describe the random process over the
time scales of interest. In this way, we can directly compare the
time-averaged directivity with the ensemble average directivity
loss determined above. From the equation for peak directivity
for a two-element array
(9)
The time-averaged directivity for a given time interval, ,
can be described by
(10a)
(10b)
where . distribution, 10 minute averages were used. From the plot,
Returning to the data measured at Goldstone on September
1, 2007 (see Fig. 3), a plot of the instantaneous directivity for
a 2-element array and the time-averaged directivity is shown
in the upper and lower portions of Fig. 5, respectively. From
the plot, it is observed that instantaneous phase errors induced
by the atmosphere have the potential to completely nullify the
signal power in the intended direction (anomalous refraction), if
the integration time of the signal is on the order of 1 sec. How-
ever, since it is assumed that phase fluctuations are zero-mean
normally distributed down to infinitesimally short time scales,
the average directivity on the order of a symbol period is a more
accurate determinator of array performance. From the lower
portion of Fig. 5, the 10-min. time-averaged directivity is com-
pared with the theoretically derived directivity for 2 elements,
as predicted by (9). Over the course of the day, we observe very
good agreement between measurement and theory.
The plot of Fig. 6 shows the comparison between the pre-
dicted ensemble average array degradation, , for a
given rms phase and the measured time-averaged directivity
loss, , for the two-element array at Goldstone, CA, for
the entire year. As 10 minutes is the smallest interval in which
we possess enough data points to establish (verify) a normal
890
Fig. 5. Plot of instantaneous directivity time series of the 2-element array (upper) and the time-averaged directivity over 10-min. blocks compared to the theoret-
ically derived directivity for the 2-element array (lower). Analysis utilizes measured phase data from Goldstone, CA, for September 1, 2007.
Fig. 6. Measured versus theoretical array loss for varying rms phase as
recorded from May 2007—May 2008 at Goldstone, CA.
we observe excellent agreement between the two curves, in-
dicating the correctness of the theoretical derivation for array
loss in the presence of atmospheric-induced phase fluctuations
and the justification to utilize differential phase statistics to
predict overall array performance for an abritrary geometry.
Deviations from the theoretical curve are likely due to the lack
of resolution to effectively determine a normal distribution
over that time scale.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
IV. PREDICTING EXPECTED ARRAY PERFORMANCE
A. Phase Statistics at Different Baselines
In order to utilize measured two-element interferometric data
at a particular site to predict the performance of an -element
array, some background into turbulence theory is required. The
turbulent atmosphere consits of large scale structures where ki-
netic energy in the form of convection (i.e., solar radiation) or
friction (i.e., rough boundaries) is constantly transfered down
to the creation of smaller scale structures (eddies) of varying
spatial scales [10]. In 1941, Andrey Kolmogorov developed a
mathematical formalism to describe this turblence in a statistical
manner, the structure function. A structure function describes
the distribution of the variance of a particular parameter
(e.g., temperature, phase, etc.) as a function of the spatial (or
temporal) scale [11]. In this manner, a spatial phase structure
function can be described by
(11)
where is the phase variance, is the phase at a point
, is an arbitrary baseline separation distance, and de-
notes the ensemble average of the enclosed quantity over all
baselines. Thus, the spatial phase structure function simply de-
scribes how the variance in phase scales with distance. How-
ever, measuring the phase at the necessary number of baselines
to obtain statistical relevancy requires many antennas at var-
ious separation distances and would be difficult to implement.
Instead, if one assumes a frozen phase screen model (Taylor
hypothesis), that is, that the statistics of the turbulence remain
“frozen” for a significant amount of time and is advected across
an array by the mean wind speed, one can relate temporal and
NESSEL AND ACOSTA: PREDICTING SPARSE ARRAY PERFORMANCE FROM TWO-ELEMENT INTERFEROMETER DATA
Fig. 7. Temporal root phase structure function for the first 10-min block of data
recorded on September 1, 2007 at Goldstone, CA.
spatial fluctuations over short time scales with a simple Eulerian
transformation between baseline length and wind speed via
(12)
where is the velocity of the phase screen, and the factor of
is merely a result of differencing two phases at two dif-
ferent times [12]. Therefore utilizing (12) in combination with
the square root of the temporal phase structure function
(13)
provides the tool to scale the rms phase from one baseline to any
other baseline. Fig. 7 shows the temporal root phase structure
function for the first 10-min of the data set recorded September
1, 2007. From this plot, it is evident that a power law relationship
exists for the phase difference at short time scales. Eventually,
as the time scales approach the array crossing time of the phase
screen ( sec for this particular 10-min time period), the rms
phase saturates. Tatarski has shown that this scaling factor, as
determined from the temporal structure function, can be used to
scale the rms phase to other baselines (up to the height of the
turbulent layer, ) via the relationship [13]
(14)
where is the slope of the temporal root phase structure func-
tion at short time scales. From the slope in Fig. 7, , angle, , and
which is close to the Kolmogorov theoretical value of 5/6 (0.8)
for thick atmospheric layers. This method thus provides the
basis in which two-element interferometer phase data statistics
can be utilized to determine -element array performance.
Over each block of time (in our case, 10-min), the slope of
the root phase structure function can be determined and the rms
phase over that same period of time can then be extrapolated
to the other baselines, based on the geometry of the particular
array. It should be kept in mind that this scaling factor is only
applicable up to the thickness of the turbulent layer , is non-dispersive away from line centers [19]. Therefore, the
which is specific to a particular site [14]. For Goldstone, CA,
radiosonde measurements indicate [15]. For baseline
distances greater than this layer thickness , our two-ele-
ment interferometer has no spatial scaling information, so the
Kolmogorov turbulence theory approximation must be used,
891
Fig. 8. CDF of rms phase for Goldstone, CA during first year of data collection
for zenith pointing angle and 32 GHz frequency of operation.
which predicts an rms scaling factor of [14]. A more
accurate representation of the scaling factor could be obtained
if an interferometer element were added at a distance .
This change in scaling factor is a direct result of the three-di-
mensional nature of the turbulence that is evident within the
inner scale of the turbulence height (where ) versus the
two-dimensional approximation of turbulence as the antennas
are separated at appreciable fractions of the vertical extent of
the turbulence layer (where ) [16].
B. Phase Statistics at Different Elevation Angles
For varying elevation angles, it is assumed that the phase
fluctuation statistics scales with the air mass through which
the signal propagates [17], [18]. Therefore, the interferometric
phase data is first scaled to zenith, from which it can be scaled
to any other elevation angle through the equation
(15)
where is the measured rms phase at the fixed elevation
is the elevation angle at which the phase sta-
tistics are desired. Typically, for site comparisons, it is adequate
to know the statistics corresponding to zenith , from
which other elevation angles can be readily derived.
C. Phase Statistics at Different Frequencies
As the refractive index of the atmosphere changes due to the
turbulent field, path length fluctuations are imposed upon the
propagating signal. These path length fluctuations will be in-
dependent of the frequency of operation, since the atmosphere
phase fluctuation (in deg) associated with a given path length
fluctuation, , is given by
(16a)
892 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 9. (a) Model array geometries for Goldstone, CA, array loss calculation example with 250-m baseline geometry (o) and a 50-m baseline geometry (x),
(b) resulting theoretical array loss versus rms phase curve for zenith pointing angle and 32 GHz frequency of operation, and array loss curves for (c) 250-m
baseline geometry and (d) 50-m baseline geometry for various elevation angles as a function of zenith-determined rms phase.

and will scale with frequency up to as
(16b)
D. Procedure to Predict Array Performance
To predict the directivity degradation of an array at a partic-
ular site in which phase data has been recorded, the following
procedure is followed, where it is assumed that the interferom-
eter baseline is less than the scale height of the turbulent layer.
If this is not the case, then the theoretical scale values from Kol-
mogorov turbulence theory should be used where appropriate.
For statistically valid results, phase fluctuations should be mea-
sured at a site for at least one year to ensure seasonal variations
are taken into account.
STEP 1: Define a block size (period of time) over which
sufficient data collection has occurred to ensure statistical
validity (in our case of 1 Hz sampling, 10 minutes was
validated as possessing enough samples to demonstrate
zero-mean Gaussian phase noise).
STEP 2: Calculate rms phase statistics, the temporal root
phase structure function, and the slope of the structure
function (at time scales less than the crossing time of the
array) over each block.
STEP 3: Scale the rms phase to the desired baseline length,
elevation angle, and frequency of operation of the array via
(17)
STEP 4: Calculate average array directivity from (4d).
NESSEL AND ACOSTA: PREDICTING SPARSE ARRAY PERFORMANCE FROM TWO-ELEMENT INTERFEROMETER DATA
Fig. 10. (top) time series phase fluctuations, (middle) rms phase time series, and (bottom) calculated array loss for model arrays for July 25, 2007 measured data
at Goldstone, CA, for zenith pointing angle and 32 GHz frequency of operation.
V. TYPICAL ARRAY PERFORMANCE AT GOLDSTONE, CA
To determine the typical array loss at Goldstone, CA, we
generate the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the rms
phase based on 1-yr data collected (May 2007—May 2008). To
normalize our analysis, the data has been transformed to zenith
and an operating frequency of 32 GHz. Recall the fixed interfer-
ometer baseline for the measured phase is 256 m. The resulting
zenith rms phase CDF is shown in Fig. 8.
From the CDF, we observe that 90% of the time (10% time
exceedance), the rms phase for the two-element interferometer
is better than 26.3 deg (at zenith). We extrapolate this data to
elements for a particular array geometry by scaling the rms
phase to different baselines, as described in the previous section.
Note that the results of this analysis will be extremely geometry
dependent [20]. As a simple example, let us consider an array
geometry similar to the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro,
NM, first, with an antenna spacing of 250 m between individual
elements (blue circles in Fig. 9(a)), and one with a spacing of
50 m (red x’s in Fig. 9(a)). Since maximum directivity is only
893
a function of the number of elements (in widely-spaced arrays),
these two geometries can be readily compared. In our analysis,
we assume the theoretical Kolmogorov turbulence root phase
structure function exponent of 5/6 and 1/3
[21].
We further assume that the average rms phase between an-
tenna elements is similar for identical baseline separations, re-
gardless of orientation or reference. Calculating the array loss
curve based on the theoretical derivation for zenith pointing
angle (Fig. 9(b)) and various other elevation angles (Fig. 9(c)
and (d)), we observe that for the 250-m baseline array geometry
in Goldstone, CA, we will need a margin of approximately 3.2
dB at zenith (13.9 dB at 10 elevation) to maintain 90% avail-
ability. This margin can be reduced, by reducing the baseline
separation to the 50-m geometry, which only requires 0.6 dB
at zenith (7.3 dB at 10 elevation). This is due entirely to the
fact that small-scale fluctuations will contain much less energy
than larger scale fluctuations, which would directly impact large
baseline arrays. Thus, for communications applications, it will
be desirable to maintain the most compact geometry possible to
894
minimize array loss due to atmospheric phase fluctuations, as
the furthest extent of the array will dominate this factor.
To investigate the transient behavior of the model array,
we can analyze the time-domain array performance for a
particularly turbulent day at Goldstone, CA. Fig. 10 shows
the phase fluctuations observed by the two-element interfer-
ometer on July 25, 2007, as well as the resulting rms phase
and calculated array loss (for both the wide and compact array
geometries described above) for zenith pointing angle and 32
GHz operational frequency. During extremely turbulent times
(beginning of the GMT day), array degradation can exceed 10
dB with a mean array loss of 6.5 dB for the entire day (250-m
baseline geometry). An approximate 4.5 dB improvement, on
average, can be realized for the more compact array design
(50-m baseline geometry).
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Herein we report on the theoretical performance of a sparse
array whose signal degradation is primarily due to atmospheric-
induced phase fluctuations. A procedure which utilizes inter-
ferometric phase measurements, combined with some requisite
knowledge of the scale height of the turbulent layer, is estab-
lished to predict array performance at a given site. The expected
degradation in directivity of an element array in the presence
of phase noise was derived theoretically and validated with mea-
sured data. Further, it is verified that the measured phase differ-
ential between two elements is indeed normally distributed (to
the resolution limits defined by the experimental setup). Based
on the theoretical analysis, it is observed that the directivity per-
formance of an array in the presence of atmospheric-induced
phase fluctuations is limited by the furthest extent of the array el-
ements, and this geometry should remain as compact as possible
to maximize array gain. That being said, optimal array perfor-
mance may not necessarily coincide with maximum array gain,
as the array signal-to-noise ratio would provide a better figure
of merit for quantifying array performance for communications
applications. There will inherently exist some trade-off in array
spacing and optimal SNR, which is fundamentally determined
by the physical location of additional noise sources within the
array antenna pattern for the given geometry. Finally, the time
series performance of an arbitrary array is shown for a partic-
ularly turbulent atmospheric day. For the geometries described
herein, as well as for low elevation angles, there is still signif-
icant array losses observed and to prevent these losses, some
form of compensation is necessary, particularly for uplink ar-
raying to be viable.
REFERENCES
[1] V. I. Tatarski, Wave Propagation in a Turbulent Medium. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1961.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
[2] O. P. Lay, “The temporal power spectrum of atmospheric fluctuations
due to water vapor,” Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser., vol. 122, pp.
535–545, 1997.
[3] O. P. Lay, “183 GHz radiometric phase correction for the Millimeter
Array,” MMA Memo 209, 1998.
[4] D. Rogstad, A. Mileant, and T. Pham, Antenna Arraying Techniques in
the Deep Space Network. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003, pp. 99–109.
[5] V. Vilnrotter, D. Lee, T. Cornish, R. Mukai, and L. Paal, “Uplink ar-
raying experiment with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft,” IPN
Prog. Rep. 42-166, pp. 1–14, Aug. 2006.
[6] R. E. Collin, Antennas Radiowave Propagation. New York: Mc-
Graw-Hill, 1985, pp. 168–207.
[7] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory Analysis and Design, 2nd ed.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2002, pp. 309–314.
[8] J. Ruze, “Antenna tolerance theory—A review,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 54,
no. 4, pp. 633–640, Apr. 1966.
[9] R. Acosta, B. Frantz, J. Nessel, and D. Morabito, “Goldstone site test
interferometer,” in Proc. 13th Ka and Broadband Communications
Conf., Turin, Italy, Sep. 24–26, 2007.
[10] M. Bremer, “Ch. 11: Atmospheric fluctuations,” in Proc. 2nd IRAM
Millimeter Interferometry Summer Sch., 2002, pp. 139–146.
[11] A. Kolmogorov, “The local structure of turbulence in incompressible
viscous fluid for very large Reynolds numbers,” Proc. USSR Academy
of Sciences, vol. 30, pp. 299–303, 1941.
[12] G. I. Taylor, “The spectrum of turbulence,” Proc. Roy. Soc. London.
Ser. A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, vol. 164, no. 919, pp.
476–490, Feb. 1938.
[13] V. I. Tatarski, Wave Propagation of the Turbulent Medium. New
York: Dover, 1961.
[14] C. Coulman, “Fundamental and applied aspects of astronomical
seeing,” Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys., vol. 23, pp. 19–57, 1985.
[15] R. Linfield, “Effect of Aperture Averaging Upon Tropospheric Delay
Fluctuations Seen With a DSN Antenna,” 1996, TDA Prog. Rep.
42–124.
[16] C. Ruf and S. Beus, “Retrieval of tropospheric water vapor scale height
from horizontal turbulence structure,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote.
Sens., vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 203–211, Mar. 1997.
[17] M. A. Holdaway, “Calculation of anomalous refraction on chajnantor,”
MMA Memo #186, Sep. 1997.
[18] B. Butler, “Another look at anomalous refraction on chajnantor,” MMA
Memo #188, Oct. 1997.
[19] S. Radford and M. A. Holdaway, “Atmospheric conditions at a site for
submillimeter wavelength astronomy,” Proc. SPIE, vol. 3357, 1998.
[20] L. D’Addario, “Combining Loss of A Transmitting Array Due to Phase
Errors,” 2008, IPN Prog. Rep. 42–175.
[21] C. Coulman, “Fundamental and applied aspects of astronomical
seeing,” Ann. Rev. Astron. Astrophys., vol. 23, pp. 19–57, 1985.
James A. Nessel (M’04) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engi-
neering from Arizona State University, Tempe, in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the University of Akron.
At ASU, he specialized in semiconductor device theory where his research
involved the development of models for predicting the effects of gamma radia-
tion on semiconductor microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices with
Los Alamos National Laboratories. Since 2004, he has been employed as an
Electronics Engineer with the Antennas and Optical Systems Branch, National
Aeronautics and Space Administration Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH.
His research interests include Ka-band propagation, microwave remote sensing,
and active phase correction for transmit arraying of microwave signals.
Mr. Nessel is a member of the American Geophysical Union and Secretary
of the local Cleveland section of the IEEE AP-S/MTT/EDS Societies.
Roberto J. Acosta, photograph and biography not available at the time of pub-
lication.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Linear Aperiodic Array Synthesis Using an Improved
Genetic Algorithm
Ling Cen, Zhu Liang Yu, Member, IEEE, Wee Ser, and Wei Cen
Abstract—A novel algorithm on beam pattern synthesis for
linear aperiodic arrays with arbitrary geometrical configuration
is presented in this paper. Linear aperiodic arrays are attractive
for their advantages on higher spatial resolution and lower side-
lobe. However, the advantages are attained at the cost of solving
a complex non-linear optimization problem. In this paper, we ex-
plain the Improved Genetic Algorithm (IGA) that simultaneously
adjusts the weight coefficients and inter-sensor spacings of a linear
aperiodic array in more details and extend the investigations to
include the effects of mutual coupling and the sensitivity of the
Peak Sidelobe Level (PSL) to steering angles. Numerical results
show that the PSL of the synthesized beam pattern has been
successfully lowered with the IGA when compared with other
techniques published in the literature. In addition, the compu-
tational cost of our algorithm can be as low as 10% of that of a
recently reported genetic algorithm based synthesis method. The
excellent performance of IGA makes it a promising optimization
algorithm where expensive cost functions are involved.
Index Terms—Aperiodic arrays, beam pattern synthesis, Ge-
netic Algorithms (GAs), linear arrays, Peak Sidelobe Level (PSL).
I. INTRODUCTION
U NEQUALLY-SPACED arrays [1]–[3], also termed as
aperiodic arrays have been studied for several decades.
Compared with equally-spaced arrays, aperiodic arrays with
optimally spaced sensors have the advantages that they are
capable of achieving higher spatial resolution or lower sidelobe.
Or we can use less sensors to meet similar pattern specifications
by carefully designing the locations of array sensors. Over
the past several decades, many analytical and numerical based
array beam pattern synthesis techniques have been developed
[4]–[19]. An example of the analytical techniques is reported in
[14], [15], in which the inter-sensor spacings for a given array
weight distribution are determined by performing a Legendre
transformation on the array factor. Examples of numerical
techniques include the use of linear or non-linear optimization
Manuscript received September 10, 2010; revised June 09, 2011; accepted
July 16, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by NSFC (60802068
and 61175114), Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University
(NCET-10-0370), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universi-
ties, SCUT (2012ZG0008), and SRF for ROCS, SEM.
L. Cen is with the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR, 138632
Singapore.
Z. L. Yu is with the College of Automation Science and Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China (e-mail:
zlyu@scut.edu.cn; zhuliang.yu@ieee.org).
W. Ser is with Nanyang Technological University, 639798 Singapore.
W. Cen is with Elektrotechnik GmbH, 34063 Kassel, Germany.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173111
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
895
methods such as the simplex algorithm [9], simulated annealing
algorithm [10], [11], differential evolution algorithm [12], and
genetic algorithms [13], [17]–[19].
Although many studies have been published on array syn-
thesis, further research is still needed for the problems described
below.
1) In deriving the solution to beam pattern synthesis, many
techniques proposed in the literature adjust either the
weight coefficients alone [4]–[7] or the sensor positions
alone [12], [13], [17]. For [8], [14], [15], both the weights
and positions are adjusted but the adjustments are made
separately. Intuitively however, it is more likely to achieve
the truly minimum sidelobe level when both the weights
and the positions are considered simultaneously.
2) Previous research efforts have focused mostly on symmet-
rical arrays [6]–[9], [12]–[15], [17]. The assumption of
symmetrical arrays allows us to adjust only half of the total
number of parameters, and hence, it reduces the design
complexity. However, the constraint on the array being
‘symmetrical’ reduces the degree of freedom of the opti-
mization process, leading to a sub-optimal solution even-
tually.
3) In order to reduce the design complexity, many published
techniques confine the inter-sensor spacings to a finite set
of candidate locations [7], [9]–[11], [13], [18]. However,
this too, reduces the optimization degree of freedom.
4) Relatively fewer works have been reported on the syn-
thesis of aperiodic arrays that use complex weight coeffi-
cients and assume an arbitrary main beam direction. Some
papers have assumed the coefficients to be complex, but the
techniques proposed assume uniform amplitude and adjust
only the phase. Other papers adjust only the amplitude and
position [8]–[11], [18] or only the phase and position [12].
Considering all the above four points, a Simulated Annealing
(SA) based method was proposed in [20] to design asymmetric
array by optimizing both the sensor positions and array complex
weight coefficients. It does not simultaneously optimize all the
parameters, but perturbs the weight coefficient and position of
each sensor in turns. In addition, it searches the sensor positions
over a grid space. Although the SA based method [20] has high
performance in array pattern synthesis, it is possible that sparse
arrays with continuously spaced sensors could have a high de-
gree of freedoms in lowering the sidelobe level [14], [15], [17].
The challenge of determining optimum parameter values si-
multaneously stems from the non-linear and non-convex depen-
dency of the array factor to the weights and the sensor positions
[12]. The performance of the employed optimization scheme is
an important factor in the success of a pattern synthesis method,
in terms of solution quality, computational load, and stability.
896 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
The intrinsic ability to cope with nonlinear problem makes the
Genetic Algorithms (GAs) a suitable solution [17]. It has been
employed in the pattern synthesis of aperiodic arrays for many
years [13], [17], [18]. In [17], an iterative approach based on a
Modified Genetic Algorithm (MGA) was proposed for the syn-
thesis of linear aperiodic arrays. In [18], a GA was customized
for adjusting the weight coefficients and the sensor positions si-
multaneously.
However, as stochastic search techniques, the major disad-
vantages of the GAs are premature convergence and slow con-
vergence speed, especially when they are employed to solve
complicated problems with a large solution space and local op-
tima [21]. As the optimization problem described in this paper
has a cost function with real variables, the number of candidate
solutions is infinite if the value precision is not constrained. This
can not only increase the probability of premature convergence,
but also lower computation speed.
In order to overcome the four problems described before and
the shortcoming of the GAs, an Improved Genetic Algorithm
(IGA) with a self-supervised mutation method has been pre-
sented in [19]. This paper explains the IGA in more details.
Specifically, the IGA is designed to achieve the following im-
provements compared to existing methods:
1) both the complex weight coefficients and the sensor posi-
tions are synthesized jointly;
2) the optimum solutions can be used for both symmetrical
and asymmetrical arrays;
3) much lower computational cost;
4) a novel multi-section based chromosome arrangement that
allows the optimization to handle a wide variety of con-
straints and evolution trends;
5) a novel crossover process for real variables;
6) a novel self-supervised (in place of the usual stochastic)
mutation that makes the IGA more robust, statistically
sound and faster in convergence.
In this paper, an extensive study has been made on the per-
formance of the IGA algorithm under different conditions. It is
shown that our method can be applied in the presence of mutual
coupling among the sensors. We also extend the investigations
to include the effect of steering angles on sidelobe level with
fixed mainbeam width.
The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows. The
array synthesis formulation for aperiodic arrays and the GA
based synthesis method are briefly described in Section II. The
IGA for the synthesis of aperiodic arrays is presented and dis-
cussed in Section III. The extension of the proposed method
considering mutual coupling effect, is presented in Section IV.
Section V describes the simulation study and shows the com-
parative performance of the presented technique. Concluding
remarks are given in Section VI.
II. METHOD ON ARRAY SYNTHESIS USING
GENETIC ALGORITHM
Assume an aperiodic and asymmetrical linear array with
sensors. The array factor AF can be characterized as [2]
(1)
where
for
for
and , is the wavelength, is the angle of arrival
of the incident wave measured with respect to the axis,
is the distance between the first and the th sensors, is the
inter-sensor spacing between the th and the th sensors,
, and is the weight coefficient of the th sensor. Since
is complex, it can be expressed as ,
where and are the amplitude and phase of respec-
tively. Consequently, the array factor can be expressed as
(2)
The task of array synthesis is to design the parameters of the
array so that it will produce a pattern close to the desired beam
pattern. Since the array factor is an exponential or trigonometric
function of sensor positions, the determination of the sensor po-
sitions is a nonlinear process with local minima. When applying
the GA for array pattern synthesis, the sensor parameters are en-
coded and cascaded to form a chromosome which represents a
potential solution. A specified number of chromosomes can be
used to construct a population, which will then evolve through
selection, breeding and genetic variation. With the help of such
an evolutionary process, the parameters of the array can be syn-
thesized.
As the objective of optimization is to minimize the sidelobe
level of the array pattern by adjusting the parameters of the
array, subject to given design specifications and constraints, the
fitness function can be defined with the evaluation of the Peak
Sidelobe Level (PSL) as
(3)
where is the spanned angles within the sidelobe band, and
is the range of the mainlobe. The function is then
evaluated excluding the mainbeam. In (3), the PSL is measured
in the unit of decibel. Here, we introduce the minus sign in order
to make it a maximization problem.
It is well known that array optimization should be organized
along specific trade-off rule between sidelobe level and main-
lobe width. To simplify this problem, only the minimization of
sidelobe level is considered in the optimization. The mainlobe
width is fixed to be within a given range according to the design
specifications.
III. IMPROVED GENETIC ALGORITHM (IGA)
Over the past decades, the GA method has been widely ap-
plied to array synthesis [13], [17]–[19], [22]–[26]. Although the
GA is able to solve non-convex pattern synthesis problems, it
suffers from intensive computation and weak-guaranteed con-
vergence, especially when the solution space is large [21]. In
order to enhance the convergence performance of the GA, we
proposed an Improved Genetic Algorithm (IGA) in [19], where
a multi-section based real encoding scheme, a section-based
CEN et al.: LINEAR APERIODIC ARRAY SYNTHESIS USING AN IMPROVED GENETIC ALGORITHM
crossover process, and a self-supervised mutation process were
proposed. This section explains the IGA in more details.
A. Encoding Scheme
An effective encoding scheme is important to the success of
the GA optimization. In the IGA, instead of using binary coding
representation (as is in most GA), the chromosomes are repre-
sented using floating-point numbers, which represent the param-
eter vectors of the array. The sensor weights and locations are
concatenated into different variable-sections, e.g., weight-sec-
tion and spacing-section (or amplitude-section, phase-section
and spacing-section if the weights are complex numbers). A
chromosome is formed by cascading all the sections. Arranging
the chromosome in this multi-section way has the advantage
that, it takes care of the possibility of different types of parame-
ters that may have different constraints and evolutionary trends.
A certain number of fitter chromosomes in a population are
selected based on Roulette Wheel Selection strategy [21], so
that highly fit chromosomes have better characteristic and more
chances to be chosen and allowed to mate.
B. Section-Based Crossover
The selected chromosomes are treated as “parents” to
produce new chromosomes called “children” by genetic op-
erations. Crossover is a basic operation for yielding new
chromosomes. In the IGA, the crossover is independently
performed for each variable-section according to a crossover
probability, . This allows independent control
of evolution process for each type of array parameters. Three
methods of crossover, i.e., uniform crossover, single-point
crossover and multi-point crossover, are randomly applied in
each generation during the evolutionary process. A control
parameter, is randomly chosen from {0,1,2}. If , if
the uniform crossover is activated, in which the crossover is
performed over the entire chromosome via a randomly gen-
erated mask. The mask is randomly generated with the same
length as that of the chromosome and it consists of a bit-string
of “0” and “1”. The children are generated according to the
information contained in the mask. If 1 or 2, a single- or
two-point crossover is performed. In the single-point crossover,
one cut-point is randomly chosen from the parents and the parts
located in the right of the cut-point are exchanged. Similarly,
for the two-point crossover, two cut-points are selected and the
parts between the two points are exchanged. The new cut-point
genes, and , are obtained by taking a linear combination
of the old cut-point genes, and , the upper and lower
bounds, and , of the gene, and a randomly generated value,
, the new fitness values, respectively,
(4)
897
where is randomly generated within [0,1]. This expression en-
sures that and are confined to be within the upper and
lower bounds.
C. Self-Supervised Mutation
After the offspring are produced from the crossover process,
they will then undergo a mutation process, which maintains the
population diversity according to a mutation probability .
One disadvantage of the stochastic mutation process is that the
process may “miss” better solutions and waste much time on
exploiting “bad” searching areas. In order to overcome this
problem, a self-supervised mutation is proposed in the IGA.
In contrast to conventional mutation methods, our mutation
process can be applied to one gene for one or more times in each
generation. Let us define each update of a gene during mutation
as a Search. In the self-supervised scheme, the results obtained
from the previous Searches are used to adjust the direction
and the step size of the subsequent Search. At the beginning
of the mutation process, a Search is performed on the gene in
an arbitrary direction. If a better solution can be obtained in
that direction, the mutation will continue with a new Search.
The Searching step sizes are gradually decreased within a local
area of the gene value. The Search in the same direction will
stop when there is no significant solution improvement. This
approach finds the best or near-best solution in one direction,
and as such, it is capable of finding better solutions in “good”
searching areas, and preventing the evolution from repeatedly
exploiting “bad” areas. By this way, the IGA can be more
efficient with less computational load over the GA.
Let the gene to be mutated be denoted as , the new gene
after one Search is calculated as
,
if ,
(5)
where and are the lower and upper bounds of , re-
spectively. The is a real number within the range of ,
which is randomly initialized at the beginning of the mutation.
After each Search, is decreased by multiplying a factor
to it as
(6)
where is the new value of is the decreasing rate
satisfying , and are the original and
is the average fitness
value of the offspring from the crossover, and is the minimum
acceptable improvement. The conditions and
, are derived based on the following considerations.
Firstly, it is found that, when is only slightly greater than
, it is often hard to obtain a significant improvement from
further Searches. It is therefore better to terminate the process at
that point so as to save computation time. Secondly, the evalua-
tion of additional individuals generated in each mutation Search
898 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
increases the computational load. Based on the principle of na-
ture selection, fitter individuals with higher fitness have a ten-
dency to produce better quality offspring. In order to reduce
computational cost, the Search and computational process are
performed only on fitter individuals whose fitness values are
larger than the average value. After updating and , a new
Search will start with and . The mutation Search on
is considered to be fully completed when the condition in (6)
cannot be met.
After the offspring is produced by crossover and mutation
process, some of the new chromosomes will be chosen to
replace the same number of chromosomes in the old popula-
tion to form a new one. The replacement strategy used is the
Generation-Replacement method incorporated with the Elitist
Strategy [27]. The whole process from encoding and selection
to crossover, mutation and replacement forms a generation of
evolution. A new population is produced in each generation.
Such process is iterated till it converges or the termination
conditions are met.
IV. EXTENSION OF PROPOSED METHOD TO INCLUDE MUTUAL
COUPLING EFFECT
Mutual coupling, which occurs in the array environment
through radiation between sensors, can have significant effects
on the sensor input impedances, the array gain, and the shape
of the array pattern. The analysis and design of array patterns
are complicated in the presence of mutual coupling. It is often
ignored since it does not have explicit relationship with the
array patterns. For the lack of elegant mathematics for calcu-
lating exact mutual coupling effect, it is also not considered in
many array synthesis method.
In the method proposed in the above sections, the mutual
coupling effect is ignored because we adopt the constraint in
[14], [15] for the inter-sensor spacing, , to make the min-
imum spacing not be smaller than , as , requirement.
, so that the mean inter-sensor spacing in aperi-
odic array is relatively large with respect to equally-spaced ar-
rays. This in turn alleviates the mutual coupling effect among
the sensors.
Considering practical applications, we extend the proposed
method to work with mutual coupling effect. Let the array factor
in (1) to be expressed in vector-form as
(7)
where denotes the transpose complex conjugate op-
eration, and the vector of weighting coefficients,
, and the nominal steering vector
. rical aperture and using uniform weights, i.e.,
The mutual coupling effects are different for each element
depending on their positions in the array. Considering the min-
imum-scattering antennas, the mutual coupling effects can be
evaluated via a coupling matrix [28]. With the existence of mu-
tual coupling effects, the true array steering vector, , is then
the multiplication of a mutual coupling matrix, , and the
nominal steering vector [29], i.e.,
(8)
is a matrix function of sensor positions, and
. The array factor in (7) is, then,
modified as
(9)
The design procedure considering mutual coupling effect is
summarized as below.
Step 1. Initialization: Specify the initial parameter values of
the IGA. A good starting point is important to the performance
of stochastic based optimization [21]. In our implementation,
the initial population is formed by using a uniform array with
unit weights and an inter-sensor spacing of half a wavelength. In
most of cases we examined, this provides a better starting point
for the optimization process compared to random initialization.
Step 2. Iteration: With the initial population, an iterative pro-
cedure of optimization is started. In the iteration, the array
parameters, i.e., and , are updated with genetic opera-
tions. The is, then, obtained based on using the
Method of Moment (MoM) [30]. The optimization aims to max-
imize the fitness function in (3) as
(10)
The array factor is calculated according to (9).
Step 3. Stopping Criteria: The iteration process in Step 2 is
terminated if any one of the following three criteria is met:
a. The design objective has been reached.
b. The improvement of fitness during successive generations
is smaller than an acceptable level.
c. The maximum number of generations is reached.
It should be noted that in some applications, one can choose
any combinations of the above stopping criteria [e.g., (a) alone,
or (a) and (b), or (a) and (c), etc.] in accordance to the design
V. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES AND RESULTS ANALYSIS
In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method,
we compare the performance of IGA with that of MGA [17].
The beampatterns are evaluated as functions of
, where is the steering direction. To get a fair com-
parison, we firstly use the same setting
in [17]. An synthesis example considering all the possible is
given in Section V-E with . In all the simulations,
the main beams are confined to be within , and
17 and 37, respectively. In [17], two typical pencil-beam
patterns were synthesized with the MGA method for a symmet-
for all .
Lower PSLs were achieved compared to those obtained from the
analytical technique proposed in [14], [15]. Besides the design
of the aperiodic array with a symmetrical aperture and uniform
weights discussed in [19], an extensive study has been made on
the performance of the IGA under different conditions in this
section, where several configurations and weights constraints
will be considered. The designs from the IGA will be compared
with those reported in [17] in terms of the PSL, convergence
speed and algorithm stability. In addition, the effects of steering
CEN et al.: LINEAR APERIODIC ARRAY SYNTHESIS USING AN IMPROVED GENETIC ALGORITHM 899

angles and mutual coupling are also investigated. Without loss

of generality, we set the parameters of (2) to

(11)

In order to have same range of sensor positions used in [17],

here we adopt the constraints of inter-sensor spacing between
and . A very sparse array can be designed by modifying
these constraints. Certainly, this does not require modification Fig. 1. Resultant lowest PSLs obtained by the IGA in 10 runs . The
of the proposed algorithm. dashed line shows the best-case lowest PSL for the MGA.

A. Case I: Aperiodic Array With a Symmetrical Aperture and

Uniform Weights
In the IGA, the population size is set to 30. The initial popu-
lation is formed by using a uniform array with an amplitude of
1 and an inter-sensor spacing of for each sensor. The pa-
rameters in the crossover and the mutation process are selected
as , , , and , which is
obtained according to the experience. The computational com-
plexity is measured in terms of the number of fitness function
evaluated, which is a common way of estimating the computa-
tional complexity of evolutionary algorithms [21]. Specifically,
it involves the computation of the array factor for each where
scans from 0 to . If 1024 points are sampled during the interval
, we have to compute (2) 1024 times for each set of param- Fig. 2. (a) Sensor positions obtained using the IGA. (b) Resultant beam patterns
from the IGA and MGA .
eter values considered. The computational time required by the
other processes involved in the algorithm is relatively short and
can be ignored. In order to find the average performance of the
IGA and gain an insight of its stability, the IGA is executed for
10 runs for each set of parameter values considered. The number
of generations is 50 for each run.
Fig. 1 shows the resultant lowest PSL in each individual
run when the IGA is employed in the synthesis of a 17-sensor
array. The best-case (i.e., lowest) lowest PSL for the IGA is
20.32 dB. In Fig. 1, the dashed line shows the best-case
lowest PSL obtained by the MGA in [17]. For the MGA, the
population size is 200 and the number of generations is 300.
Fig. 3. Resultant lowest PSLs obtained by the IGA in 10 runs . The
It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the best-case lowest PSL for dashed line shows the best-case lowest PSL for the MGA.
the MGA is 0.5 dB higher than that of the IGA. Fig. 1 also
shows that the lowest PSLs obtained by the IGA in 9 out of 10 fitness functions evaluated. This is a common way of estimating
runs are better than the best-case value obtained by the MGA. the computational complexity of evolutionary algorithms [21]
Simulation runs also show that the worst-case and average since the time taken for the other processes incurred in the com-
lowest PSLs for the MGA are also poorer than those from the putation is relatively insignificant and can be ignored [31]. It
IGA, repetitively. The sensor positions obtained by the IGA are can be seen from the table that the IGA not only achieves a
shown in Fig. 2(a). The resultant beam patterns obtained by the better PSL performance, but also requires a smaller population
IGA and the MGA are shown in Fig. 2(b). We can see from the size (30 individuals) and involves a shorter process time (50
enlarged view in Fig. 2(b) that the obtained 3 dB beamwith generations). Consequently, the average numbers of the fitness
of the main lobe from the IGA is also narrower than that from function evaluations required by the IGA are only about 10%
the MGA. or 17% , of that required by the MGA.
The above are reported for a 37-sensor array (i.e., ) This is a significant saving in the computational effort as com-
and the corresponding results are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, re- pared to that needed by the MGA.
spectively. As shown in these figures, the improvements made
by the IGA are even clearer for a large number of sensors . The B. Case II: Aperiodic Array With Asymmetrical Aperture and
main comparative results shown in Figs. 1–4 are summarized in Uniform Weights
Table I. Besides the PSL values, the computational complexity In order to increase the degree of freedom of the optimization
is also compared, which is measured in terms of the number of process, the 17-sensor array is now synthesized with an asym-
900 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 5. (a) Sensor positions obtained using the IGA. (b) Resultant beam pattern
from the IGA.
Fig. 4. (a) Sensor positions obtained using the IGA. (b) Resultant beam patterns
from the IGA and MGA. .

TABLE I
COMPARATIVE CONVERGENCE PERFORMANCE BETWEEN MGA [17] AND
PROPOSED IGA. THE ARRAYS ARE DESIGNED WITH A SYMMETRICAL
APERTURE AND UNIFORM WEIGHTS

Fig. 6. (a) Weights and sensor positions obtained using the IGA. (b) Resultant
beam pattern from the IGA.

metrical aperture, where the search space is twice as large as

that in the design Case I. The results are illustrated in Fig. 5.
As Fig. 5 shows, the IGA is able to achieve a best-case lowest
PSL of 20.6 dB which is about 0.3 dB lower than that for the
symmetrical array (shown in Fig. 2). The number of the fitness
function evaluations is now 9,207, which is higher than 6,074
required for the symmetrical array synthesis (due to the increase
in the dimension of the search space).

C. Case III: Aperiodic Array With Asymmetrical Aperture and

Optimum Real Weights
In this case, the weight coefficients and the sensor positions
are determined simultaneously using the IGA. The weight coef-
ficients are restricted to take on only real values here. The results
are shown in Fig. 6. The best-case lowest PSL of 22.3 dB is
obtained after 15,438 fitness function evaluations. Although the
search space here is approximately 4 times larger than that in the
design Case I, the number of fitness function evaluated is only
about 25.7% of that required by the MGA (see Table I). The Cur-
rent Taper Ratio (CTR) is the ratio between the maximum and
minimum amplitudes of weight coefficients. The CRT is related
to the effects of possible unforeseen occurrences regarding the
sensors with the largest weights [11]. Generally, it is important
to have smaller CRT when designing sensor weights. The am-
plitude constraint in (11) aims also to limit the CRT level. The
design in this case has a low value of CRT equal to 2.73 dB.
Fig. 7. (a) Beam pattern of the array designed with steering direction of 60 .
(b) Beam pattern of the array designed by considering all possible steering di-
rections.
D. Case IV: Aperiodic Array With Asymmetrical Aperture and
Optimum Complex Weights
In this case, the complex weights and the inter-sensor spac-
ings are determined simultaneously using the IGA. The main-
beam is steered to a direction of 60 measured with respect to
the axis, with a same mainbeam width is retained. The re-
sults are plotted in Fig. 7(a). The best-case lowest PSL is now
16.7 dB with a CRT of 3.04 dB and the total number of the
fitness function evaluated is 20,785.
In this example, we use complex weights aiming to show the
effectiveness of our method for simultaneously optimizing com-
plex weights and positions of sensors. It should be noted that in
CEN et al.: LINEAR APERIODIC ARRAY SYNTHESIS USING AN IMPROVED GENETIC ALGORITHM
TABLE II
EFFECT OF STEERING ANGLE TO PSL (dB)
some cases, e.g., aperiodic arrays with optimum placement of
sensors, complex weights may not have significant advantage
over real weights. In the above example, if the array is designed
with real weights, the PSL can reach 16.42 dB. However, if
there are some constraints on sensor placement, the advantage
of using complex weights will be apparent. The reason of this
phenomenon is that optimal placement of sensors also has the
capability on signal phase adjustment as the complex weights
do.
E. Case V: Sensitivity of PSL to Steering Angle
In the equally-spaced linear phased array, it has been shown
that the mainlobe broadens with increasing steering angles from
0 to 90 for a given set of other parameters such as the side-
lobe level [32]. This relationship between the directivity and the
steering angle still holds in aperiodic arrays. On the other hand,
if we keep the mainbeam width unchanged, the PSL will de-
crease when the steering angle increases from 0 to 90 , and
increase when the angle increases from 90 to 180 .
In order to show it, the method used for Case IV is applied to
obtain the best-case lowest PSL for different mainbeam direc-
tions ranging from 0 to 180 . The PSL and the corresponding
steering angle are listed in Table II to show the sensitivity of
PSL to steering angles. It is clear that when the array steering
direction is close to the endfire direction of array, the PSL will
be very high because in such case, the effective array aperture
is very small.
It is interesting to synthesize an array by minimizing PSL
considering all possible steering directions. We re-design the
beampattern in Fig. 7(a) by considering , the resul-
tant beampattern is shown in Fig. 7(b), where we can find that
PSL is 11.72 dB which is higher than 16.7 dB in Fig. 7(a).
This result coincides with the results in Table II because the
minimum PSL achievable when steering direction close to end-
fire direction is around 12 dB. In practice, we only consider a
specific steering direction, so the synthesized beampattern may
have lower PSL as shown in Fig. 7(a).
F. Case VI: Design in Presence of Mutual Coupling
In the design case I–V, the mutual coupling effect is not con-
sidered in optimization as many other array pattern synthesis ap-
proaches do. Since mutual coupling can have adverse effect for
a sensor array, we extend our method to work with the presence
of mutual coupling in Section IV. The 17-sensor array is de-
signed by limiting the maximum value of spacing to (i.e.,
, ). The mutual coupling effect
is evaluated using a coupling matrix, which makes sense only in
the case of minimum-scattering antennas [28]. As a good repre-
sentative of minimum scattering antenna, the dipole antenna is
then used in this example. All the dipole antennas have length
and radius . These dipoles are fed with coaxial cable
with impedance 50 . The direction of incoming signal is per-
901
Fig. 8. Resultant arrays designed using the IGA with and without considering
mutual coupling effects in the design process (a) weights and sensor positions;
(b) true beam pattern of the arrays.
pendicular to the dipole element. The weights and the sensor
spacings are jointly optimized. The mutual coupling effect for
each element depends on its position in the array. It is calculated
by the MoM [30]. The array is synthesized based on the design
procedure presented in Section IV. The weights and sensor posi-
tions obtained using our method are shown in Fig. 8(a), and the
true beam pattern of the designed array is plotted in Fig. 8(b).
If the array is synthesized without considering mutual coupling
effect in the optimization process, as shown in Fig. 8 too, the
true beam pattern of the designed array (taking mutual coupling
effect into account at the level of pattern calculation) can be se-
riously distorted, as can be seen in Fig. 8(b) (dashed line), where
the PSL increases to 9.75 dB.
VI. CONCLUSION
The objective of the proposed beam pattern synthesis
method is to minimize the Peak Sidelobe Level (PSL) while
maintaining a desired beam pattern. Extensive performance
evaluation results show that the IGA is able to achieve lower
PSL and much higher convergence rate compared to a newly
reported GA based synthesis method [17]. Our design leads to
savings on computational efforts of up to 90% compared to the
results achieved in [17]. In addition, the stable performance
of the IGA has been illustrated clearly from the statistic of
multiple independent runs too. In nearly all of the runs, the
IGA is able to find better designs than the best ones reported
in [17]. We also extend our method in the presence of mutual
coupling effect among sensors. To achieve a full understanding,
the sensitivity of the PSL to steering angles is discussed in the
paper.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge all the anonymous reviewers for
their constructive comments that helped to improve the quality
of this paper.
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Ling Cen received the B.Eng. degree from the Uni-
versity of Science and Technology of China in 1997,
the M.Eng. degree from the Chinese Academy of Sci-
ences in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and
computer engineering from the National University
of Singapore (NUS) in 2006.
She was with the General Electronic Technology
Institute, China, as a project engineer from 1997
to 1998. In 2005, she joined the Centre for Signal
Processing, Nanyang Technological University
(NTU), as a research associate, then became a
Research Fellow. She is currently working as a scientist in the Institute for
Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore. Her research interests include digital
signal processing, speech/singing synthesis, machine learning, and pattern
recognition.
Zhu Liang Yu (S’02–M’06) received the B.S.E.E.
and M.S.E.E. degrees, both in electronic engineering,
from the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and As-
tronautics, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and
the Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological Uni-
versity, Singapore, in 2006.
He worked as a Software Engineer at the Shanghai
Bell Company, Ltd., from 1998 to 2000. In 2000,
he joined the Center for Signal Processing, Nanyang
Technological University, as a Research Engineer,
then became a Research Fellow. In 2008, he joined
the College of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University
of Technology, as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor
in 2010. His research interests include array signal processing, pattern classi-
fication and applications in brain signal processing.
Wee Ser received the B.Sc. (Hon) and Ph.D. degrees,
both in electrical and electronic engineering, from
Loughborough University, U.K., in 1978 and 1982,
respectively.
He joined the Defence Science Organization
(DSO), Singapore, in 1982, and became the Head of
the Communications Research Division in 1993. In
1997, he joined Nanyang Technological University
(NTU) as an Associate Professor and was since
appointed Director of the Centre for Signal Pro-
cessing at NTU. He has published about 90 papers
in international journals and conferences. He holds five patents and has four
pending patents. His research interests include microphone array and array
signal processing in general, signal classification techniques, and channel
estimation and equalization techniques.
Dr. Ser was a recipient of the Colombo Plan scholarship and the PSC post-
graduate scholarship. He was awarded the IEE Prize during his studies in the
U.K. While in DSO, he was a recipient of the prestigious Defence Technology
(Individual) Prize in 1991 and the DSO Excellent Award in 1992. He has served
in several international and national advisory and technical committees and as
reviewers to several international journals.
Wei Cen received the B.Eng. degree and M.Eng. de-
gree, both in electrical engineering, from the Univer-
sity of Science and Technology of China, China, and
the Ph.D. degree from the Nueva Ecija University of
Science and Technology, Philippines.
Her research interests include effects of electro-
magnetic fields on biological systems, numerical
methods, signal processing.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 903

Beamformer Design Methods for Radio Astronomical

Phased Array Feeds
Michael Elmer, Brian D. Jeffs, Karl F. Warnick, J. Richard Fisher, and Roger D. Norrod

Abstract—A major emphasis in current radio astronomy in-

strumentation research is the use of phased array feeds (PAF) to
provide radio telescopes with larger fields of view. One of the chal-
lenges of PAF systems is the design of beamformers that provide
sufficient sensitivity and known, stable beam pattern structure.
High sensitivity has been achieved with the maximum sensitivity
beamformer without regard to beam pattern shape. Deterministic
beamformers provide the desired pattern shape control, but suffer
from a significant reduction in sensitivity. We present a hybrid
beamforming method, which balances the tradeoff between high
sensitivity and precise beam pattern shape control. A comparison
of each of these beamforming methods, using measured data,
confirms the advantage of the hybrid approach. The pattern
distortions introduced by modeled beamformers can be mitigated
Fig. 1. BYU 19-element PAF mounted on the NRAO 20 meter reflector an-
with a transformation step, but ultimately it is shown that PAF tenna in Green Bank, WV.
beamformer design is best done using measured calibrators. A
PAF calibration vector quality metric based on minimum descrip-
tion length is also introduced.
Index Terms—Antenna array feeds, array signal processing,
phased arrays, radio astronomy.

I. INTRODUCTION

T YPICAL radio telescopes operate with a single feed

horn antenna at the focal point of a large reflector dish.
However, in recent years there has been considerable interest
from the radio astronomy community in developing phased
array feeds (PAF) of closely spaced antennas in the focal plane.
Though no fully commissioned instrument currently uses a PAF,
several projects and research groups, including ASTRON in
the Netherlands, DRAO in Canada, CSIRO in Australia, NAIC
Cornell and Arecibo, and a collaboration between Brigham
Young University (BYU) and the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO) in the USA, are rapidly approaching de-
ployment of science-ready instruments [2]–[10]. For example,
the BYU-NRAO prototype array is shown in Fig. 1 mounted on
Fig. 2. Benefits of PAFs include the formation of multiple simultaneous beams
the Green Bank 20 Meter Telescope at NRAO, West Virginia.
from a single pointing, active control of the beam pattern shape, adaptation to
The primary advantage of a PAF fed instrument is its ability to changes in the noise environment, and cancelation of undesired signals.
form multiple simultaneously steered beams covering a much
greater field of view (FOV) than a single horn feed, and thus
dramatically reducing sky survey times by between one and two orders of magnitude. This is illustrated in Fig. 2, along
with additional advantages of a PAF instrument.
Manuscript received February 24, 2011; manuscript revised July 07, 2011; With this significant transition from traditional single-pixel
accepted July 23, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current radio telescopes to PAF systems, it is apparent that promised
version February 03, 2012.
performance improvements can be achieved only with increased
M. Elmer, B. D. Jeffs and K. F. Warnick are with the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602 USA. system complexity and after resolving a number of new tech-
J. R. Fisher is with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Char- nical challenges. Challenges include mutual coupling among the
lottesville, VA 22903 USA.
closely spaced array elements [11]–[13], hardware requirements
R. D. Norrod, retired, was with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
Green Bank, WV 24944 USA. for many (e.g., 40 to 200) identical analog and digital receiver
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173143 chains and correlator/beamforming processing, and the need for

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

904 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
new high performance beamformer design methodologies suit-
able for the PAF environment.
The focus of this paper is a study of PAF beamformer design
methods, which must balance the demand for high sensitivity
with a known, stable beam pattern spatial structure. High sen-
sitivity is required to detect the faint radio signals emitted by
distant celestial bodies, which are typically tens of dB below
the noise floor [14], while stability is needed for radiometry and
dynamic range. This tradeoff occurs because the maximum sen-
sitivity beamformer now used by all PAF development groups
achieves its optimal SNR performance by adapting the beam
pattern to the noise field and array response parameters, which
causes some variation in the far-field beam pattern. It will be
shown that the inherent tradeoff between these two parameters
is a motivating force in PAF beamformer design.
Phased antenna aperture arrays (i.e., bare arrays with no large
reflector) have been used for 70 years in applications of wire-
less communication, radar, sonar, and remote sensing, providing
benefits such as improved direction finding, spatial interference
canceling, rapid beam steering, forming multiple simultaneous
beams, gain optimization, etc. [15]–[18]. Recent work in the
area of satellite communications has even included discussion
on space platform orbital PAF-fed reflectors to provide adapta-
tion to a changing radio environment [19], [20]. Though phased
array antenna theory and design are relatively mature fields, the
stringent demands of radio astronomical observation, including
observing at very low signal to noise ratios (SNR) and the need
for extreme pattern and gain stability, have until very recently
kept these techniques from use in feed designs for the large
dish instruments. However, several multiple horn array feed sys-
tems have been commissioned, including the NAIC ALFA array
at Arecibo and the Australian (ATNF/CSIRO) Parkes 21 cm
multibeam receiver [21]–[23]. Though not operated as a closely
packed, electronically phased beamforming array, the fixed op-
tics for the multiple separate feed horns packed together in the
dish focal plane provide an increase in the number of pixels
(beams on the sky) obtained for a single dish pointing. Each an-
tenna in the array works independently to provide a sparse sam-
pling of the field of view (FOV) and thus increase sky survey
speed. In contrast, electronic beamforming capabilities of PAF
technology offer further increases in survey speed while fully
sampling the FOV with multiple simultaneous, perhaps over-
lapping beams.
A variety of beamformers have been suggested for PAF use
[24], [25], but the data-dependent max-SNR (max-sensitivity)
beamformer [26], simultaneously introduced for astronomical
PAF use by the ASTRON and BYU-NRAO teams, has been
the only one successfully applied to create images of experi-
mental PAF data [8], [27]–[32]. Other PAF beamforming work
has been limited to simulation but has shown intriguing poten-
tial. This includes use of eigenbeams to reduce data transfer and
storage requirements [33] and numerically optimized Gaussian
beams steered without distortion while accounting for polariza-
tion effects [34]. The linearly constrained minimum variance
beamformer (LCMV) is appealing because it has the ability to
provide beam pattern constraints while minimizing the overall
noise response [17]. Conjugate field match beamforming has
also been attempted, but has been found to be unsuitable due to
the inability to control beam pattern shape when there is signif-
icant gain variation across the sensor array for far-field sources
[25], [35]–[37].
Each of these design methodologies has drawbacks. The
max-SNR beamformer does not guarantee pattern stability since
it can be recomputed to optimize over variations in the noise
field. The closely related LCMV approach is promising, though
in some cases there are insufficient degrees of freedom in the
beamformer for a typical PAF to constrain the side lobe pattern
to be uniformly low while controlling the main beam shape.
Deterministically derived beamformers offer complete control
of the beam pattern shape but lack the necessary sensitivity for
useful observations. Accurate array calibrations are required in
any case, and this is a significant technical challenge. Desires
for maximum sensitivity and complete control of the beam
shape cannot be mutually satisfied. In this paper we compare
options that are available to address the new challenges of
practical PAF beamformer design. We show that while it is
possible to design a deterministic beamformer in simulation,
a transformation step is required before it can be satisfactorily
applied to measured data. Additionally, we introduce a hybrid
beamformer that balances the tradeoff between sensitivity and
beam pattern shape control, providing a solution suitable for
PAF operation.
II. PRELIMINARIES
A. Signal Model
As depicted in Fig. 3, assuming narrowband operation of a
element PAF, the complex basebanded data vector at time
sample is given as
(1)
where is the normalized array response to a unit amplitude
signal in the far field arriving from the direction of a point source
signal of interest (SOI) , and is the array noise vector.
Signals and are assumed to be zero mean random
processes, statistically stationary across the samples obtained
during the observation time. The array covariance matrix is de-
fined as
(2)
where denotes expected value and superscript is com-
plex conjugate transpose (Hermitian transpose). Assuming the
SOI and noise are statistically independent we have
(3)
Making the simplifying assumptions that the SOI is a point
source and noise is white then
(4)
where and are the power in the SOI and noise respec-
tively, and is the identity matrix. Because of the non-isotropic
ELMER et al.: BEAMFORMER DESIGN METHODS
Fig. 3. Block diagram for signal processing of a narrowband PAF.
distribution of spillover ground noise seen by the array, and mu-
tual coupling between the antenna elements, PAF system noise
is in fact correlated, but this equation is given to assist in under-
standing a later derivation.
An estimate of for an -sample short-term integration
(STI) window is calculated from observed data samples as
(5)
The beamformer output is the weighted sum of the signals re-
ceived by each array element and is computed as
(6)
where indexes one of main lobe beam steering
angles and is the th beamformer complex weight vector.
Narrowband beamformer operation is assumed in this notation.
For the broadband case the signal is decomposed into many
frequency channels and separate beamformers with distinct
weights are computed as in (6) for each channel.
B. Calibration
A calibration vector of the array voltage response to a
far-field point source is required in every direction that a
beam is to be steered or where the pattern is constrained to a
specified response value. Some details of our calibration proce-
dure (reported in [8]) are repeated here since the information is
crucial to understanding PAF beamformer design.
On-reflector calibration is necessary for accurate response
vector estimation. Even the most detailed numerical simulations
cannot predict the real physical array response with sufficient
accuracy to design beamformer weights, since they must ac-
count for signal interaction with the reflector as well as gain
variations between channels. Off-reflector bare array measure-
ments are likewise unsuitable. Antenna range calibration is un-
realistic since radio telescopes are physically too large and array
responses drift too much over time. Additionally, due to me-
chanical limitations, multipath, and thermal ground noise, a re-
flector dish cannot be steered to sufficiently low elevations to
905
use fixed man-made sources in the far field as calibration ref-
erences. The only remaining option is to perform calibration
on-reflector using the brightest available astronomical source.
The calibration procedure can be summarized as follows.
The radio telescope is steered, relative to the calibration source,
in direction for which a response vector is desired. An
on-source, signal-plus-noise covariance is obtained. The
instrument is then steered several degrees in azimuth away
from the source at the same elevation to avoid changing the
spillover ground noise pattern, and an off-source, noise-only
is obtained. The calibration vector is computed as
(7)
where is the principal eigenvector determined by the gener-
alized eigenvalue problem
(8)
A grid of response vectors is computed in the region sur-
rounding a calibration source. Up to 1000 distinct pointings
may be required depending on the desired number of simulta-
neous beams in the FOV and the number of pattern constraints
to be incorporated in the beamformer. This can be a time-con-
suming process (e.g., 4 hours), but cannot be neglected because
obtaining accurate calibration vectors is fundamental to PAF
beamformer design. These may need to be updated periodically
(e.g., every few days) to compensate electronic gain variations
and structural perturbations in the system. The typical lifetime
of a calibration set has not yet been determined, but preliminary
analysis has revealed very little performance degradation after
a 24—hour period.
The quality of calibrations depends on SNR for the chosen
bright calibrator source and integration time per pointing. SNR
drops significantly for grid points outside the FOV imposed by
the natural dish aperture response pattern. Thus, calibrations
outside the first dish side lobe are unreliable and must be dis-
carded.
We have employed an algorithm based on the minimum de-
scription length principle (MDL) [18], [38], [39] to detect the
presence of a sufficiently strong calibrator source in the received
data. Eigenvalues of the noise-pre-whitened covariance
are used to estimate , the number of dominant
sources present with adequate SNR. Pre-whitening is required
for MDL since PAF noise is correlated. The smallest
eigenvalues of (4) will be clustered near , and the remaining
eigenvalues correspond to source signals. Detection of a single
dominant non-noise signal is an indication that the calibration
vector is acceptable. Compute
(9)
906
Fig. 4. Acceptable calibration vectors are determined by the MDL quality
metric, which is an objective algorithm used to identify the existence of a single
source. White spaces indicate a good calibrator and black spaces indicate a
poor one. The source was Cassiopeia A.
where are the eigenvalues of ordered as
, and is from (5). Parameter , deter-
mines the degree of dominance (i.e., calibrator SNR) required.
For , is the conventional MDL estimate of just de-
tectable independent sources, while establishes a higher
SNR threshold. If , then SNR is assumed insufficient for
calibration at that grid point.
Fig. 4 is a real data example of a measured 33 33 calibra-
tion grid using a 19 element PAF on the Green Bank 20 Meter
Telescope. Positions of acceptable calibration vectors using
are marked in white, showing that there are practical
limits to the range of steering vectors that can be obtained with
on-reflector calibration.
C. Performance Metrics
The following metrics are used to compare the beamforming
methods presented in this paper: null-to-null beamwidth, peak
side lobe level, and sensitivity. Sensitivity can be expressed as
[25], [40]
where is the effective receiving area of the PAF system for
the beamformer weight vector , is the equivalent noise
temperature of the system at the output of the beamformer, is
Boltzmann’s constant, and is the flux density of the source
signal of interest (Jy).
III. PAF BEAMFORMER DESIGN METHODS
Of the several candidate beamformer methods mentioned in
Section I, we will consider the two that most obviously represent
the extremes in trading off high sensitivity with direct pattern
control for stable on-sky responses: the max-SNR and numeri-
cally optimized approaches. A hybrid approach combining the
positive aspects of each of these is also presented. In Sections IV
and V we will study the practical implementation challenges for
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
each given realistic array calibration data, and a performance
analysis and comparison will be presented.
A. Max-SNR Beamformer
The optimum weight vector for the max-SNR beam-
former is defined as [17], [18]
(11)
In practice, estimates of and are computed as the
on and off-source measurements, and , discussed in
Section II-B, and the maximization in (11) gives the generalized
eigenvalue problem
(12)
whose solution is the max-SNR beamformer. A distinct weight
vector is computed in this manner for each desired
pointing direction of the multiple simultaneously formed
beams.
This beamformer is easily implemented since steering a beam
in direction only requires a single pair of on and off-source
measurements. When computed with previously acquired cali-
bration data the beamformer is said to operate in “fixed-adap-
tive” mode, meaning that it is optimal for the calibration set
but does not rely on current observation array covariance es-
timates. Fully adaptive operation requires frequent updates of
throughout the observation time in order to cancel inter-
fering signals or account for changes in the noise spatial struc-
ture such as spillover noise variation as a function of pointing
elevation [8].
The max-SNR beamformer offers little direct control of the
beam pattern shape, since it naturally responds to the noise co-
variance structure. Variations in the observation environment
due to changes in spillover noise structure and electronic drift
in the receiver system change the underlying array response
vectors. This presents a dynamic range challenge since unpre-
dictable beam pattern variations may introduce undesired sig-
nals from a nearby bright source. A natural extension of the
max-SNR beamformer that provides constraints on the beam
pattern structure is the LCMV beamformer, which will be dis-
cussed in Section IV-C. We will see that it has limitations similar
(10) to those of the max-SNR beamformer.
B. Numerically Optimized Equiripple Beamformer
Deterministic beamformers are designed to achieve a speci-
fied beam pattern structure and can be derived using a number
of methods. This work utilizes an iterative optimization routine
based on the minimax principle to construct an equiripple
beamformer using calibration data (modeled or measured). The
equiripple method was chosen for convenience and is simply
a representative of a large class of deterministic beamformers.
Complex beamformer weights are found by iteratively eval-
uating the far-field response at available calibration points
throughout the beam pattern to achieve minimum gain equal
ripple side lobes within the FOV while meeting designated
main lobe shape constraints. Since this approach optimizes the
beamformer weights only with respect to specified response
pattern goals, the correlated spillover and mutually coupled
ELMER et al.: BEAMFORMER DESIGN METHODS
array noise response is not considered, so true maximum sensi-
tivity in not achievable. However, when strict control providing
known pattern shapes across all formed beams is required, this
approach may be desirable.
A similar numerical optimization with respect to the dish illu-
mination pattern could be used to control illumination spillover
and thus directly reduce noise levels, but obtaining a sample
calibration of points on the dish rather than in the on-sky far-
field beam is difficult or impossible using available calibrator
sources. Thus, only far-field pattern optimization has been con-
sidered in this analysis.
A pattern magnitude response equality constraint in direction
is specified as
(13)
where is the specified gain referenced to a unity gain main
lobe peak. Additionally, the phase of the first element in is set
to zero, eliminating an ambiguous degree of freedom. The peak
response across all side lobes for a given weight vector is given
by
(14)
where indicates the norm (i.e., ) and the
columns of are the calibration
vectors associated with the side lobe angles where the beam
pattern is to be minimized. The constrained minimax side lobe
response beamformer is found by applying a commercial nu-
merical optimization code (such as fmincon in the MATLAB®
Optimization Toolbox) to the objective function
(15)
where is the number of point response constraints applied to
the beam.
Due to practical limitations of collecting very large grids
of real data measured calibrations and the convenience of
obtaining a wide, dense grid of modeled calibrators, this design
approach appears best suited for simulation. However, it will
be shown that beamformer weights designed from modeled cal-
ibrations, even with a detailed electromagnetic model, cannot
be directly applied to PAF data without significant distortions,
and that even after applying a corrective transformation, better
performance is achieved with measured calibrators. In either
case, while the resulting beamformer provides a closely con-
trolled beam pattern shape, the associated sensitivity penalty
makes this method undesirable for typical PAF use.
C. Hybrid Beamformer
We propose a hybrid beamformer that combines the benefits
of both the max-SNR and numerically optimized equiripple
beamformers, providing maximum sensitivity for a given
amount of beam shape control. The beamformer is obtained
through the numerical optimizer described above by solving
907
(16)
where are the magnitude of the max-SNR
beam response referenced to a unity gain main lobe peak and
(17)
The user specified weighting parameter controls
whether emphasis is placed on maximizing the array SNR [40],
or on minimizing the equiripple side lobe levels. In order for
and to produce the max-SNR and equiripple
beamformers respectively, the equality pattern constraints of
(15) were changed to -dependent inequality constraints. In
(16), when the right-hand side inequality constraint
is forced to zero and acts just like the constraint
in (15). As the constraint region grows large enough
around to include the max-SNR solution with some excess
“elbow room” to allow the optimizer latitude in its search path.
The hybrid beamformer can be designed using either modeled
or measured calibration data, however, as mentioned above,
it will be shown that measured calibrators are the best choice
for this method. This hybrid beamformer will also be shown
to provide both beam pattern shape control and sufficient
sensitivity for PAF operation.
D. Transformation
Using modeled calibration vectors, deterministic beamformer
design can be done relatively quickly, with constraints over an
arbitrarily large field of view with a dense grid of points. How-
ever, such beamformer weights cannot be directly applied to
real-world data because modeling inaccuracies lead to distor-
tions in the final pattern. in situ calibration data is required.
Fig. 5 verifies this conclusion. One half of both a modeled
and measured equiripple beam pattern are shown side-by-side
for comparison. The left half shows the modeled beam pattern
resulting from an equiripple beamformer , designed using a
very detailed electromagnetic model closely matching the real
instrument (see the element pattern comparisons of Fig. 7). Re-
sponse constraints of unity gain at the main lobe peak and a gain
of dB at four additional points spaced 0.8 from boresight
provide a null-to-null width of 1.6 (constraints placed on the
side lobe or at the 3 dB point would be just as reasonable). Note
that the main beam is of uniform radius and the first side lobe
offers 27 dB of attenuation and is of constant height. The right
half figure results when measured calibration vectors are
used to calculate a beam response for . The result is notice-
able and undesirable distortion in the main beam and throughout
the side lobes.
Such unacceptable results can be significantly improved by
applying a transformation to map the modeled beamformer onto
observed calibration data to correct for the inherent modeling
inaccuracies. Even with a transformation, though, the simu-
lated calibrators do not provide the best option for deterministic
beamformer design. However, since the possibility of using
modeled beamformers is reasonable and appealing, we present
908 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 6. BYU 19-element PAF: hexagonally spaced half-wave thickened

dipoles, separated by on a ground plane.

Fig. 5. Effect of not performing a transformation before applying modeled

beamformer weights to measured data. The left half is the modeled beam pat-
tern. The right half is the measured beam pattern using the same modeled beam-
former weights. There is noticeable distortion throughout the measured pattern.

the background and results of this approach for completeness,

even though it is unlikely to be used in practice.
The goal of a transformation is to find a mapping matrix
such that real data beamformer produces a measured
beam pattern closely matching the desired simulation designed
beam pattern. A transformation of this kind would allow the ad-
vantages of designing modeled beamformers to be successfully
exploited.
Let be the beam pattern vector, where columns
of are steering vectors associated
with the angles where pattern matching is to be enforced. Sim-
ulated and measured beam patterns are given by
and respectively, with consisting of measured
calibration vectors, and those of simulation. The that mini-
mize the squared difference between the beam patterns are com-
puted as
(18)
where is the left matrix pseudoinverse
of . A recent version of the array is shown in Fig. 6.
The weighted least squares version of (18), with diagonal
weighting matrix , is written as
(19)
This result provides more control over the transformation with
improved matching at the desired points and a least squares fit
over the remainder of the pattern. The main beam structure can
be satisfactorily preserved by increasing the weighting of just a
few points within the main beam.
IV. RESULTS
A. Experimental Setup
Calibration data was collected in 2008 at the NRAO facility
in Green Bank, WV. Experiments were conducted on a 20 meter
Fig. 7. Modeled and measured power patterns of array element 1 (center ele-
ment). The close agreement between the modeled and measured patterns is an
indication of the accuracy of the simulation model.
diameter reflector with a focal length over diameter (f/D) ratio of
0.43, using a 19-element PAF of thickened, half-wave dipoles
spaced 0.6 wavelengths apart. The single-polarized, balun-fed
array elements are positioned in two concentric hexagonal rings
about a center element, mounted on a ground plane offset by
, and designed to operate at a center frequency of 1600 MHz.
Great effort has been made to design a simulation model that
closely mirrors the true PAF and operating environment for the
experimental array and 20 m dish [8]. Its accuracy is verified in
Fig. 7, where modeled and measured individual element power
patterns representing an azimuth slice through the center of the
astronomical source Cassiopeia A (Cas A) are shown to be in
close agreement. However, as shown in Fig. 5, this agreement is
inadequate for the precision required for designing PAF beam-
formers in simulation.
The calibration data set, measured with Cas A, is a 33 33
grid of 10-second pointings spaced 0.1 apart and ranging
from to in both elevation and cross-elevation
(i.e., the arc direction perpendicular to elevation) with respect
to boresight. An off-source measurement was taken at each
elevation, 8 from boresight, as an estimate of the noise field
corresponding to all calibrators at that elevation. The MDL
algorithm was used to identify useful calibrators (Fig. 4).
ELMER et al.: BEAMFORMER DESIGN METHODS 909

Fig. 8. Measured far-field pattern of the max-SNR beamformer. The pattern Fig. 9. Effect of performing a weighted least squares transformation on the
exhibits high, uncontrolled side lobes. modeled beamformer weights before applying them to measured data. The left
half of this figure is the modeled beam pattern. The right half is the measured
pattern using the transformed modeled beamformer weights. The transformation
B. Comparison of Beamformer Methods causes some distortion to the pattern but makes modeled deterministic beam-
formers possible.
To compare performance of these beamformers we first look
at the differences in the structure of each corresponding beam
pattern.
The max-SNR beam pattern is shown in Fig. 8 and demon-
strates the concerns discussed previously: nonuniform side
lobes with a peak only 13 dB below the main lobe. Neverthe-
less, the structure is optimal for obtaining maximum sensitivity
in the calibration noise field.
The modeled equiripple beamformer of Fig. 5 was con-
strained and transformed as described in Section III-D. The
terms of the weighting matrix corresponding to the five
optimization constraint points were set to a value of
while the remaining diagonal terms were initialized to 1. This
places a heavy penalty on deviations from the design equality
constraint points. Fig. 9 compares the measured beam pattern
after transformation to the original modeled pattern. In the
measured right half image, the shape of the beam main lobe is
Fig. 10. Deterministic beamformers designed with measured calibration vec-
slightly distorted, there is significant variation in the side lobe tors closely resemble the modeled version. The left half of this figure is the mod-
structure and an increase in the maximum side lobe level of 3–4 eled beam pattern. The right half is the measured beam pattern using the mea-
dB, Still, the shape much more closely resembles the desired sured beamformer weights from a numerical optimizer. There are only slight
differences noted between the two patterns.
pattern than when the modeled weights were applied without
transformation.
The need for a transformation can be entirely eliminated by
A numerical comparison of the beamforming methods is
applying the measured calibrators directly in the optimization
given in Table I. Results of the hybrid beamformer with
of (15). In Fig. 10 the measured beam pattern of the right half
and 0.25 show that low side lobes can be achieved without
image conserves the main and side lobe shapes of the modeled
fully sacrificing sensitivity. Certainly, based on the information
pattern. It still does not perfectly match the modeled image on
in Table I, the hybrid beamformer is an admissible alternative
the left (especially at the second null), but this approach does ap-
for PAF operation.
pear to provide the best overall option for deterministic design.
Fig. 12 shows results of the hybrid beamformer for all values
This raises the question of whether there is a need for modeled
of and the described set of constraints. As expected, as the
beamformer design, which is fully addressed in Section IV-D.
value of approaches 1 the side lobes and the sensitivity both
The hybrid beamformer, whose beam pattern with
increase. The results of these figures can be used to determine
is shown in Fig. 11, offers characteristics of both the max-SNR
the proper value of that should be used for designing a hybrid
and equiripple beamformers. The influence of the equiripple
beamformer for a specific application.
beamformer is seen in the uniformity across the pattern, while
the increased width of the side lobe is more characteristic of
C. LCMV Beamformer
the max-SNR beamformer. The 21 dB side lobes are several dB
higher than those of the equiripple approach, but the tradeoff for With the ability to minimize output variance while meeting
increased side lobe levels is a desirable increase in sensitivity. desired constraints, the LCMV beamformer appears to be a
910 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 11. Measured far-field pattern of the hybrid beamformer with . Fig. 12. The ability to suppress the beam pattern side lobes is greatest for the
The circular shape of the main beam and the constant side lobe level are char- equiripple beamformer corresponding to , and gradually decreases as the
acteristics of the equiripple beamformer. The peak side lobe level is slightly hybrid beamformer approaches the max-SNR result. Similarly, the sensitivity
greater than with the equiripple beamformer, but there is also a significant in- of the hybrid beamformer is greatly improved as the beamformer becomes less
crease in sensitivity. deterministic.

TABLE I
COMPARISON OF BEAMFORMER TECHNIQUES

strong candidate for PAF beamforming. The LCMV beam-

former is computed as [17]

(20)

where the columns of are calibration Fig. 13. Measured beam pattern from LCMV beamformer with a main beam
constraint plus four others evenly spaced within the first null. The constraints
vectors associated with constraint angles and is a are not adequate to provide the uniformly low side lobe structure given by the
vector of corresponding desired response values. hybrid beamformer.
This beamformer is easy to implement and only requires cal-
ibration vectors at the desired constraint points. However, due
to the limited degrees of freedom available to the beamformer
it is not possible to control the entire FOV and avoid undesired
beam pattern structure. Introducing additional constraints to ob-
tain more control uses degrees of freedom that are needed to
minimize the variance, causing a decrease in sensitivity and dis-
tortions in the beam pattern.
Example beam patterns using the LCMV beamformer are
shown in Figs. 13 and 14. Fig. 13 was constructed with five
constraint points matching those described in Section III-D.
The constraints are met, but the remainder of the pattern is
unpredictable. In order to mitigate the distortion four additional
equally-spaced constraints were added to the first null. The
result given in Fig. 14 compares well with that of the hybrid
beamformer with , achieving a sensitivity of 2.86
, but due to the limited constraints in the LCMV, there is
noticeable variation in the side lobe structure and the peak side Fig. 14. Measured beam pattern from LCMV beamformer with a main beam
constraint plus eight others evenly spaced within the first null. This pattern
lobe level of 15.24 dB is nearly 2 dB higher than in the hybrid closely matches that of the hybrid beamformer with but has higher
result. side lobes and decreased sensitivity.
ELMER et al.: BEAMFORMER DESIGN METHODS
Fig. 15. The original measured calibration set used in this analysis was highly
oversampled. There is only a slight difference between the measured beam pat-
terns after full (left half) and sparse (right half) transformations of the modeled
beamformer, but the calibration time difference is about 3 hours. The sparse
transformation introduces distortions and a decrease in sensitivity.
D. Value of Modeled Beamformers
The transformation process described in Section III-D re-
quires a set of measured calibrators to best preserve the desired
beam pattern structure, but this process can be bypassed if we
use the measured calibrators directly to design the beamformer.
Still, there are some potential benefits of modeled design that
make it an appealing consideration. Modeled design would be
useful if there was an advantage to (1) optimizing over a more
dense grid of calibrators than is required for the transformation,
or to (2) having calibration points on an increased span of an-
gles. We explore these possibilities below.
Using the MDL algorithm to remove poor calibrators from
our highly oversampled 33 33 calibration grid, we are left
with 817 pointings. Thinning this grid to just 44 points reduces
calibration time by about 3 hours, but a modeled beamformer
transformation based on this sparse calibration set results in
beam pattern distortion as seen in Fig. 15. The left half pat-
tern is the result of a full 817 point transformation and the right
half image is that of the more sparse. A significant difference
in the sensitivity is also obtained: 1.74 for the full trans-
formation and 1.66 for the sparse. The pattern distortion
and sensitivity loss may be tolerable for the given reduction in
calibration measurement time, but the result is still less desir-
able than when the sparse calibration set is directly used itself
to design the beamformer. The equiripple beamformer com-
puted directly with the sparse set of measured calibrators still
exhibits distortion, but offers much better sensitivity, achieving
1.78 . Because of the great dependence on the details of
the transformation data set, any potential benefits of modeled
dense calibration beamformer design are lost in the transforma-
tion process.
Designing modeled beamformers over a larger angular region
than can be covered with measured calibrators is only benefi-
cial if the beam shape control in the extended region is not for-
feited during the transformation procedure. The left half image
of Fig. 16 was again obtained after a transformation with a full
calibration set, while the right half image was transformed with
911
Fig. 16. The eam pattern that extends beyond the calibration region cannot be
controlled. A full transformation from the model gives the left half pattern and
a reduced 19 19 transformation region (represented by the dash-lined box)
gives the right half pattern. The modeled weights were computed based on a
larger 33 33 grid of calibrators. The patterns are in relative agreement within
the box, but not at all outside the box.
a reduced size grid of 19 19 points, bounded by the dashed
line. The result is a loss of control of the side lobes outside the
calibration region once a transformation is applied. Again we
see that the benefits of modeled design are restricted by the need
for, and the limits of the calibration set used in the transforma-
tion process.
Based on these results, we conclude that it is impractical to
design measured deterministic PAF beamformers using sim-
ulation models. Deterministic PAF beamformers are best de-
signed using measured calibration data directly, avoiding pat-
tern distortion and sensitivity loss that accompany a transfor-
mation from the model.
E. Angular Limits of Pattern Control
As noted in Section IV-D pattern shape control with deter-
ministic beamformers is limited by the angular range of the cal-
ibration vectors used in the design process. This introduces con-
cerns about the behavior of the beam pattern beyond the reach
of good calibration vectors. The inherent dish aperture pattern,
governed by the properties of the reflector dish, begins to domi-
nate the combined array-dish pattern at some angle, after which
we lose most control of the beam pattern shape. It is the region
between the edge of the calibration set and the start of the dish
aperture dominance that is of concern. Since we cannot measure
good calibration vectors in this region of interest, we must draw
conclusions through analysis of modeled results.
We are interested in knowing whether the range over which
good calibrators can be obtained extends to the angle at which
the dish pattern begins to the dominate the PAF far-field pat-
tern. If it does not, as seen in Fig. 16, there will be a region
of the beam pattern that is uncontrollable. To determine if the
measured calibration range is large enough to fill this gap, we
have computed modeled equiripple beamformers using both a
33 33 grid (matching that obtained in practice) and a larger
101 101 grid of calibration points (same grid point density in
each case). A comparison of the resulting beam patterns reveals
no noticeable difference. Although in practice the calibration set
912 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
is limited by the SNR of the calibration source, we conclude that
it is adequate to provide control of all parts of the beam pattern
that are not dominated by the dish aperture pattern.
V. CONCLUSION
Employing PAFs for radio astronomical observations intro-
duces a need for beamformers that can provide both high sensi-
tivity and beam pattern stability. The max-SNR and numerically
optimized equiripple beamformers presented above represent
the extreme cases: one offering the best sensitivity available and
the other full beam pattern shape control. In order to satisfacto-
rily manage the tradeoff between these conflicting goals we have
introduced a hybrid beamforming method. The hybrid beam-
former uses a numerical optimizer and the weighting parameter
to provide both adequate sensitivity and the necessary pat-
tern control. A comparison between the max-SNR, equiripple,
and hybrid beamformers has shown the usefulness of the hybrid
approach.
Calibration of a PAF system must be completed on-reflector,
using a bright astronomical source. This limits the angular range
over which we can obtain accurate calibrators. To measure the
accuracy of our calibration vectors we have used an algorithm
based on the minimum description length principle. We have
concluded that good calibrators can be obtained (i.e., a beam can
be steered) in all directions within the limited FOV imposed by
the reflector dish aperture pattern.
Due to unpredictable PAF operating conditions which limit
the accuracy of simulation models, beamformers designed using
modeled calibration data introduce substantial distortions in the
final measured beam pattern. A transformation step was intro-
duced to mitigate these effects. Such a transformation requires
a grid of measured calibration vectors, which can be used them-
selves to directly compute the desired beamformer. It has been
shown that there is no benefit to designing beamformers with a
model because the outcome of the required transformation is so
highly dependent upon the limitations of the measured calibra-
tion data.
The max-SNR and numerically optimized equiripple beam-
formers presented in this analysis are representative of any
number of beamformers that could be used in PAF systems.
They were used as simple examples in demonstrating solutions
to general PAF beamforming challenges. Future work should
focus on developing more complex beamformers that address
the need for reduced system noise, more broadband systems,
and greater control of the beam pattern details. Additional
analysis on the persistence of calibration data is also of interest.
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Michael Elmer received the B.S. degree (cum
laude) in electrical and electronics engineering from
California State University, Sacramento, in 2005.
He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree from
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, in Electrical
Engineering.
Research interests include digital signal pro-
cessing and RF design. His current research consists
of beamforming methods and calibration procedures
and techniques for phased array feeds.
913
Brian D. Jeffs (M’90–SM’02) received the B.S.
(magna cum laude) and M.S. degrees in electrical
engineering from Brigham Young University, Provo,
UT, in 1978 and 1982 respectively. He received
the Ph.D. degree from the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, in 1989, also in electrical
engineering.
He currently holds the rank of Professor in the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Brigham Young University, where he lectures
in the areas of signals and systems, digital signal
processing, probability theory, and stochastic processes. Current research
activity includes array signal processing for radio astronomy and radio fre-
quency interference mitigation. Previous employment includes Hughes Aircraft
Company where he served as a sonar signal processing systems engineer in the
antisubmarine warfare group. Projects there included algorithm development
and system design for digital sonars in torpedo, surface ship towed array, and
helicopter dipping array platforms.
Dr. Jeffs was a Vice General Chair for IEEE ICASSP-2001 held in Salt Lake
City, UT. He was a member of the executive organizing committee for the 1998
IEEE DSP Workshop, co organized the 2010 Workshop on Phased Array An-
tennas Systems for Radio Astronomy, and served several years as chair of the
Utah Chapter of the IEEE Communications and Signal Processing Societies.
Karl F. Warnick (SM’04) received the B.S. degree
(magna cum laude) (hons) and the Ph.D. degree
from Brigham Young University (BYU), Provo, UT,
in 1994 and 1997, respectively.
From 1998 to 2000, he was a Postdoctoral Research
Associate and Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Center for Computational Electromagnetics at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since
2000, he has been a faculty member in the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering at BYU,
where he is currently a Professor. In 2005 and 2007, he
was a Visiting Professor at the Technische Universität München, Germany. Dr.
Warnick has published many scientific articles and conference papers on elec-
tromagnetic theory, numerical methods, remote sensing, antenna applications,
phased arrays, biomedical devices, and inverse scattering, and is the author of the
books Problem Solving in Electromagnetics, Microwave Circuits, and Antenna
Design for Communications Engineering (Artech House, 2006) with Peter
Russer, Numerical Analysis for Electromagnetic Integral Equations (Artech
House, 2008), and Numerical Methods for Engineering: An Introduction Using
MATLAB and Computational Electromagnetics Examples (Scitech, 2010).
Dr. Warnick was a recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship, Outstanding Faculty Member award for Electrical and
Computer Engineering (2005), and the BYU Young Scholar Award (2007).
He has served the Antennas and Propagation Society as a member of the
Education Committee and as a session chair and special session organizer
for the International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and other
meetings affiliated with the Society. He is a frequent reviewer for the IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION and IEEE ANTENNAS AND
WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS. Dr. Warnick has been a member of the
Technical Program Committee for the International Symposium on Antennas
and Propagation for several years and served as Technical Program Co-Chair
for the Symposium in 2007.
J. Richard Fisher received the B.S. degree in 1965
in physics from The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA, and the Ph.D. degree in 1972 in
astronomy from the University of Maryland.
He joined the NRAO scientific staff at Green Bank,
WV immediately following graduate school and has
held various positions such as Head of the Electronics
Division, Site Director, and Project Manager of sev-
eral instrumentation projects. In 1978 he took leave
from the NRAO to spend 18 months at the Division
of Radio Physics, CSIRO in Australia and 3 months
at the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India. In February 2005 he moved
to the Charlottesville, VA, offices of NRAO to pursue scientific and instrumen-
tation research. His most recent position is Chief Technologist at NRAO. His
research interests include cosmology, galaxy formation, antenna design, signal
processing.
914 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Roger D. Norrod received the M.S.E.E. degree antenna optics group, then as the head of the Electronics group, and later as the
in 1979 from Tennessee Technological University, manager of NRAO Systems development for the GBT, coordinating activities
Cookeville. TN. related to Electronics, Software, and Data Analysis. He served several years as
During 1979–2011 he worked at the National the Electronics Division head at Green Bank, and as the lead engineer within
Radio Astronomy Observatory, specializing in the Microwave Group. He recently retired from the NRAO.
microwave receiver and systems design. He de-
signed several cryogenic low-noise amplifiers and
microwave receivers for radio astronomy, and
supervised production of over twenty receivers for
the VLBA project. During the 100-meter Green
Bank Telescope project, he served as head of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Experimental Results for the Sensitivity of a Low
Noise Aperture Array Tile for the SKA
E. E. M. Woestenburg, Laurens Bakker, and Marianna V. Ivashina
Abstract—Aperture arrays have been studied extensively for ap-
plication in the next generation of large radio telescopes for as-
tronomy, requiring extremely low noise performance. Prototype
array systems need to demonstrate the low noise potential of aper-
ture array technology. This paper presents noise measurements
for an Aperture Array tile of 144 dual-polarized tapered slot an-
tenna (TSA) elements, originally built and characterized for use
as a Phased Array Feed for application in an L-band radio as-
tronomical receiving system. The system noise budget is given and
the dependency of the measured noise temperatures on the beam
steering is discussed. A comparison is made of the measurement
results with simulations of the noise behavior using a system noise
model. This model includes the effect of receiver noise coupling, re-
sulting from a changing active reflection coefficient and array noise
contribution as a function of beam steering. Measurement results
clearly demonstrate the validity of the model and thus the concept
of active reflection coefficient for the calculation of effective system
noise temperatures. The presented array noise temperatures, with
a best measured value of 45 K, are state-of-the-art for room tem-
perature aperture arrays in the 1 GHz range and illustrate their
low noise potential.
Index Terms—Antenna array, low noise, noise coupling effects,
radio astronomy.
I. INTRODUCTION
F OR the Square Kilometre Array (SKA, [1]), the next gen-
eration of large radio telescopes with two orders of magni-
tude increase in sensitivity over existing telescopes, the radio as-
tronomical community is considering the use of dense Aperture
Arrays (AAs) for the SKA mid-frequency range from 400 MHz
to 1400 MHz. Considerable effort has been put in the develop-
ment of aperture arrays over the last ten years. Low frequency
aperture arrays up to a few 100 MHz have been developed and
are already in operation [2], [3] and several prototypes for higher
frequencies up to 1.5 GHz have been built [4], [5], while devel-
opment for dense aperture arrays over the frequency range from
100 MHz to 1500 MHz is continuing [6], [7]. The arrays for the
SKA-mid frequency range will consist of a large number of 1
m tiles with approximately 100 flat antennas per tile with LNAs
Manuscript received February 16, 2011; revised May 30, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 03, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
E. E. M. Woestenburg and L. Bakker are with the Netherlands Institute for
Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands (e-mail:
woestenburg@astron.nl; bakker@astron.nl).
M. V. Ivashina was with ASTRON, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands. She is now
with the Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Chalmers University of Tech-
nology, S-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden (e-mail: ivashina@chalmers.se).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173140
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
915
and receivers, of which the signals will be combined to form a
radio telescope with a (collecting) area of 500 m , as an alter-
native to reflector telescopes. Advantages of this AA-concept
over conventional reflector antennas are the wide field of view,
the possibility to avoid mechanical steering and maintenance (as
beams will be formed and steered electronically) and the oppor-
tunity to observe with a large number of beams simultaneously.
On the other hand, the arrays will have to operate at ambient
temperature, because cooling cannot be realized at reasonable
cost and complexity, due to the large number of antennas and
LNAs. At the same time the array sensitivity is of utmost impor-
tance and is determined by the ratio of effective collecting area
and system temperature Aeff/Tsys. The large collecting area of
one square kilometer is the main reason for a greatly enhanced
sensitivity, but requires that the system noise temperature will
be at a competitive level with that of conventional radio tele-
scopes.
Emphasis in the development of AA-tiles for the concept
demonstrator systems has thus far not been on achieving the
lowest possible noise temperatures, which is a challenge be-
cause of the room temperature operation. Reported noise tem-
peratures until now for aperture array tiles and systems in the
1 GHz frequency range are relatively high, around 170 K in [8]
and approximately 100 K in [9], compared to the ultimately re-
quired 40 K maximum system noise temperature for the SKA
near 1 GHz. Nevertheless, the results in [9] are similar to pre-
dicted values in [10] and a decreasing trend in noise temperature
is obvious [11].
The focus for the AA-tiles and systems in [4] and [5] has
been on proof of principle, large scale systems and adequate
production techniques, limited costs and operability. The latter
have been demonstrated in [9]. At the same time development of
low noise AAs has been progressing at different groups within
the SKA community. A similar development has been ongoing
for Phased Array Feed (PAF) systems for reflector telescopes
[12]–[15], while wide field imaging has been demonstrated with
PAF prototype systems on such telescopes [15]–[17]. Simulta-
neous with the development and construction of AA- and PAF-
demonstrator systems progress was made in the theoretical anal-
ysis and modeling of the noise properties of phased array sys-
tems with high sensitivity, in particular with respect to the effect
of noise coupling between the antenna elements [18]–[22]. The
understanding, resulting from this theoretical work, has favored
the realization of prototype arrays with a factor 2, respectively 4
improvement in noise performance with respect to [9] and [8].
This paper discusses state-of-the-art results of noise measure-
ments with a prototype AA-tile, which enable verification of the
noise models.
916 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
The AA results presented in this paper have profited from
the development of a tile for a PAF system (APERTIF, APER-
ture Tile In Focus, [17]), which will replace the existing 21 cm
single pixel feeds of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope
(WSRT), and should have competitive performance with the
present 21 cm cryogenic receiver system. This development re-
sulted in room temperature receivers and LNAs for an APERTIF
prototype tile, giving a measured system temperature in the tele-
scope below 68 K for an on-axis beam at 1.4 GHz [16], [17],
using LNAs with close to 40 K noise temperature [23].
The construction of the PAF tile with individual antennas
and receiver chains, allowed its use as an AA-tile, while the
measured results as a PAF gave rise to great expectations with
respect to the noise performance as an AA-tile. A description
of the prototype tile as AA-tile, as well as the noise measure-
ment set-up will be given in Section II. Measurement results
of the array noise temperature will be presented in Section III,
showing state-of-the-art noise performance for a room tempera-
ture AA-tile. Comparable performance has been recently shown
for a smaller array in [24], but only measured data for single
channel receiver noise temperatures are presented there. Results
from our measurements are full array noise temperatures and
will be presented for various beam configurations, both with
analog and digital beam forming. In Section IV a noise temper-
ature budget for the AA-tile will be presented and a comparison
with simulated values is made. The latter are calculated using
the equivalent system noise model in [22] and take into account
the variation of system noise temperature as a function of scan
angle [20], [21]. The results presented here have a lowest mea-
sured value of 45 K at 1200 MHz and illustrate the low noise
potential of AAs for the SKA.
II. MEASUREMENT METHOD
The APERTIF tile used for the aperture array measurements
consists of a total of 144 Vivaldi antenna elements and LNAs,
configured in a two-dimensional array with 8 9 elements with
11 cm spacing, for each of the two linear polarizations [25]. The
antenna array operates in the frequency range 1000–1750 MHz
with the optimal signal-to-noise performance around 1.4 GHz
at which the element spacing is close to the half wavelength.
Details of the system for use as a PAF can be found in [16], [17]
and [26]. For noise measurements as an aperture array, using the
Y-factor hot/cold method [8], [15], the tile is placed horizontally
on the ground as shown in Fig. 1. For the measurements two
methods were followed, one using analog beam forming with
2 2 and 4 4 elements, the other using digital beam forming
for various beam configurations. To assess the low noise poten-
tial of the tile, initial measurements were done with analog beam
forming only. The output signals from the LNAs of a 2 2 and
a 4 4 array in the centre of the tile were added with in-phase
combiners, forming broadside beams. The analog output sig-
nals of the beam formers were fed to the input of an Agilent
Noise Figure Meter 8970B and the noise temperature was de-
termined with the Y-factor method, using the loads described
next for the digital processing method. The first very promising
measurement results urged the use of a more flexible system,
with which beams in any direction could be formed. The dig-
ital beam forming and processing system of the APERTIF-pro-
Fig. 1. Prototype array situated for hot/cold measurements, with the hot load
behind the tile. In the background some of the WSRT telescopes are visible.
totype (see [17] for a description of the digital processing hard-
ware and architecture) was subsequently made available for off-
line data processing and calculation of the beam former output
noise power (based on the measured spectral noise-wave cor-
relation matrix of the array-receiver system according to the
procedure in [26]). In order to compare to the previous mea-
surements and verify the digital processing, the outputs of the
analog beam formers were first connected to one channel of the
digital processing system.
For the digital processing method, a total of 49 individual an-
tenna elements and LNAs (limited by the number of available
receivers at the time of the measurements) are connected via
25 m long coaxial cables to a back-end. The electrical lengths
of the cables have been made equal within 5 . All receiver
channels, including the cables, were calibrated with respect to
a reference channel. The differential phase stability of the re-
ceiver channels is 1 . The back-end electronics is located in a
shielded cabin, with down converter modules and digital pro-
cessing hardware [17]. Data are taken with the array facing the
(cold) sky as a ‘cold’ load, after which a room temperature ab-
sorber panel is placed over the array for the measurement with
the ‘hot’ load. This 1.2 m 1.2 m panel, shown behind the array
in Fig. 1, is slightly oversized with respect to the outer dimen-
sions of the tile (1 m 1 m), to avoid the edge elements seeing
the cold sky beyond the edge of the absorber panel. Once placed
over the array, the panel leaves approximately 0.3–0.5 wave-
length (10 cm) space between the tips of the absorbers and the
aperture plane of the antenna array. At this distance the ab-
sorbers do not influence the measured array S-parameters and
provide a load with 30 dB return loss at normal incidence. Trans-
mission through the absorbers, which have a depth of 18 cm and
a 2.5 cm thick absorptive backing, is negligible at these low fre-
quencies.
The data processing takes into account correlations between
individual receiver channels in calculation of the beam former
output noise power. This is done through performing the eigen-
value decomposition of the measured spectral noise-wave cor-
relation matrix of the array-receiver system and taking its dom-
inant eigenvector. This vector holds the noise-wave amplitudes
WOESTENBURG et al.: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR THE SENSITIVITY OF A LOW NOISE APERTURE ARRAY TILE FOR THE SKA 917

at the receiver outputs that arise due to all internal and external
noise sources and is a function of frequency. This vector is
sometimes named the ‘calibration vector’ [28], as this proce-
dure ensures that practical errors (such as electronic gain differ-
ences and non-equalization of the cables) do not impose limits
on the accuracy of the noise temperature measurements and de-
sired beam forming direction. Using off-line digital processing,
beams with a combination of any of the 49 active elements can
be formed and beams may be scanned in any direction by ap-
plying weights to the elements of this noise-wave vector (see
(1) and (2) in [26]). In this way the array noise temperature as
a function of frequency from 1.0 to 1.8 GHz has been deter-
mined for 2 2, 4 4, 5 5 and 7 7 element arrays, looking
at broadside. Also the array noise temperatures as a function of
Fig. 2. Comparison of results for analog and digital beam forming for 4- and
scan angle for the 4 4 and 7 7 element arrays have been de- 16-element arrays.
termined.

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

For all measurements a cold sky load temperature of 4 K was
assumed, slightly above the cosmic background noise of 2.7 K.
The 4 K cold load temperature is considered to be a realistic
value, as long as the beam is not directed at the horizon or di-
rectly pointed at the sun, which may be distinguished as an ap-
proximately 200 K source for the 49-element array in Fig. 5.
The ambient temperature was taken as the hot load tempera-
ture, approximately 300 K during the measurements. The un-
certainty in the measured ambient temperature is smaller than
1 K. Another source of error in the calculation of the noise tem-
perature is the accuracy of the power measurements and the re-
sulting Y-factor. The accuracy of the Y-factor measurement is
estimated at 0.1 dB, which would result in a maximum error
of 2 K for the measured Y-factors around 8 dB and the given
load temperatures. The total results in a maximum absolute error
in the noise measurement of approximately 5 K. The error be-
tween measurements at different frequency points, performed in
the same measurement cycle, is much smaller and is estimated
at 1 K maximum.
It should be pointed out that the error in the hot load tempera-
ture is mitigated considerably by the large Y-factors measured.
An error due to the measurement accuracy of the ambient tem-
perature or the construction and size of the absorber panel would
give a 1 K noise temperature error for a 6 K error in the hot load
temperature, based on the measured Y-factors around 8 dB. A
possible error due to the absorber panel would alter (lower) the
hot load temperature, which could result in the presented noise
temperatures being too pessimistic. In practice this effect ap-
pears to be negligible.
A. Array Noise Temperatures at Broadside
Fig. 2 shows a comparison of the measurement results for
the analog and digital beam forming, for the broadside beams
formed using 4 and 16 active elements in the centre of the array.
The passive elements were connected to 75 loads during these
initial measurements, which were performed mainly to verify
the digital processing method. The measured array noise tem-
peratures for the 4- and 16-element arrays are very similar, for
both analog and digital beam formers, with some minor differ-
ences due to small differences between these beam formers and
Fig. 3. AA noise temperature for broadside beams with various numbers of
active elements, compared to simulation results for the 49-element beam.
the shape of the beams in combination with environmental fac-
tors. The results are consistent with the data (not shown here)
taken with the analog processing system described in the pre-
vious section and validate the results from the digital processing
method within the 5 K error bars.
Using the digital processing method four different array
beams have been formed with 4, 16, 25, and 49 active elements.
During the measurements producing the digital data, all antenna
elements were connected to their LNA and subsequent receiver
chain, but for the unused elements the weights were set to zero
during the data processing. Complex weights for the other,
active, elements were set to direct the beam to broadside or any
other desired direction.
Fig. 3 shows the measured noise temperatures for broadside
beams with various numbers of active elements, compared to
simulation results for the 49-element beam. The 25-element
array shows the lowest noise on average as a function of
frequency, close to that of the 16-element array, both being
slightly better than the 49-element array. This may be explained
by the particular noise coupling contribution for the 49-element
array near broadside. At slightly different beam angles for the
49-element array this contribution is reduced and results in
the same minimum value at, e.g., 1.4 GHz as for the 16- and
25-element arrays.
The 4-element array has a broader beam with 9–12 dB direc-
tivity at 1–1.6 GHz as compared to the larger arrays which have
918
Fig. 4. Noise temperatures as a function of scan angle for 16- and 49-element
arrays at 1400 MHz, compared to simulation results for both arrays. The sim-
ulations include noise coupling contributions and the noise pick-up from the
environment at the horizon. The detailed effects of the location and height of
trees and buildings are not taken into account in these simulations.
directivity values higher than 15 dB at the lowest frequency, and
hence suffers from considerable noise contributions from the en-
vironment, even when it is directed at broadside. The simulated
noise temperatures for the 49-element array, as well shown on
Fig. 3, compare well within the absolute measurement accuracy
of 5 K to the measured values for that array, as well as those
for the 16- and 25-element arrays, over most of the frequency
range.
B. Array Noise Temperature as a Function of Scan Angle
An important property of AAs is the varying noise coupling
between the antenna elements as a function of scan angle, de-
scribed by the active reflection coefficient [20]–[22]. Using the
array and LNA properties a maximum of 13 K is calculated for
the 49-element array at 45 scan angle, 25% of the system noise
budget (see the simulation results in Fig. 4 and in Section IV).
It is therefore interesting to see how the measured array noise
temperature varies with scan angle and beam steering in general.
Fig. 4 shows the variation in noise temperature at 1400 MHz
for the 16- and 49-element arrays, for a maximum scan angle
(from broadside) of 85 . Up to scan angles of 40 the noise tem-
peratures only slowly vary due to the changing noise coupling,
quite well in agreement with the simulations. For larger scan
angles the broad beams introduce noise from the environment,
which dominates over the calculated variation in noise coupling.
Obviously the narrower 49-element beam allows further scan-
ning without increase in noise than the 16-element beam. It is
also shown that the narrower beam more effectively samples
the environmental temperature near the horizon, giving a higher
system noise temperature.
C. Results for Two-Dimensional Scanning
In Fig. 5 a plot is shown of the system noise temperature
at 1400 MHz for two-dimensional scanning of the 49-element
array. Over most of the scanning range the noise temperature is
well below 80 K, with lowest values under 50 K. As expected a
strong increase in noise temperature is visible near the horizon,
with extended hot regions at the location of one of the WSRT
telescopes (top right) and the sun (lower right).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 5. Two-dimensional scan of Tsys at 1400 MHz for a 49-element array,
showing the location of one of the WSRT telescopes (top right) and the sun.
TABLE I
NOISE BUDGET IN [K] OF THE 49-ELEMENT ARRAY AS A FUNCTION OF SCAN
ANGLE AT 1400 MHZ FOR THE NORTH-SOUTH DIRECTION
IV. NOISE BUDGET AND COMPARISON
WITH MODELING RESULTS
Table I shows the noise budget (partly based on simulations)
of the prototype AA-tile at 1400 MHz, with the noise coupling
contribution for a few scan angles. The equivalent system repre-
sentation of [22] was used and the simulations were performed
with the numerical approach in [26], [27]. The simulations did
not take into account the effect of the sky noise and contribu-
tions from obstacles (trees and telescopes/buildings) near the
horizon. The array noise temperature was calculated as a sum
of several noise contributions due to external and internal noise
sources, using the equivalent system representation in [22]. The
external noise contribution is the ground noise picked up due
to antenna back radiation, which was computed from the simu-
lated illumination pattern of the antenna array for the specified
beam former weights. The internal noise contribution includes
two components:
• The thermal antenna noise due to the losses in the con-
ductor and dielectric materials of TSAs and microstrip
feeds. The conductor losses are computed through the
evaluation of the antenna radiation efficiency using the
methodology detailed in [29] and the dielectric losses are
WOESTENBURG et al.: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR THE SENSITIVITY OF A LOW NOISE APERTURE ARRAY TILE FOR THE SKA 919

computed based on the experimental evaluation of the

feed loss [30].
• Multi-channel receiver noise which is calculated using
CAESAR software that is an array system simulator, de-
veloped at ASTRON [27]. This noise component accounts
for the antenna-LNA impedance noise mismatch effect
and minimal noise of LNAs. This noise coupling compo-
nent represents a combined effect of the noisy LNAs and
active reflection coefficients of the array elements that are
frequency and weighting dependent. It was computed from
the noise-wave covariance matrix of the antenna-receiver
system (see (1) and Fig. 1 in [26]) that was defined in the
absence of the external noise sources and antenna thermal
noise.
The antenna noise in Table I comprises contributions
due to the ground noise pick up (1 K), losses in the conductor
and dielectric material of the antenna and the microstrip feed.
is the measured LNA noise temperature in a 50 system, Fig. 6. Two-dimensional scan of the simulated noise coupling contribution in
including the receiver second stage contribution. is [K] for the 49-element array at 1400 MHz.
the simulated noise coupling contribution. Adding these contri-
butions leads to the simulated array noise temperature:

(1)

Table I compares the result of (1) with the measured array noise
temperature , from which a ‘measured’ value for
the noise coupling may be derived, according to the following
formula:

(2)

The simulated noise coupling contributions at 1400 MHz for

a full two-dimensional scan are presented in Fig. 6 for one po-
larization of the array, showing relatively low noise coupling
over a large scan range. One-dimensional scans in the direction
with the smallest change in noise coupling (east-west), as well
as for the perpendicular direction are shown in Fig. 7. The noise
coupling contribution remains below 10 K for scan angles up
to 60 in the east-west direction and below 14 K over the full
scan range. In the north-south direction a maximum value of
13 K for the noise coupling at 1400 MHz was calculated at 45 ,
increasing to 50 K for scanning near the horizon. This result un-
derlines that the increase in measured system noise temperature
at large scan angles in Fig. 5 is caused by noise pick up at the
horizon.
The sum of the simulated noise contributions and the LNA
noise temperature in Table I is almost identical (within the mea-
surement accuracy of 5 K) to the measured array noise temper-
ature for small scan angles. This confirms the validity of the
models, with the active reflection coefficient being the only vari-
able as a function of scan angle in Figs. 6 and 7 and for small
scan angles in Fig. 5. For scan angles larger than 40–50 the
measured results in Figs. 4 and 5 are influenced by noise pick
up from the environment. The presented results lead to the pre-
diction that for larger arrays with a narrow beam (and relatively
low side-lobes) the simulation results will more accurately pre-
dict the measurements at larger scan angles. This will be the
subject of further study.
Fig. 7. Noise coupling contribution at 1400 MHz for a 49-element array, for
two orthogonal scan directions.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper experimental noise temperature results for an
AA-tile have been presented, which demonstrate the lowest
array receiver noise temperature for an AA-tile to date, with a
minimum measured value of 45 K in L-band. The properties as
a function of frequency and the effects of scanning the beam on
the noise temperature are shown and compared to simulation
results, showing good agreement. Based on the measurement
and simulation results a number of observations have been
made, which lead to the following conclusions:
— array noise temperatures below 50 K have been consis-
tently measured, with a value of 45 K at 1200 MHz;
— the use of the edge elements in the array may cause some
increase in system noise temperature, but lead to lower
noise temperature if a smaller part of the array is active;
— for scan angles up to the increase in noise tempera-
ture due to noise coupling remains below 13 K;
— a beam formed with more elements may be scanned to
larger angles before the horizon introduces noise, due to
the narrow beam;
920 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
— scanning a smaller beam to the horizon results in a larger
contribution from the horizon to the system noise, because
the beam then ‘sees’ a larger part of a hotter environment;
— verification that the variation in system noise temperature
for large scan angles is caused solely by a change in the
noise coupling contribution, can only be done with a larger
array, i.e., with a narrow beam (with low side-lobes).
The presented results illustrate the low-noise potential of AAs
for application as future sensitive radio telescopes.
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E. E. M. Woestenburg received a degree in mi-
crowave engineering from the Technical University
of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, in 1983.
He has been involved in the design of low noise
amplifiers and receiver systems, mainly for the West-
erbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, since the start of
his professional career at ASTRON, the Netherlands
Institute for Radio Astronomy. He is presently head
of the RF & Low Noise Systems group at ASTRON.
His interests lie in the design of low noise amplifiers
and the noise characterization of aperture arrays and
phased array feed systems.
Laurens Bakker received the M.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from the University of Twente, The
Netherlands, in 2001.
From 2001 to 2006 he was a Researcher at the
Eindhoven University of Technology, working on
high speed optical data transmission technology and
analog optical communication technology. Since
2006 he has been with The Netherlands Institute
for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON). He is currently
working as System Engineer for the APERTIF
project—a phased array feed system that is being
developed at ASTRON to replace the current horn feeds in the Westerbork
Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT). His interests include communication
systems, low noise systems, (RF) system design, digital signal processing and
radio astronomy.
WOESTENBURG et al.: EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS FOR THE SENSITIVITY OF A LOW NOISE APERTURE ARRAY TILE FOR THE SKA
Marianna V. Ivashina received the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering from the Sevastopol National
Technical University (SNTU), Ukraine, in 2000.
From 2001 to 2004 she was a Postdoctoral Re-
searcher and from 2004 to 2010 an Antenna System
Scientist at The Netherlands Institute for Radio
Astronomy (ASTRON). During this period, she
carried out research on an innovative Phased Array
Feed (PAF) technology for a new-generation radio
telescope, known as the Square Kilometer Array
(SKA). The results of these early PAF projects have
led to the definition of APERTIF, a PAF system that is being developed at
ASTRON to replace the current horn feeds in the Westerbork Synthesis Radio
Telescope (WSRT).
Dr. Ivashina was involved in the development of APERTIF during
2008–2010 and acted as an external reviewer at the Preliminary Design Review
921
of the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) in 2009. In 2002, she also stayed
as a Visiting Scientist with the European Space Agency (ESA), ESTEC, in
the Netherlands, where she studied multiple-beam array feeds for the satellite
telecommunication system Large Deployable Antenna (LDA). Dr. Ivashina
received the URSI Young Scientists Award for GA URSI, Toronto, Canada
(1999), APS/IEEE Travel Grant, Davos, Switzerland (2000), the 2nd Best
Paper Award (‘Best team contribution’) at the ESA Antenna Workshop (2008)
and the International Qualification Fellowship of the VINNOVA—Marie Curie
Actions Program (2009) and The VR project grant of the Swedish Research
Center (2010). She is currently a Senior Scientist at the Department of Earth
and Space Sciences (Chalmers University of Technology). Her interests are
wideband receiving arrays, antenna system modeling techniques, receiver noise
characterization, signal processing for phased arrays, and radio astronomy.
922 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Direction Finding With Partly Calibrated Uniform
Linear Arrays
Bin Liao, Student Member, IEEE, and Shing Chow Chan, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A new method for direction finding with partly cali-
brated uniform linear arrays (ULAs) is presented. It is based on
the conventional estimation of signal parameters via rotational in-
variance techniques (ESPRIT) by modeling the imperfections of
the ULAs as gain and phase uncertainties. For a fully calibrated
array, it reduces to the conventional ESPRIT algorithm. More-
over, the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs), unknown gains, and phases
of the uncalibrated sensors can be estimated in closed form without
performing a spectral search. Hence, it is computationally very at-
tractive. The Cramér–Rao bounds (CRBs) of the partly calibrated
ULAs are also given. Simulation results show that the root mean
squared error (RMSE) performance of the proposed algorithm is
better than the conventional methods when the number of uncal-
ibrated sensors is large. It also achieves satisfactory performance
even at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).
Index Terms—Direction-of-arrival (DOA), estimation of signal
parameters via rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT), partly
calibrated arrays, uniform linear array (ULA).
I. INTRODUCTION
S ENSOR array processing using antenna arrays has been
successfully applied to many engineering fields including
wireless communications and radar systems. In particular, the
theoretical as well as applied aspects of direction finding have
received great research interest during the last decades [1], [2].
Given an ideal antenna array without any uncertainties,
direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) can be estimated with high
accuracy using high- or super-resolution methods such as
multiple signal classification (MUSIC) [3], root-MUSIC [4],
estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance
techniques (ESPRIT) [5], and maximum likelihood (ML) al-
gorithm [6]. However, antenna arrays in practice usually suffer
from imperfections such as unknown or misspecified mutual
coupling, imperfectly known sensor positions and orientations,
gain, and phase imbalances [2].
It has been shown that conventional high- or super-resolution
direction finding techniques are sensitive to array model errors,
which will considerably degrade the performance of these tech-
niques [2], [7]–[9]. A number of calibration methods have been
proposed to deal with these problems, and the performances
Manuscript received February 25, 2011; revised June 22, 2011; accepted July
28, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail: liaobin@eee.hku.hk;
scchan@eee.hku.hk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173144
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
of conventional methods may be significantly improved by
taking these antenna array uncertainties into account [10]–[16].
Theoretically, fully calibrated antenna arrays are preferred
since high- or super-resolution direction finding techniques
can be applied directly. Nevertheless, antenna arrays in some
practical applications may be incompletely calibrated. Hence,
the response of some sensor elements is poorly known or even
unknown. This class of arrays is usually referred to as partly
calibrated arrays, and a number of DOA estimation methods
have been devoted to these arrays [17]–[24]. For instance, direc-
tion finding with partly calibrated arrays was addressed in [18]
using the ML algorithm. This method requires the number
of calibrated sensors to be larger than the number of signals.
In [19], an algorithm for estimating the DOAs and the gains and
phases of the uncalibrated sensors was proposed by minimizing
a certain cost function. It has been shown that this method
can achieve a satisfactory performance. However, due to the
requirement of line searches and iterations, its complexity may
be high, and the convergence to the global minimum cannot be
guaranteed [19]. More recently, the approach in [20] extended
the ML criterion used in fully calibrated arrays and employed
a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to solve the
problem of direction finding in partly calibrated arrays. Simu-
lation results showed that it has a better performance than the
approach in [19]. However, its complexity is high because the
searching process is random in nature.
In addition, the problem of DOA estimation using partly
calibrated arrays containing multiple subarrays has been
studied [21]–[24]. This is of great interest since in large sub-
array-based systems, it may be difficult to calibrate the whole
array, though each subarray can be well calibrated [17]. A
well-known class of methods is the rank-reduction (RARE)
estimator proposed in [21]–[24]. The root-RARE algorithm
in [21] and [22] is computationally efficient, but the subarrays
are required to be linear identically oriented, and the interele-
ment spacings should be integer multiples of a known shortest
baseline. For more general cases where the geometries of sub-
arrays are arbitrary, a spectral-RARE algorithm was proposed
in [23] and [24]. However, the sensor number , subarray
number , and source number have to satisfy the condition
. Compared to the root-RARE algorithm, the
complexity will be higher since an additional one-dimensional
spectral search is needed. It is worth noting that although RARE
algorithms are based on multiple subarrays, their applications
to some common arrays such as uniform linear arrays (ULAs)
are straightforward. However, there may exist some limitations
when these methods are applied to ULAs, as we will show later
in Section IV.
LIAO AND CHAN: DIRECTION FINDING WITH PARTLY CALIBRATED ULAs 923

In this paper, we consider the problem of direction finding where is the signal covariance matrix, and
with partly calibrated ULAs, which occurs in a number of prac- denotes the statistic expectation.
tical applications [17]–[20]. A simple but efficient method based
on the conventional ESPRIT algorithm is proposed. It is well B. Partly Calibrated ULA Model
known that the conventional ESPRIT algorithm generally re- We now consider the case where only part of the ULA is
quires the array to be fully calibrated and the subarrys be identi- calibrated. Without loss of generality, it is assumed that the
cally oriented. Unfortunately, as mentioned, the arrays available first sensors of the array are calibrated, whereas the last
in practice may only be partly calibrated, and hence the ESPRIT sensors are uncalibrated with uncertainties modeled
algorithm is not directly applicable. In this study, the array man- as unknown, direction-independent gains and phases. Let and
ifold of the partly calibrated ULAs is modeled so that the con- represent the array gain and phase vectors, respec-
ventional ESPRIT algorithm can be extended to this class of tively. Then, we have
arrays by taking the imperfections into account. The proposed
method does not require any spectral search, and the DOAs as (5a)
well as the gains and phases can be jointly estimated in closed
form. (5b)
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The models
where denotes an vector with all elements equal to
of ideal and partly calibrated ULAs are first introduced in
one, and and are the unknown
Section II. The proposed method for DOA estimation using
sensor gains and phases of the uncalibrated sensors,
partly calibrated ULAs is presented in Section III. An analysis
respectively. Taking these unknown uncertainties into account,
of the proposed method and the Cramér–Rao bounds (CRBs) of
the steering vector of the partly calibrated ULAs can be written
the partly calibrated ULAs are given in Section IV. Numerical
as
examples are conducted in Section V to evaluate the perfor-
mance of the proposed method. Finally, Section VI concludes
(6)
the paper.
where denotes the Schur–Hadamard product
II. ARRAY MODELS
(7)
A. Ideal ULA Model
To begin with, we consider an ideal ULA with isotropic and is an diagonal ma-
sensors impinged by uncorrelated narrowband source sig- trix. Hence, the array covariance matrix becomes
nals, , from far field. The array output observed at
the th snapshot consists of the outputs of the sensors and (8)
can be written as
where is the steering matrix of the partly cali-
brated ULA. The eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) of (8) can
(1) be written as

(9)
where is the steering vector corresponding to the
DOA of the th source, i.e., , and the array geometry, is the
where is an diagonal matrix consisting of largest
steering matrix
eigenvalues and is an diagonal matrix
(2) consisting of smallest eigenvalues. is the
signal subspace matrix containing the eigenvectors with the
is the vector of the largest eigenvalues, while is the noise
signal waveforms, and is the sensor noise vector subspace matrix containing the eigenvectors with the
that is commonly assumed to be additive white Gaussian smallest eigenvalues. In cases of finite snapshots, the
noise (AWGN) vector with zero mean and covariance ma- array covariance matrix and its EVD can be computed as
trix , where and denote the noise variance and , where is
identity matrix, respectively. For the cases of ideal ULAs, the the total number of snapshots. The problem we are interested in
steering vector is given by is to estimate the DOAs as well as the unknown gains
and phases from array observations.
(3)
III. DOA ESTIMATION
with , , and denoting the carrier wavelength, intersensor
spacing, and DOA, respectively. From (1), the array covariance We now proceed to estimate the DOAs as well as the un-
matrix of the array output is known gains and phases of the partly calibrated ULAs. Sim-
ilar to the conventional ESPRIT algorithm, we divide the partly
(4) calibrated ULA into two overlapping subarrays. The first one
924 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

comprises the first sensors, while the second one com- are the eigenvectors of [5]. In order to show the relationship
prises the last sensors. The steering matrices of these two between , the DOAs, and the unknown gains and phases of
subarrays can be written as the partly calibrated ULA, we let be the eigen-
values of . Hence, the DOAs can be estimated as
(10a)
(10b) (19)

where and denote the nominal steering matrices of the

where . Furthermore, given the vector in (18),
subarrays, and they are equivalent to the first rows and last
the unknown gains and phases can be obtained as
rows of , respectively. and denote the
gain and phase vectors of these two subarrays, and
(20)
(11a)
(11b)
where .
It can also be noted that and satisfy Since and are still unknown, we propose to estimate them
in the finite samples case according to (16) and (18) by solving
(12) the following optimization problem:

where is an diagonal matrix of the phase delays of the

first and second subarrays for the sources, and it is given by
s. t. (21)

where denotes the Frobenius norm. In order to solve this

(13)
problem, we first minimize the objective function with respect
Since the signal subspace spans the same space as the
to . This gives the least squares solution as follows:
steering matrix , i.e., , there
exists an nonsingular matrix satisfying
(22)
(14)
Substitute this back to (21), and after some manipulation as
Inspired by the conventional ESPRIT algorithm, let consist shown in the Appendix, the problem in (21) can be finally re-
of the first rows of and represent the signal subspace formulated as
of the first subarray, and consist of the last rows
of and represent the signal subspace of the second subarray.
Consequently, we have s. t. (23)

(15a) where is given by

(15b)
(24)
Since the matrices , , and are nonsingular, one can
substitute (12) into (15) and get and . Note that the formulation
in (23) is derived based on the setting that the first sensors
(16) are calibrated. In fact, it can be applied to any partly calibrated
ULAs with arbitrary placements of the calibrated sensors, pro-
where the matrix is given by
vided that there is at least one pair of consecutive calibrated sen-
sors. For instance, if the th and th sensors are calibrated,
(17)
then the constraint in (23) should be replaced by .
We now proceed to solve the optimization problem in (23)
and with
and estimate the DOAs and the unknown gains and phases using
being an vector as
the Lagrange multiplier method. First, we note that the con-
straint in (23) can be represented as

(18) (25)

Here, we note that the first elements of are equal to one, where is an matrix given by
i.e., , . It can be found in (17) that
and are similar matrices. Therefore, the eigenvalues of
(26)
must be equal to the diagonal elements of , and the columns of
LIAO AND CHAN: DIRECTION FINDING WITH PARTLY CALIBRATED ULAs
Hence, the problem can be rewritten as
s. t. (27)
To solve this problem using the Lagrange multiplier method, we
form the Lagrangian function associated with (27) as follows
(28)
where is the Lagrange multiplier. By setting the partial deriva-
tive of (28) with respect to to zero, one gets the first-order
necessary condition for optimality as , which
leads to the optimal solution
(29)
By substituting (29) back to the constraint (27), one can deter-
mine the Lagrange multiplier , and hence the final solution
to (29) as follows:
(30)
Consequently, the matrix , DOAs , gains
and phases can be estimated according to (19), (20),
and (22).
It should be noted that a sufficient condition for the existence
of (30) is that is nonsingular. However, in the infinite samples
case, is singular. One possible way to handle this problem
is to employ diagonal loading as suggested in [17], [24], [26],
and [27]. More precisely, a small multiple of the identity matrix
is added to to form the diagonally loaded matrix
. It is worth noting that in these robust algorithms, especially
robust beamforming algorithms discussed in [26] and [27], the
loading level is usually required to be optimally selected. For-
tunately, in our case, we only require being nonsingular, and
hence can be chosen as a small value. In fact, a large may
degrade the accuracy of estimating as well as other unknown
parameters. Moreover, it is found by extensive experiments that,
in finite sample cases, the matrix is always nonsingular, and
hence there is no need for diagonal loading in general.
IV. COMPARISONS AND CRAMÉR–RAO BOUNDS
A. Comparisons
From the derivation in the previous section, it can be seen
that the proposed method is similar to the conventional ESPRIT
algorithm. Therefore, it is computationally efficient since the
DOAs as well as the gains and phases can be estimated from (19)
and (20) at the cost of an EVD, and no spectral search is re-
quired. Compared to ESPRIT, a more general case of partly cal-
ibrated ULAs is tackled. In [22], a root-RARE estimator was
developed for partly calibrated subarray-based arrays with un-
known vector translations. Since it generalizes the conventional
root-MUSIC algorithm, it can be directly applied to fully cali-
brated ULAs. However, its extension to the case of partly cali-
brated ULAs is not straightforward. On the other hand, the spec-
tral-RARE estimator derived in [24] allows the array geometry
925
to be arbitrary, and it can be directly applied to the partly cali-
brated ULAs by letting the first calibrated sensors be the first
subarray and the other subarrays be of a single sensor.
Therefore, the total number of subarrays is . Ac-
cording to the spectral-RARE estimator, the sensor number ,
subarray number , and source number must sat-
isfy , i.e.,
(31)
This indicates that the number of calibrated sensors in a ULA
should be larger than the source number. For instance, the cal-
ibrated sensors in a ULA should be no less than four when the
sources number is three. As a result, this method is not appli-
cable when . However, in the proposed method, we
only require the number of calibrated sensors to be no less than
two. In fact, this is the basic property of a partly calibrated ULA
because when there are no calibrated sensors in a ULA, the
array should be an uncalibrated rather than partly calibrated one.
A number of works have studied the problem of sensor array
processing with uncalibrated arrays [10]–[16]. For instance, an
ESPRIT-based technique has been proposed for spatial signa-
ture matrix, but not DOA estimation with uncalibrated ULAs,
in [16]. Different from this method, in our proposed method,
we aim to estimate the DOAs as well as unknown array gains
and phase in closed form by taking advantage of the calibrated
sensors.
A special case of the proposed method occurs when the ULA
is fully calibrated, i.e., . In this case, we have
and . Consequently, the constrained problem
in (21) is reduced to an unconstrained problem as follows:
(32)
and its solution is given by
(33)
Apparently, this is the solution of the conventional ESPRIT al-
gorithm. In other words, the proposed method can be regarded
as a generalized version of the conventional ESPRIT algorithm.
It is interesting to note that another generalized version of the
ESPRIT algorithm has been studied in [25]. Different from our
proposed method, this method is proposed to deal with arrays
where any sensor of the first subarray and the corresponding
sensor of the second subarray are displaced by different dis-
placement vectors.
B. Cramér–Rao Bounds
In this section, closed-form expressions for the CRBs of
partly calibrated ULAs with zero mean and statistically
independent Gaussian random vectors are given. The un-
known vectors of DOAs , gains , and phases are given
by , , and
926 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

, respectively. The CRB for DOA

estimation is given by [10], [19]

(34)

where denotes the real part of and

(35)

since . The CRB for the gain estimation is given

by [19]

Fig. 1. RMSE of DOA estimation versus SNR. The number of snapshots

(36) , and the number of calibrated sensors .

where and
is an matrix with its th entry being At first, the performance of the proposed method is evalu-
if ated at different SNRs. The determinant-based spectral-RARE
(37) algorithm [24] was also tested for comparison. Moreover, the
otherwise.
results of MUSIC using the first five calibrated sensors and
Based on the derivations of CRBs for phase estimation of un- MUSIC using the whole array with known uncertainties were
calibrated ULAs in [10] and gain estimation of partly calibrated also obtained. A total of 200 Monte Carlo experiments are run
ULAs in [19], the CRB for phase estimation of partly calibrated at each SNR, and the number of snapshots in each experiment
ULAs can be similarly derived and given by is . The following root mean squared error (RMSE) of
DOA estimation is used as the performance measure:

(38)

It should be noted that the unknown phases are modeled to be

direction-dependent in [19] and direction-independent in this
paper. Hence, the CRB for phase estimation given in (38) is
different from that in [19].
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method,
computer simulation of a partly calibrated ULA with
sensors separated by half a wavelength was performed. In all
examples, the unknown gain and phase uncertainties are con-
sidered to be direction-independent and time-invariant. Three
uncorrelated narrowband signals with identical power impinge
on the array from the far field, and hence . The DOAs of
them are assumed to be 10 , 10 , and 20 , respectively. The
background noise is assumed to be AWGN.
A. Example I
In the first example, the first five sensor are assumed to be cal-
ibrated, i.e., , while the last five sensors are uncalibrated
with unknown gain and phase uncertainties given by , tion. Here, the success probability is defined as
, , , and . where
where is the number of Monte Carlo experiments, and is
the estimated DOA of the th signal in the th experiment. In all
examples, we let .
In Fig. 1, the RMSEs of the DOA estimates obtained by dif-
ferent methods versus SNR are compared, and the CRB is also
displayed. Overall, it can be seen that, in the cases of partly
calibrated ULAs, the proposed method can give better perfor-
mance than the spectral-RARE algorithm and the MUSIC algo-
rithm using the calibrated sensors. Moreover, it can be noted that
the RMSEs of DOA estimated by all methods, except MUSIC
with known uncertainties, cannot reach the CRB even at large
SNRs. One possible explanation is that the performances of
these methods are significantly dependent on the number of cali-
brated sensors. This will be shown in the last example, where we
can see that the performances of these methods will be greatly
improved with increasing number of calibrated sensors . For
example, for a large , the RMSEs are close to the CRB even
when the SNR is 5 dB.
Fig. 2 shows the success probability of DOA estima-
,
is the number of experiments in which all of the
LIAO AND CHAN: DIRECTION FINDING WITH PARTLY CALIBRATED ULAs
Fig. 2. Success probability of DOA estimation versus SNR. The number of
snapshots , and the number of calibrated sensors .
Fig. 3. Bias magnitude of DOA estimation of the third signal versus SNR. The
number of snapshots , and the number of calibrated sensors
DOA estimate bias magnitudes are smaller than 0.5 , i.e.,
. Apparently, we
notice that the proposed method can achieve the highest DOA
estimation accuracy when the uncertainties are unknown. Even
at low SNRs, the proposed method is able to successfully
estimate all of the DOAs within the given bound with a high
probability. This suggests that the proposed method is useful
especially when the signals are seriously contaminated by
noise.
Fig. 3 illustrates the magnitude of DOA estimation bias of
the third signal, which is defined as . We
can find that even at a small SNR, the bias magnitude is rather
small. When the SNR is larger than 0 dB, the estimation bias
magnitude tends to be very small, whereas such a performance
can only be obtained by the other methods with SNR larger than
10 dB.
927
Fig. 4. RMSE of DOA estimation versus SNR. The number of snapshots
, and the number of calibrated sensors and .
TABLE I
ESTIMATED GAIN AND PHASE, BIAS MAGNITUDE, RMSE, AND CRB FOR THE
FIRST UNCALIBRATED SENSOR AT DIFFERENT SNRS USING THE PROPOSED
METHOD. TRUE VALUES ARE AND (rad)
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method
in gain and phase estimation, the estimated gains and phases,
bias magnitudes, and RMSEs are obtained by the proposed
. method with 200 experiments. The CRBs for gains and phases
estimation are also calculated based on (36) and (38) for com-
parison. Table I shows the averaged gain and phase estimates,
bias magnitude, RMSE, and CRB for the first uncalibrated
sensor at different SNRs. Since the estimation results of the
other four uncalibrated sensors obtained by the proposed
method are similar to those of the first uncalibrated sensor, they
are omitted for simplicity.
B. Example II
In this example, we will evaluate the effect of the number
of calibrated sensors in a ULA on DOA estimation. First,
we follow the settings in the previous example, but the cal-
ibrated sensors are assumed to be seven, i.e., . The
unknown gains and phases of the uncalibrated sensors are
identical to those in Example I, i.e., , ,
and . Fig. 4 shows the RMSEs of DOA estimation
when . Moreover, the results of obtained
in Example I are also displayed for comparison. It can be
928 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

and phases. For a fully calibrated array, the proposed method

reduces to the conventional ESPRIT algorithm. The DOAs
and unknown gains and phases can be estimated in closed
form without performing a spectral search. Thus, the pro-
posed method is computationally attractive. The CRBs of the
partly calibrated ULAs are also presented. Simulation results
show that the proposed method outperforms the conventional
methods especially when the number of uncalibrated sensors
is large, and satisfactory performance can be achieved even at
low SNRs.

APPENDIX
In this appendix, we briefly give the derivation of the problem
in (23).
Substituting (22) into (21), the objective function can be
rewritten as

Fig. 5. The RMSE of DOA estimation versus the number of calibrated sensors
. The number of snapshots , the .
(39)

where is an
noted that the performances of the methods, especially the projection matrix. It is known that
spectral-RARE algorithm and the MUSIC algorithm using cal- and for any matrix and
ibrated sensors, are greatly improved by reducing the number matrix , then (39) can be rewritten as
of uncalibrated sensors.
Next, we set 5 dB to and the number of snapshots to
and evaluate the performance of the proposed method with dif-
ferent number of calibrated sensors. More precisely, the RMSE (40)
is calculated for . It should be noted that the
gain and phase vector is chosen to be where the property is utilized. Moreover, based
when there are calibrated sensors, where is defined on the following identity [28]:
as the following 1 8 vector:
(41)

where and are matrices, ,

and , the objective function (40)
can be further simplified to
Fig. 5 shows the RMSEs versus the number of calibrated sen-
sors . We remark here that both spectral-RARE and MUSIC
using calibrated sensors are not applicable when the number
(42)
of calibrated sensors is less than four, i.e., , because
these two algorithms require the number of calibrated sensors
Hence, the problem in (21) becomes
be larger than the number of sources in the case of ULA.
From Fig. 5, we can see that the performance of each method
can be improved by increasing the number of calibrated sensors.
It is worth noting that when the number of calibrated sensors is s. t. (43)
10, i.e., the ULA is fully calibrated without imperfections, the
proposed method will reduce to the conventional ESPRIT algo- which is identical to (23).
rithm, whereas both the spectral-RARE algorithm and MUSIC
using calibrated sensors will reduce to the conventional MUSIC
algorithm. This is the reason why the spectral-RARE algorithm ACKNOWLEDGMENT
achieves a better performance when . The authors would like to thank the reviewers and editors for
their useful comments and suggestions.
VI. CONCLUSION
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Bin Liao (S’09) received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. de-
grees from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2006
and 2009, respectively, and is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering
at the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
His main research interests are array signal pro-
cessing and adaptive filtering.
Shing Chow Chan (S’87–M’92) received the
B.S. (Eng.) and Ph.D. degrees from the University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 1986 and 1992,
respectively.
Since 1994, he has been with the Department of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of
Hong Kong, and is now a Professor. He held visiting
positions with Microsoft Corporation, Redmond,
WA; Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China;
University of Texas at Arlington; and Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore. His research
interests include fast transform algorithms, filter design and realization,
multirate and array signal processing, communications and biomedical signal
processing, and image-based rendering.
Dr. Chan is currently a member of the Digital Signal Processing Technical
Committee of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and an Associate Editor
of the Journal of Signal Processing Systems. He was an Associate Editor of
the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS
from 2008 to 2009, and Chairman of the IEEE Hong Kong Chapter of Signal
Processing from 2000 to 2002.
930 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Calculation of MoM Interaction Integrals in Highly
Conductive Media
Joris Peeters, Ignace Bogaert, and Daniël De Zutter, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The construction of the impedance matrix in the
method of moments requires the calculation of interaction in-
tegrals between the expansion functions, through the Green’s
function and its derivatives. The singular behavior of the Green’s
function poses considerable problems for an accurate numerical
evaluation of these integrals, requiring techniques such as singu-
larity extraction or cancellation. In this contribution we will show
why these methods fail when the medium is highly conductive. A
novel technique is proposed to handle these highly challenging
integrals. The complexity of the new method is independent of the
conductivity.
Index Terms—Conductivity, electromagnetic shielding, integral
equations, method of moments (MoM).
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE method of moments (MoM) is one of the most pow-
erful approaches for solving electromagnetic scattering
problems in piecewise homogeneous media. Its main advantage
compared to other techniques, such as the finite difference time
domain (FDTD) method and the finite elements (FE) method, is
that only the surface of the objects must be discretized. The dis-
advantage, however, is that the resulting system matrix is fully
dense, describing the interaction between all expansion func-
tions by integrals with the singular 3D Green’s function, given
by , or its gradient as the kernel. Different
techniques to calculate these integrals have been proposed in the
past, focusing on regularizing the behavior. The two most
prominent approaches are singularity extraction (SE) [1]–[4]
and singularity cancellation (SC) [5]–[7]. However, both these
techniques assume that the numerator of the Green’s function,
i.e., , is a well-behaved function with a fairly small ab-
solute value of the derivative. Indeed, for lossless media the
wavenumber is real and for the usual discretization, the
function is smooth. In that case, the
wavenumber is given by , with . For a
very good conductor (with conductivity ), we have that
, with the skin depth [8]. Note
that, in general, as the conductivity becomes larger, both the
real part and imaginary part of grow, and are approximately
Manuscript received June 24, 2010; revised July 17, 2011; accepted August
28, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012
J. Peeters was with the Department of Information Technology (INTEC),
Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium. He is now with Computational Dy-
namics Ltd., London W6 7NL, U.K. (e-mail: Joris.Peeters@intec.ugent.be).
I. Bogaert and D. De Zutter are with the Department of Information Tech-
nology (INTEC), Ghent University, B-9000 Gent, Belgium.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173105
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
equal to each other in magnitude. As a consequence, be-
comes a function that is both highly oscillatory and exponen-
tially damped and can by no means be considered as a smooth
function to be handled by the standard numerical quadratures.
In fact, as will be shown later in this contribution, a very spe-
cialized approach, tuned to this damped behavior, is required in
order to accurately evaluate the impedance integrals in highly
conductive media. A similar topic has been treated in [9], but
in a different manner that, to our knowledge, does not lead to
a scalable solution (i.e. a calculation time that is independent
of the conductivity , assuming the frequency does not vary).
The outline of this paper is as follows. Section II introduces the
MoM interaction integrals that occur when modelling a scat-
tering problem at a body with complex and . Section III gives
a short overview of the currently most widely used techniques
for calculating the singular or near singular impedance integrals
and also explains the reason for their breakdown when the inter-
acting medium is highly conductive. Note that whenever SC is
considered, only the Duffy transform is employed to illustrate
the difficulties. Of course, a variety of other techniques exists
within this field, that have not each been numerically tested by
the authors. As will be shown further, though, the arguments
against SC for conductive media are applicable to all these tech-
niques. Section IV introduces our novel method for tackling
the impedance integrals in these media and in Section V, this
method is applied to a few challenging cases. Essentially, the
full-wave treatment (as opposed to using a surface impedance)
we propose is useful whenever the thickness of the conductor
becomes of the order of or smaller than the skin depth. By means
of numerical illustration and validation, Section VI applies our
approach to the case of ‘tunnelling’ through a very thin conduc-
tive spherical shell. Additionally, some further fields of applica-
tion are suggested that may benefit from this work.
II. IMPEDANCE INTEGRALS IN THE MOM
Discretization of the boundary integral equations (BIE) in
the MoM leads to a dense linear system, the matrix elements of
which describe the interaction, through the Green’s function,
between the expansion functions. Scattering at objects with a
permittivity and permeability (but neither infinitely lossy)
requires the introduction of two equivalent surface current
densities, electric and magnetic, which can be solved for as
the solution of the Poggio-Miller-Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai
(PMCHWT) [10] BIE. In this contribution, it will be as-
sumed that the surface current densities are expanded into
Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) [11] functions (which we will
denote as ), defined on a mesh of flat triangles, although
the proposed techniques have a broader field of application
(including an extension to a curvilinear mesh and the use of
PEETERS et al.: CALCULATION OF MoM INTERACTION INTEGRALS IN HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE MEDIA
higher order basis functions). The resulting matrix elements
require the calculation of the following integrals (as part of the
and operators [2]) over the support of the test functions
and the support of basis functions
(1)
(2)
(3)
with indicating the principal value of the integral. When
the supports of and overlap in at least a point, the above
integrals have a non-continuous integrand, although they are
integrable. For (the self patch case), becomes zero.
In order to determine these integrals over a triangle, for each
possible , it suffices to calculate the following integrals:
(4)
(5)
(6)
To obtain the integrals , and , these integrals , the idea, that we are dealing with the self patch case
and are required, in addition to some others that are merely
variations in terms of the presence or absence of or . The
reason both and are included here, instead of just one
of them, is to demonstrate in the examples that the presence of
has no mentionable influence on the achievable accuracy. In
short, if the three integrals above can be evaluated efficiently
and accurately, this also guarantees accurate evaluation of all
the integrals that are required in the impedance matrix.
In the next section, we will briefly revisit the techniques of SE
and SC, the workhorses behind most MoM implementations.
III. CALCULATION OF IMPEDANCE INTEGRALS IN DIELECTRICS
In order to obtain an accurate solution from the PMCHWT
BIE, it is essential that the integrals described in the previous
section are evaluated with a relatively high accuracy. When the
expansion functions and are well-separated (i.e., their dis-
tance from each other is considerably larger than their size), the
integrand is sufficiently smooth and a straightforward Gaussian
quadrature rule allows for exponential convergence. More chal-
lenging are the cases when the supports overlap (singular) or are
very close (near-singular). Both situations require a specialized
approach that deals with the singular or near-singular behavior
of the integrand.
We will first elaborate on the concept of SE, which is based on
the fact that interaction integrals with static kernels, for example
931
, can be integrated analytically. As such, for instance,
can be rewritten as
(7)
The second double integral is evaluated analytically and the
first double integral, from which the singular part is extracted,
is now regular. Note that, even though the first integrand is now
continuous, it is not because the first derivative, in this
example, displays a discontinuity at . Additional terms
have to be extracted for continuity in the derivatives [2]. Singu-
larity extraction can also be applied to the near-singular case, in
order to smooth the integrand and thus increasing the efficiency.
An essential assumption behind the philosophy of Singularity
Extraction is that, by extracting the singular (or near-singular)
static part, the remaining integral automatically becomes suit-
able for numerical quadrature. As we will see later, in the case
of conductive media, this is not the case.
A second technique, in competition with singularity extrac-
tion, is singularity cancellation. This method aims to regularize
the integrand by a suitable change of coordinates. Considering
again as an example, a simple yet effective transformation
to polar coordinates in the inner integral would do the trick
(8)
where we have assumed, in order to more clearly demonstrate
. The Jacobian compensates the that appears in the
Green’s function and as such regularizes the integrand to a
function. An advantage of this approach is that it does not rely
on the existence of analytical solutions for the static part. This
allows for more flexibility in the expansion functions, paving
the way for higher order solutions.
IV. CALCULATION OF IMPEDANCE INTEGRALS IN
CONDUCTIVE MEDIA
In order to understand the difficulties that occur when cal-
culating the impedance integrals in conductive media, it is in-
structive to look at the behavior of the Green’s function for
various values of the conductivity , as shown in Fig. 1. The
pulsation is chosen equal to 300 MHz. The distance is
varied from 0 to , with the free space wavelength (with
). Note how even a relatively poor conductor
(with ) dampens the Green’s function by more
than five orders of magnitude over a distance of about .
Copper, one of the most widespread conductors in industry, has
, leading to a Green’s function that is
extremely localized around the origin.
This behavior explains why straightforward application of
techniques such as SE or SC break down for high conductivity,
because they neglect the highly oscillatory but at the same time
exponentially damped character of . In addition, SE suf-
fers from numerical cancellation issues between the different
932
Fig. 1. The absolute value of the Green’s function for a few values of .
extracted terms. A numerical comparison for conductive media
between SE, SC (by means of the Duffy transform) and our
novel approach will be given further in this paper.
In order to introduce our new technique for treating these inte-
grals in conductive media, the explanation will be based on .
Further on it will also be shown how both and can be
treated almost identically. So, in the remainder of this section,
we will be looking at a way to efficiently evaluate the following
integral:
for arbitrary values of . In order to do this, a specialized ap-
proach is required for both the inner and outer integrals.
A. Inner Integral
First, we will take a look at evaluating the inner integral,
namely
where, although can be anywhere in space, the most chal-
lenging and practically interesting cases are when is very
close to or even in it. The key to accurately integrate the
strongly pulsed behavior is focusing the numerical quadrature
points only in those regions where the Green’s function has a
non-negligible value, based on a certain tolerance . The wave
number in a good conductor approximately satisfies
with (see Table I for some numerical values using
copper as an example). This allows us to approximately express
the numerator of the Green’s function in terms of only,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE I
THE WAVE NUMBER (1/m) AND SKIN DEPTH (m) IN COPPER
AS A FUNCTION OF THE FREQUENCY (Hz) AND
FREE SPACE WAVE NUMBER
Fig. 2. The real part, imaginary part and absolute value of the function
.
The behavior of this function is illustrated in Fig. 2 (with
(9) ).
Beyond a certain electrical length, the numerator of the
Green’s function drops to a fraction compared to its
value in the origin. As such a certain cutoff value of can be
determined, beyond which the remainder can be neglected,
namely
(13)
With this knowledge, the inner integral can now be evalu-
(10) ated to any desired tolerance independent of . As a first step,
a similar transform as in the Singularity Cancellation method
is employed, namely a Duffy transformation, see, e.g., [3]. As
mentioned before, this allows for more flexibility in the inte-
grand and will in fact allow us to treat the inner integrals of ,
and in an identical manner, despite the different kernel.
With respect to a carefully selected the integral is trans-
formed to polar coordinates
(14)
(11)
This point is found by first projecting into the plane of the
triangle and calling this projection . If lies within , it
is equal to . If lies outside the triangle, is that point on
the edge of the triangle that lies closest to . This process of
finding is illustrated in Fig. 3.
Once is determined, is divided into one, two or three tri-
angles (depending on the location of ), each having as one
(12)
of their corners. This is illustrated in Fig. 4. The total integral is
PEETERS et al.: CALCULATION OF MoM INTERACTION INTEGRALS IN HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE MEDIA 933

Regarding the shape of the integrand, it must be noted that,

while the polar coordinate transform is capable of cancelling
out a singularity, leads to a singularity. In
addition, due to the conductive behavior, the function will
in any case have its most dominant behavior around ,
although the limitation of radial distance to largely solves
this problem. One interesting approach to tackle integrands
such as with possible endpoint singularities is the double
exponential (DE) transform [13], essentially mapping a [ 1,
1] region on a region that can be handled with a
trapezoidal rule to exponential accuracy. This allows for the
Fig. 3. The point is found as the point on the triangle (or its edge) that is
closest to . This is illustrated for three different possibilities of .
desired flexibility in terms of kernel and expansion functions.
The radial integrand now becomes (suppressing dependencies
of and assuming to indicate the integration endpoint,
whether or not truncated to )

Fig. 4. The division into subtriangles for three different cases. The location of
is indicated by the small circle. Left: lies in the triangle, which is sub-
divided into three parts. Middle: lies on the edge of the triangle, which is
subdivided into two parts. Right: lies on the corner of the triangle and no
subdivision is needed.
Fig. 5. The truncation of the radial integration domain from
to keep all quadrature points within a distance from .
expressed as the sum of the integrals over these subtriangles, a
similar approach as, e.g., [7] and [12].
The integration over one subtriangle can be rewritten as
Let us first look at the radial integration for a subtriangle
The endpoint of the integration is dependent on the tri-
angle shape, on the angular coordinate and also on the value of
, which might truncate the integration domain. The latter oc-
curs when the endpoint is further away from than the distance
. In that case, the integration is carried out from to
, such that the new endpoint is away from . This
is illustrated in Fig. 5. Clearly, this cutoff does not compromise
the accuracy, due to the rapid decay of the Green’s function.
(17)
in which and with
the so-called double exponential transform given by
. To our knowledge, the DE
transform was first employed for the calculation of impedance
integrals in [12], which also contains a large amount of back-
ground on the technique. The essential difference with regard
to conductive integrals is the use of in this work. An
alternative for DE is using Gauss quadrature. Even though it
cannot handle the singular behavior of , it performs better
for those integrals that are regularized by the Duffy transform
(i.e. achieves roughly one or two orders of magnitude additional
to precision for the same number of quadrature points). So, in
the case of the self-patch, when is zero, it would lead to a
more efficient solution. However, in any case different from
the self-patch we would need the K-operator in addition to the
T-operator, so our recommendation is to use the DE transform
to calculate the different radial integrals simultaneously, which
reduces the number of evaluations of the Green’s function,
whilst still achieving any practically desired tolerance. So, in
the remainder of this article we will use the DE transform (like
(15) in our own MoM implementation for these integrals), but the
reader should be aware that Gauss quadrature can be a decent
alternative in some cases, but unfortunately fails in others. As
an example, integral (17) is evaluated for the following data:
, , and . The
(16) results are given in Table II for a few choices of the parameters.
The use of the truncation distance essentially imposes a
maximal absolute error on the integral. If the interaction dis-
tance is well beyond the skin depth , this may lead to a large
relative error (because the value of the integral is very small).
However, in the MoM scheme, it is pointless to evaluate these
integrals to higher precision because they barely contribute.
Essentially, the more distant an interaction, the less accurate
its evaluation needs to be. That is exactly what the use of
accomplishes. Note that in all numerical experiments, both here
and in the next sections, the values of are obtained through
934 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE II
THE RELATIVE ERROR AND ABSOLUTE ERROR FOR THE
NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF THE RADIAL INTEGRAL (17). THE NUMBER OF
QUADRATURE POINTS FOR THE DOUBLE EXPONENTIAL FORMULA IS
Fig. 6. The integration domain when is smaller than the dimensions of the
triangle. In contrast, when becomes larger, the integration domain becomes
the entire triangle.
comparison with a numerical result using a much higher amount
of quadrature points, which is used as the reference result.
Having control over the radial integral, it is now used as the
integrand for the angular quadrature
(18)
Regarding the choice of quadrature rule and number of sample
points needed to evaluate (18), it is important to notice that,
when is small compared to the dimensions of the triangle,
the integrand is actually not strongly dependent on because
in that case only a limited portion of the triangle has to be inte-
grated over. This is illustrated in Fig. 6. As such, in those cases,
as little as one integration point is usually sufficient. When the
conductivity is high, these cases will occur quite often and it
is worth detecting them. If the complete triangle plays a role,
then a Gaussian quadrature rule is employed. For most prac-
tical purposes, 8 sample points in turn out to be sufficient. In
order to illustrate the obtainable accuracy and the fact that the
complexity is independent of the conductivity, we consider the
following example. The triangle is defined by the vertices (0, 0,
0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 1, 0), the first of which is chosen to be .
Table III shows the accuracy of the angular integral for a few
locations of the observer point , a few values of and different
numbers of sample points for the angular integration. The
radial integration was performed with sufficient accuracy so as
not to influence the results.
TABLE III
THE RELATIVE ERROR AND ABSOLUTE ERROR FOR THE
NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF THE ANGULAR INTEGRAL (18)
TABLE IV
THE RELATIVE ERRORS AS A FUNCTION OF FOR EVALUATION OF
THE INNER INTEGRAL USING SINGULARITY EXTRACTION (WITH 15 TERMS),
SINGULARITY CANCELLATION (WITH 17 QUADRATURE POINTS BOTH FOR
THE RADIAL PART AND THE ANGULAR PART) AND OUR NOVEL APPROACH
(USING THE SAME AMOUNT OF QUADRATURE POINTS AS SC AND FOR A
TOLERANCE OF )
It is clear that the previously described methods allow for ef-
ficient and accurate evaluation of the inner integral (14). Appli-
cation of the DE technique and the introduction of makes
the calculation time and accuracy independent of the conduc-
tivity. The inner integral will now serve as the integrand of the
outer integral, over triangle . However, before moving on to
the outer integral, the numerical accuracy and efficiency of our
treatment of the inner integral will be compared with that of
Singularity Extraction and Singularity Cancellation. The latter
comes in many shapes, but here we will simply employ our pre-
viously discussed technique, but setting , which re-
duces to a typical Duffy transform. Of course, other cancella-
tion approaches may lead to different results, but this example
merely serves as an illustration of the problems that will occur
in, to our belief, all of them. For singularity extraction, we use
a formulation without a “regular remainder,” i.e., we extract as
many analytical terms as is necessary for a sufficiently accurate
result (in this case 15 terms) if there was no conductivity. For
the numerical example, we take a source triangle that has ver-
tices at (0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 1, 0), with an observer point
above its center of mass and we use a wavenumber of
the form . The results are shown in Table IV.
As can be observed, the SE method becomes numerically un-
stable and diverges, due to the many terms that suffer from nu-
merical cancellation. If only one or two terms are extracted (in-
stead of 15) and the remainder is integrated numerically, a sim-
ilar problem as with the SC technique will appear, which can
not keep up with the increasingly rapid variation of the Green’s
function and loses accuracy. For the inner integral, the com-
putational cost of the novel approach is approximately equal
to that of the considered singularity cancellation approach, be-
cause the same amount of quadrature points is considered and
any preprocessing is negligible compared to the evaluations of
the Green’s function. The novel approach is less accurate at low
PEETERS et al.: CALCULATION OF MoM INTERACTION INTEGRALS IN HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE MEDIA
TABLE V
NORMALIZED TIME FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE INNER INTEGRAL,
COMPARING AN ADAPTIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF SC WITH THE
NOVEL METHOD
losses, due to the cutting procedure, but manages to stay within
the chosen tolerance for the cases of high conductivity, whereas
other methods fail in this region. In order to demonstrate the
non-scalable behavior of the SC technique, the same experiment
as before is repeated, but now using adaptive refinement for SC
until the tolerance is achieved. The results, using our own
implementation of both methods, are demonstrated in Table V,
displaying the normalized time for SC and the novel method. In
contrast with the previous numerical example, the total number
of quadrature points (and hence the computational time) re-
quired for SC increases as increases. This is because the SC
approach requires increasingly deeper local refinement near the
observation point, in order to achieve the desired accuracy. The
novel approach is essentially independent of the conductivity
because it identifies the critical region during preprocessing. SE
was omitted here due to its inherent instability.
B. Outer Integral
The outer integral is given by
(19)
and the others have a similar form and can also be treated in
a completely identical manner as will be described in this sub-
section. However, for the sake of the argument, the approach
will be focusing on . For the inner integral, the key to effi-
cient evaluation was a focusing of quadrature points in the re-
gions where the integrand is non-negligible (through the choice
of and the use of the DE transform). A similar objective
lies behind the philosophy of the proposed method to evaluate
the outer integral. As an example, and to illustrate the difficul-
ties, Fig. 7 shows two triangles and that, when projected
onto each other, overlap only partially. When the conductivity
is high, the parts on that are not very close to (basically
within the range as previously determined) will hardly con-
tribute to the outer integral. If the two triangles are parallel and
right above each other, the integrand will in fact hardly change
at all. The only regions on where the outer integrand is not
smooth are those that are very close to an edge of , because
in that case the inner integrand and hence the result of the inner
integration changes rapidly. In order to accurately evaluate the
integral, these latter regions will require special care. Our novel
approach is designed to determine those parts of that con-
tribute to the outer integral and to focus the quadrature points in
those regions where the integrand changes rapidly.
As a first step, the integration region on is reduced by elim-
inating those parts that are too far from the plane of to give
935
Fig. 7. The situation of two triangles that only partially overlap when projected
onto each other, with the dashed line indicating the projection of the top triangle
on the plane of the bottom triangle.
Fig. 8. The domain of (lying in the yz-plane) is reduced to the darkly shaded
area (the polygon ABCD), which is the intersection between and the (infinite)
volume described by the plane of (dashed thin line in the xy-plane) and its
upward projection (dashed thick line) over a distance .
any contribution. This is obtained by calculating the intersec-
tion (if any) between and the region between two planes, one
at a distance below and parallel to and a similar plane
above . Depending on the configuration, this leads to a single
polygon with three, four or five edges. If there is no intersection,
is too far away from and the entire interaction integral, in
view of the previously chosen tolerance , can be considered
zero. This process is illustrated in Fig. 8.
The next step attempts to further reduce the integration do-
main and also identifies those regions where a rapid change of
the integrand can be expected. This in turn leads to a subdivi-
sion of the integration domain in judiciously chosen subtrian-
gles, such that in the end quadrature points are distributed in
such a way that the overall integration precision is guaranteed.
In order to achieve this, is first projected onto the plane of
. This projection is subsequently extended (in the plane of )
with polygons, covering a distance of at least from the orig-
inal projection. The reduced integration domain for the outer
integral is then determined as the intersection between and
’s projection including its extensions. This process is illus-
trated in Fig. 9. In this particular example, the plane of triangle
is parallel to that of (the geometry is shown in Fig. 7).
The solid black line in Fig. 9(a) represents the projection
of in the plane of . We now first extend this projection
over a distance to the outside. This extension is also
shown in Fig. 9(a) (the dashed lines). From this it follows that
the integration over can be restricted to the darkly shaded
area (denoted ). Referring to the reasoning put forward w.r.t.
the integration over in (18), it is clear that the integrand will
936 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 9. (a) Triangle (lightly and darkly shaded area) is reduced to the region
forming its intersection with the projection (solid line) of triangle and
its extensions to the outside over a distance (dashed lines). The darkly
shaded area is the resulting domain for the outer integration. (b) In addition to
the outward extension, the projection must also be extended inwards. This
does not change the total integration domain, but it influences the division into
polygons. The white dashed lines indicate the region that is shown in detail in
Fig. 10(c) Schematic representation of the total integration domain (identical to
the darkly shaded area in (a) and (b)), subdivided into the polygons over which
the individual integrations takes place.
not vary uniformly over . In order to guarantee the overall in-
tegration precision, the boundary of the projected triangle
is now also extended to the inside as depicted in Fig. 9(b), fi-
nally leading to the subdivision of in elementary integration
polygons (6 in this particular example), as shown in Fig. 9(c).
The numerical integration over these polygons now leads to an
overall positioning of the sample points accounting for the expo-
nential variation of the integrand imposed by the Green’s func-
Fig. 10. (a) A detail of the absolute value of the inner integrand (in dB), in the
region indicated by the white dashed lines in Fig. 9(b). In that example,
is equal to 0.05 and was chosen to achieve a accuracy. Here we see the
exponential behavior of the integrand near the edges (indicated by the black
lines), dropping below beyond a distance . The outward extension of
the projection is indicated by the white dashdot line. (b) Similar to (a), but now
showing the absolute value of the inner integrand (in dB) minus its value at (0.4,
0.4, 0). The white dashdot lines indicate the inward extension.
tions (see Fig. 10 for a detail of the behavior of this integrand),
as such making sure that the precision obtained for the inner in-
tegration (10) does not get compromised when performing the
outer integration (19).
To further illustrate the principles put forward by means of the
example of Fig. 9, we again turn to the example shown in Fig. 8.
In this special case, the projection of on reduces to the
line in Fig. 8, as the planes of and are perpendicular.
Applying the procedure followed in the example of Fig. 9 now
simply amounts to the reduction of the outer integration domain
to the polynomial .
The combination of the first and second steps guarantees that
the integrand in each polygon is non-negligible and that each
possible steep variation is covered by one polygon. In a final
step the actual integration needs to be carried out over these do-
mains. The easiest approach, which delivers accurate results, is
to divide each polygon into triangles and then consider all these
triangles separately. Numerical quadrature over a triangle is al-
ready present in most implementations, reducing the amount of
programming required. A possible alternative to this approach
PEETERS et al.: CALCULATION OF MoM INTERACTION INTEGRALS IN HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE MEDIA
TABLE VI
THE RELATIVE ERRORS ( AND ) FOR THE NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF THE IMPEDANCE INTEGRALS
NUMBER OF QUADRATURE POINTS USED FOR THE OUTER INTEGRATION (19) IS GIVEN BY
would be adaptive outer integration on the entire outer domain,
which was in fact the first method attempted by the authors.
However, the computational cost quickly becomes prohibitive
as it goes up rapidly with the conductivity. In Table V it was
shown how an adaptive approach does not scale for the inner
integral, due to the increasingly deeper refinement around the
observation point. For the outer integral, the situation is even
worse because, in general, refinement will be required along
lines instead of points. An adaptive approach, for both outer and
inner integral, can easily take more than a thousand times longer
than our novel method. The novel approach requires some ge-
ometrical preprocessing, but this is negligible in comparison to
the evaluation of the Green’s function. In the current implemen-
tation, every separate outer subtriangle is treated with the same
amount of quadrature points. Further gains in efficiency may
possibly be obtained by selecting this number more carefully for
each subtriangle or even through adaptive quadrature per sub-
triangle. However, that is beyond the scope of the current work.
V. PERFORMANCE
This section will evaluate the performance and accuracy for
calculating the impedance integrals for a few of the most inter-
esting and challenging cases. The techniques described in the
previous sections will be applied to each of the integrals ,
and . Three particular geometrical situations will be consid-
ered that are of particular importance to potential applications.
These are the so-called self patch (when two triangles overlap),
the orthogonal neighbor patch (when they touch in a line and
have orthogonal planes) and the case of two parallel triangles
that are close to each other. Note that the self patch for is al-
ways zero and consequently that the self patch for does not
need to be calculated. Note that the accuracy of all results has
been obtained through self-convergence (using the same method
but with higher precision and, consequently, more quadrature
points). For the low conductivity cases, our technique for the
inner integral has been compared with SE and SC (see also
Table IV), which verifies the implementation. The evaluation of
the outer integral has been compared with an adaptive technique
(progressive refinement of the integration region into more tri-
angles), which is incredibly slow for higher conductivity but
does, eventually, confirm our results. For every result, we gen-
erated a reference value that is at least two orders of magnitude
more precise, in terms of all parameters (number of quadrature
937
AND IN THE CASE OF A SELF PATCH. THE
points for the radial, angular and outer integral, as well as the
tolerance for ).
A. Self Patch
The first example under consideration is that of the interac-
tion between two identical triangles, which is the cornerstone
of the impedance matrix. The triangle is defined by the vertices
(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 1, 0). The material through which they
interact is chosen to be copper and
the self patch integral is studied at different frequencies. The
challenging situations are those for which is small (or, equiva-
lently, is large), which happens in the limits of high conduc-
tivity and high frequency. The results are shown in Table VI.
Note that the self patch contribution to the K-operator is always
zero [10], hence the omission of for this example.
The results show that our approach is stable for small and
can also achieve a desired tolerance, for the frequency ranging
over many orders of magnitude. Further numerical tests show
that our approach is stable for at least as small as ,
indicating the inherent robustness of our approach. Actually,
the critical parameter in determining the behavior of the inte-
grand is , with the typical size of the mesh elements
(so for the self patch example). Taking a closer look
at realistic values of , two frequency ranges need to be
treated. In the case of high frequencies, will be of the order
of (with the wavelength in the background medium),
while in the low frequency regime, is determined by the
geometry and can be considered independent of the frequency.
In the high frequency regime, with , we have that
. As the frequency increases, the
skin depth decreases as , but the discretization of the trian-
gles as , eventually leading to a situation where our special
approach is no longer required as the dimensions of the triangles
become even smaller than . However, for copper,
for (or ), so in prac-
tice any high frequency simulation for the microwave and mil-
limeter wave range involving copper (or other good conduc-
tors) requires the techniques we previously described. At low
frequencies, we have and the pa-
rameter depends both on the frequency and the geometry. An
important aspect that has not yet been discussed before are the
conditions under which it is allowed to use triangles that are
considerably larger than the skin depth . Roughly said, this is
valid when the curvature of the geometry is sufficiently small
938 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

TABLE VII TABLE VIII

THE RELATIVE ERRORS FOR THE NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF THE THE RELATIVE ERRORS AND FOR THE NUMERICAL EVALUATION
IMPEDANCE INTEGRAL IN THE CASE OF AN ORTHOGONAL NEIGHBOR OF THE IMPEDANCE INTEGRAL IN THE CASE OF NEAR-SINGULAR PARALLEL
PATCH TRIANGLES

in comparison with . As a result, near sharp corners of a con-

ducting object it will still be necessary to refine the mesh in order
to accurately catch the electromagnetic behavior. However, this
can be done in a localized manner, without affecting the mesh
of those parts that are smooth.

B. Neighbor Patch
Whilst the self patch is critical for the contribution due to the
operator of the PMCHWT formulation [10], the associated
impedance integrals discretizing the operator are zero. The
most common neighbor patches, namely those where the two
triangles lie in the same plane, also result in a zero contribution
[10]. As such, here we will consider the case of two orthog-
onal triangles that touch in one line (as shown in Fig. 8), which,
incidentally, is also of considerable practical importance. is
again defined by the vertices (0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 1, 0),
while has (0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 0, 1) as its corners. The
remaining logarithmic edge singularity in the outer integral is a
well-known issue [10], but due to the focusing of our quadrature
points in a small region near the common edge, relatively good
and stable results can be obtained by simply applying a brute
force Gaussian integration.
The results, shown in Table VII, demonstrate that it is pos-
sible to obtain an accuracy that is more than enough for most
applications. If a still better accuracy is required, certain ap-
proaches could be followed (e.g., [10]) to get rid of the re-
maining edge singularity, but that is beyond the scope of this
paper.
C. Thin Plate Triangles
In a practical application, many of the impedance integrals
(for interaction through a conductive medium) will be negli-
gible, simply because the triangles are too distant and the kernel
is highly lossy. In many cases, only the self patch, neighbor
patches and point patches (when two triangles touch in exactly
one point) contribute (the so-called singular integrals). How-
ever, one exception is that of very thin plates, with a thickness
of the order of the skin depth or smaller. In that case, the inter-
action between the two walls through the conductive medium
has an important contribution and needs to be accounted for.
An important aspect regarding accuracy is that these integrals
do not require the same accuracy as the self patch contribution
because, due to the lossy nature of the medium, they are pertur-
bations of the diagonal. If the self patch is known to accu-
racy and the distance of the wall leads to a drop in interac-
tion strength, then only approximately relative accuracy
is required for the interactions through the wall. Any additional
Fig. 11. The geometry for the numerical example.
accuracy would get numerically lost in the uncertainty on the
self patch. Our approach automatically takes this into account
through the value of . So, two types of relative errors will be
given in the results, namely
and , with the eval-
uation of the self patch integral corresponding to . To make
it more challenging, we will consider triangles that, while par-
allel (as is the case for thin walls), do not have a completely
overlapping support. This creates some difficulties for the outer
integral, solved by our approach. is defined by the vertices
(0, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0) and (0, 1, 0) and by (1, 1, d), (0, 1, ) and
(1, 0, ), where is the thickness of the plate (and the distance
between the triangles). The results will again focus on the accu-
racy of . The results are shown in Table VIII.
The cases where are the result of being smaller
than (meaning that the integral will be evaluated to zero).
However, as shown by , this is within our de-
sired tolerance.
VI. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
To illustrate the previously developed techniques, we will
consider the practical case of very thin, conductive walls, which
was in fact the original motivation for this work. If the wall
thickness is of the order of the skin depth or smaller, the “tun-
neling effect” cannot be neglected and a full-wave solution is
required. In order to allow verification of the numerical result,
a configuration will be chosen that allows comparison with an
analytical solution. Fig. 11 displays this geometry (not to scale),
which consists of a hollow conductive sphere with radius and
thickness .
The parameters are chosen as follows: , ,
(copper). The incoming plane wave
PEETERS et al.: CALCULATION OF MoM INTERACTION INTEGRALS IN HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE MEDIA
Fig. 12. A comparison (between simulation and analytical result) of the electric
field after scattering at a very thin conductive shell.
has a frequency of (so for the back-
ground medium) and is linearly polarized with and
. The skin depth of copper at this frequency is
. The surfaces of each sphere are discretized in 584
triangles, leading to a total of 3504 unknowns. The impedance
integrals were calculated with a tolerance of . in the transition zone. It may also serve as a reference against
The results are displayed in Fig. 12, comparing the total
simulated field with the analytical result obtained from the
Mie series. The results are plotted along the dashed line shown
in Fig. 11 (which is the x-axis). The error is represented as
, which is a measure for the distance
in the complex plane. As such, it compares the complex field
values, taking both amplitude and phase into account. The
distance between the data and the error can be interpreted
as the relative accuracy of the result. This is better than 1%,
except close to the walls. This is due to geometrical meshing
error (flat triangles are used to model a curved surface). Similar
results are very difficult to obtain with a method that discretizes
the volume instead of the boundaries. In order to catch this
behavior it is, however, necessary to accurately evaluate the
impedance integrals. An identical simulation, but using tradi-
tional Singularity Cancellation (without ) instead of our
method, failed to converge.
In a second simulation, using the same geometry as shown in
Fig. 11, we evaluate the shield penetration (SP) for these enclo-
sures for various values of . The SP, in this case, is defined as
(20)
The results are shown in Fig. 13 for ranging from 0.1 to 10,
with the error defined in the same way as for Fig. 12. Clearly
the simulations agree very well with the analytical solution
throughout the entire domain.
Of course, the accurate modeling of the tunneling effect
through a conductor is not the only application of this work.
A full-wave treatment (as opposed to using, e.g., a surface
impedance approximation) is necessary whenever the thickness
becomes of the order of the skindepth or when the inside be-
comes important for other reasons, e.g. in the study of the effect
of corners or of impurities within the conductor. Additionally,
939
Fig. 13. The shield penetration as a function of , calculated both analytically
and numerically.
it provides a smooth extension of the full-wave approach for
dielectrics to conductors, without requiring a sudden transition
to surface impedances, possibly leading to more reliable results
which different high conductivity approaches can be evaluated.
A deeper investigation of all these applications will be the
subject of future work.
VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the accurate and scalable evaluation of
impedance integrals in a conductive medium has been treated.
An error-controllable approach was proposed that is stable for
the high conductivity limit, evaluating both the inner and outer
integral with care. The main novelty is with regard to the use of
a cutoff distance—at various places in the algorithm–to more
efficiently focus numerical effort. The performance of the ap-
proach was shown through a few challenging case studies (self
patch, neighbor patch and near singular case) and the example
of very thin conductive shells. Finally, some suggestions for
application of this technique were listed.
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[5] M. Khayat and D. Wilton, “Numerical evaluation of singular and near-
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[8] J. Van Bladel, Electromagnetic Fields, ser. IEEE Press Series on Elec-
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Joris Peeters was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in
1983. He received the M.Sc. degree in physical
engineering and the Ph.D. degree in applied physics
from the University of Ghent, Belgium, in 2006 and
2010, respectively.
In 2006, he joined the Electromagnetics Group,
Department of Information Technology, University
of Ghent, to do further research. He then focused on
efficient techniques within the context of boundary
integral equations, with much attention to complex
real-life problems in the field of computational
electromagnetism. After a brief period working as a Postdoctoral Researcher
at the University of Ghent, he joined Computational Dynamics Ltd., London,
U.K., in March 2011, to work within the extended field of computational
continuum mechanics.
Ignace Bogaert received the M.S. degree in physical
engineering and the Ph.D. degree in applied physics
from Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, in 2004 and
2008, respectively.
In 2004, he joined the Electromagnetics Group,
Department of Information Technology (INTEC),
Ghent University. Currently, his research is sup-
ported by a postdoctoral grant from the Research
Foundation-Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen). His re-
search interests include boundary integral equations
for the modeling of various physical systems, with
the emphasis on robustness, efficiency and accuracy.
Daniël De Zutter (F’00) was born in 1953. He received the M.Sc. degree in
electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree, and he completed a thesis leading
to a degree equivalent to the French Aggrégation or the German Habilitation
from Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, in 1976, 1981, and 1984, respectively.
Between 2004 and 2008, he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering,
Ghent University, where he is now a Full Professor of electromagnetics and the
Head of the Department of Information Technology. His research focusses on
all aspects of circuit and electromagnetic modelling of high-speed and high-
frequency interconnections and packaging, on electromagnetic compatibility
(EMC) and numerical solutions of Maxwell’s equations. As an author or coau-
thor he has contributed to more than 180 international journal papers (cited in
the Web of Science) and 200 papers in conference proceedings.
Prof. De Zutter was elected to the grade of Fellow of the IEEE in 2000. He
was an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY
AND TECHNIQUES.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Electromagnetic Scattering From General Bi-Isotropic
Objects Using Time-Domain Integral Equations
Combined With PMCHWT Formulations
Ze-Hai Wu, Student Member, IEEE, Edward Kai-Ning Yung, Fellow, IEEE, Dao-Xiang Wang, Member, IEEE, and
Jian Bao, Student Member, IEEE
Abstract—Electromagnetic scattering by general bi-isotropic
objects is calculated by using the time-domain integral equations
which are incorporated with the Poggio-Miller-Chang-Har-
rington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) formulations. By introducing a
pair of equivalent electric and magnetic sources, electromagnetic
fields inside a homogeneous bi-isotropic region can be represented
by these sources over its boundary after applying fields splitting
method. A series of coupled surface integral equations are ob-
tained after imposing boundary conditions. These equations are
then solved numerically using the method of moment (MoM)
which involves separate spatial and temporal testing procedures.
The Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) functions are used as the spatial
expansion and testing functions, and the weighted Laguerre
functions are derived as the temporal basis and testing functions.
Numerical results such as transient currents, far scattered fields,
and normalized radar cross sections are presented and compared
with analytical results as well as MoM-based frequency-domain
analysis, and good agreements are observed.
Index Terms—Bi-isotropic medium, method of moments (MoM),
scattering, time domain integral equations.
I. INTRODUCTION
B I-ISOTROPIC (BI) medium is a special class of complex
materials that can produce both electric and magnetic po-
larizations when excited by either an electric or magnetic source
[1]. Among all, Chiral and Tellegen materials represent two sub-
classes of BI medium [2], [3]. Chiral medium is optically active,
which means that the polarization plane of an electromagnetic
(EM) wave is rotated when propagating through it. Investiga-
tions show that Chiral medium possesses the property of reci-
procity, while Tellegen medium is nonreciprocal. Many efforts
have been made in the fabrication of these BI materials [4]–[6]
because of their great potential in the millimeter-wave and mi-
crowave applications such as antenna radomes [7], chiro-mi-
crostrip antennas [8], modes convertors [9], and polarization ro-
tators [10]. Such material brings about new challenges to the EM
Manuscript received December 21, 2009; revised December 06, 2010; ac-
cepted August 08, 2011. Date of publication October 20, 2011; date of current
version February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Research
Grants Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), China,
under Grant CityU 124308.
Z.-H. Wu was with the Department of Electronic Engineering, City Univer-
sity of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. He is now with Argus Technologies,
Guangzhou Development District, Guangzhou, China. (e-mail: zhwu@argusan-
tennas.com.cn).
E. K.-N. Yung, D.-X. Wang, and J. Bao are with the Department of Electronic
Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China (e-mail:
eeedyung@ee.cityu.edu.hk; dxwang@ee.cityu.edu.hk; rubinshun@msn.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173098
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
941
theory since its constitutive relationships enforce an additional
coupling between electric and magnetic fields. Hence, consid-
erable attention has been paid to developing accurate numerical
methods to solve the EM propagation, scattering and radiation
problems associated with the BI medium [11]–[21].
This paper is concerned with the EM scattering by general
BI objects. Although an analytical method has been previously
proposed for BI cylinders by Monzon where a contour inte-
gral technique is combined with the dyadic Green’s function
[11], [12], it can only calculate two-dimensional BI bodies at
normal incidence. Kluskens considered the scattering of a chiral
cylinder with arbitrary cross section [13]. Integral equations
are formulated for it, along with its solution in method of mo-
ment (MoM). Later this method was extended to three-dimen-
sional chiral scatterer by Worasawate [15] and chiral revolution
by Yuceer [16]. Wang applied MoM to solve the surface inte-
gral equations that were incorporated with the Poggio-Miller-
Chang-Harrington-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) formulations for the
scattering by general BI objects [17] and BI coated conduc-
tors [18]. Although there have been many frequency-domain
techniques reported for the scattering of BI media, very little
work has been done in the time domain. Most of the time-do-
main schemes available for BI media focus on the finite dif-
ference methods, such as finite-different time-domain (FDTD)
[19], conformal FDTD [20], BI-FDTD [21], and so on. The ex-
amples available are restricted to chiral spheres whose solutions
can be analytically calculated by using the modal expansion
theory. Therefore, the applicability of the FDTD method still
needs verification for general BI objects.
The time-domain integral equation (TDIE) solver is com-
monly used for analyzing complex EM scattering phenomenon
[22]–[26]. Although the FDTD method has been the dominant
tool for time-domain simulations, the TDIE approach is prefer-
able in some applications especially for analysis of transient
scattering by large-size bodies. The reason is that the TDIE
method solves fewer unknowns by using surfaces discretization
and requires no artificial absorbing boundary condition (ABC).
The most popular method to solve a TDIE is the marching-on
in time (MOT) scheme [23], [24]. However, many researchers
have pointed out that the MOT method may suffer from late-
time instabilities in the form of high frequency oscillation. Re-
cently, the marching-on in degree (MOD) method [25], [26]
using a set of scaled Laguerre polynomials as the temporal ex-
pansion and testing functions is proposed for the TDIE, and
stable results can be obtained even for late time. To the best of
942 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

our knowledge, this TDIE solver has not been used to deal with (6)
the scattering by BI media. For the first time, this work presents
the application of the MOD-based TDIE method for three-di-
where is the wave impedance in the medium surrounding
mensional homogeneous BI objects with arbitrary shape.
the scatterer, and and are the scattered fields outside the
In this paper, pair of new sources and two integro-differen-
dielectric body. The integro-differential operators and in
tial operators are first defined and, later, they are introduced
(5) and (6) are defined as
to formulate the far scattered fields by homogeneous dielectric
objects in time domain. Then the method is extended for con-
structing scattered fields inside and outside the BI medium. A
field splitting scheme [1], also known as Bohren Decomposition
[27], is employed to simplify the expression of the EM fields in- (7)
side the bodies. It turns out that the fields in the BI media can
be decomposed into two uncoupled wavefields, which individ-
ually satisfy Maxwell’s equations. In this sense, the BI media
can be replaced by two isotropic dielectrics each of which is
(8)
characterized by its own isotropic parameters, and the fields
for BI media can be easily obtained as the summation of two
wavefields. In order to achieve stable solutions, PMCHWT for- where represents the distance between the observa-
mulations [28], [29] are used to construct the surface integral tion point and the source point , is the retarded
equations. After enforcing boundary conditions, a series of cou- time, is the velocity of the propagation of EM
pled integral equations are established, and they are solved nu- wave in space, and denotes the surface with the singularity
merically by the MoM involving separate spatial and temporal at removed from the surface . It can be seen that here
testing procedures. The Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) functions we introduce a pair of new sources and instead
are used as the spatial expansion and testing functions, and the of using the equivalent electrical current and magnetic
weighted Laguerre functions are used as the temporal expan- current to construct the far scattered fields. In this case,
sion and testing functions. The use of the Laguerre functions the time derivative of the electric and magnetic vector potentials
completely removes the time variable from computation, and can be easily handled because there is no time-integral term ex-
the matrix equation is solved recursively using a MOD proce- isted.
dure. To validate the accuracy of the proposed TDIE method,
the scattering of BI objects is analyzed, and the transient cur- B. Integral Equations in BI Medium
rents, far scattered fields and bistatic radar cross-sections are The expression of the electric and magnetic fields inside the
presented and compared. BI region is relatively complex because of the introduction of
the bi-isotropic constitutive relations, namely
II. THEORY AND INTEGRAL EQUATION FORMULATIONS
(9)
A. Equivalent Sources for Homogeneous Dielectric Bodies
(10)
Here, we consider a homogenous dielectric body with per-
mittivity of and permeability of which is embedded in an where and are Tellegen and Pasteur parameters, respec-
infinite homogenous medium with permittivity of and per- tively, and and are the permittivity and permeability of the
meability of . A pair of new sources and on the BI medium.
surface of the dielectric body is defined by To represent the fields in the BI region, a field splitting
scheme is applied [1]. Both the electric and magnetic fields
(1)
and in the homogeneous BI medium are divided
into the right- and left-circularly polarized wavefields. The
(2)
right-polarized fields are denoted by “ ” subscript, while
the left-polarized components are denoted by “–” subscript.
where and are the equivalent electric and mag-
Therefore, we can write
netic surface currents. According to the equation of continuity,
the electric charge density and magnetic charge density (11)
can be written as
(12)
(3)
The wavefields and are independent and
(4) uncoupled in the homogeneous BI medium. They are related
With the use of equivalent principle [30], the scattered fields to respective medium characterized by , and
can be formulated in terms of the equivalent sources and , which are defined by
on the surface by
(13)
(5) (14)
WU et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM GENERAL BI OBJECTS USING TDIEs COMBINED WITH PMCHWT FORMULATIONS 943

(15) in which the equivalent electric and magnetic sources are repre-
sented by using the RWG functions [32]. The equivalent sources
and are expanded by
where and . Since two wavefields
are independently governed by Maxwell’s equations,
and can be expressed by (24)

(16)
(25)
(17)
where and are the time-domain coefficients to be
where the integro-differential operators and are defined determined, is the number of the inner edges, and
as represents the RWG function. The coefficients for the temporal
expansion functions and which are assumed to be
causal response functions for , can be expanded as

(18) (26)

(27)

(19)
As can be seen, the expressions of the scattered wavefields
and in the media induced by and
are similar to those of free space except that the ma-
terial parameters are different. Here the relations of and
can be obtained from Maxwell’s equations,
(20)
(21)
To determine the unknown sources and , the boundary
condition needs to be enforced on the surface of the BI scat-
terer. That means the total tangential fields should be continuous
across the surface of the BI object. Hence, a set of coupled field
integral equations can be obtained as
where and are the unknown coefficients, and
is the temporal basis function. is the Laguerre
function of order [33] with a scaling factor .
Through the Galerkin’s method, we take both spatial testing
with and temporal testing with
to the integro-differential operators
and , respectively. With reference to [26], is the maximum
order of the Laguerre functions which is the time-bandwidth
product of the incident waveform. When computing the in-
tegrals, the distance between two triangles is assumed to be
constant, hence
(28)
where , and can be either or –, and
is the distance between the center point of triangles and .
With these assumptions, we obtain the following equations

(22)

(23)
(29)

where and are the incident electric and magnetic fields

respectively, and the subscript “tan” represents the tangential
components.

III. NUMERICAL SOLUTION PROCEDURE

A. Basis Functions and Testing Scheme

MoM [31] is adopted to solve (22) and (23). For the imple-
mentation of MoM, the surface of an arbitrarily shaped BI ob- (30)
ject is meshed by using a number of planar triangular patches,
944 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

The inner integral represents a spatial testing which

is defined by multiplying the function and integrating
in the triangle pairs , and represents a temporal (39)
testing which is done by multiplying the function and in-
tegrating from zero to infinity. With reference to [25], the tem-
poral integral can be simplified as

(31)

where the spatial integrals , , , and are

given by (40)

(32)

(33)

(34)

(35)
(41)
(36)
and the elements on the right hand are
where is a unit vector along the direction . It is noted (42)
that the time and space variables are separated in the computa-
tion, and the time variable is replaced by the order degree of the (43)
Laguerre functions.
where and are given by
We apply both the spatial and temporal testing procedures to
(22) and (23). The matrix below is obtained after some
(44)
mathematical manipulations,
(45)

where the definitions for , , , and are given

(37) in appendix (A1)–(A4).
For the above equations, the calculation of the system ma-
trix elements , , , and is very time
where the elements on the left hand side of the matrix are consuming because the double integrals , , and
require much computation. In the cases of , all
the integrals are regular and they can be calculated numerically
[34]. When the source and observation edges are in the same tri-
angles or , analytical formulas [35] are used to remove the
singularity of the spatial integrals. In addition to that, the inte-
gral is not needed for the computation during the whole so-
lution because of automatic cancellation of the PMCHWT for-
mulations.
We can see from (37) to (45) that, to obtain the coefficients
and , the matrix (37) should be solved recursively on
(38) the order of the degree of Laguerre function. Particularly, in the
first step when , the parameters , , , and
are all equal to zero. As a result in such case, only system
matrix elements , , , and are needed
where the LU decomposition can be stored for further use. In the
following -th step, we only have to compute , , ,
and on the right side of the matrix, which are the sums of
WU et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM GENERAL BI OBJECTS USING TDIEs COMBINED WITH PMCHWT FORMULATIONS 945

Fig. 1. The 3-D Bi-isotropic sphere and coordinates illustrations.

the previous solved coefficients and , as shown in ap-

pendix (A1)–(A4). Since all the spatial integrals will be needed
in the last step , we multiply all the spatial integral
with and store these values generated from the first
step. This can save much computation cost. The complexities
of this method are for the filling procedure and
for the iteration procedure.

B. Far Scattered Fields and Bistatic Radar Cross Sections

After solving the matrix (37) in a marching-on in degree
manner, the transient electric and magnetic current coefficients
are expressed by using (1) and (2). Once the equivalent currents
on the scatterer are determined, the far scattered fields can
be computed [25]. After computing the total scattered field
at a point , it can be rewritten by using the sphere
coordinates as
(46)

With the use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT), the total scat-
tered and incident fields and at a frequency Fig. 2. Transient currents at the point (0.0096, 0.0022, 0.0005) on a 0.02 m
band can be obtained. Using the scattering amplitude matrix, the diameter BI sphere.(a) real and imaginary part, (b) magnitude.
co-polarized bistatic radar cross section and the cross-polar-
ized bistatic cross section are defined [18].

IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this section, the numerical results for the Bi-isotropic scat-
terer placed in free space will be presented to validate the previ-
ously described TDIE scheme. In this part, and are the speed
of wave propagation and the wave impedance of free space, re-
spectively. The scatterers are illuminated by a Gaussian plane
wave, in which the electric and magnetic fields are given by

(47)

(48)

where , is the unit vector in the

Fig. 3. Normalized forward scattered fields of the BI sphere .The sphere has a
direction of wave propagation, is the pulse width, and is radius of 0.01 m, and other parameters are , , , and
the time delay. In this work, the field is incident from .
and with and , as shown in Fig. 1.

A. Sphere Scattering The sphere has a relative permittivity of and a relative

In the first example, we consider a BI sphere of radius 0.01 permeability of , and it is meshed with 616 triangular
m centered at the origin. The exact solutions obtained using the patches and 924 unknowns. The Gaussian pulse of
matrix Ricatti equations [14] are also presented for comparison. and is used in this numerical computation, and it
946 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. Forward co- and cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere as
a function of frequency. The sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other parameters
are , , , and .
Fig. 5. Co-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere as a function of the
evaluation angle. The BI sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other parameters
are , , , and .
has a spectrum of 9 GHz. (The unit “m”denotes a light meter,
and one light meter is the amount of time taken by EM wave
to travel 1 m.) The scattering geometry of the sphere is shown
in Fig. 1, where the forward direction is defined by and
. In the TDIE computation, we set , which
is sufficient to get accurate results. The value can be different
for BI spheres with different , and it will be illustrated in
the convergence test. The exact solution was computed at 30
discrete frequencies between 0 and 9 GHz.
The scattering of a BI sphere with constitutive parameters
and is first computed by using the pro-
posed TDIE solver. In this computation, the maximum temporal
order is set to be 120. Fig. 2 displays the transient response of
the electric and magnetic currents at the point (0.0096, 0.0022,
0.0005) of the sphere. The real and imaginary parts of the cur-
rent are plotted in Fig. 2(a), and it is obviously seen that the
computed value of currents does not increase, even at very late
Fig. 6. Cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere as a function of
the evaluation angle. The BI sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other parameters
are , , , and .
Fig. 7. Forward co- and cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere
for different values of . The BI sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other pa-
rameters are , , , and .
time. The magnitude of the currents are shown in Fig. 2(b), and
a gradual decrease is observed in the magnitude of both the elec-
tric and magnetic currents. Fig. 3 displays the normalized for-
ward scattered electric fields, in which both the - and -compo-
nent are stable. The computed forward co- and cross-polarized
bistatic radar cross-sections are also shown in Fig. 4 in the fre-
quency band from 0 to 9 GHz, and they are in good agreement
with the exact results. The co- and cross-polarized bistatic echo
widths of the BI sphere as a function of evaluation angle are
shown at the frequencies of 4 GHz and 6 GHz in Figs. 5 and 6,
respectively, and they agree very well with the exact results.
It is found that the number of the meshed triangles and the
maximum temporal order both significantly influence the ac-
curacy of the numerical result. Since the convergence test of the
triangle number has already been discussed in [15], this part will
only show the effect of the parameter on convergence. At
first, the values of used for a BI sphere with parameters de-
scribed in the last part are 80, 100, and 120. Fig. 7 shows the re-
sults of the convergence test in the forward scattering direction.
WU et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM GENERAL BI OBJECTS USING TDIEs COMBINED WITH PMCHWT FORMULATIONS 947

Fig. 8. Forward co- and cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere
for different values of . The BI sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other pa-
rameters are , , , and . Fig. 11. Co-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI cylinder as a function of
the evaluation angle. The cylinder has a radius of 0.02 m with a height of 0.04
m. Other parameters are , , , and .

Fig. 9. Forward co- and cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI sphere
for different values of . The BI sphere has a radius of 0.01 m, and other pa-
rameters are , , , and .

Fig. 12. Cross-polarized bistatic echo widths of the BI cylinder as a function

of the evaluation angle. The cylinder has a radius of 0.02 m with a height of
0.04 m. Other parameters are , , , and .

in Fig. 8. It is noted that the TDIE solutions converge to the

Fig. 10. The 3-D Bi-isotropic cylinder with the definition of coordinates.
It is observed that the accuracy increases for a higher . It has
been found that the TDIE results converge to those given by the
exact solutions when . The second convergence test
is performed when the Pasteur parameter of the BI sphere is
increased to 0.5 with the Tellegen parameter remaining un-
changed. The maximum temporal orders are 100, 120, and 130
in this computation. The computed forward co- and cross-po-
larized bistatic radar cross-sections of the BI sphere are shown
exact results when , larger than in the first test. The
third convergence test is done when the Tellegen parameter
of the BI sphere is increased to 0.8 with a Pasteur parameter
. The maximum temporal orders are chosen to be 80,
100, and 120. Fig. 9 displays the co- and cross-polarized bistatic
radar cross-sections of the BI sphere. The TDIE solutions con-
verge to the exact results when , which is the same
as the first convergence test. From these convergence tests, it
can be concluded that the maximum temporal order should
be increased to get satisfactory results when increasing Pasteur
parameter , while it is not affected by changing the Tellegen
parameter only.
B. Cylinder Scattering
The second example is the scattering from a finite length BI
cylinder, which is computed using the proposed TDIE tech-
948 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

(A1)

(A2)

(A3)
WU et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM GENERAL BI OBJECTS USING TDIEs COMBINED WITH PMCHWT FORMULATIONS
nique, and the results are compared with those of the frequency-
domain integral equation (FDIE) analysis based on the MoM
solution [17]. The cylinder has a radius of 0.02 m with a height
of 0.04 m, and other parameters are chosen to be , integro-differential operators
, , and . Fig. 10 displays the
meshed cylinder, and it has 610 triangular patches with 915 un-
knowns. The parameters of the incident Gaussian pulse remain
unchanged and is used in the TDIE computation.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the co- and cross-polarized bistatic radar
cross-sections of the BI cylinder at the frequencies of 2.0 GHz,
and 4.0 GHz, respectively. The results of the proposed time-do-
main method agree well with the frequency-domain data for the
co-polarized radar cross-section. Slight difference is observed
for the cross-polarized radar cross-section near degree
at 4.0 GHz. A perfect match is not observed at some angles, and
the reason is that the comparison is made between two different
numerical techniques.
V. EXTENSION TO THE DISPERSIVE CASE
Owing to the fact that the constitutive parameters are non-dis-
persive, the equations abovementioned are set up for high ideal-
ized model. It is not very difficult for us to extend the proposed
method for frequency dependent materials. The TDIE method
based on the MOD procedure is one of the recursive convolu-
tion techniques that allow linear dispersion to be incorporated
like FDTD formulation [19], [21].
Taking the dispersive chiral media for example, the electric
and magnetic fields are decomposed into the wavefields and the
scattering problem is treated as the sum of two problems in asso-
ciated isotropic media. After using the fields splitting scheming,
the (13)–(15) will become
(49)
(50)
(51)
949
(A4)
where the frequency variation of the chirality term is expressed
by the Condon model [1].
The fields inside the chiral media can be constructed using the
and . Different from non-
dispersive formulations (18) and (19), these two operators will
have an additional time-integral term. After applying boundary
condition, the coupled integral equations can be obtained. For
the testing procedure, the temporal integral (31) will become a
little complicated because of the additional time-integral term.
This integral and the whole solution are considered as the further
work in the near future.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a TDIE solver using the MoM technique is
applied to calculate the scattering problem of the general BI
medium. Two pairs of new sources with integro-differential op-
erators have been introduced to construct a series of coupled sur-
face integral equations which are combined with the PMCHWT
formulation. The equations are solved with Galerkin’s method
that involves separate spatial and temporal testing procedures.
The RWG functions are used as the spatial expansion and testing
functions. Also the weighted Laguerre polynomials are used as
the temporal expansion and testing functions. Numerical results
including the transient currents, far scattered fields, and co- and
cross-polarized bistatic radar cross-sections are given. Compar-
isons with the analytical results are made, and good agreements
are observed. Also, the proposed TDIE method is verified by
the FDIE approach based on the MoM solution.
APPENDIX
In this Appendix, for the marching-on in degree method to
solve the matrix (37), the detailed expression of the elements
, , , and in (42) and (43) are given by
(A1)–(A3) on the previous page and (A4) at the top of this
page.
950 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
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Ze-Hai Wu (S’07) was born in Jingzhou, China.
He received the B.S. degree in information engi-
neering and the M.S. degree in communication and
information systems from South China University
of Technology (SCUT), Guangzhou, China, in 2002
and 2005, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2010.
He is currently a R&D Engineer at Argus Tech-
nologies (China) Ltd., Guangzhou, China. His
current research interests include novel base station
antenna, and time-domain electromagnetic compu-
tational methods.
Edward Kai-Ning Yung (M’85–SM’85–F’12) was
born in Hong Kong. He received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of Mississippi,
University, in 1972, 1974, and 1977, respectively.
He worked briefly in the Electromagnetic Labora-
tory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He
returned to Hong Kong in 1978 and began his teacher
career at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. He joined the
newly established City University of Hong Kong in
1984 and was instrumental in setting up a new depart-
ment. He was promoted to Full Professor in 1989, and
in 1994, he was awarded one of the first two personal chairs in the University.
He is the Founding Director of the Wireless Communications Research Center,
formerly known as Telecommunications Research Center. Despite his heavy
administrative load, He remains active in research in microwave devices and
antenna designs for wireless communications. He is the principle investigator
of many projects worth tens of million Hong Kong dollars. He is the author of
over 450 papers, including 270 in referred journals. He is also active in applied
research, consultancy, and other technology transfers.
Prof. Yung was the recipient of many awards in applied research, including
the Grand Prize in the Texas Instrument Design Championship, and the Silver
Medal in the Chinese International Invention Exposition. He is a Fellow of the
Chinese Institution of Electronics, the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and the
Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. He is also a member of the Electromag-
netics Academy. He is listed in the Who’s Who in the World and Who’s Who in
the Science and Engineering in the World.
WU et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC SCATTERING FROM GENERAL BI OBJECTS USING TDIEs COMBINED WITH PMCHWT FORMULATIONS
Dao-Xiang Wang (M’08) was born in Nanjing,
China. He received the M.S. degree from Nanjing
University of Science and Technology (NJUST) in
2004 and the Ph.D. degree from City University of
Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2007.
Since 2007, he has been a Research Fellow at City
University of Hong Kong. His research interests
include computational electromagnetics, electro-
magnetic scattering and propagation in complex
media, and signal integrity.
951
Jian Bao (S’11) was born in Zhejiang, China. He
received the B.Sc. degree in electronic engineering
from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2005
and the M.Phil. degree in electronic engineering from
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2007,
where he is currently working towards the Ph.D. de-
gree.
His research interests include numerical method
in electromagnetic, antennas, electromagnetic scat-
tering and propagation in complex media, and fast
and efficient algorithms.
952 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Efficient Surface Integral Equation Using Hierarchical
Vector Bases for Complex EM Scattering Problems
Li Ping Zha, Yun Qin Hu, and Ting Su
Abstract—A set of hierarchical divergence-conforming vector
basis functions based on curved triangular patches is presented for
method of moment (MoM) solutions of surface integral equations
in this paper. The higher order method of combined-field integral
equation (CFIE) solves perfect electric conductor electromagnetic
scattering problems, the higher order electric-magnetic current
combined-field integral equation (JMCFIE) formulations solves
dielectric objects, and their combination is able to efficiently
analyzes the scattering of hybrid PEC-dielectric objects. The
expressions of the divergence- conforming hierarchical basis
functions up to order 3.5 are reported in this paper. The multilevel
fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) is then employed to reduce the
memory requirements and computational complexity. Numerical
experiments indicate that the proposed hierarchical vector basis
functions can provide well-conditioned linear system for iterative
solution.
Index Terms—Complex electromagnetic scattering, hierarchical
vector basis functions, surface integral equation.
I. INTRODUCTION
F REQUENCY domain surface integral-equation (SIE)
formulations is a powerful tool in electromagnetic sim-
ulation, since they require fewer unknowns than volumetric
methods. In terms of the geometrical modeling and current
discretization, traditional methods are low-order techniques
and the structure is modeled by surface geometrical elements
that are electrically very small and the currents within the
elements are approximated by low-order basis functions [1].
When the size of problem is very large, the plane triangles
used to discrete the surface will produce a large number of
unknowns, but cannot provide enough flexibility and effi-
ciency in modeling curved structures. Further more, the accu-
racy of solution while using the low-order bases is improved
slowly with increases in the number of unknowns. Higher
order numerical methods resolve such problems. Hierarchical
higher order basis functions enable to use different orders of
current/field approximation in different elements, and also a
-adaption scheme [2] comparing to interpolatory higher order
Manuscript received January 28, 2011; revised April 27, 2011; accepted June
16, 2011. Date of publication September 15, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grants 60701003, 60701005, and 60825102 and in
part by the Major State Basic Research Development Program of China (973
Program) under Grant 2009CB320201.
The authors are with the Department of Communication Engineering, Nan-
jing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China (e-mail:
daisy918@163.com; 113333627@qq.com; suting4190@hotmail.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2167932
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
vector bases. However, the hierarchical basis functions suffer
from a weakness that as the order increases, the system matrix
becomes ill-conditioned, which worsens the convergence rate
of the iterative solver. Recently hierarchical vector bases with
good orthogonality have received intense attention [3]–[10].
The hierarchical vector bases fall into two categories: hierar-
chical vector basis functions based on triangular elements and
those based on quadrangular elements. Hierarchical Legendre
basis functions [5] for curved quadrilaterals use a near-orthog-
onal expansion of the surface current and lead to a low condi-
tioned MoM matrix. Comparing to quadrangular patches, the
triangular mesh can provide more accurate and effective geo-
metrical discretization for arbitrary surfaces, especially those
contains cuspate structure. Webb [3] use orthogonal polyno-
mials based on curved triangular elements and Whitney bases
as the lowest order vector functions to construct hierarchical
vector bases in 2-D finite element method (FEM) computa-
tions. In [8], a nearly orthogonal set of hierarchical vector
basis functions based on flat triangular patches were used in
MoM-SIE formulations. But if higher order basis functions
for currents are used on flat patches, many small patches may
be required for the geometrical precision of the model, and
then higher order basis functions actually reduce to low-order
functions (on small patches) [1].
An efficient method of SIE, Poggio-Miller-Chang-Har-
ringt-on-Wu-Tsai (PMCHWT) [11]–[13], is employed to
solve the electromagnetic scattering problems for homoge-
neous dielectric objects. However the iteration convergence of
PMCHWT formulation is found to be slow [14] because the
magnetic surface current isn’t well tested. For this reason, a new
combined-field integral equation proposed by Pasi Ylä-Oijala
and Matti Taskinen [15] is used. This electric-magnetic current
combined-field integral equation (JMCFIE) can lead to a matrix
equation with a high convergence rate. In this work, the higher
order formulation of JMCFIE for dielectric electromagnetic
analysis is presented.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the higher
order hierarchical basis functions based on curved triangular
elements used in MoM are derived from the curl-conforming
hierarchical vector bases proposed by Graglia et al. [9], [10].
The expressions of the divergence-conforming hierarchical
basis functions up to order 3.5 are given in detail. An efficient
combined-field SIE formulation of higher order method for
complex EM scattering problems is presented in Section III. In
Section IV, the multilevel fast multipole method (MLFMM) is
employed to reduce the memory requirements and computa-
tional complexity, and numerical results are also given to show
ZHA et al.: EFFICIENT SURFACE INTEGRAL EQUATION USING HIERARCHICAL VECTOR BASES 953

TABLE I
EDGE-BASED AND FACE-BASED HIERARCHICAL POLYNOMIALS UP TO THE
THIRD ORDER ASSOCIATED WITH EDGE 1

Fig. 1. Position vector of arbitrary point determined by normal-

ized face coordinates on curved parametric triangular patch.

the improved performance of the proposed techniques in terms

of iterative convergence rate and computational time. Without
any further orthogonalization of the vector functions, the hier- the order of 3.5 associated with edge 1 can be expressed in
archical vector basis functions in [16] are used to compare with simplex coordinates as
the hierarchical bases described in Section II.

II. HIERARCHICAL DIVERGENCE-CONFORMING VECTOR

BASIS FUNCTIONS

The class of basis functions defined on curved parametric tri- (2)

angles proposed here is a set of divergence-conforming hier-
archical-type vector basis functions for modeling surface cur-
rents. The lowest order of divergence-conforming bases as well
as higher order functions for triangular elements can be obtained
by forming the cross product of the element normal with the
curl-conforming functions given in [10]. In order to simplify the
derivation of their divergence type, we rewrite the lowest-order
(order of 0.5) divergence-conforming basis functions on a tri-
angle element. They can be expressed in normalized area coor-
dinates as
The first subscript of denotes the edge number of the triangle
element, and the second subscript labels the order number of
edge-based hierarchical polynomials associated with that edge.
The remaining two subsets of edge-based functions associated
with edge 2 and edge 3, can be obtained by rotating the simplex
coordinates in (2), and then multiplying by the cor-
responding lowest-order basis in (1). The face-based functions
associated with edge 1 can be expressed as

(3)
(1)
The remaining two subsets of face-based functions associated
with edge 2 and edge 3 can be obtained by rotating the simplex
where is the position vector of the point determined by nor-
coordinates in (3), and then multiplying by the cor-
malized face coordinates on curved parametric triangular patch,
responding lowest-order basis in (1). According to [17], a 2-D
as shown in Fig. 1. is the element Jacobian.
triangle element can have only two independent tangent vectors,
Then we extract parts of the new set of orthogonal scalar
therefore one of the three subsets of face-based functions should
polynomials proposed by Graglia et al. [9], [10] for triangular
be discarded.
patches. As shown in Fig. 1, the element-edges are labeled
Finally, the divergence of the hierarchical vector basis func-
by using the three parent variables , and . Without
tions
loss of generality, we consider basis functions associated with
edge 1. The higher order bases are derived from the generating (4)
polynomials multiplied by the lowest-order bases. The edge-
based and face-based hierarchical polynomials up to the third
is obtained by [17]
order associated with edge , are given in Table I,
where indicates the Legendre polynomial of order ,
(5)
and . So the edge-based basis functions up to
954 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Accordingly, problem 2 has no incident wave in the internal

equivalent problem. The continual boundary condition is also
used for the tangential component of the total field. We formu-
late the traditional and on the dielectric sur-
face, and the and on the conductor surface,
respectively, as

(8)

(9)
Fig. 2. Arbitrarily shaped PEC object coated by homogeneous dielectric.
(10)
(11)
III. EFFICIENT COMBINED-FIELD SIE FORMULATION OF
HO METHOD is the outward unit normal on the dielectric surface or con-
ductor surface. Integral operators , with the superscript
The efficient combined-field surface integral equation for and represent the dielectric surface and the conductor surface,
complex electromagnetic analysis presented here especially respectively, while the subscript 1 and 2 represent the external
specifies the combination of the combined-field integral equa- problem and internal problem, respectively. The integral oper-
tion (CFIE) and the electric-magnetic combined-field surface ators and are defined as
integral equation (JMCFIE), and its formulations based on the
generalized Huygens’ Principle [15]. As shown in Fig. 2, the (12)
homogeneous dielectric body is characterized by ,
and the conductor body is coated by that dielectric. Consider a (13)
general purpose scattering problem of a time harmonic plane
wave , incident on the surface of the coated object.
where , and is the boundary
Using the equivalence principle, the problem can be solved
surface of the considered domain. Then by operating with
by considering two simple equivalent problems, an external
to (6)–(11), and combining them as follows, the new com-
equivalent problem and an internal equivalent problem. The
bined-field surface integral equations (JMCFIE-CFIE) for this
external equivalent problem corresponds to the scattering field
conductor-dielectric combined problem are obtained as in (14),
induced by the equivalent surface electric current and magnetic
shown at the bottom of the page, where denotes the wave
current residing on the surface of the dielectric body
impedance in free space, and . The coefficients
in free space, and the internal equivalent problem corresponds
satisfy , are in successful procedures,
to the scattering field induced by the equivalent surface currents
the coefficients are equal to . When only a metallic
residing on the surface of the dielectric body
object exists in our discussion, formulation (14) reduces to the
and the conductor body in the homogeneous domain character-
traditional CFIE. Additionally, as the coefficients are set to
ized by , respectively. Now let’s take the external
and , the PMCHWT-EFIE formulations
equivalent problem as problem 1, and the internal equivalent
are obtained.
problem as problem 2.
Both unknown currents and can be discretized by the
In problem 1, there is a time harmonic plane wave
higher order hierarchical vector basis functions proposed in
incident on the surface of the dielectric body. Using the con-
Section II,
tinual boundary condition for the tangential component of the
total electric field and total magnetic field on dielectric surface,
we formulate the traditional and for the di- (15)
electric surface, as
(16)
(6)
where and are the unknown expansion coefficients. The
(7) total number of unknowns is . The equations in (14)

(14)
ZHA et al.: EFFICIENT SURFACE INTEGRAL EQUATION USING HIERARCHICAL VECTOR BASES
TABLE II
SEVERAL PARAMETERS AFFECT THE SOLUTION PRECISION FOR THE CALCULATIONS OF BI-RCS OF A PEC SPHERE WITH A RADIUS OF 5 , USING CFIE
WITH FINE MESH
are all testing by the same HO basis functions using Galerkin’s
testing method. Direct numerical Gauss quadrature is applied to
nonsingular integrals. When the source point coincide with
or is close to the observation point , the integrals of Green’s
functions will be singular or near-singular. A singularity sub-
traction method [21]–[23] has been used for the evaluation of
singular and near-singular potential integrals in this paper. In
the singularity subtraction scheme, the singular and near-sin-
gular integrals are decomposed into two parts: a nonsingular in-
tegral that can be numerically calculated by Gaussian quadra-
ture and singular terms that can be analytically evaluated. For
the higher order basis functions on curved triangles, the evalu-
ation of the singular terms becomes even more challenging. In
our implementation, for the calculation of inner integrals, after
the singular terms has been extracted, a tangent plane triangle
at the projection point of is substituted for the source triangle,
where is an integral point on the observation triangle, and then
the singular terms can be calculated analytically on this tangent
plane triangle by use of the method in [21].
Equations (14) lead to a well condition HO impedance matrix
which can be easily solved by an iteration algorithm. The good
convergence property will be discussed in Section IV.
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section, numerical results demonstrate the efficiency
of the proposed method. In all considered cases, the multilevel
fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) is employed to reduce the
memory requirement and accelerate the iterative solution. The
cube size on the finest layer is adjusted properly for large patch
when the higher order hierarchical vector basis functions are
directly applied in MLFMA. The inner-outer flexible general-
ized minimal residual (FGMRES) algorithm was used for the
iterative solution of the system matrix. In the FGMRES algo-
rithm, the inner and outer restart numbers are both taken to be
10, and the stop precision for the inner and outer iteration is
955
1.E-2 and 1.E-3 respectively. All computations, unless other-
wise mentioned, were carried out on a computer with 1.87 GHz
CPU and 1.96 GB RAM.
The first example considers the bistatic radar cross section
(Bi-RCS) of a perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) sphere of
radius to test the accuracy of the proposed hierarchical
basis functions. Root mean square (RMS) error was used as a
measuring tool for the comparison of accuracies of the solutions
and is defined as
(17)
where denotes the calculated radar cross section (RCS)
and denotes the reference Mie solution, both measured in
decibels, and is the number of sampling points, which are
the angles of observation [19]. In Table II, various parameters
affect the solution precision and computational efficiency for
fixed order basis functions are presented. As discussed in [20],
the FMM box size is chosen to be a little bit larger than the
average patch size in all numerical calculations. As shown in
Table II, for different mesh sizes giving rise to different scales
of unknowns, we obtain various RMS errors for a fixed order of
HO bases. Results indicate that the smaller mesh size produced
lower RMS error, but more memory and computation time are
needed. When the mesh sizes reach a maximum for each order
basis functions (soln. no. 3, 6, 10 and 12), the RMS error is about
0.5 dB, and then the accuracy should be questioned. The gauss
integral points on the patch also affect the solution precision
(see soln. no. 8 and 9). By using more integral points on the ele-
ment patch, one can obtain more accurate results, but the matrix
filling time is greatly increasing. It is suitable that the number
of integral points is slightly greater than the number of degrees
of freedom (DOF) for a triangle element.
As the second example, we consider the electromagnetic scat-
tering of Tomahawk missile model. That simulation model with
a length of and a radius of is given in Fig. 3. The CFIE-
956
Fig. 3. The simulation model of Tomahawk missile.
Fig. 4. Bistatic RCS of -polarization of that missile at 1.2 GHz, for the
hierarchical basis functions of order 2.5 and RWG basis functions.
Fig. 5. Bistatic RCS for -polarization of a dielectrically coated warhead at
3 GHz, with the RWG basis functions, and the hierarchical basis functions of
order 3.5 based JMCFIE-CFIE formulation, respectively.
MLFMM method with higher order basis functions is also em-
ployed to solve this problem and the hierarchical basis functions
of order 2.5 are employed. As Fig. 4 shows, the Bi-RCS is com-
puted for a -directed and - polarized incident plane wave at
1.2 GHz. The HO method produces 15372 electric current un-
knowns, and only requires 26 outer iterative steps and 134 s
for FGMRES, which includes the both inner and outer iteration
CPU times. The numerical results agree well with RWG basis
functions’.
Another example is a simple dielectrically coated warhead
in free space, as shown in Fig. 5. A PEC warhead was coated
by a homogeneous dielectric , with the thickness of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. (a) Number of iterations with respect to the number of unknowns for
the dielectrically coated warhead example. (b) Computation time with respect
to the number of unknowns for the dielectrically coated warhead example.
coating 0.05 m, and a maximum size of 1.08 m along the di-
rection. This scatterer is discretized with 6008 curvilinear trian-
gular patches for order 1.5 hierarchical basis functions, 2378 for
order 2.5, and 1266 for order 3.5, giving rise to 46390, 38598,
and 35712 HO unknowns respectively. The incident angles of
plane wave are , at 3 GHz. The Bi-RCS at
the scattered angle for - polarization was shown in
Fig. 5. The HO results of order 3.5 is compared with the LO
method. JMCFIE-CFIE was used for these calculations. In the
LO method, this example is discretized using 698 RWG basis
functions [18] per wavelength, producing 222168 unknowns.
Note that the result for RWG basis functions was carried out
on a computer with 2.83 GHz CPU and 8 GB RAM. It can be
found that there is an excellent agreement among them. The use
of higher order techniques greatly reduces the number of un-
knowns for a given problem [1].
Fig. 6 shows the plot of the convergence behavior of the hi-
erarchical basis function based on the FGMRES method for the
JMCFIE-CFIE formulation of the warhead example in Bi-RCS
computation. We compare the order of 2.5 hierarchical basis
function’s result with that order of 2.5 in [16]. Increasing the
frequency of the incident wave from 600 MHz to 3 GHz, while
adjusting the real mesh size for each frequency point, results
in 4452 HO unknowns for 900 MHz, 9219 for 1.4 GHz, 17199
for 2 GHz, 38598 for 3 GHz, and 97419 for 5 GHz. The outer
iterative steps and total (inner and outer) iteration CPU times
with respect to the number of unknowns are given in the plots.
It can be observed that the iteration convergence behavior of
HO JMCFIE-CFIE technique has been improved largely; the
outer iterative steps and iteration time for the hierarchical bases
of order 2.5 proposed in this paper is less than the hierarchical
basis function of order 2.5 in [16] by at least a factor of 7.
ZHA et al.: EFFICIENT SURFACE INTEGRAL EQUATION USING HIERARCHICAL VECTOR BASES
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a set of hierarchical divergence- con-
forming vector bases based on curved triangular element for
surface integral equations solved using the MLFMA with a
reduced computational complexity. HO methods need less
memory requirements without compromising the accuracy of
geometry modeling in comparison with LO methods. Since
the combined-field surface integral equation (JMCFIE-CFIE)
formulation can lead to a well tested equation system, these
proposed hierarchical vector bases can also provide a well-
conditioned system matrix for iterative solution which is
based on the inner-outer flexible generalized minimal residual
(FGMRES) algorithm. The numerical results of the proposed
higher order basis functions have been compared with other set
of hierarchical divergence-conforming vector bases which are
also based on curved triangular patches. It can be found that the
iteration convergence behavior of the proposed HO technique
has been improved largely.
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Li Ping Zha was born in Anhui Province, China, in
1987. She received the B.S. degree in electronic in-
formation engineering from Anhui University of Ar-
chitecture, China, in 2008, and is currently working
toward the Ph.D. degree at Nanjing University of Sci-
ence and Technology (NJUST), Nanjing, China.
Her current research interests include computa-
tional electromagnetics, electromagnetic modeling
of scattering problems, wave scattering and propaga-
tion from random media, and numerical techniques
for electrically large objects.
Yun Qin Hu was born in Jiangsu Province, China,
in 1982. She received the B.S. degree in electronic
information engineering from Jiangsu University,
China, in 2005, and is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree at Nanjing University of Science and
Technology (NJUST), Nanjing, China.
Her current research interests include various as-
pects of computational electromagnetics with focus
on precondition- ing and fast solution of frequency
domain integral equation, electromagnetic modeling
of microwave integrated circuits and microstrip
antennas.
Ting Su was born in Anhui Province, China, in
1985. She received the B.S. degree in communica-
tion engineering from Nanjing University of Science
and Technology (NJUST), China, in 2006, where
she is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree.
Her current research interests include computa-
tional electromagnetics, antennas and electromag-
netic scattering and propagation, electromagnetic
modeling of microwave integrated circuits.
958 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Accelerated FDTD Analysis of Antennas
Loaded by Electric Circuits
Yuta Watanabe, Member, IEEE, and Hajime Igarashi, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A fast FDTD method for the analysis of antennas
loaded by nonlinear electric circuits is introduced. In the present
analysis, the modified nodal analysis (MNA) method is coupled
with the FDTD method. The time-periodic explicit error correction
(TP-EEC) method is applied to the MNA method for accelerated
computation of the transient processes. The present method is
applied to analysis of simplified models of an RFID tag composed
of a nonlinear electric circuit and line antenna. It is shown that
the present method can effectively shorten the computational time
by accelerating the transient processes.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic waves, FDTD method, modified
nodal analysis, RFID tag, TP-EEC method.
I. INTRODUCTION
F ELD COMPUTATION METHODS, such as the finite
-difference time-domain (FDTD) method [1], [2] and the
method of moment [3], have widely been used for analysis
of high frequency electronic devices. In recent years, these
methods have been applied to coupling analysis of high-fre-
quency electromagnetic fields and electric circuits for the
design of high-frequency electronic devices and analysis of
electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) problems [4]. In the
coupling analysis, circuit simulation involving nonlinearity
requires time domain computations. For this reason, the cou-
pling analysis of electromagnetic fields and nonlinear electric
circuits usually requires high computational cost. When the
time constant of the circuit is much longer than the time period
of electromagnetic waves, this problem becomes quite severe
because the number of time steps must be considerably large.
It would be possible to reduce the computational cost if one
could effectively shorten the time constant, that is, accelerate
the computation of the transient processes of the circuit.
The time-periodic explicit error correction (TP-EEC) method
[5], [6], which accelerates the transient processes of time-pe-
riodic systems, has been introduced for reduction of compu-
tational costs. The TP-EEC method is based on the assump-
tion that the unknown variables are temporally periodic in the
steady state and slowly converging components without period-
icity can be separated from them. The slowly converging com-
ponents are then determined by solving small-scale correction
Manuscript received April 07, 2011; revised June 30, 2011; accepted August
03, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with the Graduate School of Information Science and Tech-
nology, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-0814, Japan (e-mail: ywata@em-si.
eng.hokudai.ac.jp; igarashi@ssi.ist.hokudai.ac.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173148
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
equations to correct the transient solutions. The TP-EEC method
is an extension of the EEC method [7], which gives a general
framework of the error correction based on the decomposition
of unknowns to fast and slowly converging components. It has
been shown that the EEC has a common theoretical basis with
the deflation methods [8], which have been applied to linear sys-
tems of poor convergence [9], [10]. The TP-EEC method has
been applied to finite element (FE) analysis of motors and cou-
pling FE analysis of circuit and eddy current fields [6], in the
latter of which inductance is computed in the FE analysis by
taking magnetic saturation into account.
In this paper, we will discuss the effectiveness of the TP-EEC
method when applied to antenna analysis, where coupling be-
tween electromagnetic waves and a nonlinear circuit is consid-
ered. In particular, we consider here transient analysis of dipole
antennas loaded by a nonlinear circuit, which are simplified
models of the UHF-band RFID tag. In the design optimiza-
tion of antennas for RFID tags, the coupled problem between
the electromagnetic waves and the circuit must be repeatedly
solved [11]. Hence the reduction in the computational cost for
the coupling analysis is of fundamental importance. Moreover,
in this paper, we will introduce a theoretical basis of the TP-EEC
method for explanation of the reason why it is effective for ac-
celeration of the transient processes.
In this work, the FDTD method and modified nodal anal-
ysis (MNA) [12], [13] are employed for the coupling analysis
of a high frequency electromagnetic field and a nonlinear cir-
cuit. This paper will be organized as follows: in Section II, the
coupled method with the FDTD method and MNA will be for-
mulated. Moreover a computational procedure of the present
method will be described. In Section III, the TP-EEC method
will be formulated, and effect of the TP-EEC method will be
discussed, while in Section IV, numerical results will be shown
to verify the present method.
II. HYBRIDIZATION OF FDTD METHOD AND MNA
The hybridization of the FDTD method and MNA will be
described in the following. The Maxwell equations
(1a)
(1b)
are considered in this paper where the conduction current den-
sity is determined from the voltage-current characteristics of
the nonlinear circuit. In the FDTD process, (1a) and (1b) are
WATANABE AND IGARASHI: ACCELERATED FDTD ANALYSIS OF ANTENNAS LOADED BY ELECTRIC CIRCUITS 959

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit for FDTD method of antenna loaded by nonlinear

circuit.

Fig. 1. Line antenna loaded by nonlinear circuit.

approximated by the central differences in time and space and

explicitly solved in turns as follows [2]:

(2a)

(2b)

Let us consider the line antenna loaded by a nonlinear circuit,

shown in Fig. 1, parallel to the z-axis, where , and
are the cell size of the FDTD method. The spatial size of the
nonlinear circuit is assumed to be sufficiently smaller than that
of the FDTD cell. By integrating (1a) on the surface of the
FDTD cell, we obtain

(3)

where is the voltage imposed to the circuit,

is the capacitance of the FDTD cell, is the cur-
rent flowing into the nonlinear circuit and the is total current
given by

(4)
Fig. 3. Flow diagram.

The equivalent circuit governed by (3) is shown in Fig. 2 [12],

[13]. This circuit is composed of a parallel circuit of the cur-
Fig. 3 shows the flow diagram of the coupling analysis of the
rent source computed from (4), the capacitance and the
FDTD method and MNA. In the FDTD process, the magnetic
nonlinear circuit. The equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 2 is ana-
field is computed, where denotes the time step, and
lyzed by MNA in this work. Modified nodal analysis determines
is computed from by (4). Then, is sub-
the voltages between nodes in the electrical circuit according
stituted to the right-hand side of (5), which is solved by MNA
to Kirchhoff’s Current Law. A system of the nonlinear circuit
for including . The resultant electric field
equations of the form
is substituted to (2-b), which is solved by the FDTD method for
. These computations of , , and are repeated
(5) until a steady solution is obtained.

is solved, where is composed of the unknown nodal

voltages, current source driven by the antenna, nonlinear III. ACCELERATION OF CONVERGENCE IN CIRCUIT ANALYSIS
function which includes the effects of the active devices such
as diodes and transistors, and C is the capacitance matrix. Note This section describes the TP-EEC method which accelerates
here that (5) includes (3). the transient processes of the circuit.
960 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

A. Discretized Circuit Equation where and represent the correction

Discretization of (5) with the finite difference leads to a
system of nonlinear equations of the form
(6)
vector and matrix composed of the slowly converging compo-
nents whose explicit forms will be described below. The con-
stant represents the degree of the correction. The approxi-
mated solution given by (12) is substituted to (11) to obtain
the residual vector given by

where (13)

We expand (13) around for linearization, and then employ

the Galerkin approximation that in (13) is orthogonal to the
(7a)
column vectors in W to obtain the correction equation given by
(7b)
(14)
(7c)
where and
and . When equals to 1, for example, this scheme
corresponds to backward Euler method. In this work, (6) is
solved with the Newton-Raphson method at each time step. ..
.
.. .. (15)
. .
B. TP-EEC Method ..
.
When the time constant of the system governed by (6) is much
longer than , high computational cost is required to obtain the (16a)
steady state solutions which do not vary in time. To accelerate
the convergence to the steady state, the TP-EEC method is ap- (16b)
plied to (6).
It is assumed that is periodic, which satisfies .
The correction matrix of the 0th order
The solution to (6) is then expected to have periodicity in the
, in which the slowly converging components are assumed to
steady state. On the other hand, in the transient state, periodicity
be temporally constant, is given by
would approximately hold, that is
(17)
(8)
where is the unit matrix. By substituting (17) to the
To apply the TP-EEC method to (6), we introduce the vectors left-hand side of (14), one has
defined for each period as
(18)

Then it is assumed that (11) can be solved with sufficiently high

.. (9) accuracy except at where imperfect periodicity would
. result in nonnegligible residuals. Under this assumption, the
residual can be expressed in the form

.. (10)
. .. (19)
.

Equation (6) for one period is now expressed in the form

Substitution of (18) and (19) to (14) yields

(11)
(20)
To accelerate convergence to the steady state, is decomposed
into fast and slowly converging components as follows: By solving (20) for , is corrected from (12).
Convergence to the steady state can further be accelerated
(12) by use of the correction of the 1st order in which
WATANABE AND IGARASHI: ACCELERATED FDTD ANALYSIS OF ANTENNAS LOADED BY ELECTRIC CIRCUITS 961

the slowly converging components are assumed to be tempo-

rally constant and linear. The corresponding correction matrix
is given by

(21a)
where
(21b)

By substituting (21) to (14), one obtains Fig. 4. Analysis model.

(22a) which is a projection matrix satisfying . It can easily be

seen from (26) that . The error can be decomposed
in the form
(22b)

(27)
(22c)
where

(28)
(22d)
Therein, the errors and represent the slowly and
fast converging errors, and they satisfy A-orthogonal relation
. It can be seen from (25) to (28) that the
(22e)
slowly converging error is eliminated as by the
TP-EEC method. On the other hand, has no effects from
The unknown is then corrected with the vectors and
the correction because of the property . Thus
determined by solving (22) as follows:
this error component is reduced by the iterative solution of (11)
where its convergence is expected to be fast by definition. It is
(23) known that the multigrid method, which effectively eliminates
the slowly converging components with spatially smooth pro-
Although increase in the degree of the correction, e. g. from 0th files by mapping them to coarser meshes, is also based on the
to 1st, is expected to give better convergence, it also results in above mentioned decomposition and selective elimination [14].
increase in the unknowns in the correction equation. More detailed discussions on the TP-EEC method are can be
found in [15].
C. Effect of TP-EEC Method
The mathematical property of the TP-EEC method has been IV. NUMERICAL RESULT
discussed for the scalar linear diffusion equation [5]. We give
here more general discussion on this method. By substituting
and (14) to (12), we obtain A. CR Diode Series Circuit

The half-wave dipole antenna loaded by the nonlinear cir-

(24) cuit shown in Fig. 4 is analyzed by hybridization of the FDTD
method and MNA to test acceleration of convergence to the
The steady solution to (11) is here expressed by . Then, the steady state by applying the TP-EEC method to MNA. The
error is modified after the error correction in the nodal voltages of the nonlinear circuit are obtained from MNA.
form The half-wave dipole antenna is assumed to be illuminated by
the plane wave. The amplitude and frequency of incident wave
(25) is assumed to be 20 V/m and 1 GHz. The size of the FDTD cell,
, is set to 3mm. The perfect matched layer
where and P is defined by is employed to enforce the free space conditions on the domain
boundary. The half-wave dipole antenna is parallel to -axis and
(26) set to perfect conductor .
962 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 5. CR diode serial circuit.

Fig. 7. Time evolution error of node voltage.

Fig. 8. Cockcroft-Walton circuit.

Fig. 6. Time evolution of .

The nonlinear circuit is composed of a capacitance, diode and

resistance as shown in Fig. 5. The capacitance is set to 10pF
and the resistance is set to . The diode circuit is assumed
to obey V-I characteristics given by

(29)
.
where is the voltage at diode. For negative voltages, the diode
current is nearly zero. The explicit form of the circuit (5) for the
circuit shown in Fig. 5 is given in the Appendix. In this analysis,
is set to 1 in MNA and is set to 200.
Fig. 6 shows the time evolution in the voltage . It can be Fig. 9. Time evolution of output voltage .
seen in Fig. 6 that the convergence to the steady state is clearly
accelerated by the present method.
Fig. 7 shows the absolute error between the steady and
transient solutions. The numbers of time steps required to sat-
isfy for no correction, for 0th correction, and for
1st order correction, are approximately 205000 steps (1025 ns),
2400 steps (12 ns) and 1600 steps (8 ns), respectively. This
means that the TP-EEC method of the 1st order correction pro-
vides convergence to the steady state 128.1 times faster than that
for noncorrected computation. Moreover, the three solutions in
the steady state are found to be in good agreement.

B. Cockcroft-Walton Circuit
The TP-EEC method is now applied to the half-wave dipole
antenna loaded by the CW circuit shown in Fig. 8. The explicit
Fig. 10. Time evolution error of node voltage.
form of the circuit (5) for the circuit shown in Fig. 8 is given in
the Appendix. The parameters of the FDTD method and MNA
are the same as those used in Section IV-A. Fig. 10 shows the absolute error between the steady and tran-
Fig. 9 shows the time evolution of the output voltage of sient solutions. The number of time steps required to satisfy
the CW circuit. It can be seen in Fig. 9 that the convergence to for no correction, for 0th order correction, and for
the steady state is clearly accelerated by the TP-EEC method. 1st order correction, are approximately 8880 steps (44 ns), 3545
WATANABE AND IGARASHI: ACCELERATED FDTD ANALYSIS OF ANTENNAS LOADED BY ELECTRIC CIRCUITS
steps (18 ns) and 1800 steps (9 ns), respectively. That means that
the TP-EEC method of the 1st order correction provides conver-
gence to the steady state 4.9 times faster than that for noncor-
rected computation. Moreover, it is observed that the three solu-
tions in the steady state are in good agreement. It can be seen in
Figs. 7 and 10 that the effects in acceleration by TP-EEC method
depend on circuits.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, it has been shown that convergence to the steady
state of a nonlinear circuit driven by antenna voltage, which
was analyzed by FDTD and MNA, is effectively accelerated
by using the present method. The theoretical reason why the
present method can improve convergence to the steady state has
been discussed. To test the present method, it has been applied
to analysis of a half-wave dipole antenna loaded by nonlinear
circuits including diodes. It has been numerically shown that
the TP-EEC method effectively accelerates convergence to the
steady state.
APPENDIX
This appendix describes the nodal equations for the circuit
discussed in this paper. The nodal equations for the CR diode
series circuit shown in Fig. 5 are given by
(A1)
(A2)
(A3)
where is the input current obtained by the FDTD computation
and is the capacitance for the FDTD cell.
The nodal equations for the CW circuit shown in Fig. 8 are
given by
(A4)
(A5)
(A6)
(A7)
(A8)
REFERENCES
[1] K. S. Yee, “Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems
involving Maxwell’s equations in isotropic media,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propag., vol. AP-14, pp. 302–307, 1966.
[2] A. Taflove, Computational Electrodynamics, The Finite-Difference
Time-Domain Method. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1998.
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[3] R. F. Harrington, Field computation by moment methods. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley, 1993.
[4] C. R. Paul, Introduction to Electromagnetic Compatibility. Hoboken,
NJ: Wiley, 2006.
[5] Y. Takahashi, T. Tokumasu, M. Fujita, S. Wakao, T. Iwashita, and M.
Kanazawa, “Improvement of convergence characteristic in nonlinear
transient eddy-current analyses using the error correction of time inte-
gration based on the time-periodic FEM and the EEC method,” IEEJ
Trans. PE, vol. 129, no. 6, pp. 791–798, 2009.
[6] Y. Takahashi, T. Tokumasu, A. Kameari, H. Kaimori, M. Fujita, T.
Iwashita, and S. Wakao, “Convergence acceleration of time-periodic
electromagnetic field analysis by the singularity decomposition-ex-
plicit error correction method,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 46, no. 8, pp.
2947–2950, Aug. 2010.
[7] T. Iwashita, T. Mifune, and M. Shimasaki, “Similarities between
implicit correction multigrid method and A-phi formulation in elec-
tromagnetic field analysis,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 44, no. 6, pp.
946–949, Jun. 2008.
[8] H. Igarashi and K. Watanabe, “Deflation techniques for computational
electromagnetism: Theoretical considerations,” IEEE Trans. Magn.,
vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 1438–1441, May 2011.
[9] C. Vuik, A. Segal, and J. A. Meijerink, “An efficient preconditioned
CG method for the solution of a class of layered problems with extreme
contrasts in the coefficients,” J. Comp. Phys., vol. 152, pp. 385–403,
1999.
[10] Y. Saad, M. Yeung, J. Erhel, and F. Guyomarch, “A deflated version of
the conjugate gradient algorithm,” SIAM J. Sci. Comput., vol. 21, no.
5, pp. 1909–1926, 2000.
[11] Y. Watanabe, K. Watanabe, and H. Igarashi, “Optimization of meander
line antenna considering coupling between non-linear circuit and elec-
tromagnetic waves for UHF-band RFID,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 47,
no. 5, pp. 1506–1509, May 2011.
[12] V. A. Thomas, M. E. Jones, M. Piket-May, A. Taflove, and E. Harrigan,
“The use of SPICE lumped circuits as sub-grid models for FDTD anal-
ysis,” IEEE Micr. Guid. Wave Lett., vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 141–143, 1994.
[13] M. J. Piket-May, A. Taflove, and J. Baron, “FDTD modeling of digital
signal propagation in 3-D circuits with passive and active loads,” IEEE
Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 42, pp. 1514–1523, Aug. 1994.
[14] D. Braess and W. Hackbusch, “A new convergence proof for the multi-
grid method including the V-cycle,” SIAM J. Numer. Anal., vol. 20, no.
5, pp. 967–975, 1983.
[15] H. Igarashi, Y. Watanabe, Y. Itoh, and K. Watanabe, “Why error cor-
rection methods realize fast computations,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol.
48, no. 2, Feb. 2012.
Yuta Watanabe (M’10) received the B.S. and M.I. degrees in engineering
from Akita National College of Technology and Hokkaido University, Sapporo,
Japan, in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree at the same institution.
His primary research interest is in the area of computational electromagnetics
and design optimization.
Hajime Igarashi (M’95) received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engi-
neering from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, in 1982 and 1984, respec-
tively, and the Ph.D. degree in engineering from Hokkaido University in 1992.
He has been a professor at the Graduate School of Information Science and
Technology, Hokkaido University, since 2004. He has worked as a research en-
gineer at Canon Co. Ltd., [during] from 1984 to 1989. From 1989 to 1999, he
was a research associate with the Faculty of Engineering, Hokkaido University.
He was a guest researcher at Berlin Technical University, Germany, under sup-
port from the Humboldt Foundation from 1995–1997. He was an associate pro-
fessor from 1999 to 2004 at Kagawa University, Japan, and Hokkaido Univer-
sity. His research area is computational electromagnetism, design optimization
and RFID technologies. He has authored and coauthored more than 90 peer-re-
viewed journal papers.
964 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

An Angle-Dependent Impedance Boundary Condition

for the Split-Step Parabolic Equation Method
Chad R. Sprouse, Member, IEEE, and Ra’id S. Awadallah, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A formulation of the impedance boundary condi-
tion (IBC) is derived, which can be used in split-step parabolic
wave equation solvers to accurately represent an interface with ar-
bitrary dielectric properties. The approach relies on ensuring that
the plane-wave decomposition of the field satisfies the appropriate
IBC for each spectral component. Numerical experiments illus-
trating the robustness of the approach for low-contrast interfaces
and angles-of-incidence near the Brewster angle are presented.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic propagation, Maxwell equa-
tions, microwave propagation.
I. INTRODUCTION
urally by solving for the fields both above and below the in-
terface and enforcing continuity of the tangential fields at the
interface. In the split-step method, propagation over such an in-
terface must be treated as propagation in a half-space along with
an appropriate boundary condition at the interface.
In this paper, we present a new method for treating the inter-
face using an impedance boundary condition (IBC). The inves-
tigation leading to this result was motivated by the problem of
propagation over lunar terrain that has near-zero conductivity
and low permittivity . Previous implementations of
the IBC did not handle such low-constrast interfaces accurately,
and so a new formulation was required. The resulting “consis-
tent-field” IBC formulation is presented in Section II with nu-
merical experiments for the lunar terrain in Section III.

P ARABOLIC equation solvers [1], [2] provide a powerful

modeling capability for propagation of electromagnetic
waves over long distances in complex environments. They are
II. FORMULATION

used extensively for predicting radar coverage in ducting en- A. Split-Step Method
viroments over rough surfaces. Two primary classes of solvers In this paper, we consider a cylindrical coordinate system
are used in conjuction with the parabolic wave equation. The with azimuthal symmetry in both the fields and environment.
first is a finite-difference approach that relies on fine discretiza- The Helmholtz equation for this geometry is
tion of the spatial domain for accurate representation of the field
propagation. The second is the split-step approach [3], [4] that (1)
implements propagation in the Fourier domain and utilizes a se-
ries of “phase-screens” to account for refraction effects. where is the auxiliary field which is equal to
One of the primary advantages of the split-step method with for horizontal polarization (H-pol) and for vertical po-
respect to the finite-difference approach is its insensitivity to larization (V-pol). Here and throughout this paper, we assume
discretization size, i.e., while finite-difference methods may re- and omit a harmonic time variation of for all fields. In the
quire discretization in both altitude and range on the order of a far field, the term proportional to may be neglected. Fac-
tenth of a wavelength or finer, the split-step method needs only torizing the resulting far-field wave equation into forward and
half-wavelength discretization in altitude while range steps can backward components gives
be large compared to the wavelength. In practice, the discretiza-
tion for the split-step method is driven by the variation in the (2)
environment rather than a requirement to resolve the fast varia-
tion of the fields. where
A consequence of the use of Fourier techniques, however, is
that the split-step method requires that the dielectric properties (3)
of the domain be slowly varying in both altitude and range. By
contrast, the finite-difference method is able to handle sharp in- Assuming that the commutator is negligible and con-
terfaces between regions of different dielectric properties nat- sidering only outgoing waves, we have the parabolic equation

(4)
Manuscript received July 29, 2010; revised June 27, 2011; accepted August
22, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This equation has the formal solution
The authors are with the Milton S. Eisenhower Research Center, The Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723 USA (5)
(e-mail: chad.sprouse@jhuapl.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. The well-known (wide-angle) split-step method computes
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173107 the field taking into account the refractivity by making the

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

SPROUSE AND AWADALLAH: ANGLE-DEPENDENT IBC FOR SPLIT-STEP PARABOLIC EQUATION METHOD 965

approximation (see [4], for example; this approximation was

introduced and discussed in [5])

(6)

with from (3). With this approximation, (5) is

approximated as
Fig. 1. Plane wave incident on the interface between two homogeneous half-
(7) spaces. Note that with the sign convention used here, in this figure.

where the symmetric splitting of the “refractive” portion of

the propagator is used and is allowed to be Elimination of the subsurface fields from the boundary condi-
a slowly varying function of both range and altitude. The tion requires that
“diffractive” portion of the propagator, , is han-
dled in the Fourier -space conjugate to the -coordinate. In (12)
-space, the diffractive propagator is thus , where
. If, in addition to the slow variation assumption
required for the above derivation, we have , Considering fields of the form (10), the incident and reflected
then this propagator is accurate for angles fields are given by
from to . In particular, it is exact for free-space
(13)
propagation.
The split-step procedure for advancing the field thus becomes
(14)

(8) respectively in the upper domain (see Fig. 1), while the field in
the lower domain is given by
where represents the Fourier transform with respect to the
-coordinate.
(15)
B. Impedance Boundary Condition
Propagation above a discontinuous dielectric interface using where with . Hence, is
the split-step method must be incorporated in the diffractive given by
propagator due to the slow-variation requirement for .
This interface is incorporated by considering only fields in (16)
the half-space bounded below by the interface and using an
impedance boundary condition to include the effects of the Substituting (16) into (11) gives
presence of the interface. While the full boundary condition
at the interface requires continuity of both tangential electric
field and magnetic field , at the boundary, the half-space (17)
problem admits only a single boundary condition. Thus, a
single impedance condition on the propagated field given by The H-pol case is similar, providing the proper definition of the
coefficient in (9) as
(9)

is used. This condition is valid for the case where the field V-pol
(18)
is a plane wave of the form H-pol

(10) where the branch cut of the square-root is taken to be along the
negative real axis such that . The boundary condition
with (we take for waves having a com- for the field in the upper domain then gives us the condition
ponent that propagates in the negative -direction). For V-pol,
the propagated field is and from Ampére’s Law, we have (19)
. Denoting the fields below the surface with
for the field amplitudes. The traditional IBC formulation [6] as-
primes, a linear combination of the boundary conditions on the
sumes a unit incident field amplitude, , such that
tangential and fields is
, where is the reflection coefficient

(11) (20)
966 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

It should be noted that is associated with the direction of prop- where and , while for , we set
agation of the incident field, which explains the choice of sign in
the definition of . With this formulation, the field
in terms of the field is given by

(21) (31)

where This method exhibits numerical artifacts similar to those en-

countered with the simpler CPV approach.
(22) Previous efforts [7], [8] have sought to mitigate these artifacts
through the use of a variety of numerical techniques, but rely on
Here and in the remainder of this paper, we neglect any surface an angle-independent impedance assumption, , such
wave contributions and focus solely on the spatial waves. For as [9]. One such approach defines an auxiliary
the case of lossless dielectrics (real ) considered in Section III, field
there is no surface wave component, and the results presented
are exact. (32)
Equation (22) can be written in terms of the regular Fourier
transforms of the even and odd extensions of as and solves for using sine transforms (the boundary condi-
tion for is simply ). The field is then com-
(23) puted as the solution to the forced differential equation (32). If
has any components proportional to the homogeneous so-
where lution to this equation, , the solution for will
diverge due to resonance. The alternative central/forward/back-
(24) ward difference approach of [8] effectively shifts the homoge-
neous solution away from any component of resulting in
Equation (21) then becomes a well-behaved solution. However, this approach has the unde-
sirable side-effect of changing the reflection amplitude for in-
(25) cidence angles away from grazing. An example of this effect is
shown in Section III.
where . This is the In contrast, this paperrevisits (19) to derive a formulation that
“mixed-transform” approach. The singularity at in avoids the singular behavior of (25).
the integrand may be handled by taking the Cauchy Principal
Value (CPV) of the integral. As will be shown in Section III, C. Consistent-Field IBC Formulation
this formulation exhibits artifacts associated with this singu-
larity. Alternative handling of the singular integrand does not For a general field, (19) must be satisfied for the plane-wave
resolve the issue. For example, adding and subtracting the sin- decomposition of the field , i.e.,
gular part of the integrand to construct a regular integrand that
can be numerically integrated and analytically integrating the (33)
singular part gives
This formulation focuses on ensuring that the propagated field
(26) is consistent with the presence of the interface. In particular,
and , where is the solution to .
with
For H-pol, there is no such solution, while for V-pol, there is a
solution, , which corresponds to boundary reflections
of waves incident on the surface at the Brewster angle.
(27) As the boundary condition is entirely accounted for through
modification of the diffractive part of (8), without loss of gen-
where is the residue at , and erality, we consider the case with , such that
(28)
(34)
Here, we have used the relation
where must satisfy (33). By decomposing into the
(29) sum of functions and , which are respectively even
and odd in , and substituting into (33), it is shown that
For , the residue is given by

(30) (35)
SPROUSE AND AWADALLAH: ANGLE-DEPENDENT IBC FOR SPLIT-STEP PARABOLIC EQUATION METHOD 967

where . Here, we have used the fact that the erywhere above the interface. Thus, any field component that is
Fourier transform preserves even/odd symmetry, i.e., upwardly propagating must have been reflected from the surface
at some point. For , since , this implies that
this component must be zero. Realistically, however, the source
(36) is the aperture field of an antenna located at a finite range. The
antenna may produce components in the direction , and these
Thus, the problem may be solved completely in terms of an odd must be accurately captured if this method is to be useful in
function of . The intial field is specified for , from practice. We note that since and hence compo-
which we must determine such that nents for which will not interact with the surface during
propagation. Thus, it is a good approximation to propagate these
components in free space.
To accomplish this, the incident field can be partitioned into
(37) two portions, , propagated in the
presence of the surface and in free space, respectively. One such
To this end, define splitting is given by

(38) (44)

(39) (45)

so that with known and unknown. where is a unitless parameter that determines the splitting,
Taking the Fourier transform, we have with larger including more components in the free-space field.
The field is propagated in the presence of the surface by
(40) propagating the antisymmetric field given by (35), while
the field is propagated in free space using (8). The total
To solve for , we will consider the discrete Fourier trans- field at the next range step is then given by
form such that (40) becomes

(46)

A detailed outline of this algorithm is included in the Appendix.

(41)
III. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS
where for . Substitution into the discrete Current methods perform well for high-contrast interfaces
version of (33) gives and/or shallow grazing angles, so the experiments presented
here will focus on scenarios in which these methods break down.
As the singularity in (25) occurs at the negative of the Brewster
angle, a worst-case scenario is expected for excitations near this
angle. Therefore, a low-contrast interface at separating
(42) regions of free space (above) and (below) is used. The
simulation is initiated with a Gaussian source field [2]
which may be solved in the least-squares sense as an overdeter-
mined linear system. This procedure is computationally inten-
sive, but would only need to be performed for the initial field (47)
(e.g., at ). In practice, for initial fields that are nonzero only
away from the interface, it is a good approximation to simply set with m ( GHz), m, ,
for . It is this latter approach that is used in the and . The value of was chosen such that the
results presented in Section III. beam is incident on the interface near the Brewster angle
In theory, the field could simply be computed from (35). .
For this to be valid, however, it must be true that Fig. 2 shows the power distribution of the field for this sce-
nario as computed by the mixed-transform method. Severe nu-
(43) merical artifacts dominate the result with variations in the im-
plementation details determining the particular form of the arti-
where, as above, is the solution to . For a gen- facts. Treating the singularity as in (26) yields a similar result.
eral antenna pattern, this condition will not be satisfied. This Mitigation techniques such as those described in [8] remove the
issue arises from the fact that (33) was derived for a plane-wave singular behavior by effectively modifying the surface proper-
decomposition of the fields in which the components exist ev- ties near the Brewster angle.
968 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 2. Gaussian beam with 1 half-beamwidth and elevation angle in-
cident on the interface at between regions of free space and
computed using the mixed-transform approach. Numerical ar-
tifacts dominate the result.
Fig. 3. Gaussian beam with 1 half-beamwidth and elevation angle in-
cident on the interface at between regions of free space and
computed using finite-differences in both upper and lower
half-spaces. Spatial sampling in both height and range is . The null in
the reflected field at the Brewster angle is clearly indicated.
The finite-difference solution to the above scenario is shown
in Fig. 3. This method solves for the fields in both upper and
lower half-spaces and treats the boundary condition at the in-
terface by enforcing continuity of the tangential fields. Hence,
there is no impedance boundary condition assumption so that
this solution serves as a useful “ground-truth” for comparison
with the split-step solutions. Unlike the split-step method, how-
ever, the finite-difference method is sensitive to the resolution
used. A very fine sampling of in both range and altitude
was used to ensure an accurate baseline for comparisons.
Fig. 4. Gaussian beam with 1 half-beamwidth and elevation angle in-
cident on the interface at between regions of free space and
computed using the consistent-field formulation. Vertical sam-
pling is . There is a clear null in the reflected power exactly at the Brewster
angle as expected.
Fig. 5. Histogram of the difference between the results shown in Fig. 4 and the
finite-difference result using a spatial resolution of plotted as a function
of power.
Fig. 4 shows the result computed using the consistent-field
IBC formulation. The numerical artifacts seen in Fig. 2 are ab-
sent, and the expected null in the reflected field along the Brew-
ster angle is accurately predicted.
Fig. 5 shows a bivariate histogram of the difference between
the consistent-field split-step result and the finite-difference re-
sult as a function of power over the domain shown in Fig. 4.
This plot shows the degree of discrepancy between the two re-
sults as well as the power levels at which the differences occur.
Large differences at low power levels are less significant than
at higher power levels. Agreement between the two results is
extremely good with generally less than 1 dB of difference and
less than 0.5 dB for power levels greater than 70 dB.
To test the convergence properties of both the split-step and
finite-difference methods, the spatial sampling was increased
and the simulations rerun. Increasing the altitude sampling of
the split-step method from to did not affect the
SPROUSE AND AWADALLAH: ANGLE-DEPENDENT IBC FOR SPLIT-STEP PARABOLIC EQUATION METHOD 969

Fig. 7. Tapered cardioid antenna pattern propagated in free space (dashed

curve) and over an interface at between regions of free space
and computed using the finite-difference method (solid black
Fig. 6. Histogram of the difference between the results shown in Figs. 4 and 3 curve), an implementation of the method of [8] (fine dashed curve, blue online),
as a function of power. and (46) (dotted curve, red online).

result. Sampling in range was not varied as the split-step method
is exact with respect to range for a free-space upper medium as it
is simply a process of serial application of Huygens’ Principle.
Doubling the sampling (in both range and altitude) of the finite-
difference method from to reduced the error
as shown in Fig. 6. Thus, these plots represent a measure of
the accuracy of the finite-difference method with the split-step
result representing “ground-truth.”
An example from the lunar propagation scenario which mo-
tivated this investigation is shown in Fig. 7. It shows a compar-
ison of the consistent-field approach to the method of [8] for a
wide-angle antenna pattern. The antenna pattern used is the ta-
pered cardioid defined by
the IBC for a single plane wave to the spectral decomposition
of a general field. Experiments show excellent agreement with
full-space solutions.
It should be noted that the approach described here is an alter-
nate method for representing the impedance boundary condition
within the split-step formalism. Although the results presented
in this paper are for the case of free space above the surface, at-
mospheric refractivity can be incorporated via (8) in the usual
way. Future work will investigate the possibility of including
surface-wave effects and combining this approach with tech-
niques for incorporating surface roughness such as the linear
shift map [10].

(48) APPENDIX
CONSISTENT-FIELD SPLIT-STEP ALGORITHM
where is the elevation angle and is the taper function This appendix provides an outline of the split-step algorithm
using the consistent-field impedance boundary condition incor-
(49) porating the field-splitting (46).
otherwise. Let the domain encompass ranges from to and altitudes
This was one of two proposed antenna patterns for the commu- from to with , where the surface is located at
nications system on a lunar lander intended for the International . We discretize this domain in range and altitude with
Lunar Network mission currently under study by NASA. The steps and . We
simulation was again performed at a frequency of 2.25 GHz image the domain in altitude so that we have for
with the antenna located 1.5 m above the interface . . The algorithm to propagate the auxilliary field
The consistent-field result uses (46) with and provides to the next range step consists of the
much better agreement with the finite-difference result than the following steps.
method of [8], which was developed for high-conductivity sur- 1) Multiply the field above the surface by the first half of the
faces and does not correctly capture the Brewster-angle effect refractivity correction for the range step
(manifested here as a damping of the interference pattern due to
the vanishing of the reflected field at the Brewster angle). (50)

for .
IV. CONCLUSION
2) Apply a -space windowing function to simulate an un-
A formulation of the impedance boundary condition has been bounded upper half-space by forcing the field to zero at
developed, which eliminates divergences seen in previous ap- the boundary
proaches while preserving the correct behavior of reflections
from the surface. The technique is based on an application of (51)
970 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

for . Many choices of filter will serve this 10) Transform the field back to -space
purpose; we have used a tapered cosine window

(64)
(52)

11) Apply the second half of the refractivity correction

3) Transform the field to -space
(65)

(53) for .

REFERENCES
for . [1] M. F. Levy, Parabolic Equation Methods for Electromagnetic Wave
4) Split the field into the two portions needed to propagate to Propagation. London, U.K.: IEE, 2000.
[2] F. B. Jensen, W. A. Kuperman, M. B. Porter, and H. Schmidt, Compu-
the next range step and compute the -field tational Ocean Acoustics. New York: AIP Press, 1994.
[3] R. H. Hardin and F. D. Tappert, “Applications of the split-step Fourier
method to the numerical solution of nonlinear and variable coefficient
(54) wave equations,” SIAM Rev., vol. 15, p. 423, 1973.
[4] D. J. Thomson and N. R. Chapman, “A wide-angle split-step algorithm
for the parabolic equation,” J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., vol. 74, no. 6, pp.
(55) 1848–1854, Dec. 1983.
[5] M. D. Feit and J. A. Fleck, Jr., “Light propagation in graded-index
fibers,” Appl. Opt., vol. 17, no. 24, pp. 3990–3998, Dec. 1978.
5) Transform both fields back to -space [6] R. Janaswamy, “Radio wave propagation over a nonconstant immit-
tance plane,” Radio Sci., vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 387–405, May–Jun. 2001.
[7] G. D. Dockery and J. R. Kuttler, “An improved impedance-boundary
algorithm for Fourier split-step solutions of the parabolic wave equa-
(56) tion,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 44, no. 12, pp. 1592–1599,
Dec. 1996.
[8] J. R. Kuttler and R. Janaswamy, “Improved Fourier transform methods
for solving the parabolic wave equation,” Radio Sci., vol. 37, no. 2, p.
(57) 1021, Mar. 2002.
[9] J. R. Kuttler and G. D. Dockery, “Theoretical description of the para-
bolic approximation/Fourier split-step method of representing electro-
6) Enforce antisymmetry on the -field to simulate the ef- magnetic propagation in the troposphere,” Radio Sci., vol. 26, no. 2,
pp. 381–393, Mar.–Apr. 1991.
fect of the surface and taper the -field to zero below the [10] D. J. Donohue and J. R. Kuttler, “Propagation modeling over terrain
surface using the parabolic wave equation,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 260–277, Feb. 2000.

(58) Chad R. Sprouse (M’09) received the B. S. degrees in mathematics and physics
from Washington State University, Pullman, in 1998, the M. S. degree in com-
(59) puter science from The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, in 2002, and
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg.
for where He is currently a Senior Staff Member with The Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, where he has been since 2000. From
1998 to 2000, he was with Computer Sciences Corporation, where he was a
(60) Flight Dynamics Analyst with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Green-
belt, MD. His research interests include electromagnetic and acoustic propa-
gation and scattering as well as hydrodynamics and fluid-structure interaction
modeling.
for some positive (we used for the results
presented above).
7) Transform the fields to -space and propagate to the next
range step Ra’id S. Awadallah (S’97–M’98) was born in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1966. He re-
ceived the B.S.E.E. and M.S.E.E. degrees from the Jordan University of Science
and Technology, Irbid, Jordan, in 1988 and 1991, respectively, and the Ph.D. de-
(61) gree in electrical engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University, Blacksburg, in 1998.
(62) From 1991 to 1993, he worked as a Lecturer with the Department of Elec-
tronics, Jerusalem University College of Sciences, Abu-Dis/Jerusalem, Israel.
In 1998, he joined The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,
8) Recombine the fields at the new range Laurel, MD, as a Research Associate, where he is presently Principal Profes-
sional Staff Member of the Milton S. Eisenhower Research Center. His research
interests include tropospheric propagation, electromagnetic scattering from ran-
(63) domly rough surfaces, radar cross section of complex targets, and applied elec-
tromagnetism.
Dr. Awadallah is a Member of Commission F of the International Scientific
9) Apply a -space window analogous to Step 2. Radio Union (URSI).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Nested Multi-Scaling Inexact-Newton Iterative
Approach for Microwave Imaging
Giacomo Oliveri, Member, IEEE, Leonardo Lizzi, Member, IEEE, Matteo Pastorino, Fellow, IEEE, and
Andrea Massa, Member, IEEE
Abstract—A microwave imaging technique based on the in-
tegration of the Inexact-Newton method within a multi-scaling
strategy is proposed in the framework of the contrast field for-
mulation of the electromagnetic inverse scattering. The inversion
problem is solved by means of a nested procedure that considers
three different logical levels: (a) an outer multi-focusing loop
aimed at implementing a synthetic zoom for focusing the scatterer
support within the investigation domain; (b) a local linearization
of the original full-nonlinear inverse scattering function; and (c) a
truncated Landweber inner loop devoted to regularize the arising
ill-posed linear problem. Thanks to the features of the integrated
approach, a reliable inversion technique able to suitably face the
non-linearity and the ill-posedness/ill-conditioning issues of the
imaging problem is designed. A numerical validation dealing with
different objects, measurement setups, and noise conditions is
carried out to assess the features and the potentialities as well
as the limitations of the proposed strategy. Comparisons with
bare approaches and other multi-resolution formulations are
presented, as well.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic inverse scattering, microwave
imaging, Inexact Newton method, iterative multiscaling approach.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N RECENT years, microwave imaging systems have been
widely studied and developed because of their applications
to non-invasive and non-destructive testing problems [1]–[4]
arising in subsurface prospecting [5], biomedical imaging
[6]–[11], and material characterization [12]. In this framework,
several interesting results from both the algorithmic [13]–[18]
and instrumentation viewpoint [19]–[21] have been reported
in the scientific literature. However, a limited number of mi-
crowave imaging systems are at present used in real-world
applications due to the limitations of present-day instruments
and techniques still confined at the laboratory experimentations.
As far as inversion procedures are concerned, further work
is needed for developing reliable, stable, and efficient inver-
sion algorithms usable in practical applications. This is mainly
due to the theoretical difficulties that arise when solving in-
Manuscript received December 30, 2010; revised May 12, 2011; accepted
August 09, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
G. Oliveri, L. Lizzi, and A. Massa are with the ELEDIA Research
Group@DISI, University of Trento, Povo 38123, Trento, Italy (e-mail: gia-
como.oliveri@disi.unitn.it; leonardo.lizzi@disi.unitn.it; andrea.massa@ing.
unitn.it).
M. Pastorino is with the Department of Biophysical and Electronic Engi-
neering, University of Genova, 16145 Genova, Italy (e-mail: pastorino@dibe.
unige.it).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173131
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
971
verse problems, namely the ill-posedness and the non-linearity
[22]. In order to properly address these issues, several tech-
niques have been proposed in the last few years. On the one
hand, the use of global optimization techniques [23]–[31] as
well as of alternative formulations (e.g., Rytov and Born ap-
proximations [22], formulation [14], [32]–[34], qualita-
tive methods [35]–[41]) has been proposed in order to miti-
gate the presence of local-minima caused by the non-linearity
of the inverse scattering problem at hand [42]. Moreover, since
the occurrence of local minima is related to the degree of non-
linearity, the data information content, and the number of un-
knowns [42], information retrieval techniques able to suitably
allocate the unknowns within the domain of interest have been
proposed, as well. More specifically, multi-resolution strategies
[43]–[47] proved to be very effective in better exploiting and
enhancing the information collectable from the measurements,
thus yielding accurate reconstructions in different conditions
[48]–[52] with a high computational efficiency.
On the other hand, efficient regularization techniques have
been introduced to mitigate the ill-posedness/ill-conditioning
that causes the non-uniqueness and the numerical instabilities
of the solution. Indirect regularization techniques, based on the
introduction of suitable multiplicative or additive terms to the
error cost function, have been applied to both deterministic [14]
and to stochastic [15] methodologies. Direct regularization ap-
proaches have been recently proposed, as well. In this latter
framework, the exploitation of the Inexact Newton method has
been investigated and its regularization features have been as-
sessed dealing with both numerical [53] and experimental data
[54].
This paper is aimed at presenting a new microwave imaging
technique based on the integration of an efficient multi-fo-
cusing strategy, namely the iterative multi-scaling approach
(IMSA) [44], [46], with the Inexact-Newton solution method
(INM) [53], [55] to effectively tackle both the non-linearity
and the ill-posedness/ill-conditioning of microwave imaging
problems by exploiting the best properties of the two strategies
and mutually overcoming their limitations. More in detail, a
nested approach is developed by considering three different
procedural steps: (a) an outer multi-scaling loop aimed at
iteratively locating the regions-of-interest (RoIs) where the
scatterers are supposed to be located within the investigation
domain and adaptively refining the inversion grid within those
areas, (b) a linearization loop that locally approximates the
nonlinear inversion problem with a linear one to address the
non-linearity issues, and (c) a truncated Landweber loop de-
voted to find the regularized solution of the approximated linear
972 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

inverse problem. Such a choice is motivated by the following where is the measurement curve outside
considerations: is the two-dimensional free space Green’s func-
• the IMSA approach proved to be a suitable countermea- tion [56].
sure against local minima problems thanks to the effective The objective of the reconstruction procedure is that of
exploitation of the available information, thus enabling the finding the unknown distributions of and in
use of local search strategies for solving the arising inverse starting from the knowledge of within and
scattering problems [44]; in a set of measurement points in (
• the INM, a numerically efficient local search approach, has ). Equations (2) and (3),
shown reliable and stable regularization features despite rewritten in a more compact notation as follows:
few regularization parameters to be set [53], [55];
(4)
• the integration of the two approaches is very easy thanks
to the modularity of the multi-scaling scheme [46]. mathematically describe the relationships between the unknown
The expected outcome is a set of guidelines/indications/ranges vector and the data vector
for the interested user to identify the working conditions/sce-
narios when the IMSA-IN performs in an optimal fashion (i.e., being the nonlinear scattering operator:
the optimal trade-off between reconstruction accuracy and com-
putational costs also in view of the envisaged application) in
comparison with state-of-the-art methodologies, as well.
The outline of the paper is as follows. Section II briefly sum-
marizes the mathematical model of the scattering problems of
(5)
interest. In Section III, the inversion strategy combining the
IMSA with the INM is described. A numerical validation is then The inversion of the nonlinear operator (5) for determining the
presented (Section IV) to analyze features, potentialities, and unknown term yields to an ill-posed problem [22]. There-
limitations of the proposed IMSA-IN method with reference fore, a regularized solution of (4) is looked for by applying the
to cylindrical configurations under transverse magnetic (TM) multi-resolution iterative linearization scheme detailed in the
illumination conditions. Finally, some conclusions are drawn following section.
(Section V).
III. IMSA-IN INVERSION PROCEDURE
To numerically address the inverse-scattering problem at
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION hand, (4) is firstly discretized according to the Richmond’s
procedure [60]. At each th step of the IMSA (
Let us consider a cylindrical scatterer of arbitrary bounded
being the step index), the RoI is par-
cross section embedded in a homogeneous lossless non-mag-
netic background with permittivity . The unknown scatterer titioned into square cells centered at (
is successively probed by known incident transverse-mag- ), being the number of degrees of freedom
netic (TM) monochromatic waves whose time-dependence of the scattered field [58], to obtain the following algebraic
is assumed and omitted hereinafter. The material nonlinear equation:
properties of the nonmagnetic scatterer are invariant along the (6)
symmetry axis and they are described by the object function
[44] where

(1)
being the discretized ver-
being the position vector and and are the sion of applied to .
relative dielectric permittivity and electric conductivity, respec- Thanks to the suitable choice of the ratio between measure-
tively. ment data and unknowns (i.e., ) and the
Under these hypotheses, the scattered, , total, reduced occurrence of local minima [42], numerically efficient
, and incident, , fields for each illumination local search algorithms can be profitably used as solution tools
comply with the following integral equations for (6) at each th step. The INM is here adopted to benefit from
[56]: its strong regularization capabilities, numerical efficiency, ac-
curacy, and robustness [53]. Such an approach stems from the
classical Newton technique, which is, in its simplest scalar im-
plementation, a local root-finding algorithm. At each iteration
(2) ( being the INM iteration index) the INM per-
forms the following two phases [53]:
• Linearization—Truncation at the first term of the Taylor
expansion of to determine its linear approxi-
(3)
mation ;
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING 973

• Update—Computation of the new guess solution 3) Update. Update . If , then

, where satisfies the following relationship , and terminate, else Goto 2.
. The INM is then iterated by successively repeating the “lin-
As for the linearization, let us consider that the Fréchet deriva- earization” and the “update” phases until steps are completed
tive of (6) at , is defined as follows:1 (i.e., ). Once the INM loop has been terminated,
a new IMSA step takes place and the “filtering”
and “clustering” processes are performed for updating [44].
Successively, a higher spatial resolution is adopted only within
the RoI and the inversion of (6) is carried out on finer and finer
where is a variation in , then the first term of the Taylor discretization grids by updating (
expansion of turns out to be . ). The multi-step process is iterated until suitable
Accordingly, the linear approximation of in corre- termination conditions hold true [44] and is finally
assumed as the retrieved solution.
spondence with results
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
This section is aimed at numerically assessing the poten-
(7) tialities and the limitations of the IMSA-IN method in terms
being and . of accuracy, computational complexity, and robustness when
To update the th trial solution (Outer INM dealing with various scatterers, measurement setups, and noise
loop—Fig. 1), the increment is com- conditions. Besides the pictorial representations of the retrieved
puted according to the classical Newton scheme by solving dielectric distributions, the accuracy of the reconstructions is
the linear equation or, in an equivalent quantitatively evaluated by computing the reconstruction errors
fashion exploiting (7), by the following: as in [53], [44] and defined as follows:

(8)
Unfortunately, (8) is ill-posed [53] and an approximated (i.e.,
(9)
inexact) solution of (8) has to be found through regularization.
Towards this end, a finite number of Landweber iterations is where is the number of cells of the whole investigation do-
applied2 [57]. More in detail, a regularized solution of the least- main or belonging to the scatterer support
square counterpart of (8), that is or to the background region . Moreover, and de-
note the retrieved and the actual contrast, respectively.

A. Homogeneous Square Cylinder

The first set of experiments deals with a single lossless homo-
geneous scatterer [ —Fig. 2(a)] off-centered in a square
being the adjoint operator of [57], is computed investigation domain of size and illuminated by a
by performing the following truncated Landweber loop (Inner set of TM plane waves coming from
INM loop—Fig. 1): . For each view, the synthetically-generated
1) lnitialize. Let . Set the total number of scattered field is collected at measurement points uni-
Landweber iterations, ; formly-spaced on a circle in radius. It is worthwhile
2) Computation. Evaluate the step value to notice that the values of and have been chosen following
the guidelines in [58] to collect from the scattered field all the
information available on the scenario under test. The IMSA-IN
and BARE-IN reconstructions have been carried out by setting
[53], and [59]. Moreover,
the maximum number of multi-scaling steps has been fixed to
[44].
The retrieved profiles in Fig. 2 indicate that the IMSA-IN
[Fig. 2(b)] performs better than the bare INM (BARE-IN)
for a given ; [Fig. 2(d)] as pointed out by the smaller value of the “external”
1The Fréchet derivative
error ( versus ).
can be quite easily computed by exploiting
the bi-linearity of the integral operators involved in (2) and (3), as detailed in As regards the evolution of the estimated distribution at
[53]. different IMSA steps [Fig. 3(a)–(d)], the reconstruction accu-
2Several other approaches could be used such as the Tichonov method, the racy improves step-by-step as confirmed by the behavior of
truncated , the method, or the truncated factorization [53]. the error figures in Fig. 3(e) (Noiseless case). More in detail,
However, the truncated Landweber method has been shown to be more suitable
for this application in terms of numerical efficiency and simplicity of the setup monotonically decreases of about one order in magni-
of the regularization parameter [53]. tude ( versus ) as
974 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (

, Noiseless Data)—Actual con-
trast distribution (a). Reconstructed profile with (b) BARE-IN, (c) BARE-CG,
(d) IMSA-IN, and (e) IMSA-CG.

Fig. 3. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (

Fig. 1. Flowchart of the IMSA-IN method. , Noiseless Data)—IMSA-IN recon-
structions at intermediate steps: (a) , (b) , (c) , and (d) .
well as the internal error ( versus (e) Behavior of the error indexes versus .
). On the other hand, the external error
does not exhibit a monotone decrement versus because . These re-
of the free-space initialization sults have been yielded by setting to its minimum value
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING 975

Fig. 4. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (

, Noiseless Data)—Reconstructed profiles with Fig. 5. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (
(a), (c), (e) the IMSA-IN and (b), (d), (f) the IMSA-CG for different values of , Noiseless Data)—Reconstructed profiles with
: (a), (b) , (c), (d) , and (e), (f) . (a), (c), (e) the BARE-IN and (b), (d), (f) the BARE-CG for different values of
: (a), (b) , (c), (d) , and (e), (f) .

for collecting all the available information [58].

slightly better than that of the IMSA-CG when more scattered
However, the condition is usually assumed when
field samples are processed [ versus
applying the INM [53]. Therefore, further experiments have
being —Fig. 6(a)]. An
been developed by choosing to fairly compare the
explanation of the dependence of the IMSA-IN accuracy on
standard INM and its enhanced multiscaling version. Towards
is that overconstraining the inversion (i.e., using more than
this end, the same scatterer has been reconstructed in succes-
measurement points) helps the reduction of the approxi-
sive simulations with 60, 240, 360 [Fig. 4(a), (c), (e)].
mation error introduced by the linearization of the INM Outer
As it can be observed, the reconstruction with the IMSA-IN
loop. It is worth remarking that such a consideration and the
significantly enhances with [Fig. 2(d)— versus
above remarks on the relationship between inversions and
Fig. 4(e)— ] as also confirmed by the corresponding
hold true also when dealing with BARE approaches (Fig. 5).
error figures in Fig. 6. As an example, increasing above
Indeed, while the BARE-CG reconstruction for
yields a total error reduction of around one order of
[Fig. 5(f)] does not significantly improve that with
magnitude [ —Fig. 6(a)].
[Fig. 2(c)], the BARE-IN performs more and more accurately
Such a behavior is not due to the IMSA procedure, but it is
increasing [Fig. 5(a), (c), (e)] as confirmed by the error
rather related to the intrinsic nature of the INM method. As
indexes computed for the BARE inversions in Fig. 6. More-
a matter of fact and unlike the IMSA-IN [Fig. 4(a), (c), (e)],
over and as expected, the total reconstruction error for the
the inversions with a state-of-the-art multi-resolution conju-
IMSA-based implementations (whether based on CG or IN) is
gate gradient approach (IMSA-CG) [44] highlight that
always below that obtained with the BARE methods (Fig. 6)
is already sufficient to achieve a low reconstruction error
with an improvement of about one order in magnitude for every
[Fig. 2(e)— ] and the improvements
choice of [e.g.,
are not significant for larger values [Fig. 4(b), (d), (f)]. This
versus for the IN
is quantitatively assessed by the plots of the error indexes of
formulation—Fig. 6(a)].
the IMSA-CG in Fig. 6 where, as a representative example,
As for the computational issues, Fig. 7 shows the plot of
the total error turns out to be almost constant and equal to
the total inversion time3 for the IMSA-IN method versus in
whatever . On the other hand, it
comparison with that needed by the IMSA-CG approach and
should be noticed that although when
, the IMSA-IN performances result equivalent or 3On a standard laptop with 2.16 GHz CPU clock and 2 GB of RAM.
976 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 7. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (

, Noiseless Data)—Behavior of the inversion
time as a function of .

the fully-nonlinear one of the CG formulation. More specifi-

cally, although the CPU time of both approaches depends on
the same manner on (as well as on the discretization grid),
such a result is related to the faster convergence of the INM ap-
proach (i.e., smaller number of iterations to reach a threshold
of the cost function) as well as the lower computational com-
plexity of each INM step, which does not require any univariate
search unlike the CG [44]. Moreover, it must be also noticed
that the IMSA further enhances the numerical efficiency of the
IN method, despite the multi-step processing, since significantly
smaller-dimension problems are actually solved at each step
of the zooming procedure. Quantitatively, only
[s] are required by the IMSA-IN method when
with a reduction of about 54% with respect to the standard
INM ( [s]—Fig. 7).
Because of the favorable trade-off between inversion accu-
racy and computational burden, the setting will be
considered hereinafter as reference setup for the IMSA-IN pro-
cedure.
To provide further insights on the IMSA-IN, the next nu-
merical experiment is aimed at assessing its robustness against
noisy data. Towards this end, the field data scattered from
the dielectric profile in Fig. 2(a) have been corrupted with
different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels of an additive zero
mean complex Gaussian noise. The enhanced robustness of the
IMSA-IN with respect to the INM can be well recognized by
comparing the retrieved object profiles when SNR 30 dB
Fig. 6. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (
[Fig. 8(a) versus (b)], SNR 20 dB [Fig. 8(c) versus (d)],
, Noiseless Data)—Plots of (a) , (b) , and SNR 10 dB [Fig. 8(e) versus (f)]. The IMSA extension
and (c) versus . allows one satisfactory inversions for both high and moderate
SNRs [Fig. 8(b)–(d)] as well as (unlike its BARE counterpart)
an acceptable dielectric estimate when processing highly-cor-
their BARE counterparts. As it can be noticed, the IN-based in- rupted data [Fig. 8(e) versus Fig. 8(f)]. These considerations
versions are more computationally-efficient than the CG-based are quantitatively confirmed by the values of the error indexes
ones (e.g., [s] versus in Fig. 9(a). As it can be noticed, the total reconstruction error
for —Fig. 7) because of the less com- is on average halved mainly thanks to the “cleaning” effect
plex nature of the linear problem to be solved compared to outside the support of the scatterer enabled by the zooming
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING 977

Fig. 9. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction (

Fig. 8. Off-Centered Square Cylinder Reconstruction ( , Noisy Data)—Error indexes versus
, Noisy Data)—Dielectric profiles SNRs for (a) INM-based and (b) CG-based methodologies.
retrieved by means of (a), (c), (e) the BARE-IN and (b), (d), (f) the IMSA-IN
for different SNR values: (a), (b) [dB], (c), (d) [dB],
and (e), (f) [dB].
SNR 30 [dB] and . As expected, the advantages of
the multi-step implementation are still confirmed [Fig. 10(b)
process. As for the comparison between IN-based method- versus (c)]. Such enhancements are even more evident when
ologies [Fig. 9(a)] and CG-based ones [Fig. 9(b)], previous reconstructing stronger scatterers as in second and third
outcomes are still confirmed in the presence of noise. rows of Fig. 11. As a matter of fact, while the IMSA-IN
inversions turn out to be always acceptable for larger and
B. Homogeneous “Two-Lines” Cylinder larger contrasts [Fig. 11(d)— ; Fig. 11(f)— ],
the performances of the bare INM significantly worsen when
In order to verify whether the previous outcomes on the , until the retrieved profile fully differs from the
IMSA-IN still hold true also when dealing with more complex actual one as in Fig. 11(e) concerned with the case .
dielectric shapes and different values, the homogeneous For completeness, the inversions for a weaker distribution
“two-lines” cylinder in Fig. 10(a) has been chosen as another are also reported [Fig. 11(a)–(b)] to give the reader
benchmark geometry. Such an object is assumed to be located the full picture on the effectiveness of the IMSA-enhanced
in a square domain of size and the scattered fields implementation versus . The result is that the IMSA-IN fully
due to differently-directed TM illuminations have improves the accuracy of the bare INM version as pointed
been collected at measurement out by the error plots in Fig. 12. Although the error indexes
samples on a circle of radius . increase for both INM and IMSA-IN as the value grows,
For comparison purposes, let us analyze the dielectric it turns out that whatever the actual
distributions retrieved by the IMSA-IN and the INM when contrast and, on average,
978 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 11. “Two-Line” Cylinder Reconstruction (

[dB])—Dielectric profiles reconstructed with (a), (c), (e) the BARE-IN and
(b), (d), (f) the IMSA-IN when (a), (b) , (c), (d) , and (e), (f)
.

Fig. 10. ‘Two-Line’ Cylinder Reconstruction (

[dB])—Actual contrast (a). Dielectric profiles reconstructed with Fig. 12. “Two-Line” Cylinder Reconstruction ( SNR
(b) the BARE-IN and (c) the IMSA-IN. 30 [dB])—Error indexes versus .

, and C. Non-Homogeneous Cylinder

. In order to assess the performances of the IMSA-IN in the
It is also worth observing that these outcomes are not only presence of non-homogeneous scatterers, the set of experiments
limited to lossless scatterers as indicated by the results in Fig. 13 of this section considers the reference profile in Fig. 14(a) char-
concerned with the same profile of Fig. 10, but with acterized by and for the inner and outer
. square profiles, respectively. The geometry and measurement
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING
Fig. 13. Lossy “Two-Line” Cylinder Reconstruction (
[dB], )—Actual (a), (b) and retrieved profiles
by (c), (d) BARE-IN and (e), (f) IMSA-IN: (a), (c), (e) real and (b), (d), (f)
imaginary part of the contrast functions.
Fig. 14. Non-Homogeneous Cylinder Reconstruction (
[dB])—Actual contrast distribution (a).
Dielectric profiles estimated with (b) the BARE-IN, (c) the BARE-CG, (d) the
IMSA-IN, and (e) the IMSA-CG.
setup of Section IV-B have been maintained, while the scat-
tering data have been blurred with a SNR 30 dB noise level.
979
Fig. 15. Non-Homogeneous Cylinder Reconstruction (
[dB])—Dielectric profiles estimated with
(a) the BARE-IN, (b) the BARE-CG, (c) the IMSA-IN, and (d) the IMSA-CG.
Because of the undoubted and already highlighted advan-
tages of the IMSA-IN over the standard INM, the following
analysis will be mainly focused in comparing the IMSA-IN
with the IMSA-CG, while the results for the BARE-IN
will be only reported for completeness. By comparing
the inversions results from the IMSA-IN [14(d)] and the
IMSA-CG [14(e)], it turns out that the reconstruction error of
the INM-based technique is lower than that of the full non-
linear CG-based approach ( versus
—Table I) despite the non-trivial
contrast.
Such an indication, in conjunction with the higher numerical
efficiency of the IMSA-IN compared to the fully-nonlinear
CG formulation ( [s] versus
[s]—Table I), could yield one to
conclude that the IMSA-INM approach is the best strategy.
However, it is worth to note that those results have been ob-
tained by considering an “over-sampling” of the measurement
domain that unavoidably leads to a
more complex/expensive measurement setup in terms of both
acquisition time and measurement precision (e.g., receiver
positioning) with respect to the case in which
measurement points were employed.
In order to further (besides the analysis carried out in
Section IV-A) investigate on the IMSA-IN performance reduc-
tion when a smaller number of measures are available and to
give more argumentations on the choice between IMSA-IN and
IMSA-CG, the same numerical example has been solved pro-
cessing measurements for each view. As it
can be observed (Fig. 15), the reconstruction from the IMSA-IN
is not accurate and the shape of the inner cylinder is completely
lost even though the scatterer support is still correctly lo-
cated [Fig. 15(c)]. On the opposite, the IMSA-CG provides a
low reconstruction error ( versus
—Table I) also in these working
conditions [Fig. 15(d)] at the cost of a longer inversion time
( [s] versus
[s]—Table I).
980 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

TABLE I
NON-HOMOGENEOUS CYLINDER RECONSTRUCTION ( SNR 30 [dB])—ERROR AND COMPUTATIONAL INDEXES

Fig. 17. “Three-Hollow” Cylinder Reconstruction (

[dB])—Actual contrast profile (a). Dielectric profile
retrieved from (b) the BARE-IN, (c) the BARE-CG, (d) the IMSA-IN, and
(e) the IMSA-CG.

Section IV-B and blurred with an additive noise with SNR

20 dB.
From the pictorial representations of the retrieved di-
electric profiles (Figs. 16–17) and the values of the cor-
Fig. 16. “Three-Hollow” Cylinder Reconstruction (
responding errors (Table II), the IMSA-IN and IMSA-CG
[dB])—Actual contrast profile (a). Dielectric profile methods guarantee a comparable accuracy when
retrieved from (b) the BARE-IN, (c) the BARE-CG, (d) the IMSA-IN, and [Fig. 16(d) versus 16(e)] ( versus
(e) the IMSA-CG.
—Table II), while, as expected, the
full nonlinear approach is more effective when
[Fig. 17(c) versus (d)]. Moreover, the following considerations
The results from the last two experiments indicate that come out: (a) the total inversion time needed by CG-based ap-
(a) when a large number of measurements is available proaches is generally two-orders in magnitude longer than that
, the IMSA-IN approach is more efficient of IN-based retrievals (e.g., [s] versus
and accurate than the IMSA-CG, while (b) the fully non-linear [s] when —Table II);
CG-based approach overcomes the IN-based method in (b) the multi-zooming scheme significantly reduces of
terms of accuracy when . Moreover, it is again both IN-based (e.g., [s] versus
worth remarking that the reconstructions with the “bare” [s] for —Table II) and
methods are unsatisfactory when using the INM formulation CG-derived methods (e.g.: [s]
[Figs. 14(b)–15(a)] and very rough when exploiting the non- versus [s] for —Table II).
linear CG [Figs. 14(c)–15(b)] whatever the choice of .
V. CONCLUSIONS AND REMARKS
D. “Three-Hollows” Cylinder
A new strategy for microwave imaging has been presented.
The last test case is aimed at further assessing whether the The proposed reconstruction method is based on the integration
above “guidelines” still apply for more complex geometries ex- of a direct regularization method (INM) in a multi-scaling loop
hibiting higher-resolution details. Towards this end, the dielec- (IMSA) to mitigate the non-linearity and the ill-conditioning of
tric scatterer in Fig. 16(a) is imaged starting from the the inverse problems at hand. The IMSA-IN approach has been
data collected with the same measurement setups described in validated through simulations involving scatterers with simple
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING
TABLE II
“THREE-HOLLOW” CYLINDER RECONSTRUCTION (
as well as complex cross sections and different dielectric pro-
files under various noisy conditions. The numerical analysis has
pointed out the following key issues:
• the inversion performances of the IMSA-IN are always
better than those of the standard INM whatever the mea-
surement setup, the scatterer profile, and the blurring con-
ditions (Section IV);
• the IMSA-IN method is significantly more computation-
ally efficient than the IMSA-CG as well as of the bare INM
(e.g., Fig. 7);
• the IMSA-IN provides smaller or comparable reconstruc-
tion errors than the IMSA-CG technique with reduced
computational costs when redundant measurements are
possible . Otherwise , [14] P. M. van den Berg and A. Abubakar, “Contrast source inversion
the IMSA-IN performances degrade compared to the
IMSA-CG ones (Sections IV-B–IV-D) even though they
still remain superior to those of the bare counterpart
(INM).
Future works will be aimed at extending the proposed approach
to deal with multiple separable scatterers [61] and full-
inverse problems [62]. Of course, further validations of the
method potentials against experimental data will be matter of
future analysis.
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[58] O. M. Bucci and G. Franceschetti, “On the degrees of freedom of scat-
tered fields,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 37, pp. 918–926, Jul.
1989.
[59] G. Bozza and M. Pastorino, “An Inexact Newton-based approach to mi-
crowave imaging within the contrast source formulation,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 1122–1132, Apr. 2009.
[60] J. H. Richmond, “Scattering by a dielectric cylinder of arbitrary cross
shape,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 334–341,
May 1965.
[61] S. Caorsi, M. Donelli, and A. Massa, “Detection, location, and imaging
of multiple scatterers by means of the iterative multiscaling method,”
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[62] G. Franceschini, D. Franceschini, and A. Massa, “Full-vecto-
rial three-dimensional microwave imaging through the iterative
multi-scaling strategy—A preliminary assessment,” IEEE Geosci.
Remote Sens. Lett., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 428–432, Oct. 2005.
Giacomo Oliveri (M’09) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in telecommunications engineering and the
Ph.D. degree in space sciences and engineering from
the University of Genoa, Italy, in 2003, 2005, and
2009, respectively.
Since 2008, he has been a member of the ELEDIA
Research Center at the University of Trento, Italy.
His research work is mainly focused on cognitive
radio systems, electromagnetic direct and inverse
problems, and antenna array design and synthesis.
Leonardo Lizzi (M’10) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in telecommunications engineering and the
Ph.D. degree in information and communication
technology from the University of Trento, Italy, in
2004, 2007, and 2011, respectively.
His research work mainly focuses on multi-band
and ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna design and syn-
thesis. He is now a member of the LEAT (Laboratoire
d’Electronique, Antennes et Telecommunications),
University of Nice–Sophia Antipolis, CNRS UMR
6071, Valbonne, France.
OLIVERI et al.: A NESTED MULTI-SCALING INEXACT-NEWTON ITERATIVE APPROACH FOR MICROWAVE IMAGING
Matteo Pastorino (M’90–SM’96–F’09) received
the Laurea degree in electronic engineering and the
Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering and computer
science, both from the University of Genoa, Genoa,
Italy, in 1987 and 1992, respectively.
At present, he is the Director of the Applied Elec-
tromagnetics Group, Department of Biophysical and
Electronic Engineering, University of Genoa, where
he is a Professor of electromagnetic fields. He teaches
the university courses of “Electromagnetic Fields,”
“Remote Sensing and Electromagnetic Diagnostics,”
and “Antennas and Remote Sensing.” His main research interests are in the field
of microwave and millimeter wave imaging, direct and inverse scattering prob-
lems, industrial and medical applications, smart antennas, and analytical and
numerical methods in electromagnetism. He is a coauthor of more than 300 pa-
pers in international journals and proceedings of conferences.
Prof. Pastorino is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENTS.
983
Andrea Massa (M’03) received the Laurea degree in
electronic engineering from the University of Genoa,
Genoa, Italy, in 1992 and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tronics and computer science from the same univer-
sity in 1996.
From 1997 to 1999, he was an Assistant Professor
of electromagnetic fields in the Department of
Biophysical and Electronic Engineering, University
of Genoa, teaching the university course of “Elec-
tromagnetic Fields 1”. From 2001 to 2004, he was
an Associate Professor at the University of Trento.
Since 2005, he has been a Full Professor of electromagnetic fields at the
University of Trento, where he currently teaches electromagnetic fields, inverse
scattering techniques, antennas and wireless communications, and optimization
techniques. At present, he is the director of the ELEDIALab at the University
of Trento and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. He is a member of
the IEEE Society, of the PIERS Technical Committee, of the Inter-University
Research Center for Interactions Between Electromagnetic Fields and Biolog-
ical Systems (ICEmB) and Italian representative in the general assembly of the
European Microwave Association (EuMA). His research work since 1992 has
been principally on electromagnetic direct and inverse scattering, microwave
imaging, optimization techniques, wave propagation in presence of nonlinear
media, wireless communications and applications of electromagnetic fields to
telecommunications, medicine and biology.
Prof. Massa is an Associate Editor of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS
AND PROPAGATION.
984 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fast and Shadow Region 3-Dimensional Imaging
Algorithm With Range Derivative of Doubly
Scattered Signals for UWB Radars
Shouhei Kidera, Member, IEEE, and Tetsuo Kirimoto, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Ultra-wideband (UWB) radar with its high range
resolution and applicability to optically harsh environments, offer
great promise for near field sensing systems. It is particularly
suitable for robotic or security sensors that must identify a target
in low visibility. Some recently developed radar imaging algo-
rithms proactively employ multiple scattered components, which
can enhance an imaging range compared to synthesizing a single
scattered component. We have already proposed the synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) method considering a double scattered,
which successfully expanded a reconstructible range of radar
imagery with no a priori knowledge of target or surroundings.
However, it requires a multiple integration of the received signals,
requiring the fifth times integration in the 3-D case. Thus, this
method requires an intensive computation and its spatial resolu-
tion is insufficient for clear boundary extraction such as edges or
specular surfaces. As a substantial solution, this paper proposes a
novel shadow region imaging algorithm based on a range deriva-
tive of double scattered signals. This new method accomplishes
high-speed imaging, including a shadow region without any inte-
gration process, and enhances the accuracy with respect to clear
boundary extraction. Results from numerical simulations verify
that the proposed method remarkably decreases the computation
amount compared to that for the conventional method, especially
for the 3-D problem, enhancing the visible range of radar imagery.
Index Terms—Fast and shadow region imaging, multiple scat-
tered wave, range derivative of double scattered signal, range
points migration, ultra-wideband (UWB) radar.
I. INTRODUCTION
U ltra-wideband (UWB) pulse radar with high range res-
olution fulfills its potential for near-field sensing tech-
niques. A robotic sensor is one of the most promising appli-
cations of UWB radar, able to identify a human body even in
optically blurry visibilities, such as dark smog in disaster areas
or high-density gas in resource exploration scenes. It is also
Manuscript received December 09, 2010; revised May 31, 2011; accepted
August 29, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current ver-
sion February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid
for Scientific Research (B) (Grant 22360161), and the Grant-in-Aid for Young
Scientists (Start-up) (Grant 21860036), promoted by the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science (JSPS).
The authors are with the Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering,
University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan (e-mail:
kidera@ee.uec.ac.jp).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173128
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
in demand for non-contact measurement in manufacturing re-
flector antennas or aircraft bodies requiring high-precision sur-
faces. Furthermore, it has a potential for accurate surface extrac-
tion of the human breast for detecting breast cancer, where the
surface reflection from a breast often causes severe interference
[1], [2]. While various radar imagery algorithms have been de-
veloped based on the aperture synthesis [3], the time reversal
approach [4], [5], the range migration [6], [7] or genetic algo-
rithm (GA)-based solutions for domain integral equations [8],
they are not suitable for the above applications because it is,
in general, difficult to achieve both low computation cost and
high spatial resolution. To conquer the problem in the conven-
tional techniques, we have already proposed a number of radar
imaging algorithms, which accomplish real-time and high-res-
olution surface extraction beyond a pulse width [9], [10]. Al-
though these algorithms have been applied to surface imaging,
such as breast cancer detection [2], through-the-wall imaging
[11], or human activity recognition [12], they are actually ap-
plicable only to simple shapes such as convex objects. As a
high-speed and accurate 3-D imaging method feasible for com-
plex-shaped targets, the range points migration (RPM) algo-
rithm has been established [13]. This algorithm directly esti-
mates an accurate direction of arrival (DOA) with the global
characteristic of observed range points, avoiding the difficulty
of connecting them. Although RPM is based on a simple idea,
it offers accurate and super-resolution surface extraction by in-
corporating a frequency domain interferometer [14]. However,
the above methods including [13] and [14] have the unresolv-
able problem that aperture size strictly constrains the imaging
range of a target surface. In many cases, a major part of a target
shape, such as a side of the target, falls into a shadow region,
that is not reconstructed since only single scattered components
are used for imaging.
To resolve this difficulty and enhance imaging range, the
SAR algorithm considering a double scattered path has been
developed [15]. Although this method shows that shadow
region imaging is possible by positively using double scattered
signals without preliminary observations or target models,
which are required in other algorithms [16], [17], the method
requires multiple integrations of the received signals. This
incurs a large computation cost, especially for obtaining a full
3-D image. Moreover, the spatial resolution of SAR is often
insufficient to identify target shapes particularly for edges
or wedges owing to a range resolution limited by frequency
bandwidth of UWB pulse, even if a large aperture size, i.e.,
high azimuthal resolution, is obtained.
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM
As an essential solution for these problems, this paper pro-
poses a novel imaging algorithm based on the range derivative
of doubly scattered signals, where an initial image obtained by
RPM is used to the best effect. This method is based on an orig-
inal proposition that each DOA of the double scattered points
is strictly derived from the derivative of range points both in
the 2-D and 3-D cases. This proposition enables us to directly
estimate a target boundary corresponding to the doubly scat-
tered centers without any integration procedures. The results of
numerical simulations, investigating various target shapes and
computational complexities, show that the proposed method ac-
complishes high-speed target boundary extraction in situations,
which produce a shadow using existing techniques.
II. 2-D PROBLEM
A. System Model
Fig. 1 shows a system model for the 2-D model. It assumes
a mono-static radar with an omnidirectional antenna scanning
along the -axis. A static target with an arbitrary shape is
assumed, the spatial gradient of conductivity or permittivity
on its boundary is expressed with Dirac’s delta function [9], a
so-called clear boundary. This assumption is generally accept-
able for most indoor UWB sensors, for which omnidirectional
radiation can be achieved by a small micro-strip antenna, as
in [14], and the surroundings of sensors should be artificial
objects such as furniture or walls with clear boundaries in
terms of the center wavelength of a general UWB pulse. Due
to the static object assumption, the scanning velocity is not
relevant here. The propagation speed c of the radio wave is
assumed to be a known constant. A transverse electric (TE)
mode wave and cylindrical wave propagation is considered. A
mono-cycle pulse is used as the transmitting current. The space
in which the target and antenna are located is expressed by the
parameters . The parameters are normalized by , which
is the central wavelength of the pulse. is assumed for
simplicity. is defined as the electric field received at
antenna location at time . is calculated
by applying the Wiener filter to as
(1)
where is the signal in the frequency domain of
. is defined as
(2)
where , and is the reference signal
in the frequency domain, which is the complex conjugate of that
of the transmitted signal. is a constant for dimension consis-
tency. This filter is an optimal mean square error (MSE) linear
filter for additive noises. is now converted to
using the valuable conversion where c is the speed
of the radio wave.
B. Conventional Imaging Algorithms
Two methods are introduced as the conventional imaging
algorithms for comparison with the proposed method. One
985
Fig. 1. System model in the 2-D problem.
is RPM, which achieves accurate high-speed target imaging
even with a complex-shaped boundary, and employs a single
scattered wave [13], [14]. The second is SAR extended for
double scattered waves [15].
1) RPM: As one of the most promising imaging algorithms
applicable to various target shapes, the RPM algorithm has been
established. First, this method extracts the group of range points
as , which satisfy the local maxima of . Basi-
cally, RPM assumes that a target boundary point exists
on a circle with center and radius , following from the
assumption of an omnidirectional antenna and cylindrical prop-
agation of a TE mode wave, and employs an accurate DOA (
in Fig. 1) estimation by making use of the global characteristics
of the observed range map. The optimum is calculated as
(3)
where and is the number
of the range points. denotes the angle from the axis
to the intersection point of the circles, with parameters
and . The target boundary for each range point
is expressed as and
. This algorithm ignores range points connection,
and produces accurate target points, even if an extremely com-
plicated range distribution is given. It also has the significant
advantage that each target point and range point
satisfies a one-to-one correspondence, which takes a substantial
role in the proposed method described in the following section.
The performance example of RPM is presented here, where
the received electric field is calculated by the finite-difference
time-domain (FDTD) method. The range points are
extracted from the local peaks of which are beyond
the preliminary determined threshold [13]. An example of this
method for the target shape shown in Fig. 1 is presented. Fig. 2
shows the output of the Wiener filter, and the extracted range
points as . The received signals are calculated at 401
locations for . A noiseless environment is
assumed. The positive local maxima are regarded as the range
points originated from the single scattered waves and, on the
contrary, the negative ones are regarded as the range points
originated from the double scattered components, because they
have, in general, an anti-phase relationship. Fig. 3 shows the
estimated target points obtained by RPM. and
986
Fig. 2. Output of Wiener filter s(X; Z ) for the multiple targets and range points
as (X; Z ) and (X; Z ).
Fig. 3. Estimated image with RPM for the multiple targets.
Fig. 4. Estimated image with the SAR I (r ) using double scattered signals for
the multiple targets.
are empirically determined by considering robust-
ness and accuracy for imaging, as detailed in [13]. This figure
indicates that the target points accurately express the front side
of the target boundary, but the rectangular side of the boundary
mostly falls into a shadow region. This is because each antenna
receives a distinguishable echo from the target boundary, which
is perpendicular to the direction of the line of sight from each
antenna location. This is an inherent problem in all algorithms
that use only a single scattered wave for target reconstruction.
2) SAR With Double Scattered Signals: SAR employing
the double scattered signal has been developed to enhance the
imaging range, including a shadow [15]. Here, the same system
and signal models are used as in Section II-A. In general, a
double scattered wave propagates with a different path from
that of a single scattered one. It, therefore, often provides
independent information as to the two scattering points. This
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
method calculates the image using double scattered waves as
(4)
where denotes the region of real
space, is the output of the Wiener filter, and
. The minus sign in (4) creates a
positive image focused by double scattered waves that have an
antiphase relationship from a single scattered one. Here, the
initial image is defined as the original SAR image as
(5)
Equation (4), simple expression of the aperture synthesis of
the received signals by considering a double scattered path,
can be regarded as a coherent integration scheme because
denotes the amplitude and its positive outputs offer the
target boundary. Any extension of the SAR algorithm, such as
omega-k migration [18] range-Doppler, can be used in creating
. The final image is defined as
(6)
where is the Heaviside function.
The performance evaluation of this method is shown as fol-
lows. Fig. 4 shows the estimated image for the previous
target case, using the same data as in Fig. 2. is normalized
by its maximum value. Fig. 4 shows that the part of the side re-
gion of the rectangular target can be reproduced, and that the
visible ranges of the circle and rectangular boundaries are re-
markably expanded. The reason is that double scattered waves
are effectively focused on the part of the target side in (4). It
also claims that this method does not require target modeling or
a priori information of the surroundings.
However, it requires a triple integration for imaging and its
calculation time goes up to around 60 s for Intel Pentium D
2.8-GHz processor. In the 3-D case, such a large calculation
burden becomes more severe for a robotic sensor because it ba-
sically requires a fifth times integration for each image frame.
Moreover, some false images occur around the target boundary,
due to the range sidelobe of filter responses or other components
like triple scattering ones; it also offers a blurry boundary, where
its spatial resolution is strictly limited by half of a pulse width.
C. Proposed Method
To overcome the problems described for conventional
methods, this paper proposes an accurate high-speed imaging
algorithm for the shadow region. This method employs target
points, which are preliminarily created by RPM, and directly
reconstructs the target points corresponding to the double
scattered signals, where each derivative of the range points is
employed.
1) Principle of Proposed Method: This subsection describes
a basic theory of the proposed method, indicating the relation-
ship between the range points and the doubly scattered cen-
ters. Here, two target points originating from the doubly scat-
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM 987

tering are defined as and , respec-

tively. As previously described, a double scattered signal has an
anti-phase relationship to a single scattered one [15]; the nega-
tive peaks of are mostly regarded as double scattered
echoes. Then, is defined as the range point of a double
scattered wave, which is extracted from the local minimum of
. denotes an antenna location. In this case,
the following proposition holds.
Proposition 1: When exists on , the next
relationship holds:

(7)

where Fig. 5. Relationship among the double scattered points p ; p , and the antenna
and are defined, location p .
and hold. This method assumes that a double
scattered path satisfies the law of reflection on each scattering
total number of target points by RPM. In addition, each normal
boundary; that is regarded as a phase stationary condition.
vector on is given by
The proof of this proposition is described in Appendix A. It
is naturally derived as , which is used for the
actual procedure of the proposed method, as described in the
following section. If holds, regarded as single scattered (13)
case, (7) is equivalent to inverse boundary scattered transform
(IBST) in [9]. Here, is expressed as This relationship is derived from the assumption that each an-
tenna receives a strong echo from the target boundary, which
(8) is perpendicular to a direction for a line of sight [13]. Equation
(13) indicates that the inclination of the target boundary is di-
Once a first scattering point is determined, is given as rectly estimated without using derivative operations; it is appli-
cable even for a non-differentiable point like an edge. In addi-
(9) tion, target points obtained by RPM on edges are reconstructed
from different antenna locations, because an edge diffraction
In addition, if the normal vector as on is given, the law of wave can be received in a wider observation range. Such points
reflection derives as have different normal vectors, which are directly related to ,
and contribute to the search for a secondary scattering center
first diffracted from an edge.
This algorithm determines an optimal from a set
(10) of target points obtained by RPM, which is defined as
. Here, the parameter vector
where is also defined as
(11) (14)
(15)
holds with . The derivation of (10)
is described in Appendix B. obviously satisfies the following (16)
condition as
where , and is deter-
(12) mined in (11), similarly. To select the optimal from ,
two conditions for are introduced as follows. First, using (8),
where holds. Fig. 5 shows the relationship is defined as
among the scattered points and the antenna location .
2) Incorporation With RPM: A substantial idea of the pro-
posed method is that it makes uses of the preliminary estimated (17)
target points by RPM as the first scattering location with
its normal vector . As previously described in Section II-B1, where and are calculated in (10) and (9), respec-
RPM directly converts the range points to the target points, sat- tively. Second, considering an another condition in (12),
isfying a one-to-one correspondence. Here we define each target is defined as
point and range point with RPM as and
, where is the (18)
988 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Step 2) Range points are extracted as

from the output of a Wiener filter, ac-
cording to the condition given as

(23)

where is the total number of range points of

the double scattered signals, and is empirically
determined.
Fig. 6. Relationship between p and p as two candidates for p . Step 3) For each is calculated by the
difference approximation with Gaussian weighting
where . Fig. 6 shows as
the relationship between two candidates for as and
. Then, the proposed method determines the optimum
candidate for each as
(24)
(19)

The optimum second scattering point is determined as

where is empirically determined and de-
notes the number of range points of ,
(20) which satisfy . The
parameter is created in (15) is stored into a set
where is defined as , when the evaluation value in the right as .
term in (19) becomes minimum. This optimization scheme is Step 4) For each from is created in (16).
based on the assumption that if is the actual target point, Then, and are determined in
it must satisfy both (8) and (12). Note that this method does (19) and (20), respectively.
not employ an integration of the scattered signals but directly Step 5) If does not satisfy the condition in (21), it
determines the double scattering points using the derivative of is added to the set of the target points .
the range points. Step 6) Steps 4) to 5) are iterated until becomes empty.
Furthermore, a false image reduction scheme is introduced. Step 7) Obtain the final set of target points as
In the postprocessing, is regarded as a false image, if .
the following condition is satisfied: Step 3) avoids the fatal sensitivity caused by the derivative op-
erations by taking an appropriate value for . Although this
(21) method needs an optimization procedure for , it requires no
integration process, directly locating the accurate target points.
where is an empirically determined threshold, and
is defined as
D. Performance Evaluation Using Numerical Simulation
This section presents numerical examples performed by the
proposed method for two target cases. Fig. 7 illustrates the target
points reproduced by RPM and the proposed methods, where
(22) the true range points for single and double scattered signals
are given by a geometrical optics approximation [15]. Here,
and are set. This figure in-
where dicates that the proposed method accurately creates the target
and . increases when points around the side of the rectangular boundary. This veri-
the following two conditions are satisfied. First, a large number fies that if the actual range points are given, our method obtains
of the first Fresnel zones determined by target points with RPM, extremely accurate boundary extraction, including shadow re-
regarded as , include the double scattering point as . gions. As a realistic case, Fig. 8 presents the estimated target
Second, exists close to the antenna location compared points with RPM and the proposed method, where the same data
to the observed range of single scattering . We assume that as in Fig. 2 are used. This figure exemplifies that this method
both situations are inadmissible for the actual target points. The produces many accurate target points around the rectangular
similar scheme for a false image reduction is described in [15]. side. Here, it should be noted that the RPM reconstructs the
3) Procedure of the Proposed Algorithm: The actual proce- rectangular edge points as in Fig. 3, which are converted from
dure of the proposed method is summarized as follows. the multiple range points on the part of the hyperbolic
Step 1) A set of target points is obtained by RPM. curve for which and in Fig. 2.
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM 989

Fig. 7. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the multiple
objects, when true range points are given. Fig. 9. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the concave
target, when true range points are given.

Fig. 10. Output of Wiener filter s(X; Z ) for the concave target and range points
as (X; Z ) and (X; Z ).
Fig. 8. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the multiple
objects, when range points are extracted from s(X; Z ).

Those target points, which can be reconstructed from the dif-

ferent antenna locations, have multiple normal vectors as
related to the second scattering directions as described in
the proposed method. Consequently, even in the case that the
first scattering points exist on an edge, i.e., includes
an edge diffraction, this method selects the optimum first scat-
tering point in (19) and sequentially determines for each
. Also, while possibly includes no double scat-
tered range points accidentally extracted from range sidelobes
of single scattered signals, or other scattering components, this
figure validates the fact that the false image reduction postpro-
Fig. 11. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the concave
cessing successfully eliminates these false points. Besides, it has targets, when range points are extracted from s(X; Z ).
a great advantage in computation time, which requires less than
0.4 s for Intel Pentium D 2.8-GHz processor with 800 MB ef- Wiener filter, which is calculated by FDTD, and each extracted
fective memory. As previously mentioned in Section II-B2, the range point as and . Fig. 11 presents the esti-
conventional method costs around 60 s, and it is distinctly im- mated image created by the proposed method. It verifies that, in
proved as to the computation burden. However, some fluctua- the practical case, it can produce accurate target points around
tions of the estimated points occur around the rectangular side, the side of the concave boundary, which are not seen for RPM.
regardless of a noiseless situation. This is because the method The calculation time is also around 0.4 s with the same processor
employs the range derivative in (9), which tends to enhance previously described, which is definitively improved from that
small errors caused by the scattered waveform deformations or required by the conventional method around 60 s.
other interference effects. Here, the quantitative analysis is introduced by defined as
For another target case, a deep-set concave boundary is inves-
tigated. Fig. 9 shows the target points estimated by RPM and the (25)
proposed method, respectively, where the true range points are
given. It is confirmed that our method successfully enhances the where and express the locations of the true and esti-
imaging range around the side of the concave boundary, using mated target points, respectively. is the total number of .
the double scattered range points. Fig. 10 shows the output of a Fig. 12 plots the number of estimated points for each value of
990 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. Number of target points for each  , in the case of Figs. 8 and 11.
Fig. 13. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the multiple
targets at SN = 30 dB.
in both cases as Figs. 8 and 11. It verifies that the number of
accurate target points with the proposed method significantly
increases around , simultaneously enhancing the imaging
range. The mean value of as is for the mul-
tiple objects, and this result quantitatively proves the effective-
ness of the proposed method as to accurate imaging. In the case
of the concave boundary, becomes , because
there are many false image points over the actual boundary as
in Fig. 11 for both RPM and the proposed method. This inaccu-
racy is mainly contributed by the conventional RPM, not by the
proposed method. The reason for this is that more than a triple
scattering effect produces an unnecessary image.
Furthermore, an example in noisy situation is investigated,
whereby white Gaussian noise is added to each received signal
as . Fig. 13 shows the estimated points obtained by the
proposed method, where the mean S/N is 30 dB. S/N is defined
as the ratio of peak instantaneous signal power to the average
noise power after applying the matched filter with the trans-
mitted waveform. Although the accuracy of the estimated target
points deteriorates due to the false range points extracted from
noisy components, the whole image can offer a significant target
boundary including the side of the rectangular boundary. Also,
it should be noted that the range fluctuations caused by noise
are effectively suppressed by the Gaussian weighted difference
approach in (24) using an appropriate . scanning by modifying (7). However, the scanning line must be
Next, the relationship between and S/N is investigated for
multiple objects as in Fig. 14 for each . The figure shows
that the proposed method obtains a sufficient accuracy less than

Fig. 14. Relationship between  and S/N for each  as to the multiple ob-
jects.
over SN dB using any value of . While this
method requires an apparently high S/N to hold the accuracy, the
definition of S/N used in this paper overestimates the practical
S/N because it considers not only a frequency localization of
the received pulse but also a temporal one. Indeed, the actual
UWB radar system can achieve this level of S/N. because we
assume a near field measurement, where each receiver obtains
an intensive echo from objects even under the spectrum mask
of the UWB signal [19], and random noises in received signals
can be considerably suppressed using coherent averaging.
Moreover, to consider the applicability of the method to a
realistic scenario, the sensitivity of antenna location to inaccu-
racy is investigated. This is mainly caused by mechanical er-
rors in the scanning system. Figs. 15 and 16 show the output
of Wiener filter with extracted range points and the estimated
image with RPM and the proposed method at SN dB,
respectively. The spatial errors with the Gaussian distribution
are added to each antenna location in calculating the
received signals. The standard deviation of the errors is set to
, which corresponds to 1-mm accuracy for the antenna po-
sitioning, in the case of 100-mm center wavelength of the UWB
pulse. This can be obtained by the real scanning systems used
in [14]. The figure shows that the proposed method still cre-
ates an accurate image including the shadow region; denotes
in this case. The first reason for this is that RPM
has a significant tolerance to random noise or system errors be-
cause it employs the global characteristic of the range points
distribution; there is only a slight image degradation as shown
in the figure. The second reason is that the proposed method
employs the smoothing scheme in calculating the range deriva-
tive in (24), and the false image reduction as postprocessing, in
order to avoid image distortions from system errors or receiver
noise and enhance the credibility of the obtained images.
Finally, the limitation of this method is discussed as follows.
The proposed method, which does have some limitations, has
two main requirements: a scanning orbit and a clear boundary
assumption for objects. First, while this paper assumes linear
antenna scanning, it can be extended to arbitrary curvilinear
differentiable because the method employs derivative operation
along it. Second, although the method assumes a clear boundary
for objects, in the case of a human body, this assumption is
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM 991

Fig. 17. System model in 3-D problem.

Fig. 15. Output of Wiener filter and extracted range points for the multiple
X;
targets, where random errors are given to antenna locations ( 0).

Fig. 18. Relationship among p ;p and p in 3-D model.

as the output of the Wiener filter with the transmitted waveform.

Fig. 16. Estimated image with RPM and the proposed method for the multiple As similar to the 2-D case, The two sets of range points are
X;
targets where random errors are given to antenna locations ( 0). extracted from the local maxima and minima as and
, respectively.
hardly acceptable, and then, both the conventional and the
proposed methods offer blurry images expressing statistical B. Proposed Method for the 3-D Problem
scattering centers. On the other hand, with respect to a UWB This section describes the 3-D model of the proposed method.
waveform, any waveform holding the same equivalent band- Here, an antenna location is redefined as . The
width with lower a range sidelobe is applicable to this method, first scattering point as and the second one as are also
for example, a pulse, chirping signal, or spread spectrum redefined as
(M-sequence) waveforms. This is because the proposed method
uses only the significant ranges, which can be extracted from
the local maxima or minima of the output of Wiener filter using
any possible transmitted waveform with enough S/N level.
Consequently, the performance limitation depends mainly on (26)
the bandwidth of the transmitted pulse and the S/N level. In
addition, while this paper assumes mono-static observation, it where and hold. Fig. 18
is easily extended to a bi-static model, required for a realistic shows the relationship among and in the 3-D model.
radar constitution, employing the same approach in the pro- Similar to the 2-D model, the following proposition holds.
posed method. This is our future task. Proposition 2: If and exist on each range
point , the next formulations hold:
III. 3-D PROBLEM
(27)
A. System Model
Fig. 17 shows a system model for the 3-D problem. The target
model, antenna, and transmitted signal are the same as those The derivation of this proposition is described in Appendix C.
assumed for the 2-D problem. The antenna is scanned on the Once is determined, and can be calculated as
plane, . It assumes a linear polarization in the direction of
the -axis. A spherical wave propagation is assumed. R-space
is expressed by the parameter . We assume for (28)
simplicity. is defined as the received electric field at
the antenna location . is defined
992 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

(29)

where denotes an imaginary unit.

In this extension, target points redefined as
corresponding to the range points as
obtained by
RPM are employed [13]. Each normal vector is also
calculated as

(30)
Fig. 19. Estimated 3-D image with RPM and the proposed method for the tar-
gets as in Fig. 17, when true range points are given.
And then, the parameter vector defined in (14) is constituted
by redefining , and up-
dating in (11).
Using the above parameters, the target points in the 3-D
model are basically calculated according to the procedure of
the proposed method in the 2-D case, as in Section II-C3. Some
modifications for the procedure are described below. As in Step
2), the range point is extracted from the output
of a Wiener filter , where the following condition
satisfies:

(31) Fig. 20. Extracted range points of single and double scattered waves for the
targets in Fig. 17.

Also, in Step 3), is calculated as

(32)

where , and denotes the number of the range

points which satisfy around
. Fig. 21. Estimated 3-D image with RPM and the proposed method for the tar-
C. Performance Evaluation Using Numerical Simulation
This section presents two examples of the proposed method
with different target cases, using a numerical simulation. The
mono-static radar is scanned for , where the
number of locations on each axis is 101. Here,
and are set. First, the target boundary
is assumed as in Fig. 17. Fig. 19 illustrates the estimated target
points obtained by RPM and the proposed method, where the
true range points are given by the geometrical optics approxi-
mation, similar to 2-D case. This figure verifies that the imaging
points express a quite accurate target boundary including the
side of the cylindrical objects. This is because the double scat-
tered wave propagates along the side of the toric and cylindrical
boundaries. Next, Fig. 20 shows the range points as
and extracted from the output of a Wiener filter,
which is calculated by FDTD. Figs. 21 and 22 depict the es-
timated 3-D image and its cross-section at , filter. Figs. 26 and 27 present the 3-D target image and its cross
respectively. These figures show that the obtained image of the
proposed method, in this case, accurately creates the side of the
cylindrical boundary, which cannot be reconstructed by RPM.
gets as in Fig. 17, when range points are extracted from s(X; Y; Z ).
There are some divergent images around the target side, which
are basically caused by the errors of range derivatives. This
method creates the target points, not the intensified SAR image,
which contributes to the identification of the edge or wedge re-
gion. Note that, the proposed method requires only 10 s for a
full 3-D image after creating the target points with RPM. This
amount is prominently reduced from that of the conventional
method based on the fifth times integral for imaging after SAR
processing [15], requiring around s.
For another example, a concave target is shown in Fig. 23.
Fig. 24 offers the estimated 3-D boundary performed by the pro-
posed method, where the true range points are given. This ver-
ifies that the proposed method accomplishes an accurate target
imaging including the side of the concave boundary. Fig. 25
shows the extracted range points from the output of a Wiener
section at , respectively, where the received
data is calculated by FDTD. This figure also proves that the pro-
posed method creates an accurate image around the deep side of
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM
Fig. 22. Cross-section image of Fig. 21 for 00 1   0 1.
: x : gets in Fig. 23, when range points are extracted from s(X; Y ; Z ).
Fig. 23. True concave target boundary.
Fig. 24. Estimated 3-D image with RPM and the proposed method for the tar-
gets in Fig. 23, when true range points are given.
Fig. 25. Extracted range points of single (black) and double (red) scattered
waves for targets in Fig. 23.
the concave boundary, which is focused by the double scattered
signal.
Furthermore, a quantitative analysis for these examples is pre-
sented as follows. Fig. 28 shows the number of target points
for each accuracy , that is defined as in (25) for the target
cases as in Figs. 21 and 26. This figure shows that the proposed
method increases accurate target points around and avoids
the accuracy distortion for both target cases. The mean value of
993
Fig. 26. Estimated 3-D image with RPM and the proposed method for the tar-
Fig. 27. Cross-section image of Fig. 26 for 00 1   0 1.
: x :
Fig. 28. Number of target points for each  in the case of Figs. 21 and 26.
this error index as is for the toric and cylindrical tar-
gets, and for the deep-set concave targets, respectively.
This quantitatively shows that the proposed method enhances
the imaging range even in the 3-D model, accomplishing much
faster image processing.
In addition, an example of a noisy situation is presented.
White Gaussian noise is added to the received signal .
Fig. 29 shows the estimated target boundaries of the RPM and
the proposed method, with S/N around 30 dB. This figure
shows that, while the proposed method suffers from image
fluctuations caused by random noise, it still offers a signifi-
cant image expansion around the side of the torus boundary.
in this case.
Finally, the computational complexities of the algorithms
are compared. The conventional SAR based method requires
around , where and
denote the sampling numbers for the antenna location ,
and the spatial coordinates and , respectively, and
gives the Landau notation. This is because the conventional
994 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

wedge region and helps to classify the target structure. Numer-

ical simulations in the 2-D and 3-D models, including mul-
tiple objects and concave shaped objects showed that the pro-
posed method substantially extended the imaging range with ex-
tremely high speed, even if the model errors and random noises
are added to the received data. This exemplifies a significant ap-
plicability to the realistic radar sensing scenario. Particularly for
the 3-D problem, it is a more than times improvement com-
pared with that of the conventional SAR-based method as to the
computational complexity. Consequently, this method can sig-
nificantly contribute to the design of real-time sensors, as found
Fig. 29. Estimated 3-D image with RPM and the proposed method for the tar-
= 30
gets in Fig. 17 at SN dB. in robots or security systems.

TABLE I
CALCULATION TIME (FOR INTEL PENTIUM D 2.8 GHz PROCESSOR) AND
COMPUTER COMPLEXITY OF EACH ALGORITHM APPENDIX A
DERIVATION OF (7)
is divided into three terms as

(33)
SAR-based method should employ a quintuple integration for
each image voxel as in [15]. On the contrary, the proposed Here, is expressed as
method requires around , since it requires only a
searching operation to the first scattering points obtained by (34)
RPM for each range point . Table I
shows a comparison for computational times using an Intel where
Pentium D 2.8-GHz processor with 800-MB memory, and hold. Each partial derivative
the computational complexity for each method. In this case, of is given as
and , where
each voxel size is . This table shows that the computation
(35)
required for the proposed method is reduced to times that of
the conventional method. Moreover, even if the fast processing
of the SAR like omega-k migration [18] were to be adopted to (36)
double scattering aperture synthesis, it would have an essential
problem that the computation complexity severely depends, in (37)
principle, on the voxel size or imaging range. On the contrary,
the proposed method, based on range points migration, is quite where
different from SAR, and it does not need to determine the voxel
size or imaging region, owing to the mapping from the observed
(38)
range points to the target boundary points. The computation
required depends only on the number of observed range points,
which is on the order of the square of the antenna scanning (39)
samples.
(40)

IV. CONCLUSION
(41)
This paper proposed a novel imaging algorithm for expanding
the imaging range, which efficiently utilizes the range derivative (42)
of double scattered waves. The proposed method elicits some
inherent characteristics in the RPM method and achieves di-
hold. In this case, we assume that the reflection path of the
rect shadow imaging without using any integration process. This
double scattered path satisfies the law of reflection and the fol-
method has an outstanding advantage that it accomplishes ex-
lowing relationships hold:
tremely high-speed imaging by specifying a clear boundary ex-
traction, simultaneously extending the visible region without a
priori knowledge of target or surroundings. It has the additional (43)
advantage that the target boundary can be expressed as a group
of target points, which enables the identification of an edge or (44)
KIDERA AND KIRIMOTO: FAST AND SHADOW REGION 3-D IMAGING ALGORITHM 995

(53)

(54)

(55)

(56)

hold, where and are used. Then,

Fig. 30. Relationship among e ; e ; e @p
p =@X; and @p
p =@X . the similar relationships hold as

Fig. 30 shows the relationship among those parameters. Substi- (57)

tuting these equations to (35)–(37), (7) is obtained.
(58)

Substituting them to (49)–(51), (27) as to is derived.

APPENDIX B Using the same approach, (27) for is obtained.
DERIVATION OF (10)
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[15] S. Kidera, T. Sakamoto, and T. Sato, “Experimental study of shadow Tetsuo Kirimoto (M’91–SM’97) received the
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radars,” in Proc. PIERS’09, Aug. 2009, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 393–396. engineering from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in
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IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 187–201, Jan. 2007. From 1978 to 2003, he was with Mitsubishi
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tering in multistatic point-scatterer estimation,” IEEE Trans. Signal From 1982 to 1983, he was a Visiting Scientist at the
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[18] X. Xu, E. L. Miller, and C. M. Rappaport, “Minimum entropy regu- From 2003 to 2007, he was with the University of
larization in frequency-wavenumber migration to localize subsurface Kitakyushu as a Professor. Since 2007, he has been
objects,” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 41, no. 8, pp. with the University of Electro-Communications,
1804–1812, Aug. 2003. Tokyo, Japan, where he is a Professor at the Graduate School of Informatics
[19] Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Office of Engineering and Engineering. His current study interests include digital signal processing
and Technology (OET) Bulletin No. 65, Supplement C, Aug. 1997, p. and its application to various sensor systems.
35. Prof. Kirimoto is a member of the Institute of Electronics, Information, and
Communication Engineers (IEICE) and the Society of Instrument and Control
Shouhei Kidera (M’11) received the B.E. degree Engineering (SICE) of Japan.
in electrical and electronic engineering from Kyoto
University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2003 and M.I. and Ph.D.
degrees in informatics from Kyoto University in
2005 and 2007, respectively.
He is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate
School of Informatics and Engineering, University
of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan. His
current research interest is in advanced signal
processing for the near field radar, UWB radar.
Prof. Kidera is a member of the Institute of Elec-
tronics, Information, and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICE) and the
Institute of Electrical Engineering of Japan (IEEJ).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
High-Resolution ISAR Imaging by Exploiting
Sparse Apertures
Lei Zhang, Zhi-Jun Qiao, Member, IEEE, Meng-Dao Xing, Member, IEEE, Jian-Lian Sheng, Rui Guo, and
Zheng Bao, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Compressive sensing (CS) theory indicates that
the optimal reconstruction of an unknown sparse signal can be
achieved from limited noisy measurements by solving a spar-
sity-driven optimization problem. For inverse synthetic aperture
radar (ISAR) imagery, the scattering field of the target is usually
composed of only a limited number of strong scattering centers,
representing strong spatial sparsity. This paper derives a new
autofocus algorithm to exploit the sparse apertures (SAs) data for
ISAR imagery. A sparsity-driven optimization based on Bayesian
compressive sensing (BCS) is developed. In addition, we also
propose an approach to determine the sparsity coefficient in the
optimization by using constant-false-alarm-rate (CFAR) detec-
tion. Solving the sparsity-driven optimization with a modified
Quasi-Newton algorithm, the phase error is corrected by com-
bining a two-step phase correction approach, and well-focused
image with effective noise suppression is obtained from SA data.
Real data experiments show the validity of the proposed method.
Index Terms—Bayesian compressive sensing (BCS), compressive
sensing (CS), inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), sparse aper-
ture (SA).
I. INTRODUCTION
D UE TO the superiorities over other remote sensing tools,
such as high probability of target identification, robust
performance under all-weather circumstances, and very long
operating distance, inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) is
widely applied in many civilian and military fields [1], [2].
To realize these applications, the two-dimensional (2-D) high
resolution is usually required to characterize target features in
detail. In general, high down-range resolution depends on the
system bandwidth. To mitigate this dependence, stepped fre-
quency waveforms (SFWs) [3] are employed. High cross-range
resolution is obtained by exploiting the multiple diversities of
radar-viewing angles to the target, and then Doppler analysis
can resolve scattering centers into different Doppler bins. The
Manuscript received January 03, 2011; revised June 16, 2011; accepted July
20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was supported by the “973” Program of China under
Grant 2010CB731903. The work of Z.-J. Qiao was supported by the U. S. Army
Research Office under Grant No. W911NF-08-1-0511 and the Texas Norman
Hackerman Advanced Research Program under Grant No. 003599-0001-2009.
L. Zhang, M.-D. Xing, J.-L. Sheng, R. Guo, and Z. Bao are with the National
Key Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071,
China (e-mail: zhanglei_0330@126.com).
Z.-J. Qiao is with the Department of Mathematics, University of Texas–Pan
American, Edinburg, TX 78539-2999 USA.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173130
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
997
cross-range resolution depends on both the available CPI and
intrinsic motion characteristics of the target. As is known,
achieving high cross-range resolution usually requires a long
CPI. However, in the situation of multitargets, long observa-
tion for a single target imaging is no longer acceptable in a
modern radar system, attributed to its multiple functions, such
as searching, locating, and tracking multiple targets simultane-
ously. Since targets may locate in different channels and beams
as well as with different velocity vectors, radar system has to
switch among different line-of-sight (LOS) angles to capture
them. As a result, observation interval is assigned evenly to
each target, resulting in sparse apertures (SAs) and gaps in
the collected data. SAs would be also introduced in synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) imaging with multiply angular diversi-
ties [4], [5], where a target is illuminated by several sensors
from different angles independently and each sensor collects
only a small angular region composing a sparse aperture. In
SA-ISAR imaging, if the motion error is eliminated, a simple
way to achieve image would be to apply Fourier transform with
the missing data set to zero, bringing serious grating lobes in
the image.
To reduce the discontinuous aperture effects on ISAR
imagery, many novel approaches are ready to use. These
approaches can be sorted into three groups: 1) CLEAN
techniques [6]–[8] treat image formation from SA data as a
deconvolution procedure. They estimate and subtract the main
lobes of the strong scattering centers iteratively until reach
a convergence. CLEAN techniques are usually efficient but
sensitive to noise. 2) A number of modern spectral estimate
approaches can cope with SA data effectively. They estimate
the complex-valued amplitude and position of strong scatterers
from gapped data based on interpolation of the missing data
under certain constraints. The gapped-data amplitude and
phase estimation (GAPES) [4], [9] and its extensions [10], [11]
are representative approaches of this group. They can handle
quite general SA patterns and perform well under some noisy
circumstances. 3) Interpolation and extrapolation algorithms
can be also solve the data missing problem in some situations.
By fitting the available data into linear predication models,
the missed data can be interpolated or extrapolated from
the observed data. These methods also apply some modern
spectral estimation techniques to obtain the coefficients of the
prediction model. See some detailed approaches in [12]–[16].
The conventional approaches usually perform well in coping
with SA data in some situations. However, they are more
or less sensitive to additive noise and usually take nominal
model error into consideration, especially evitable phase errors
998 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
induced by undesired target motion. It should be emphasized
that due to the discontinuities between subapertures, current
approaches [17]–[21] are not satisfactory to be directly applied
for phase adjustment. As the complex phase errors and noise are
inevitable, conventional methods for the SA imaging encounter
inherent limitations in real applications. Therefore, the error
correction should be accounted in dealing with SA imaging to
a large extent. Another significant factor, the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) gain of the formatted image, also plays an important
role in SA imagery. In ISAR imaging, radar signal is usually
contaminated by strong noise, which is usually overcome by the
coherent accumulation processing, providing a high SNR in the
final image. It is well known that the SNR gain is proportional
to the amount of signal accumulated. In SA-ISAR imaging,
due to a large portion of data missed, the negative effect of
noise would degrade the performance of current approaches to
generate image with high SNR. Notably, the negative effects
from both motion error and strong noise should be accounted
seriously in SA-ISAR imaging.
The ISAR image demonstrates the distribution of strong
scattering centers of the target’s scattering field in the
range-Doppler (RD) plane. The dominant scattering cen-
ters take only a fraction of the whole bins in the plane. In
this sense, ISAR image represents strong spatial sparsity in
the RD domain. Exploiting such sparsity is meaningful to
achieve improved performance, such as super-resolution [22],
feature enhancement [23], SAR imaging with model error
correction [24], and simplicity of data acquirement [25]. More
importantly, recent developing theory of the compressive
sensing (CS) tells us that an unknown sparse signal is able
to be exactly recovered from a very limited number of mea-
surements with high probability by exploiting the sparsity of
signal. This is implemented by solving a -norm optimization
problem [26]–[28]. In other words, the ill-posed problem,
recovering high-dimensional signal from low-dimensional
observations, could be solved by exploiting sparsity of the
objective signal.
Following this idea, in this paper, we propose a novel al-
gorithm for SA-ISAR imaging. In this algorithm, we focus
on image formation from SA data and correction of the phase
errors induced by translational motion. The SA-ISAR imaging
and model error correction are converted into a problem of
solving a sparsity-driven optimization problem corresponding
to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate in Bayesian com-
pressive sensing (BCS) [29]. The sparsity-driven optimization
is based on the assumption that the additive noise is subject to
a zero-mean Gaussian distribution with unknown variance
and the signal components corresponding to the dominant scat-
tering centers follow a Laplace distribution with coefficient
independently. In the sparsity-driven optimization, the sparsity
coefficient is directly related to and . In order to precisely
estimate the statistic parameters from SA data, we utilize
the constant-false-alarm-rate (CFAR) detector to discriminate
signal from noise in the subaperture images approximately.
Using the pure noise and target components, both and can
be obtained via maximum likelihood (ML). In the SA-ISAR
imaging algorithm, the phase adjustment is indispensably re-
quired as model error correction, and conventional CS solvers
Fig. 1. SA geometry.
are not directly available herein. Therefore, we apply a mod-
ified Quasi-Newton algorithm for image formation jointed
with phase adjustment, which is implemented in an iterative
manner. A two-step phase adjustment is developed for coarse
correction of motion error, which can reduce the phase error in
a small level. In order to improve the efficiency of the solver,
fast Fourier transform and conjugate gradient algorithm can
be applied in its implementation. Real data experiments show
that the sparsity-driven algorithm is capable of overcoming the
grating lobes and yielding ISAR image with high SNR, even
when the observations are very limited.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we introduce
the SA-ISAR imaging algorithm and the statistic estimation of
and . In Section III, the Quasi-Newton solver is presented
in detail, together with a two-step phase adjustment for accel-
eration of the solver. In Section IV, we present results of real
data experiments to validate the proposed method, and we give
some conclusions in last section.
II. SPARSITY-DRIVEN OPTIMIZATION FOR SA-ISAR IMAGING
A. Signal Model for SA-ISAR Imaging
Considering that an ISAR system observes multiple tar-
gets simultaneously, radar illumination has to switch from
one target to another evenly, resulting in sparse apertures
for each target. At first, conventional range compression and
range alignment are applied to the SA data with some current
approaches [30]–[33], which are identical to those in the con-
ventional ISAR imagery. The range-compressed and aligned
signal is denoted by . Without loss of generality, we assume
that there are subapertures for a target consisting of a long
sparse aperture. Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the sparse aper-
ture. The full aperture should contain pulses with index from
0 to , and each pulse composes range bins. Suppose
that the th subaperture consists of pulses (whose index
is from to ). The range-compressed data set
corresponding to the th subaperture is given by (1), shown at
the bottom of the next page. Then, the SA data matrix is
..
.
(2)
..
.
We note that the SA data set has
pulses. Clearly, in an ideal ISAR data collection,
the returned signals can be regarded as a measuring patch of
the two-dimensional Fourier transform of the target scattering
field corresponding to some aspect angles. Due to the maneuver,
the phase errors from complex motion of the target should be
ZHANG et al.: HIGH-RESOLUTION ISAR IMAGING BY EXPLOITING SPARSE APERTURES 999

accounted in signal modeling. Then, the echoed signals with B. SA-ISAR Imaging via Exploiting Sparsity
phase error are rewritten in the following form:
Generally, the components of are approximated as a zero-
(3) mean complex Gaussian noise, namely, its imaginary and real
parts (denoted by and , respectively) independently follow
where is an matrix and denotes the 2-D Gaussian distributions with unknown variance . As a result,
ISAR image, whose pixel values are corresponding to scattering its probability density function is given by
center amplitudes. is the additive noise matrix with the same
size as . stands for a partial Fourier matrix in size ,
whose construction is corresponding to the SA structure. It is
given by

.. (8)
.
(4)
.. The notation for a matrix denotes
. . Therefore, we have the Gaussian likeli-
hood model of the observation, which is
where

(9)
.. .. .. .. ISAR imagery demonstrates the distribution and amplitudes
. . . .
of limited dominant centers of the target, which usually rep-
resents strong sparsity. According to Bayesian compressive
(5) sensing [29], the sparsity can be formulized by placing a
sparseness-promoting prior on . Herein, this sparseness prior
is represented by the Laplace density function.
is the partial Fourier matrix in accordance with the th sub-
aperture. In our SA-ISAR imaging, the structure of the sparse
(10)
aperture of a certain target is assumed to be obtained. In other
words, we can construct the exact partial Fourier matrix of in
advance. is an matrix and represents the phase errors where . Then, SA-ISAR im-
from pulse to pulse agery is shifted into a classical problem to estimate from
noisy observation . For this purpose, the MAP estimator is
(6) used, which is given by

where (11)

.. Using the Bayes rule, one gets

.
(7)
.. (12)
.
Clearly, (11) is also equivalent to
and
denotes the phase error vector corresponding to the th
subaperture. (13)

.. .. .. .. (1)
. . . .
1000 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Substituting (9) and (10) into (13), the MAP estimator becomes
(14)
where is the sparsity coefficient, which is directly
related to the unknown statistic of noise and target signal.
The optimization problem consists of two different terms:
The -norm preserves the data fidelity of the solution, and
the -norm imposes it to be sparse. Clearly, based on the
assumption of Gaussian and Laplace distributions, the MAP
estimator of SA-ISAR imagery is corresponding to an -norm
regularization optimization problem, which is often called basis
pursuit denoising (BPDN) [34]. BPDN is often concerned as
a well-suited estimator of sparse signal from limited measure-
ments. It also can overcome the noise interference effectively.
Clearly, different from conventional SA imaging algorithms,
the MAP estimator aims at reconstructing denoised image with
full resolution. Compared to the point-enhanced algorithm [23],
the sparsity-weighting coefficient in the optimization (14) has
an analytic expression in mathematics: It is directly associated
with the statistics of noise and target in a Bayesian sense. How-
ever, besides the unknown phase error, a significant problem of
solving (14) for SA imaging lies in the determination of . Only
when a precise value of the sparsity coefficient is given can we
reconstruct an optimal ISAR image from limited noisy SA data.
Nevertheless, if is set too large, weak scatterers together with
noise will be rejected in the reconstruction of image, and only
the dominant scattering centers are preserved. If is overly
small, then a significant part of noise elements may be left
in the image, degrading the image quality. Derived from the
MAP estimation, the sparsity coefficient is deterministic if
we have the prior information about and . In Section II-C,
we propose an approach to estimate them from subaperture
images.
C. Estimation of and
The estimation of and from SA data can be used as
prior information. Estimation of the noise variance is available
since Gaussian noise usually distributes evenly, and there exists
a large number of cells containing only noise in the RD plane.
Given enough noise samples by those pure noise bins, we can
estimate with high accuracy. Meanwhile, of the Laplace
distribution placed on can be estimated from the signal bins.
Herein, the estimation of the statistical parameters of noise and
ISAR image contains the following two steps.
Step 1) SA images are generated by conventional ISAR
imaging procedure. Noise variance is estimated by
using pure noise samples.
Step 2) Scattering centers of target are determined by CFAR
detector in the SA images. Meanwhile, the noise
bins are set to be zero, and maximum likelihood
estimation of is performed by using the denoised
SA images.
In Step 1, we first perform conventional imaging processing
to each SA data, including translational motion removal and
azimuth compression. As conventional range alignment and
phase adjustment are suitable to correction of translational
motion within the subaperture data, each self-organized sub-
aperture is ready to generate a low-resolution image with the
range-Doppler algorithm. In the SA image, the target is placed
round the zero Doppler as the Doppler shift is removed in the
translational motion compensation, which indicates that the
cells corresponding to high Doppler frequency contain noise
only. Herein, we use these bins as noise samples. As we assume
the noise follows zero-mean Gaussian distribution, the ML
estimator of is the variance of all real and imaginary parts of
noise samples (defined as ). Because there are SA images,
one usually has enough noise samples, and trends to the
exact value.
In Step 2, the first is the detection process to separate scat-
tering centers from noise in the SA images. Due to high SNR
gained from the 2-D coherent integration, strong scattering
centers are distinctive from noise in the SA images. Herein,
discriminating target bins from noise in the SA images corre-
sponds to a problem of distributed target detection under the
background of Gaussian noise. Utilizing the noise samples
from Step 1, a CFAR detector for target scatters detection
is straightforward. Then, we can use these noise samples to
develop a CFAR detector for strong scattering centers. For
an extensive study of CFAR detector, [35] and [36] can be
consulted. Then, bins with amplitudes larger than the CFAR
threshold are determined as target components, and the rest are
regarded as noise and set to be zero. After the above denoising
processing, the th SA image is defined as . The ML esti-
mator of is found by maximizing
(15)
It is equivalent to maximizing . Differentiating
with respect to produces
(16)
Setting (24) equal to zero yields the ML estimator of the th SA
image
(17)
Clearly, the ML estimator of is the the reciprocal of the mean
of all pixel values. Finally, we average the estimates of all SA
images to obtain the estimation of , which gives
(18)
By using and , the sparsity coefficient is obtained easily,
which is given by . For clarity, we give conceptual
flowchart by using the Yak-42 data in Fig. 2.
ZHANG et al.: HIGH-RESOLUTION ISAR IMAGING BY EXPLOITING SPARSE APERTURES 1001

This problem is a 2-D optimization. To make it is easy to solve.

We first convert it to one-dimensional (1-D) problems. The op-
timization (20) can be rewritten as

(21)

Fig. 2. Statistic estimation from SA image.

where and denote the SA signal
of the th range cell and the th column of the high resolu-
Generally, as we use the target samples from subaperture im-
tion 2-D image, respectively. Due to the independence between
ages to estimate the statistics of the full aperture image, some
the range cells, solving the 2-D optimization (20) is equivalent
estimation error is inevitable. However, in real applications, we
to figure out the following 1-D optimization for all range cells
find performs well in different situations, although it usually
separately. For the reconstruction of the th column of , we
trends to be excessively large. A drawback of the estimator for
have the following optimization:
lies in the need of a considerable amount of pulses in a subaper-
ture, which may limit its usage in some special cases, such as
very short SA and random sampled SA patterns. In these cases,
the high SNR gain by the 2-D coherent integration may not be
achievable, and thus signal components are submerged by the (22)
strong noise, which will be studied in our future work. Hence, the conjugate gradient function of
with respect to is cal-
III. MODIFIED QUASI-NEWTON SOLVER FOR SA-ISAR culated through
IMAGING
A. Modified Quasi-Newton Solver for Image Formation and
Phase Adjustment
(23)
Clearly, formation of the full-aperture resolution image by SA
data is an ill-posed problem. Due to the data missing among the where the Hessian matrix is approximately given by
subapertures, the pulse amount is much less than that of
Doppler bins of the high-resolution image. According to
the theory of the compressive sensing, SA-ISAR imagery is pos-
sible by solving the -norm optimization problem in (13), and (24)
it is also widely accepted that the problem is equivalent to the
-norm constraint optimization in compressive sensing [37], and
for which many efficient solvers are available [38]–[40]. Never-
theless, these methods are not directly applicable to (13) due to
the phase errors induced by unexpected target motion. In this
section, we present a modified Quasi-Newton solver for ISAR
imaging from SA data, joint with correction of phase error from (25)
translational motion. At first, in order to overcome the nondif-
ferentiability of the -norm around the origin in (13), a useful Because the Hessian approximation relies on the objective ,
approximation [23], [41], [42] is employed by an iterative solver to (22) is presented through the following
formula:
(19)
(26)
where stands for the modulus operator, and is a small
nonnegative parameter. Clearly, to ensure the approximation as where and are the estimators of and in the
rigid as possible, should be set small. Thus, the MAP estimator th iteration, respectively. To accelerate the update, conjugate
of the image in (13) can be reformatted as gradient algorithm (CGA) can be applied to avoid the matrix
inverse calculation. In the case of no prior information about
the phase error, starting from the initial value and
, then we have the estimator of the phase error
in the th iteration (denoted by )
(20)
(27)
1002 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Here, the updating exponential term of the phase error is given
by
(28)
and
(29)
In the sparstiy-driven SA-ISAR algorithm, we consider the
phase error among the pulses. The phase error is corrected
during the image formation in an iterative manner. It should be
noted that there are no constraints on concrete form of phase
errors in the solver, and even when the phase errors vary ran-
domly from pulse to pulse, it is capable of achieving high quality
SA-ISAR images. The computational load of the Quasi-Newton
solver is a significant to its real applications. We note that major
computational load of in each update sources from the matrix
inversion calculation of in (24), which is implemented
by CGA. However, due to the iterative property of CGA, its
efficiency may be slow as one need to perform the calculation
of the linear equation many
times. Its major computational load lies in the multiplication of
in . As the term corresponds
to the partial Fourier matrix, allowing us to use fast Fourier
transform (FFT) to implement ( denotes an -dimen-
sional vector) efficiently: We perform the inverse FFT to and
obtain , then set the components corresponding to the vacant
apertures to zero and followed FFT. For simplicity, only the
multiple operations are accounted. Therefore, taking only the
multiple operations into account, can be implemented
with only flops corresponding to two FFTs. For
the number of the CGA iterations to solve (26) being
case, the computational cost of CGA is about
flops. Assuming there are times of iterations in the
Quasi-Newton solver, the computational cost by using FFT is
flops approximately.
B. Efficiency Improvement by Combining Conventional Phase
Adjustment
The major problem of the Quasi-Newton solver in dealing
with severe phase errors lies in its low efficiency. From the
viewpoint of optimization, appropriate initialization of and
is essential to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the
Quasi-Newton solver. Precise initialization can dramatically re-
duce the iteration number to achieve a satisfactory solution to
the optimization problem. However, precise prior information
of and is usually not achievable. Herein, the initialization
of is achieved by setting the vacant apertures to zero and ap-
plying FFT. Preprocessing of motion compensation should be
carried out to suppress the phase errors as much as possible,
which would put much less burden on the Quasi-Newton solver
and enhance its convergence with much less iterations. Due to
the data discontinuity, phase adjustment for the SA data is quite
different from the conventional ISAR scenarios. Herein, we pro-
pose two-step preprocessing for phase error reduction.
In the first step, we utilize the Doppler tracking technique.
Without assumption of even and full aperture, the Doppler
tracking technique still works by multiple prominent points
processing (PPP) [2]. The basic idea of the multiple PPP
algorithm is to track the phase history of one or more isolated
point-scatters in aligned range profiles in order to extract
phase errors. The main challenge in applying the multiple
PPP algorithm is the selection of the point-like prominent
scatterers, which should be well isolated in their respective
range cells. It is easily found that this method performs well in
artificial targets with dominant scatters, for instance, airplanes,
missiles and ships, etc. The PPP procedure includes three steps:
1) searching for one or several reference range cells by using
some criteria like minimum variance; 2) taking conjugate phase
at the reference range cells and combining them together by
weighting; and 3) making phase correction for all range cells
by the conjugate phase. However, in the presence of strong
noise or absence of prominent points, the precision of the
Doppler tracking may degrade. Therefore, Doppler tracking by
the multiple PPP serves as a coarse step.
In the second step, we perform conventional phase ad-
justment to each subaperture to suppress phase errors within
subaperture effectively. Note that each subaperture has a
self-organized structure where the pulses are distributed con-
tinuously and evenly. Therefore, we can apply precise phase
adjustment to eliminate the residual phase errors for each sub-
aperture. Many phase adjustment algorithms could be applied
to implement this step, such as the weighted least-squares
phase estimation (WLSPE) [18] and the time-frequency trans-
form-based auto-focusing [19]. This step can be regarded as
a fine step for the phase error correction. Nevertheless, phase
correction is performed on each subaperture independently,
and thus phase errors within a subaperture can be eliminated to
a nominal level. WLSPE is robust to noise, and as it directly
extracts phase error rather than phase gradient, there is no
significant additional linear phase in each SA data. In real
application, we always apply it to implement the fine correc-
tion. However, residual phase errors still exist among different
subapertures. By two-step preprocessing for phase adjustment,
the majority of phase errors are removed, and only a fraction
of them are left for the sparsity-driven algorithm, improving its
efficiency dramatically. Considering the phase error difference
within a subaperture is removed in the second step, for the th
subaperture, we have
(30)
In the phase error estimations (27) and (28) of the sparsity-
driven SA-ISAR imaging, we may reformat the update of phase
error for the th subaperture in a simpler way
(31)
ZHANG et al.: HIGH-RESOLUTION ISAR IMAGING BY EXPLOITING SPARSE APERTURES
Fig. 3. Flowchart of the SA-ISAR imaging.
Here, the updating exponential term of the phase error is refor-
matted as
(32)
and
(33)
where denotes the operator to sum up all the matrix
elements; is the conjugate operator, and represents
Hadamard multiplication. The convergence for the iteration is
straightforward. Let increase, then we may repeat the itera-
tive procedure in the optimization problem until we have
(34)
where the constant is chosen as small as the predetermined
threshold. Additionally, we can terminate the iteration, when
exceeds a predetermined number. Due to the two-step phase ad-
justment, the residual phase error is small. Therefore, an optimal
solution can be obtained by the Quasi-Newton algorithm with
only several iterations. For example, in the following experi-
ments, only five iterations are used for the SA with a quarter of
pulses missing. To make it clear, a flowchart for the SA-ISAR
imaging is given in Fig. 3.
IV. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS WITH EXPERIMENTS
In this section, real ground-based measurements are used to
generate synthetic data for carrying out a performance analysis
of the SA-ISAR imaging by the sparsity-driven optimization.
Accounting for the special cases of the ISAR imaging with noisy
SA measurements, the performance analysis is carried out by
considering two aspects: the phase error and the sparse aperture
pattern. The experiments here are vital to validate the effective-
ness of our approach.
1003
Fig. 4. Aligned range profiles.
Fig. 5. RD image after auto-focusing.
A. Data Set and Experimental Conditions
In our algorithm for the SA-ISAR imaging, the sparsity of the
target scattering field is exploited to overcome the model error
and form a well-focused image. We believe that the inherent
sparsity of a real ISAR target is difficult to be represented by
simple simulated data. To make it convincing, we utilize the
real measured ISAR data to perform different experiments. A
data set of Yak-42 airplane is recorded by a C-band (5.52 GHz)
ISAR experimental system. The system transmits 400-MHz
linear modulated chirp signal with 25.6- s pulse width, pro-
viding a range resolution of 0.375 m. The received signal is
dechirped and I/Q sampled for range compression. We notice
that since tracking errors are involved in the reference distances
for the dechirping on receiving, random initial phase is intro-
duced for each pulse. Range alignment and phase adjustment
are required before we perform azimuth compression to the
full-aperture data. The pulse repetition frequency is 400 Hz
without undersampling. The data set consists of 1024 pulses.
Conventional range alignment is applied to the data set elim-
inating the MTRC. The aligned profiles are shown in Fig. 4.
From the aligned profiles, we know that several prominent
scattering centers are available. For comparison, we apply the
WLSPE to the data set and then generate the RD image shown
in Fig. 5. The generated image is well focused, which can be
used as a standard image for evaluating experimental results
from sparse apertures. The estimated phase errors from a full
1004 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. Full aperture phase errors with WLSPE.
aperture are shown in Fig. 6, from which we note that due to the
complex motion and dechirping on receiving, the phase errors
are in a random pattern. In the following SA-ISAR imaging
experiments, these phase errors are overcome by the two-step
phase correction and the sparsity-driven imaging algorithm
jointly. Phase error estimation in Fig. 6 is utilized as the crite-
rion to evaluate the precision of the SA phase adjustment.
To provide a quantitative evaluation for the following
SA-ISAR imaging experiment, we consider two metrics.
The first evaluation metric could be the target-to-background
ratio (TBR). By applying an adaptive threshold on the full-reso-
lution image in Fig. 5 to separate the target and the background
regions and then counting the target energy (within the target
region) and noise energy of the reconstructed image, the TBR
is given by
(35)
where and are the predetermined target and background
region shown in Fig. 7. It can also measure the target energy
preservation with the help of the target region. Herein, we use
the signal energy within the target region as the other metric,
which is given by
(36)
In the following SA imaging experiment, both TBR and SE
are utilized as the quantitative metric to evaluate the SA image
quality.
B. SA-ISAR Imagery Comparison With GAPES
In this section, we simulate the SA data of one target col-
lected by a radar system observing multiple targets. In this sce-
nario, the data amount corresponding to one target decreases
along with the increase of the target amount. In the following
experiment, we extract echoes from the complete aperture data
Fig. 7. Target region.
TABLE I
ESTIMATED AND IDEAL IN SA1 PATTERN
set of Yak-42 plane as SA samples for simulation. The SAs with
512, 256, and 128 pulses are regarded as Case 1, 2, and 3 re-
spectively. To test the robustness of the approach, we add com-
plex-valued Gaussian noise into the SA data sets to generate
different SNRs (20, 10, and 5 dB). Herein, the SNR is defined
as the energy ratio between the original data set and the added
noise. In our experiments, we consider that the pulse amount
within a subaperture is 128. Collecting 128 pulses is achieved
within a very short observation for a conventional ISAR system
(0.32 s), which should not conflict with other radar activities
including tracking and locating for multiple targets. In all ex-
periments, the SA-ISAR imaging procedure in Fig. 3 is ap-
plied. The weights in the optimizations are estimated with
the CFAR-based approach, and the CFAR is set to . For
the purpose of comparison, we also provide the ideal sparsity
coefficients calculated by using the ideal ML-estimated from
the image in Fig. 5 and the real noise variances under different
SNRs. The estimated sparsity coefficients and the ideal ones are
all listed in Table I. Clearly, there is some difference between the
estimated and ideal sparsity coefficients; one can note that the
difference within a single SA are very small. By using the esti-
mated sparsity coefficients, optimizations under different SNRs
and SA cases are developed.
For all cases above, we first exploit the two-step phase ad-
justment to reduce the phase error. However, by comparing the
results to those via WLSPE in Fig. 6, there still exist residual
phase errors, as plotted in red in Fig. 8. Note that we only show
the outcomes of Cases 1 and 2 since the results of Case 3 are
identical to those in the first SA of the other two cases corre-
spondingly. Although the residual phase errors are small within
a single SA, among different SAs they vary in a large range al-
most one radian difference. The proposed sparsity-driven algo-
rithm with (32) is expected to correct the rest phase difference
ZHANG et al.: HIGH-RESOLUTION ISAR IMAGING BY EXPLOITING SPARSE APERTURES
Fig. 8. Phase adjustment evaluation.
Fig. 9. Results with the proposed approach.
between SAs. The residual phase errors via sparsity-driven cor-
rection with 20 iterations are plotted in blue in Fig. 8. It is ex-
plicit to see that since the constant difference between different
SAs is removed effectively via sparsity-driven correction, the
residual phase errors are at the same level. Therefore, the phase
difference becomes nominal which promises good performance
of imaging.
Fig. 9 shows the SA imaging results by using the proposed
approach under different SNRs. The first column of Fig. 9 gives
the sparse aperture patterns with different SA numbers (4, 2, and
1). Different rows in Fig. 9 correspond to imaging results with
different cases. The second, third, and right columns give the
1005
imaging results under 20, 10, and 5 dB, respectively.
One notes that, in all cases, well-focused images are achieved,
which validates the effectiveness of our algorithm. For compar-
ison, we also use the GAPES to process SA data under the same
conditions. It should be emphasized that, as GAPES requires
no phase error within the SA data, the phase error is precor-
rected before we extract SAs from original data in Fig. 6. The
image results obtained by GAPES are given in Fig. 10. For both
SA approaches, the decrease of measurements amount yields
some noise increase in the reconstructed image, as we can see
from Figs. 9 and 10. However, the sparsity-driven SA-ISAR
imaging generally removes major noise producing image with
1006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 10. Results with GAPES.

TABLE II V. CONCLUSION
TBR OF IMAGES (dB)
In this paper, we present a sparsity-driven algorithm to
generate high-resolution ISAR images with sparse apertures,
in which SA-ISAR imaging problem is converted into a spar-
sity-constrained optimization based on Bayesian compressive
sensing. By using conventional Doppler tracking and autofocus,
a two-step preprocessing for phase adjustment is developed to
improve the efficiency and precision of the sparsity-constrained
SA-ISAR imaging effectively. Real data experiments and the
TABLE III results manifest the effectiveness of the proposed approach in
SE OF IMAGES (dB) different conditions. For the issue of SA-ISAR imaging, there
are still some open problems. For example, the SA imaging for
maneuvering targets may be much involved, and distributed
ISAR can also generate SA data with very short CPI [43], but
the synchronization is a significant problem. They remain to be
carried out in the future work.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable
comments to improve the paper quality.
much higher TBRs than GAPES as one can note from Table II.
High TBR indicates that the sparsity-driven method has promi-
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Lei Zhang was born in China in 1984. He received
the B.S. degree in mechanism and electrical engi-
neering from Chang’an University, Xi’an, China, in
2006, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in
signal processing at the National Key Laboratory of
Radar Signal Processing, Xidian University, Xi’an,
China.
His major research interest is radar imaging (SAR/
ISAR).
Zhijun Qiao (M’10) received the Ph.D. degree in
applied math from the Institute of Mathematics,
Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1997, wherein
his dissertation was one of the first 100 excellent
Ph.D. dissertations awarded in 1999.
From 1999 to 2001, he was a Humboldt Research
Fellow with the Department of Mathematics and
Computer Science, University of Kassel, Kassel,
Germany. From 2001 to 2004, he was a Researcher
with the Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM. He was also a Pro-
fessor with the Department of Mathematics, Liaoning University, Shenyang
City, China, since 1997. Currently, he is the PI of two grants under the Depart-
ment of Defense program and the Norman Hackerman Advanced Research
Program. He is currently with the Department of Mathematics, The University
of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the
Pacific Journal of Applied Mathematics. He has published two monographs
and more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed international journals. His research
interests include nonlinear partial differential equations and its application in
radar imaging.
1008 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Mengdao Xing (M’04) was born in China in 1975.
He received the Bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees in
electrical engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an,
China, in 1997 and 2002, respectively.
He is currently a Full Professor with the National
Key Laboratory for Radar Signal Processing, Xidian
University. His research interests include SAR,
ISAR, and over-the-horizon radar (OTHR).
Rui Guo was born in China in 1985. She received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Xidian
University, Xi’an, China, in 2007, and is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree in signal processing at the
National Laboratory for Radar Signal Processing, Xi-
dian University.
Her major research interests are radar imaging and
image processing, especially polarimetric synthetic
aperture radar.

Jialian Sheng was born in China in 1987. She Zheng Bao (M’80–SM’90) was born in Jiangsu,
received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering China. He received the Bachelor’s degree in radar
from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2010, and engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an, China,
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in signal in 1953.
processing at the National Laboratory for Radar He is currently a Professor with Xidian University
Signal Processing, Xidian University. and the Chairman of the Academic Board of the Na-
Her major research interests are radar signal pro- tional Key Laboratory of Radar Signal Processing.
cessing and radar imaging. He has authored or coauthored six books and pub-
lished over 300 papers. Currently, his research fields
include space-time adaptive processing (STAP),
radar imaging (SAR/ISAR), automatic target recog-
nition (ATR) and over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) signal processing.
Prof. Bao is a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Nondestructive Material Characterization
of a Free-Space-Backed Magnetic Material
Using a Dual-Waveguide Probe
Milo W. Hyde, IV, Member, IEEE, Michael J. Havrilla, Senior Member, IEEE, Andrew E. Bogle, Member, IEEE,
and Edward J. Rothwell, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—A free-space-backed dual-waveguide probe measure-
ment technique is introduced to determine nondestructively the
complex permittivity and permeability of an unknown material.
The purpose of this new measurement technique is to complement
the existing PEC-backed dual-waveguide probe material-charac-
terization method. Provided in this paper is the theoretical devel-
opment of the new technique and its experimental validation. It is
shown, by applying Love’s equivalence theorem, that a system of
coupled magnetic field integral equations can be formulated and
subsequently solved for the dominant mode reflection and trans-
mission coefficients using the method of moments. Also included
in the theoretical development of the new technique is a deriva-
tion of the dyadic Green’s function for a magnetic-current-excited
two-medium grounded-slab environment. Last, experimental com-
plex permittivity and permeability parameters extracted for two
magnetic-shielding materials are presented and analyzed to vali-
date the new technique.
Index Terms—Green’s function, integral equations, microwave
measurements, moment methods, open-ended, parallel-plate
waveguides, permeability measurement, permittivity measure-
ment, waveguides.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE properties of waveguide probes, whether they be rect-
T angular, circular, or coaxial guides, have been the subject
of significant research over the past several decades [1]–[7].
Published applications of waveguide probes include nonde-
structive evaluation/nondestructive inspection (NDE/NDI)
characterization of solids and liquids [8]–[21], surface and
subsurface crack detection and characterization [22]–[26], and
in vivo characterization of biological tissues [27], [28]. The vast
majority of the published literature regarding waveguide probes
describes single-probe techniques. While very well suited
to characterize dielectric media, i.e., determine permittivity
, single-probe characterization techniques suffer when one
Manuscript received January 24, 2011; manuscript revised June 03, 2011;
accepted August 22, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current
version February 03, 2012. The views expressed in this paper are those of the
authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force,
the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
M. Hyde, M. Havrilla, and A. E. Bogle are with the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson
AFB, OH 45433 USA (e-mail: milo.hyde@afit.edu).
E. J. Rothwell is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824 USA.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173136
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1009
wants to fully characterize a material with both magnetic and
electric properties (i.e., determine permeability as well as
). A few techniques—most notably the two-thickness method
[21], [29]–[31], two-layer method [17], [18], [20], [31], [32],
frequency-varying method [31], [33], and the short/free-space
method [17], [18], [20]—have been published to address
this single-probe shortfall. Unfortunately, these techniques
are not always applicable and, in some circumstances, are
numerically unstable [32]. A better approach would be to
use a material-characterization apparatus which permits both
the reflection and transmission coefficients to be
simultaneously measured. Since and are independent
over all frequencies, the and of the material under test
(MUT) can be determined unambiguously at every data point.
Currently, two such measurement geometries exist, namely,
the flanged-waveguide measurement geometry (utilizing a
rectangular waveguide [34] or utilizing a coaxial waveguide
[35]) and the dual-waveguide probe (DWP) geometry [36] (the
focus of this paper).
The DWP measurement geometry, as introduced in [36], is
shown in Fig. 1(a). The structure consists of two rectangular
waveguides attached to an infinite PEC flange. The MUT is as-
sumed to be PEC backed. The authors derive theoretical expres-
sions for and by replacing the waveguide apertures
with equivalent magnetic currents in accordance with Love’s
equivalence principle. By enforcing the continuity of the trans-
verse magnetic field at the waveguide apertures, a system of cou-
pled magnetic field integral equations is derived, which when
solved via the method of moments, yields and . The
and of the MUT are then found via numerical inversion
of and using the Newton–Raphson method or non-
linear least squares. It is found via measurement that using the
DWP provides very accurate values of due to a strong in-
terrogating magnetic field, but difficulty arises in determining
. The -measurement sensitivity is attributed to the fact that
since the MUT is typically electrically thin and the predom-
inately transverse electric field in the MUT/parallel-plate re-
gion of the DWP is forced to zero at the PEC waveguide walls,
only a small interrogating electric field exists in the MUT/par-
allel-plate region to measure permittivity [36].
In this paper, the structure in Fig. 1(b) is proposed to address
the DWP -measurement sensitivity referenced above. This
structure is very similar to the DWP geometry depicted in
Fig. 1(a); however, in this approach, the MUT is assumed
1010 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

A. Electric and Magnetic Field Distributions

The first step in deriving expressions relating and
to and is to find expressions for the transverse electric and
magnetic fields in the waveguide and MUT regions of Fig. 1(b).
The transverse fields in the waveguide regions of Fig. 1(b) can
be expressed as a summation of and rectangular
waveguide modes [40]:

(2)

Fig. 1. (a) PEC-backed DWP measurement geometry as analyzed in [36]. (b) for probe 1, and
Free-space-backed (FS-backed) DWP measurement geometry analyzed in this
paper.

to be free-space (FS) backed. This change permits a larger

(3)
interrogating electric field to penetrate the MUT region and
thus, it is hypothesized, provides a more accurate measure-
ment. In the section to follow, the theoretical expressions for for probe 2. Here is assumed and suppressed. In (2)
and are derived (Section II). This is done in the and (3), , , , and are the transverse electric and
same manner as outlined in the previous paragraph. However, transverse magnetic field distributions (see Appendix); ,
the Green’s function for the geometry depicted in Fig. 1(b) , , and are the transverse electric and transverse
(termed a two-medium grounded-slab geometry hereafter), magnetic reflection and transmission coefficients (
does not exist in the literature and is, in general, of a much and ); and is the -di-
more complicated mathematical form. It is for these reasons rected propagation constant. Note that because of the symmetry
that the derivation of the dyadic Green’s function for a mag- of the incident field and of the measurement apparatus,
netic-current-excited two-medium grounded-slab geometry is only and modes of odd index are excited [36].
also included (Section III). Last, measurements found using Of these, only higher order modes of the form are
the new free-space-backed (FS-backed) geometry for two mag- significant [36], [41]. The effects of probe alignment, flange-
netic-shielding materials are presented and compared to both thickness, and MUT-thickness uncertainties on extracted and
a traditional destructive material-characterization technique values were investigated in [36]. For brevity, this analysis is
(namely, the Nicolson Ross Weir technique (NRW) [37], [38]) not repeated here.
and the original PEC-backed technique introduced in [36] The transverse magnetic field in the MUT region of Fig. 1(b)
(Section IV). is found by replacing the waveguide apertures with equivalent
magnetic currents, and , in accordance with Love’s
II. METHODOLOGY equivalence principle [40], [42]. The transverse magnetic field
The purpose of this section is to theoretically analyze the is related to and via the electric vector potential , de-
measurement structure depicted in Fig. 1(b). This entails finding fined as
theoretical expressions for the reflection and transmission
coefficients, which are functions of frequency , the MUT
thickness , , and . In most material-characterization prob-
lems (including the one presented in this paper), it is not possible
to find closed-form mathematical expressions for and in (4)
terms of and (a notable exception is the NRW method).
Thus, it becomes necessary to numerically invert and
by the expression
to find and . This is equivalent to solving
(5)

(1) In (4), ; ; as de-

fined by and as defined by
where is a specified tolerance, using, for instance, the are the waveguide-aperture
Newton–Raphson method [39]. If, as is commonly done to cross-sectional areas over which and are distributed;
mitigate measurement noise, the reverse reflection and and is the dyadic Green’s function for a magnetic-current
transmission coefficients are included in the system of excited two-medium grounded slab
equations (thereby making the system overdetermined), non-
linear least squares can then be used [39]. (6)
HYDE et al.: NONDESTRUCTIVE MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A FREE-SPACE-BACKED MAGNETIC MATERIAL 1011

See Section III for the derivation of .

B. Coupled Magnetic Field Integral Equations

With the expressions for the transverse fields in the waveguide

M
and MUT regions of Fig. 1(b) determined, a system of coupled Fig. 2. Magnetic-current-excited two-medium grounded-slab geometry. The
magnetic field integral equations (MFIEs) can be derived by en- induced magnetic current is confined to medium 1. Medium 2 is unbounded,
forcing the continuity of the transverse magnetic fields at the =
starting at z h and extending to infinity.

waveguide apertures, namely,

(7)
where is given in (5). The unknowns in the above system
are the equivalent magnetic currents, and , as well as
the modal reflection and transmission coefficients, , ,
, and .
C. Method of Moments Solution
The method of moments (MoM) [42], [43] is used to solve
(7). To ensure fast convergence in the MoM, basis functions
should be chosen which closely resemble the physical distribu-
tion of the currents they are representing. In the case of equiva-
lent magnetic currents
(8)
where is the unit normal vector pointing into the MUT
region. Because of (8), the transverse electric field distributions
given in (2) and (3) are chosen as expansion functions for
and , respectively.
Substitution of (2) and (3) into (7) and subsequent simplifica-
tion yields a system of functional equations. To produce
a nonsingular system of linear equations, testing functions must
be chosen and applied to (7). The testing functions chosen and
applied here are the transverse magnetic field distributions , where
(23) and (24), given in the Appendix. These field distributions
are utilized as testing functions because of the computational
simplicity provided by waveguide-mode orthogonality.
Applying via the inner product and simplifying produces
a matrix equation of the form where
is the MoM, or impedance matrix; is the vector containing
, , , and (i.e., the desired modal reflection
and transmission coefficients); and is a vector containing the
contribution from the incident field.
The MoM matrix takes the form
of this physical meaning, the and submatrices are
equal due to the symmetry of the DWP, while the and
submatrices are equal due to reciprocity. The individual matrix
elements describe how a source mode (specified by the second
set of subscript indices) couples into an observation mode
(specified by the first set of subscript indices). For instance, the
element is physically interpreted as how the -source
mode located at probe 1 couples into the 10-mode observed at
probe 2.
III. DYADIC GREEN’S FUNCTION FOR A
MAGNETIC-CURRENT-EXCITED TWO-MEDIUM
GROUNDED SLAB
In this section, the dyadic Green’s function for a magnetic-
current-excited two-medium grounded-slab environment is de-
rived. Recall that it is needed to compute the transverse magnetic
field which exists in the MUT region of Fig. 1(b). The geom-
etry for this Green’s function derivation is shown in Fig. 2. The
figure depicts a PEC grounded-slab waveguide filled with two
homogeneous, isotropic media excited by an impressed mag-
netic current confined to medium 1. To find the Green’s func-
tion for such a geometry, the solutions to the following forced
and unforced Helmholtz wave equations, subject to boundary
conditions at the interfaces, must be found:
(10)
. Physically, the particular, or forced
solution represents the principle wave emanating from the
magnetic source in unbounded space. The homogeneous, or un-
forced solution represents the waves scattered from the
boundaries at and in the absence of the source.
It is for this reason that only the unforced solution is needed
to model behavior in medium 2, while both the forced and un-
forced solutions are needed to model behavior in medium 1:
(11)

.. .. .. .. .. .. The geometry depicted in Fig. 2 is invariant along the and

. . . . . . directions, thus prompting transformation of those variables
..
. using the two-dimensional Fourier transform

.. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . .

(9)
where the submatrices of the form describe how a source (12)
located at probe affects the field observed at probe . Because
1012 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

where . Applying the above Fourier transform to

(10) produces

(13)

where and is the -directed

spectral-domain wavenumber. The spectral-domain solutions to
the differential equations in (13) are readily found to be

(14)
where are the unknown positive - and negative -directed
complex wave amplitudes, respectively. Substituting (14) into
the spectral representations of (11) yields
Fig. 3. Photograph of the DWP measurement apparatus including specially ma-
chined line and short calibration standards.
(18)
for an observer in medium 1 and

(15)

where the various functional dependencies have been omitted

for notational convenience. Note that as a consequence of the
root choice of and the Sommerfeld radiation condition [42],
only a positive -directed wave exists in medium 2. This is phys-
ically expected since medium 2 is unbounded.
To find the unknown complex wave amplitudes, boundary
conditions must be applied to (15). The boundary condition at
the PEC plane is . In terms of the electric vector
potential, the boundary condition is
(16)
The remaining boundary conditions at the material interface are
and . In terms of the
vector potential, the material interface boundary conditions are
(17)
(19)
for an observer in medium 2. Here
(20)
The spectral-domain dyadic Green’s function given above
can be transformed to the spatial domain using the inverse
Fourier transform relationship given in (12). However, it is
computationally advantageous to perform the integration in (4)
using the spectral-domain representation. The evaluation of six
integrals—two basis function integrals, two testing function
integrals, and two inverse Fourier transform integrals—is re-
quired to evaluate (4) using the spectral-domain representation.
The four spatial integrals can be computed in closed form and
the two inverse Fourier transform integrals, which have even
and rapidly converging integrands, are readily calculated using
numerical quadrature.

where . IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

Applying (16) and (17) to (15) and simplifying yields the
spectral dyadic Green’s function
A. Apparatus Description and Experimental Procedure
Material measurements at X-band (8.2 to 12.4 GHz) of EC-
COSORB® FGM-125 (a lossy silicon-based magnetic-shielding
material approximately 3.175 mm thick) and ECCOSORB®
FGM-40 (1.016 mm thick) [44] were made using an Agilent
Technologies E8362B vector network analyzer [45]. The DWP,
shown in Fig. 3, consists of two precision X-band rectangular
HYDE et al.: NONDESTRUCTIVE MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A FREE-SPACE-BACKED MAGNETIC MATERIAL
Fig. 4. (a) Complex permittivity " results for FGM-125 using the PEC-backed (circle traces) and FS-backed (square traces) DWP measurement geometries (1,
5, and 10 modes traces are included). (b) Complex permeability  results for FGM-125 using the PEC-backed (circle traces) and FS-backed (square traces) DWP
measurement geometries (1, 5, and 10 modes traces are included).
waveguides connected with screws to a 30.48 cm 30.48
cm 9.779 mm aluminum flange plate. To ensure sufficient
coupling when measuring lossy materials, the rectangular
waveguides are machined so that only a 3.810 mm spacing
exists between their apertures. Prior to attaching the flange plate
to the rectangular waveguides and making material character-
ization measurements, the apparatus is first calibrated using
the thru, reflect, line calibration method (TRL) [46] utilizing
the specially machined line and short standards depicted in
Fig. 3. The TRL calibration places the forward and reverse
phase-reference (calibration) planes at the probe 1 and probe
2 rectangular waveguide apertures. The flange plate is then at-
tached to the rectangular waveguides using precision alignment
pins. To shift the rectangular waveguide TRL calibration planes
to the flange/MUT interface, a short calibration measurement
(measurement made using the DWP pressed against a PEC
plate) and an “empty” calibration measurement (measurement
made using the DWP of a column of air approximately 9.703
mm thick) are made. For the empty calibration measurement,
the measured -parameters are time gated to remove the un-
wanted reflections from the flange-plate edges. The measured
-parameters of the MUT are also time gated to remove any
possible flange-edge reflections. More detail on this -param-
eter time-gating technique can be found in [47]–[51]. The
and of the MUT are found by solving
(21)
1013
with via the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm [39].
Note that due to the symmetry of the
measurement geometry and due to
reciprocity.
B. ECCOSORB® FGM-125 Results
Fig. 4 shows the complex permittivity [Fig. 4(a)] and
permeability [Fig. 4(b)] for FGM-125 extracted using the
PEC-backed (circle traces) and FS-backed (square traces)
DWP measurement geometries. The material-characterization
results are further segregated into 1, 5, and 10 higher-order
modes traces. To serve as a reference, the permittivity and
permeability for FGM-125 found using the NRW technique
are also included. Table I shows the root-mean-square errors
for the PEC-backed and FS-backed DWP and results
assuming the NRW results are the true FGM-125 permittivity
and permeability values. The results depicted in the figures
as well as those in the table show that significantly worse
permittivity and permeability values are obtained using the
FS-backed DWP geometry compared to those obtained using
the PEC-backed DWP geometry. The poorer performance of the
FS-backed DWP in measuring permeability is expected since
the FS-backed geometry does not permit a large interrogating
magnetic field into the MUT region to effectively determine
. Note that this -measurement difficulty is the complement
of the PEC-backed DWP -measurement difficulty discussed
in Section I. The poorer performance of the FS-backed DWP in
measuring permittivity is rather unexpected since the geometry
of the measurement implies that a strong interrogating electric
field should exist in the MUT region to effectively determine .
The only positive aspect of the FS-backed results, compared
to the PEC-backed results, is that the dielectric loss remains
1014 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 5. (a) Magnitudes of the measured and theoretical (calculated using the NRW FGM-125 " and  results) forward S -parameters for FGM-125 using the
FS-backed DWP measurement geometry. (b) Magnitudes of the measured and theoretical (calculated using the NRW " and  results) forward S -parameters for
FGM-125 using the PEC-backed DWP measurement geometry. The magnitude of the short calibration forward transmission measurement S is also
included.

TABLE I
PEC-BACKED AND FS-BACKED DWP ROOT-MEAN-SQUARE ERRORS
physically realizable (although significantly over predicted),
i.e., , for the entire frequency range.
The reason for the rather poor performance of the FS-backed
DWP measurement geometry in measuring (as well as ) is
depicted in Fig. 5. The figure shows the magnitudes of the mea-
sured and theoretical forward -parameters (calculated using
the NRW FGM-125 and values) for both the FS-backed
and PEC-backed DWP measurement geometries. Note that the
reverse -parameters are not shown so as to not clutter the plots.
Recall that and . Also in-
cluded on the figures is the magnitude of the short calibration
forward transmission measurement . Theoretically,
no energy should be transmitted from probe 1 to probe 2 when
making this measurement; therefore, this quantity should be
zero. When actually measured, however, be-
cause of measurement error/noise sources, such as small air gaps
which exist between the flange plate and the MUT. Note that
during data collects, weight (approximately 18 kg) is applied
to the top of the aluminum flange near where the rectangular
waveguides attach to the plate in order to minimize these gaps.
Thus, is a good indicator of the effective “noise”
floor of the measurement apparatus. Note that in Fig. 5(a), the
magnitude of the forward transmission coefficient is on the order
of for a majority of the frequency range, whereas
in Fig. 5(b) the magnitude of the transmission coefficient is sev-
eral times larger than . This physically implies that
stronger coupling into the surface-wave-mode spectrum occurs
for the PEC-backed DWP than for the FS-backed DWP (when
measuring a material like FGM-125). Little energy couples be-
tween probe 1 and probe 2 meaning that the FS-backed DWP
behaves very similarly to a FS-backed single-waveguide probe,
in this context. Based on this analysis, the FS-backed DWP
transmission measurements for FGM-125 are practically use-
less being on the order of the measurement error/noise of the
apparatus. Thus, one should expect that the and values re-
turned using the FS-backed DWP measured -parameters will
be inaccurate and unstable (with much greater variation than
the PEC-backed DWP results). This is precisely the behavior
depicted in Fig. 4. Before progressing to other experimental re-
sults and analysis, it should be stated that the and exper-
imental results presented in this section are not without prece-
dent. Historically, researchers have had difficulty obtaining ac-
curate permittivity and permeability results using nondestruc-
tive techniques like the one presented in this paper with dielec-
tric loss, , being the most error prone measurement (as is
the case here) [18], [20], [29], [31], [33].
C. ECCOSORB® FGM-40 Results
While the FGM-125 results of the FS-backed DWP are dis-
couraging, measurements of a different magnetic-shielding ma-
HYDE et al.: NONDESTRUCTIVE MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A FREE-SPACE-BACKED MAGNETIC MATERIAL 1015

Fig. 6. (a) Complex permittivity " results for FGM-40 using the FS-backed DWP measurement geometry (1, 5, and 10 modes traces are included). (b) Complex
permeability  results for FGM-40 using the FS-backed DWP measurement geometry (1, 5, and 10 modes traces are included). Note that the " and  results
for FGM-40 using the PEC-backed DWP measurement geometry cannot be presented because a solution to (21) is not found.

terial yielded better results. Fig. 6 shows the [Fig. 6(a)] and
[Fig. 6(b)] results for FGM-40 using the FS-backed DWP. Like
FGM-125, FGM-40 is a silicon-based magnetic-shielding mate-
rial; however, it is more heavily dielectrically and magnetically
loaded than FGM-125 and thinner. The magnitudes of the mea-
sured and theoretical forward -parameters (calculated using
the NRW FGM-40 and values) for the FS-backed DWP
are shown in Fig. 7(a). The magnitudes of the measured forward
-parameters for the PEC-backed DWP are shown in Fig. 7(b).
Note that only the magnitudes of the measured forward -pa-
rameters (and not the theoretical forward -parameters) for the
PEC-backed DWP are plotted because numerical calculation of
the theoretical -parameters is highly unstable due to FGM-40
being very electrically thin. Even if the theoretical -parame-
ters could be calculated for FGM-40, it is very likely that the
and values returned using the PEC-backed DWP would
be inaccurate and unstable because, like the FS-backed DWP in
the case of FGM-125, the magnitudes of the transmission coef-
ficients are on the order of the measurement error/noise of the
apparatus. Contrast this with the measured -parameter mag-
nitudes depicted in Fig. 7(a). With the exception of the lower
frequencies, the magnitude of the transmission coefficient using
the FS-backed DWP is several times larger than
Thus, one should expect stable and values for FGM-40
for most of the frequency range using the FS-backed DWP mea-
surement geometry. This is precisely what is shown in Fig. 6.
D. Experimental Summary
It is important to summarize the key findings obtained from
the measurements of FGM-125 and FGM-40 as they pertain
to the PEC-backed and FS-backed DWP measurement geome-
tries. The and results for FGM-125 clearly show that
the FS-backed DWP struggles compared to the PEC-backed
DWP in accurately determining constitutive parameters. The
main reason for this is revealed in Fig. 5 which definitively
shows that little energy couples between the two probes of the
FS-backed DWP thereby making the permittivity and perme-
ability results inaccurate and unstable. On the other hand, the
and results for FGM-40 show the superiority of FS-backed
DWP over the PEC-backed DWP since the PEC-backed DWP
permittivity and permeability results cannot even be calculated.
The question of when to use the FS-backed or PEC-backed
DWP geometries still remains. A theoretical answer to this
question is very difficult considering that the theoretical
-parameters depend on the characteristics of the MUT in a
very complex way, i.e., they are functions of , ,
, , and the thickness (a five-dimensional
space). However, a simple experimental answer to the question
is to compare the magnitudes of the measured transmission
coefficients with . Whichever geometry yields the
higher should be used to extract
and . For instance, in Fig. 5, the FS-backed geometry had
an average ; the PEC-backed
geometry had an average .
Clearly, the PEC-backed measurements should be used
. to extract and and the permittivity and perme-
ability results depicted in Fig. 4 support this conjec-
ture. In Fig. 7, the FS-backed geometry had an average
, while the PEC-backed geom-
etry had an average . In this
case, the FS-backed measurements should be used to extract
permittivity and permeability and the and results shown
in Fig. 6 support this selection criterion. Note that this criterion
does not provide any information on the overall accuracy of the
extracted and values, only which DWP geometry can be
expected to perform better.
1016 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 7. (a) Magnitudes of the measured and theoretical (calculated using the NRW FGM-40 " and  results) forward S -parameters for FGM-40 using the
FS-backed DWP measurement geometry. (b) Magnitudes of the measured forward S -parameters for FGM-40 using the PEC-backed DWP measurement geometry.
Note that the theoretical S -parameters for FGM-40 using the PEC-backed DWP measurement geometry cannot be presented because the numerical calculation of
the theoretical S -parameters is highly unstable. The magnitude of the short calibration forward transmission measurement S is also included.

Fig. 8. (a) Complex permittivity " results for FGM-125 using S -parameter measurements collected from both the PEC-backed and FS-backed (triangular traces)
DWP measurement geometries (1, 5, and 10 modes traces are included). (b) Complex permeability  results for FGM-125 using S -parameter measurements
collected from both the PEC-backed and FS-backed (triangular traces) DWP measurement geometries (1, 5, and 10 modes traces are included).

Before concluding, it is worth noting that the two geome- ments collected from both the PEC-backed and FS-backed (tri-
tries seem to behave as the complements of each other, both angular traces) DWP measurement geometries. Here and
intuitively and experimentally. Therefore, combining -param- are found by solving
eter measurements from both DWP geometries to determine
and could provide better results than either alone. Fig. 8
shows the complex permittivity [Fig. 8(a)] and permeability
[Fig. 8(b)] results for FGM-125 using -parameter measure- (22)
HYDE et al.: NONDESTRUCTIVE MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A FREE-SPACE-BACKED MAGNETIC MATERIAL
TABLE II
COMBINED PEC-BACKED AND FS-BACKED DWP
ROOT-MEAN-SQUARE ERRORS
where . Table II shows the
root-mean-square errors for the combined PEC-backed and
FS-backed DWP and results assuming the NRW results
are the true FGM-125 permittivity and permeability values.
When one compares the results depicted in Fig. 8 and Table II
with Fig. 4 and Table I, it is clear that the two DWP measure-
ment geometries complement one another and a significant
improvement (and quite extraordinary accuracy) in both permit-
tivity and permeability can be gained by using both geometries
to determine and . Indeed, when it is possible to make
both measurements, both should be made and the measured
-parameters from both measurements should be used to
extract the permittivity and permeability regardless of MUT.
Note that the and of FGM-40 were also extracted using
both measurement geometries. Since numerical calculation of
the theoretical -parameters using the PEC-backed geometry is
highly unstable for very electrically thin MUTs like FGM-40,
the permittivity and permeability results are nearly identical to
those obtained using the FS-backed geometry alone (Fig. 6)
and thus are not shown.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the FS-backed DWP measurement geometry
[Fig. 1(b)] is introduced and analyzed. Section II presents the
theoretical derivation of the FS-backed DWP reflection and
transmission coefficients necessary to determine the complex
permittivity and permeability of the MUT. This is accomplished
by replacing the waveguide-probe apertures with equivalent
magnetic currents in accordance with Love’s field equivalence
theorem [40], [42]. Enforcing the continuity of the transverse
magnetic field at the waveguide-probe apertures (Section II-A)
produces a system of coupled MFIEs (Section II-B), which
when solved via the MoM (Section II-C), yields the theoretical
reflection and transmission coefficients. Section III presents
the theoretical derivation of the dyadic Green’s function for
a magnetic-current-excited two-medium grounded-slab envi-
ronment. This Green’s function is necessary to compute the
magnetic field which exists in the MUT region of the FS-backed
DWP. Last, the FS-backed DWP is verified experimentally via
the measurement of two lossy magnetic-shielding materials
(ECCOSORB® FGM-125 and ECCOSORB® FGM-40). It is
found that the FS-backed DWP measurement geometry is the
complement of the published PEC-backed DWP measurement
geometry [Fig. 1(a)] [36] and that when the measurements
of both DWP geometries are combined, significantly better
permittivity and permeability results are obtained than using
either geometry alone.
1017
APPENDIX
The transverse electric and transverse magnetic field distribu-
tions , , , and are
(23)
when in probe 1, and
(24)
when in probe 2. Here, and are
the - and -directed wavenumbers, and
are the transverse electric and transverse
magnetic wave impedances, and is
the -directed propagation constant.
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HYDE et al.: NONDESTRUCTIVE MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A FREE-SPACE-BACKED MAGNETIC MATERIAL
Milo W. Hyde IV (S’10–M’10) received the B.S.
degree in computer engineering from the Georgia In-
stitute of Technology, Atlanta, in 2001 and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the
Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright–Patterson
Air Force Base, Dayton, OH, in 2006 and 2010,
respectively.
From 2001 to 2004, he was a Maintenance Officer
with the F-117A Nighthawk, Holloman Air Force
Base, Alamogordo, NM. From 2006 to 2007, he
was a Government Researcher with the Air Force
Research Laboratory, Wright–Patterson Air Force Base. He is currently an As-
sistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright–Patterson Air Force Base. His
current research interests include electromagnetic material characterization,
guided-wave theory, scattering, and optics.
Dr. Hyde is a member of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement (IMS),
Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT-S), Antennas and Propagation (APS),
Geoscience and Remote Sensing (GRSS), and Electromagnetic Compatibility
Societies (EMC), as well as the International Society for Optical Engineering
(SPIE) and the Optical Society of America (OSA).
Michael J. Havrilla (S’85–M’86–SM’05) received
B.S. degrees in physics and mathematics, the
M.S.E.E degree, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Michigan State University, East
Lansing, MI, in 1987, 1989, and 2001, respectively.
From 1990 to 1995, he was with General Electric
Aircraft Engines, Evendale, OH and Lockheed
Skunk Works, Palmdale, CA, where he worked as
an Electrical Engineer. He is currently an Asso-
ciate Professor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at the Air Force Institute
of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH. His current research interests
include electromagnetic and guided-wave theory, electromagnetic propagation
and radiation in complex media and structures and electromagnetic materials
characterization.
Dr. Havrilla is a member of URSI Commission B and the Eta Kappa Nu and
Sigma Xi honor societies.
1019
Andrew E. Bogle (S’04–M’07) received B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. Degrees in electrical engineering from
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, in
2001, 2004, and 2007, respectively.
From 2007 to 2009, he was with Niowave, Inc.,
Lansing, MI, where he worked as an Electrical
Engineer. He is currently an Research Engineer in
the Sensor Systems Division at the University of
Dayton Research Institute, Dayton, OH. His current
research interests include electromagnetic materials
characterization, electromagnetic and guided-wave
theory, electromagnetic propagation, and radiation in complex media and
structures.
Edward J. Rothwell (F’05) was born in Grand
Rapids, MI, on September 8, 1957. He received the
B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Michigan
Technological University, Houghton, in 1979, the
M.S. degree in electrical engineering and the degree
of electrical engineer from Stanford University,
Stanford, CA, in 1980 and 1982, respectively, and
the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, in
1985, where he held the Dean’s Distinguished
Fellowship.
He worked for Raytheon Co., Microwave and Power Tube Division, Waltham,
MA, from 1979 to 1982 on low-power traveling wave tubes, and for MIT Lin-
coln Laboratory, Lexington, MA, in 1985. He has been at Michigan State Uni-
versity from 1985 to 1990 as an Assistant Professor of electrical engineering,
from 1990 to 1998 as an Associate Professor, and from 1998 as Professor. He
is coauthor of the book Electromagnetics (CRC Press, 2001).
Dr. Rothwell received the John D. Withrow award for teaching excellence
from the College of Engineering at Michigan State University in 1991, 1996, and
2006, the Withrow Distinguished Scholar Award in 2007, and the MSU Alumni
Club of Mid-Michigan Quality in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2003. He
was a joint recipient of the Best Technical Paper Award at the 2003 Antenna
Measurement Techniques Association Symposium, and in 2005 he received the
Southeast Michigan IEEE Section Award for Most Outstanding Professional.
He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, Commission B of URSI.
1020 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Evaporation Duct Height Estimation and Source
Localization From Field Measurements at an
Array of Radio Receivers
Xiaofeng Zhao
Abstract—Remote sensing of the atmospheric refractivity struc-
ture using signal strength measurements from a single emitter to an
array of radio receivers has been proposed as a promising way for
refractivity estimation. As a complement to the pioneers’ published
works, this paper focuses on addressing the problem of simulta-
neously estimating the evaporation duct height and localizing the
source’s position. The problem is organized as a multi-parameter
optimization issue and genetic algorithm is adopted to search for
the optimal solution from various trial parameters. The perfor-
mance is determined via numerical simulations and mainly eval-
uated as a function of: 1) the geometry of the receiver array; 2) the
transmitting frequency; and 3) the noise in the measurements.
Index Terms—Antenna array, electromagnetic propagation,
evaporation duct, optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
A PROMISING method for remotely sensing of the refrac-
tivity structure is based on inference from measurements
of radar signal strength. The most popular approach is termed
refractivity from clutter (RFC) technique which retrieves the re-
fractivity profiles by taking advantages of the changes in radar
clutter returns due to the changes in atmospheric environments.
In the last decade, several RFC methods have been developed
[1]–[6]. Detailed discussions about these different RFC algo-
rithms can be found in the works completed by Yardim et al.
[7], Vasudevan et al. [8] and Douvenot et al. [9]. An important
issue of these new techniques is how to evaluate their perfor-
mance under realistic conditions.
Instead of using radar clutter returns, point-to-point mi-
crowave measurements have also been proposed as useful in-
formation for refractivity estimation. Gingras et al. introduced
basic concepts of electromagnetic matched-field processing
(EM-MFP) techniques and performed simulations for simulta-
neously localizing an EM emitter and estimating surface-based
duct parameters from synthetic complex-valued (amplitude and
phase) field measurements [10]. Tabrikian et al. proposed using
point-to-point field measurements to estimate atmospheric duct
parameters by the maximum a posteriori (MAP) method [11].
Manuscript received October 08, 2010; manuscript revised April 03, 2011;
accepted July 15, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current
version February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 41175025.
The author is with the Institute of Meteorology, PLA University of Science
and Technology, Nanjing 210093, China (e-mail: zxf_best@126.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173115
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Gerstoft et al. quantified the performance of EM-MFP method
for remote sensing of the refractivity structure using signal
strength measurements from a single emitter to an array of
radio receivers [12]. Valtr et al. put forward the usage of field
measurements at a receiver site of a terrestrial point-to-point
link in terms of angle-of-arrival spectra to retrieve the vertical
refractivity structure [13]. Zhao et al. investigated possibilities
of refractive index profile retrieval using field measurements
at an array of radio receivers in terms of variational adjoint
approach [14]. In the above mentioned papers, however, only
surface-based ducts and elevated ducts were investigated.
Compared with these two kinds of duct, evaporation ducts
are more prevalent in the marine environment and are more
important for shipboard radar communications.
Previous works about estimating evaporation duct profiles
from radar sea echoes have been given in [1], [6] and [15]. This
paper focuses on addressing the problem of simultaneously es-
timating the evaporation duct height and localizing the source’s
position using signal strength measurements from a single
emitter to an array of radio receivers. The problem is organized
as a nonlinear optimization issue, and a global optimization
technique referred to as genetic algorithm is adopted to search
for the optimal solution from various trial parameters. The
performance is determined via numerical simulations. The
parabolic equation method is used to simulate the synthetic
signal measurements and the replica fields. The validities of
using parabolic equation method to model electromagnetic
wave propagation from point-to-point measurements have been
discussed in [16]–[19].
This paper will proceed in the following manner: Forward
models including evaporation duct refractivity model and elec-
tromagnetic propagation model are introduced in Section II.
Section III shows the numerical simulations of evaporation duct
height estimation and source localization. Detailed discussions
about the factors that affect the performance are presented in
this section, including 1) the geometry of the receiver array; 2)
the transmitting frequency; and 3) the measurement noise. In
Section IV, the basic conclusions are summarized.
II. FORWARD MODEL
In this paper, the electromagnetic wave propagating in the
evaporation duct environments is the main considerations.
Therefore, a proper refractivity parameter model and an accu-
rate propagation model should be given first.
ZHAO: EVAPORATION DUCT HEIGHT ESTIMATION AND SOURCE LOCALIZATION FROM FIELD MEASUREMENTS AT AN ARRAY OF RADIO RECEIVERS
Fig. 1. Modified refractivity M versus height (a) Evaporation duct (b) Surface-
based duct (c) Elevated duct.
A. Evaporation Duct Refractivity Model
In the marine environment, three major types of duct are fre-
quently encountered. They are the evaporation duct, the sur-
face-based duct and the elevated duct, as shown in Fig. 1. The
evaporation duct is surface-based and is persistent over ocean
areas because of the rapid decrease of moisture immediately
above the surface. Evaporation ducts are small (typically less
than 40 m high), but have a substantial effect on the propaga-
tion of radio waves above 3 GHz [12].
For thermally neutral conditions in which the air and sea tem-
perature are equal, the modified refractivity for an evapora-
tion duct can be determined at any height by the relationship
[20]
(1)
where is the modified refractivity at sea surface and its typ-
ical value is 339 M-units, is evaporation duct height (EDH),
is the natural logarithm and is Jeske’s roughness length
of [21]. As shown in Fig. 1(a), EDH defines the
upper boundary of the trapping layer where . linear function. The observations are the receiver array data
B. Propagation Model
For many years now the parabolic equation (PE) method has
been used to model electromagnetic wave propagation in the
troposphere. The biggest advantage of using the PE method is
that it gives a full-wave solution for the field in the presence
of range-dependent environments. PE can be derived from the
scalar Helmholtz wave equation under certain assumptions, and
it has the form
(2)
where represents a scalar component of the electric field for
horizontal polarization or a scalar component of the magnetic
field for vertical polarization, is the free-space wave number,
is the range and is the height. is the modified index of
refraction, takes into account the earth’s curvature and is defined
by , being the index of refraction and being
1021
the radius of the earth. Owing to is very close to unity, for
environmental inputs, modified refractivity , defined by
, is commonly used to describe the information
of the atmospheric environments.
Let be the complex scalar component of the field
at range and height . Then, the field at range and
height , denoted by , could be given by the Fourier
split-step solution to PE as
(3)
where and are the Fourier transform and Fourier in-
verse transform, respectively. is the transform variable, and
is the range increment, given by . Detailed in-
formation about the Fourier split-step PE solution may be found
in [22], [23].
III. NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
The evaporation duct height estimation, as well as source lo-
cation, from radio signal strength measurements is an inverse
problem. Matched-field processing (MFP) methods represent
one approach for solving inverse problems through the usage
of extensive forward model runs. The basic concepts of electro-
magnetic matched-field processing were introduced in [10] and
the related genetic algorithms (GA) based on global optimiza-
tion procedures were discussed in [10] and [12]. In [10], Gin-
gras et al. separated the surface-based duct inversions into three
cases, being case A: source-location estimation in a known envi-
ronment, case B: estimation of environment parameters, source
location known, and case C: joint source-location and environ-
mental parameter estimation. Here, we will just deal with the
case C, i.e., source localization and evaporation duct height es-
timation.
In this paper, the problem is formulated as a parameter opti-
mization issue, in which the observations are known to be re-
lated to an unknown parameter vector through a known non-
samples, the nonlinear function is the parabolic equation gov-
erning the troposheric electromagnetic wave propagation, and
the parameter vector is comprised of the evaporation duct height
and the source-location coordinates (source range and source
height). This is a multi-parameter inversion problem, and an
efficient global search algorithm should be employed. GA has
been proved to be such an algorithm, which differs from other
search techniques by the usage of concepts of natural selection
and evolution. It uses simplified genetic operators and Darwinist
principles such as that of survival of the fittest.
In all simulations, the synthetic array data are generated for a
scenario with the following general characteristics.
Source Signal: The synthetic signal simulates a Gaussian an-
tenna with vertical polarization at frequencies from 1 GHz to 10
GHz. Source range is 100 km and source height is 10 m.
Receive Antenna: The receive antenna is a vertical array an-
tenna. Three configurations of the receiver array are considered.
1) 10 elements from 1–10 m with spacing of 1 m, 2) 10 elements
1022 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

TABLE I
PARAMETER SEARCH BOUNDS FOR THE THREE RETRIEVED PARAMETERS

from 21–30 m with spacing of 1 m and 3) 30 elements from 1–30

m with spacing of 1 m.
Propagation Environment: The propagation environment
used for all synthetic cases is an evaporation duct with 30 m
height. In order to simplify the computation, the refractive
conditions are considered constant with the distance for the
entire propagation path.
Propagation Code: The advanced propagation model (APM)
[24] is used for all simulations. APM combines the capabilities
Fig. 2. Coverage diagrams (dB) showing propagation loss as a function of
of radio physical optics (RPO) and terrain parabolic equation height and range for a 30 m evaporation duct case. The transmitter height is
model (TPEM) in a relatively fast code. 10 m, and the transmitting frequency is 1 GHz for (a) and 10 GHz for (b).
Objective Function: In all cases, the objective function used
is the Bartlett processor defined by [25]

(4)

where is the objective function, is the parameter vector that

should be retrieved, is a complex-valued vector of syn-
thetic measurements, is a complex-valued vector of replica
field, is the number of receiver elements and denotes con-
jugate transpose.
Optimization Parameters: The genetic algorithm is used to
perform global optimal search [26]. The GA search parameters
are: population size 20, crossover probability 0.5, jump muta-
tion probability 0.05, creep mutation probability 0.16. The ter-
mination is controlled by the computation time of 5 minutes.
Our computation source is ThinkPad R400 equipped with dual
CPUs (P8600, 2.40 GHz) and 2 GB EMS memory bank. Every
running could get different forward model runs, depending on
the operating frequency and the source to the receiver range
[23]. Through a great deal of numerical experiments, we think
that 5 minutes is enough to get a preferable retrieved parameter
vector for the cases in this paper. The convergence of the algo-
rithm is discussed in the appendix. The three retrieved param-
eters are the evaporation duct height (EDH), the source height
and the source range. The parameters and their search bounds
are given in Table I.
Fig. 2 illustrates the propagation loss coverage diagrams for
a 30 m evaporation duct case computed by APM. The source
height is 10 m at a frequency of 1 GHz and 10 GHz, respectively,
for Figs. 2(a) and 2(b). It is clear that in 1 GHz case, little energy
is trapped in the duct layer. While in 10 GHz case, the dominant
component of the energy is trapped.
A. The Inversions of Different Geometries of the Receiver
Array
As mentioned above, three configurations of the receiver
array are considered. 1) 10 elements from 1–10 m with spacing
Fig. 3. Detailed inversion results of the three retrieved parameters with 5%,
10% and 20% Gaussian noise at different transmitting frequencies (a) The in-
version results of the evaporation duct height (b) the inversion results of the
source height and (c) the inversion results of the source range.
of 1 m, 2) 10 elements from 21–30 m with spacing of 1 m and
3) 30 elements from 1–30 m with spacing of 1 m. The detailed
inversion results at frequency of 1 GHz and 10 GHz are shown
in Table II.
From Table II, we could see that different receiver antenna
position and different aperture size could result in different in-
version results. When the transmitter operates at the frequency
of 1 GHz, 1–10 m aperture size inversions are unsatisfied except
for the evaporation duct height. Compared with 1–10 m aperture
size, 21–30 m has a great improvement in the source range in-
versions. When the aperture size extends to 1–30 m, though the
source range is not as well defined, the whole inversion results
are acceptable. At 10 GHz frequency case, the retrieved results
are better than that of 1 GHz. The reason might be that at 10
GHz frequency, more energy at the receiver array location that
can be used for profile estimation purposes, see Fig. 2. In 1–30
m aperture size case, the results are very close to the actual pa-
rameter values. However, in any case depicted in Table II, the
evaporation duct height retrievals are believable.
ZHAO: EVAPORATION DUCT HEIGHT ESTIMATION AND SOURCE LOCALIZATION FROM FIELD MEASUREMENTS AT AN ARRAY OF RADIO RECEIVERS 1023

TABLE II
INVERSION RESULTS OF DIFFERENT GEOMETRIES OF THE RECEIVER ARRAY

TABLE III
INVERSION RESULTS WITH DIFFERENT GAUSSIAN NOISE.

TABLE IV
DETAILED PROCESS DIFFERENT INVERSIONS,
OF TWO

B. The Inversions With Gaussian Noise Added to the
Measurements
In practical operations, errors could be stemmed from many
sources: errors in describing the environment, errors in the for-
ward model, instrument and measurement errors, and noise in
the data [12]. Here, only measurement noise will be considered.
The error term is assumed complex Gaussian distributed, sta-
tionary with zero mean, and the error at each receiver element
is uncorrelated. In order to investigate the antinoise ability of
GA for duct parameters inversion and source localization, three
different quantities of Gaussian noise are considered, being 5%
Gaussian noise, 10% Gaussian noise and 20% Gaussian noise.
The configuration of the receiver array is with 30 elements from
1–30 m with spacing of 1 m. The detailed inversion results at
frequency of 1 GHz and 10 GHz with different Gaussian noise
are shown in Table III.
From Table III, it is seen that at lower frequency (1 GHz), the
inversion results are degraded. However, at higher frequency
(10 GHz), the antinoise ability of using GA to retrieve evapo-
ration duct height and localize source position is perfect. Even
with 20% Gaussian noise, the mean deviation between the in-
version results and the true parameter values is just 0.714%. The
detailed inversion results of the three retrieved parameters with
5%, 10% and 20% Gaussian noise at different transmitting fre-
quencies (1–10 GHz) are given in Fig. 3. When the Gaussian
noise is only 5%, the retrieved parameter values are acceptable
above 4 GHz. In 10% Gaussian noise case, the frequency should
above 7 GHz, and 20% with 8 GHz.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper focuses on addressing the problem of simultane-
ously retrieving the evaporation duct height and localizing the
source’s position. This is a nonlinear optimization problem and
genetic algorithm is adopted to perform global optimal search.
Three factors are mainly concerned, i.e., the geometry of the re-
ceiver array, the transmitting frequency, and the measurement
noise. Numerical simulations indicate that larger aperture size
and/or higher operating frequency can retrieve better results.
The antinoise ability is very good when the frequency is above 8
GHz. Only 30 m evaporation duct case is investigated. It could
be asserted that with lower duct height, the minimum frequency
1024 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. A posteriori distributions for the evaporation duct height, the source
height and the source range (a) 1–10 m aperture size operating at frequency of
1 GHz (b) 1–30 m aperture size operating at frequency of 10 GHz.
will increase. The preliminary results obtained in this paper
might be helpful for practical applications, such as antenna dis-
tributions and frequency selections.
Further work is necessary to collect real-field data and the cor-
responding environmental parameters, and use them to verify
the preliminary conclusions in this paper.
APPENDIX
MODEL CONVERGENCE
Douvenot et al. have pointed out that: 1) the aim of refrac-
tivity estimation is not to give the exact refractivity profile, but
to propose a ’generic’ model able to render an approximation
of the real atmospheric conditions; 2) operational applications
of the estimation necessitate short computation time, less than
10 minutes, to avoid errors due to temporal evolution of atmos-
phere [27]. Based on these two points, the convergence of the
algorithm is discussed.
From Table II, it is seen that the worst and best inversions are
1–10 m aperture size operating at 1 GHz and 1–30 m aperture
size operating at 10 GHz, respectively. Table IV gives the de-
tailed process of these two different inversions.
For 1–10 m aperture size operating at frequency of 1 GHz
case, the inversions are converged in 5 minutes computations.
For 1–30 m aperture size operating at 10 GHz case, the best
inversions are obtained when the computation time achieves 9
minutes. However, the results are just a little improvement com-
pared with 4 minute ones. Through a great deal of numerical ex-
periments, we found that 5 minutes is enough to get preferable
retrieved parameters. Therefore, the termination condition is set
to be 5 minutes for all of the inversions discussed in this paper.
Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) give the statistical results for the above two
experiments. For each experiment, GA is executed 100 times
with different initial random seed and starting values for the
model parameters.
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1025
Xiaofeng Zhao was born in Jiangsu, China, on
November 2, 1983. He received the M.Sc. degree
from PLA University of Science and Technology,
Nanjing, China, in 2009, where he is currently
working towards the Ph.D. degree at the Institute of
Meteorology.
His research interests include electromagnetic
wave propagation modeling and atmospheric refrac-
tivity estimation.
1026 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Extrapolation of Wideband Electromagnetic
Response Using Sparse Representation
Huapeng Zhao, Student Member, IEEE, and Ying Zhang
Abstract—Wideband electromagnetic response can be extrapo-
lated using combined low frequency and early time information,
which can substantially reduce the computational load. Most ex-
isting extrapolation methods are based on orthogonal polynomials,
but selecting optimal parameters of orthogonal polynomials is not
straightforward. This work proposes to extrapolate wideband elec-
tromagnetic response using sparse representation. The electromag-
netic response is expressed as linear combination of atoms from an
overcomplete dictionary. Optimal linear combination of atoms is
then sought through the affine scaling transformation and the sup-
port vector regression. By increasing the data length step by step,
convergence of the sparse solution is used as a criterion to deter-
mine the sufficient data length. Performance analysis shows that
our proposed extrapolation method retains lower computational
complexity and renders more flexibility in reconstructing a signal.
Numerical examples are presented to show the efficacy and advan-
tages of the proposed extrapolation method.
Index Terms—Extrapolation, overcomplete dictionaries, sparse
representation, wideband electromagnetic response.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N COMPUTATIONAL electromagnetics (CEM), elec-
tromagnetic response from an arbitrary structure can be
sought by numerically solving Maxwell’s equations in either
frequency- or time-domain. Though accurate, CEM methods
are usually computation intensive, especially when wideband
information is requested, for which one has to conduct compu-
tation at many frequency points. On the other hand, early time
and low frequency information is relatively easy to be obtained
using CEM methods. In order to reduce the computational
burden in wideband analysis, various extrapolation techniques
have been proposed to obtain wideband response using the
information at a few low frequency points. Furthermore, low
frequency and early time information are mutually complemen-
tary, and they can be combined to obtain better extrapolation
accuracy [1].
Manuscript received October 14, 2010; revised June 15, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 10, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported by a grant from the National Nat-
ural Science Foundation of China for Young Scholars (No. 61101094 ).
H. P. Zhao was with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and is now with the Department
of Electronics and Photonics, Institute of High Performance Computing, Singa-
pore 138632, Singapore (e-mail: huapengzhao@pmail.ntu.edu.sg).
Y. Zhang was with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and is now with the School of
Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of
China, Chengdu, China (e-mail: zhangying@ee.uestc.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173116
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
In extrapolation methods, extrapolating bases influence the
accuracy a lot. Orthogonal polynomials are usually adopted
as extrapolation bases, because they are complete and provide
compact support. Meanwhile, it has been found that the extrap-
olation accuracy is affected by the number of basis functions
and the time scaling factor [2]. and should be optimized
in order to obtain accurate and stable extrapolation. In [3], the
bounds of and the minimum of were given, and the range
of convergence was derived. Nevertheless, optimal choice of
and is still not straightforward. Furthermore, the data
length also affects the extrapolation accuracy, where
and are lengths of time- and frequency-domain data,
respectively. It was stated that is a necessary
condition for accurate extrapolation [4]. However, in practice,
it is interesting to know the sufficient values of and ,
with which one can decide when to stop the expensive CEM
simulation. In [5], [6], the genetic algorithm was adopted to
optimize the values of and . A criterion was proposed to be
used together with genetic algorithm to determine the sufficient
data length [5], [6]. Though genetic algorithm automated the
selection of , and the data length, it may converge to
local minimums for non-convex problems. Therefore, it is
highly desirable to develop new extrapolation methods which
automatically determine the sufficient value of and
efficiently select optimal values of and .
The optimization of and is essentially a process of
choosing suitable basis functions. In this paper, a new extrap-
olation method is developed based on sparse representation.
The sparse representation method is utilized for its ability in
automatically selecting suitable basis functions. An overcom-
plete dictionary is designed to represent the electromagnetic
response. Elements of the dictionary are called atoms. Since
the sparse representation method chooses optimal atoms auto-
matically and efficiently, the computational load in optimizing
and is reduced substantially. Meanwhile, a criterion is
proposed to determine the sufficient value of . Thus,
one can stop the CEM simulation once the criterion is satisfied.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. For complete-
ness, a brief introduction to sparse representation is presented in
Section II. The proposed method is detailed in Section III, where
performance analysis of the proposed method is also given. Nu-
merical examples are provided in Section IV, and concluding
remarks are presented in Section V.
II. SPARSE REPRESENTATION
Giving an th order tensor , where
denotes the vector spanning the Hilbert
space is named as a dictionary, and
ZHAO AND ZHANG: EXTRAPOLATION OF WIDEBAND ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE USING SPARSE REPRESENTATION 1027

is called an atom. For an observed quantity to be regression (SVR) are adopted to find the approximation coef-
decomposed, the approximation of in terms of atoms of ficients. For proper choice of and , convergence of ap-
is given by proximation coefficients is utilized as a sufficient condition. Per-
formance of the proposed method is analyzed and compared
(1) with existing methods.

A. Proposed Overcomplete Dictionary

where denotes the approximation coefficient. The approxi-
Define two sets and
mation error is defined as
, which contain all possible values of polynomial order
(2) and time scaling factor , respectively. An overcomplete dic-
tionary is constructed using , where denotes the
th order orthogonal polynomial, and it can be any of the three
where inf means the infimum. Because , approx- polynomials studied in [2], which provide similar performance.
imation by (1) is called sparse representation. Due to the un- In this work, is chosen to be the weighted Lagurre polyno-
derlying linear dependency of atoms in (i.e., the dictionary mial. The time-domain signal is then expanded as
is overcomplete), solution of subject to minimizing (2) is
not unique. From the perspective of sparse representation, one
aims to find a constituted by the smallest number of atoms (5)
in , i.e., the value of is the smallest. When is an orthog-
onal basis of , the optimal approximation is given by the and correspondingly, the frequency-domain signal has the
weighted sum of the basis functions yielding the first largest expansion
values of , where denotes the inner product. How-
ever, for an overcomplete dictionary, finding the optimal is an
nondeterministic polynomial time (NP)-hard problem. (6)
There have been many literature discussing how to solve such
an NP-hard problem. In general, given the observation , the
is the Fourier transform of , and .
problem of finding can be formulated as
The difference of our expansion from that using orthogonal
(3a) polynomials lies in the introduction of and as variables,
while orthogonal expansion represents the signal with fixed
(3b) values of and . It is known that and
construct two sets of orthogonal bases for a
where represents the expectation,1 is the matrix form of fixed value of . However, any element of is
the tensor is the tolerance, and is the -norm of not necessarily orthogonal to when .
defined as The same holds for and
if . It means that expansions using (5) and (6) are
(4) not orthogonal expansion. Instead, the atoms with different
values of and are linearly dependent. When most elements
of are zero, (5) and (6) can be considered
which is a conventionally used sparsity measurement [7], [8]. as sparse representation of and , respectively. It
(3b) is used to measure the noise so that the derived can be should be noted that when contains a single element, and
more accurate. With different choices of , the solution methods , (5) and (6) degenerate to orthogonal
and results can be different. Details on the solution of (3) can be expansions.
found in [7]–[15] and references therein. For practical implementation, and are constructed as
Sparse representation has been widely used in various en- follows. First, the minimum of is determined using (51) of
gineering problems, including the direction-of-arrival estima- [3]. is then chosen to be 1.5 times its minimum. is defined
tion [16], [17], signal compression [18], blind source separation as . Second, the convergence
[19], channel equalization [20], etc. More recently, sparse rep- range of can be found from (50) of [3]. Denote the conver-
resentation has been introduced to the antenna and propagation gence range as . According to [2], can be written
community for power angle spectrum estimation [21]. In most as
applications, it has been shown that sparse representation can
greatly enhance the performance of conventional algorithms. (7)

III. PROPOSED EXTRAPOLATION METHOD where is the time step size. From the values of and
, the minimum and maximum of can be found from (7),
In this section, an overcomplete dictionary is developed in
and they are denoted by and , respectively. A new
order to extrapolate wideband electromagnetic response effi-
interval is then created, where is the largest
ciently. The affine scaling transformation and support vector
integer satisfying , and is the smallest in-
1Expectation is only needed for statistical application. teger satisfying . The set of is now defined as
1028 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

. The sam- where

pling step size of will be discussed in Section IV. denotes the th row of , and . By using dif-
Constructing two overcomplete dictionaries as shown in (8) ferent error penalty functions, (14) is able to handle different
measurement noises. When quadratic loss function is used, the
measurement noise is assumed to be Gaussian. When Huber
penalty function is used, the effect of outliers on the regression
(8a) can be reduced.
Considering as the target for the input pattern , (14) is
identical to the optimization problem of SVR formulated as [23]

(8b) (15a)

and defining the approximation coefficients

(15b)
(9)

(5) and (6) can be equivalently expressed as where are slack variables, and
determines the trade-off between finding a sparse solution and
(10)
retaining small residual error. Empirical results suggest that the
(11) value of has negligible effect on the regression performance
When early time sequences and low frequency data are [24]. A robust choice of is given by [25]
available, can be computed from the following linear equation (16)
(12)
where denotes the mean of targets, and denotes their stan-
where dard deviation. The dual problem of (15) is given by

.. ..
. .

.. ..
. .
(17)
.. ..
. .
and is given by
(13)
(18)
In (12), the dimension of matrix is . When
, (12) is an overcomplete problem which
which is called support vector expansion.
can be solved by imposing sparse constraint on . After is
In this work, the input pattern is unknown. Therefore, the
derived, only atoms corresponding to the nonzero elements of
following iterative algorithm is proposed to find the sparse so-
contribute to the expansion of and . Therefore, only
lution of (12).
these atoms are used to extrapolate the signals, and they are
Step 1: Initialize using a randomly generated vector,
called active atoms.
, and
B. Solution of the Sparse Representation Problem .
Step 2: Solve (17).
In this paper, we propose to solve (12) using the SVR. Dif-
Step 3: Compute by (18).
ferent from (3) which assumes that the measurement noise is
Step 4: Update .
Gaussian, we may settle a wider range of problems by choosing
Step 5: Evaluate whether the termination criterion is satis-
different penalty functions in the SVR.
fied. If yes, stop; else, go to Step 2.
Using the affine scaling transformation [22], can be found
In this paper, the proposed iterative algorithm is terminated
via
when is satisfied.

C. A Criterion To Determine Sufficient Data Length

For practical application of extrapolation methods, it is desir-
(14) able to know the sufficient value of , with which one
ZHAO AND ZHANG: EXTRAPOLATION OF WIDEBAND ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE USING SPARSE REPRESENTATION 1029

will be able to decide when to stop the expensive CEM simu- signal using low order atoms with different values of . This is
lation. Naturally, the larger is, the better accuracy helpful in enhancing the extrapolation accuracy.
one can obtain. Nevertheless, there must be a sufficient value of Besides, for existing orthogonal expansion methods, the op-
, where enough information have been provided to timal values of and are determined by global searching.
obtain accurate extrapolation. Beyond this sufficient value, very For the searching method, if the optimal value of is large,
little new information will be added by increasing the values of the searching range also becomes very large. Supposing orthog-
and . As a result, as long as reaches its suffi- onal expansion methods search from order to order with
cient value, the solved approximation coefficients will change time scaling factors, the computational complexity is about
very little with increasing . Therefore, by increasing , which is very high for large values of and
and step by step, the convergence of can be utilized . In the proposed method, the computational complexity of
as a criterion to determine the sufficient value of . In SVR is and when
order to measure the convergence of , a sequence of and , respectively. denotes the number of sup-
can be generated in ascending order. The relative variation of port vectors [26]. Therefore, the computational complexity of
is then defined as the proposed method can be estimated to be , where
is the number of iterations required to find the sparse solu-
(19) tion.2 As long as is not very large, the proposed method re-
tains lower computational complexity compared to orthogonal
expansion methods. Although it is difficult to estimate , the
where represents the approximation coefficients calculated
convergence rate of the iteration algorithm in Section III-B can
using the th value of in the ascending sequence.
be shown to be quadratic when quadratic loss function is used
Based on this criterion, the following iterative scheme is pro-
[7], [26]. One may refer to [26] for more details on the conver-
posed.
gence of the iteration method.
Step 1: Initialize , and set . Set the threshold
and the initial value of . IV. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
Step 2: Solve (12) using the solution method presented in
Numerical examples are presented in this section to illustrate
Section III-B.
the efficacy and advantages of the proposed method. Choice of
Step 3: If m is zero, go to step 4, otherwise, compute using
parameters in our proposed method is discussed at the end of
and .
this section. The following Gaussian pulse is used as the time-
Step 4: If has been continuously satisfied for three
domain excitation
times, sufficient value of has been found,
and iteration can be stopped. Otherwise,
, go to (20)
Step 2.
and denote the step sizes of and , respec- where is used to control the bandwith, and is the time shift
tively. Initial values of and should not affect the final ex- to make the pulse negligible at . The combined error is
trapolation accuracy a lot, because the aforementioned iteration adopted as a criterion to measure the extrapolation accuracy, and
is repeated until convergence. However, more iterations will be it is computed by
required if initial values of and are too small. In practice,
and can be chosen to be around one sixth to one third of (21)
the total time- and frequency-domain data lengths, respectively. where
is the tolerance for the relative variation of approximation , and symbols with
coefficient . Numerical examples in Section IV show that sat- hat denote the extrapolated results.
isfactory accuracy can be obtained with of 0.05. 1) Example 1: Scattering from a conducting plate is first
considered. Following the convention, the unit of time adopted
D. Performance Analysis for this example is light meter (lm). The time-domain induced
A favorable property of using sparse representation is that current is calculated using an in-house developed time-domain
a high order atom with may be linearly dependent with integral equation solver, and the frequency-domain data is
low order atoms with , where . Namely, an atom obtained using a frequency-domain integral equation (FDIE)
can be approximated by linear combination of lower solver.
order atoms with time scaling factors other than . This Figs. 1 and 2 show the extrapolated results of the induced
renders more flexibility compared to conventional orthogonal current in time- and frequency-domain, respectively, both of
bases, and it is beneficial for signal representation using atoms which are validated by directly computed results. Also shown
with limited orders. For orthogonal expansions, a signal can be in these two figures are results obtained using orthogonal poly-
accurately represented if and only if the order of the signal is nomial basis. One can observe the good agreement between ex-
not higher than the order of the polynomials used. If the signal trapolated and directly computed results. Fig. 3 illustrates the
contains high order components, the number of basis functions expansion coefficients for the overcomplete dictionary and the
has to be increased in orthogonal expansion, whereas the pro- 2This computational complexity is overestimated because is gener-
posed sparse representation method is able to approximate the ally satisfied in sparse representation method.
1030 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. Induced current at the center of a square conducting plate in time-do-
main (time step size 0.15 lm). The side length of the plate is 2 m. A
plane wave is illuminating the conducting plate. The incident wave is polarized
in negative -direction, and its magnitude is 120 V/m. Its temporal
variation is governed by (20) with lm, and lm.
Fig. 2. Induced current at the center of the conducting plate in frequency-do-
main (frequency step size 1.3 MHz). (a) Real part. (b) Imaginary part.
orthogonal polynomials. Fig. 3(a) shows that expansion coeffi-
cients using the overcomplete dictionary are very sparse. Fur-
thermore, comparing Fig. 3(a) with Fig. 3(b), one can easily
see that the solution from sparse representation is searched in
Fig. 3. Values of expansion coefficient solved using different approaches. (a)
Overcomplete dictionaries. (b) Orthogonal polynomials.
a two-dimensional space, whereas the expansion coefficients of
orthogonal polynomials are only solved in a one-dimensional
space. This means the sparse representation renders another de-
gree of freedom, which enlarges the possibility to find a better
signal reconstruction. Therefore, one can expect better extrapo-
lation accuracy using sparse representation.
Table I presents the CPU time required by different extrap-
olation approaches. The proposed method requires much less
CPU time than the orthogonal extrapolation method. It should
also be noted that 12 seconds will be required to obtain the in-
duced current at one frequency point if the direct FDIE solver
is utilized. On the other hand, it only takes 1.59 seconds to con-
duct extrapolation once using the proposed method. Extrapola-
tion accuracy using different methods is listed in Table I. It is
seen that the proposed method obtains better accuracy than the
orthogonal expansion method.
Fig. 4 illustrates the variation of and as and in-
crease. drastically decreases when and are less than
60, after which it keeps at a small level, indicating that there is
little change in . also decreases as the data length increases.
However, it decreases much slower after and exceed 60.
Therefore, there is a sufficient value of and , at which
ZHAO AND ZHANG: EXTRAPOLATION OF WIDEBAND ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE USING SPARSE REPRESENTATION 1031

TABLE I
CPU TIME AND ACCURACY COMPARISON BETWEEN OUR METHOD AND
ORTHOGONAL EXPANSION METHOD FOR THE FIRST TWO EXAMPLES

Fig. 5. Reflection coefficient of a microstrip bandpass filter in the time-domain

ns).

Fig. 4. Variations of and as the data length increases for the example of
conducting plate.

enough information has been provided for accurate extrapola-

tion. Fig. 4 also shows that there is a connection between and
. Hence, it is reasonable to utilize as a criterion to determine
sufficient values of and . The value of depends on
user’s accuracy requirement. An empirical choice is to set it to
0.05, and increase and until has been continu-
ously satisfied for three times. The effect of on the accuracy
will be discussed at the end of this section.
2) Example 2: The reflection coefficient of a microstrip
bandpass filter is considered as the second example. The filter
is the same as the one used in [3]. The time- and frequency-do-
main information are obtained from [3]. In this example, the
iterative method in Section III-C has been adopted to determine
the sufficient values of and . With the empirical choice
of , sufficient values of and are found to be 70.
Figs. 5 and 6 show the time- and frequency-domain reflection
coefficients of the bandpass filter, respectively, where good
agreement is observed between extrapolated and directly com-
puted results. For this and next examples, the unit of time is
nanoseconds (ns). Fig. 7 illustrates and versus data length.
One can have the same observations in Fig. 7 as in Fig. 4. CPU
time for this example is presented in Table I. Compared with Fig. 6. Reflection coefficient of a microstrip bandpass filter in the frequency-
the orthogonal expansion method, the proposed method obtains domain ( MHz). (a) Real part. (b) Imaginary part.
better extrapolation accuracy with less CPU time.
3) Example 3: The third example is a planar dipole antenna, antenna. Parameters for the Gaussian pulse are ns,
whose time-domain and frequency-domain driving-point cur- and ns. With the criterion presented in Section III-C,
rent is shown in Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. The directly com- and are chosen to be 100 and 230, respectively. Good
puted results are obtained using the CST Microwave Studio. agreement is observed between extrapolated and directly com-
A discrete current port of amplitude 1 A is used to excite the puted results. Fig. 10 illustrates the variation of and against
1032 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 7. Variations of and as the data length increases for the example of
bandpass filter.

Fig. 8. Time-domain driving-point current of a planar dipole antenna (

ns). Geometry of the dipole antenna is shown in the inset. Parameters of Fig. 9. Frequency-domain driving-point current of the dipole ( =25 MHz).
the dipole antenna are the same as the one used in [3] except for that the width (a) Real part. (b) Imaginary part.
and length of the substrate are 3.6 cm and 5.6 cm, respectively.

and . It is seen that after the chosen values of and

keeps at a small levle, and does not decrease a lot,
which indicates that and are sufficient
for accurate extrapolation. This validates the effectiveness of
the proposed criterion in determining sufficient values of
and . It should be mentioned that the proposed method takes
11 seconds to conduct extrapolation once, while 180 seconds
are needed to obtain the driving-point current at one frequency
point using the frequency-domain CEM solver.
4) Parameter Choice: There are mainly three parameters re-
quiring presetting in our proposed method, i.e., the value of ,
the number of basis functions , and the interval .
Table II lists the relative extrapolation error corresponding to
different choices of . It is seen that the accuracy with of
0.05 is satisfactory. Reducing the value of will improve the
accuracy with the price of more CEM simulations. Therefore,
Fig. 10. Variations of and as the data length increases for the example of
0.05 is suggested as an empirical choice of . Guidelines for planar dipole antenna.
setting and have been given in Section III-A.
ZHAO AND ZHANG: EXTRAPOLATION OF WIDEBAND ELECTROMAGNETIC RESPONSE USING SPARSE REPRESENTATION
TABLE II
RELATIVE ERROR WITH DIFFERENT VALUES OF
FOR THE THREE EXAMPLES
TABLE III
VALUES OF PARAMETERS IN DESIGNING THE OVERCOMPLETE DICTIONARY
FOR THE THREE EXAMPLES
Table III lists the values of parameters in designing the over-
complete dictionary for the three examples. is sampled uni-
formly in with a step size of . In this work,
is set to 0.5, though it may be determined dynamically using
the grid refinement technique [17]. It should be noted that insta-
bility may occur if atoms of the dictionary are highly correlated.
Hence, in order to avoid instability, the value of should not
be too small. Besides the aforementioned parameters, and
also need initialization. As noted in Section III-C, initial
values of and may be set to one sixth to one third of the
total data lengths in time- and frequency-domain, respectively.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In this paper, a sparse representation method has been de-
veloped to obtain wideband response from combined low fre-
quency and early time information. A criterion has been pro-
posed to determine the sufficient data length, with which one
can decide when to stop the expensive CEM simulation. Perfor-
mance analysis has shown the lower computational complexity
and higher flexibility of the proposed method. Numerical ex-
amples have been provided to illustrate the efficacy and advan-
tages of the new extrapolation method. It has been shown that
the sparse representation method not only reduces the time in
selecting optimal values of and , but also provides more
flexibility and better accuracy. Furthermore, for orthogonal ex-
pansion, it is required that . If is increased
beyond during its optimization, or should
be enlarged, which means additional expensive CEM simula-
tion is required. However, the proposed algorithm does not have
this restriction. Finally, simulation results showed the effective-
ness of the proposed criterion in determining the sufficient data
length. The proposed method can be used together with CEM
methods to greatly save computation time in obtaining wide-
band electromagnetic response.
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Huapeng Zhao (S’08) was born in Hebei province,
China, in 1983. He received the B.Eng. and M.Eng.
degrees in electronic engineering from the Univer-
sity of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu, China, in July 2004 and March 2007, re-
spectively. From January 2008 to August 2011, he
was working towards the Ph.D. degree in the School
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore.
He is now a Research Scientist with the Institute
of High Performance Computing, Singapore. His re-
search interests include computational electromagnetics, signal processing tech-
niques in electromagnetics, and measurements in electromagnetic reverberation
chamber.
Mr. Zhao was a recipient of the Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award by the Of-
fice of Education of Sichuan Province, China, and the Science and Technology
Advancement Award (First Class) by the Ministry of Education, China, in 2009
and 2005, respectively.
Ying Zhang was born in Chengdu, China, in 1981.
She received the B.Eng. degree from the University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China
(UESTC), Chengdu, China, in 2004, and the Ph.D.
degree from the Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore, in 2011, all in electronic engineering.
She is currently an Associate Professor with
the School of Electronic Engineering, UESTC,
Chengdu, China. Her research interests include array
signal processing, sparse signal representation, and
wireless communication.
Dr. Zhang was a recipient of the 2010 Best Student Paper Award of IEEE
Singapore MTT/AP Chapter.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Wearable Two-Antenna System on a Life Jacket
for Cospas-Sarsat Personal Locator Beacons
Andrea A. Serra, Paolo Nepa, Member, IEEE, and Giuliano Manara, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—A wearable two-antenna system to be integrated on a
life jacket and connected to Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) of
the Cospas-Sarsat system is presented. Each radiating element is
a folded meandered dipole resonating at 406 MHz and includes a
planar reflector realized by a metallic foil. The folded dipole and
the metallic foil are attached on the opposite sides of the floating el-
ements of the life jacket itself, so resulting in a mechanically stable
antenna. The metallic foil improves antenna radiation properties
even when the latter is close to the sea surface, shields the human
body from EM radiation and makes the radiating system less sensi-
tive to the human body movements. Prototypes have been realized
and a measurement campaign has been carried out. The antennas
show satisfactory performance also when the life jacket is worn by
a user. The proposed radiating elements are intended for the use
in a two-antenna scheme in which the transmitter can switch be-
tween them in order to meet Cospas-Sarsat system specifications.
Indeed, the two antennas provide complementary radiation pat-
terns so that Cospas-Sarsat requirements (satellite constellation
coverage and EIRP profile) are fully satisfied.
Index Terms—Cospas-Sarsat system, folded dipole, life-jacket
antennas, life vest antennas, meandered dipole, wearable antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE Cospas-Sarsat system [1] is intended to provide a
earth-to-satellite SOS communication in case of ship-
wrecks or similar crashes. The basic Cospas-Sarsat system is
composed of [1] the following.
• Distress radio beacons like ELTs (Emergency Locator
Transmitters) for aviation use, EPIRBs (Emergency Po-
sition Indicating Radio Beacons) for maritime use, and
PLBs (Personal Locator Beacons) for personal use, which
transmit signals during distress situations;
• Instruments on board satellites in geostationary and low-
altitude earth orbits, which detect the signals transmitted
by distress beacons;
• Ground receiving stations, referred to as Local Users
Terminals (LUTs), which receive and process the satellite
downlink signal to generate distress alerts;
• Mission Control Centers (MCCs) which receive alerts pro-
duced by LUTs and forward them to Rescue Coordination
Manuscript received April 19, 2011; revised July 14, 2011; accepted August
26, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
A. A. Serra is with the Department of Information Engineering, University
of Pisa, Pisa IT-56100, Italy (e-mail: andrea.serra@iet.unipi.it).
P. Nepa and G. Manara are with the Department of Information Engineering,
University of Pisa, Pisa IT-56100, Italy. They are also with Consortium
Ubiquitous Technologies (CUBIT), Navacchio, Pisa IT-56100, Italy (e-mail:
p.nepa@iet.unipi.it; g.manara@iet.unipi.it).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173151
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1035
Centers (RCCs), Search and Rescue Points Of Contacts
(SPOCs) or other MCCs.
ELTs are cumbersome and heavy devices because they
are supposed to resist heavy impacts and high temperatures.
EPIRBs are intended to be released by boats at the shipwreck
and they are usually mounted on buoys. PLBs are similar to
portable radios both in terms of size and weight and are sup-
posed to be carried in pockets or attached to safe vests. They
are sold as self standing transmitters.
Typical antennas used for distress radio beacons are
monopole/whip antennas; a fractal antenna layout has been
presented in [2].
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, transmitting systems
for Cospas-Sarsat applications fully integrated on emergency
equipment are not available yet. Transport companies usually
provide floating life vests to be worn in emergencies. Usually,
they consist of a wide and flat front part and a back element
around the neck intended to support the survivor’s head (like
a collar). Some of them are inflatable, especially on aircrafts,
and some are filled with floating elements. The latter are plastic
foam blocks, such as polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene, in-
serted into the main jacket’s parts. Apart from what required by
whistles, emergency lights, reflective strips and lashing straps,
enough room is available for additional devices on both the
main parts of the aforementioned vests, where PLB antennas
can be attached to. Life-vest integrated PLB antennas belong
to the class of wearable antennas and some effort has been re-
cently made in this research field [3]–[7]. They should be as
light and small as possible and they should not interfere with the
human body to ensure good radiation performance. Apart from
reflection coefficient specifications, radiation patterns should
not be impaired from survivors’ movements and radiation ef-
ficiency should be kept at acceptable values even when the an-
tenna is close to the sea surface. Moreover, the antenna should
be shielded from the body to guarantee low SAR (Specific Ab-
sorption Rate) levels, although the latter is probably the least
problem in distress situations.
In this paper, the performance of a Cospas-Sarsat two-an-
tenna system operating at 406 MHz and integrated on a real
floating life jacket is investigated through both simulations and
measurements. First, a comparison between three dipole-like
antenna prototypes (a meandered dipole, a bow-tie dipole, and
a folded meandered dipole) is done in order to outline some im-
portant antenna features, and results are shown in Section II.
In Section III, the effect of human body movements on the an-
tenna reflection coefficient is experimentally checked. Finally,
in Section IV the radiation properties of the folded meandered
dipole are analyzed. In order to maximize the satellite radio
coverage, a two-antenna system installed in the front part of
1036 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. Prototypes of the meandered dipole (top) and bow-tie (bottom) an-
tennas.

Fig. 1. Typical floating life vest: (a) front view, (b), (c) two possible antenna
placements.

a life jacket is proposed and its compliance with the Cospas-

Sarsat system specifications (coverage requirements and Effec-
tive Isotropic Radiated Power, EIRP, profiles) is verified. Final
remarks are discussed in the Conclusions.

II. ANTENNA DESIGN

Fig. 1(a) shows a typical floating life vest. It is composed of
two main parts: a front/chest one (in the continuous line box)
and the head/neck one (in the dotted line box). The chest part
is supposed to be fasten to the human trunk and the head one
should provide support to the head and keep it away from the
sea surface. Modern life jackets are mostly designed to auto-
matically orientate themselves in a way that the survivor chest
faces the sky (and his back lies on the water surface). So, the
highlighted parts in Fig. 1(a) should face upward. In the bottom
of Fig. 1(a), one of the floating element is partially extracted
from the jacket and it is clearly visible. It is made of several
rectangular soft PVC slices stacked-up to form a thick block
and its size is around cm . A sim-
ilar PVC block is inside the life jacket in the neck area and its
size is around cm . Enough room is
available to realize a planar antenna on the largest face of each
floating block. Fig. 1(b) and Fig. 1(c) show a sample of how
two antennas could be attached to these floating elements in the
front and in the head placements, respectively. Fig. 3. Measured reflection coefficient for (a) the bow-tie dipole (BTD) and (b)
In a preliminary phase, three different dipole-like antennas the meandered dipole (MD) antenna. Both the chest and head placements have
resonating at 406 MHz have been designed and prototyped to been considered when the antennas are attached to a life jacket worn by a user.
Measured reflection coefficient for the free-space antennas is also shown as a
be attached to the floating blocks: a meandered dipole (MD), a reference.
bow-tie dipole (BTD) antenna, and a folded meandered dipole
with a conducting reflector on its back (FMD). Fig. 2 shows the
first two of the above mentioned radiating elements. the metallic strip and the foam block, and the free space con-
The MD is realized with a copper adhesive foil and it is stuck dition just indicates that it is not mounted on the jacket. Both
directly on the 9 cm thick floating block. It is 30 cm long and 2 the chest and head placements (as illustrated in Fig. 1) are con-
cm wide and the meandering has been necessary to reduce size sidered. Both free-space antennas exhibit a reflection coefficient
in order to fit the available room in the life vest (strip width less than 20 dB in the Cospas-Sarsat system frequency band
is equal to 5 mm and the meanders are all equal). In Fig. 2 (406–406.1 MHz). However, it is apparent from measurements
the BTD is also shown, which is realized with the same tech- shown in Fig. 3 that, when the life jacket is worn, antenna return
nique; it is 27 cm long and 6 cm wide. In Fig. 3 the reflec- loss performance is impaired by the presence of the survivor’s
tion coefficient for the MD and the BTD antennas are shown, body. Indeed, human body conductivity and losses modify the
when the antennas are either in free-space or on a life jacket antenna input impedance, as they are only 9 cm far apart (the
worn by a user. Each antenna is considered as the group of 9 cm PVC block thickness corresponds to around 1/8 of the
SERRA et al.: WEARABLE TWO-ANTENNA SYSTEM ON A LIFE JACKET
Fig. 4. Measured impedance of the meandered dipole (MD) antenna when the
antenna is in free space, placed on the body and when a conductive shield is
placed on the opposite side of the floating block with respect to the dipole (neck
case). Data plotted in the frequency range between 350 MHz and 450 MHz.
free-space wavelength at 406 MHz). When the BTD is mounted
on the worn life jacket, the reflection coefficient is minimally
degraded with respect to the free-space case if the antenna is
placed in the front part. When it is mounted around the neck,
performances are a little worse, reasonably because of the near
presence of the head; however, the reflection coefficient is still
less than 10 dB around 406 MHz. From Fig. 3(b) it can be
observed that, when the MD is on the worn life jacket, the op-
erating frequency is down shifted but the reflection coefficient
keeps values lower than 12 dB.
For the specific application [8], the VSWR is required to be
smaller than 1.5 (reflection coefficient less than 14 dB). A
shielding element could helpfully be interposed among the ra-
diating element and the user’s body in order to reduce the cou-
pling between the antenna and the human body. On the other
hand, this electrically small separation will result in an input
impedance reduction as it is well known for horizontal dipole
antennas close to a metallic plane [9]. As an example, Fig. 4
shows the input impedance for the MD in free space, mounted
on the jacket and when a metallic foil is stuck on the foam face
opposite to the dipole. In the last case, the metallic sheet acts like
a shield between the radiating element and the human body. It
is apparent from Fig. 4 how the presence of the human body,
and more of the conductive shield, affects the input impedance
values. In the free space case, the impedance trace is inside the
in the frequency range of the COSPAS
SARSAT system. When the antenna is placed close to the body
(with and without the shield) the impedance traces do not pass
inside the and matching is no more satis-
fied (as apparent also from Fig. 3(b), where the MD_worn_neck
trace is always higher than the 14 dB threshold). As expected,
the higher value of the shield conductivity with respect to that
of the body leads to lower impedance values (shorting effect).
Fig. 5 shows the reflection coefficient for the MD and BTD
when a metallic shield is placed on the opposite side of the
1037
Fig. 5. Measured reflection coefficient for the bow-tie dipole (BTD) and the
meandered dipole (MD) antenna when a metallic shield is placed on the opposite
side of the floating block with respect to the dipoles. Both the chest and head
placements have been considered when the antennas are attached to a life jacket
worn by a user.
floating block with respect to the dipoles. As expected the re-
flection coefficient is affected by the presence of the shield and
system requirements are not satisfied. The reflection coefficient
is greater than 8 dB.
This effect can be mitigated if a folded dipole is used, since
folding determines an input impedance increasing with respect
to a conventional dipole [9]. The FMD is shown in Fig. 6(a) and
is essentially a printed folded dipole whose arms are meandered
in order to save space according to the available room on the life
vest. The FMD is composed of two identical parallel printed ele-
ments which exhibit the same topology of the meandered dipole
in Fig. 2. The two elements are stuck, facing each other, on the
two sides of a 1 mm thick Rohacell substrate and electrically
connected at their ends (bottom left detail of Fig. 6(a)). The di-
mensions of the antenna and the floating block are also indicated
in Fig. 6.
The antenna has been optimized in order to resonate at 406
MHz when the folded meandered dipole and the metallic shield
are mounted on two opposite sides of the 9 cm thick floating
element, as shown in the bottom of Fig. 6. The shielding element
is realized with a 30 cm long and 10 cm wide conductive sheet.
Fig. 7 shows the reflection coefficient for the FMD with the
shielding sheet when the life jacket is worn by a user. To show
the beneficial contribution of the conductive sheet, the reflec-
tion coefficient for the free-space FMD is also shown for com-
parison. Similar to the MD and BTD, the FMD antenna is con-
sidered as comprising the metallic strip, the foam block and the
metallic shield. The free-space notation indicates that the an-
tenna is not mounted on the jacket. As expected, results for the
folded meandered dipole are better than those obtained for the
simpler meandered dipole and the bow-tie antenna. Indeed, the
resonance is kept around the operating frequency and the reflec-
tion coefficient is less than 14 dB even when the life jacket is
worn.
The antenna reflection coefficient was also measured in a wet
condition. First, the FMD, was made waterproof by means of
a wrapping foil. Then, it was placed (floating) in a large basin
filled with sea water. The FMD was got wet in order to create
some water layer on the antenna, in order to simulate a more
1038 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. Prototype of the Folded Meandered Dipole—FMD (top) and details of
the feeding gap (top right) and of the shorting at one of its ends (top left). In
the bottom of the figure, the metallic shield on the opposite side of the floating
element is also shown.
Fig. 7. Measured reflection coefficient for the folded meandered dipole—FMD
antenna, in free space, worn and floating on sea water. Both the chest and head
placements have been considered when the antennas are attached to a life jacket
worn by a user. The measured reflection coefficient for the free-space antenna
is also shown as a reference.
realistic operating condition. The reflection coefficient remains
less than 14 dB at the operating frequency, this means that
both the water surface beyond the antenna reflector and the thin
water layer on the dipole do not strongly affect its performance.
The FMD, which forms the antenna composed of the dipole
and the metallic shield, was designed and tuned on the actual
dimensions of the available floating block (9 cm). One of the
practical inconveniences that could occur in an emergency is
that the floating element could be compressed and its thickness
reduced. Fig. 8 shows the effect of the thickness reduction on
the antenna reflection coefficient.
Fig. 8. Measured reflection coefficient for the folded meandered dipole—FMD
antenna, in free space, when the height h of the floating block is reduced (to
simulate an unintentional compression of the floating block).
As it can be observed from Fig. 8, the antenna is slightly de-
tuned and the reflection coefficient minimum is shifted toward
higher frequencies. Nonetheless, the bandwidth requirement is
still fully satisfied. It is worth mentioning that the floating block
used in the measurement campaign (extracted from a real life
jacket) is very light but also difficult to compress. For instance,
a hundred kilograms load causes a thickness variation of less
than 1 cm and the thickness rises back up to 9 cm when the load
is removed.
III. ANTENNAS PERFORMANCE ON A LIFE JACKET: RETURN
LOSS FLUCTUATIONS
In realistic emergency situations, the wearable antenna
impedance tuning can be degraded by body activities due to
user’s excitement or simply to movements induced by the sea
waves. A measurement campaign has been conducted when the
life jacket is worn by a user who performs a series of random
body movements. The investigated activities are related to the
upper limbs and head movements, which could introduce the
main perturbations. Samples of the reflection coefficient ampli-
tude at 406 MHz were collected in a three minute time sweep.
In this interval the arms were waved in the front of the trunk
and around the head, the head was swung ahead and behind and
the chest was slightly leaned forward. During these activities
the jacket is displaced from its nominal position, being slightly
bent and deformed. Fig. 9 shows the collected samples when
the antenna is mounted in the front part of the jacket.
As apparent from Fig. 9, reflection coefficient fluctuations are
smaller for the FMD than for the BTD and the MD antennas.
Moreover, the reflection coefficient is always less than 12 dB
for the FMD, while it can become greater than 10 dB for the
other two antennas. Each of the above antennas has been sep-
arately considered, while trying to maintain an analogous mo-
bility degree during measurements.
Fig. 10 shows the probability density function of the collected
samples and Table I summarizes some statistics (for ten data ac-
quisition, for each antenna), including the mean values and the
relative standard deviation (RSD%), that is the standard devia-
tion divided by the mean value. In the third column of Table I
the occurrence of VSWR values higher than 1.5 is also shown.
SERRA et al.: WEARABLE TWO-ANTENNA SYSTEM ON A LIFE JACKET
Fig. 9. Samples of the measured reflection coefficient at 406 MHz collected in
a three minute time sweep when the life jacket is worn and the user moves the
arms, the trunk and the head.
Fig. 10. Probability density function of the measured reflection coefficient am-
plitude at 406 MHz for the bow-tie dipole (BTD), meandered dipole (MD) and
folded meandered dipole (FMD) antennas, during a series of repetitive body
movements.
The mean value of the reflection coefficient amplitude results
to be approximately equal to 16 dB, while it is around 12.5
dB for the MD antenna.
As already noted in Fig. 9, the folded meandered dipole ex-
hibits the lowest RSD% and it is also significant that it shows
a very low percentage (less than 3%) of VSWR values higher
than 1.5. On the basis of the results shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10,
the FMD was chosen because its reflection coefficient is more
stable (traces in Fig. 7 are very similar and they almost overlap)
both in a stationary condition and when some movements are
performed (Fig. 9, 10 and Table I).
IV. ANTENNAS PERFORMANCE ON A LIFE JACKET: RADIATION
PATTERNS
In this section radiation patterns are analyzed to check their
compliance with the Cospas-Sarsat specifications [8]. The
Cospas-Sarsat System includes two types of satellites [1]:
• Satellites in low-altitude Earth orbit (LEO) which form the
LEOSAR System;
1039
TABLE I
MEAN VALUES AND RELATIVE STANDARD DEVIATION OF THE REFLECTION
COEFFICIENT FOR THE BOW TIE DIPOLE, THE MEANDERED DIPOLE AND THE
FOLDED MEANDERED DIPOLE ANTENNAS
• Satellites in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) which form
the GEOSAR System.
The GEOSAR system can provide almost immediate alerting
in the footprint of the GEOSAR satellite, whereas the LEOSAR
system provides coverage of the polar regions (which are
beyond the coverage of geostationary satellites). The latter can
locate the distress event using Doppler processing techniques
and it is less vulnerable to obstructions which may block a
beacon signal in a given direction because the satellite is con-
tinuously moving with respect to the beacon. On the other side,
the LEOSAR satellites are not always visible by the beacons as
their orbit time is around ninety minutes long. Then, in order
to see a LEOSAR satellite as soon as it arises from its polar
orbit, the radiation beam of the beacon antenna is required to
be relatively wide. System specifications [8] require the EIRP
to be between 32 dBm and 43 dBm for at least 90% of the
elevation region between 5 and 60 (radiation patterns are
required to be hemispherical) when the power transmitted to
the antenna is 37 dBm 2 dB. It obviously follows that high
efficiency antennas could allow to satisfy EIRP requirements
with significant beacon power saving.
Due to the better performance of the folded meandered dipole
antenna in terms of reflection coefficient robustness with respect
to the body presence and movements, radiation performance
will be analyzed just for this antenna. The radiation patterns
were evaluated both numerically and through measurements.
The antenna was simulated in the presence of a simple model of
the human trunk when placed in the above mentioned available
spots (front chest and head). The human model was composed
of a box for emulating the chest and an ellipsoid for the head, as
shown in Fig. 11(a). Electrical characteristics for a 2/3
muscle equivalent phantom (available at [10]) were applied to
the chest and head homogeneous volumes. The resulting proper-
ties at the system operating frequency correspond to ,
. In order to consider the effect of the sea surface,
an infinite planar surface with sea water electric characteristics
( , ) was imposed just behind the model back
as it was supposed to be floating on it. Numerical simulations
were performed with CST Microwave Studio [11].
The folded meandered dipole exhibits a quite large beam in its
H-plane (the H-plane pattern would be omni-directional without
the metal shield and the body model). The simulated gain is
around 7 dB when the antenna is placed on the chest (in either
vertical or horizontal configuration) and around 1 dB when the
antenna is at the head position. It follows that the head has a
1040 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 11. Human trunk and head models used in numerical simulations
mm . The chest and the head are modeled as
homogeneous volumes with electric characteristics equal to 2/3 of the muscle’s
one at 406 MHz. The two-antenna configurations consist of two folded mean-
dered dipoles are perpendicularly oriented: (a) chest and head placements; (b)
both antennas are located at the chest.
Fig. 12. Photo of the Satimo SG 3000F measurement facility at Ce.R.Ca.,
Calearo’s research centre in Vicenza, Italy.
significant effect on the antenna gain with a reduction of more
than 6 dB. In order to reduce the front end gain requirement at
the satellite, it is necessary that the life jacket EIRP is as close
as possible to the upper limit of 43 dBm.
This makes the folded meandered dipole placed on the head
spot an inefficient solution. Then, a more efficient practical im-
plementation of a two-antenna system was considered where
both radiating elements are orthogonally placed on the front part
of the life jacket (Fig. 11(b)). It is worth noting that the receiving
antennas at the Cospas-Sarsat satellites are circularly polarized
antennas.
A simple phantom model of the human body was prepared
by filling a plastic tank mm
with water and a proper salt concentration to simulate human
body complex permittivity at 406 MHz [10], [12]. Measure-
ments on the FMD prototype were carried out in a Satimo SG
3000F system (available at Ce.R.Ca., Calearo’s research centre
in Vicenza, Italy). A photo of the measurement system is shown
in Fig. 12, where the tank and the life jacket are also visible.
Fig. 13. Simulated and measured gain patterns for the horizontal (a) and the
vertical (b) folded meandered dipoles, arranged as shown in Fig. 11(b).
The effect of the sea surface was added in a post processing
phase through the electromagnetic numerical solver Feko [13].
The Satimo system was first used to measure radiation patterns
in free space. Radiation pattern data were then imported in the
simulation software FEKO and a radiation boundary in the form
of a flat surface was added under the antenna to account for the
effect of the sea surface. With this post processing setup, the
final radiation patterns (Fig. 13) were computed.
The radiation patterns for the configuration corresponding
to Fig. 11(b) were measured and results are shown in Fig. 13,
together with the simulated ones. Simulated and measured
gain patterns are in a good agreement in both principal planes.
Fig. 13(a) shows patterns relevant to the horizontal FMD
antenna, while Fig. 13(b) shows those for the vertical FMD
antenna. As expected, both antennas exhibit a relatively wide
beam in the H-plane (y-z plane for the horizontal dipole and
x-z plane for the vertical dipole) and a narrower beam in the
E-plane (x-z plane for the horizontal dipole and y-z plane for
SERRA et al.: WEARABLE TWO-ANTENNA SYSTEM ON A LIFE JACKET 1041

the vertical dipole). The E-plane pattern of the horizontal dipole

is slightly asymmetric as a consequence of the presence of the
vertical dipole antenna in the direction.
As aforementioned, EIRP limits are between 32 dBm and 43
dBm and must be satisfied for the 90% of the elevation angles
between 5 and 60 . The proposed idea is to use the two above
described antennas and to alternatively transmit with one of the
two, in order to cover the desired satellite region. Fig. 14(a)
shows the EIRP contour plot (measured data) for the vertically
mounted folded meandered dipole placed on the front chest as
in Fig. 11(b), when the transmitted power is set to 37 dBm (the
nominal value).
The 5 to 60 elevation circles are highlighted by two dotted-
lines, the white region indicates allowed EIRP values between
32 dBm and 43 dBm, while the green (red) color indicates those
regions where EIRP values are below 32 dBm (above 43 dBm).
If a single antenna is considered (vertical dipole), the green re-
gion covers around 89% of the elevation angle space and, even
if for a very small percentage (less than 1%), system require-
ments are not fully satisfied. Moreover, it is worth considering
that, for a number of reason related to the emergency situation
(natural body movements, sea wave induced movements), the
performance of a single antenna could be degraded and it could
not radiate as required by the system or as it was measured
during the Cospas-Sarsat testing procedure [8]. An increased
reliability can be gained with a two-antenna system where the
transmitter periodically switches between the two dipoles (it
is worth noting that fast switching is not required, so that the
switch implementation is not a complicate and expensive task).
Thus, the radiation patterns of the horizontal and vertical FMD
in Fig. 13(a) were combined by selecting the antenna with the
highest gain between the two. With this technique the personal
locator beacon uses alternatively the two antennas to transmit
the emergency request by increasing the likelihood that at least
one of the two exhibits a relatively high gain toward the direc-
tion the satellite is arising from. In Fig. 14(a) and Fig. 14(b)
the white areas indicates the directions where the EIRP require-
ments are met.
It is apparent that lower EIRP values are located along the
directions parallel to each dipole (dipole null directions). On
the other hand, when the results are combined, the green region
(EIRP values less than 32 dBm) is quite reduced and the ele-
vation profile is covered for 97% of the direction space, with a
wide margin with respect to the 90% requirement.

V. CONCLUSIONS
A wearable two-antenna system to be integrated on a life
jacket and connected to Personal Locator Beacons (PLBs) of the
Cospas-Sarsat system has been presented. A set of dipole-like
configurations resonating at 406 MHz have been prototyped and
compared. The most promising radiator resulted to be a folded
meandered dipole which includes a planar reflector made of
a metallic foil. The folded dipole and the metallic foil could
be attached on the opposite sides of the floating elements of a
typical commercial life jacket, so resulting in a mechanically
stable antenna. Prototypes have been realized and a measure-
ment campaign has been carried out when the life jacket with
the antenna was worn by a user. It has been shown that the
Fig. 14. EIRP contour plot (measured data) for the two-antenna system as
shown in Fig. 11(b) when the transmitted power is set to 37 dBm: (a) vertical
dipole, (b) horizontal dipole, (c) combined data for a system where the trans-
mitter continuously switches between the horizontal and the vertical FMD an-
tennas.
metallic foil makes the radiating system less sensitive to the
human body movements and improves antenna radiation prop-
erties even when it is close to the sea surface (it also shields
the human body from EM radiation). A waterproof prototype
1042 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
was arranged to test its performance when the antenna floats
on water and a thin water film is placed on the dipole. Re-
sults showed that bandwidth requirements are still fully satis-
fied. The effect of the floating block height variation (compres-
sion) was also analyzed and the resulting antenna was very ro-
bust even for heavy compressions. The proposed radiating el-
ements are intended for their use in a two-antenna scheme in
which the transmitter can switch between them in order to cover
most of the Cospas-Sarsat satellite constellation. Indeed, the
two antennas provide almost complementary radiation patterns
so that Cospas-Sarsat requirements (satellite constellation cov-
erage and EIRP profile) can be fully satisfied.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Ce.R.Ca., Calearo’s research
centre in Vicenza, Italy (http://www.calearo.com/) for making
available the measurement site and E. Toniolo for his precious
help in the measurement campaign. The authors also acknowl-
edge the support of CST for providing additional resources and
technical assistance for the parallel version of CST Microwave
Studio.
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[11] [Online]. Available: http://www.cst.com/
[12] C.-K. Chou, G. W. Chen, A. W. Guy, and K. H. Luk, “Formulas for
preparing phantom muscle tissue at various radiofrequencies,” Bioelec-
tromagnetics, vol. 5, pp. 435–441, 1984.
[13] [Online]. Available: http://www.feko.info/
Andrea A. Serra received the Laurea degree in
telecommunications engineering and the Ph.D.
degree from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in
2003 and 2007, respectively.
Since September 2003, he has been with the
Microwave and Radiation Laboratory, Department
of Information Engineering at the University of Pisa.
In 2006, he was a Visiting Ph.D. Researcher at the
Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Birmingham. He is currently con-
ducting his postdoctoral research at the University
of Pisa. His research interests are about the design of wideband and multiband
antennas for base station and mobile terminal, the implementation of diversity
schemes for mobile communications. He is also involved in the characterization
of channel propagation for body centric communication systems and in the
design of wearable antennas.
Paolo Nepa received the Laurea degree in electronics
engineering (summa cum laude) from the University
of Pisa, Italy, in 1990.
In 1993 he became Researcher at the Department
of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa.
From July to December 1998, he was at the Electro-
Science Laboratory (ESL), The Ohio State Univer-
sity, Columbus, as a Visiting Scholar supported by a
grant of the Italian National Research Council. At the
ESL, he was involved in research on efficient hybrid
techniques for the analysis of large antenna arrays.
In April 2002 he became Associate Professor at the University of Pisa, where
he currently teaches courses on Electromagnetic Fields, Antennas and Propaga-
tion, EM Radiations and Biological Interactions. His research interests include
the extension of high-frequency techniques to electromagnetic scattering from
material structures and its application to the development of radio propagation
models for indoor and outdoor scenarios of wireless communication systems.
His research group his mainly involved in the design of wideband and multi-
band antennas, for both base stations and user terminals of modern communi-
cation systems, and in the performance analysis of spatial/polarization diversity
techniques, as well in radiolocation systems. More recently he is working on
channel characterization and wearable antenna design for body-centric commu-
nication systems, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, U.K., and
the Queen Mary University of London, U.K. He has been Visiting Professor at
the University of Oviedo, Spain, and at the Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan. He has
coauthored over 60 technical papers in international journals and more than 120
refereed conference papers.
Dr. Nepa received the Young Scientist Award from the International Union
of Radio Science, Commission B, in 1998.
Giuliano Manara was born in Florence, Italy, on Oc-
tober 30, 1954. He received the Laurea degree in elec-
tronics engineering (summa cum laude) from the Uni-
versity of Florence, Italy, in 1979.
Currently, he is a Professor at the College of Engi-
neering of the University of Pisa, Italy. Since 2000,
he has been serving as the President of the Bachelor
and the Master Programs in Telecommunication En-
gineering at the same University. Since 1980, he has
been collaborating with the Department of Electrical
Engineering of the Ohio State University, Columbus,
Ohio, where, in the summer and fall of 1987, he was involved in research at the
ElectroScience Laboratory. His research interests have centered mainly on the
asymptotic solution of radiation and scattering problems to improve and extend
the uniform geometrical theory of diffraction. In this framework, he has ana-
lyzed electromagnetic wave scattering from material bodies, with emphasis on
the scattering from both isotropic and anisotropic impedance wedges. He has
also been engaged in research on numerical, analytical and hybrid techniques
(both in frequency and time domain), scattering from rough surfaces, frequency
selective surfaces (FSS), and electromagnetic compatibility. More recently, his
research has also been focused on the design of microwave antennas with ap-
plication to broadband wireless networks, and on the development and testing
of new microwave materials (metamaterials).
Prof. Manara was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2004 for “contributions to the
uniform geometrical theory of diffraction and its applications.” Since 2000, he
has been serving as the Secretary/Treasurer of the Italian Society on Electromag-
netics (Società Italiana di Elettromagnetismo, SIEm). Since 2002, he has been
working as a member of the IEEE Italy Section Executive Committee. In May
2004, he was the Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the International
Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory of Commission B of the International
Union of Radio Science (URSI). He also served as a Convenor for several URSI
Commission B international conferences, and URSI General Assemblies. Since
August 2011, he is serving as a Chairman of the International Commission B of
URSI.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Analysis of Cellular Antennas for Hearing-Aid
Compatible Mobile Phones
Pekka M. T. Ikonen, Member, IEEE, and Kevin R. Boyle, Member, IEEE
Abstract—The Federal Communications Commission ensures
that a certain portion of mobile phones sold in the United States
are hearing-aid compatible. When the phone is tested for compat-
ibility, the spatial near-field distribution generated by the phone
in the vicinity of its acoustic output is used as the assessment
criteria. Certain types of cellular antennas are known partial
solutions for the radio-frequency related challenges of hearing-aid
compatibility. We briefly summarize the characteristics of these
antennas, introducing a new figure-of-merit based on a radi-
ating and balanced mode analysis. We then introduce a class
of dual-feed, dual-radiator cellular antennas as promising new
candidates for enabling hearing-aid compatibility. It is shown that
the proposed antennas, utilized with proper matching circuits,
have inherent characteristics that make them attractive solutions
for hearing-aid compatible mobile phones.
Index Terms—Cellular antenna, GSM, hearing-aid compati-
bility, mobile phone, radiating and balanced mode analysis, spatial
near-field profile.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires
that a certain portion of mobile phones offered to con-
sumers in the United States of America (USA) are hearing-aid
compatible (HAC) according to the ANSI C63.19 standard [1],
[2]. A typical hearing-aid device is used either in microphone
mode or in T-coil (induction coil) mode [2]. Devices operating
in the microphone mode are susceptible to radio-frequency (RF)
electromagnetic disturbances, whereas those operating in the
T-coil mode are disturbed by audio-frequency magnetic field
phenomena stemming from transient currents. Here we focus
only on the microphone mode, and use the term HAC to refer to
phone compatibility in this mode. We bear in mind, however, that
a real HAC phone must also meet the compatibility requirements
when the hearing-aid device is used in the T-coil mode: audio
designers are typically responsible for this.
The root cause of compatibility challenges in the microphone
mode is the emission of pulsed RF signals by the cellular an-
tenna. The signals are picked up and demodulated at the input
of hearing-aid device. They are then further amplified and fil-
tered by the remaining stages of the device and may produce au-
dible interference if the signal is strong enough [3], [4]. Antenna
Manuscript received April 11, 2011; revised June 28, 2011; accepted August
03, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
P. M. T. Ikonen is with TDK-EPC Corporation, Espoo 02600, Finland
(e-mail: pekka.ikonen@epcos.com).
K. R. Boyle is with Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 2XH, U.K. (e-mail: kevin.
boyle@epcos.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173149
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1043
and RF designers are typically responsible for ensuring that
the near-field amplitudes in the vicinity of the phone’s acoustic
output are within allowed limits, referred to as M-limits in the
ANSI standard [2].
Pulsed signals are generated by time-division multiple-access
(TDMA) systems such as GSM. The fundamental frequency
(and several of the harmonics) associated with the GSM pulse
repetition rate of 217 Hz fall in the audible frequency region. In
addition to this, the peak transmission power is high, at 2 W
and 1 W in the low-band (bands V and VIII) and high-band
(bands I, II, III, IV) respectively. In other TDMA systems such
as TD-SCDMA and LTE TDD the transmission power is no-
ticeably lower than in GSM. It is therefore predicted that HAC
challenges are less likely with these systems.
The allowance limits for emissions at frequencies below
960 MHz are 10 dB higher (more relaxed) than at frequencies
greater than 960 MHz [2]. This, added to the fact that the GSM
peak transmission power at frequencies below 960 MHz is
only 3 dB higher than at frequencies above 960 MHz, implies
that the biggest real-life challenge to meet HAC RF emission
limits are over the transmission (Tx) frequencies of band II
(GSM1900). Similar arguments are presented also in [5]–[7].
From a standard-specified compatibility point of view, only
GSM1900 is important, since currently HAC is a regulatory
requirement only in the USA.
Some initial works devoted mainly to general modeling
and measurements of interaction between hearing-aid devices
and wireless devices can be found in [3], [4], [8], [9]. Re-
cently, the focus has turned more towards real antenna and
RF solutions leading to dedicated HAC mobile phones. The
techniques proposed to manipulate the near-field distribution
of a HAC phone can be roughly divided into two categories:
i) manipulate the mechanics of the phone, ii) utilize cer-
tain types of cellular antennas. Wavetraps (typically grounded
quarter-wave resonators) [5], [6], [10], [11] or band-stop fil-
ters implemented in the chassis [12] are some proposals aimed
to solve HAC by manipulating the mechanics of the phone.
Whilst in most cases the results are rather good with “bare”
printed-wiring-board (PWB) prototypes, the operation of the
proposed parasitic high-Q resonators might be disturbed when
placed inside a real phone packed full of lossy (for radio-fre-
quency wave interaction) mechanics components. An alterna-
tive approach is to utilize cellular antennas, mounted at the
bottom of the PWB, that are able to excite (quasi-) balanced
(differential) spatial near-field profile over certain frequencies
relevant for HAC [7], [13]. The majority of such antennas
proposed so far either have parasitic elements or are variants
of folded loops [14], [15]. Implementation examples of folded
1044 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 1. Loop antenna with equivalent radiating and balanced modes. Fig. 2. Loop antenna with simplified equivalent radiating and balanced modes.

loops in real mobile phones can be found, for example, in

[16], [17].
We demonstrate in this paper how folded loops and antennas
with parasitic elements can operate quasi-independently of the
phone PWB (which in turn leads to low fields at the phone
speaker location and good HAC performance). We then show
that a class of dual-feed bottom-mounted cellular antennas,
utilized with proper matching circuits, can also excite quasi-in-
dependent modes over the frequencies relevant for HAC.
We explain the HAC performance of these antennas using a
radiating and balanced mode analysis [18]. It is shown that the
proposed dual-feed antennas are volume-versus-performance
competitive, when compared against the known single-feed
antennas that enable HAC.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Sections II
and III we analyze the basic performance of loop and parasitic
antennas respectively. We utilize a radiating and balanced mode Fig. 3. Example “loop” antenna. All dimensions are in millimeters.
analysis to determine the extent to which radiation is indepen-
dent of the PWB. In Section IV a proposed dual-feed antenna is
introduced, analyzed and shown to have HAC properties sim- This is necessary to ensure balance, i.e., .
ilar to those of parasitic structures. Input matching and total ef- In this case, the radiating and balanced modes can be further
ficiency are verified by measurements in Section V and conclu- simplified as shown in Fig. 2.
sions are drawn in Section VI. Consider first the radiating mode, the impedance of which
All 3-D electromagnetic simulations are performed using An- is given by . It consists of a “T” shaped
soft HFSS. monopole fed directly against the PWB. Within the monopole
is a slot that is excited at its centre. When the slot is half-wave
II. ANALYSIS OF “LOOP” ANTENNAS long it has a low current adjacent to the feed, forcing a high
impedance. In turn, this reduces the currents on both the
The “loop” antennas under consideration and their radiating monopole and the PWB (since current continuity must be
and balanced mode decomposition are shown in Fig. 1. It is as- maintained between the two).
sumed that the feed and shorting pins of the antenna (shown The balanced mode impedance is given by
vertically in Fig. 1) are electrically close and therefore strongly . Nominally no current flows on the PWB and the “loop”
coupled. The same assumption is also made for the horizontal antenna acts as a folded dipole.
sections of the antenna. These assumptions are normally met At the input, the radiating and balanced modes add according
due to the size constraints of typical commercial implementa- to [18]
tions and the need to obtain resonance close to 900 MHz.
The feed and shorting pins are denoted by 1 and 2 respec- (2)
tively. and are the radiating mode currents on the feed
and shorting pins respectively, whereas and are the bal- is impedance seen at the antenna feed due to the radiating
ance mode currents. One of the balanced mode voltage sources mode, where it simply adds in parallel with .
is multiplied by a current sharing factor, given by Consider the implementation shown in Fig. 3. This is similar
to the folded-loop analyzed in [7], but with the parasitic element
(1) removed for analysis and illustration purposes. The loop is made
IKONEN AND BOYLE: ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR ANTENNAS FOR HEARING-AID COMPATIBLE MOBILE PHONES 1045

of copper strips that are folded to conform to the outer casing of

the handset. The antenna is predominantly over ground and we
model the PWB as a 40 100 mm copper plate. The height of
the antenna element in z-direction is 5 mm, and the maximum
dimension in the y-direction is 21.5 mm.
Throughout the rest of the paper we study the near-field dis-
tributions generated by the antennas over the grey area shown in
Fig. 3 below the PWB. The dimensions of the area are 50 110
mm , and it is located 15 mm below the PWB. A similar area
has been used for near-field studies also in [7]. It is to be noted
that this area is not the same measurement area as specified in
the standard [2]1. We deliberately study the near fields over a
larger area to better illustrate the quasi-balanced mode related
characteristics of near-field distributions.
The radiating and balanced mode impedances of this structure
are shown in Fig. 4. They combine to give exactly the correct
impedance at the feed.
It can be seen that the radiating mode impedance,
is that of a “T” shaped monopole fed against PWB that is
impedance transformed to at the antenna input due to the
current sharing of the feed and shorting strips. In this case the
structure is symmetric, so is real and equal to 1, such that
the impedance transformation factor is equal to 4.
Importantly, an antiresonance is imposed by the slot within the
monopole which minimizes the radiating mode currents. This
occurs when the slot is electrically half-wave: in this case at
1.88 GHz, as shown in Fig. 4(a).
In the balanced mode, the antenna feed is isolated from the
PWB and the impedance is that of a folded dipole (which is also
impedance transformed by the action of the fold). It is resonant
at 1.935 GHz, as shown in Fig. 4(c).
The physical requirements for the slot and the dipole to be
half-wave resonant at a particular frequency are approximately
the same. At this frequency, the radiating mode is at a high
impedance level, drawing a small current, whereas the balanced
mode is close to the system impedance, drawing a relatively
much higher current. Hence, the antenna is well matched, but
independent of the ground plane—exactly what is required for
Fig. 4. Radiating and balanced mode impedances of the structure shown in good HAC performance.
Fig. 3: (a) , (b) , (c) , (d) , (e) of and in dB
versus frequency. The frequency range is 0.8–3 GHz for all plots and Smith A figure-of-merit (FOM) for this can be derived by com-
Chart trace symbols are separated by 20 MHz. paring the radiating mode current with the total current, as
follows:

(3)

where and is used to indicate a real com-

ponent. This is necessary to disallow localized reactive currents
from the FOM. This is plotted for the structure of Fig. 3 in Fig. 5.
It is shown that the relative magnitude of the radiating mode
current is low over a moderate range of frequencies centered
about 1.9 GHz, corresponding approximately to the resonant
frequency of the balanced mode and the antiresonant frequency
of the radiating mode.
The FOM indicates the extent to which source currents are
decoupled from the PCB. However, it does not take account of
1The distance between the antenna and the near-field measurement area is
Fig. 5. versus frequency (GHz) for the structure shown in Fig. 3. according to the standard.
1046 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. Near-field distributions generated by the antenna shown in Fig. 3 at
1.0 GHz. (The radiator location corresponds to the bottom of the distributions).
Fig. 7. Near-field distributions generated by the antenna shown in Fig. 3 at
1.95 GHz.
the coupling between the antenna and the PCB, so should not
be used as an absolute indication of HAC performance.
Fig. 4(d) shows the impedance at the antenna feed and in-
dicates that three resonances are achieved. In a typical indus-
trial design the second resonance of the radiating mode is often
lowered to form a dual-resonance in the 2 GHz region. This
will not significantly affect the balanced mode, so the HAC
performance will remain good compared to a conventional an-
tenna (without a mode that is isolated from the PWB). However,
the radiating mode antiresonance may not be maintained within
band II, which will lessen the improvement achievable.
Figs. 6–8 show the near field distributions at 1.0, 1.95 and
2.75 GHz, respectively. All the numerical near-field plots pre-
sented in the paper have been simulated with 1 W accepted
power at the active antenna port. The simulated radiation ef-
ficiencies at the above mentioned frequencies are dB,
dB and dB respectively.
At the lowest resonant frequency (Fig. 6) the field distribu-
tions are dominated by the radiating mode, with sine-like E-field
and cosine-like H-field distributions. The near-field distribu-
tion corresponding to the second resonant frequency (Fig. 7) is
a clear quasi-balanced mode as can be seen when comparing
Fig. 8. Near-field distributions generated by the antenna shown in Fig. 3 at
2.75 GHz.
Fig. 9. Parasitic antenna with equivalent radiating and balanced modes.
the distributions to ([7], Figs. 2 and 5). The H-field distribution
corresponds to balanced-mode current distributions presented,
for example, in ([15], Figs. 3 and 9) and ([19], Fig. 5). At the
highest resonant frequency the near-field distribution (Fig. 8)
again shows a clear radiating-mode distribution as is apparent
from the standing-wave patterns.
Fig. 7 illustrates the benefit of the quasi-balanced mode for
HAC: “cool” near-field areas are observed at the top of the
near-field analysis region that corresponds to the location of the
phone acoustic output.
III. ANALYSIS OF PARASITIC ANTENNAS
A parasitic antenna and an equivalent radiating and balanced
mode decomposition are shown in Fig. 9.
With chosen such that , the radiating and bal-
anced modes can be further simplified as shown in Fig. 10.
The radiating mode is a simple “T” monopole fed against the
PWB, whereas the balanced mode is a dipole fed in isolation
from the PWB.
Consider the implementation shown in Fig. 11. Here the
structure has the same dimensions as the “loop” antenna shown
in Fig. 3 and the driven and parasitic elements are symmetric:
we have closed the slots in the loop antenna to generate the
driven and parasitic elements.
The impedances of the radiating and balanced modes are as
given in (2) and shown in Fig. 12. The is shown in
IKONEN AND BOYLE: ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR ANTENNAS FOR HEARING-AID COMPATIBLE MOBILE PHONES 1047

Fig. 10. Parasitic antenna with simplified equivalent radiating and balanced
modes.

Fig. 11. Parasitic antenna (of the same dimensions as the “loop” antenna shown
in Fig. 3).

Fig. 13. Here the is clearly not as good as for the

“loop” antenna, though at 1.71 GHz some improvement in HAC
Fig. 12. Radiating and balanced mode impedances of the structure shown in
performance should be expected. Fig. 11: (a) , (b) , (c) , (d) , (e) of and in dB
Away from their resonant frequency, parasitic elements in- versus frequency. The frequency range is 0.8–3 GHz for all plots and Smith
crease the antenna quality factor. This is particularly the case in Chart trace symbols are separated by 20 MHz.
dual-band antenna designs: a parasitic element used to increase
the high frequency bandwidth tends to reduce the low frequency
bandwidth. The reason for this has not received much attention
and can be explained by the addition of the radiating and bal-
anced modes. The radiating mode has a lower quality factor (Q)
than balanced mode. The summation (radiating plus balanced
modes) also has a higher Q than the radiating mode. We define
the Q as [20]

(1)

where is impedance, is resistance and is the angular fre-

quency. The Q versus frequency of the parasitic arrangement is
shown in Fig. 14.
Fig. 13. versus frequency (GHz) for the structure shown in Fig. 11.
It can be seen that the radiating mode has the lowest Q at all
frequencies. Hence, using part of the available space for a para-
sitic element is only worthwhile if a resonant loop is introduced aids matching over a particular frequency band. For frequen-
in the impedance response (the driven and parasitic elements cies outside this band, the parasitic element degrades the an-
must have different dimensions for this to occur), that, in turn, tenna bandwidth (compared to an antenna that also utilizes the
1048
Fig. 14. versus frequency for the structure shown in Fig. 11 in the radiating
(red, solid), balanced (green, long dash) and radiating plus balanced (blue, short
dash) modes.
Fig. 15. Simulation model for the considered dual-feed antenna. All dimen-
sions are in millimeters.
volume occupied by the parasitic element). This is because the
balanced mode contribution effectively increases the antenna Q.
Near field distributions for a similar parasitic arrangement are
shown in the section that follows, hence, for brevity they are
omitted here.
IV. PROPOSED DUAL-FEED ANTENNA
The proposed dual-feed antenna is shown in Fig. 15. The
low-band radiator is the meandered radiator on the left and the
high-band radiator is the shorter radiator on the right. The PWB
dimensions are 45 105 mm . Metallization has been removed
from the PWB for an area 45 7 mm at the bottom end of
the PWB (there is 7 mm ground clearance below the radia-
tors). PWB corner rounding, with a rounding radius of 5 mm,
is used to more realistically model the main board of a real
mobile phone. The dimensions of the PWB and ground clear-
ance are different as compared to the antenna structures pre-
sented in Sections II and III. The PWB dimensions chosen for
the dual-feed antenna correspond to the main board of a real
smartphone available on the market.
We simulate the plastic carrier, shown semi-transparent
in Fig. 15, as a pc-abs plastic block having permittivity
. The height of the carrier is 5 mm. The
PWB conductor and the radiators have simulated conductivity
S/m, and the C-clips (connecting the radiators to
PWB) are modeled as copper blocks having bulk copper con-
ductivity.
Example matching circuits used with the proposed antenna
are shown in Fig. 16. The principal operation of the antenna and
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 16. Matching circuits used with the antenna shown in Fig. 15.
Fig. 17. Input impedance of the low-band radiator without the matching circuit
over 824–960 MHz.
matching circuit is straightforward. Consider, for example, the
low-band radiator. The electrical length of the radiator at around
900 MHz is where is the effective wavelength (in the
given prototype mechanics setup). Thus, over bands V and VIII
the radiator obeys normal quarter-wave monopole type series-
resonant input impedance behavior, as shown in Fig. 17. The
same holds for the high-band radiator, as shown in Fig. 18 (the
“pure” series resonant impedance behavior is slightly disturbed
by finite coupling between the first harmonic of the low-band
radiator and the fundamental mode of the high-band radiator,
and by the influence of the PWB).
In the PWB prototype setup the real part of input impedance is
mainly determined by the ground-clearance portion. When the
antenna is located inside a real phone, close by mechanics com-
ponents such as battery, possible metal back cover, hands-free
speakers below the antenna carrier, and display typically lower
the real part of input impedance. In this case the purpose of the
matching circuit is to first increase the input resistance close to
50 Ohms. This can be done, for example, with the tapped induc-
tors shown in Fig. 16. Small inductor values can be implemented
as narrow lines on the PWB. The residual reactance is tuned with
the shunt capacitor to create a double-resonant matching peak.
IKONEN AND BOYLE: ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR ANTENNAS FOR HEARING-AID COMPATIBLE MOBILE PHONES
Fig. 18. Input impedance of the high-band radiator without the matching circuit
over 1710–2170 MHz.
Fig. 19. Simulated S-parameters of the radiators in Fig. 15 through the
matching circuits in Fig. 16. Solid blue line is the input matching of the
low-band radiator, dashed magenta line is the input matching of the high-band
radiator, and the brown dash-dotted line (visible at around 1.9 GHz) is the
coupling between the radiators. The horizontal line marker is at dB, the
vertical line markers are at 824 and 960 MHz, and at 1710 and 2170 MHz.
The input matching through the matching circuits is shown in
Fig. 19.
A conceptually similar antenna and matching configuration is
considered in [21]. Also [22] shows a conceptually rather sim-
ilar antenna implementation. The novelty of the present paper is
to analyze the HAC performance of the proposed antenna. RF
front-end architectures that are suitable for use with dual-feed
cellular antennas are presented in [23]–[25].
The proposed antennas and matching circuits behave as band-
pass filters. This filtering behavior ensures good isolation be-
tween the radiators, which is a mandatory requirement for the
1049
Fig. 20. Impedance seen towards the RF front-end when looking from the
low-band radiator connection point through the matching circuit. The plotted
frequency range is 1850–1910 MHz.
proper operation of the rest of the RF in the phone. The low-band
matching circuit also plays an important role in the HAC per-
formance of the antenna.
The impedance seen looking towards the RF front end at the
low-band radiator connection point through the matching cir-
cuit is shown in Fig. 20 over the Tx band of GSM1900. The
matching circuit effectively short circuits the low-band radiator
at these frequencies. This means that heuristically the antenna in
Fig. 15 can be considered around 1900 MHz as an asymmetrical
dipole, where the high-band radiator is the active dipole arm,
and the low-band radiator is an electrically long parasitic arm.
Hence, the radiating and balanced mode analysis of Section III
is appropriate.
The impedances of the radiating and balanced modes are as
given in (2) and shown in Fig. 21. The is shown in
Fig. 22. It is not as good as for the “loop” antenna, though at 1.9
GHz (and other frequencies) some improvement in HAC perfor-
mance over more conventional antennas is expected. At 1850
MHz there is a peak in the due to resonance in the
radiating mode (causing a peak in the radiating mode current).
This is closely followed by a minima in the at 1930
MHz due to resonance in the balanced mode. The peak can be
suppressed by reducing the resonant frequency of the radiating
mode. This can be achieved by making the high frequency res-
onator electrically longer. Doing so also reduces the resonant
frequency of the balanced mode, as indicated by the modified
result shown in Fig. 22. More work is required to find ways of
independently controlling the radiating and balanced mode im-
pedances, either by antenna or matching circuit design.
The above observations are partly validated by the near-field
distribution shown in Fig. 23. We have implemented lossless
3-D models for the matching circuits into HFSS (losses in the
1050 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 23. Near-field distributions of the antenna shown in Fig. 15 at 1.9 GHz.

Fig. 21. Radiating and balanced mode impedances of the structure shown in
Fig. 15: (a) , (b) ,. The frequency range is 0.8–3 GHz for all plots and
trace symbols are separated by 20 MHz. Fig. 24. Near-field distributions of the antenna shown in Fig. 15 at 0.9 GHz.

matching circuits are accounted for in the experimental ver-

Fig. 22. versus frequency for the structure shown in Fig. 15 with
and without modification to alter the frequencies of the minima/maxima.
ification where we present measured total and radiation effi-
ciency results). The high-band radiator feed port is active, and
the low-band radiator feed port is replaced with a 50 Ohm load.
The near-field distribution has a close resemblance to the near
field distribution shown in Fig. 7, implying a quasi-balanced
mode excitation. The slight asymmetry observed in Fig. 23 is
explained by the structural asymmetry (of the effective dipole).
The simulated radiation efficiency at 1.9 GHz is dB. For
reference, a clear common-mode distribution is illustrated in
Fig. 24 at 0.9 GHz (the low-band radiator is active, and the high-
band radiator is terminated in 50 Ohms). The corresponding
simulated radiation efficiency is dB.
It is noted that the matching circuits shown in Fig. 16 are
example proposals aimed to enable HAC. The antenna in Fig. 15
also works for HAC with other matching circuits, provided that
IKONEN AND BOYLE: ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR ANTENNAS FOR HEARING-AID COMPATIBLE MOBILE PHONES
Fig. 25. Photograph of the implemented prototype.
Fig. 26. Measured S-parameters of the prototype radiators. Solid blue line is
the input matching of the low-band radiator, dashed magenta line is the input
matching of the high-band radiator, and the brown dash-dotted line is the cou-
pling between the radiators. The horizontal and vertical line markers are at same
locations as in Fig. 19.
the low-band matching circuit effectively short circuits the low-
band radiator at around 1900 MHz.
V. PROTOTYPE
A photograph of the implemented prototype is shown in
Fig. 25. We have chosen discrete matching components whose
values are closest to the values shown in Fig. 16. Component
values for the low-band radiator are 2.2 nH and 15 pF, and
for the high-band radiator 1.5 nH and 5.1 pF. In this case
the matching circuits have been implemented as parallel LC
circuits (values of series inductors are practically zero).
The measured input matching and total efficiency are shown
in Figs. 26 and 27. We observe that the radiators are well
matched over the target bands. There is a slight total efficiency
challenge at the highest edge of band VIII. It is to be noted
that the total efficiency is somewhat sensitive, especially at
band edges, to the matching component values (impedance
transformation). Thus, it is most likely the component values
(transformation) used in the prototype implementation are not
optimum for total efficiency, though they optimize the input
matching. The measured radiation efficiency is also slightly
1051
Fig. 27. Measured total efficiency (solid line) and radiation efficiency (dashed
line) in free space (dB).
lower than the simulated radiation efficiency, indicating lower
realized conductivity of radiators and C-clips, and higher
realized loss tangent of the antenna carrier. Also, we observe
that there is a total efficiency minimum at high-band around
1950 MHz. This is mainly due to the corresponding matching
notch, as the radiation efficiency is rather flat at the middle of
2 GHz region. Thus, the excitation of the quasi-balanced mode
itself does not noticeably lower the efficiency of the antenna,
even though the corresponding mode has slightly higher quality
factor as compared to common mode.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper provides detailed analysis of the HAC perfor-
mance of “loop” and parasitic based mobile phone antennas.
The analysis uses a radiating and balanced mode decomposi-
tion to isolate currents that flow on the PWB and solely on the
antenna structure itself. This allows a HAC FOM to be derived
that indicates the degree to which currents are suppressed on
the PWB. It is shown that “loop” antennas have a particularly
good FOM (over a narrow frequency band). Parasitic antennas
also suppress PWB currents, and a similar mechanism can be
utilized in the design of a dual antenna system (a low- and
high-band antenna pair) with appropriate matching. Such a
system has the advantages that the antennas can be simple and
the matching specific to each band.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Mr. Naoaki Utagawa for as-
sistance in making the prototype, and carrying out the measure-
ments.
REFERENCES
[1] Hearing Aid Compatibility for Wireless Telephones. New York: FCC
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ANSI C63.19-2007, Amer. Nat. Standards Inst., 2007, New York.
[3] K. Caputa, M. A. Stuchly, M. Skopec, H. I. Bassen, P. Ruggera, and
M. Kanda, “Evaluation of electromagnetic interference from a cellular
telephone with a hearing aid,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol.
48, no. 11, pp. 2148–2154, Nov. 2000.
1052 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
[4] R. E. Schlegel and F. H. Grant, “Modeling the electromagnetic re-
sponse of hearing aids to digital wireless phones,” IEEE Trans. Elec-
tromagn. Compat., vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 347–357, Nov. 2000.
[5] P. Lindberg, A. Kaikkonen, and M. Sudow, “Improvement of hearing
aid compatibility (HAC) of terminal antennas using wavetraps,” in
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Monica, CA, Mar. 2009, pp. 1–4.
[6] P. Bahramzy, L. Azzinnari, K. B. Jakobsen, and M. Sager, “Near-field
reduction techniques in the speaker area of slide mobile phones for
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Int. Symp., Charleston, SC, Jun. 2009, pp. 1–4.
[7] P. Hui, “Near fields of phased antennas for mobile phones,” in
Proc. 2009 Asian Pacific Microw. Conf., Singapore, Dec. 2009, pp.
2718–2721.
[8] M. Skopec, “Hearing aid electromagnetic interference from digital
wireless telephones,” IEEE Trans. Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 6,
no. 2, pp. 235–239, Jun. 1998.
[9] M. Okoniewski and M. A. Stuchly, “Modeling of interaction of elec-
tromagnetic fields from a cellular telephone with hearing aids,” IEEE
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1998.
[10] J. Holopainen, J. Ilvonen, O. Kivekäs, R. Valkonen, C. Icheln, and
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tennas Wireless Propag.Letters, vol. 8, pp. 592–595, 2009.
[11] C.-T. Lee and K.-L. Wong, “Internal WWAN clamshell phone antenna
using a current trap for reduced ground plane effects,” IEEE Trans.
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[12] A. Zhao, J. Ollikainen, J. Thaysen, and T. Bodvarsson, “Design of HAC
compatible mobile phone with LC band-stop filter embedded in PWB,”
in Proc. 2008 Asian Pacific Microw. Conference, Macau, Dec. 2008,
pp. 1–4.
[13] J. Ilvonen, J. Holopainen, O. Kivekäs, R. Valkonen, C. Icheln, and P.
Vainikainen, “Balanced antenna structures of mobile phones,” in Proc.
2010 Eur. Conf. Antennas Propagatiion (EuCAP 2010), Barcelona,
Spain, Apr. 2010, pp. 1–5.
[14] H. Morishita, H. Furuuchi, and K. Fujimoto, “Performance of bal-
ance-fed antenna system for handsets in the vicinity of a human head
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149, no. 2, pp. 85–91.
[15] S. Hayashida, H. Morishita, and K. Fujimoto, “Self-balanced wideband
folded loop antenna,” in IEE Proc. Microw., Antennas Propag., Feb.
2006, vol. 153, no. 1, pp. 7–12.
[16] C. Di Nallo and A. Faraone, “Multiband internal antenna for mobile
phones,” IEE Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 9, pp. 1–2, Apr. 2005.
[17] I. Szini, C. Di Nallo, and A. Faraone, “The enhanced bandwidth folded
inverted conformal antenna (EB FICA) for multi-band cellular hand-
sets,” in Proc. 2007 Antennas Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., Honolulu, HI,
Jun. 2007, pp. 4697–4700.
[18] K. R. Boyle and L. P. Ligthart, “Radiating and balanced mode analysis
of PIFA antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 1, pp.
231–237, Jan. 2006.
[19] B. S. Collins, S. P. Kingsley, J. M. Ide, S. A. Saario, R. W. Schlub, and
S. G. O’Keefe, “A multi-band hybrid balanced antenna,” in Proc. 2006
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Columbus, OH, Jun. 2003, vol. 1, pp. 501–504.
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handset antenna for penta-band operation,” in Proc. 2010 Antennas
Propag. Soc. Int. Symp., Toronto, ON, Jul. 2010, pp. 1–4.
[23] R. Whatley, T. Ranta, and D. Kelly, “RF front-end tunability for LTE
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grated Circuit Symp., Monterey, CA, Oct. 2010, pp. 1–4.
[24] T. Ranta, D. Pilgrim, and R. Whatley, “RF front end adapts for in-
creased mobile data demand,” EE Times, pp. 1–9, Oct. 2010.
[25] The Prismark Wireless Technology Report, Sep. 2010.
Pekka M. T. Ikonen (S’04–M’07) was born on
December 30, 1981, in Mäntyharju, Finland. He
received the M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees in com-
munications engineering (with distinction) from
the Helsinki University of Technology, Helsiinki,
Finland, in 2005 and 2007, respectively.
From 2007 to 2009 he was first with Nokia
Research Center and then with Nokia Devices
R&D working as Antenna Researcher and Antenna
Technology Manager, respectively. Since August
2009 he has been with TDK-EPC defining strategies
for RF and antenna system development for future handset devices.
Kevin Boyle (M’05) was born in Chelmsford, U.K.,
on January 23, 1966. He received the B.Sc. (hons.)
in electrical and electronic engineering from City
University, London, U.K., the M.Sc. degree in
microwaves and optoelectronics (with distinction)
from University College, London, U.K., and the
Doctor of Technology degree from Delft University
of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
He was with Marconi Communications Systems
Ltd. until to 1997, working on all aspects of antenna
system design. He then joined Philips Research Lab-
oratories (which became NXP Semiconductors Research in 2006) where he was
a Principal Research Scientist and a Project/Cluster Leader for antenna and
propagation related activities. In 2008 he joined EPCOS (which has since be-
come TDK-EPC) working as an Antenna Systems Architect. His main areas
of interest include antenna design for mobile communication systems, adaptive
RF systems, MIMO/diversity, propagation modeling and related areas of mo-
bile system design.
Dr. Boyle has actively participated in COST 259 and 273, is a member of
the IET—where currently serving on the Antennas and Propagation Executive
Committee—and a Chartered Engineer. He has published more than 30 papers
in refereed international journals and conferences, has contributed to two books
and holds more than fifteen patents.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Mobile Communication Base Station Antenna
Using a Genetic Algorithm Based Fabry-Pérot
Resonance Optimization
Dongho Kim, Member, IEEE, Jeongho Ju, and Jaeick Choi
Abstract—We proposed a high-gain wideband resonant-type
mobile communication base station antenna using a Fabry-Pérot
cavity (FPC) technique. To overcome inherent narrow radiation
bandwidth of FPC-type antennas while keeping relatively high
gain, we introduced a new superstrate structure composed of
square patches and loops, which satisfies an FPC resonance con-
dition at a target frequency region. To do that, we optimized the
superstrate geometry with the help of a real-value coding hybrid
genetic algorithm (RHGA).
The optimized superstrate is very thin, and therefore, it can
be fabricated with a single dielectric substrate, which is a fairly
strong point in practical applications. Moreover, we enclosed four
openings of the antenna in lateral directions to increase antenna
gain with a limited aperture area. Therefore, a modified prediction
method of an FPC resonance is used, which reduced the effort of
complicated three-dimensional antenna optimization.
Consequently, our antenna is able to operate in a wide band-
width with a relatively high realized gain. Furthermore, good
agreement between measured results and prediction ones confirms
the validity of our design approach.
Index Terms—Base station antenna, Fabry-Pérot cavity an-
tenna, hybrid genetic algorithm, high-gain antenna, wideband
antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
R ECENTLY, in accordance with the growth of mobile
communication industry, the usage of a personal mobile
phone has been explosively increased. For that reason, mobile
base station antenna techniques also have been rapidly devel-
oped to keep up with the increased number of users within a
service area using limited frequency resources [1], [2].
Many sorts of a base station antenna employ an array of a
dipole antenna or a microstrip patch antenna, which is ready
to increase overall antenna gain and to control a beam shape
according to a frequency reuse plan [3]–[5]. However, signal
feeding networks from a power input port to wave radiating
structures are generally long and complicated, which might
cause an unwanted energy loss during signal transportation.
Manuscript received September 14, 2010; revised May 12, 2011; accepted
June 16, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
D. Kim is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Sejong University,
Seoul 143-747, Korea (e-mail: dongkim@sejong.ac.kr).
J. Ju and J. Choi are with the Antenna Research Team, Electronics and
Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, 305-700, Korea.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173108
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1053
Recently, highly directive antennas using resonance of a par-
tially reflective surface (PRS) such as Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC)
or electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures have been intro-
duced [6]–[12]. The FPC antenna makes use of resonance of a
cavity generally consisting of a ground plane and a superstrate.
By appropriately adjusting the cavity height and the reflection
magnitude and phase of the superstrate, the FPC antenna can
provide very high gain at and near the resonant frequency [13].
One strong point of the FPC antenna lies in its simple feeding
structure. Practically, the FPC antennas provide high gain with
a single feeding antenna such as a dipole or a microstrip patch
antenna. It is matter of course that array signal feeding can more
increase antenna gain compared to a single feeding case. In ad-
dition to a horizontally arranged PRS structure, cylindrical EBG
structures have also been proposed for base station antenna ap-
plications [14], [15].
However, because the cavity resonance condition is satisfied
only at one frequency, a radiation bandwidth of the FPC antenna
is usually very narrow; in other words, the cavity resonates with
a very high quality factor. Therefore, impedance matching and
radiation bandwidths of FPC antennas are also inherently very
narrow due to the nature of a cavity operation, which are not
appropriate to commercial applications.
To overcome the narrow radiation bandwidth problem,
an FPC antenna with a single-layer frequency selective sur-
face (FSS) superstrate consisting of dissimilar size square
conducting patches was proposed [16], [17]. In [16], [17],
antenna bandwidth was increased by tapering cells printed
on the superstrate, which spread resonant frequencies around
a center frequency of a target bandwidth. In the meantime,
some techniques of adjusting reflection phase of a superstrate
unit cell to meet the resonance condition of a FP cavity were
proposed in [18], [19]. Instead of tapering superstrate unit cells,
they introduced two individual conductive patterns printed on
a single or double dielectric layers, which provides relatively
large reflection magnitude with reflection phase similar to an
ideal phase response satisfying the FPC resonance.
In this paper, we provide a broadband high gain mobile base
station antenna. Our antenna has a superstrate composed square
patches and loops, which meets an FPC resonance condition in
a target Korean personal communication service (PCS) band
from 1 750 MHz to 1 870 MHz. The superstrate is very thin,
and therefore, it is quite comfortable to fabricate and to apply
for practical antennas. To optimize reflection behavior of the
superstrate, we use a real-value coding hybrid genetic algorithm
1054 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 1. Photographs of (a) the inside and (b) the outside of the fabricated FPC
antenna.

(RHGA) providing fast convergence with a relatively small size

of population [20]–[23].
Initially, we design the superstrate based on a modified FPC
resonance prediction formulation, which is able to consider the
effect of four metallic side walls. And overall performance of
the entire antenna structure is tuned by using a commercial 3-D
full wave simulator of CST microwave studio (MWS) [24]. Ex- Fig. 2. Description of (a) the patch antenna with mm,
perimental data show good agreement with the simulation re- mm, mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, and , and (b) a unit cell of the superstrate with
sult, which proves the validity of our design approach. mm, mm, mm, and mm.

II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT

Photographs of a proposed FPC antenna are shown in Fig. 1.
A 50 coaxial probe-fed wideband patch antenna is located
inside the FP cavity that is enclosed with four lateral metallic
walls in the x- and y-direction, respectively. A ground plane
of the patch antenna is the bottom face of the cavity. The su-
perstrate consisting of 19 5 unit cells covers the entire upper
opening of the FP cavity shown in Fig. 1(a), which is supported
with eight acrylic posts. Overall dimension of the FPC antenna
is 590 mm 170 mm 98 mm in the x-, y-, and z-direction.
A detailed description of the patch antenna and the unit cell
geometry are shown in Fig. 2. To extend an impedance matching
bandwidth of the patch antenna, we have inserted two rectan-
gular slits as shown in Fig. 2(a) [25], [26]. An inner conductor of
a signal feeding coaxial cable is directly connected to the patch.
And an air gap has been placed between the substrate of the
patch and the ground plane.
As for the unit cell of the superstrate, on one side of a dielec-
tric substrate is printed with a square patch and the opposite side
with a square loop. The lower side of the superstrate composed
of square loops is confronting the bottom side of the cavity. Be-
cause our superstrate is very thin, where the thickness is about
1.5 mm, it is directly applicable to practical antennas.
We can determine the FP resonance condition by considering
reflection phases of two faces of the cavity, which consist of
the superstrate and the ground plane. However, with the help of
a modified resonance prediction formula based on a dispersion
relation of a classical metallic rectangular cavity, we can more
accurately estimate FPC resonance including the effect of four
metallic side walls [17]:
(1)
where are integer numbers corresponding to possible
eigen-modes inside the cavity, and and are lengths of the
cavity shown in Fig. 1(b), is the speed of light in air, is the
reflection phase of the superstrate, and is the resonant height
from the ground to the bottom face of the superstrate.
It is well known that waves satisfying the FP resonance con-
dition with relatively large magnitude of reflection can collimate
outgoing waves toward a specific direction, and therefore, en-
hance the directivity and gain of antennas [6]–[10]. Generally,
the large reflection can be easily obtained with various types of
KIM et al.: MOBILE COMMUNICATION BASE STATION ANTENNA USING A GENETIC ALGORITHM BASED FABRY-PÉROT RESONANCE OPTIMIZATION 1055

Fig. 5. Reflection phase and magnitude responses of the unit cell composed of
a square loop and patch.

In the frequency region of interest, the lowest mode inside

Fig. 3. Flow chart of a real-value coding hybrid genetic algorithm (RHGA).
the cavity is a mode, so we set and ,
respectively [17].
To optimize the geometry of superstrate unit cell, we used a
real-value coding hybrid genetic algorithm (RHGA) [20]–[23].
As shown in Fig. 3, the RHGA is equipped with a gradient-like
selector based reproduction, modified simple crossover, and dy-
namic mutation. And, we applied elitism to prevent a loss of
the best individual from the preceding generation, which might
occur on account of inherent nature of a genetic algorithm. Four
target optimization parameters are the height of the FPC
cavity, and lengths ( ) and width of the square patch
and the square loop patterns. The population size of the RHGA
is 10. The optimization process of the superstrate unit cell ge-
ometry is shown in Fig. 4. A fitness or cost function to be min-
imized is defined by

Fig. 4. Optimization process of the unit cell geometry using a RHGA, which
shows the best and the average costs, respectively. (3)

where and are reflection phases of an ideal re-

sponse and the proposed unit cell, is a reflection mag-
conducting patterns within a certain frequency bandwidth. Con-
nitude of the proposed cell, and are optimization starting
sequently, the FP resonance condition is also readily acquired
and ending frequencies, and are weighting coefficients
by changing the geometry of conducting patterns of a super-
for each angular and magnitude component of the fitness func-
strate or by varying the distance between the superstrate and a
tion. We set MHz, MHz, and
ground plane. However, the FP cavity resonance condition is
, respectively. The total number of frequency points
exactly satisfied at only one frequency, which restricts expan-
for the calculation of the fitness function is 25. To prevent the
sion of a radiation bandwidth of FPC antennas. Therefore, to
gain decrease, we selected the weighting coefficient of ,
obtain a wide radiation bandwidth and high gain properties at
which is five times larger than . Consequently, we could min-
the same time, reflection phase of the superstrate should satisfy
imize the gain reduction caused by a small magnitude of
the FPC resonance condition at more than one frequency. To do
throughout the relatively wide target frequency range. Using the
that, we have optimized reflection behavior of the superstrate,
(1) and (2), and the optimized reflection behavior of the super-
which might provide an ideal phase-like response (see a broken
strate, the resonant height is determined as 96.4 mm.
line in Fig. 5) in a target PCS frequency region. From (1), the
Computed reflection behaviors of the superstrate unit cell are
ideal phase response depicted in Fig. 5 is derived by
shown in Fig. 5. In the figure, the broken line denotes an ideal
reflection phase satisfying the FP resonance at each frequency.
(2)
Therefore, it can be said that we could acquire the necessary
1056
Fig. 6. Comparison of simulated and measured (a) input reflection coefficients,
and (b) realized gain at . The behaviors of the same patch antenna without
metallic walls and superstrate are also shown here.
reflection phase values from 1.76 GHz to 1.88 GHz, which are
very similar to the ideal phase response. But, a reflection mag-
nitude is reduced to about 0.65, which may not be helpful to
enhance antenna gain.
As shown in Fig. 1, we fabricated the wideband FPC antenna
based on the optimization result of the superstrate geometry
and the prediction of FPC resonance. Fig. 6 shows performance
of the proposed antenna. As for the input reflection coefficient
, 10 dB bandwidth is from 1.74 GHz to 1.84 GHz, which
corresponds to a fractional bandwidth of about 5.6%. In regard
to antenna gain, the maximum measured gain is 13.8 dB and
the 3 dB radiation bandwidth is about 180 MHz, which cor-
responds to a fractional bandwidth of 10%. The antenna gain
shown in Fig. 6 is realized gain in the superstrate surface normal
direction including overall mismatch and efficiency parameters
of the antenna. Hence, it is undoubtedly clear that our antenna
well operates with relatively flat gain within the target PCS fre-
quency band. The patch antenna behavior without the FPC is
also shown in Fig. 6. The maximum gain of the patch antenna
is about 9.4 dB. Accordingly, we could increase the overall an-
tenna gain about 4.5 dB by introducing the FPC technique. In
Fig. 6(a), we can see that there is another impedance matched
frequency band near 2.06 GHz, which exists because of a gen-
eration of higher modes inside the cavity.
To more clearly show the existence of the higher mode, we
compute the magnitude and phase distribution in the cavity,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. (a) Magnitude and (b) phase distribution inside the cavity at mm
(right below the bottom face of the superstrate).
which are shown in Fig. 7. At a fundamental radiation mode,
i.e., at 1.75 GHz and 1.85 GHz, the magnitude and phase distri-
bution is approximately symmetric with respect to the center
of the cavity. Moreover, the overall phase contrast shown in
Fig. 7(b), namely, the maximum phase difference between the
largest and the smallest values, does not exceed 100 degrees,
which tells us that the signal distribution inside the cavity is
not destructive. Therefore, the antenna stably and strongly ra-
diates energy toward a normal direction (z-direction) in the fun-
damental mode frequencies. However, at the second radiation
mode near 2.1 GHz, overall phase varies from 0 to 340 degrees,
which is indicating the existence of destructive interference in-
side the cavity. In fact, we can see several magnitude peaks at
2.1 GHz resulting from the interference of waves at the higher
mode. Accordingly, different from the radiation behavior in the
fundamental mode, there exist several main beams distributing
in the x-direction.
Measured radiation properties are compared with computed
values, which are depicted in Fig. 8. To obtain practical beam
shapes that are narrow in the elevation direction (the xz-plane)
and wide in the azimuthal direction (the yz-plane), we intention-
ally make the aperture as a rectangular shape, which is narrower
in the azimuthal direction. Consequently, the half-power beam
width in the E-plane is more than 2 times narrower than that in
the H-plane. As for the H-plane radiation pattern, the antenna
structure including the feeding patch antenna is perfectly sym-
metric with respect to the xz-plane, so the radiation pattern in
the azimuthal direction is also symmetric. However, the patch
is not symmetric with respect to the yz-plane. That is the reason
why the E-plane radiation pattern is not symmetric.
KIM et al.: MOBILE COMMUNICATION BASE STATION ANTENNA USING A GENETIC ALGORITHM BASED FABRY-PÉROT RESONANCE OPTIMIZATION 1057

azimuthal direction, radiation aperture was made as a rectan-

gular shape.
For wide beam width corresponding to a target personal com-
munication service, we optimized the superstrate structure con-
sisting of the square patches and loops, which satisfies an FPC
resonance condition in the target frequency band. We used a hy-
brid genetic algorithm for the optimization of the superstrate ge-
ometry.
Our antenna radiates well in the target band with relatively
high-gain. And, there exists only a fundamental mode inside
cavity, which is important for high gain behavior radiating only
toward the aperture-normal direction. Consequently, it was also
shown that radiation behaviors at each frequency are also ap-
propriate for the application of base station antenna.
Predicted antenna performance showed good agreement with
experimental data gathered in a fully anechoic chamber, which
confirms validity of our design approach.

Fig. 8. Radiation patterns (realized gain) at (a) 1.765 GHz, and at
(b) 1.855 GHz.
TABLE I
PERFORMANCE OF THE FABRICATED FPC ANTENNA
It is also important to note that a front-to-back radiation ratio
(FBR) of the proposed antenna is relatively high, which is one
significant design parameter required for base station and re-
peater antennas of today.
We can see that the measured and predicted radiation proper-
ties agree very well, which confirms the validity and accuracy
of our design approach. The detailed antenna performance is de-
scribed in Table I.
III. CONCLUSION
A base station antenna for mobile communication was pro-
posed. We chose an FPC-type antenna as our prototype an-
tenna to obtain relatively high-gain property. A single wide band
patch-antenna fed energy into the FP cavity, which is enclosed
with four metallic side-walls. To get a wider beam width in an
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[8] D. Kim and J. I. Choi, “Analysis of antenna gain enhancement with a
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Perot resonance approach,” J. Infrared, Milli. Terahertz Waves, vol. 31,
no. 11, pp. 1289–1303, 2010.
[9] J. Yeo and D. Kim, “Novel design of a high-gain and wideband Fabry-
Perot cavity antenna using a tapered AMC substrate,” Int. J. Infrared
Milli. Waves, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 217–224, 2009.
[10] D. Kim, “Novel dual-band Fabry-Perot cavity antenna with low fre-
quency separation ratio,” Microw. Opt. Tech. Lett., vol. 51, no. 8, pp.
1869–1872, 2009.
[11] Y. J. Lee, J. Yeo, J. Mittra, and W. S. Park, “Application of electromag-
netic bandgap (EBG) superstrates with controllable defects for a class
of patch antennas as spatial angular filters,” IEE Antennas Propag., vol.
53, no. 1, pp. 224–235, 2005.
[12] R. Chantalat, C. Menudier, M. Thevenot, T. Monediere, E. Amaud,
and P. Dumon, “Enhanced EBG resonator antenna as feed of a re-
flector antenna in the Ka band,” IEEE Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 7,
pp. 349–353, 2008.
[13] G. V. Trentini, “Partially reflecting sheet arrays,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propagat., vol. 7, pp. 666–671, 1956.
[14] G. A. Palikaras, A. P. Feresidis, and J. C. Vardaxoglou, “Cylindrical
electromagnetic bandgap structures for directive base station an-
tennas,” IEEE Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 3, pp. 87–89, 2004.
[15] H. Chreim, E. Pointereau, B. Jecko, and P. Dufrane, “Omnidirectional
electromagnetic band gap antenna for base station applications,” IEEE
Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 6, pp. 499–502, 2007.
[16] Z. Liu, W. Zhang, D. Fu, Y. Gu, and Z. Ge, “Broadband Fabry-Perot
resonator printed antennas using FSS superstrate with dissimilar size,”
Microw. Opt. Tech. Lett., vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 1623–1627, 2008.
[17] D. Kim, J. Ju, and J. I. Choi, “A broadband Fabry-Pérot cavity antenna
designed using an improved resonance prediction method,” Microw.
Opt. Tech. Lett., vol. 53, no. 5, pp. 1065–1069, 2011.
1058 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

[18] A. F. Feresidis and J. C. Vardaxoglou, “A broadband high-gain res- Jeongho Ju received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
onant cavity antenna with single feed,” in Proc. EuCAP 2006, Nice, in information and telecommunication engineering
France, 2006, vol. 626SP. from Incheon University, Incheon, Korea, in 2006
[19] L. Moustafa and B. Jecko, “EBG structure with wide defect band for and 2008, respectively.
broadband cavity antenna applications,” IEEE Wireless Propag. Lett., Since 2008, he has been with ETRI, Daejeon,
vol. 7, pp. 693–696, 2008. Korea, where he currently works in the antenna
[20] J. J. Grefenstette, “Optimization of control parameters for genetic al- research team as a member of the engineering
gorithms,” IEEE Trans. Syst. Man, Cybern., vol. SMC-16, no. 1, pp. staff. His current research interests include passive
122–128, 1986. components, filters, and antenna design based on
[21] D. T. Pham and G. Jin, “Genetic algorithm using gradient-like repro- metamaterials.
duction operator,” Electron. Lett., vol. 31, no. 18, pp. 1558–1559, 1995.
[22] D. T. Pham and G. Jin, “A hybrid genetic algorithm,” in Proc. 3rd
World Congr. Expert Systems, Seoul, Korea, 1996, vol. 2, pp. 748–757.
[23] G. G. Jin, Genetic Algorithms and Their Applications. Seoul, Korea:
Kyo-Woo Sa Press, 2002. Jaeick Choi received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
[24] CST Microwave Studio: Workflow & Solver Overview. CST Studio degrees from the Korea University, Seoul, Korea, in
Suite 2009, CST-GmbH, 2009. 1981, 1983, and 1995, respectively.
[25] K. L. Wong and W. H. Hsu, “A broadband rectangular patch antenna Since 1983, he has been with ETRI, Daejeon,
with a pair of wide slits,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 49, pp. Korea. He had been involved in the RF/antenna
1345–1347, 2001. development of the earth station, especially the
[26] N. Fayyaz and S. Saravi-Naeini, “Bandwidth enhancement of a rect- SCPC and VSAT systems, TT&C ground station (of
angular patch antenna by integrated reactive loading,” in IEEE Trans.
Arirang satellite), IMT2000 system, and digital DBS.
Antennas Propagat. Soc. Int. Symp. Dig., 1998, pp. 1100–1103.
He was in charge of electromagnetic environment
esearch and development of EMI/EMC technologies
and EMF Exposure Assessment from 2004 to 2005.
Currently, he is researching and developing metamaterials and their application
Dongho Kim (M’08) received the B.S. and M.S. technologies for antenna/RF sensors, RF components, and radio transmission
degrees in electronics engineering from Kyungpook technologies.
National University, Daegu, Korea, in 1998 and
2000, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
and electronics engineering from Korea Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST),
Daejeon, Korea, in 2006.
From 2000 to 2011, he was a Senior Researcher
with the Electronics and Telecommunications Re-
search Institute (ETRI), Daejeon, Korea, where
he was involved with the development of various
antennas including RFID and mobile communication antennas, and artificially
engineered structures such as electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structures, fre-
quency selective surfaces (FSS), and artificial magnetic conductors (AMC). In
2011, he joined the Department of Electronic Engineering, Sejong University,
Seoul, Korea, where he is now an Assistant Professor. His research interests
include advanced electromagnetic wave theory and application, design of
highly efficient and miniaturized antennas using artificially engineered mate-
rials, design of EBG structures, FSS, and AMC, platform-tolerant special RFID
antenna design, and development of a variety of metamaterials with negative
permittivity and permeability.
Prof. Kim is a life member of the Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engi-
neering and Science (KIEES).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Development of Novel 3-D Cube Antennas for
Compact Wireless Sensor Nodes
Ibrahim T. Nassar, Student Member, IEEE, and Thomas M. Weller, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—3-D antennas for narrow band, wireless sensor node
applications are described herein. The antennas were designed on
the surface of a cube which makes available the cube interior for
sensor electronics placement. The layout of each antenna consists
of a dipole fabricated on two sides of the cube and connected to a
balanced-to-unbalanced line transition on the third side. The base
of the cube serves as a ground plane for the microstrip feed line.
The first cube antenna was designed for an operating frequency
of 2.4 GHz and its 10 dB return loss bandwidth is 2%. of the
proposed design is 0.55 and its measured gain is 1.69 dBi with 78%
measured radiation efficiency. The second cube antenna is similar
to the first one but it was loaded with high dielectric constant super-
strates. of the second proposed antenna is 0.45, its measured
gain is 1.25 dBi with 73% measured radiation efficiency and the
bandwidth is 1.5%. The designs compare well with high efficiency,
electrically small antennas that have been described in the open
literature. A Wheeler Cap was used to measure the efficiency and
the 3-antenna method was used for measuring the gain.
Index Terms—3-D antennas, balanced, dipole antennas, electri-
cally small antennas, Wheeler cap method, wireless sensor net-
works (WSNs).
I. INTRODUCTION
I T is expected that the use of distributed wireless sensor net-
works will undergo continuous growth in the future with
numerous applications such as environmental and biomedical
monitoring. The motivation for this paper is to develop antennas
for wireless sensor nodes used for embedded and through-life
structural health monitoring of civil infrastructures. Important
design goals in such applications are to minimize power con-
sumption and the size of the sensor node [1]. Embedding sensor
nodes into man-made objects or natural environments also in-
troduces certain antenna design challenges.
One of the most significant challenges is miniaturizing the
antenna size, as the antenna usually occupies the majority of
the overall sensor node volume. Most of the antennas currently
in use for wireless sensor node applications are planar [2]–[11],
due to their low cost, ease of fabrication, and relatively high
radiation efficiency. However, efficient planar antennas tend
to have large cross-sectional areas. Therefore, 3-D antennas
Manuscript received November 08, 2010; revised February 13, 2011; ac-
cepted August 09, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current
version February 03, 2012. This work was supported by the National Science
Foundation under Grant #ECS-0925929.
The authors are with the WAMI Lab, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
33620 USA (e-mail: inassar@mail.usf.edu; weller@usf.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173121
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1059
are often preferred for applications that require high efficiency
concurrently with small size, since these antennas make more
efficient use of the available volume by realizing relatively
long antenna lengths. 3-D antennas are also beneficial in
opening up internal volume for other uses, such as storage for
batteries or other circuit elements. The design of the presented
cube antennas aims to produce omnidirectional, simple, and
low-cost antennas that are directly integrated into the structural
packaging with the capability of housing the sensor electronics
within the structure.
The interest in a low-cost, omnidirectional solution moti-
vated the use of a dipole antenna. A dipole antenna can also be
easily fabricated in different shapes and configurations. In [12],
a dipole antenna has been fabricated on a sphere and provided
very good performance as the occupied volume was utilized to
the greatest extent. In [13], a dipole antenna has been printed
on a pyramid configuration in a manner which is similar to the
presented design. The antenna was easily fabricated; however,
the pyramid configuration provided low gain even though the
antenna exhibited large electrical size. The low gain is due to
the high percentage of canceled radiated fields related to the
shape and relative orientation of the dipole arms.
In contrast, a cubical structure has proven to exhibit relatively
high gain and efficiency, as demonstrated previously for MIMO
applications [14]–[18]. In these implementations, multiple an-
tennas were fabricated on the cube surface and each one was fed
by an isolated port. One potential drawback to this design is that
it would be difficult to achieve a compact feeding configuration.
The cube approach has also been used with a single input [19];
however, the antenna has a low gain and a relatively low G/Q
(gain/quality factor) ratio, and may be difficult to manufacture.
In addition, the design in [19] may present challenges in terms
of integration with other circuit elements as it does not have a
ground plane or an integrated balun.
In this paper, a new approach to the design of dipole antennas
on a cube configuration, with and without superstrate loading,
is presented (Fig. 1). The approach is based on the meandered
line dipole antenna [20], fabricated on two sides of the cube and
connected to a balanced-to-unbalanced line transition on a third
side. The dipole arms were meandered and wrapped around the
cube faces in a manner that provided a well-balanced antenna
with high gain relative to the electrical size. The base of the cube
serves as a ground plane for the microstrip feed line, leaving
the other sides of the cube available for uses such as another
integrated antenna.
The measured and simulated data prove that the cube an-
tennas have very good performance relative to their occupied
volumes, with gain and efficiency that are comparable to that
1060
Fig. 1. Fabricated cube antennas: dielectrically loaded design (left) and non-
loaded design (right).
Fig. 2. Parallel plate balun.
of the spherical antennas. Also, a comparison of the G/Q ratio
for different designs shows that the presented cube antennas are
among the more efficient electrically small antennas known in
the literature. A comparison with a 2-D version of the antennas
shows that the radiation efficiency is not significantly degraded
in the transformation to the 3-D form factor. In addition, the pre-
sented cube antennas are relatively insensitive to the presence of
dielectric and metallic inclusions within the antenna structure.
The sections that follow begin with a discussion of the transi-
tion between unbalanced to balanced structures using a parallel
plate balun, along with the meandered-line, half-wave dipole
that was the starting point for the 3-D antenna design. The arms
of the dipole were rotated and placed on two sides of a cube
to form the first cube antenna. The second iteration of the cube
antenna incorporates high dielectric constant superstrates, re-
sulting in smaller antenna size. In order to determine the radia-
tion efficiencies the Wheeler Cap method was used.
II. CUBE ANTENNA DESIGN
A. Parallel Plate Balun
Symmetric dipole antennas require a balanced feed. In cases
where the connection to the signal source is unbalanced (e.g.,
using a coaxial or microstrip feed), a balun is needed to tran-
sition between the source and the antenna input. In this work,
a parallel plate waveguide transmission line is used as a
balun (Fig. 2). The design consists of two conducting strips of a
width larger than the separation between them, in order to min-
imize the fringing fields [21].
The two strips of the balun need to be in length in order
to provide a high impedance at the dipole antenna side, can-
celing the unbalanced current coming from the ground of the
unbalanced microstrip feed line [13]. This is the approach used
with the Bazooka balun [22].
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 3. Geometry of the meandered dipole antenna.
Fig. 4. Meandered dipole antenna arm dimensions.
B. Meandered Line Dipole Antenna Design
In this section, a meandered line half-wave dipole antenna op-
erating at 2.4 GHz is described. The antenna geometry, shown
in Figs. 3 and 4, is formed by two symmetric, non-meandered
rectangular strips of dimensions and and two meandered
sections. Each of the two arms is fabricated on opposite sides of
the substrate. The dipole is center-fed by the parallel plate
balun that is perpendicular to the feed line. Between the balun
and the feed point are an impedance-matching line and a
microstrip line with a characteristic impedance of 50 . It was
shown via electromagnetic simulation that the balanced current
distribution at the antenna input was not affected by bending
the balun. The substrate is Rogers/RT Duroid 6010 with a nom-
inal relative dielectric constant of 10.2, and a thickness of
50 mil. This high permittivity substrate will reduce the antenna
size, although higher permittivity is unfortunately often equiv-
alent to higher dielectric losses [23].
The meandered line approach was employed to minimize the
length of the antenna. Ansoft HFSS 11 was used to determine
the total length of the meandered portion of the arms, the slot
size between sections, and the number of meandered sections in
order to minimize the antenna size without degrading the gain.
To match the input impedance to 50 , the width of the meander
line, the width of the parallel plate transformer, and the width
and length of the matching line were adjusted. Table I shows
the meandered dipole antenna dimensions.
The characteristic impedances of the parallel plate
transformer and the matching line are 48 and 70 , respec-
tively. An approximate equivalent circuit model of the antenna
is given in Fig. 5; here is the characteristic impedance and
is the antenna input impedance at 2.4 GHz.
NASSAR AND WELLER: DEVELOPMENT OF NOVEL 3-D CUBE ANTENNAS FOR COMPACT WIRELESS SENSOR NODES
TABLE I
MEANDERED DIPOLE ANTENNA DIMENSIONS IN mm
Fig. 5. Approximate equivalent circuit model for the meandered dipole an-
tenna; the 48 transmission line represents the balun.
Fig. 6. Measured and simulated for the meandered dipole antenna.
Fig. 7. Geometry of the first cube antenna.
Fig. 6 shows the measured and simulated of the mean-
dered dipole antenna. As seen, the measured data fits the simu-
lated data well, although there is a small shift in the frequency
which could be attributed to fabrication errors. The measured
10-dB return loss bandwidth is 4.7%.
C. First Cube Antenna Design
After studying the meandered line antenna, the cube antenna
was designed as shown in Fig. 7. The antenna consists of a
half-wave dipole printed on three sides of the cube and con-
nected to the parallel plate balun in the center. The left-hand arm
is attached to the microstrip feed line and the right-hand arm is
attached to the ground plane of the microstrip line. By wrap-
ping the dipole arms around the cube, i.e., transforming from
1061
TABLE II
FIRST CUBE ANTENNA DIMENSIONS IN mm
Fig. 8. Measured and simulated for the first cube antenna.
the initial meandered line antenna to the cubical form factor,
the effective volume is reduced by a factor of 1.27.
The meandered sections were rotated in a clockwise/counter
clockwise fashion and placed along the -axis as shown in
Fig. 7. This orientation preserves the balanced current on the
dipole and balun; when the meandered sections are not rotated
with respect to each other the simulated radiation patterns
exhibit distorted, non-dipole like characteristics. Improved gain
is achieved with longer non-meandered sections, requiring a
compromise between antenna size and performance.
The cube antenna input impedance at 2.4 GHz without the
feeding network is . In order to compensate for this
change in the input impedance relative to the initial meandered
line dipole, the characteristic impedance of the quarter-wave
parallel plate transformer was decreased to 33 . The width
and length of the matching line were subsequently optimized
to obtain the best match to 50 . The characteristic impedance
of the matching line is 73 with an electrical length of .
Table II shows the first cube antenna dimensions.
The of the antenna is shown in Fig. 8. As seen, a good
match between the measured and simulated data over a wide
frequency range was obtained. The bandwidth was decreased
relative to the first design by a factor of 2.35 due to the reduction
of the antenna size and the lower input resistance.
D. Second Cube Antenna Design
In order to minimize the size of the cube antenna, the dielec-
tric loading technique was used. As with the substrate, the super-
strate material is 50-mil-thick Rogers/RT Duroid 6010. The su-
perstrate was placed over the dipole arms and over the both sides
of the parallel plate balun (Fig. 9). Since the presence of the
1062
Fig. 9. Geometry of the second cube antenna design. (a) Side view and (b) top
view. The light layer is the superstrate and the dark layer is the substrate.
TABLE III
SECOND CUBE ANTENNA DIMENSIONS IN mm
Fig. 10. Measured and simulated for the second cube antenna.
superstrate reduces the guided wavelength, this loading caused
shrinkage of the occupied volume by a factor of 1.3 relative to
the first cube antenna design.
The loaded cube antenna input impedance without the
feeding network at the frequency of operation is 5.5–3i .
The antenna input impedance was matched to 50 using a
quarter wave parallel plate transformer with a characteristic
impedance of 22 , and a matching line with a charac-
teristic impedance of 83 . Table III shows the second cube
antenna dimensions.
Fig. 10 shows the measured and simulated of the second
cube antenna. As seen the measured data fit the simulated data,
but the resonant frequency shifted up by 0.05 GHz, which could
be attributed to the air gaps between the substrates and the su-
perstrates. Relative to the first cube design, the return loss band-
width reduced by a factor of 1.3 due to the reduction in the phys-
ical size.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 11. Measured E-plane (solid) and H-plane (dashed) patterns for (a) the
meandered antenna, (b) the first cube antenna, and (c) the second cube antenna.
III. RADIATION PERFORMANCE AND DISCUSSION OF
MEASURED RESULTS
Fig. 11 shows the measured E- and H-plane radiation patterns
for the three antenna designs. These antennas are linearly po-
larized in the horizontal direction ( -axis), relative to the coor-
dinate system in Fig. 3. The E-plane tests were carried out by
rotating the antennas in the azimuth plane from 0 to 360 at an
elevation angle of 0 in the -plane. For the H-plane pattern the
antennas were rotated along the -plane. As seen, all antenna
designs demonstrate similar omnidirectional patterns with the
maximum radiation occurring broadside to the non-meandered
portions of the dipole arms.
The gain has been measured using the 3-antenna method, fol-
lowing the same procedures as above for the E-plane radiation
patterns. The gain measurement has an uncertainty of dB.
In order to determine the efficiency of the designed antennas,
a cubical configuration of copper measuring was used
as a Wheeler Cap (Fig. 12). The size of the Wheeler Cap was
selected to push the interior modes to higher frequencies re-
sulting in a sparse mode spectrum [24]. These measurements
were found to have a variability of approximately .
The measured and simulated antenna parameters at the reso-
nant frequency are listed in Table IV. The data shows that the
gain did not deteriorate significantly with the 3-D orientation.
However, this orientation did result in a decrease of the axial
ratio by 12 dB, which is due to the difference in the direction of
radiation between the meandered and non-meandered sections.
Despite this change, the antennas remain linearly polarized as
the axial ratio exceeds 16 dB. It was also found that the antenna
polarization was not significantly affected by the changes in the
NASSAR AND WELLER: DEVELOPMENT OF NOVEL 3-D CUBE ANTENNAS FOR COMPACT WIRELESS SENSOR NODES
Fig. 12. Cubical Wheeler cap.
TABLE IV
MEASURED AND SIMULATED ANTENNA PARAMETERS
dipole arm configuration, since the current distribution is con-
centrated on the non-meandered sections of the arms. As a re-
sult, the gain was not considerably impacted by cross-polariza-
tion effects. The measured return loss bandwidths are relatively
narrow compared to typical dipole antennas of these sizes due
to the low antenna input impedance; however, this bandwidth
range is suitable for the narrowband sensing application that
motivated this work.
As expected, loading the antenna with superstrates resulted
in a smaller design. However, the loading also reduced the ef-
ficiency as the high permittivity material introduces additional
dielectric loss and concentrates the electric field inside the sub-
strate [23]. The loading also resulted in a 0.3 dB gain decrease
for the same reasons.
Fig. 13 shows the gain over quality factor ratio (G/Q) for the
designs presented in this work and others from the literature,
compared with an approximated G/Q limit. As small, narrow-
band antennas with a ground plane can have a linear gain of 3,
the G/Q limit was calculated using and the expression for
the minimum radiation Q for a linearly polarized antenna given
in [26, Eqn. (20)]. The G/Q ratio was calculated for each of the
presented designs based on the measured maximum gain and
the Q at 2.4 GHz. The Q was found from the measured 10 dB
return loss bandwidth according to [27, Eqn. (7)].
A sequential comparison of the G/Q ratio from the meandered
line dipole antenna to the second cube antenna design shows
that this new method for minimizing the total occupied volume
retains the relative separation from the G/Q limit. Fig. 13 also
shows that the cube antennas in this work provide a larger G/Q
ratio than the pyramidal antenna proposed in [13] and the cube
1063
Fig. 13. Comparison of G/Q ratio of the presented designs and other miniatur-
ized antennas.
antenna proposed in [19], and performance that is similar to the
4-arm folded spherical helix antenna presented in [12].
IV. WIRELESS SENSOR NODE APPLICATIONS
For the application of interest to this work, the small, 3-D
form factor is attractive. As previously noted, the study is pri-
marily geared toward sensor nodes that can be embedded in
civil infrastructure, such as bridges, pilings or pavement for
structural health monitoring. Very low, or zero power sensor
transceiver designs such as described in [28] and [29] will be
used, allowing long-term monitoring but also heightening the
need for highly efficient antennas. The planar antennas com-
monly used for wireless sensor nodes would result in a relatively
large cross-sectional area in comparison to the 3-D configura-
tion. Another potential advantage of a 3-D antenna for sensor
nodes is the relative ease of rapid dispersal (e.g., air-drop) into a
preferred orientation that facilitates wireless interrogation from
above or from the sides, by simply weighting the bottom of the
package. While the fabrication process required for a 3-D an-
tenna will be more complex than that for a typical 2-D antenna,
significant advances are being made in stereolithography and
3-D printing methods that will address this challenge [30], [31].
The manual assembly method used for the designs presented
herein is currently being transitioned to 3-D printing.
As the available volume for the antennas in wireless sensor
nodes is limited, a compromise between the bandwidth and the
antenna radiation efficiency has to be made. As noted above, ra-
diation efficiency is the more important performance metric in
this work. For the harmonic sensor transceivers that will be used
with these antennas, the operational bandwidth is typically less
than 1% [29], a result of maximizing the efficiency of the trans-
ceiver that is not system-performance limiting because the data
rates will be very low. As the dimensional control of current-day
3-D printing is on the order of 1 micrometer, it is expected that
sufficient repeatability in the manufacturing process is achiev-
able. If that is not found to be the case, approaches for frequency
tuning, such as thin spray-on dielectric coatings or trimming the
length of the meandered sections, could be investigated.
If the presented cube antenna were to be used in the harmonic
sensor design, the antenna would need to be re-optimized to
achieve a conjugate match to the complex impedance of the
diode multiplier for optimal frequency conversion efficiency
[29]. In this respect, an advantage of the 3-D antenna is that
1064
Fig. 14. First cube antenna and an inserted block representing internal sensor
electronics.
Fig. 15. Simulated for the first cube antenna with an inserted metallic block
of different heights.
its input impedance is readily adjusted without increasing the
total occupied volume. The desired complex impedance can be
obtained by optimizing the meandered arm parameters, the par-
allel plate transformer width, as well as the width and the length
of the microstrip matching line.
The 3-D antenna also provides the capability of housing
the sensor electronics within the antenna structure while being
relatively insensitive to the presence of such inclusions (di-
electric, metallic or a combination of both). To demonstrate,
the first cube antenna was tested with blocks of conductive
and lossy dielectric material ( of 10 and loss tangent of 0.1)
inside the structure, as seen in Fig. 14. Figs. 15 and 16 show
the effect of the block size on the antenna resonant frequency.
As seen, the conductive and dielectric blocks, with a height
up to 8 mm, have little impact on the resonant frequency
frequency shift due to the weak coupling. This
frequency shift could be accommodated by small adjustments
in the antenna design. Also, the metallic block did not affect
the radiation pattern or the antenna gain, while the lossy di-
electric block with a height of 8 mm (equaling the height of
the meandered arm section) decreased the maximum gain by
0.2 dB without affecting the radiation pattern. The insignificant
variation in the radiation pattern and gain is important, since
these parameters are more difficult to adjust than the center
frequency. As the zero power sensor nodes of interest will have
minimal electronics inside the cube, these results demonstrate
that the antenna approach is suitable for the application of
interest. If a battery is required for sensor operation, it could be
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 16. Simulated for the first cube antenna with an inserted lossy dielec-
tric block of different heights.
located beneath the ground plane if necessary to minimize the
impact on antenna performance.
V. CONCLUSION
Designs of 3-D cube antennas have been developed that are
good candidates to work efficiently for narrowband, wireless
sensor applications where the available volume is constrained.
The performance of the antennas has been validated theoreti-
cally and experimentally, and shown to approach the theoretical
performance limits for electrically small antennas. The 3-D de-
signs exhibit sensitivity to the dimensions of the ground plane
that is being investigated further, along with the integration of
a second antenna on the opposing side of the cube. However,
measurement and simulation data have proven that conductive
and lossy dielectric objects, of sizes up to mm , can be
placed inside the cube without significantly degrading the an-
tenna performance, suggesting that this design approach may
be a good candidate for use with wireless sensor nodes. Di-
rect-write printing techniques which enable conductor deposi-
tion on flexible and non-planar surfaces are a possible approach
for high-volume manufacturing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was conducted in partnership with the University
of Vermont and SRI International. The authors would like to
thank Rogers Corporation for providing substrate material, Di-
amond Engineering Company for providing support for our an-
tenna measurement system, and nScrypt, Inc., for advice re-
garding 3-D printing. They would also like to thank Dr. G.
Mumcu for helpful discussions on electrically small antennas
and design suggestions.
REFERENCES
[1] G. Whyte, N. Buchanan, and I. Thayne, “An omnidirectional, low
cost, low profile 2.45 GHz microstrip fed rectaxial antenna for wireless
sensor network applications,” presented at the IEE and IEEE Conf.
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Ibrahim T. Nassar (S’09) was born in Irbid, Jordan, on May 16, 1986. He
received the B.S. degree from Jordan University of Science and Technology,
Irbid, and the M.S. degree from University of South Florida, Tampa, in 2008
and 2010, respectively, all in electrical engineering.
He is now a Graduate Research Assistant with the WAMI Lab, the Univer-
sity of South Florida. His research is focuses on design and development of RF
microwave circuits and small, low-cost, and low-profile antennas for wireless
sensor applications.
Mr. Nassar ranked within the top ten among his colleagues in his Bachelor
degree and was one of the students selected to participate in the NSF IRES
program at the University of Central Florida in 2008.
Thomas M. Weller (S’92–M’95–SM’98) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively.
From 1988 to 1990 , he was with Hughes Aircraft Company, El Segundo,
CA. He joined the University of South Florida, Tampa, in 1995, where he is
currently a Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department. He cofounded
Modelithics, Inc., in 2001. His current research interests are in the areas of RF
micro electromechanical systems, development and application of microwave
materials, and integrated circuit and antenna design. He has thirteen U.S. patents
and over 150 professional journal and conference publications.
Dr. Weller was a recipient of the Outstanding Young Engineer Award from
the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in 2005, the USF Presi-
dent’s Award for Faculty Excellence in 2003, IBM Faculty Partnership Awards
in 2000/2001, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1999, and the
IEEE MTT Society Microwave Prize in 1996.
1066 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Influence of the Hand on the Specific
Absorption Rate in the Head
Chung-Huan Li, Member, IEEE, Mark Douglas, Senior Member, IEEE, Erdem Ofli, Member, IEEE,
Benoit Derat, Member, IEEE, Sami Gabriel, Nicolas Chavannes, Member, IEEE, and Niels Kuster, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—The influence of the user’s hand holding a mobile
phone to the ear on the peak spatial-average Specific Absorption
Rate (psSAR) averaged over any 1 g and 10 g of tissue in the
head is investigated. This study is motivated by recent reports
that found substantial increases in psSAR by the presence of the
hand in some cases. Current measurement standards prescribe
the measurement of SAR in a head phantom without a hand
present. The mechanisms of interaction between the hand and
mobile phone models are studied. Simulations and measurements
at 900 and 1800 MHz have been conducted to complement the
understanding of the hand grip parameters leading to higher SAR
in the head. Numerical simulations were conducted on four mobile
phone models, and parameters such as the palm-phone distance
and hand position were varied. Measurements of 46 commercial
mobile phones were made, and the maximum psSAR with dif-
ferent hand positions and palm-phone distances was recorded.
Both simulations and measurements have found increases in the
psSAR in the head of at least 2.5 dB due to the presence of the
hand. Furthermore, the psSAR is sensitive to the hand grip, i.e.,
the variations can exceed 3 dB.
Index Terms—Dosimetry, FDTD methods, interaction with
continuous media, mobile communication, numerical simulation,
SAR.
I. INTRODUCTION
D URING a voice call, a mobile phone is typically held by
the user’s hand next to the side of the head. The hand and
head are therefore likely to be in the reactive near field of the
antenna and can significantly influence the radiation pattern, ef-
ficiency, radiofrequency (RF) current coupling within the de-
vice and antenna impedance [1]–[6]. Human tissues are lossy di-
electric materials at mobile phone frequencies [7] and therefore
absorb RF power. The absorbed power is quantified in terms
of the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). SAR limits are estab-
lished in international exposure standards for the whole-body
averaged SAR and peak spatial-average SAR (psSAR) averaged
over 1 gram or 10 grams of tissue [8], [9]. Measurement stan-
dards and national regulations have been established to evaluate
Manuscript received June 03, 2010; revised March 29, 2011; accepted August
08, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
C.-H. Li and N. Kuster are with IT’IS Foundation and the Swiss Federal Insti-
tute of Technology (ETH) CH-8092, Zurich, Switzerland (e-mail: ed@itis.ethz.
ch).
M. Douglas and N. Chavannes are with IT’IS Foundation, CH-8004 Zurich,
Switzerland.
E. Ofli is with Schmid & Partner Engineering AG (SPEAG), CH-8004 Zurich,
Switzerland.
B. Derat is with Field Imaging, Meudon 92048, France.
S. Gabriel is with the Vodafone Group, Newbury RG14 2FN, U.K.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173102
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
the psSAR in the user when using a mobile phone so that com-
pliance with the exposure standards can be demonstrated [10],
[11].
The measurement standards specify the use of the Specific
Anthropomorphic Mannequin (SAM), a homogeneous head
phantom having a size, ear thickness and dielectric parameters
that result in a conservative over-estimate compared to the SAR
in a person [12]. For this reason, the simulated results in this
paper are conducted primarily using SAM. These standards do
not specify the use of a hand model when measuring the SAR
in the head because previous studies cited by the standards con-
cluded that the SAR in the head is generally reduced when the
hand is introduced [13]–[16]. In 1995, Balzano et al. reported
that the change in psSAR in the head due to the hand was
negligible for large phones having sleeve dipole antennas and
10–30% lower for flip phones if the palm is in direct contact
with the casing [13]. In 1997, Kuster et al. used real hands in
three fixed positions on twenty mobile phones at 900 MHz
and 1800 MHz and found that the psSAR in the head did not
increase above the measurement uncertainty [15]. A numerical
study by Meyer et al. in 2001 with two simplified mobile phone
models found an increase in psSAR in the head in one of the
two cases of only 7% [16].
Since the publication of these studies, several changes have
taken place. Mobile phones have become smaller and antenna
designs and locations have changed. The integration of CAD
modeling of human anatomy into simulation tools and advanced
algorithms for posing the anatomy have made it possible to
study the influence of different hand grips. Simulations of large
parameter sets can be conducted in a reasonable time due to the
dramatic increase in processor speed. The development of fast
SAR measurement systems greatly reduces the time to measure
large sample sizes of mobile phones [17].
Additionally, standardized hand phantoms have recently
become available. These hand phantoms have been developed
for an over-the-air test plan for certification of mobile phones,
developed by the CTIA [8]. The hand phantoms have homo-
geneous dielectric properties representing dry palm [19] (900
MHz: , ; 1800 MHz: ,
). User studies were conducted for [18] to define
four different hand grips for the majority of mobile phones,
depending on the width, form factor and usage mode [20]. Two
of the grips are used in this study, as shown in Fig. 1. The size
of the hand phantoms is an average value of the 50th percentile
sizes for men and women, taken from [21]–[24]. The phantoms
therefore represent average hands for radio-frequency analysis
of mobile phone performance. The hand models include a low
loss and low permittivity spacer for accurate mobile phone
positioning.
LI et al.: INFLUENCE OF THE HAND ON THE SPECIFIC ABSORPTION RATE IN THE HEAD
Fig. 1. CTIA-defined anthropomorphic hand phantoms for (a) bar style and (b)
clam-shell style mobile phones. The spacer attached on the palm is for phone
positioning.
Recent studies have found cases where the hand can sig-
nificantly increase the psSAR in the user. A study of body-
worn mobile phones by Francavilla and Schiavoni found that
the psSAR in the body can increase by between 30% and 40%
when the user’s hand is holding the mobile phone [25]. Mea-
surements were made on four mobile phones, and simulations
were conducted on simplified mobile phone models with helical
or whip antennas. Limited studies showing significant influence
of the hand on psSAR in the head [4] and radiated antenna per-
formance [4], [5], [26] have also been conducted. Following
these studies, it is necessary to do a thorough investigation, in-
cluding a wide range of realistic hand positions.
The objective of this study is to investigate the hand effect
over a large sample of mobile phones used in several different
hand grips and positions. Numerical simulations are conducted
using a wide range of hand grips and positions with four mo-
bile phone models. Conclusions are drawn regarding the types
of hand grips and positions that result in increased psSAR in the
head. Measurements are made of 46 commercial mobile phones
using a human hand in different grips. Finally, the considera-
tions of the hand effect on the head psSAR are discussed. In
this paper, the change of the head psSAR due to the hand is de-
fined as
(1)
Throughout the paper, the psSAR value is normalized to the
antenna forward power, except where indicated. Each psSAR
value in (1) is determined by averaging the SAR over a 1-gram
or 10-gram cubical mass centered at each point, then selecting
the maximum value over all points. Therefore, (1) represents the
ratio of the highest psSAR values regardless of location. This
is important, as the presence of the hand may cause a shift in
the location of the psSAR. To specifically refer to the change in
the 1-gram or 10-gram psSAR, the variables and
are used. The absolute values of psSAR are not
presented in this paper as these are dependent on the power level
of the device and the operating mode. The focus of the paper is
the investigation of the mechanisms that change the . used because it can be well defined and controlled by scripts for
1067
Fig. 2. Mobile phone models used to investigate the effect of the user’s hand
on SAR in the head are the generic clamshell model with a single-band PIFA
at (a) 900 MHz and (b) 1800 MHz, (c) a CAD model having a clamshell style
with an external helical antenna operating at 1750 MHz and (d) a CAD model
having a bar style with an internal PIFA operating at 1750 MHz (phone 4). (a)
Phone 1. (b) Phone 2. (c) Phone 3. (d) Phone 4.
II. NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS
A. Models and Method
Numerical simulations are performed with the software
package SEMCAD X that has been and continuously is co-de-
veloped with several university partners and Schmid & Partner
Engineering AG (SPEAG, Zurich, Switzerland). The RF
solver is based on the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD)
method enhanced with multiple method extensions that enhance
the accuracy and speed [27]–[29]. The simulation frequencies
selected in this study are 900 MHz, 1750 MHz and 1800 MHz.
The model resolution is about 0.1 to 0.2 mm, depending on the
phone models. Five to seven layers of UPML/CPML are used
as the absorbing boundary surround the modeling space [30],
with at least 0.25 wavelengths of free space between the model
and the absorbing layers.
Four mobile phone models have been selected for this study,
including two generic designs and two computer-aided design
(CAD) models (Fig. 2). The generic mobile phones both have a
clamshell style with three metal parts representing the top half,
the bottom half and a conductive element (flexible PCB) joining
the two halves at the hinge. These models have a single-band
planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) at 900 MHz (phone 1) or 1800
MHz (phone 2). The two CAD mobile phone models have ei-
ther a clamshell style with an external helical antenna (phone
3) or a bar style with a PIFA (phone 4). The details of the CAD
models are reported and have been validated with measurements
in previous studies [4], [31]. The antennas in phone 3 and phone
4 were re-designed using genetic algorithm optimization and
thus their performance may be different from those of commer-
cially-available mobile phones [32].
The mobile phone models are placed in the cheek position
against the SAM head, as defined in [11]. For phone 4, heteroge-
neous head models were also used. A previous study of the hand
effect on Over-The-Air (OTA) parameters reports that the mo-
bile phone antenna performance is sensitive to the hand position
[4]. Thus, it is important to define a rigorous process in order
to observe the range of that may occur. The process
makes use of a generic block model of the hand as shown in
Fig. 3. This generic hand consists of three bricks which repre-
sent the palm spaced away from the back face of the mobile
phone and the fingers holding the sides. The generic hand is
1068 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. Generic hand model shown holding phone 2 to the SAM head. The Fig. 4. for phone 2 at 1800 MHz is represented as a function of
generic hand consists of three blocks representing the palm, the thumb and the the generic hand position.
other fingers gripping the sides of the phone. The hand phantom is moved over
a wide range of positions along the length of the phone (Y-direction) and palm
distances to the back of the phone (Z-direction).

automated simulations and optimization. To find the hand po-

sition that maximizes , the generic hand is moved in
the Y-direction from the top to the bottom of the phone, and
the palm spacing is moved in the Z-direction over a 60 mm
range, as shown in Fig. 3. The fingers are touching the cheek,
and the finger length L varies according to the hand position. In
the coordinate system, corresponds to the top
of the inside of the palm touching the top of the outer surface
of the antenna. The movement resolution is 10 mm in both Y-
and Z-directions. The hand position that maximizes
is then selected. Next, the generic hand model is substituted with
a CTIA-defined homogeneous anthropomorphic hand. The an- Fig. 5. of phone 4 at 1750 MHz is represented as a function of
thropomorphic hand is used in two different grips. the generic hand position.
• Grip 1: identical to the CTIA-defined grips shown in Fig. 1
for the specific mobile phone type (bar or clamshell). The
position of the hand on the mobile phone model is based on
the position of the generic hand that maximizes .
• Grip 2: the fingers of the hand are posed using the Poser
tool in SEMCAD X [33] so that the hand grip corresponds
as close as possible to the grip of the generic hand that
maximizes while still conforming to the range
of realistic hand grips [34].

B. Results
The simulation results quantify how sensitive is to Fig. 6. Generic hand at the position that maximizes and the cor-
responding anthropomorphic hand phantom in (a) grip 1 and (b) grip 2 on phone
the hand position. is shown as a function of hand 1.
position in Fig. 4 for phone 2 and Fig. 5 for phone 4. The total
variation of is about 3.5 dB for phone 2 and 2.1
dB for phone 4. For phone 2, 30% of the hand positions re- 2 are applied. Due to the small size of phone 4, it was not pos-
sult in positive values of , while for phone 4, it was sible to position the anthropomorphic hand in grip 1 and use a
found for 95% of the hand positions. The 90th percentile value realistic grip (the index finger would be above the top of the
of is 0.5 dB and 1.8 dB for phone 2 and phone 4, phone). Thus, only grip 2 is used for phone 4. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7
respectively. show the hand grips applied on phone 1 and phone 4, respec-
Based on the position of the generic hand that maximizes tively.
, the phones were simulated with the anthropomor- Phone 4 with grip 2 is also simulated with anatomical head
phic hand phantom. For phones 1, 2 and 3, both grip 1 and grip models, as shown in Fig. 8. The setup is identical to that of
LI et al.: INFLUENCE OF THE HAND ON THE SPECIFIC ABSORPTION RATE IN THE HEAD
Fig. 7. Generic hand at the position on phone 4 that maximizes
and the corresponding anthropomorphic hand phantom in grip 2. The views
show (a) the front of the mobile phone model, looking through a transparent
SAM, and (b) the back of the mobile phone model.
Fig. 8. Phone 4 with grip 2 as seen in Fig. 7 is simulated with anatomical head
models. In addition to the Duke model seen here, the heads of Ella and Visible
Human model are also used in this study.
Fig. 7 except that the SAM head is replaced by the heads of the
Visible Human (VH) [35] and the Duke (adult male) and Ella
(adult female) models of the Virtual Family [36]. The ears of
the models are compressed to represent the force exerted by the
mobile phone [37].
Table I shows the simulation results of the four mobile
phone models with the hand grips where the highest values
of were observed. For the results normalized to the
same forward power to the antenna, maximum
values higher than 2 dB are consistently observed for both
frequencies and all four phone models investigated. The
data shows how the antenna match, and therefore the delivered
power, are influenced by the presence of the hand. As the hand
is in the antenna near field, it can in general strongly affect the
delivered power, depending on its size and position, and on the
antenna and mobile phone design. It is interesting to note that
the results presented in Table I are not consistently or strongly
biased by the anthropomorphic hands in the grips presented.
The change in the delivered power ranges from 0.8 dB (phone
3, grip 2) to 0.7 dB (phone 2, grip 1), and it is less than the
change in in all cases. This leads to the conclusion that
the increase in presented in Table I is more strongly
affected by the disturbance of the fields than the change in the
antenna match. For other cases not presented in Table I, the
effect of antenna match could be substantial.
1069
The same results are shown normalized to the feed point cur-
rent in Table I. The increase of psSAR is also over 2 dB for
phone 3 and phone 4. is not as high for phone 1 and
phone 2. Note that the hand grips have been chosen to maxi-
mize based on power normalization rather than cur-
rent normalization. For all but one case in Table I, the antenna
radiation efficiency, , and the total radiated power, TRP,
drop by at least 3 dB when the hand models are included. The
hand absorbs a significant amount of power as expected [4].
Table II shows the results when anatomical head models are
used instead of SAM for phone 4. The psSAR in the external
ear (pinna) is excluded from the 1-gram and 10-gram averaging
for the results shown. RF exposure standards from
ICNIRP [8] and IEEE [9] have different approaches for how the
psSAR limits in the pinna are taken into account. It is outside the
scope of this paper to deal with the complexities of this pinna
issue. in SAM also excludes the ear, as the ear is
lossless. Table II shows that for the anatomical heads
is similar or higher to those for SAM, regardless of whether the
psSAR is normalized to current or power. The use of anatomical
heads therefore do not change the conclusions of this study.
III. MEASUREMENT
A. Models and Method
SAR measurements were made with 46 commercial mo-
bile phones in order to determine the effects of the hand on
the psSAR in commercial mobile phones. All of the general
styles are included: bar (including personal digital assistants),
clamshell and slide, as shown in Table III. All of the mo-
bile phones were operated in GSM mode aside from two in
WCDMA mode. A base station simulator was used to establish
the call at the center channel of the band and maintain a fixed
output power of the mobile phone. The measurements with
each mobile phone were repeated and psSAR variations less
than 5% were observed.
Measurements were made using an iSAR system (SPEAG,
Zurich, Switzerland) [17]. The top surface of the system follows
the ear-to-mouth line of the SAM, as specified in [10], [11]. This
line is extruded in an orthogonal direction (see Fig. 12). The
thickness of the outer shell is 2 mm, except at the ear spacer
where it is 6 mm, as specified in [10], [11]. The 256 electric field
probes are arranged in a planar array which is conformal and
4 mm below the shell. Cubic spline interpolation is applied be-
tween the measured points, and the psSAR is estimated using the
algorithms derived from [38], [39]. The probes are embedded
in a lossy dielectric material having dielectric parameters over
a wide frequency range, at least 600–6000 MHz, within 10% of
the target values for human tissue that are standardized in [10],
[11]. The short measurement time ( 1 s) compared to conven-
tional systems ( 300 s) makes it practical to perform the large
number of measurements in this paper. The position of the mo-
bile phone is secured by a dielectric phone holder. A comparison
study between iSAR and a standard SAR measurement system,
DASY52 (SPEAG, Zurich, Switzerland) shows that the differ-
ence in psSAR is within 0.5 dB for most transmitters [17]. The
repeatability of iSAR measurements is within 0.2 dB.
1070 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE I
SIMULATION RESULTS OF THE FOUR MOBILE PHONE MODELS WITH DIFFERENT HAND SCENARIOS
TABLE II
IN ANATOMICAL HEAD MODELS WITH PHONE 4 AND THE
CORRESPONDING ANTHROPOMORPHIC HAND PHANTOM IN GRIP 2
TABLE III
NUMBER OF EACH TYPE OF COMMERCIAL MOBILE PHONE MEASURED IN
THIS STUDY
A human right hand, as seen in Fig. 9 is used, with dimensions
shown in Table IV. The hand dimensions are close to the CTIA-
defined hand phantom [18]. The original hand grip applied in
this study is based on the grip studies [18], [34] (Fig. 9(a) and
Fig. 9(b)). The hand is moved vertically (Fig. 9(c)) and horizon-
tally (Fig. 9(e)) with different palm-phone distances (Fig. 9(d)).
This does not cover the full range of hand positions possible,
but it is intended to represent a subset of realistic hand positions.
The maximum psSAR among all the hand grips and positions is
recorded for each mobile phone.
B. Results
The maximum values obtained for the mobile
phone models is shown in Fig. 10. Previous studies suggest that
the increase of psSAR due to hand is more pronounced at higher
frequencies [25]. Indeed, the data show that a narrower range of
maximum values is observed at 900 MHz than at
1800 MHz, and that the percentage of mobile phones exhibiting
a significant increase in psSAR is less at 900 MHz than at 1800
MHz. For example, the number of mobile phones exhibiting
values above 0.5 dB is 5 out of 21 at 900 MHz
and 21 out of 46 at 1800 MHz.
IV. DISCUSSION
A. Influence of Hand Position
The proximity of the user’s hand significantly perturbs the
near-field distribution around the mobile phone. To illustrate
this point, Fig. 11 shows the SAR distribution in SAM from
phone 2 with and without the anthropomorphic hand phantom
in grip 1. In the absence of the hand, the SAR is more evenly
spread out, while the presence of the hand results in a more con-
centrated absorption pattern for this case. The observed changes
in the pattern have several non-independent causes 1) reflec-
tions by the hand resulting in a confinement of the RF energy
between head and hand, 2) detuning of the antenna, 3) modi-
fication of the RF coupling between the electrical components
in the phone and therefore on the current distribution inside the
phone. In the simulated cases, if the palm of the hand is very
close to the antenna (less than 15 mm), the strongly increased
LI et al.: INFLUENCE OF THE HAND ON THE SPECIFIC ABSORPTION RATE IN THE HEAD
Fig. 9. Hand grip and movement applied to obtain the maximum
different palm-phone distances and moved to the left (e) and right sides.
TABLE IV
DIMENSIONS OF THE TESTER’S HAND AND THE CTIA-DEFINED HAND
PHANTOM. HAND LENGTH IS THE DISTANCE FROM THE CENTER OF WRIST TO
THE TIP OF THE MIDDLE FINGER. PALM LENGTH IS THE DISTANCE FROM THE
MIDDLE CREASE TO DISTAL PALM CREASE
Fig. 10. for (a) 21 mobile phones at 900 MHz and (b) 46 Mobile
phones at 1800 MHz.
absorption inside the hand reduces the psSAR in the head (as
seen in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5). At palm-phone distances of 15 mm to
35 mm, the psSAR in the head increases for the cases at 1750
and 1800 MHz. The psSAR then drops at larger palm-phone
distances. The psSAR in the head is also sensitive to the hand
location, with highest psSAR values when the top of the palm
is directly over the antenna.
The higher range of values and more frequent oc-
currence of high values may be due to the shorter wavelength of
1800 MHz. At shorter wavelengths, the mobile phone and the
1071
value. The original grip (a), (b) is shifted (c) to different positions, posed (d) with
Fig. 11. Distribution of 1 g-averaged SAR of phone 2 in the SAM (a) without
the hand and (b) with the anthropomorphic hand in grip 1. (The white squares
are the hotspots.
hand are electrically larger and there are more opportunities to
influence both the near field distribution and the currents on the
mobile phone. This result is consistent with the general finding
of Francavilla and Schiavoni [25]. Additional studies at other
frequencies would be needed to see if this trend continues.
B. Suitability of the Hand Model
To examine if a homogeneous hand can approximate the ef-
fect of a real hand, a comparison is made between the CTIA-de-
fined hand and the tester’s hand for one mobile phone at a fre-
quency near 1800 MHz (Fig. 12). SAR measurements are made
on the iSAR for both left and right hands. Efforts were made by
the tester to pose the hand as closely as possible to the grip used
by the CTIA-defined hand. The measurement results as seen in
Table V show that the difference between the hand phantom
and the human hand is small (within 0.25 dB). This suggests
that a human hand can be approximated by the homogeneous
hand model for this purpose. An interlaboratory comparison
study between seven laboratories found that the reproducibility
of psSAR measurements with a CTIA-defined hand phantom
at 900 and 1800 MHz was within acceptable levels, resulting
in only a modest increase in the measurement uncertainty com-
pared to psSAR measurements without a hand model [40].
C. Antenna Design Considerations
It was shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 that psSAR in the head can
be very sensitive to the hand position. Given that the psSAR is
1072
Fig. 12. psSAR measurement of a mobile phone using (a) the tester’s hand and
(b) the hand phantom.
TABLE V
FOR THE MEASUREMENT SETUP SHOWN IN FIG. 12 WITH THE
TESTER’S HAND AND THE CTIA-DEFINED HAND MODEL
Fig. 13. (a) Original model of phone 2 and modifications to change the location
of (b) the antenna and (c) the flexible PCB.
caused by currents on the radiating structure [41], the psSAR
is also sensitive to the design of the antenna and mobile phone.
However, the complexity of mobile phone design makes it dif-
ficult to devise simple antenna design rules that are guaranteed
to mitigate the hand effect. Proposals to keep the current from
flowing on the mobile phone chassis have been proposed such as
creating a current choke [1]. Modifications to the mobile phone
chassis can be made to keep the current from flowing on areas
influenced by the hand [3]. To suppress regions of high electric
field concentration on the antenna, such as slots on PIFA an-
tennas, the slots can be replaced by lumped elements [6].
A practical approach for a specific mobile phone design is
to identify and change the primary design features that cause
the psSAR increase. This approach is demonstrated for phone
2, where high values of psSAR in the head have been identi-
fied with enhanced currents on the flexible PCB. The current
on the flexible PCB can be reduced by changing the locations
of the antenna or the flexible PCB, as shown in Fig. 13. Each
configuration was simulated with the generic hand in the same
range of hand positions as described in Section II-A. The re-
sults were used to produce the distribution of with
position as shown in Fig. 4, and the highest value of
was recorded. These maximum values, given in Table VI show
how sensitive the hand effect can be to a small number of mo-
bile phone parameters.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE VI
MAXIMUM IN SAM OVER ALL POSITIONS OF THE GENERIC
HAND. RESULTS ARE SHOWN FOR THE DESIGNS OF FIG. 13
V. CONCLUSION
Significant increases (2.5 dB or more) in psSAR in the user’s
head have been observed when the hand is considered. The hand
has a more pronounced effect at 1800 MHz than at 900 MHz.
Simulations at 1800 MHz over a wide range of hand positions
found that higher psSAR in the head occurs when the palm is
over the antenna with a minimum palm-antenna spacing. At
closer distances, the psSAR in the head decreases. The psSAR
in the head is sensitive to the hand position, with variations of
more than 3 dB observed. The CTIA-defined hand model gives
similar results as a real hand, and psSAR increases in the SAM
head have been replicated in anatomical heads.
A main objective of this work was to investigate the psSAR
increases in SAM, as this is the head phantom used by interna-
tional measurement standards. The results support the conclu-
sion that significant and reproducible psSAR increases in SAM
are possible when the hand is introduced. Therefore, the influ-
ence of the hand is an important factor to consider for future re-
visions of these standards. Possible considerations, such as the
addition of hand models in SAR measurement procedures or the
application of scaling factors to account for hand effects, require
further work. This study reports the highest increases in psSAR
in the head, but it does not investigate the likelihood of such
an increase among the user population. It also does not address
compliance with regulatory limits, as it is outside the scope of
this investigation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Vodafone Group for pro-
viding the mobile phones for this study.
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Chung-Huan Li was born in May, 1979 in Taipei,
Taiwan. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees
in electronic engineering from the National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology (NTUST),
Taipei, Taiwan, in 2002 and 2004, respectively.
He joined the Foundation for Research on Infor-
mation Technologies in Society (IT’IS), Swiss Fed-
eral Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzer-
land, in April 2007 as a Ph.D. student. His interests
include antenna design, as well as the study of elec-
tromagnetic waves and theory.
Mark Douglas (S’86–M’98–SM’05) received the
B.Eng. degree from the University of Victoria,
Victoria, BC, Canada in 1990, the M.Sc. degree from
the University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada in
1993, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
Victoria in 1998, all in electrical engineering.
He joined the IT’IS Foundation in 2009 as
a Project Leader in the area of electromagnetic
dosimetry. From 2002 to 2009, Mark was an engi-
neering manager in the Corporate Electromagnetic
Energy (EME) Research Laboratory at Motorola,
where he led advancements in radiofrequency dosimetry research and testing.
Before joining Motorola, he was a Senior Technical Leader with the Antenna
Development Group at Ericsson and a member of the Ericsson EMF Research
Group, Stockholm, Sweden. His research work has resulted in over 60 papers
for scientific conferences and peer-reviewed journals. He also holds 5 patents.
1074 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Erdem Ofli (M’02) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. de-
grees in electrical engineering from Bilkent Univer-
sity, Ankara, Turkey, in 1995 and 1997, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2004.
In 2005, he joined Schmid and Partner Engi-
neering AG (SPEAG), Zurich, Switzerland, and is
currently working as a Senior Engineer. He is inter-
ested in numerical techniques in electromagnetics,
microwave and millimeter wave components and
systems design, wireless communications.
Benoit Derat was born in Drancy, France, in 1979.
He received the Engineer degree from the Ecole
Superieure d’Electricite (Supelec), Gif-sur-Yvette,
France, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in physics
from the University of Paris XI, Orsay, France,
in 2006, in collaboration with the mobile phones
R&D Department of SAGEM Communication,
Cergy-Pontoise, France.
From 2006 to 2008, he worked for SAGEM Mo-
biles R&D as a research engineer and expert in an-
alytical and numerical modeling of electromagnetic
radiation and near-field interactions. In 2009, he founded the FIELD IMAGING
S.A.R.L. company, providing services in his areas of expertise. His research
interests include small antenna design and measurement, 3-D electromagnetic
simulation, near-field power dissipation mechanisms and Specific Absorption
Rate (SAR) measurement and computation.
Dr. Derat is currently an active member of the IEC MT62209 and ICES TC34
SC2.
Sami Gabriel received the B.Eng. (hons) and M.Sc.
degrees in London, U.K., in 1990 and 1992, respec-
tively.
He joined the Dielectrics Research Group at King’s
College London to investigate the dielectric proper-
ties of biological tissues then moved to Imperial Col-
lege London to investigate the microwave heating of
organic compounds. His work is published in peer-re-
viewed journals with over 3,000 citations. He joined
Vodafone Group in 2003 as Chief Engineer in Re-
search and Development. He is a member of the IEEE
International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety, TC34 contributing for over
14 years, he represents the U.K. as an expert delegate to the International Elec-
trotechnical Committee, PT62209 as well as the European Committee for Elec-
trotechnical Standardization TC106 WG1. He is an expert advisor to the UK
Mobile Operators Association and GSM Association on mobile device SAR
evaluation matters.
Mr. Gabriel is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and
member of its policy advisory group BEPAG. He .
Nicolas Chavannes was born in Bern, Switzerland,
in April 1972. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. de-
grees in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland,
in 1998 and 2002, respectively.
In 1996, he joined the Bioelectromagnetics/EMC
Group (BIOEM/EMC) at ETH Zurich where he was
involved in computational electrodynamics and re-
lated dosimetric applications. From 1998 to 2002, he
was with the Laboratory for Electromagnetic Fields
and Microwave Electronics (IFH) as well as the Lab-
oratory for Integrated Systems (IIS), both located at ETH Zurich. There, his
research activities were focused on the development of FDTD local refinement
techniques and their application to numerical near-field analysis. In late 1999,
he joined the Foundation for Research on Information Technologies in Society
(IT’IS), Switzerland, where he is currently in charge of the development and ex-
tension of a simulation platform targeted for antenna modeling and MTE design
in complex environments, dosimetry and optics applications. In early 2002, he
joined Schmid & Partner Engineering AG (SPEAG), Zurich, as head of the soft-
ware R&D team. His primary research interests include the development, imple-
mentation and application of computational modeling and simulation techniques
to electromagnetics in general, and antennas as well as bioelectromagnetic in-
teraction mechanisms in particular.
Niels Kuster (F’11) received the M.S. and Ph.D. de-
grees from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
ETH Zurich (ETHZ), Zurich, both in electrical engi-
neering.
Between 1993 and 1999, he was an Assistant
Professor at the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, ETHZ. He was awarded Professor at
the Department of Information Technology and
Electrical Engineering, ETHZ, in 2001. From 1999
until now, he has served as the Founding Director
of the Foundation for Research on Information
Technologies in Society (IT’IS), Switzerland. In 2010, he initiated the sister
institute IT’IS USA, a nonprofit research unit incorporated in Maryland, of
which he is currently the President. During his career, he has held invited
Professorships at the Electromagnetics Laboratory of Motorola, Inc., FL, and
at the Metropolitan University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1998. He also founded several
spin-off companies Schmid & Partner Engineering AG, MaxWave AG, NFT
Holding AG, Zurich MedTech AG and advises other companies as board
member such as IMRICOR, Inc., TheraBionic LLC, etc. He has published
more than 600 publications (books, journals, and proceedings) on measurement
techniques, computational electromagnetics, dosimetry, exposure assessments,
and bioexperiments. His primary research interests include safe and beneficial
applications of electromagnetic fields in health and information technologies.
He is particularly interested in measurement technology; computational elec-
trodynamics for the evaluation of close near fields in complex environments
(e.g., handheld or body-mounted transceivers, residential/work environments,
etc.); safe and reliable wireless communication links within the body or
between implanted devices and exterior equipment for biometric applications;
development of exposure setups and quality control for bioexperiments to
evaluate interaction mechanisms, therapeutic effects and potential health risks;
exposure assessments; EM safety of medical devices; medical diagnostic and
therapeutic applications of EM, in particular EM cancer treatment modalities;
and virtual patient applications. He is currently building up a new research
team in computational life science in biology.
Dr. Kuster is a member of several standardization bodies and acts as a con-
sultant to government agencies around the globe on the safety of mobile com-
munications. He was a board member of various scientific societies and boards,
was Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) president in 2008–2009. He is dele-
gate of the Swiss Academy of Science and is currently an Associate Editor of
the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Demonstration of a Cognitive Radio Front End
Using an Optically Pumped Reconfigurable
Antenna System (OPRAS)
Youssef Tawk, Joseph Costantine, Sameer Hemmady, Ganesh Balakrishnan, Keith Avery, and
Christos G. Christodoulou
Abstract—A cognitive radio front end using an optically
pumped reconfigurable antenna system (OPRAS) is investigated.
The scheme consists of a ultrawidebhand antenna and a reconfig-
urable narrowband antenna in close proximity to one another. The
narrowband reconfigurability is achieved by a integratinglaser
diodes within the antenna structure to control the switching state
of photoconductive silicon switches. This scheme has the advan-
tage of eliminating the use of optical fiber cables to guide light to
the switches, and enables easier integration of the reconfigurable
antenna in a complete communication system. The performance
of the proposed technique is presented, and comparisons are
made to other commonly used switching techniques for recon-
figurable antennas, such as techniques based on PIN diodes and
RF microlectromechanical systems integration. The application
of this antenna design scheme serving as the receive channel in a
cognitive radio communication link is also demonstrated.
Index Terms—Cognitive radio, laser diodes, photoconductivity,
reconfigurable antenna, silicon, ultrawideband (UWB).
I. INTRODUCTION
A COGNITIVE radio system minimizes interference with
other wireless systems in its operating band and maxi-
mizes throughput by dynamically altering its transmit/receive
characteristics to occupy unused frequency channels [1], [2].
The basic architecture of a cognitive radio system is comprised
of a “UWB sensing antenna” that continuously monitors the
wireless channel and searches for unused frequency channels;
and a “reconfigurable transmit/receive antenna” to perform the
required communication within those unused frequency chan-
nels [3], [4].
Manuscript received February 05, 2011; revised June 07, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 16, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported by the Air Force Research Lab
under Contract FA9453-09-C-0309.
Y. Tawk, S. Hemmady, and C. G. Christodoulou are with the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
NM 87131 USA (e-mail: yatawk@ece.unm.edu; shemmady@unm.edu;
christos@ece.unm.edu).
J. Costantine is with the Electrical Engineering Department, California
State University Fullerton, Fullerton, CA 92834-9480 USA (e-mail: jcostan-
tine@fullerton.edu).
G. Balakrishnan is with the Center for High Technology Materials, University
of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131 USA (e-mail: gunny@unm.edu).
K. Avery is with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Direc-
torate, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque NM 87117 USA (e-mail: keith.
avery@kirtland.af.mil).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173139
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1075
One of the challenges in a cognitive radio RF front end
is the design of the reconfigurable antenna. So far, recon-
figurable antennas for cognitive radio communications have
been implemented using PIN diodes, RF MEMS or some
physical alteration of the antenna structure using a rotational
movement [5]–[10]. For example, in [5] a co-located wide-
band and narrowband antenna is fabricated. The wideband
antenna is a continous planar waveguide (CPW)-fed printed
hour-glass-shaped monopole which operates from 3 to 11
GHz. The narrowband antenna is a microstrip patch printed on
the reverse side of the substrate, and connected to the wide-
band antenna via a shorting pin and designed to operate from
5.15 to 5.35 GHz. A reconfigurable C-slot microstrip patch
antenna is proposed in [6]. The reconfigurability is achieved
by switching on and off two patches using PIN diodes. The
antenna can operate in dual band or in very wideband mode.
In [7], a quad-antenna with a directional radiation pattern is
presented. The operating frequency can be adjusted by the use
of a microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) switch, making
it suitable for cognitive radio applications. The authors in [8]
incorporate the sensing and the reconfigurable antennas into
the same substrate. The reconfigurable antenna is able to tune
between 3–5 GHz and 5–8 GHz via a rotating circular patch.
With each rotation, a different triangular shape is fed.
Some research has also been conducted on the design of op-
tically reconfigurable antennas [11]–[15]. In [11], the authors
used an -type silicon switch doped with phosphorus to in-
crease its conductivity. The authors implemented the photocon-
ductive switch on a printed dipole antenna which was fed by
optical-fiber cables in order to create frequency and radiation
pattern reconfigurability by effectively changing the dipole arm
length. An optically controlled frequency reconfigurable mi-
crostrip antenna was implemented in [12] as well. The authors
shorten the slot inside the antenna patch in order to make the
antenna change its electrical length. This has the effect of pro-
ducing a different resonant frequency. In [13], planar arrays of
electrically small metallic patches are connected by switches.
The field-effect-transistor (FET)-based electronic switches are
used with optical control. The drawback in this design is that
the energy lost in the switches reduces the radiating efficiency
of the antenna to a point where it might prove unbeneficial for
some applications.
In this paper, we focus on demonstrating a cognitive radio ap-
plication by utilizing a new technique to achieve frequency re-
configurability in photoconductive-switch based antennas. The
1076 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
design is based on integrating laser diodes within the antenna
structure. This technique negates the need for optical-fiber ca-
bles for delivering light to the photoconductive switches [16],
thereby reducing the complexity of the system and allowing for
easier integration of such antennas in future wireless handheld
devices. This technique does not require any biasing lines for
switch activation purposes in the antenna radiating plane, as is
the case with RF MEMS [17] or PIN diodes [18].
This paper is divided into the following sections: In Section II,
a comparison between the proposed technique in this paper and
the previous work done on reconfigurable antenna is discussed.
In Section III, the architecture of the investigated cognitive an-
tenna structure is shown. Section IV presents the integration of
the laser diodes into the antenna substrate structure. The ex-
perimental RF performance of the antenna in comparison with
numerical simulations is shown in Section V. In Section VI,
we present an algorithm to implement a cognitive radio receive
channel using the designed antenna from Section III. Finally,
we conclude in Section VII by recapitulating the salient results
presented through this work and proposing future work.
II. COMPARISON BETWEEN “OPRAS” AND RF
MEMS/PIN-DIODE-BASED RECONFIGURABLE
ANTENNA SYSTEMS
In this paper, an -type silicon (Si) piece with an initial carrier
concentration of cm is used as the switching element. It
has physical dimensions of mm mm. By illuminating the
silicon switches by light from the laser diode, the mobility of
charges in the silicon decreases but their density increases. This
increase in the charge carrier density results in a general increase
in the conductivity of the switch [19]–[22].
In the design of reconfigurable antennas and reconfigurable
arrays, it is always desired to minimize the power required to
activate the switching elements. The laser diode used in this
paper requires a supply voltage in the range of 1.8–2.07 V and
a driving current in the range of 0–129 mA in order to generate
an output laser power in the range of 0–90 mW. The relation
between the output power level (in miilwatts) and the current/
voltage for this laser diode is shown in Fig. 1, which shows
that a voltage of 1.9 V and a current of 87 mA are required
to drive the laser diode to produce an output laser power of 50
mW. This power level is sufficient to make the silicon switch
transition from the OFF state to the ON state, and this transition
is manifested by the increase in the silicon total conductivity (dc
+ RF).
The silicon substrate used in this paper has a bandgap en-
ergy 1.12 eV, which corresponds to an activation bandgap
wavelength: 1.24 1.107 m
785 nm. determines the cutoff wavelength of the incident
photons that are necessary to excite electrons from the silicon
valence band to the conduction band.
RF-MEMs/PIN diodes-based reconfigurable antenna systems
require the design of appropriate bias lines which lie in the plane
of the antenna. Bias lines affect the antenna radiation pattern
and increase the complexity of the structure by adding addi-
tional RF components. On the other hand, “OPRAS” is based
on integrating laser diodes within the antenna substrate where
Fig. 1. Relation between the optical power and the voltage/current for the laser
diode.
no bias lines are needed to be printed on the plane of the ra-
diating structure of the antenna. A copper piece is attached to
the back of the antenna ground. This piece has a minimal effect
on the antenna radiation pattern since it has a small depth and
the same (or smaller) width/height as the antenna ground plane.
Also, this technique eliminates the use of optical-fiber cables for
light delivery which enables easier integration of the reconfig-
urable antenna.
RF MEMs also suffer from poor reliability [23]. The deploy-
ment of RF MEMs into commercial and defense applications is
very limited. PIN diodes exhibit nonlinear behavior at RF fre-
quencies since the stored charge can be insufficient to control
the RF current [24]. The nonlinear behavior of PIN diodes man-
ifests itself as undesired antenna resonances.
All of the problems produced by RF MEMs and PIN diodes’
integration can be overcome by implementing the “OPRAS”
technique. The copper piece that is used as a heat sink for the
laser diode improves the reliability of the proposed technique
compared to RF MEMs, by increasing the laser diode lifetime.
Also, the activation/deactivation of the photoconductive switch
by shining light from the laser diode does not produce har-
monics and intermodulation distortion as with the case of PIN
diodes. The relation between the input power and the output
power from a photoconductive switch shows a linear behavior
[25], [26].
Table I shows a comparison between the three different
techniques in terms of voltage/current requirement, amount of
power consumption, and the switching speed [27]–[30]. The
“OPRAS” performs faster than RF MEMs but needs more
driving current. The PIN-diodes-based reconfigurable antenna
acts faster than “OPRAS, ” but needs a higher level of driving
voltage. The estimated power consumption of “OPRAS” lies
between that of RF MEMS and PIN diodes.
III. ANTENNA STRUCTURE
The cognitive radio front end described in this paper con-
sists of an ultrawideband (UWB) and a reconfigurable narrow-
band antenna placed next to each other. The antenna top view is
shown in Fig. 2(a); its bottom view is shown in Fig. 2(b).
TAWK et al.: DEMONSTRATION OF A COGNITIVE RADIO FRONT END
TABLE I
COMPARISON BETWEEN DIFFERENT SWITCHING TECHNIQUES
Fig. 2. Antenna structure. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.
The cognitive antenna is printed on a Taconic TLY substrate
with a dielectric constant of 2.2 and a height of 1.6 mm. The
sensing and the reconfigurable structures are fed via a stripline.
They both have a partial ground in order to allow radiation above
and below the substrate. The reconfigurable antenna ground is
36 mm 9 mm. It has a longer length than the ground of the
sensing antenna in order to accommodate the copper fixture. The
separation between the two ground planes is chosen to be 8 mm.
All of the dimensions shown in Fig. 2 are in millimeters.
The UWB sensing antenna is a modified elliptical-shaped
monopole. It covers the band from 3 to 11 GHz. It has a major
axis of 25.2 mm 0.38 and a minor axis of 22 mm
0.35 , where corresponds to the lowest frequency (3
GHz). A small tapered microstrip section is used to match the
UWB sensing antenna to the feed point.
1077
Fig. 3. (a) Integration of the laser diode into the antenna structure. (b) Drilled
copper piece which supports the laser diodes.
The reconfigurable antenna is a modified printed monopole.
It has an elliptical slot that contains a triangular arm. Both struc-
tures are connected together via a silicon switch (S1). At the end
of the modified monopole, a hexagonal patch is attached via an-
other silicon switch (S2).
IV. LASER DIODE INTEGRATION
A semiconductor laser diode is a device that converts elec-
trical energy into optical radiation. The laser radiation is highly
monochromatic and it produces highly directional beams of
light. The laser action is produced by simply passing forward
current through the diode itself. On account of its compact
size and capability for high-frequency modulation, the semi-
conductor laser is one of the most important light sources for
optical-fiber communication [20], [21].
The laser diode used in this paper operates at 785 nm and has a
maximum output power of 90 mW. It has a can-type architecture
and a part number L785P100 [31]. The integration of the laser
diode is achieved by attaching it to the back of the ground of the
reconfigurable antenna as shown in Fig. 3(a). In order to couple
the light from the laser diodes efficiently, two holes of diameter
1 mm are drilled through the substrate.
The copper piece used to integrate the laser diodes with the
antenna structure is shown in Fig. 3(b). It is included into the
simulation environment with the antenna structure to take its
effect on the antenna performance into consideration. Its width
is the same as the ground of the reconfigurable antenna
9 mm). It has a length of 21.5 mm and depth of 6.5 mm. This
copper piece has two holes where inside each hole a laser diode
is fixed
The reconfigurable antenna radiation pattern at 4.6 GHz
and 5.2 GHz in the YZ plane for the case when the copper
piece is removed and when it is present is shown in Fig. 4. One
can notice that the inclusion of this piece has a minimal effect
on the antenna radiation pattern. Also, the laser diode cables
are shielded and, therefore, do not interfere with the antenna-
1078 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 4. Antenna radiation pattern in the YZ plane (8 = 90 ).

Fig. 5. Fabricated antenna structure. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.

radiated field. These two frequencies are chosen only as a proof

of concept.

V. FABRICATION AND RESULTS

The fabricated antenna structure is shown in Fig. 5(a) and (b).
Two photoconductive switches are integrated within the recon-
figurable antenna. Fig. 6. (a) Measured and simulated jS11j for the sensing antenna when both
switches are OFF. (b) Contour map of the normalized radiation pattern for the
UWB antenna in the XZ plane. (c) YZ plane.
A. UWB Antenna
The comparison between the measured and the simulated re-
flection coefficient (in decibels) for the UWB sensing antenna from 3 to 11 GHz. Good agreement is noticed between the sim-
is shown in Fig. 6(a). The antenna is able to cover the spectrum ulated and the measured data for the UWB sensing structure.
TAWK et al.: DEMONSTRATION OF A COGNITIVE RADIO FRONT END 1079

This data correspond to the case when both switches are OFF. We
observed that the same UWB response is maintained for the dif-
ferent states of the two switches. The normalized UWB antenna
radiation pattern in the XZ plane /YZ plane
is shown in Fig. 6(b) and (c) as a colored contour plot for the case
when both switches are OFF. The color code in the right side of
the plot corresponds to the normalized values (in decibels) of the
total radiated electric field for different frequency/angle values.
It is observed that the UWB antenna has less variation in the XZ
plane compared to the YZ plane for the radiated E-field across
the majority of the frequency bands/angle values.

B. Reconfigurable Antenna
For the narrowband reconfigurable antenna, when the two sil-
icon switches (S1 and S2) are not illuminated by a laser light
(OFF state), only the modified monopole is fed. This results in
an antenna resonance between 4.15 and 5.1 GHz. Upon acti-
vation of the first switch (S1) by driving the laser diode via a
current of 87 mA and a voltage of 1.9 V (this corresponds to
50-mW optical power), the antenna shifts its resonance to the
4.8–5.7 GHz band. By illuminating the second switch (S2) with
the same amount of pumped power, the 3.2–4.3 GHz band is
covered. The case when both switches are ON produces a reso-
nance outside the band of the UWB sensing antenna, and is not
considered for our application. The simulated and the measured
reflection coefficient for the reconfigurable narrowband antenna
are summarized in Fig. 7(a) and (b).

C. Coupling
Since both structures are incorporated into the same cognitive
antenna substrate, it is essential to look at the coupling between
the UWB sensing and the reconfigurable narrowband antenna.
This coupling or “cross-talk” is quantified by the transmission Fig. 7. (a) Simulated and (b) measured reflection coefficient for the reconfig-
between the two antenna ports. The coupling between the urable antenna.
two radiating structures is a function of their physical separa-
tion. In order to find the optimum distance between the two ra-
diating structures without making the overall cognitive antenna
too large, an optimization study was performed in HFSS. It was
observed that for separation distances of less than 6 mm, there
was considerable crosstalk between the two radiating structures.
A separation of 8 mm ensured that the measured between
the two radiating structures was less than 20 dB across the
band from 3 to 11 GHz.
The comparison between the simulated and the measured
for the case when S1:OFF-S2:OFF and S1:OFF-S2:ON for a
separation of 8 mm between the UWB and the reconfigurable
narrowband structures is shown in Fig. 8. A measured coupling
of less than 20 dB was achieved throughout the whole band
of the UWB sensing antenna. The case when S1:ON-S2:OFF
also gives a similar response.

D. Radiation Pattern
The comparison between the simulated and the measured ra-
diation pattern in the XZ plane for the reconfigurable Fig. 8. Simulated and measured coupling for the case when both switches are
off and when S1:OFF/S2:ON where the distance between the UWB and the re-
antenna is shown in Fig. 9. The radiation pattern is taken at configurable antenna ground is 8 mm.
3.6 GHz (S1: OFF-S2: ON), 4.6 GHz (S1: OFF-S2: OFF) and
1080
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured radiation pattern for the three different cases
of the switches in the XZ plane ( = 0 ).
Fig. 10. Generic cognitive radio work-flow diagram.
at 5.2 GHz (S1: ON-S2: OFF). A reasonable omnidirectional
radiation pattern was achieved.
VI. IMPLEMENTATION OF A COGNITIVE RADIO
RECEIVE ALGORITHM
A work-flow diagram indicating the operation of a cognitive
radio system is shown in Fig. 10. The sensing antenna is gen-
erally a UWB antenna with an operating band that spans the
entire frequency spectrum over which the wireless communi-
cation is expected to occur. The “Spectrum Sensing” module
of the cognitive radio engine continuously searches for unused
frequency channels within this operating band. This informa-
tion is fed to the “Spectrum Decision” module which determines
the corresponding band for communication. The “Switch Con-
troller” module then performs the required electronic operation
(switching, multiplexing, etc.) to tune the operating frequency
of the reconfigurable antenna which performs the data com-
munication over the unused wireless frequency channels deter-
mined by the “Spectrum Decision” module.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 11. Cognitive radio receive channel experiment workflow.
Fig. 12. Experiment setup.
In this section, we demonstrate the applicability of our cog-
nitive antenna, described previously, by incorporating it into a
mockup of a cognitive radio receive channel. The experiment
flowchart is shown in Fig. 11. The setup of this experiment is
shown in Fig. 12.
The experiment workflow consists of the following steps:
Step 1) Controlling the frequency sweeper via LABVIEW: A
frequency sweeper is used as a model of the wireless
channel in a cognitive radio environment. It is pro-
grammed to generate a continuous wave (CW) every
3 s at a randomly chosen carrier frequency between
3 and 6 GHz.
The RF output of the frequency sweeper is con-
nected to the broadband TX horn antenna that is
placed at a distance of 3 m away from the cogni-
tive radio antenna. We consider the transmitted ran-
domly chosen carrier frequency by the horn antenna
as the “unused” frequency channel in the cognitive
radio environment, to which the reconfigurable re-
ceive antenna should tune its operating frequency.
Step 2) Sensing the channel: The UWB sensing antenna
of the cognitive antenna structure discussed in
Section IV is connected to the spectrum analyzer.
TAWK et al.: DEMONSTRATION OF A COGNITIVE RADIO FRONT END 1081

ceive the incoming signal. A diagnostic algorithm is

also introduced within our workflow controller code
(written in LABVIEW) to ensure that the recon-
figurable antenna switches are appropriately com-
manded by the laser drivers. The reconfigurable an-
tenna is connected to a network analyzer (NA). The
signal acquired by the NA is analyzed by the control-
ling computer to determine the operating frequency
band of the reconfigurable antenna.
Step 6) Resume: The whole process (Steps 1)– 6)) is repeated
every 3 s. The tuning of the reconfigurable antenna
is in the microsecond range [21]. The entire anal-
ysis is done instantaneously in a way that the recon-
figurable antenna immediately changes its operating
frequency once the unused frequency band is deter-
mined.
Fig. 13. Sensing antenna spectrum.

VII. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new antenna scheme for cognitive radio
communications is presented. The cognitive antenna consists
of a UWB antenna and a frequency-reconfigurable antenna in-
corporated into the same substrate. The reconfigurable antenna
is based on photoconductive switches. A novel approach for
switch activation is proposed, which allows the laser diodes
to be incorporated directly within the antenna structure. This
approach will enable easier integration of such antennas into
commercial wireless devices. A prototype cognitive antenna
was fabricated to test the suggested method. Good agreement
was observed between the simulated and the measured RF
performance of the antenna. A cognitive radio receive channel
experiment was also conducted to demonstrate the applicability
of the proposed scheme. For future work, we are investi-
Fig. 14. Switching decision tree that determines which switch will be activated.
gating techniques to reduce the transition thresholds of the
switching elements. Also, an approach is under investigation
to use a field-programmable gate array controller to provide
all of the decision logic required in the cognitive radio system
The spectrum analyzer continuously measures the
workflow where the CW tones that are generated by the fre-
power-spectral density of the received signal from
quency sweeper are replaced by modulated signals of a given
the UWB sensing antenna.
bandwidth. This will enable fabrication of a cognitive radio
Step 3) Spectrum decision: The signal acquired by the spec-
front-end module on a chip.
trum analyzer is analyzed by a controlling computer,
which then determines the dominant frequency com-
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number=L785P100
Youssef Tawk received the B.Sc. degree in computer
and communications engineering from Notre Dame
University, Louaize, Lebanon, in 2006, the M.Sc.
degree in computer and communications engineering
from the American University of Beirut, Beirut,
Lebanon, in 2008, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
and computer engineering from the University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 2011.
He has published several journal and conference
papers. His research areas include reconfigurable an-
tenna systems, cognitive radio, as well as RF elec-
tronic design and photonics.
Dr. Tawk is the recipient of many awards during his studies.
Joseph Costantine received the B.Sc. degree in
electrical, electronics, computer and communica-
tions engineering from the second branch of the
Faculty of Engineering, Lebanese University, Beirut,
in 2004, the M.Sc. degree in computer and commu-
nications engineering from the American University,
Beirut, in 2006, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
and computer engineering from the University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 2009, where he also
completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2010.
When he was with the American University,
he was awarded a six-month research scholarship at Munich University of
Technology (TUM), Munich, Germany, as part of the TEMPUS program. Cur-
rently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department,
California State University Fullerton. He has also published many research
papers and is a co-author of an upcoming book on reconfigurable antennas.
His research interests are in the areas of reconfigurable systems and antennas,
antennas in wireless communications, electromagnetic fields, RF electronic
design, and communication systems.
Dr. Costantine received many awards during his studies and career.
Sameer Hemmady received the B.S. degree in
electronics engineering from the University of
Mumbai, Mumbai, India, in 2002, and the M.S.
degree in telecommunications engineering and the
Ph.D. degree in applied physics from the Univer-
sity of Maryland-College Park in 2004 and 2006,
respectively.
Currently, he is an Applied Physicist with more
than seven years of experience in the planning,
design, implementation, and technical assessment
of advanced directed energy weaponized systems.
He has been a Program Manager and Principal Investigator on several U.S.
Department of Defense programs pertaining to nonlethal-directed energy
weapons, counterelectronics, and radar technologies. His technical expertise
includes intentional electromagnetic interference and compatibility, low-ob-
servable phase-array antennas, radar systems, Terahertz and optical beam
transport systems, and lasers. He is also a Research Professor in the Applied
Electromagnetics Group, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. He has authored one book on sta-
tistical electromagnetism, several journal papers, and conference proceedings
covering applied research in wave propagation, statistical electromagnetism,
electromagnetic interference/electromagnetic compatibility, and quantum
electronics. He holds a U.S. patent on wave imaging and a pending patent on
reconfigurable low-observable stealth antennas.
TAWK et al.: DEMONSTRATION OF A COGNITIVE RADIO FRONT END
Ganesh Balakrishnan received the B.E. degree in
electronics and communications engineering from
the University of Madras, Madras, India, in 2000, the
M.S. degree in engineering with a specialization in
communication engineering from the University of
Toledo, Toledo OH, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in
optical sciences from the University of New Mexico
(UNM), Albuquerque, in 2006.
Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Center
for High Technology Materials, UNM. His research
interests include high-power vertical external-cavity
surface-emitting laser development using quantum-dot-based and antimonide
quantum-well-based active regions. He has co-authored many journal articles
and conference presentations.
Keith Avery (M’04) received the B.S. degree from
DeVry Institute of Technology, in 1983.
Currently, he is the Program Lead for the In-
tegrated Microsystems program at the Air Force
Research Laboratory (AFRL), focusing on advanced
packaging and optoelectronics for space. For the first
12 years of his career, he was with the commercial
sector, designing digital and analog circuits for com-
mercial, industrial, and telephony applications. Prior
to joining AFRL he was a government contractor
performing design activities for space experiments,
advanced packaging techniques, and radiation effects on microelectronics.
During his career, he has increased his level of responsibility for design
activities and program management. He has authored or co-authored numerous
papers on designs for space and radiation effects.
Mr. Avery is a member of NPSS and AIAA.
1083
Christos G. Christodoulou (F’02) received the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from North
Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1985.
He was a faculty member with the University
of Central Florida, Orlando, from 1985 to 1998.
In 1999, he joined the faculty of the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department, University of
New Mexico, Albuquerque, where he was Chair of
the Department from 1999 to 2005. Currently, he is
the Director of the Aerospace Institute, University of
New Mexico (UNM), and the Chief Research Officer
for the Configurable Space Microsystems Innovations and Applications Center
(COSMIAC), UNM. He was appointed IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecturer
from 2007 to 2010, and elected as the President for the Albuquerque IEEE
Section in 2008. He was an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTION ON
ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION for six years as a Guest Editor for a special
issue on “Applications of Neural Networks in Electromagnetics” in the Applied
Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) journal, and as Co-Editor
of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Special issue on “Synthesis and Opti-
mization Techniques in Electromagnetics and Antenna System Design” (2007).
He has published about 400 papers in journals and conferences, has 14 book
chapters, and has co-authored four books. His research interests are modeling
of electromagnetic systems, reconfigurable antenna systems, cognitive radio,
and smart RF/photonics.
Dr. Christodoulou is a member of Commission B of URSI. He was the Gen-
eral Chair of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society/URSI 1999 Sympo-
sium, Orlando, FL, and the Co-Technical Chair for the IEEE Antennas and Prop-
agation Society/URSI 2006 Symposium, Albuquerque. He is the recipient of the
2010 IEEE John Krauss Antenna Award for his work on reconfigurable fractal
antennas using microelectromechanical switches, the Lawton-Ellis Award, and
the Gardner Zemke Professorship at the University of New Mexico.
1084 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Evaluation of a Statistical Model for the

Characterization of Multipath Affecting Mobile
Terminal GPS Antennas in Sub-Urban Areas
M. Ur Rehman, Member, IEEE, X. Chen, Senior Member, IEEE, C. G. Parini, Member, IEEE, and
Z. Ying, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper describes and validates a technique

to characterize the environmental effects on mobile terminal
GPS antennas using statistical model. This method requires the
knowledge of 3-D free space antenna gain patterns and average
angular distribution of incident power in the environment. The
power distribution must be known in both elevation and azimuth
and separately for parallel and perpendicular polarizations. The
antenna performance is assessed in terms of GPS Mean Effective
Gain and GPS Coverage Efficiency .
Angle of Arrival distributions of incident GPS
radio waves arriving at the mobile terminal are assumed to be
randomly uniform in both the azimuth and elevation planes. It
effectively replicates the open field (sub-urban) working condi-
tions for the mobile terminal GPS antennas. The method could be
adapted to an urban environment by introducing the information
of distributions. A lengthy open field measurement
campaign based on received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and mean
number of tracked GPS satellites is carried out to validate the
statistical model.
Index Terms—Environment effects, GPS antennas, multipath in-
terference, wireless networks.

I. INTRODUCTION Fig. 1. GPS environment and multipath signals.

T HE introduction of built-in GPS in portable Personal Nav-

igation Devices (PNDs) especially the mobile phones has
revolutionized the navigation industry. The ever growing de-
mand of availability of the navigation facilities in these devices
has made the GPS an essential part of the modern Wireless Per-
sonal Area Network (WPAN) and Wireless Body Area Network
(WBAN) applications.
The portable mobile terminals are affected by multipath due
to reflections, diffractions and scattering of the incident radio
waves. It depends on the structure of surrounding environment,
as shown in Fig. 1. This phenomena has been studied well
over the time. Analysis of this complex and random in nature
problem is complicated. Statistical modelling is a powerful
tool that offers simple and flexible solutions to such problems.
Manuscript received January 18, 2011; revised June 28, 2011; accepted
September 19, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current
version February 03, 2012.
M. Rehman, X. Chen, and C. G. Parini are with the School of Electronic
Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, London
E1 4NS, U.K. (e-mail: masood.rehman@elec.qmul.ac.uk).
Z. Ying is with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Lund 22188,
Sweden.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173134
A number of researchers has used this approach to study and
characterize the multipath effects on mobile terminals and GPS
antennas [1]–[10]. Axelrad et al. have used signal-to-noise
ratios (SNR) to predict and remove multipath errors [7]. Wu
et al. have used siderial filtering of time-series range residual
variations based on least-square model to mitigate the multipath
[8]. It requires a comprehensive data set containing multipath
delay samples from yesterday and the preceding day. Spangen-
berg et al. have modelled the multipath as variance change in
received signals in LOS conditions and as mean value jumps in
NLOS conditions using extended Kalman filter [9]. Hannah has
proposed a Parabolic Equation based propagation model for
GPS multipath employing the concept of coupled polarization
reflection coefficient [10]. However, these studies usually need
large measurement data sets and mainly deal with quantification
of multipath effects on stand-alone, static GPS receivers with
antennas designed according to the theoretical guidelines.
Ideally, the GPS antennas should have good Right Hand Cir-
cular Polarization (RHCP) with a uniform radiation pattern over
entire upper hemisphere to receive the incoming GPS signal ef-
ficiently. A good rejection of Left Hand Circular Polarization
(LHCP) is also required to avoid multipath [11]–[13]. However,

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

UR REHMAN et al.: MOBILE TERMINAL GPS ANTENNAS IN SUB-URBAN AREAS 1085

these requirements are difficult to fulfil in portable devices, es-

pecially the mobile terminals that are required to allow max-
imum mobility of the user and flexibility of use with multiple
functions such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, digital camera,
mobile TV and GPS [14], [15].
In the common scenarios of cluttered environments including
indoors and city streets, Line-of-Sight (LOS) GPS signals ar-
riving at the mobile terminal is weak while the reflected signals
may have arbitrary polarizations. Moreover, the mobile phones
are hardly used in a fixed position and the “up” direction of
the antenna changes depending on the used orientation. Further-
more, the antenna suffers from electromagnetic absorptions and
shielding of clear sky view in hand-held positions. Establishing
a quick GPS link with good satellite lock is therefore, a diffi-
cult task in such devices. Use of wide-beam linearly polarized
GPS antennas could help to address uncertainty of antenna ori-
entation, blockage of LOS signal and clear sky view, and losses
due to user’s body. Hence, linearly polarized antennas are a pre-
ferred choice for mobile terminal GPS as they give better perfor-
Fig. 2. Spherical coordinates system and representation of a hypothetical inci-
mance compared to the conventional RHCP antennas [16]–[18]. dent wave distribution model.
Moreover, it enables the use of the multipath signal construc-
tively in order to establish a quick GPS link. Once a GPS lock
is achieved, positioning errors can be estimated and removed scenarios provide an excellent alternative to the field tests, pre-
using software approaches. It necessitates the characterization dicting the antenna performance while avoiding the shortcom-
of mobile terminal GPS antennas in multipath environment. ings of the field tests.
Mean Effective Gain (MEG) has been used as an important A statistical method is developed to characterize the envi-
performance metric for mobile handsets in multipath land ronmental factors on the performance of the GPS antennas,
mobile propagation environments [19], [20]. It statistically de- introducing the parameters of GPS Mean Effective Gain
scribes the impact of the antenna on the link budget considering and Coverage Efficiency . The MEG equa-
Angle of Arrival and polarization of the incident waves and tion derived by Taga [1] is re-formulated to suit the GPS
antenna gain characteristics [1]–[4]. Effects of the presence of environment with RHCP incoming waves and environmental
human body can also be evaluated using this technique [5], reflections. An overview of the expected performance of the
[6]. The applicability of this idea to the portable GPS antennas GPS antenna in the multipath environment can be achieved
in conjunction with a new parameter of antenna Coverage using this method having the knowledge of 3-D free space an-
Efficiency has been proposed and developed by Ur Rehman tenna gain patterns and average angular distribution of incident
et al. [21]–[23]. This paper investigates the usefulness of this power in the environment.
method presenting a thorough analysis of the mobile terminal
GPS antennas. A. GPS Mean Effective Gain
The content of this paper is organized as follows: In The MEG is the average gain of the antenna performance in
Section II, the statistical model for the GPS multipath environ- a multipath radio environment. The MEG of an antenna in a
ment is introduced. In Section III, the open field measurement mobile terminal is defined as [1]
procedure for the GPS antennas is detailed. In Section IV,
performance of various GPS mobile terminal antennas in the (1)
multipath environment is evaluated and results of the proposed
statistical model and open field measurements are compared.
For spherical coordinates (Fig. 2), can be expressed
Section V discusses the effects of change in antenna orientation
as [24]
on its performance in open field multipath environment. Finally,
conclusions are drawn in Section VI.

II. STATISTICAL MODELLING OF GPS MULTIPATH (2)

ENVIRONMENT
where and are and components of the
Currently, the performance assessment of a mobile terminal antenna power gain pattern respectively, and
GPS antenna is mostly done by field tests. However, it has draw- indicate the and components of angular density functions
back of longer procedures where weather, temperature and lo- of the incoming waves respectively. is the mean power that
cation hazards make it hard to control the test environment. It would be received by an isotropic antenna in polarization
results in lack of accuracy due to poor repeatability and effi- while is the mean power received by an isotropic antenna in
ciency. The statistical models representing the real multipath polarization. The total mean incident power arriving
1086 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
at the antenna would be the summation of the mean powers in
the two polarizations.
The incident wave in the GPS mobile environment can be
split into two components, perpendicular polarized component
and parallel polarized component. Therefore, and compo-
nents respectively correspond to the perpendicular and parallel
polarized components. Re-formulating (2) to suit the GPS envi-
ronment results as follows:
(3)
Now, and are the mean received powers in the perpen-
dicular and parallel polarizations with respect to the ground
plane while and represent the perpendicular
and parallel components of the angular density functions of the
incoming waves respectively, as shown in Fig. 1. ar-
riving at the mobile GPS terminal is then
(4)
The ratio between the mean powers received in the two polar-
izations is called XPR (Cross Polarization Ratio) and described
as
(5)
Using (3)–(5), the MEG expression for the GPS antenna can
be formulated as [22], [23]
(6)
Since, XPR governs the polarization of the incoming wave in
this model; the circular polarized nature of the incoming GPS
satellite signal is accumulated by making dB. It em-
ploys the fact that simultaneous transmission of two linearly po-
larized waves that have a phase difference of (radian) re-
sults in the generation of a circularly polarized wave.
B. GPS Angle of Arrival Distribution
The gives statistical definition of direction of arrival
of the incident radio waves, arriving at the mobile terminal GPS
antenna. Both the azimuth and elevation planes should be con-
sidered separately to replicate the multipath environment.
The incident radio waves are reflected, diffracted and scat-
tered from the objects located in the surroundings of the re-
ceiving antenna. Since, these objects vary in height and shape,
the direction of arrival of the incident waves is random. This
random occurrence is dealt with a uniform angular density func-
tion in azimuth, similar to the case of the land mobile environ-
ment [1]–[3]. For the GPS environment, reflections from the
ground (Fig. 3) should also be considered in the elevation plane.
The elevation plane is therefore, divided into incident and re-
flection regions. Due to lack of available measurement data for
Fig. 3. Multipath environment model around the mobile terminal GPS receiver
antenna [22].
direction of arrival of the GPS waves, the angular density func-
tion is assumed to be uniform in the incident region. In the re-
flection region, it is no longer uniform and reduced by a factor
governed by the reflection coefficients. Also, the favourable use
of the multipath signal in the mobile terminal GPS antennas for
quick link establishment leads to use sum of the received powers
in the incident and reflected regions.
In accordance with the preceding assumptions, the statistical
model for the GPS antenna in an open field multipath environ-
ment with ground reflections is proposed as follows [22], [23]:
(7)
(8)
depends upon the reflection coefficients for the perpen-
dicular and parallel components that varies with angle of inci-
dence as [25]
(9)
(10)
In this study, the open field ground is considered to be of a
semi-grassy semi-concrete type with a relative permittivity of
4.5 [26], [27]. It makes the model a replication of open field
working environment. Having the knowledge of , the
model could be easily adapted to an urban environment.
C. GPS Coverage Efficiency
Coverage Efficiency of the receiving GPS antenna is another
important parameter. It defines the capability of the antenna to
receive the signals coming directly from the satellites.
The GPS antenna can receive signals from all directions that
lie within its coverage area. However, the performance of a GPS
antenna is currently characterized by its ability to receive the
signals for elevation angles higher and lower than 10 (from
the horizon) [12]. Defining the antenna coverage based on this
criteria fails to describe its overall coverage in the upper hemi-
sphere. The concept of the Coverage Efficiency overcomes this
drawback by giving information about the antenna coverage in
the whole upper hemisphere.
UR REHMAN et al.: MOBILE TERMINAL GPS ANTENNAS IN SUB-URBAN AREAS 1087

been selected to investigate the worst case scenarios. This selec-

tion is validated in the following sections by a close agreement
between values calculated using the proposed model and ob-
served in the open field tests.

III. OPEN FIELD TEST PROCEDURE

A detailed open field test procedure is adopted to verify and
validate the model’s predictions.

A. Measurement of GPS Mean Effective Gain

For , the received signal power should be
known. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a measure that is used
Fig. 4. Illustration of calculations based on RHCP radiation pattern of a to evaluate the performance of the designed GPS antennas. It
GPS antenna with cross-hatched regions indicating coverage area (where signal indicates how strongly the satellite’s radio signal is being re-
is above dBi).
ceived. It is computed as a ratio of the signal power to the noise
power corrupting the signal
The Coverage Efficiency of the antenna-under-test is calcu- dB (13)
lated as the ratio of the solid angles subtended by its coverage
area to the total area [22], [23] Also [29]

(11) dB (14)

These calculations are based on RHCP gain pattern of the an-
tenna-under-test to suit the RHCP incoming radio waves. The
coverage area depends on a carefully calculated received signal
threshold level. Signals below this level are considered too weak
to make an impact and hence, wasted. The maximum coverage
that can be obtained by a reference GPS antenna is termed as
the total area. It is considered to be the half hemispherical solid
angle of for an isotropic antenna. Fig. 4 illustrates calcula-
tions. The box encloses the incident region (upper hemisphere)
with the horizon at 0 and the zenith at 90 . Cross-hatched part
indicates the coverage area.
An appropriate threshold level is worked out using GPS link
budget for L1 (1575.42 MHz) frequency band [28]
(12)
where is the receiver sensitivity while is transmitted
output power including the transmitter losses. and
indicate gain of the transmitting and receiving antennas re-
spectively, while is the free space loss and indicates
the miscellaneous losses including polarization mismatch and
atmospheric losses. The link budget is calculated as follows:
• Satellite km
• dBi [28], [29]
• dBW (corresponds to 50 W typical) [28]
However, in practical scenarios could be reduced to 14.3
dBW due to impedance mismatches and circuit losses [29].
dB
dB [28], [29]
dBW (corresponds to dBm typical)
Different GPS vendor specifications indicate that could be as
high as dBW [30]. Submitting these values in (12) gives
dBi. It shows that a minimum threshold level of
dBi is required to calculate the Coverage Efficiency of
the GPS antenna. However, a threshold level of dBi has
Here, NF is noise figure representing the noise generated within
the GPS receiver while is the temperature dependent source
resistance noise power. At a temperature of 25 C and a system
bandwidth of 1 Hz [31]
(15)
where is the Boltzmann’s constant and is temperature in
Kelvins. Now, putting these values in (13), the following ex-
pression is obtained:
dB dB (16)
It implies that the signal strength delivered to the GPS re-
ceiver is linearly dependent on the SNR if NF is constant in (16).
Hence, Mean Received Power of a GPS antenna in
(1) can be calculated using the mean SNR level for that antenna.
Mean SNR level of the reference antenna (typically dipole an-
tenna) gives the total Mean Incident Power . Finally,
is calculated by taking the ratio of the mean SNR
levels of the two antennas.
B. Measurement of GPS Coverage Efficiency
The Coverage Efficiency describes how well the antenna can
view the sky and receive the satellite signal. In the field, this
quality corresponds to the number of tracked GPS satellites. It
is obtained by taking the ratio of the mean value of the tracked
satellites (representing the coverage area of the antenna-under-
test in (11)) and the maximum number of the tracked satellites
observed during the whole measurement process (representing
the total area in (11))
(17)
1088 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 5. Open field test set up for measurement of and for GPS
antennas.
C. Measurement setup
DG-100 GPS receiver from GlobalSat Technology is used in
the measurements. This receiver has an embedded SIRF Star-III
chipset module with 20 channels (can track 20 satellites). The
sensitivity of the receiver is dBm. The data of number of
tracked satellites and received SNR by the antenna-under-test
is collected using satellite status chart. The field test set up is
illustrated in Fig. 5. The antennas are connected to the GPS
receiver via a MMCX-to-SMA jumper cable.
The designed antennas are tested for the GPS signal recep-
tion in outdoor open environment in both horizontal and vertical
orientations with respect to the ground. In this sub-urban envi-
ronment, height of the buildings in the vicinity of the test point
ranges from 10– m and are located at a distance of 30–
m. The GPS receiver and the antennas are placed at a height of
1 m from the ground. The antennas are rotated horizontally and
eight readings of satellite status chart are recorded for the fol-
lowing angles
(18)
It effectively provides the average reception of the signal in
the environment. The information of the eight best values of the
received SNR are used to calculate the mean SNR level for each
antenna. Hence
(19)
is then calculated by dividing of the an-
tenna-under-test to of the reference antenna. is cal-
culated using mean number of the tracked satellites
and dividing by 12, which appeared to be the maximum number
of the tracked satellites during the measurements.
D. Tested Generic GPS Antennas
Three types of generic GPS antennas; dipole, microstrip patch
and PIFA; are analysed in the open field multipath environment
for this study.
1) Dipole: The use of a standard simple antenna with known
characteristics is needed to bench-mark the model. A half wave-
length dipole antenna working at 1575.42 MHz is chosen for
this purpose due to its simplicity and wide usage as a standard
antenna.
The fabricated prototype of the antenna is shown in Fig. 6(a).
The antenna performs well in L1 frequency band with dB
bandwidth of 153 MHz as depicted by the measured S11 re-
sponse in Fig. 6(b). The 3-D gain patterns of the antennas are
measured in an anechoic chamber using Satimo’s Stargate 64
measurement system. The patterns for the perpendicular and
parallel polarizations of the antenna in horizontal and vertical
orientations are illustrated in Figs. 6(c) and (d).
2) Microstrip Patch Antenna: A circular polarized (CP)
truncated corner microstrip patch antenna is used in this study.
Fig. 7(a) shows the geometry of the fabricated antenna. The
free space S11 response of the antenna in Fig. 7(b) shows good
impedance matching in L1 band with centre frequency at 1578
MHz. The measured 3-D radiation patterns for perpendicular
and parallel polarization of the antenna for both the horizontal
and vertical orientations are illustrated in Figs. 7(c) and (d).
3) PIFA: The planar inverted F antenna (PIFA) is a popular
choice for a wide range of GPS applications. The antenna used
in this study is shown in Fig. 8(a). The measured S11 curve of
the antenna shown in Fig. 8(b) indicates that the PIFA oper-
ates well in the L1 band having dB bandwidth of 45 MHz.
Figs. 8(c) and (d) give an account of the measured 3-D radia-
tion patterns for perpendicular and parallel polarizations of the
antenna in both horizontal and vertical orientations.
IV. EVALUATION OF GPS ANTENNA PERFORMANCE IN
MULTIPATH ENVIRONMENT
Two approaches have been adopted to establish accuracy and
efficiency of the proposed statistical model to predict the GPS
antenna performance in the multipath environment as described
in the following sections.
A. Comparison Based on Simulated and Measured 3-D
Radiation Patterns
First, statistical calculation results of the model are com-
pared for two different input methods. The 3-D gain patterns
of the three antennas, obtained through the simulations and
the anechoic chamber (Satimo Stargate 64) measurements, are
used for the comparison. The results summarized in Table I
show good agreement between the calculated results of
and using the simulated and the measured 3-D gain
patterns. A maximum difference of 0.6 dB has been observed in
values in the actual reflection environment while 4%
in values. This difference is assigned to antenna fabrication
errors.
Theoretically, the performance of a GPS antenna in terms of
its in actual reflection environment (ARE) should lie
between the two extreme ideal environments i.e., total reflec-
tion environment (TRE) and no reflection environment (NRE)
UR REHMAN et al.: MOBILE TERMINAL GPS ANTENNAS IN SUB-URBAN AREAS 1089

Fig. 6. Geometrical structure of dipole antenna with measured S11 and 3-D power gain patterns for perpendicular and parallel polarizations in horizontal and
vertical orientations. (a) Dipole antenna geometry (all lengths are in mm), (b) Measured S11, (c) Gain patterns for horizontal orientation, (d) Gain patterns for
vertical orientation.

Fig. 7. Geometrical structure of truncated corner microstrip patch CP antenna with measured S11 and 3-D power gain patterns for perpendicular and parallel
polarizations in horizontal and vertical orientations. (a) CP Patch antenna geometry (all lengths are in mm), (b) Measured S11, (c) Gain patterns for horizontal
orientation, (d) Gain patterns for vertical orientation.

as part of the incident wave is reflected back, depending upon
the reflection coefficients for the ground permittivity of 4.5 [26],
[27]. The results in Table I indicate that the proposed model
works well exhibiting the expected theoretical behaviour.
B. Comparison Based on Measured 3-D Radiation Patterns
and Actual Field Tests
The comparison of the model’s calculations to open field
measurements serves as a crucial step in the validation process.
The open field tests have been performed both at the Sony
Ericsson Communications, Sweden and QMUL, London. The
horizontal dipole antenna is used as a reference antenna in
this study. Both the calculated (obtained through the proposed
model using 3-D measured gain patterns) and measured (mean
SNR level observed in the actual field test) values of
are normalized to the corresponding values for the horizontal
dipole antenna and described in dBd. Hence, dB (in the
actual reflection environment given in Table I) and 40.2 dB (in
the open field test) is being used as the reference level for the
calculated and measured results, respectively. The antennas are
placed horizontally with respect to the ground. The results are
summarized in Table II.
In these assessments, the repeatability of the measurement
procedure must also be known. Therefore, in these as well as
the following investigations, and are calculated
performing three sets of measurements for each antenna and
1090 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 8. Geometrical structure of PIFA with measured S11 and 3-D power gain patterns for perpendicular and parallel polarizations in horizontal and vertical
orientations. (a) PIFA geometry (all lengths are in mm), (b) Measured S11, (c) Gain patterns for horizontal orientation, (d) Gain patterns for vertical orientation.

TABLE I
COMPARISON OF CALCULATED AND OF TESTED GPS ANTENNAS IN DIFFERENT REFLECTION ENVIRONMENTS USING SIMULATED AND MEASURED
3-D POWER GAIN PATTERNS FOR VALIDATION OF PROPOSED GPS MULTIPATH MODEL (TRE TOTAL REFLECTION ENVIRONMENT, NRE NO REFLECTION
ENVIRONMENT, ARE ACTUAL REFLECTION ENVIRONMENT)

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF CALCULATED AND OF TESTED GPS ANTENNAS IN HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL ORIENTATION USING MEASURED 3-D POWER
GAIN PATTERNS TO THE ACTUAL FIELD TEST MEASUREMENTS

mean values are reported. The standard deviation of these three minal GPS antennas. Fig. 9 indicates that a similar performance
measurements (averaged over various tested scenarios) is 0.6 dB ranking of the three antennas has been achieved both in the cal-
and 5% for and , respectively. culations and measurements. It confirms that the model can suc-
The field test results show a good agreement with the model’s cessfully translate and predict the working of the GPS antennas
predictions for and values for the three mobile ter- in the multipath environment. A maximum difference of 0.2 dB
UR REHMAN et al.: MOBILE TERMINAL GPS ANTENNAS IN SUB-URBAN AREAS
Fig. 9. Comparison of calculated and measured values of and
showing performance ranking of the GPS dipole, CP patch and PIFA antennas
in horizontal orientation. (a) taking horizontal dipole as a reference
(0 dBd), (b) .
is noted for values and 2% for values between the
model’s calculations and open field measurements. These dif-
ferences are well below the accepted levels reported in litera-
ture [1], [2], [5]. They are mainly attributed to random factors
arising from atmospheric errors and weather conditions.
The results also indicate that the two parameters of
and do no rely tightly on each other. An antenna with good
may exhibit poor and vice versa, for example in the
case of the PIFA antenna. However, the multipath performance
of the GPS antennas could only be characterized by a combined
consideration of the two parameters. incorporates the
whole environment taking into account both the direct as well
as multipath signals, especially the ground reflections. On the
other hand, only considers the direct link. An antenna having
low values of and would be unable to establish
a quick GPS link as the direct signal is weak while multipath
impact is less significant. The performance of the antenna with
high values of should be analysed further in terms of
its . A high shows that the direct signal is stronger than the
multipath signal enabling the antenna to achieve an overall good
performance with quick GPS link and low multipath errors. On
contrary, low shows a weaker direct signal with greater im-
pact of the multipath signal. An antenna exhibiting such perfor-
mance could build satellite link quickly but with high errors. It
is evident from the results that the CP patch belongs to the first
category while the PIFA lies in the second category. However,
an optimal performance could only be achieved with an antenna
exhibiting good and .
1091
Fig. 10. Comparison of calculated and measured values of and
showing performance ranking of the GPS dipole, CP patch and PIFA antennas
in vertical orientation. (a) taking horizontal dipole as a reference (0
dBd), (b) .
V. PERFORMANCE DEPENDENCE ON ANTENNA ORIENTATION
The antenna orientation plays a vital role in multipath wire-
less communications. Varying orientation changes the antenna
main lobe direction inflicting link losses. The mobile terminals
operate in a dynamic environment with ever-changing orienta-
tion of the antennas depending on the user’s holding position.
The effects of these changes on the mobile terminal GPS an-
tennas are characterized in this section. The antennas are placed
in vertical orientation (with respect to the ground) and perfor-
mance is studied in comparison to the horizontal orientations.
The calculated and measured results using the proposed
statistical model and open field test are presented in Table II.
Fig. 10 shows the comparison of the antenna rankings in terms
of their and based on the two methods. It is further
established that the model delivers precise results with a close
agreement to the field test observations. A maximum relative
difference of 0.4 dB in and 4% in has been noted.
These results also show that change in the antenna orientation
has a profound effect on the performance of the GPS antennas.
Comparing the vertically oriented antennas to those in hori-
zontal orientation (Fig. 11), the horizontal configurations show
an overall better performance in terms of . These vari-
ations in are associated to the antenna gain patterns.
incorporates overall changes in the antenna gain pat-
tern for both polarizations and its response to the multipath en-
vironment in terms of (that also include ground reflec-
tions). Hence, it describes that the antenna gain and polarization
responds better to the nature of the incident plane waves when
1092
Fig. 11. Performance comparison of the GPS antennas with effects of change
in orientation in terms of calculated and . (a)
horizontal dipole as a reference (0 dBd), (b) .
placed horizontally. The higher values of the antenna gain, es-
pecially in the upper hemispherical space, in both the perpendic-
ular and parallel polarizations (as presented in the gain pattern
figures) are a key contributor.
The majority of the tested antennas also exhibit better in
the horizontal orientation as more open sky view is available. It
increases the number of the tracked satellites and hence, level
of the received signal in the incident region . bility to establish a quick satellite link in arbitrary orientations.
As a result, the wasted signal is reduced improving the overall
. The change in antenna with changing orientation (with
respect to the ground) is attributed to the sensitivity of the an-
tenna to receive the incoming GPS signal. Since, the incoming
GPS signal is RHCP, antenna RHCP gain patterns are evaluated
in order to study the relation between and RHCP gain with
change in antenna orientation. The RHCP gain patterns of the
tested antennas are measured using Satimo’s Stargate 64 mea-
surement system. Fig. 12 presents the comparison of measured
RHCP gains in the incident region for the tested antennas in
both the horizontal and vertical orientations. In these figures,
cross-hatched area indicates the useful angles having a gain
level above dBi, contributing to .
The comparison of the presented plots clearly indicates that
of the antenna depends upon the strength of the RHCP gain
in the incident region. For example, in the case of the CP patch
antenna, the vertical orientation exhibits much lower of 72%
as compared to 99% for the horizontal orientation. It describes
that the antenna has more clear sky view and a larger coverage
area while placed horizontally. The RHCP gain patterns also
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
support this theory. Fig. 12(b.i) shows that all of the incident
region is above the required threshold level of dBi when the
antenna is working in the horizontal orientation. A decreased
for the vertically orientated antenna is caused by comparatively
less area meeting this threshold. Presence of the RHCP gain
levels lower than dBi (non-hatched area) in Fig. 12(b.ii),
particularly in the angles and
, gives rise to the wasted
signals resulting in a lower .
In most of the tested cases, value increases with
increase in . However, in case of PIFA, an opposite trend
is observed for the vertical orientation. The vertical PIFA has
shown a decreased value due to reduction in overall
gain levels (Fig. 8). The non-hatched regions in Fig. 12(c),
show the angles that are not covered by the antenna due to
gain levels below dBi. This uncovered region is larger
for the horizontal orientation (Fig. 12(c.i)) as compared to the
vertical orientation (Fig. 12(c.ii)). Therefore, the PIFA exhibits
an improved in vertical orientation.
The results show that and is an efficient mea-
sure to characterize the antenna performance in the multipath
environment. It simplifies the practical evaluation of the antenna
performance as it is based on the antenna gain pattern mea-
surements in anechoic chamber. It describes the antenna per-
formance incorporating both the polarization properties of the
antenna-under-test and the directional properties of the radio en-
taking vironment. For example, from the perspective of antenna effi-
ciency and maximum gain, the CP patch should out-perform the
dipole and PIFA for the GPS operation. However, and
results show that these methods are not enough to describe
the performance of the antennas in practical scenarios. It has
been observed that the CP patch is more vulnerable to change
in the orientation as and varies significantly. The
vertical CP patch has lost 1.6 dB of its and 27% of
its coverage as compared to the horizontal CP patch. It indi-
cates that the multipath signal has little impact on the CP patch
antenna and it relies more on the direct signal lowering its capa-
On the other hand, of the vertical PIFA has reduced
by 0.8 dB but its has improved by 3%. It depicts that the di-
rect signal is playing a greater part in the antenna performance.
The ability of the PIFA to make good use of the multipath signal
in the horizontal orientation and the direct signal in the vertical
orientation enables it to establish a faster GPS link regardless
of the orientation (at the expense of comparatively higher mul-
tipath error in horizontal orientation). Hence, a combined con-
sideration of antenna gain, polarization, the radio environment
(i.e., the distributions) and the orientation in terms of
and depicts that PIFA could deliver better per-
formance in the multipath environment as compared to the CP
patch antenna.
VI. CONCLUSION
A statistical model to evaluate the performance of the mo-
bile terminal GPS antennas in a multipath environment is pre-
sented with two novel concepts of the GPS Mean Effective Gain
and GPS Coverage Efficiency . The model is
implemented and verified through extensive numerical studies
UR REHMAN et al.: MOBILE TERMINAL GPS ANTENNAS IN SUB-URBAN AREAS
Fig. 12. Measured RHCP gain patterns in the incident region for dipole, CP patch and PIFA GPS antennas in horizontal and vertical orientations (cross-hatched
regions indicate where signal is above dBi). (a) Dipole (i) Horizontal orientation (ii) Vertical orientation, (b) CP Patch (i) Horizontal orientation (ii) Vertical
orientation, (c) PIFA (i) Horizontal orientation (ii) Vertical orientation.
and its precision is established through experimental procedures
using a dipole, CP patch and PIFA. The model efficiently pre-
dicts the GPS antenna performance in an open field with multi-
path. Therefore, it provides a means to analyse antenna opera-
tion in actual working scenarios without doing open field mea-
surements.
Role of the antenna orientation in the multipath GPS oper-
ation is also investigated. The horizontal orientations has ap-
peared to be more efficient due to availability of a wider clear
sky view and higher gain values in the upper hemisphere. How-
ever, it is not a generalized trend and varies from antenna to an-
tenna. It is also observed that the linear polarized GPS antennas
could perform better establishing quick GPS link in open field
working conditions as compared to the circularly polarized an-
tennas. However, further investigations are needed to support
the argument.
Besides its precise predictive capabilities, the proposed
statistical model is only suitable for open field (sub-urban)
GPS environment due to the assumption of uniform
in azimuth and elevation planes. For urban area operation with
greater number of reflecting objects, more practical
should be considered. Therefore, inclusion of repre-
senting greater probability of arrival of the GPS signal near the
zenith as compared to the horizon angles, for example Gaussian
and elliptical, is a future extension of this study. Furthermore,
effects of human presence in the vicinity of the mobile terminal
GPS antennas would also be investigated.
1093
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Sony Ericsson Mobile Com-
munications for their support of this study.
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Masood Ur Rehman (M’11) received the B.Sc
.(hons.) degree in electronics and communication
engineering from University of Engineering and
Technology, Lahore, Pakistan, in 2004 and the M.Sc.
degree in wireless networks and the Ph.D. degree in
electronic engineering from Queen Mary University
of London, U.K., in 2006 and 2010, respectively.
He then joined the School of Electronic En-
gineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary
University of London as Research Assistant. His
main research interests include electromagnetic
interaction of antennas and human body, multipath environment effects on
mobile terminal antennas and UWB communications.
Xiaodong Chen (SM’96) received the B.Sc. degree
in electronic engineering from the University of
Zhejiang, Hangzhou, China in 1983, and the Ph.D.
degree in microwave electronics from the University
of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu, in 1988.
In September 1988 he joined the Department of
Electronic Engineering at King’s College, University
of London, as a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow. In
September 1990 he was employed by the King’s
College London as a Research Associate and was
appointed to an EEV Lectureship later on. In 1999 he joined the School of
Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of
London where he is currently a Professor. His research interests are in the
fields of wireless communications, microwave devices and antennas. He has
authored and co-authored over 300 publications (book chapters, journal papers
and refereed conference presentations) and is currently a member of UK
EPSRC Review College and Technical Panel of IET Antennas and Propagation
Professional Network.
Clive G. Parini (M’96) received the B.Sc. degree
in 197 and the Ph.D. degree 1976 from Queen Mary
College, University of London, U.K.
He then joined ERA Technology Ltd (UK)
working on the design of microwave feeds and
offset reflector antennas. In 1977 he returned to
Queen Mary and is currently Professor of Antenna
Engineering and heads the Antenna and Electro-
magnetics Research Group. He has published over
300 papers on different research topics including
communications, antenna and electromagnetics.
Prof. Parini is a Fellow of the IET and a member and past Chairman of the
IET Antennas and Propagation Professional Network Executive Team. He is
a member of the editorial board and past Honorary Editor for the IET Journal
Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation. In 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Academy of Engineering. He is currently the Director of Research for the
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
Zhinong Ying (SM’04) received the B.Phys. degree
from Zhejiang Normal University, China, in 1982;,
the M.S.E.E. degree from Beijing University of
Post and Telecommunications, China, in 1986,
and the Ph.D. degree from Chalmers University of
Technology, Sweden, in 1995.
He is an expert of antenna technology in Sony Er-
icsson Mobile Communication AB, Lund, Sweden.
He joined Ericsson as a Senior Engineer, became Se-
nior Specialist in 1997 and Expert in 2003. He was an
Adjunct Professor of Electromagnetic Wave Centre
at Zhejiang University, China. His main research interests are small antennas,
broad and multi-band antenna, multi-channel antenna systems, near-field human
body effects and measurement techniques. He has authored and co-authored
over 50 papers in various of journal, conference and industry publications and
contributed a book chapter to the well known “Mobile Antenna Handbook”. He
holds more than 60 patents in the field of antennas and mobile terminals. He
was the supervisor for terminal antenna technology and concepts in Ericsson.
His most significant contributions are the development of non-uniform helical
antenna and multi-band integrated antenna whose innovative designs are used
worldwide in mobile industry. His patented designs have reached a commercial
penetration of more than several hundred million products worldwide. He was
also involved in the evaluation of Bluetooth Technology invented by Ericsson.
Dr. Ying received the Best Invention Award at Ericsson Mobile in 1996, Key
Performer Award at Sony Ericsson in 2002 and nominated for President Award
at Sony Ericsson in 2004 for his innovative contributions. He also served as
TPC Co-chairmen in International Symposium on Antenna Technology (iWAT)
2007. He was a member of scientific board of ACE program (Antenna Centre
of Excellent in European 6th frame) from 2004 to 2007.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
A Mixed Rays—Modes Approach to the Propagation
in Real Road and Railway Tunnels
Franco Fuschini and Gabriele Falciasecca
Abstract—These days, security and efficiency of transportation
networks are usually supported by wireless communication sys-
tems. In all cases, the radio-link reliability strongly depends on
propagation properties and, therefore, effective prediction tools
and models are requested in the design and planning phases of
the radio system. In this paper, a mixed rays—modes approach
to the propagation modeling in real tunnels is presented. The
propagating field is computed as the superimposition of many
characteristic modes, whose amplitudes are properly estimated
thanks to a limited and, therefore, fast ray-tracing procedure; the
geometrical optics rules are also used to model the main effects
of the possible tunnel curvature. Moreover, an equivalent wall
roughness is introduced in order to approximately account for
the actual tunnel transversal shape and for the presence of inner
elements and objects. The model is compared with some other
different existing models and with measurements carried out
inside an underground line in a neighborhood of Naples. The
achieved performance is in line with the published scientific data.
Index Terms—Field prediction, modal theory, propagation in
tunnels, ray models.
I. INTRODUCTION
S ECURITY and efficiency of transportation networks have
frequently benefitted from the support of wireless commu-
nications. Primary/secondary surveillance radar (PSR/SSR) and
instrumental landing systems (ILS) represent probably the most
popular among many useful applications for naval/air freight.
The management and the safety of railway transport is also sup-
ported by wireless systems, such as the European Train Control
System (ETCS) and the Automatic Train Operation and Con-
trol (ATO/ATC) systems present in some existing driverless sub-
ways [1]. Wireless transmissions for vehicle-to-vehicle commu-
nications have been recently investigated as well [2].
In all cases, the radio-link reliability strongly depends on
propagation properties and, therefore, effective prediction tools
and models are requested in the design and planning phases of
the radio system.
Since tunnels are usually present along road and railway
routes, the modelling of propagation inside tunnels has been
extensively addressed, and the corresponding existing models
can be grouped into three main classes:
Manuscript received January 31, 2011; revised June 07, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 29, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
The authors are with the Department of Electronics, Computer Sciences and
Systems (DEIS), University of Bologna—Villa Griffone, 40037 Pontecchio
Marconi, Bologna, Italy (e-mail: franco.fuschini@unibo.it).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173137
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1095
1) Ray Models [3]–[7]: Optical rays are traced between the
transmitter and the receiver, according to the geometrical the-
ories of propagation (Geometrical Optics and Uniform Theory
of Diffraction [8]). Each ray tool must be fed by a proper de-
scription of the propagation environment. The more detailed and
accurate the description, the more reliable the field prediction
is, but also the higher the requested computation time. Besides,
some errors and imprecision are always unavoidably present
in the databases containing the environmental information to
input to the model, since some objects are commonly mispo-
sitioned, misdimensioned, or even missing at all; other inaccu-
racies may be introduced in the values of the electromagnetic
(EM) parameters.
Therefore, the ray approach is always promising and effective
in theory, but, in practice, its cost-benefit ratio can be sometimes
questionable.
Moreover, ray models usually consider plane surfaces and,
therefore, cannot immediately account for possible tunnel cur-
vatures, which on the contrary can often be present along the
tunnel route.
2) Modal Approach [9]–[12]: Tunnels are regarded as an
oversized dielectric waveguide and, therefore, the propagating
field is described through the superimposition of proper char-
acteristic modes. The tunnel transversal dimensions are usually
much larger than the wavelength , so that many modes are ex-
pected to be fully involved in the propagation process [9], [10].
In order to associate the tunnel with its characteristic modes, the
transversal shape and dimensions of the tunnel must be known,
as well as the EM parameters of the tunnel walls.
If analytical, closed-form expressions for the tunnel modes
are available, predictions can be achieved with a limited com-
putation time. In practice, this occurs only if the tunnel has a
simple transversal shape (rectangular/circular), which is there-
fore usually assumed [9]–[12]. Unfortunately, this assumption
can turn out to be too coarse in several real cases (especially
in the railway one), and this obviously reduces the model
reliability.
Even in cases when analytical formulas are considered for
the modes, they must be weighted anyway by proper (com-
plex) amplitudes, whose evaluation is not always trivial. In most
cases, therefore, the modal approach is limited just to the fun-
damental mode (i.e., the least attenuated mode) [12], and a full
multi-modal description of the propagating field is seldom con-
sidered [10].
Finally, the possible presence of bends within the tunnel
can be addressed through the introduction of the characteristic
modes of a curved waveguide [9], [13]–[15]. This approach
often leads to quite complex expressions for the EM field, thus
requiring some numerical computation for their solution.
1096 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

3) Heuristic Models [16]: The radio link inside the tunnel

is described through a simple, ready-to-use analytical formula,
based on some reasonable considerations and often supported
by several measured data. Heuristic models usually provide an
estimate of the signal path loss as a function of some synthetic
parameters, such as the link distance, the tunnels dimensions,
the operating frequency, the antennas positions, and their main
radiation properties. Dual-slope behavior is often assumed [16]
(i.e., the existence of a near and a far region with quite dif-
ferent propagation characteristics). In particular, the propaga-
tion of just one dominant mode is assumed in the far region.
This assumption is strictly true in the limit (with r being Fig. 1. Tunnel section and reference system.
the link distance), but could be doubtful otherwise (the higher
the frequency, the rougher the assumption). Therefore, heuristic
models can be affected by a slight underestimate of the received A. Analytical Description
power for large distance.
Moreover, the passage from the near to the far region in [16] Real tunnels often exhibit an arched cross-section, which can
occurs at the so-called breakpoint distance, whose value corre- be further complicated by the presence of inner, structural ele-
sponds to the intersection between the curves related to the near ments, such as walkways, cables, pipes, etc. Starting from such a
model (based on the Friis formula) and the far model (based complex transversal shape, a useful, easy-to-handle modal char-
on the propagation of the only dominant mode). Unfortunately, acterization is impracticable. Therefore, simpler, approximated
this intersection may not exist, depending on the positions of the rectangular or circular sections are usually considered [9]–[12].
antennas inside the tunnel (for instance, it can disappear if the With reference to the straight rectangular tunnel with transversal
antennas are moved close to the tunnel walls). dimensions w (width) h (height) (Fig. 1), any field
In this paper, the electromagnetic (EM) propagation inside a can be expressed as the superimposition of X- and Y-polarized
real railway and road tunnel is modelled through a sort of mixed modes with indexes (m,n)
rays—modes approach. The entire propagating field description
(1)
is fundamentally based on the superimposition of proper char-
acteristic modes, but it also benefits from some hints inspired by
a ray representation of the tunnel propagation. (2)
In particular, a fast, preliminary ray-tracing procedure is used
for an effective evaluation of the complex amplitudes of the
with being the complex amplitudes,
propagating modes, which can be therefore properly weighted
being the mode functions, and being the
and combined. Moreover, the possibility of associating each
mode propagation constant.
mode with proper optical rays bouncing on the tunnel walls al-
Under the following restrictions [17]:
lows the introduction of some simple corrective elements to the
modal approach in order to quickly but effectively account for
the possible route curvature and the real tunnel section. (3)
With respect to the existing models, the adopted approach
succeeds (within certain limits) in combining simplicity and re- (4)
liability. Starting from a rather simple description of the envi-
ronment (through a list of some synthetic, easy-to-know param- the X-polarized modes can be characterized by the following
eters), performance in line with the published scientific data can approximated expressions (similar formulas hold for the Y-po-
be achieved even in real cases with limited computational effort larization) [17]:
and moderate consumption of time.
The paper is organized as follows. Tunnel modes are briefly
introduced in Section II, whereas the suggested procedure for
the evaluation of propagation properties in the ideal and real
tunnel is addressed in Sections III and IV, respectively. Sec- (5)
tion V shows some comparisons between measured and simu-
lated results, and conclusions are then drawn in Section VI.
(6)
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE TUNNEL MODES
The tunnel characteristic modes are shortly introduced here.
In particular, the analytical expressions of the modes in the case
(7)
of rectangular tunnel are recalled in Section II-A, whereas the
possibility of associating each mode with optical rays properly
bouncing on the tunnel walls is outlined in Section II-B. (8)
FUSCHINI AND FALCIASECCA: MIXED RAYS—MODES APPROACH
with (m even) or (m odd), (n
even) or 0 (n odd); is the complex, relative permittivity of the
tunnel walls, i.e.,
(9)
According to the usual values of the real relative permittivity
, the wall conductivity and
the communication frequency of the modern wireless systems
GHz), is often assumed in the following sections.
Equations (1)–(8) clearly show that the field associated with
the (m, n) mode behaves as a progressive wave in the tunnel axis
direction, whereas it is a stationary wave in the transversal ( )
plane. Moreover, it is also worth noticing that the EM field of
each mode vanishes on the tunnel walls.
Since , each mode undergoes a propagation loss as
it travels along the tunnel; the mode attenuation is often repre-
sented by the modal attenuation factor (MAF) also introduced
in [9]
(10)
At mobile communications frequencies (hundreds of MHz
and greater), the MAF values increase quite slowly with m, n
and, therefore, strong multimodal propagation can be expected.
B. Geometrical Description
The possible modes in a rectangular tunnel can be approxi-
mately determined also by a ray theory approach. To this end,
the (m, n) mode can be geometrically described (irrespective
of its polarization) as the cluster of rays which proceed into
the tunnel bouncing on the vertical/horizontal walls with proper
grazing angles and , respectively. These rays produce
an EM field which is a progressive propagating wave along the
tunnel axis and on the contrary a full standing wave in the
plane, where the rays superimposition must reproduce the (m,n)
mode behavior. Hence, the following relations for the grazing
angles can be derived:
(11)
(12)
Moreover, analytical expressions for the following quantities
associated with the (m,n) mode can be immediately drawn from
the mode geometrical description:
• distance between two consecutive bounces on the vertical
and the horizontal walls: by means of some
trigonometrical considerations, the following expressions
can be achieved:
(13)
(14)
1097
It can now be easily noted that the least attenuated modes
(i.e., with the lowest MAF values) are characterized by
grazing angles values quite close to zero. Moreover, since
directive antennas pointed in the tunnel axis direction are
the likeliest radiators to be used, the most powerful rays
launched by the transmitter impinge on the tunnel walls
with rather small grazing angles and, therefore, the corre-
sponding modes can be expected to also have the largest
amplitudes.
In conclusion, the modes (and rays) with high grazing an-
gles values can often be considered negligible, at least to a
first approximation; in that case, cos
and, therefore, (13) and (14) can be further simplified
(15)
(16)
• number of reflections on the vertical and the hori-
zontal walls over a tunnel stretch of length
(17)
(18)
According to this geometrical, equivalent description, the
MAF value is the result of the energy loss due to the multiple re-
flections of the mode wavefronts on the tunnel walls; after
and consecutive reflections, the field intensity along the
ray is reduced by a factor ,
with and being the reflection coefficients related to
the vertical and horizontal walls, respectively. Therefore, the
MAF can also be written according to the following expression,
obviously equivalent to the previous (10):
(19)
III. PROPAGATION IN IDEAL TUNNEL
Equations (5)–(8) provide an analytical description for the
characteristic modes of a rectilinear tunnel with a rectangular
transversal shape (“ideal” tunnel in the following text). Propa-
gation inside such a tunnel can be therefore modelled through
the modal expansion described by (1) provided that the modes’
complex amplitudes are properly evaluated.
Assuming the knowledge of the electric field
over the transversal reference sec-
1098 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. Simulation results for the ideal tunnel: w = 7.8 m, h = 5.3 m, " =
0 0 j 0 z j =1.5 m,
Fig. 2. Ray approach to the estimation of the field distribution on the reference
section. 5, (x = x = 1.95 m, y = y = 0.65 m), z
P =34 dBm.

tion , the values can be immediately estimated

through the following expression [18]:
(20)
with S being the transversal tunnel section. Equation (20) can be
immediately achieved on the base of the orthogonality between
the modes functions (7)–(8), i.e.,
(21)
with being the Kronecker delta. For the sake of precision, it is
necessary to observe that in case of , then (1) must be
slightly modified as follows:
(22)
In order to achieve the electric-field distribution on the refer-
ence section, the geometrical ray-approach outlined in Fig. 2 is
adopted here. Starting from the transmitting antenna radiation
properties and the transmitter position on the excita-
tion plane , the multipath field contributions in each
point of the reference section can be easily computed by means
of a standard ray-tracing algorithm [19]. In order to achieve a
satisfactory but simple and fast evaluation of the required field
distribution, only the direct and the once-reflected rays can be
considered, provided that ; in this case,
the reflection coefficients amplitudes are rather small (since the
incidence directions are close to the normal to the side walls)
and, therefore, contributions undergoing more than one reflec-
tion can be approximately neglected.
After the computation of the modes amplitudes, the propa-
gating field inside the tunnel can be evaluated through (22) and,
hence, the power received by an antenna placed in
can be achieved as
(23)
with being the receiving antenna gain in the
direction of the tunnel axis, and being the polarization and
the power matching coefficients (both ranging from 0 to 1).
A multimodal procedure for the computation of the received
power inside an ideal tunnel is also proposed in [10], where an
analytical expression for the mode amplitudes is achieved. Nev-
ertheless, the approach adopted in [10] is restricted to a sort of
isotropic source, since the emitted field is independent of the
rays departure directions; on the contrary, the actual antenna ra-
diation pattern is here taken into account, since it is considered
by the ray-tracing procedure which provides the field distribu-
tion on the reference plane.
Power measurements carried out inside a straight tunnel
with nearly smooth walls have been presented in [9] and are
here compared with simulations performed in approximately
the same conditions (Fig. 3). Different radiators are used at
different frequencies (half-wave dipoles at 450 MHz, horn
antennas at 900/2100 MHz), whereas the radiated power
and the antennas positions are the same in all cases. The con-
sidered parameters values are listed in the figure caption; the
transmitter/receiver coordinates are related
to the reference system introduced in Fig. 1.
The clear agreement between Fig. 3 and [9, Figs. 18–19] sug-
gests that the modal approach to the propagation inside an ideal
tunnel is rather satisfactory, provided that the modes’ ampli-
tudes are reliably estimated.
IV. PROPAGATION IN REAL TUNNEL
The actual geometric properties of a real tunnel may con-
siderably differ from the ideal case considered in the previous
section.
The presence of structural elements, such as walkways,
cables, and conduits can complicate the shape of the tunnel
transversal contour (especially in the railway case), so that the
rectangular (or circular) approximation can represents a too
rough simplification. The possible inner elements usually act
as energy scatterers, thus producing an increase in the signal
path loss [9]. Moreover, the presence of bends along the tunnel
route is also rather frequent and, therefore, the effects of the
curvature on the propagation should be properly modelled in
FUSCHINI AND FALCIASECCA: MIXED RAYS—MODES APPROACH
order to avoid an unsatisfactory prediction. These aspects are
shortly addressed in the following subsections.
A. Walls Equivalent Roughness
Part of the scientific literature on radio communication inside
tunnels is dedicated to the mine environment [12], [20]–[22],
where an important role in the propagation is played by the
walls’ roughness.
Because of the surface roughness, the energy impinging on
the tunnel walls does not undergo just specular reflection but it
is on the contrary spread in many different directions. There-
fore, the energy carried by the principal modes (characterized
by small grazing incidence and, therefore, by the lowest MAF
values) is partially transferred to the higher order with more at-
tenuated modes, thus producing an additional signal loss with
respect to the case of perfectly smooth walls [12].
The rough surface is often assumed to have a Gaussian distri-
bution with zero mean and standard deviation [12], [13], [21],
so that the intensity of a ray impinging with a grazing angle
is reduced after a single reflection by a factor [12]
(24)
Therefore, the intensity reduction suffered by the (m,n) mode
after and bounces on the vertical and horizontal
walls, respectively, and can be expressed as follows:
(25)
where and describe the roughness of the vertical and
horizontal walls, respectively; obviously, the values of
and are provided by (17) and (18), as well as (11)
and (12).
Since the ray intensity is proportional to the square of the field
amplitude, the magnitude of the (m,n) mode propagating
from the reference plane to the z transversal section must satisfy
the following relation:
(26)
with being the field amplitude that would be present at the
distance z in the absence of any roughness , and,
therefore, it would be proportional to . the characteristic modes of a curved rectangular waveguide
Hence
(27)
This expression shows that the effect of the walls roughness
on each mode can be taken into account by means of a proper
increase ( in (27)) of the mode attenuation coefficient.
1099
Fig. 4. Effects of the tunnel curvature on the optical rays.
Actually, the walls of road and railway tunnels can be assumed
much smoother than those of mines, so that the scattering effects
due to the surface roughness is not expected to have a great im-
pact on propagation. Nevertheless, some energy scattering can
be anyway originated by the possible, inner structural elements.
Therefore, it is here assumed that each real tunnel can be associ-
ated with a somehow equivalent, distributed, surface roughness,
which is supposed to produce approximately the same mean, ad-
ditional loss due to the actual, discrete scattering sources.
On the base of this assumption, the effects on propagation
due to the actual tunnel contour and the presence of inner scat-
tering objects can be approximately accounted in the rectangular
model by a proper increase in the modes loss coefficients (ac-
cording to (27)), provided that the values of the and pa-
rameters have been properly evaluated.
B. Tunnel Curvature
According to previous studies [9], [13]–[15], [23], [24], the
main impact of the tunnel curvature on propagation usually con-
sists of an increase in the modes attenuation and, therefore,
in the overall received signal loss. Starting from the geomet-
rical interpretation of each mode, this effect can be immediately
explained, since the incidence angles of the
rays associated with the modes on the tunnel walls are usually
decreased by the presence of a curve ( in
Fig. 4). This leads to lower reflection coefficients and, hence, to
a larger refraction loss (19) and MAF values (10).
The effects produced by the tunnel curvature on the propa-
gation properties have been investigated in some previous work
adopting an analytical approach based on the introduction of
[9], [13]–[15]. The corresponding results are quite fair but
also rather complicated to handle, since the achieved analyt-
ical expressions for the EM field inside the curve are usually
unavailable in closed form and, therefore, some numerical
computation is often required for their solution.
In order to avoid any complicated formalism and complex
computation, an extremely simplified, heuristic approach is con-
sidered here, which aims at a quick estimate of the additional
loss produced by the curve and whose effectiveness should be
evaluated a posteriori on the base of the provided results.
In particular, the bends are here limited to the side walls of
the tunnel (i.e., the roof and the floor are assumed to lie on hor-
izontal planes) and are supposed to be circular, that means they
1100 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

are fully described through their radius and angular amplitude TABLE I
(R and in Fig. 4). The only effect produced by the reflec- CURVATURE EFFECT ON THE MODE ATTENUATION FACTOR
tions on the curved vertical walls is then considered, leaving the
computation for the horizontal walls unchanged.
According to this (quite coarse) approximation, the analyses
are restricted to the 2–D plan represented in Fig. 4. The (cur-
vature) additional loss is then evaluated through the following
procedure:
• for each (m,n) mode, an effective grazing angle of the
corresponding rays on the curved tunnel walls is estimated
by means of some simple geometrical considerations; the
values basically depend on the curvature radius , Example with w = 8 m, h = 4 m,  = 8.5 m, f = 2 GHz, R = 25 w.
the value related to the straight tunnel (12), and the
tunnel width (w);
• the number of reflections on the vertical walls suf-
fered by the modes inside a curved tunnel stretch of length
is then evaluated;
• the total refraction loss inside a curve with length
is then computed for each mode through
the following expression, which comes directly from (19):

(28)
Fig. 5. Curvature effects on propagation losses—w = 4.26 m, h = 2.13 m,
" = 8.5.
The additional loss provided by the tunnel curvature is
therefore equal to

(29)
with (in decibels) being the modal loss in the case
of the straight tunnel; substituting (19) into (29), the fol- Fig. 6. Dominant mode (m = n =) 1 MAF value for different curvature radius
lowing expression of the mode additional loss in the linear in a rough walled tunnel (w = 10 m, h = 5 m) at the frequency of 925 MHz.
unit can be immediately achieved:

Table I shows a comparison between the MAF values of some

(30)
different modes in the straight/curved case; the considered main
system parameters are again listed in the table caption.
The curvature impact on the propagation losses is displayed
• finally, the extra loss to be considered for the (m,n) mode in Fig. 5 in the case and for some values and
at a distance from the beginning of the bend is both the horizontal ( ) and the vertical ( ) polarization. The
achieved as tunnel dimensions are those considered in [9] and are reported
in the figure caption. The results in Fig. 6 are instead related
(31) to the case investigated in [23], where the tunnel curvature (for
different R values) and the walls roughness (
Further details on the adopted procedure can be found in the cm) are considered together; the transversal dimensions are 10
Appendix. m (w) 5 m (h) and the frequency is equal to 925 MHz.
FUSCHINI AND FALCIASECCA: MIXED RAYS—MODES APPROACH
Fig. 7. Transversal section of the tunnel considered for measurement.
Fig. 8. Transmitting antenna radiation patterns.
The rather satisfactory agreements between Fig. 5 and [9,
Figs. 23–24] and between Fig. 6 and [23, Fig. 3] suggest that
the adopted approach to the evaluation of the curvature effects
on propagation should be considered accurate enough.
V. COMPARISON WITH MEASUREMENTS
A measurement campaign has been carried out inside the
underground line connecting Naples and Aversa (Italy); it is a
“cut & cover” tunnel with an approximately rectangular shape
( 8.4 m, 5, 1 m), as schematically represented in Fig. 7.
Some structural elements and objects are present inside
the tunnel, such as the walkways along the vertical walls, the
railway tracks on the floor (Fig. 7) and some lamps, and signs
and cables on the roof and the lateral walls. All of these objects
act as energy scatterers and make the transversal shape slightly
different from the ideal, rectangular case.
1101
Fig. 9. Measurement routes inside the tunnel.
The measurement setup is constituted of a fixed transmitter
(Tx) and a moving receiver (Rx). The Tx is placed at a distance
of about 0.2 m from the vertical wall, and its height with re-
spect to ground is equal to 3.4 m. (In the reference system of
Fig. 1, this means 4 m, 0.85 m, 0). The trans-
mitter output power and the carrier frequency are 100 mW
and 2.4 GHz, respectively; the radiating antenna is dual-po-
larized 45 45 and bidirectional (i.e., with two opposite
main lobes, oriented in the direction of the tunnel axis), with a
gain of 10.5 dB. (The vertical/horizontal normalized radiation
patterns are shown in Fig. 8.)
The receiver is mounted on a pole1 of height 2.9 m and
moves along a track going away from the transmitter ( 1.8
m, 0.35 m, ); the receiving antenna is vertically
polarized and approximately omnidirectional in the horizontal
plane with a gain equal to nearly 7.5 dB.
The overall cable losses amount to 2 dB ( 0.45 dB between
the Tx and the radiating antenna and 1.55 dB between the
receiving antenna and the receiver).
Four different measurement routes having a length of some
hundreds of meters have been considered inside the tunnel and
are indicated with letters A–D in Fig. 9. The tunnel is approxi-
mately straight in all cases except for route B which exhibits a
mild curvature with a radius of about 780 m.
The comparison between measurements and simulations re-
lated to route A is shown in Fig. 10. The black-dashed line has
been achieved assuming a perfectly rectangular and smooth-
walled tunnel (i.e., with the model described in Section III).
The agreement with measurement (blue-dotted line) is clearly
quite poor, according to the idea that some correctives should be
introduced into the “ideal model” in order to somehow account
for the real tunnel properties and to get, therefore, a more satis-
factory prediction.
The possible scattering effects provided by the inner elements
(walkways, railways tracks, etc.) have been therefore modeled
according to the equivalent roughness approach (Section IV-A),
thus strongly improving the prediction accuracy (red continuous
line in Fig. 10).
1The possible presence of trains inside the tunnel is therefore neglected for
the time being, according to most of the available scientific literature [9]–[11],
[21], [22].
1102 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 10. Comparison simulation—measurements, route A.
Fig. 11. Comparison simulation—measurements, route B.
The values considered for the scattering coefficients are
0.25 m and 0.75 m; they do not represent necessarily the
best values, since their optimization lies outside the purpose of
this paper. Nevertheless, the likeliest and values seem
to be of the same order of magnitude as the dimensions of the
scattering objects present in the tunnel transversal section.
The predicted received power levels related to route B are
plotted versus measurements in Fig. 11. The agreement is again
rather satisfactory, provided that the same degree of wall rough-
ness is considered and the route curvature is taken into account.
Actually, the curvature is rather mild and, therefore, propaga-
tion can be expected to be slightly affected by the bend; in order
to estimate the actual effect produced by the curve, a simulation
assuming a perfectly straight tunnel has been carried out, with
a mean error and an error standard deviation equal to 2.55 dB
and 5.68 dB, respectively.
An overall evaluation of the prediction reliability is concisely
provided in Table II, where the mean error and the error
standard deviation are computed for each route; the mixed
rays—modes approach here proposed provides an accuracy in
line with previously published works [4]–[6].
The exact reasons of the prediction errors cannot be easily
identified and must be further investigated. In this regard, it
should be reminded that (5)–(8) represent an approximated an-
alytical solution even for the ideal, straight rectangular case
[17]. Moreover, the equivalent roughness models represent a
TABLE II
MEAN ERRORS AND ERRORS STD. DEVIATIONS FOR
THE MEASUREMENT ROUTES
simple but rather approximated approach to account for the ac-
tual tunnel shape and its real properties and, therefore, it un-
avoidably introduces some further inaccuracies. Finally, the in-
troduced roughness is supposed to be distributed over all of the
tunnel walls and, therefore, it may be fit to describe the effect
of structural elements which are actually present along the en-
tire tunnel length (such as cables, walkways, tracks, etc.). On
the contrary, it could be rather unsuited to model the presence
of “spot scatterers” such as air shafts or railways points which
can be differently positioned along the routes producing “local”
rather than “distributed” effects.
VI. CONCLUSION
Propagation inside tunnels is a quite complex phenomenon
whose description requires nontrivial field prediction models.
Common ray-tracing tools represent a possible, satisfactory so-
lution in theory, but in practice their actual reliability strongly
depends on the accuracy of the environment description; more-
over, they are not trivial to handle and often undergo a heavy
computational burden.
The modal approach is generally simpler and faster, but it ap-
pears convenient just in rather ideal, unrealistic cases (straight,
empty tunnel with circular/rectangular section).
Finally, heuristic models provide a fast but rough knowledge
of the channel, which can be perhaps useful for a preliminary,
coarse system design, but practically unfit to support the net-
work deployment and optimization phases.
The model proposed in this paper aims at catching some ben-
efits from these different approaches, but avoiding their main
drawbacks at the same time. It is essentially based on a multi-
modal description of the propagation, which is nevertheless en-
riched by some heuristic correctives (based on the geometrical
optics theory) in order to extend its prediction capability also to
real cases.
The model is compared with some other different existing
models and with measurements carried out inside an under-
ground line in the neighborhood of Naples. The achieved per-
formance is in line with the published scientific data.
APPENDIX
Radio propagation inside a rectangular tunnel is physically
produced by several radio waves which advance into the tunnel
bouncing on its walls; each propagating wavefront can be
marked by the couple of angles ( and ) describing the
way it impinges on the vertical/horizontal wall, respectively.
Every characteristic mode of the tunnel is defined by the set of
FUSCHINI AND FALCIASECCA: MIXED RAYS—MODES APPROACH 1103

Fig. A1. Geometrical description of a mode at the beginning of the curve.

Fig. A3. Geometrical description of case a2: reflections on both vertical walls.

For higher order modes and for the only “case b,”
the first reflection occurs on the internal wall and (necessarily)
the second on the external one; a third case “b3” must be then
considered.2
“Case a1”–with reference to Fig. A2, the ray representative of
the mode covers the curved tunnel by successive reflections on
the external wall; the reflection angle which determines the re-
fraction loss is therefore (Fig. A2) and can be evaluated as
explained hereafter.
In the reference system O , represented in Fig. A2, the
equation of the OP line is

(A1)

The coordinates of point can therefore be computed through

the following system:
Fig. A2. Geometrical description of case a1: reflections just on the external
vertical wall.

rays with the same angles values, which are expressed by (11)
and (12) for the rectilinear case.
In order to evaluate the effect of the presence of a curve on (A2)
the mode propagation loss, it is necessary to estimate how the
mode characteristic angles change inside the bend. Assuming
the curvature can affect only the vertical wall for simplicity rea-
sons, the problem can be therefore approximately simplified to Moreover, the angular coefficient of the line CP is equal to
the 2-D case represented in Fig. A1, where the (m,n) mode is
simply represented by a couple of rays characterized by an inci- (A3)
dence angle on the vertical walls equal to .
It is easy to show that for the lower order modes ( ,
and, therefore, the angle between the lines OP and CP
with dependent on the R, w, and values) both of the two
can be finally computed as
considered rays undergo the first reflection on the external wall
of the curved tunnel. In these conditions and depending on the
values of and R, the second reflection may occur again on (A4)
the external wall or instead on the inner one. Therefore, the “case
2Atmobile communication frequencies and for usual tunnel dimensions, the
a” in Fig. A1 can be further split into the cases “a1” and “a2”
schematically represented in Figs. A2 and A3 (similarly, cases
m (10)
value is quite large and, therefore, the modes belonging to class “b3”
fade rather quickly along the tunnel, so that their impact on propagation is often
“b1” and “b2” could be achieved from “case b” of Fig. A1). quite small.
1104 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

The arched distance between two consecutive reflections (i.e.,

(A13)
between and and evaluated along the tunnel axis) is given
by
The total number of reflections experienced by the mode in-
(A5) side the curved tunnel of length is then estimated as

With “Case a2”–different reflection angles must be considered, (A14)

for the external and internal tunnel walls, respectively (
and in Fig. A3). The same procedure already described In order to achieve the mode refraction loss inside the bend,
for “case a1” can be applied for the evaluation of . Then, the values achieved from (A12) and (A14) must be introduced
the computation of starts from the expression of the line into (31).
(Fig. A3)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Ansaldo STS (www.ansaldo-
(A6) sts.com) for providing the measurements used in the final com-
parisons, and Wireless Future (www.wirelessfuture.it) for sup-
The coordinates of point are therefore the solution of the porting the execution of simulations.
following system:
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1105
Franco Fuschini was born in Bologna, Italy, in
1973. He received the Ph.D. degree in electronics and
computer science from the University of Bologna,
Bologna, Italy, in 2003.
From 2004 to 2006, he held a postdoctoral position
at the Department of Electronics and Computer Sci-
ence (DEIS), University of Bologna. From 2007 to
2011, he was with the Marconi Wireless Consortium
(Italy). Currently, he is Research Associate at DEIS.
His main fields of interest are antenna systems and
propagation models for real environments, radio sys-
tems network planning, and radio-frequency identification.
Gabriele Falciasecca was born in Bologna in 1945.
In 1970, he joined the Laboratories of the Fon-
dazione Bordoni at Pontecchio Marconi, Bologna,
Italy, where he was involved in the Italian research
programme on millimeter waveguide communica-
tion systems. In 1973, he was Assistant Professor
and Lecturer in microwave techniques with the
Department of Electronics and Computer Science,
University of Bologna, where he has been Full
Professor of Microwaves since 1980. From 1994 to
2000, he was Director of the Department.
Mr. Falciasecca has been the President of the Emilia-Romagna Technological
Development Agency since 2001. He has been the President of the Guglielmo
Marconi Foundation since 1997 and is a member of the “Advisory Board” of
Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. He is Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the
Consortium “Elettra2000,” devoted to the study and to the diffusion of scien-
tific results in the field of health issues related to electromagnetic waves. His
main fields of research are mobile radio systems, microwaves, optical systems,
millimeter waves, radio propagation, radio navigation, and landing aids.
1106 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Optimum Wireless Powering of Sensors
Embedded in Concrete
Shan Jiang, Student Member, IEEE, and Stavros V. Georgakopoulos, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—The optimization of wireless powering of sensors em-
bedded in concrete is studied here. Our analytical results focus on
calculating the transmission loss and propagation loss of RF waves
penetrating into concrete at different humidity conditions. Specif-
ically, this analysis leads to the identification of an optimum fre-
quency range within 20–80 MHz that is validated through antenna
coupling full-wave EM simulations. Also, an optimized rectenna is
designed in order to calculate the battery charging time. Finally,
the effects of reinforced bars to RF power transfer are analyzed.
Index Terms—Concrete, energy transmission, rebar, rectenna,
wireless sensors.
I. INTRODUCTION
ARIOUS Nondestructive Testing (NDT) technologies
V for construction and performance monitoring have been
studied for decades. In the past few years, health monitoring of
infrastructure has been done by active acoustic transducers [1]
and inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) [2], which are
labor-intensive and expensive techniques. Recently, the rapid
evolution of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technologies
has enabled the development of sensors that can be embedded
in concrete to monitor the structural health of infrastructure.
Such sensors can be buried inside concrete and they can collect
and report valuable volumetric data related to the health of
a structure during and/or after construction. For example,
embedded sensors can collect data, such as, temperature, dis-
placement, pressure, strain, humidity, and detect cracking and
rebar corrosion.
The cost of such monitoring systems is significant. The ex-
pensive nature of structural monitoring systems is a direct result
of the high installation and maintenance costs associated with
wired systems. The installation of a monitoring system can rep-
resent up to 25% of the total system cost with over 75% of the
installation time focused solely on the installation of wires [3].
In outdoor applications, such as bridges, potentially harsh envi-
ronmental conditions necessitate additional efforts to install ca-
bles in weatherproof conduits thereby raising installation costs.
A promising solution that can decrease the cost of monitoring
systems and reduce their deployment time is based on the use
of wireless embedded sensors. Such wireless embedded sensors
Manuscript received March 17, 2011; revised July 02, 2011; accepted August
08, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Dissertation Year Fellowship
that was provided by Florida International University.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33174 USA
(e-mail:shan.jiang1@fiu.edu; georgako@fiu.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173147
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
need to operate for long time. However, sensor batteries have fi-
nite life time. Therefore, in order to enable long operational life
of wireless sensors, novel wireless powering methods, which
can charge the sensors’ rechargeable batteries wirelessly, need
to be developed.
Various wireless powering methods have been proposed in the
past. Specifically, power for sensors was scavenged from bridge
vibrations in [4]. An air core coil was connected to a voltage
doubler to collect power in [5]. RFID technology was applied
in [6]–[8] to transfer power using inductive coupling between
master and sensor magnetic coils. Also, the effects of concrete’s
dielectric constant and loss tangent to the radiation pattern and
gain of a microstrip patch antenna were studied in [9]. A circu-
larly polarized rectenna for wireless power transfer was designed
in [10]. One antenna-rectenna model working at 5.7 GHz was
built in [11] to convert RF power to DC power. Finally, planar in-
verted-F antennas working at 915 MHz were buried into a bridge
pier in order to study the feasibility of wireless communications
inside concrete [12]. However, RF communications in concrete
suffer from high losses. This problem is inherent to all wireless
communications with sensors buried in concrete, and it stems
from the high attenuation of RF signals in concrete.
In this paper, analytical as well as computational methods are
used to identify optimal conditions for wireless powering of sen-
sors embedded in concrete. Two types of loss are analyzed in
order to find the optimum frequency range: a) the transmission
loss caused by the reflection of the electromagnetic wave at the
air-concrete interface, and b) the propagation loss generated by
the wave’s propagation through the lossy concrete media. The
electromagnetic properties of concrete are modeled by the ex-
tended Debye model. Then, the performance of the optimum
frequency range is tested by antenna coupling simulations. Also,
an optimum rectifying circuit is designed to convert RF power
to DC power. Finally, the effects of rebars on wireless power
transfer are analyzed.
II. PLANE WAVE MODEL
For a plane wave penetrating concrete, the total power loss is
the sum of transmission loss and propagation loss, and it rep-
resents the difference between the power transmitted and the
power received at certain depth inside concrete. We develop an-
alytical formulations that describe both loss mechanisms and
then calculate the total losses for two cases. The first case cal-
culates the losses of a plane wave impinging on an air-concrete
interface at normal incidence assuming the thickness of concrete
is infinite, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The second case calculates the
losses of a plane wave impinging on an air-concrete interface
at normal incidence assuming that the thickness of concrete is
finite, as shown in Fig. 1(b).
JIANG AND GEORGAKOPOULOS: OPTIMUM WIRELESS POWERING OF SENSORS EMBEDDED IN CONCRETE
Fig. 1. Plane wave penetrating concrete at normal incidence: (a) Concrete half-
space, and (b) Concrete slab.
A. Power Attenuation for Normal Incidence
We formulate analytical equations to calculate the transmis-
sion loss and propagation loss for the scenario of Fig. 1(a). The
incident power is written as [13]
where is the incident electric field and stands for
the intrinsic impedance of air.
Similarly, the transferred power in concrete is written as
where is the transmitted electric field,
intrinsic impedance of concrete, and stands for
the relative complex permittivity of concrete [14]. The real part
of the relative permittivity is
where stands for the difference between the values of the
real part of the relative permittivity at low and high frequencies,
and is the relaxation time. The real part of the complex rel-
ative permittivity represents the ability of the medium to store
electrical energy.
The imaginary part of the complex relative permittivity rep-
resents the energy losses due to dielectric relaxation as follows:
where is the DC electrical conductivity of concrete and
is the effective conductivity. This model can be considered
as an extension of the Debye model (extended Debye model).
The Debye model parameter values are available in [14] for six
1107
different humidity conditions (from 0.2% to 12.0%). The hu-
midity condition describes the percentage of water by volume
and it is represented here by the symbol, .
Furthermore, the transferred power at a propagation depth, ,
inside concrete can be written using (2) as
(5)
where the transmission coefficient is given by [15]
(6)
and is the attenuation constant [15]
(7)
Based on (5) the transmission loss, describing the power loss
caused by the air-concrete interface, can be calculated in dB as
follows:
(8)
Also, the propagation loss inside the concrete can be written
as
(1)
(9)
Therefore, the total loss of the normal incidence is written as
(10)
(2)
and it depends on the complex permittivity of concrete and the
is the depth of propagation.
The power losses are plotted in Fig. 2 for four different hu-
midity conditions of concrete and a propagation depth of 0.25
m. Fig. 2(a) illustrates that the transmission loss decreases dra-
matically as the frequency increases from 1 MHz to 20 MHz,
and then remains almost constant for frequencies higher than
(3)
20 MHz. The propagation loss is plotted in Fig. 2(b), and it
increases slowly for frequencies up to 100 MHz and then in-
creases dramatically for higher frequencies. Furthermore, trans-
mission loss and propagation loss are added together to obtain
the total loss for air-concrete propagation, as shown in Fig. 2(c).
As expected, due to the reverse variations of the two losses, an
optimum frequency range exists, within which there is signifi-
cantly smaller power loss. For example, the total loss in the fre-
quency range of 20–80 MHz for wet concrete (12% humidity)
is about 5–11 dB less than the total loss at the lowest or highest
(4) frequency in our analysis. This observation is particularly useful
for wireless powering of sensors embedded in concrete, where
we seek to minimize transmission losses in order to deliver max-
imum power to the sensors. It should be pointed out that the
optimum frequency range of 20–80 MHz includes the bands of
shortwave radio (3–30 MHz) and VHF TV (54–72 MHz and
1108 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

76–88 MHz). Therefore, sensors embedded in concrete oper-

ating in the optimum frequency range will be able to efficiently
harvest signals in these bands for charging.
Our results also illustrate that total loss increases as the hu-
midity of concrete increases. This is expected, since as the mois-
ture content increases from 0.2% to 12%, the conductivity of
concrete increases almost 30 times [14] thereby causing more
losses. Specifically, we discuss the humidity effects because
many applications require monitoring the properties of concrete
while it is still wet and curing. For example, high strength con-
crete may take 6 to 60 days to cure depending on the structure
and the weather conditions. Therefore, high strength concrete
needs to be closely monitored by sensors while it is curing (it is
wet) to ensure that it reaches its full strength before any mechan-
ical load is applied to it. Hence, when designing wireless pow-
ering systems, the concrete’s moisture content should be taken
into account to maximize the RF power transfer.
The total loss for the concrete slab scenario of Fig. 1(b) can
be deduced following a similar procedure to the one presented
in [16] as

(11)

where is given in (12), shown at the bottom of the page,

is the reflection coefficient given by (13), shown at the bottom of
the page, is the attenuation constant in concrete,
is the phase constant, and is the phase of .
It should be pointed out that the total loss given by (11) for
, i.e., for a very thick concrete slab (i.e., concrete half-
space), becomes equal to the total loss given by (10).
The analysis of the concrete slab case is performed because
wave reflections on both sides of a concrete slab affect the power
transfer versus the case of concrete half-space, where reflections
at the air-concrete interface occur only once. Also, concrete
slabs are widely used in construction, i.e., buildings, bridges,
etc.
Fig. 3 illustrates the total power loss for four different con-
crete slab thicknesses and for a concrete humidity condition of
12%. These results indicate that the losses inside the optimum
frequency range of 20–80 MHz are 5–14 dB smaller than the
losses at the lowest or highest frequencies of our analysis. Also,
the oscillatory behavior of the total loss is expected due to the su-
perposition of primary and reflected waves. Therefore, use of the
optimum frequency range can lead in significant performance
improvement of the power transmission.

B. Power Attenuation for Oblique Incidence

To examine transmissions at oblique angles of incidence
Fig. 2. Power attenuation for normal incidence and different humidity condi-
tions, h, when d = 0:25 m. (a) Transmission loss. (b) Propagation loss. (c) Total for a general wave polarization, it is convenient to de-
loss. compose the electric field into perpendicular and parallel

(12)

(13)
JIANG AND GEORGAKOPOULOS: OPTIMUM WIRELESS POWERING OF SENSORS EMBEDDED IN CONCRETE 1109

Fig. 3. Total attenuation for plane wave penetrating concrete slab at normal
incidence when h = 12%, and d = 0:25 m.

components and analyze them separately. The transmis-

sion coefficient for parallel and perpendicular polarization
is given by and
, respectively,
where is the angle of incidence and is the angle
of transmission defined by Snell’s law of refraction [15],
. Following similar procedure to the
one outlined for the normal incidence calculation, we use (8) to
calculate the transmission loss for various incidence angles.
Following similar steps to the normal incidence case of con-
crete half-space, the average total loss across all incidence an-
gles ranging from 0 to 89 degrees is calculated for frequencies
from 1 MHz to 1 GHz. The normal incidence corresponds to 0 Fig. 4. Average total loss across all incidence angles from 0 to 89 degrees when
degree. Fig. 4 plots the average total loss versus frequency for d = 0:25 m. (a) Parallel polarization. (b) Perpendicular polarization.
both polarizations. Based on Fig. 4, it can be concluded that the
average total loss for an oblique incident plane wave is larger
than the normal incidence case, as expected, but both cases ex-
hibit similar variation. For example, the average total loss for
parallel polarization in the 20–80 MHz frequency range is ap-
proximately 3 dB larger than the total loss for normal incidence
in the case of 12% humidity. Therefore, when the wave is nor-
mally incident and the frequency is between 20–80 MHz, an
embedded sensor will receive significantly larger power than
the other cases we examined. Also, for the case of oblique in-
cidence we see that the optimum frequency range still matches
the optimum range that we identified for the normal incidence Fig. 5. Setup of two dipoles in the air-concrete model. (L = 4 m, H = =2 at
the dipole resonant frequency, D = 0:25 m).
(20–80 MHz).

A. Coupling Between Two Dipoles

III. DIPOLES FOR EMBEDDED SENSORS
In the previous section we identified an optimum frequency
range of 20–80 MHz that provides minimum transmission
losses. In this section, antenna analysis is performed in order
to validate and confirm this important finding. All simulations
are performed with either Ansoft Designer or Nexxim. Also,
all Ansoft Designer simulations use the extended Debye model
for concrete (as discussed in Section II).
Specifically, the coupling between two resonant half-wave-
length dipoles is analyzed using Ansoft Designer. One dipole
resides in air with length of , picked based on [17],
and the other dipole resides inside the concrete with length
of that was picked based on our simulations to
match the resonant frequency of the dipole in air, as shown
in Fig. 5; is the free-space wavelength and is the permit-
tivity of concrete. Fig. 6 illustrates the results of our analysis
1110
Fig. 6. Coupling for different concrete humidity conditions for dipoles res-
onating at 500 MHz (Fig. 5 setup).
where the frequency range is normalized with the resonant
frequency of the dipole antennas (the dipole in air and the
dipole in concrete). Specifically, Fig. 6 plots the coupling
difference between various humidity conditions and the dry
concrete (0.2% humidity) for dipoles with a resonant frequency
of 500 MHz. It should be pointed out that in our case we
need to maximize the coupling (minimize the power losses)
between the two dipoles in order to obtain optimized wireless
communication between the two antennas. Also, we need to
maximize the wireless power transfer between the two dipoles
in order to charge the battery of embedded sensors in concrete.
As expected, the coupling for lower humidity conditions is
larger than the one for higher humidity conditions, as shown
in Fig. 6. Specifically, the coupling of the two dipoles for 12%
humidity is approximately 14.5 dB smaller than the coupling of
two dipoles for dry concrete (0.2% humidity). The plane wave
analysis predicts an 11.31 dB difference between the same cor-
responding humidity conditions, which is shown in Fig. 2. The
difference between plane wave analysis and dipoles’ simulation
results is due to the pattern and gain of the dipole antennas.
Therefore, in order to design a transmitting-receiving power
system for the air-concrete interface and maximize the power
transfer between the two dipoles, we must take into account the
humidity condition of concrete since it has detrimental effect
to the coupling between the two dipoles.
Also, a pair of dipoles (one residing in air and one residing
inside the concrete, as shown in Fig. 5) with matching resonant
frequencies is designed for various resonant frequencies, i.e.,
70 MHz, 100 MHz, 200 MHz, 500 MHz and 1 GHz. Then, the
coupling between the two dipoles is calculated for each case of
resonant frequency. Fig 7 plots the difference between the cou-
pling of two dipoles for each resonant frequency and the cou-
pling of two dipoles for a resonant frequency of 70 MHz. This
was done because 70 MHz resides in the optimum operation
frequency range according to the results of the previous section.
Fig. 7 illustrates that the coupling of the dipoles resonating at
70 MHz is larger than the coupling of the dipoles at other reso-
nant frequencies (since the difference is positive). For example,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Dipoles’ coupling for different resonant frequencies when the humidity
condition of concrete is 12% (Fig. 5 setup).
the coupling of the two dipoles resonating at 1 GHz is about
3.5 dB smaller than the coupling of the dipoles resonating at 70
MHz. This indeed validates our findings from the previous sec-
tion, and indicates the existence of an optimum frequency range
at 20–80 MHz.
B. Effects of Rebars
So far, we have presented results involving antennas in
homogeneous concrete. However, in reality and in most appli-
cations reinforcement bars (rebars) are embedded in concrete to
improve its mechanical stability. Rebars are metallic and there-
fore they affect the performance of antennas that are embedded
in concrete as well as the wireless powering of sensors. Here,
we present results describing the effects of rebars on coupling
between a transmitting and a receiving dipole, as shown in
Fig. 8.
The material of the rebars is set to Steel-1008, whereas the
grid size and the period lengths are shown in Fig. 8. First, the
rebars are set 10 cm above the half-wavelength dipole that is em-
bedded in concrete; rebars are located between the two dipoles,
as shown in Fig. 8(a). Second, the rebars are set 10 cm below
the half-wavelength dipole that is embedded in concrete; rebars
are located below the two dipoles, as shown in Fig. 8(b).
Fig. 9 illustrates the effects of rebars’ position on antenna
coupling in the frequency range of 70 MHz to 1 GHz. It is ob-
served that coupling decreased when rebars were inserted be-
tween the dipoles. Also, this coupling reduction is more sig-
nificant at lower frequencies. For example, when the humidity
condition of concrete is 12%, the coupling at 70 MHz reduced
by approximately 16 dB when rebars were added between the
dipoles, whereas the coupling at 1 GHz only reduced by 1 dB,
as shown in Fig. 9(a). This is due to the fact that at lower fre-
quencies the grid formed by the rebars creates a more effective
electromagnetic shield because the wavelength is larger than the
period of the rebar grid. Also, Fig. 9 shows that when rebars are
set below the two dipoles, their coupling is larger at lower fre-
quencies. In fact, at low frequencies, coupling for the case with
rebars below the dipoles is even larger than the coupling for the
JIANG AND GEORGAKOPOULOS: OPTIMUM WIRELESS POWERING OF SENSORS EMBEDDED IN CONCRETE 1111

Fig. 8. Setup for studying the rebar effects (L = 4 m, H = =2 at the dipole
resonant frequency, D = 0:25 m, l = 120 mm, d = 100 mm, r = 7:95 mm).
(a) Geometry side view of rebars located between the dipoles. (b) Geometry side
view of rebars located below the dipoles. (c) Geometry top view.

case of no rebars. This happens because at lower frequencies,

the wavelength is larger and the rebars form a more reflective
element (compared to higher frequencies) under the dipole em-
bedded in concrete, which in turn increases coupling. The oscil-
lation behavior of the coupling is also expected due to the effects
of the rebar layer on the impedance of the dipole inside the con-
crete [18]. In conclusion, Fig. 9 shows that for the case of rebars
below the dipoles coupling peaks at low frequencies whereas in
the case of rebars between the dipoles coupling exhibits peaks
at higher frequencies (e.g., for the case of 5.5% humidity, max-
imum coupling occurs in the range of 500 MHz to 700 MHz).
Therefore, in order to design a wireless powering system for an
air-concrete interface with maximized power transmission, re-
bars must be taken into account since they significantly impact
coupling between antennas.
IV. RECTENNA DESIGNS FOR EMBEDDED SENSORS
Following our analysis of dipole antennas for embedded sen-
sors we proceed to discuss some practical considerations for em-
bedded sensor antennas. Specifically, in this section, a rectifica-
tion circuit along with the antenna (rectenna) is used to convert
the received electromagnetic power to DC power for charging
the sensor’s battery.
A. Rectenna Design
A pair of square patch antennas is designed for 70 MHz,
which is included in our 20–80 MHz optimum frequency range.
One patch is in air with length of , [17], and one
is in concrete with length of , which was picked
based on our simulations to match the resonant frequency of
the patch in air; is the free-space wavelength and is the
Fig. 9. Dipoles’ coupling for different rebar conditions. (a) Humidity condition
of concrete is 12%. (b) Humidity condition of concrete is 5.5%.
permittivity of the substrate. Each patch is designed on a
thick Rogers RO4003 substrate and fed by a coaxial
probe [17]. The geometry configuration of the patch antenna is
shown in Fig. 10. This type of patch antenna is selected due to
its low-mass and compact size [19].
Specifically, we simulate the wireless power transfer system
consisting of two patch antennas operating at 70 MHz buried at
a depth m inside concrete with 0.2% humidity and
for a distance m. The patch antenna located
in air is connected to a 1 W power source, and the patch that
is embedded in concrete is connected to a rectifier circuit to
form the rectenna, as shown in Fig. 11. This system is analyzed
using NEXIMM software. The rectifying circuit consists of one
HSMS-2850 Schottky detector diode, a 6 nF capacitor and a 100
Ohm load. The power delivered to the load is 56.6 mW, which
is equivalent to a wireless power transfer efficiency of 5.66%.
In order to optimize the efficiency of the wireless powering
system we design matching circuits for the antennas and the rec-
tifier. Fig. 12 illustrates the complete circuit layout where the
1112
Fig. 10. Setup of two patches in the air-concrete model. (L = 4 m, H = =2
at the patch resonant frequency, D = 0:25 m).
Fig. 11. Wireless powering system setup: C = 6 nF, D is a HSMS-2850
Schottky detector diode, load = 100
and source is a power source with 1 W
output and 50
internal resistor. configurations.
Fig. 12. Wireless powering system setup: L = 100 nH, C = 30 pF, L =
60 nH, C = 25 pF, L = 70nH; C = 45 pF, C = 6 nF, D is a
HSMS-2850 Schottky detector diode, Load = 100
and Source is the power pp. 1–4.
source with 1 W output and 50
internal resistor. [4] E. Sazonov, H. Li, D. Curry, and P. Pillay, “Self-powered sensors for
two patches are both matched to 50 Ohm using matching net-
works. The rectifying circuit (diode, capacitor and load) is also
matched to 50 Ohms. The matched system increases power de-
livered to the load to 67.1 mW, which is equivalent to an im-
proved wireless power transfer efficiency of 6.71%.
B. Rechargeable Battery
A common problem for energy harvesting devices is that the
amount of energy harvested must be sufficient to power the elec-
tronic device of interest. For our application, approximately a
power of 50 mW is required to run commercial sensor nodes
[20] and we will use a rechargeable battery as a power source.
The 80 mAh Nickel-metal hydride button cell battery [21] is
specifically chosen to power the wireless sensor node embedded
in concrete since it can withstand more harsh environments and
it offers more energy per unit volume than the nickel-cadmium
type one [22]. It should be noted that neither a charge controller
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
nor voltage regulator need to be incorporated into the circuit for
this type of battery [21]. Also, the size of this battery is suitable
for nodes embedded in the concrete.
Assuming that we use the same nodes as in [23], the recharge-
able button cell battery consumes 1.25 mAh per day and can
work 64 days without charging while in sleep mode. In working
days, this battery consumes 6.9 mAh per day and can work for
only 11 days with 5.8% duty cycle. This battery can be fully
charged using our wireless powering system of Fig. 12, which
has 25.9 mA output current, in 3.1 hours.
V. CONCLUSION
The air-concrete plane wave model is used to calculate the
transmission loss, propagation loss and total loss for normal
incidence and oblique incidence. These losses are related to
the electrical properties of concrete, operational frequency, and
the incidence angle. For sensors that are embedded in medium
depths, maximum power is received when the transmitted wave
is normally incident at the air-concrete interface and the opera-
tional frequency is between 20–80 MHz. Therefore, sensors em-
bedded in concrete operating in the optimum frequency range
will be able to efficiently harvest signals in the bands of short-
wave radio and VHF TV. Also, our results illustrate that the
moisture content of concrete, as well as the period and loca-
tion of the reinforced bars should be carefully considered when
designing the wireless power transfer system. Therefore, future
work will include detailed analysis of the effects of various rebar
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D: Appl. Phys., vol. 40, pp. 5366–5372, 2007.
[15] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering, 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,
2005.
[16] K. G. Ayappa, H. T. Davis, G. Crapiste, E. A. Davis, and J. Gordon,
“Microwave heating: An evaluation of power formulations,” Chem.
Eng. Sci., vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 1005–1016, 1991.
[17] J. D. Kraus and R. J. Marhefka, Antennas for All Applications, 3rd
ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
[18] P. Raumonen, L. Sydanheimo, L. Ukkonen, M. Keskilammi, and M.
Kivikoski, “Folded dipole antenna near metal plate,” in Proc. IEEE
AP-S Intel. Symp., 2003, pp. 848–85.
[19] J. Huang, Z. A. Hussein, and A. Petros, “A VHF microstrip antenna
with wide-bandwidth and dual-polarization for sea ice thickness
measurement,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 10, pp.
2718–1722, Oct. 2007.
[20] N. G. Elvin, N. Lajnef, and A. A. Elvin, “Feasibility of structural moni-
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[21] H. A. Sodano, G. E. Simmers, R. Dereux, and D. J. Inman, “Recharging
batteries using energy harvested from thermal gradients,” J. Intel. Mat.
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1113
Shan Jiang (S’11) received the B.S. and M.S.
degrees in electrical engineering from Tianjin Poly-
technic University, Tianjin, China, in 2005 and 2008,
respectively, and is currently working towards the
Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, Florida International University, Miami.
Her research interests include electromagnetic
wave propagation, antennas and RF circuits.
Stavros V. Georgakopoulos (S’93–M’02–SM’11)
received the Diploma in electrical engineering from
the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 1996, and
the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, in
1998, and 2001, respectively.
From 2001–2007 he held a position as Principal
Engineer at the Research and Development Depart-
ment of SV Microwave, Inc., where he worked on
the design of high reliability passive microwave com-
ponents, thin-film circuits, high performance inter-
connects and calibration standards. Since 2007, he has been with the Depart-
ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Florida International University,
Miami, where he is now Assistant Professor. His current research interests re-
late to applied electromagnetics, antennas, wireless communications and wire-
less sensors.
1114 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Portable Real-Time Microwave Camera at 24 GHz
Mohammad Tayeb Ghasr, Member, IEEE, Mohamed A. Abou-Khousa, Senior Member, IEEE,
Sergey Kharkovsky, Fellow, IEEE, R. Zoughi, Fellow, IEEE, and David Pommerenke, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a microwave camera built upon
a two-dimensional array of switchable slot antennas. The camera
borrows from modulated scattering techniques to improve iso-
lation among the array elements. The camera was designed to
measure vector electric field distribution, be compact, portable,
battery operated, possess high dynamic range, and be capable
of producing real-time images at video frame-rate. This imaging
system utilizes PIN diode-loaded resonant elliptical slot antennas
as its array elements integrated in a simple and relatively low-loss
waveguide network thus reducing the complexity, cost and size
of the array. The sensitivity and dynamic range of this system is
improved by utilizing a custom-designed heterodyne receiver and
matched filter for demodulation. The performance of the multi-
plexing scheme, noise-floor and dynamic range of the receivers are
presented as well. Sources of errors such as mutual-coupling and
array response dispersion are also investigated. Finally, utilizing
this imaging system for various applications such as 2-D electric
field mapping, and nondestructive testing is demonstrated.
Index Terms—Electric field mapping, microwave camera, non-
destructive testing, real-time imaging, switchable slot antenna.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE utility of microwave and millimeter wave imaging
techniques has been successfully demonstrated for a
variety of applications including: nondestructive testing and
evaluation (NDT&E) of materials and composite structures
[1], [2], medical imaging [3]–[6], and security applications
[7]–[9], to name a few. The successes associated with these
works is partially due to the fact that electromagnetic waves,
at microwave (300 MHz–30 GHz) and millimeter-wave
(30 GHz–300 GHz) frequencies, penetrate a wide range of
Manuscript received March 10, 2011; revised July 11, 2011; accepted August
06, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported in part by a grant from NASA Marshall
Space Flight Center (MSFC), Huntsville, AL.
M. T. Ghasr and R. Zoughi are with the Applied Microwave Nondestructive
Testing Laboratory (amntl), Missouri University of Science and Technology,
Rolla, MO 65409 USA (e-mail: m.t.ghasr@mst.edu; zoughi@mst.edu).
M. A. Abou-Khousa was with the Applied Microwave Nondestructive
Testing Laboratory (amntl), Electrical and Computer Engineering Department,
Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409 USA. He
is now with the Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute,
The University of Western Ontario, London, ON N6A 5K8, Canada (e-mail:
maboukh@imaging.robarts.ca).
S. Kharkovsky is with Civionics Research Centre, School of Engineering
at the University of Western Sydney, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia (e-mail:
S.Kharkivskiy@uws.edu.au).
D. Pommerenke is with the Electromagnetic Compatibility Laboratory, Elec-
trical and Computer Engineering Department, Missouri University of Science
and Technology, Rolla, MO 65409 USA (e-mail: davidjp@mst.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173145
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
optically-opaque and non-conducting materials, such as var-
ious composites, ceramics, concrete, wood, clothing, and
interact with their interior structures. Signals at microwave
and millimeter-wave frequencies are non-ionizing and are
not considered to be sources of hazardous radiation, leading
to their ever-increasing utility in a wide variety of diverse
imaging applications. Moreover, the relatively large available
signal bandwidth at these frequencies, enable the possibility of
producing three-dimensional (3-D) images [7], [8].
Microwave imaging is based on collecting the vector (i.e.,
magnitude and phase) scattered electric field distribution from
an object over a known two-dimensional (2-D) plane or ideally
over a surface enclosing the object (e.g., a sphere). This may
be accomplished by mechanically raster scanning a transceiver
over the object [10], or irradiating the object with an incident
wave and then collecting the scattered electric field distribution
over a known surface (i.e., 2-D plane) [4], [5]. Mechanical raster
scanning is an established and accurate method due to the ab-
sence of errors which otherwise exists in imaging array config-
urations such as mutual coupling and variation in the response
of the array elements. In addition, such systems do not suffer
from the required array-element spacing constraint. However,
the drawback of mechanical raster scanning is that it commonly
requires a relatively long time to collect the electric field data
[10]. For reasons that are rather obvious, the trend in microwave
imaging has been to move towards real-time imaging capability
in the form of measuring the vector electric field distribution
over a receiving antenna array.
Microwave and millimeter wave imaging systems that mea-
sure the coherent spatial scattered field distribution directly,
using a multiplexed array of antennas, commonly incorpo-
rate imaging algorithms such as those derived from synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) techniques to back-propagate the electric
field to the scattering object [7], [8], or use algorithms based
on reconstruction techniques to obtain information about the
geometrical and/or dielectric distribution of the scattering
object [5], [11]. Nowadays, custom-designed microwave and
millimeter wave imaging systems are capable of real-time
image production while producing images with relatively high
spatial resolution. The high resolution feature is obtained in the
near-field of the array [7], [8], [12], while the depth-of-focus
is aperture-limited, i.e., limited by the size of the array [12].
In the far-field of the array, these systems may operate as
phased-arrays to enable narrow angular scanning in their
field-of-view. In this case the resolution becomes a function
of the array beamwidth, which is also aperture limited. There
are many challenges in designing systems that utilizes SAR
imaging, stemming from the requirements associated with a
tightly-spaced measurement grid (e.g., or smaller array
element spacing) dictated by the Nyquist sampling criterion.
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
The array elements of imaging arrays are typically multi-
plexed, at the RF level into a single receiver. There are two
conventional methods for this purpose. The first method utilizes
switching capabilities in the array (switched-array) to route the
signal from an array element to the transceiver [8]. Switched-
array systems utilize a set of RF switches to multiplex the signal,
from each array element, with a receiver that performs the task
of coherent detection. At the upper end of microwave frequency
range RF switching becomes expensive, and bulky. Another
challenge is to design small, yet efficient array elements. The
dimensions of the array elements must be much smaller than
in order to fit in a tightly-spaced 2-D grid. To date, the de-
velopment of large-scale 2-D imaging arrays have been limited
due to these challenges. At high frequencies exceeding 20 GHz,
only 1-D successful imaging systems based on switched-array
have been developed [8]. Although as mentioned earlier that an
RF-multiplexed array of antennas mimics the performance of
a mechanically scanned system, practical multiplexing requires
high isolation between the array elements through the switching
network, and very low signal loss (i.e., insertion loss) between
the array elements and the receiver. Any amplitude or phase dis-
persion over the array elements must be properly measured and
calibrated for.
The second method utilizes modulated scattering technique
(MST) to “spatially tag” the scattered signal at specific lo-
cations within a collector array. The use of MST for electric
field measurements was first introduced in 1955 [13]. Since
then, this method has been widely implemented in 1-D and
2-D configurations using various linear scatterers, such as
small dipole antennas, and has been extensively used for an-
tenna pattern and radar cross section measurement in addition
to some investigations involving medical applications [14].
Several MST-based 1-D imaging systems have been designed
and built with an array of sub-resonant dipoles at frequencies
up to 18 GHz [3]–[5], [14]. The use of MST overcomes some
of the difficulties associated with switched arrays (i.e., bulki-
ness and isolation) by modulating the scattered signal with a
low-frequency modulating signal. Using MST, the measured
signal is uniquely distinguished from any other signal present
at the receiver, and is therefore spatially localized to the probe
location (which is known) by utilizing proper modulation and
demodulation techniques. The main advantage of MST is that
multiplexing is performed at a relatively very low frequency,
typically 100’s of KHz. Traditional MST suffers from several
limitations [14]–[16]. The commonly used small dipole an-
tenna, provides for very small modulation depth, defined as the
power ratio of the modulated signal to the incident signal, in
the order of 40 dBc to 70 dBc [3], [15]. This significantly
limits the sensitivity and dynamic range of the overall system.
Another limitation associated with MST is the signal transfer
from the scatterer to the receiver. Spatial collection schemes
or passive combiners are lossy solutions, lowering the overall
system dynamic range [14], [17]. Furthermore, the mutual cou-
pling among the array elements (e.g., dipoles) can significantly
reduce the system dynamic range. These problems become
even more significant and challenging at higher frequencies
such as those in the millimeter-wave region [16], [18].
1115
This paper describes a novel design for a real-time imaging
system. This design overcomes many of the mentioned limita-
tions associated with the current imaging systems. It is a combi-
nation of a switched RF multiplexed system and MST measure-
ment approaches, utilizing a PIN diode-loaded switchable reso-
nant slot antenna as its array elements [17], [18] to perform the
switching function directly at the array element locations rather
than using an RF switching network. Subsequently, the isola-
tion among the array elements, and consequently the dynamic
range is markedly improved. The cornerstone of the imaging
array used in this design is a low-loss waveguide network which
routes the modulated signal from each array element to a set of
four receivers. Each receiver down-converts the modulated sig-
nals to an IF signal where a sensitive demodulator is used to
match filter the modulated signal. This unique design results in a
system with a relatively high dynamic range, and enables image
production at video frame rate rendering it a real-time imaging
system or “camera.”
This paper describes the design and development of a novel
portable mm mm mm 2-D microwave camera
operating at 24 GHz. This camera, which is primarily a 2-D co-
herent vector electric field mapping device, provides for ade-
quate spatial sampling, reasonable aperture size, relatively large
dynamic range, and video frame-rate image production. The
camera collector consists of a 24 24 (576 elements) array
of switchable slot antennas, spaced by , where is the
free-space wavelength. Each element is loaded with a PIN diode
facilitating fast switching for the purpose of real-time mapping
of the electric field distribution at the aperture of the camera. The
various design and construction aspects of this system were op-
timized and integrated to produce a standalone imaging system.
Description, optimization steps, and design features of the var-
ious components of this design are presented here. The perfor-
mance of the multiplexing scheme, noise-floor and the dynamic
range characteristics of the receivers are also investigated and
summarized. Finally, the utility of this camera for imaging sev-
eral objects is illustrated.
II. MICROWAVE CAMERA DESIGN
A general schematic of the microwave camera is shown in
Fig. 1, in which many individual antennas are used to collect
the electric field distribution on a predetermined 2-D measure-
ment plane. The combiner along with the antenna array perform
the task of spatial multiplexing required to spatially sample the
electric field distribution and route the corresponding signals to
a high dynamic range RF receiver. Subsequently, the RF re-
ceiver provides the coherent vector electric field information
from each antenna in this array. The RF circuitry also generates
the incident electric field necessary for illuminating the object
to be imaged. The spatial multiplexing and the RF circuits are
synchronized by a processor that collects the data. Additional
steps performed by the processor, such as any required calibra-
tion or signal processing, make these data representative of the
scattering source or the object being imaged. The basic designs
associated with the RF circuitry and the processors are well es-
tablished, yet they must be optimized for this specific applica-
tion. The array designed for this type of electric field distribution
1116 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. General schematic of the microwave camera.
measurement is commonly referred to as a “retina,” for its sim-
ilarity to the function of a human eye retina [4].
The proof-of-concept design described in [17] was founded
on efficient spatial multiplexing of scattered electric field over
the 2-D space of slot array. The analysis showed the possibility
of effective and rapid “electrical scanning” of the array. The ef-
ficacy of that design was mainly due to employing PIN diode
loaded resonant slot antennas instead of the commonly used
linear scatterers (e.g., dipole antennas). However, the design
associated with that system also exposed several design defi-
ciencies requiring significant improvement or redesign. Conse-
quently, a new approach, to the overall design, was considered
to not only address those deficiencies, but to also address other
issues related to the extension of the collector design to a more
viable imaging system.
The utilization of a rectangular waveguide network in the
collector, instead of the lossy free-space collection system used
in [17] is one of the main features of this imaging system.
Rectangular waveguides are widely used low-loss transmission
lines, and can therefore improve the efficiency of the overall
system by reducing attenuation and radiation losses of the
desired electric field picked up by the resonant slot array ele-
ments. In addition, the use of rectangular waveguides provides
significant control over redirecting, redistributing, and adding
signals from a large number of slot antennas, as will be seen
later. Integrating the high-frequency transceiver components
into the frame of the retina, beside its appealing compact-
ness, eliminates errors caused by long and flexible coaxial
transmission lines that are otherwise required. Several aspects
of this design were optimized through extensive simulations
and experiments. The design features and properties of each
component of this imaging system are described in details in
the following sections. Hereon, the term retina refers to the unit
consisting of the slot antenna array and the collector, while the
term collector refers to the waveguide network collecting the
signal from the slots and combining them.
A. Slot Antenna
Fig. 2 shows the outlines of the slot antenna as they appear
on the two sides of a PCB. The design and the electromagnetic
Fig. 2. Top and bottom views of the resonant slot antenna as manufactured on
a PCB.
properties of this slot antenna are presented in detail in [18] and
will not be repeated here. Briefly, this slot antenna operates as a
switch when loaded with a PIN diode (MA4AG907) [19] with
a very high radiation efficiency ( 97%) when the PIN diode is
reverse or zero biased (turned OFF). Conversely, when the PIN
diode is forward biased (or ON) the slot becomes reflective with
a very small leakage (i.e., slot is closed) [18]. These attributes
make the slot a good candidate for the waveguide-fed imaging
array considered here. Furthermore, the slot can be easily in-
tegrated into a rectangular waveguide wall while maintaining
efficient signal coupling.
Fig. 3 shows the simulated (using CST-MWS [20]) and mea-
sured reflection coefficient, looking into the waveguide for the
ON and OFF states of the PIN diode. The slot prototype was
simulated and then manufactured on a 0.5 mm-thick Rogers
RO4350 laminate [21]. When the slot is open and radiating (i.e.,
the PIN diode is OFF), the magnitude of the reflection coeffi-
cient is less than 15 dB. However, when the slot is closed (i.e.,
the PIN diode is ON), the reflection coefficient becomes very
high ( 0.2 dB). The measured slot response shows a slight shift
in the resonant frequency coupled with an increase in reflection
coefficient when the slot is open. The slight shift in the resonant
frequency is due to slight inaccuracies in electrical dimensions
of the manufactured slot. The increase in the measured reflec-
tion coefficient when the diode is OFF, and the increased mea-
sured leakage when the diode in ON is due to the non-perfect
contact between the slot PCB and the testing waveguide flange.
This was experimentally verified by increasing or reducing the
pressure on the slot PCB.
B. Collector Design
The retina size of 152 mm 152 mm accommodates an array
of 24 rows by 24 columns with an interspacing of 6.25 mm cor-
responding to at 24 GHz. The proof-of-concept design in
[17] utilized a free-space collection scheme where an antenna
placed behind the retina was used to collect the modulated scat-
tered signal. For that relatively small retina of 37.5 mm by 31.25
mm in [17], the signal experienced a loss of nearly 25 dB when
traveling from a slot at the retina to the collector antenna. If sim-
ilar design is used for a larger array, this loss will significantly
increase, rendering the collection approach inefficient and ef-
fectively unusable. A transmission line was deemed necessary
to guide the collected scattered signals into the receiver. Rect-
angular waveguides are attractive for use at microwave and mil-
limeter wave frequencies for their low loss transmission prop-
erties. Moreover, a slot antenna can be readily integrated into
the sidewall of a rectangular waveguide by matching the po-
larization of the slot antenna to the vector surface current on
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
Fig. 3. Measured and simulated magnitude of reflection coefficient for the res-
onant PIN diode-loaded slot antenna.
the waveguide wall. A single waveguide can feed or recipro-
cally collect signal form many slots in a corporate-feed style.
For example, a single waveguide can be meandered behind the
array to collect the signal from all slots in an array. However,
the total loss in the waveguide collector network is proportional
to the number of slot antennas on the waveguide wall since each
PIN diode-loaded slot antenna, when closed, contributes a small
amount of unwanted leakage/radiation loss ( 0.28 dB per slot),
resulting in a relatively high level of loss in the waveguide. Con-
sequently, the collector waveguides were limited to one wave-
guide per row of the retina, resulting in 24 collector waveguides
in this design. Finally, the end-ports of these waveguides were
combined to route the collected signals to the receiver.
Another issue to be considered when placing the slots on
the waveguide walls is the space management, given the array
element interspacing requirement of , and the variety of
options (e.g., broad or narrow wall) for slot placement on the
waveguide walls. The broad dimension of the waveguide must
be larger than or else the waves do not propagate inside
it. Therefore, it is physically impossible to place two waveg-
uides side-by-side with their broad sidewalls in one plane with
a center-to-center spacing of . This forces the placement of
the slots on the narrow sidewall of the waveguide. A standard
K-band waveguide has a narrow dimension of 4.3 mm (slightly
larger than the slot height), which leaves an adequate 1.95 mm
of wall thickness between each two waveguides when placed at
6.25 mm distance from each other.
Fig. 4(a) shows the aluminum block in which the three walls
of 24 parallel waveguides are machined. This serves as the
signal collection network. The slot array is then fabricated on a
PCB constituting the fourth wall of the waveguides. The design
of the slot antenna array will be described in details in the
next section. Fig. 4(b) shows a picture of the assembled retina,
with the slot array PCB mounted, using an aluminum rim on
top of the waveguide network. The PCB is connected to the
waveguide array using conductive epoxy, ensuring no signal
leakage or coupling between adjacent waveguides. The rim
on top of the PCB serves two purposes. First, it provides for a
1117
Fig. 4. (a) Aluminum block with 24 parallel waveguides, and (b) assembled
retina.
secure mounting of the slot array PCB onto the base. Secondly,
it completes the flange on the side of the retina for terminating
these waveguides into signal combiners, as shown.
C. Slot Antenna Array
Mounting the slot on the aperture of a standard waveguide is
an effective method for testing and optimizing its electromag-
netic and switching performance characteristics. However, in
the retina, the slot is placed on the narrow side-wall of a rectan-
gular waveguide. Subsequent to establishing the slot dimensions
as explained earlier, the signal coupling and radiation proper-
ties of the slot, when placed on the narrow sidewall of a wave-
guide were simulated using CST-MWS. The structure simulated
is shown in Fig. 5 with the waveguide outlines in white. The
waveguide has three solid metallic walls and the fourth wall is
created by the two-layer PCB containing the slot, as explained
earlier. The bias structure was not considered in this simulation
since prior extensive simulations showed that it does not ad-
versely affect the electrical properties of the slot.
Initially, simulations were performed with a slot placed on a
standard K-band (WR-51) rectangular waveguide with dimen-
sions of 10.7 mm by 4.3 mm. The simulated radiated power de-
fined as , is shown in Fig. 6. This def-
inition of radiated power is valid since the radiation efficiency
of this slot is high. Fig. 6 shows that for a standard waveguide,
the radiated power when the slot is open (i.e., when the diode is
OFF) is less than 6 dB, and when the slot is closed (i.e., when
the diode is ON) the radiated power (representing leakage) is
less than 20 dB. While the leakage level is acceptable, the ra-
diated power when the slot is open is lower than the ideal value
of 3 dB. Reducing the broad dimension of the waveguide ef-
fectively addresses the issue of low radiated power level when
using a standard waveguide. The frequency of operation (24
GHz) is at the higher end of K-band. Therefore, the waveguide
1118
Fig. 5. Simulated structure for the slot antenna on the narrow sidewall of wave-
guide.
Fig. 6. Simulated radiated power from PIN diode loaded slot antenna on the
waveguide narrow sidewall.
broad dimension may be reduced to 6.25 mm before reaching
the cutoff frequency of the waveguide [22]. Consequently, the
waveguide broad dimension was reduced from the standard 10.7
mm to 7.7 mm bringing the cutoff frequency to 19.5 GHz,
well below the frequency of operation. Looking at this structure
from the radiated power point-of-view, in this modified wave-
guide case, the leakage when the slot is closed increases slightly.
More importantly, the radiated power when the slot is open in-
creases to 3.1 dB, which is twice as much compared to the
standard waveguide case. In other words, approximately half of
the power reaching the slot from port 1 is radiated. A 3 dB
radiated power (50% total efficiency) is considered optimum in
the sense that if the slot is used in the receiving mode (as it will
be used in the microwave camera), half of the power reaching
the slot will travel to each side of the waveguide and no power
will be reflected back from the slot. The 3 dB increase in ef-
ficiency is due to the increase in the current intensity on the
narrow wall (containing the slot) in comparison to the broad
wall when the waveguide broad wall dimension in reduced. This
phenomenon can be quantized by calculating the ratio of the
current intensities on the two different waveguide walls [22], as
shown in Fig. 7 and was also verified by simulation.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Ratio of the current on the narrow wall to current on the broad wall of
standard and a modified waveguide.
D. Slot Array Design
A close-up view of the slot antenna array is shown in
Fig. 8(a). The array was fabricated on a two layer 0.5 mm-thick
RO4350B laminate [21]. Since the back layer is not accessible
in this design (because of the waveguide collection network),
only the top layer is used for placing the biasing network. The
576 resonant slots antennas were placed in a 24 24 grid with
center-to-center spacing of 6.25 mm . Matrix addressing
scheme, commonly used in electronic displays, was used in
this design. In a matrix-addressing scheme for an array,
only addresses (or bias lines in this case) are needed. In
this scheme, to address a slot at the intersection of a row and a
column, its corresponding rows and columns are addressed. To
perform the electrical scan of the retina, first a row is enabled
by properly biasing the line, and then the various elements in
that row are scanned by sequentially addressing the columns.
Subsequently by going through all rows, a complete 2-D
electrical scan of the retina is performed. By placing LEDs in
the bias structure we combined the row and column bias lines
at each junction before feeding them to the anode of the PIN
diodes, as shown in Fig. 8(b). The LEDs are required since the
cathode of the PIN diode is grounded in addition to the fact
that the slot must be idly closed (i.e., PIN diode is normally
ON). Thus, to address a particular slot, its corresponding row
and column lines are pulled low (i.e., turned off). The LEDs
perform logic OR operation, that is the PIN diode will only
be turned OFF if both of its corresponding row and column
lines are pulled low. Low profile (0402 size) surface-mount
red and green LEDs were used for the column and row address
connections, respectively.
The row address lines were etched as 0.127 mm-wide hor-
izontal lines onto the PCB top layer at midpoint between the
rows. On the other hand, thin (0.127 mm-diameter) insulated
wires were used for the column address lines, which were sol-
dered at each slot location to its corresponding red LED. Slight
disturbance on the slot antenna radiation properties are antici-
pated from the close proximity of the LEDs and the bias lines,
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
Fig. 8. (a) Close-up views of the retina PCB showing the bias lines, bias LEDs,
and the slots, and (b) bias circuit.
however a compromise is made between this disturbance and
the low cost and ease of fabrication of this current design.
E. Combiner Waveguide
The 24 collector waveguides, shown in Fig. 4, are the first
stage of guiding the signal from each slot to the receiver. The
signal picked-up by each slot travels to both ends of its cor-
responding waveguide in the 24 waveguide collector. Several
approaches were investigated for combining the output ports
of these 24 waveguides into a single or few output ports. The
schematic of the chosen combiner is shown in Fig. 9. This ap-
proach utilizes a switchable iris at each end of each collector
waveguide. The iris is switchable and facilitates the routing of
the signal from each collector waveguide to a set of four coaxial
ports (two on each side). The coaxial ports are created by a
quarter-wave monopole feed at each end of the combiner wave-
guide. The iris was also a resonant PIN diode-loaded elliptical
slot similar to the retina slots, optimized to be placed in the
wall between the waveguides. By properly switching the desired
iris, the signal picked up by a slot on the array is routed to the
four coaxial ports by opening the respective iris on each side on
1119
Fig. 9. Schematic of the switched waveguide combiner.
the collector waveguide. Meanwhile, all other irises are main-
tained in a closed state to enhance the isolation within the array,
and to reduce the loss in the combiner waveguides. Using this
method, the maximum attenuation experienced by a signal be-
fore reaching the nearest port is estimated to be less than 12 dB.
This attenuation is mainly due to the leakage in the array slots
and the combiner irises.
As mentioned, to ensure maximum signal transfer from the
retina to the output ports, only one of the combiner irises should
be open at a given time. In ideal situations when the irises have
zero leakage, the connection between each collector waveguide
and a combiner waveguide, is considered as a switchable
E-plane Tee. This Tee configuration was extensively simulated
using CST-MWS [20]. The switchable iris is a PIN diode-con-
trolled resonant slot, similar in design to the slot of the retina
and optimized for operating inside the Tee structure for the
frequency of operation. The simulation results showed that
when the switch is open, at the resonant frequency of 24 GHz,
the power division in the Tee is 3.9 dB which comparing to
the ideal value of 3 dB results in an insertion loss of 0.9 dB,
while the return loss was 10 dB. On the other hand, when the
switch is closed, the isolation is 20 dB. Moreover, the signal
traveling through the collector waveguide experiences a small
amount of loss.
For the final application of designing a combiner for the mi-
crowave camera, 24 irises were manufactured on a single 0.5
mm-thick 2-layered PCB with RO4350B laminate. This board
was sandwiched between the combiner waveguide and the 24
collector waveguides, as shown in Fig. 10.
F. Signal Source and Receiver
The transceiver design was based on a heterodyne scheme,
where the first harmonic of a single side-band of the modu-
lated signal is demodulated. This design scheme is illustrated
in Fig. 11. The main RF source generates a signal, which is sent
through a transmitting antenna to irradiate the target. The re-
ceived signal, which is square-wave amplitude-modulated by
the retina, is down-mixed to the IF stage where it is filtered
and amplified. The LO frequency is set such that the funda-
mental harmonic on the lower sideband is mixed to the center
1120 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 10. Combiner waveguide assembly.
frequency of the IF filter. The two spectra insets in Fig. 11 show
the modulated signal before and after being down-converted to
the IF frequency range. The narrowband IF filter passes this
harmonic, while at the same time it attenuates the relatively
strong carrier along with all other harmonics. Subsequently, the
IQ demodulator provides in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) out-
puts proportional to the real and imaginary parts of the electric
field at the retina aperture. As mentioned in the previous sec-
tion, due to the combiner design, this imaging system requires
four such receiver channels. This scheme was first introduced
in [23], in order to improve measurement accuracy by elimi-
nating the quadrature error associated with the high-frequency
components. In [23] the mixing was performed down to base-
band, such that the IF frequency is the fundamental frequency of
the modulating signal. In the design presented here the mixing
is performed to a fixed IF frequency of 10.7 MHz irrespective
of the modulation frequency. That is to say, given commercial
off-the-shelf (COTS) components at standard IF frequencies
(e.g., 10.7 MHz) the ability to independently select the modu-
lation frequency provides for significant design flexibility. This
design has several other advantages over the design introduced
in [23]. First, the fixed IF frequency provides the flexibility
of changing the modulation frequency without changing the IF
stage hardware. Second, the higher IF frequency of 10.7 MHz
used here, compared to the low IF frequency corresponding to
the modulation frequency of less than 1 MHz used in [23], trans-
lates to lower flicker noise. Third, the higher IF frequency
translates to larger frequency difference between the RF sources
reducing the design complexity associated with the sources.
There is one fundamental difference between this design and
the more traditional MST receivers [14]; namely, utilizing the
IQ demodulator to perform both the quadrature detection and
matched filtering (i.e., demodulation). In this scheme the IQ de-
modulator serves as a quadrature lock-in amplifier, which per-
forms the task of quadrature coherent detection on a single tone,
which is the first harmonic of the square wave modulated signal.
The disadvantage of this scheme is that capturing the first har-
monic results in approximately 3.9 dB loss in power, 3 dB of
which is for ignoring one side-band and another 0.9 dB accounts
Fig. 11. Schematic of the microwave camera including the RF sources and one
channel of the receiver.
for ignoring the harmonics of the square wave signal. How-
ever, this scheme offers a good compromise between the loss
in power and the following benefits. First, a heterodyne receiver
provides higher dynamic range by eliminating quadrature errors
associated with high frequency homodyne receivers. Second,
the design provides flexibility in the choice of modulation fre-
quency. Finally, the highly accurate IQ demodulator at the IF
frequency also acts as a matched-filter eliminating the need for
lock-in amplifiers for demodulation and thus reducing system
complexity. Overall, the signal power loss is compensated for
by the resulting higher dynamic range and sensitivity of the re-
ceiver and the ability to filter and amplify the IF signal. Another
disadvantage of this design as compared to [23] is the require-
ment of an additional IF source. However at standard commer-
cial IF frequencies, such as the 10.7 MHz used here, there is an
abundance of commercially available phase-locked sources.
Individually testing the various components of the receiver
showed that the RF receiver front-end and the IQ demodulator
both exhibited a dynamic range exceeding 90 dB. However,
the overall dynamic range of the receiver is limited by signals
passing through the IF bandpass filter (100 KHz bandwidth) in-
cluding the noise generated by the leaked carrier. Consequently,
the overall dynamic range of the receiver was experimentally
measured. The retina was excluded from this measurement due
to the difficulty in controlling the magnitude and phase of the
incident electric field on each individual slot. Instead the mea-
surements were performed using a standalone slot to create the
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
Fig. 12. (a) Dynamic range of the receiver, and (b) phase error within the dy-
namic range.
modulated signal (i.e., replacing the retina slots). The electric
field on the slot was controlled using laboratory equipment such
as precision attenuators and phase shifters. Fig. 12 illustrate the
receiver dynamic range and the accuracy by which phase of a
signal may be measured. Fig. 12(a) shows the dynamic range
of the receiver, indicating a linear response range of approxi-
mately 70 dB for each of the four channels. Fig. 12(a) shows
the corrected signal output power after compensating for this IF
gain. Fig. 12(b) shows that the phase measurement error within
the dynamic range of the receiver is less than 10 degrees at the
low end of its dynamic range and it is less than 2 degree at its
upper half of its dynamic range for a range of approximately 50
dB. The receiver saturates when the input power level exceeds
35 dBm. The saturation is due to the high IF stage gain. The
cumulative gain of the IF stage is 40 dB. This high gain is nec-
essary to compensate for the losses in the array. Moreover, this
high gain is readily achievable since other strong signals, that
will otherwise saturate the IF amplifier and the IQ demodulator
(e.g., the carrier), are filtered out. The ability to introduce this
gain is crucial in compensating for the losses in the array, and
hence utilizing the dynamic range of the receiver to the fullest
extent.
1121
Fig. 13. Pictures of the (a) front and (b) back of the camera showing the array
at the front and the various RF and control components at the back.
III. RESULTS
Fig. 13 shows pictures of the front and back of the as-
sembled microwave camera. The major component of this
microwave camera is the switchable imaging array. Performing
the switching operation at the antennas rather than using
bulky RF switches resulted in a thin array design with a final
size of mm mm mm. The various RF and
digital control circuitries are mounted on the back of the
array in a multi-level stacked configuration. This configura-
tion resulted in the total size of the microwave camera being
mm mm mm, which makes it handheld and
readily portable. This microwave camera provided real-time
imaging at a video frame rate of 22 frames per second. This
section will present the efficacy of this design in measuring
electric field distribution including a few of imaging examples.
A. Calibration and Electric Field Pattern Measurements
Array dispersion, defined as the variation in the response of
array elements to a uniform plane wave illumination [4], is the
largest contributor to errors in mapping electric field distribu-
tion. To some extent these variations are due to inaccuracies in
manufacturing of the slots, mounting the components on the
array, and due to differences between nominal values of the
component properties. However, experiments showed that these
variations are typically very small. The largest variation in the
response of the array elements comes from the signal path con-
necting each array element to the receiver. This path takes the
signal through the collector waveguide, the iris, the combiner
waveguide, and finally through a short cable connected to the
receiver where in each portion of this path the signal undergoes
attenuation and reflection. It was anticipated that signal ampli-
tude will depend linearly (in dB) on the distance between the
slot and the output port. Utilizing four ports, one at each corner
of the array, alleviates some of this signal loss. In this case the
signal experiencing the maximum attenuation will be from the
slots in the middle portion of the collector array.
Typically a response calibration is performed to correct for
any distortions [24]. The response calibration is performed by il-
luminating the retina with a known electric field. In this case the
known electric field was generated by an open-ended K-band
rectangular waveguide aperture. Several measurements at var-
ious distances, between the camera and the waveguide covering
a range of two wavelengths from 387 mm to 411 mm with steps
of 2 mm, were performed. At these distances the magnitude
1122
Fig. 14. Measured versus simulated electric field distribution produced by a K-band open ended waveguide from a distance of 390 mm, (a) simulated magnitude
(dB), (b) measured magnitude (dB), (c) simulated phase (deg), (b) measured phase (deg).
variations over the aperture of the retina does not exceed 1 dB.
On the other hand the phase variations go through a full cycle. At
each distance, the correction coefficients are computed by ref-
erencing the measured electric field pattern over the aperture of
the camera to the simulated waveguide pattern. Subsequently,
the corrected measurements from the four ports are combined
using a maximum ratio combiner (MRC) [25]. The results of
the various distances are averaged to remove the effect of any
multiple reflection or placement errors. Subsequent to applying
MRC, the maximum dispersion over the array was measured to
be 15 dB. The maximum loss is suffered by the signal picked up
by the middle slots, since they must travel the longest distance
to reach the four receivers at the four corners of the array. As a
result, in the worst case the overall dynamic range of the system
is reduced by this loss.
Fig. 14 shows the corrected measurement versus the sim-
ulated electric field distribution produced by the open-ended
waveguide from a distance of 390 mm. This measurement was
not part of the calibration set. The magnitude plot shows slight
distortion. This distortion is very small and it is only noticed
due to the small range of the actual electric field amplitude. The
root mean squared error (RMSE) in the magnitude for this mea-
surement is 0.025. The phase distribution on the other hand
shows a strong resemblance to the simulated phase pattern. The
RMSE was 3.5 degrees. Overall, these accuracies are consid-
ered very high for such a high-frequency system. Furthermore,
for imaging applications and array processing techniques such
as synthetic aperture radar algorithms, the overall phase pattern
is much more important than the absolute error.
Several other measurements of various electric field patterns
were made and the RMSE compared to the simulated fields
were computed. Overall, the magnitude measurements showed
an RMSE of 0.03 compared to the simulated results, while
phase measurement showed a RMSE of 13 degrees. These er-
rors are quite acceptable since the experimental setups were po-
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
sitioned manually and the 13 degrees corresponds to less than
0.5 mm in position error at 24 GHz. Therefore, for all practical
purposes, this retina measures the electric field pattern accu-
rately. Further improvements would require a better calibration
of the retina that takes into account and corrects for the limited
isolation in the waveguide network and the very small mutual
coupling among the slots which was fully studied in [26].
B. Imaging Results
The microwave camera is a primarily a coherent electric field
mapping device. When measuring the scattered electric field
from an object, an image of that object may be reconstructed
using techniques such as SAR imaging. This portable mi-
crowave camera possibly may be used in various applications
involving nondestructive testing, medical imaging, security,
and contraband detection. The video frame rate and small
form-factor of the microwave camera, makes it a desirable
candidate for high throughput applications (e.g., airport pas-
senger security check-points, conveyed product inspection,
etc.). The retina of this microwave camera is designed as a
receiver requiring an external signal source to irradiate the
target. This camera may be operated in two modes namely:
reflection and through-transmission modes. In reflection mode,
the transmitting antenna and the retina are both on the same
side and the resulting image represents reflective properties
of the object being imaged. In through-transmission mode,
the object is placed between the transmitting antenna and the
retina, resulting in an image corresponding to both the reflection
and transmission properties of the object (i.e., attenuation and
scattering).
1) Reflection Mode: Operating the microwave camera in re-
flection mode requires that the irradiating antennas (transmit-
ters) and the receiving retina be both on the same side of the
object being imaged. The choice and configuration of the il-
luminating antenna(s) plays a direct role on the fidelity of the
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
Fig. 15. Experimental reflection mode setup for imaging of a balsa wood
sample containing a thin copper tape inclusion: (a) front view with a single
transmitter, (b) side view with single transmitter, and (c) front view showing
four transmitters.
resulting image. The downside of using a single or few trans-
mitters is that the pattern of this external transmitter will af-
fect the contrast of the resulting image. In an experiment, a
mm mm mm balsa wood sample with a thin 6.35
mm 6.35 mm copper film inclusion was imaged in reflec-
tion mode, first using a single transmitter as shown in Fig. 15(a)
and Fig. 15(b), and then using four transmitters, as shown in
Fig. 15(c). The transmitters in this experiment were K-band
open-ended rectangular waveguide aperture antennas.
The sample was placed 150 mm away from the camera. SAR
imaging technique [8] was then used to reconstruct the image
of the balsa wood from its mapped scattered field. Fig. 16(a)
shows the reconstructed image when using only one transmit-
ting antenna. An indication of the copper film inclusion can be
seen in the middle of the image. The dashed line indicates the
boundary of the sample. The image also shows a strong spec-
ular reflection from its left edge, which is closest edge to the
transmitter. The choice of irradiating antenna and its radiation
pattern on the target affects the fidelity of the obtained image.
Non-uniform illuminations and specular reflections may cause
some areas of the target not to be illuminated properly. This
problem is alleviated to some extent by using multiple transmit-
ters. Fig. 16(b) shows the reconstructed image the sample when
illuminated using four transmitting antennas from the four cor-
ners of the microwave camera as shown in Fig. 15(c). In this
image, the sample is more uniformly illuminated and thus its
image represents its shape and reflection properties to a better
extent than the case of single antenna illumination, case in point
that the balsa wood is a weak scatterer and the copper inclusion
is a strong scatterer. Mono-static mode, in which each element
is used as transmitter and receiver, is expected to produce higher
quality images since the target is illuminated from various an-
gles which greatly reduced distortions due to specular reflec-
tions [8].
2) Through-Transmission Mode: In through-transmission
mode, the camera is placed in front of a transmitting antenna
and the object is placed in between the transmitter and receiver.
Usually, a small transmitter antenna is used to create a fairly
broad pattern, such that the object and the retina will be some-
what uniformly illuminated. A reference image without the
presence of the target is needed to correct for the variation in
the pattern of the transmitter antenna [17]. Fig. 17(a) shows
the camera operation in the through transmission mode. In
this case, the transmitter is a K-band open-ended rectangular
waveguide antenna, and the target is a two layer balsa wood
1123
Fig. 16. SAR image of the balsa wood sample with copper inclusion in reflec-
tion mode: (a) using a single transmitter, and (b) using 4 transmitters.
Fig. 17. Imaging in through transmission mode of a balsa wood sample with a
small rubber inclusion: (a) setup, and (b) SAR image.
composite with a small rubber inclusion. The images on the PC
monitor show the raw magnitude, the raw phase and the SAR
images obtained in real-time. Fig. 17(b) shows the SAR of this
sample, clearly showing the rubber inclusion and the effect of
the user’s hand holding the sample from the bottom corner and
top left side. In this configuration, the target either attenuates,
or re-scatters the microwave energy towards the retina, and for
this reason the rubber inclusion and the edges of the sample
are clearly seen in the focused image while the majority of the
low permittivity balsa wood is seen transparent to microwave
energy.
IV. SUMMARY
This paper presented design and performance of a portable
mm microwave camera operating at 24 GHz
based on an array of 576 switchable slot antennas and MST mea-
surement techniques. Several aspects of this design resulted in
substantially improving the overall system performance. Many
optimization challenges were overcome that resulted in an effi-
cient feed for the slots, practical slot addressing scheme, low-
loss waveguide collector network, and a custom-designed het-
erodyne receiver. Many elements of this design were founded
on extensive full-wave simulations and experimental verifica-
tion. The improved array element (resonant slot) and the signal
collection scheme, provide for stronger signals at the receiver
thus enhancing the overall SNR and correspondingly the dy-
namic range of the system.
As a microwave camera, this system enables real-time
imaging at a video frame rate of 22 frames per second and is
intended for real-time imaging applications. This frame rate
was made possible by the relatively high modulation rate of
1 MHz. The design of the heterodyne receiver allowed for
1124 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
optimizing the modulation rate for the specific frame rate and
dynamic range requirements.
This microwave camera produces SAR images focused at the
location of the object due to its accurate vector electric field
mapping. In the through-transmission mode, the produced im-
ages were of high fidelity despite the relatively long operating
wavelength. The design of this camera does not accommodate
a desirable true mono-static reflection mode imaging. Utilizing
simple transmitters placed around the camera, helped in pro-
ducing images of simple structures in the reflection mode. How-
ever, specular reflection and non-uniform illumination prohib-
ited the formation of meaningful images of complex targets in
the reflection mode. A more practical one-sided system would
require sufficient number of transmitters, or a suitably designed
transmitting antenna, to illuminate the target uniformly from
various angles. A short video demonstrating the functionality
of this camera is available at [27].
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Mohammad Tayeb Ghasr (S’01–M’10) received
the B.S. degree in electrical engineering degree
(magna cum laude) from the American University
of Sharjah (AUS), Sharjah, in 2002, the M.S. degree
in electrical engineering from the University of
Missouri-Rolla, Rolla, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from Missouri University
of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), MO, in
2009.
Currently, he is an Assistant Research Professor
with the Applied Microwave Nondestructive Testing
Laboratory (amntl), Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Missouri
University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). His research interests
include microwave and millimeter-wave instrumentation and measurement, RF
circuits, antennas, and numerical electromagnetic analysis.
Mohamed A. Abou-Khousa (S’02–M’09–SM’10)
was born in Al-Ain, UAE, in 1980. He received the
B.S.E.E. degree (magna cum laude) from the Amer-
ican University of Sharjah (AUS), Sharjah, UAE, in
2003, the M.S.E.E. degree from Concordia Univer-
sity, Montreal, QC, Canada in 2004, and the Ph.D.
degree in electrical engineering from Missouri Uni-
versity of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T),
MO, in 2009.
Currently, he is a Research Scientist with the
Imaging Research Labaratories at Robarts Research
Institute, London, Ontario, Canada. Prior to his current position, he was RF
research Engineer at Robarts. His efforts at Robarts are focused on developing
RF hardware and system-level solutions to improve the performance of the
high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. His research interests
include high count RF coil array design, millimeter wave and microwave
instrumentation, numerical electromagnetic analysis, modulated antennas, and
subsurface imaging.
GHASR et al.: PORTABLE REAL-TIME MICROWAVE CAMERA AT 24 GHz
Sergey Kharkovsky (M’01–SM’03–F’11) re-
ceived the Diploma in electronics engineering from
Kharkov National University of Radioelectronics,
Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1975, and the Ph.D. and D.Sc.
degrees in radiophysics from the Kharkov State
University, Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1985, and from the
Institute of Radio-Physics and Electronics (IRE) of
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in 1994,
respectively.
Currently he is an Associate Professor in the Civ-
ionics Research Centre, School of Engineering at the
University of Western Sydney (UWS), Australia. Prior to joining UWS in July
2011 he was a Member of the Research Staff at IRE from 1975 to 1998, a Pro-
fessor in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at the Cukurova
University, Adana, Turkey, from December 1998 to February 2003, and a Re-
search Associate Professor in the Applied Microwave Nondestructive Labora-
tory (amntl), the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Missouri
University of Science and Technology, formerly University of Missouri-Rolla,
from March 2003 to June 2011. His current research interest is microwave and
millimeter wave physics and techniques, sensor technologies, imaging, material
characterization and nondestructive evaluation of composite structures.
Dr. Kharkovsky is a member of the American Society of Nondestructive
Testing (ASNT) and the ASNT University Programs Award Committee, and
an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND
MEASUREMENT.
R. Zoughi (S’85–M’86–SM’93–F’06) received the
B.S.E.E, M.S.E.E, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical en-
gineering (radar remote sensing, radar systems, and
microwaves) from the University of Kansas where
from 1981 until 1987 he was at the Radar Systems
and Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL).
Currently he is the Schlumberger Endowed
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Missouri University of Science and Technology
(Missouri S&T), formerly University of Mis-
souri-Rolla (UMR). Prior to joining Missouri S&T
in January 2001 and since 1987 he was with the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Department at Colorado State University (CSU), where he was
1125
a professor and established the Applied Microwave Nondestructive Testing
Laboratory (amntl). He held the position of Business Challenge Endowed
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1995 to 1997 while at
CSU. He is the author of a textbook entitled Microwave Nondestructive Testing
and Evaluation Principles (Kluwer, 2000), and the coauthor with A. Bahr,
and N. Qaddoumi of a chapter on Microwave Techniques in an undergraduate
introductory textbook entitled Nondestructive Evaluation: Theory, Techniques,
and Applications edited by P.J. Shull (Marcel and Dekker, Inc., 2002). He
is the coauthor of over 110 journal papers, 260 conference proceedings and
presentations and 90 technical reports. He has ten patents to his credit all in the
field of microwave nondestructive testing and evaluation.
Dr. Zoughi is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT. He is serving his second term
as an at-large AdCom member of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement
(I&M) Society and also serves as the society’s VP of Education. He is also
an IEEE I&M Society Distinguished Lecturer. He has been the recipient of
numerous teaching awards both at CSU and Missouri S&T. He is the recipient
of the 2007 IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Distinguished
Service Award, the 2009 American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT)
Research Award for Sustained Excellence Award and the 2011 IEEE Joseph F.
Keithley Award in Instrumentation and Measurement. He is also a Fellow of
the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.
David Pommerenke (M’98–SM’03) received the
Diploma in electrical engineering and the Ph.D.
degree in transient fields of electrostatic discharge
from the Technical University of Berlin, Berlin,
Germany, in 1989 and 1995, respectively.
After working at Hewlett Packard for five
years he joined the Electromagnetic Compatibility
(EMC) Laboratory at the University Missouri-Rolla
(currently Missouri University of Science and Tech-
nology) in 2001 where he is a Professor in electrical
engineering. He has published more than 100 papers
and is inventor on 10 patents. He has been distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE
EMC Society in 06/07. His main research interests are system level ESD,
numerical simulations, EMC measurement methods and instrumentations.
1126 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Is Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) Based Radio

Communication an Unexploited Area?
Ove Edfors, Member, IEEE, and Anders J. Johansson, Member, IEEE

Abstract—We compare the technique of using the orbital an-

gular momentum (OAM) of radio waves for generating multiple
channels in a radio communication scenario with traditional
multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) communication methods. We
demonstrate that, for certain array configurations in free space,
traditional MIMO theory leads to eigen-modes identical to the
OAM states. From this we conclude that communicating over
the sub-channels given by OAM states is a subset of the solutions
offered by MIMO, and therefore does not offer any additional
gains in capacity.
Index Terms—Antenna arrays, antenna radiation patterns,
channel capacity, free-space propagation, MIMO, orbital angular
momentum, radio communication.

Fig. 1. Illustration of the creation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser beams from

I. INTRODUCTION planar laser beams by using transparent spiral phase plates introducing a linear
phase delay with azimuthal angle. OAM state implies a phase delay over

I T WAS RECENTLY shown that the photon orbital angular

momentum (OAM) can be used in the low frequency radio
domain and is not restricted to the optical frequency range [1].
one revolution. Three different phase plates are illustrated in gray, for OAM
state 0, 1 and 2. The colored surfaces are contour surfaces indicating where the
phase of the laser beams is zero.

These findings and the claimed prospects for opening a new
frontier in wireless communications, with “promise for the de-
velopment of novel information-rich radar and wireless com-
munication concepts and methodologies” [1], motivates the in-
vestigation in this paper.
Here we focus on the wireless communication aspects of
[1] and the follow-up paper [2]. We start by identifying the
conditions under which electromagnetic waves with specific
OAM characteristics1 are generated in [1], [2] and continue by
comparing with properties of traditional communication using
multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) antenna systems [5]–[7]. We
pay special attention to the singular value decomposition (SVD)
based derivation of channel capacity for MIMO systems [8],
when applied to MIMO systems under free-space propagation
conditions. Spatial multiplexing under free-space conditions
may seem like a contradiction, but this very concept has been
investigated in various forms for almost a decade [9]–[12].
When restricting ourselves to using circular antenna arrays, the
SVD-based analysis in combination with properties of circulant
Manuscript received February 24, 2011; revised May 26, 2011; accepted July
15, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical and Information Tech-
nology, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden (e-mail: ove.edfors@eit.lth.se;
ajn@es.lth.se).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173142
1These radio waves with specific OAM characteristics are often called
“twisted radio beams” [3], [4] in popular science contexts.
matrices [13], [14] can deliver the same beam-forming and the
same OAM properties as in [1], [2]. The beam forming process
for all eigenmodes/OAM states can be performed by a discrete
Fourier transform (DFT) [15], which was also observed in [1].
The analysis also reveals that the eigenmodes of the resulting
MIMO system are not necessarily unique, making OAM radio
communication a sub-class of traditional MIMO communi-
cation with circular antenna arrays. Finally, we conclude the
analysis by comparing the channel capacity of OAM-based
communication, resulting from MIMO with circular antenna
arrays, with known limits on the capacity of MIMO commu-
nication [7]. This shows that OAM based communication can
achieve nearly optimal capacity gain, as predicted by MIMO
theory, when the antenna arrays are closely spaced compared
to the Rayleigh distance.
II. SHORT REVIEW OF RADIO OAM
Radio OAM can be seen as a development of techniques
used in laser optics, where Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) mode laser
beams are created using spiral phase plates [16]. The phase
fronts of the created LG beams are helical in the sense that the
phase front varies linearly with azimuthal angle, as illustrated
in Fig. 1.
As a means of creating radio waves with OAM properties the
authors of [1] and [2] use antenna arrays consisting of concen-
tric uniform circular arrays (UCAs). The antenna elements in
the UCAs are fed with the same input signal, but with a succes-
sive delay from element to element such that after a full turn the
phase has been incremented by a an integer multiple of .
The basic principle of one of these UCAs is shown in Fig. 2.

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

EDFORS AND JOHANSSON: IS ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM (OAM) BASED RADIO COMMUNICATION AN UNEXPLOITED AREA? 1127

where and are unitary ma-

trices containing the left and right singular vectors of , re-
spectively, while is a diagonal matrix with the
positive singular values , in decreasing order, on
its diagonal, and is the rank of . The
left and right singular vectors in and are obtained from
the eigen-decompositions of the Hermitian matrices and
, respectively, while the singular values along the diag-
onal in are the square roots of the corresponding eigenvalues
( and share the same set of positive eigenvalues).
From a capacity point of view, nothing is changed if we per-
form pre-processing to obtain our transmitted vector with the
unitary matrix , and post-processing of our received vector
Fig. 2. Eight-element UCA with phase rotation on element to ap-
proximate OAM state .
with the unitary matrix . To describe the pre- and post-pro-
cessing, we use the notation
In [1] they calculate the far-field intensity patterns using NEC2 (3)
[17] and conclude that the results are very similar to those ob- (4)
tained in paraxial optics. It is also pointed out that the different
OAM states in a beam can be decomposed by integrating the The pre- and post-processing operations above can also be seen
complex field vector weighted with along a circle as receiver- and transmitter-side beam-forming, where the left
around the beam axis. In practice there will be a finite number of and right singular vectors of the channel matrix are used as
antennas in an UCA measuring the field and the integration op- steering vectors. Performing these operations on the original
eration is approximated by a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) MIMO system (1) gives us an equivalent system
of the field in the antenna positions (or the antenna outputs). In (5)
[1] it is also concluded that with a limited number of antennas, (6)
, there is an upper limit on the largest OAM number that
can be resolved, namely . where we, in the last step, use the SVD in (2) and denote the
Before we investigate these array design strategies for ap- noise by . Since is unitary, the new noise vector
proximating beams with certain OAM states and apply standard has the same distribution as itself, i.e., .
MIMO theory to the resulting systems, let us briefly review the The corresponding capacity for known channel at the
basics of narrow-band MIMO systems. transmitter becomes
Narrow-band MIMO systems have been addressed in
numerous publications during the last decade and a stan- (7)
dard formulation of the input/output relationship in complex
base-band notation is where all the available power is distributed across the chan-
nels, according to the water-filling principle, such that
(1)
(8)
where is the vector of inputs, the
vector of outputs, the MIMO channel
matrix, and the vector of additive receiver noise. In III. CAPACITY OF FREE SPACE MIMO SYSTEMS
many cases is assumed to be random, e.g., in wireless MIMO
To be able to compare free space MIMO systems against each
communication scenarios with relative movements in the prop-
other we need the channel matrix in (1) for a given config-
agation environment. Here we assume that is both known
uration of the antenna arrays and a measure which quantifies
and has specific properties. The additive noise is assumed
the performance of a particular configuration. We will use the
to be a vector of independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.)
channel capacity of the MIMO system, relative to the capacity
zero-mean, circularly symmetric, complex Gaussian noise com-
of a single-in-single-out (SISO) system, operating at the same
ponents such that , where is the noise
antenna separation and using the same total transmit power. We
variance on each receiver branch and is the
call this the capacity gain of the MIMO system over a SISO
identity matrix.
system.
The channel capacity of the MIMO system above has been
known for a long time, for both known and unknown channel at A. Channel Matrices in Free Space
the transmitter side. We will review a technique here to derive
Given the distance between a pair of antenna elements in
the capacity of the system, first introduced by Telatar [8], which
free space, we denote the (narrow band) transfer function from
is essential to the analysis in the rest of the paper. We use the
transmit antenna input to receive antenna output as
singular value decomposition (SVD) of the channel matrix
(9)
(2)
1128 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
where the free space loss is given by , the additional
phase rotation due to propagation distance is introduced by the
complex exponential term, denotes the wavelength of the used
carrier frequency, and contains all relevant constants such as
attenuation and phase rotation caused by antennas and their pat-
terns on both sides.
For the above model to be relevant in our analysis of antenna
arrays, we assume that all antenna elements (in each array) are
equal and that the propagation distance is large enough to
provide:
• a valid far-field assumption between any pair of transmit/
receive antenna elements, and
• relative array sizes (diameters) small enough to assume
that the antenna diagrams are constant over the directions
of departure/directions of arrival involved.
The first of these requirements essentially says that the free-
space loss formula should be valid, while the second one im-
plies that the antenna diagrams of the used antenna elements
should be smooth enough in the direction of the opposing array
to allow them to be approximated well by a constant (included
in above). These requirements are not strictly necessary for
the analysis, but greatly simplifies the expressions.
Given that we have an MIMO system, where
is the distance between receive antenna element
and transmit antenna element , the channel matrix becomes
.. .. .. .. (10)
. . . .
where
(11)
is given by (9).
B. Capacity Gain
In the rest of the paper we will use a relative capacity mea-
sure to evaluate the gain of applying MIMO instead of SISO
communication. We assume that we have equal transmitters and
receivers for both systems, with the same antennas and equal
receiver noise figures. The SISO system uses a single trans-
mitter-receiver pair, while the MIMO system uses multiple units
on each side.
As a basis for the capacity gain, we assume that our SISO
system needs a certain transmit power to achieve a certain
SNR on the receiver side. The required transmit power can be
calculated using a simple link budget. By using the propagation
loss as given by (9), the required transmit power becomes
(12)
where is the receiver noise variance and is the distance
between the transmitting and receiving antenna. This choice of
transmit power gives a reference SISO channel capacity of
(13)
Fig. 3. Distance between two antenna elements on concentric circles with
radii and , respectively, placed on a common beam axis at a distance
from each other. The angle between first elements in the two arrays is denoted
.
We now evaluate the capacity of the studied MIMO system
for the same transmit power, , and compare
their channel capacities. We define the MIMO capacity gain as
(14)
where is the channel capacity for the studied
MIMO system for known channel at the transmitter, i.e., where
is given by in (7).
Following the analysis in [7], the capacity gain of any MIMO
system is limited by the number of antennas at each side as
.
Having established our metric for comparing the merits of
different MIMO systems, we move on to the specific antenna
array geometries addressed in this paper.
IV. CIRCULAR ARRAYS ON THE SAME BEAM AXIS
IN FREE SPACE
The basic system configuration described in [1] concerns an-
tenna arrays with one or more concentric UCAs used to create
electric fields with different OAM states. Here we focus on
the simplest MIMO system using such antenna structures; two
UCAs facing each other on the same beam axis at a distance
. One is the transmitting array and one is the receiving array,
as illustrated in Fig. 3, where the dots indicate antenna element
positions. The distance between arbitrary points on the two con-
centric circles, with radii and , on which the antenna
elements are placed, with an angle between the points is
(15)
Assuming evenly distributed antennas on the first circle
and evenly distributed antennas on the second circle,
neighboring antenna elements on the two circles are
(16)
radians apart, respectively.
Without loss of generality, we can assume that the first an-
tenna element on the first circle is placed at zero radians, while
the first antenna element on the second circle is placed at an
angle . By changing the value on we can obtain all possible
EDFORS AND JOHANSSON: IS ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM (OAM) BASED RADIO COMMUNICATION AN UNEXPLOITED AREA? 1129

relative rotations between the two antenna arrays. Using the an- where is a diagonal matrix, with unit magnitude complex
gles between two elements on each array as described in (16), numbers as diagonal elements, used to rotate the complex eigen-
while introducing a relative array rotation , the angle between values into singular values on the positive real axis. If is the
transmit element and receive element becomes th eigenvalue (diagonal element) in , the th diagonal ele-
ment of is . By observing that both transmit-
(17) and receive-side beam-formers, (3) and (4), are given by the
rearranged DFT in (23), we have verified that the linear phase
where and . rotations across UCAs proposed in [1] and [2] to approximate
If the distance and the array radii and are given, OAM states in radio beams coincide with the eigen-modes de-
the distance between elements in the two arrays can be ex- rived with standard MIMO theory for our free-space scenario.3
pressed as, substituting (17) in (15), The circulant property also helps us in the calculation of sin-
gular values of the channel matrix, which are the magnitude of
(18) the DFT of the first column of , sorted in decreasing order.
An important observation at this stage is that for the same
number of antennas on both sides, the el- V. WAVE FRONT PROPERTIES AND CHANNEL CAPACITY
ement-to-element distances only depend on the dif- After verifying that the free-space MIMO model gives the
ference . This relation holds for all array same beam-forming vectors as the ones proposed in [1], we also
separations , array radii and , and angles between want to verify the phase properties of the wave front as predicted
first elements. by this model. Using the steering vectors in (3), with ,
Assuming that the antenna elements of both arrays are co-po- we can calculate the received signal in a point in space as
larized,2 we use the distances between transmit and receive an-
tenna elements (18) and the free space transfer function (9), to (27)
express the elements of the MIMO channel matrix (10) as
where is the channel matrix from the transmitter array ele-
(19) ments to a single receiving antenna element in the investigated
For the same number of antennas on both point in space, using (9), and is a vector with a single one in
sides the matrix becomes circulant [13], since its elements the position corresponding to the th OAM state. In Fig. 4 we
inherit the property that only depends on the dif- show the resulting phase plots for an 8-element transmit array.
ference , through (19). This implies that The phase plots are calculated for three different distances, 1/4,
the channel matrix is diagonalized by the unitary DFT 4 and 400 times the Rayleigh distance for the entire antenna ar-
matrix rays4

(20) (28)
with entries where the aperture is set to the transmit UCA diameter
. The plot shows that we do not have very clean helical
(21)
phases below the Rayleigh distance, but the gains of several of
the OAM states makes them useful for communication. When
With this notation we can write the eigen-decomposition as
the distance increases above the Rayleigh distance, we observe
(22) much cleaner helical phases, but the normalized gains of all
non-zero OAM states fall rapidly, since the rank of the channel
where contains the eigenvalues of the channel matrix. To matrix approaches one. This makes all but the zeroth OAM
change this into an SVD, where the singular values are real, state essentially useless at these distances for communication
non-negative, and sorted in decreasing order, we first modify the at realistic SNRs. Several of the OAM states at
eigen-decomposition by rearranging the order of the eigen-vec- are so weak that we can clearly observe numerical problems in
tors so that the eigenvalues are sorted according to decreasing the plots.
magnitude. Denote this sorted eigen-decomposition We have verified that our simple MIMO model generates the
helical wave fronts expected in OAM, but at the same time, the
(23) pure OAM states are not necessarily unique in the sense that
With this notation, the matrices in the SVD of the channel matrix they provide the only set of eigenmodes for the channel. In the
(2) can be expressed: 3It can also be shown that if the number of antenna elements on one side is
an integer multiple of the number of antennas on the other side, the resulting
(24) channel matrix becomes rectangular circulant [14] and the matrix containing
the singular vectors corresponding to the side with fewer elements is a DFT
(25) matrix. The singular vectors on the other side, however, do not form a DFT
(26) matrix but can be described in closed form with harmonic functions.
4While the antenna arrays may be closer than the (array) Rayleigh distance,
2Here
we focus on a single polarization while, in principle, two independent any pair of transmit/receive antenna elements of the arrays are considered to be
MIMO systems can be achieved if we exploit both polarization states. at far field distances from each other.
1130 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. Phase plots at three different distances from an 8-element UCA with
radius of . The DFT is used as transmit beam-former and phase
plots are shown for distances of 1/4, 4 and 400 times the Rayleigh distance
. Phase is coded as shades of gray, from black to white representing the
range , and the phase plots are sorted in order of gain (singular value).
Normalized gains are shown below each phase plot and the plot area is
. Rayleigh distance. To investigate this further, we calculate the
example provided in Fig. 4, there are singular values with mul-
tiplicity two, which leads to non-unique singular vectors. The
non-uniqueness is illustrated by the phase plots in Fig. 5 for the
same setup as in Fig. 4, but a numerical SVD is performed to
obtain the eigenmodes rather than using the closed form expres-
sions. Two of the eigenmodes (singular values of multiplicity
one) coincide with OAM states 0 and 4 for in
Fig. 4, while the other six display quite different characteristics
(singular values with multiplicity 2). The set of singular values
are the same for both cases, making them equivalent from a
communication point of view.
When calculating the phase diagrams above, we notice
that higher order OAM states become very weak beyond the
Fig. 5. Phase plots from an 8-element UCA with radius of .
A numerical SVD is performed of the channel, the right singular vectors are
used as beam-formers and phase plots are shown for the distance 400 times the
Rayleigh distance . Phase is coded as shades of gray, from black
to white representing the range , and the phase plots are sorted in order
of gain (singular value). Normalized gains are shown below each phase plot and
the plot area is .
Fig. 6. Capacity gain over single antenna (SISO) system at at UCA sizes 4 4,
8 8, and 16 16, at an SNR of 30 dB. Curves are calculated for array radii
100 and array separation distances from 10 times below to 1000 times above
the Rayleigh distance (20.0000 ).
channel capacity gain, as defined in (14), for three different
configurations with 4 4, 8 8, and 16 16 antenna elements,
at a per-receiver branch SNR of 30 dB. The channel capacity
for the MIMO configurations is maximized over all relative
rotations of the two arrays. The results are shown in Fig. 6.
We can see that in all three cases the capacity gain achieved
by using OAM-based MIMO communication almost reach
the theoretical maximum [7] of 4, 8, and 16 times that of a
SISO system below the Rayleigh distance, while performance
degrades considerably at larger distances. At 1000 times the
Rayleigh distance only one eigen-mode (OAM state 0) is useful
for communication and the only gain available is the the array
gain. This behavior can also be understood from the radiation
patterns displayed in [1] and [2], where all but OAM state 0
have a null in the forward direction.
EDFORS AND JOHANSSON: IS ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM (OAM) BASED RADIO COMMUNICATION AN UNEXPLOITED AREA?
VI. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In the investigation above, we have shown that OAM-based
radio communication, as proposed in [1], can be obtained from
standard MIMO theory, under certain conditions. Inspired by
the discussion in [1], we made a system design with UCAs
facing each other on the same beam axis in free space, which
leads to circulant channel matrices, for all numbers of antenna
elements (same number on both sides), all antenna radii (can be
different at both ends), and all relative rotations of the arrays.
Such matrices are diagonalized by the DFT, which means that
the OAM states presented in [1] are one, not necessarily unique,
set of eigen-modes of these channels.
In our evaluation of the expected performance of such sys-
tems we showed that well above the Rayleigh distance there is
a single dominant eigen-mode/OAM state. This leads to only a
small capacity gain over a SISO system, essentially due to the
array gain. No multiplexing gain is achieved since only one of
the modes will carry information at realistic SNRs. Well below
the Rayleigh distance, the investigated systems almost achieve
the maximum capacity gains predicted by MIMO theory when
using the OAM based eigenmodes of the channels. This means
that the system based on UCAs is a relatively good choice in free
space, since there is very little extra gain to achieve with other
array geometries. The helical phase of the OAM states remain
coherent over vast distances, but the amount of energy that can
be received beyond the Rayleigh distance with a limited-size
array decays rapidly, as compared to free space attenuation, for
all but OAM state 0. Since the Rayleigh distance increases with
array radius and frequency, the distances at which we have a
multiplexing gain can be increased with larger array radii or a
move to higher frequencies. One application example would be
to use the sub-millimeter range of wavelengths, where planar
UCAs of reasonable size can be integrated into, e.g., wallpaper
and used to provide short-range high data-rate links based on
spatial multiplexing under free-space conditions in indoor envi-
ronments.
Since transmitter and receiver beam-forming can be done
with the DFT, OAM based communication between UCAs in
free space has a potential to deliver high performance at short
distances with a low computational complexity, when fast trans-
forms are used. It is, however, only under very specific condi-
tions that OAM based communication provides an optimal so-
lution. The traditional and more general MIMO communication
concept can handle all array geometries and propagation envi-
ronments, including those where OAM based communication is
optimal.
Our main conclusion is that exploiting OAM states does
not bring anything conceptually new to the area of radio
communications. It is well covered by traditional MIMO com-
munication, using channel eigen-modes for transmission, in
the sense that OAM states of radio waves will be automatically
exploited whenever the array configurations and propagation
environments call for it.
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Ove Edfors (M’00) received the M.Sc. degree in
computer science and electrical engineering in 1990
and the Ph.D. degree in signal processing in 1996,
both from Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.
In the spring of 1997, he worked as a researcher at
the Division of Signal Processing at the same univer-
sity, and in July 1997, he joined the staff at the De-
partment of Electrical and Information Technology,
Lund University, Sweden, where he has been a Pro-
fessor of radio systems since 2002. His research in-
terests include radio systems, statistical signal pro-
cessing and low-complexity algorithms with applications in telecommunication.
Anders J. Johansson (M’03) received the Masters,
Lic.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
from Lund University, Lund, Sweden, in 1993, 2000,
and 2004, respectively.
From 1994 to 1997, he was with Ericsson Mobile
Communications AB developing transceivers and an-
tennas for mobile phones. Since 2005, he has been
an Associate Professor in the Department of Elec-
trical and Information Technology, Lund University,
Sweden. His research interests include antennas and
wave propagation for medical implants as well as an-
tenna systems and propagation modeling for MIMO systems. He is involved as
one of the researchers in the NeuroNano Research Center at Lund University,
which is a interdisciplinary research initiative, and where he is responsible for
the development of the telemetry part of the project.
1132 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Communications
A Circularly Polarized Ring-Antenna Fed by a Serially
Coupled Square Slot-Ring
The-Nan Chang, Jyun-Ming Lin, and Y. G. Chen

Abstract—An aperture-coupled ring-antenna is presented in this com-

munication. The antenna is fed by a microstrip line through a unique aper-
ture configuration. The aperture contains a square slot ring with four short
branch slots protruding toward the center of the ring. It is studied that
axial-ratio and return-loss bandwidths of 8.7% centered at 2.53 GHz can be
achieved. Within 2.42 GHz–2.64 GHz, the gains are all greater than 7 dBic.
Index Terms—Circular polarization, slot.

Fig. 1. An overview of the ring-antenna excited by a coupling ring-slot.

I. INTRODUCTION

An antenna is inseparable from a transmission line. If an antenna
matches well with a transmission line, it can radiate more efficiently.
Various methods have been devised to physically connect or electrically
couple a transmission line to an antenna. The microstrip patch and the
ring-antenna are two frequently used antennas. To excite a patch, we
can use a coaxial cable or a microstrip line to directly connect to the
microstrip patch antenna. The microstrip line can also be coupled to
the patch antenna through a slot [1] or a cross-slot [2]–[4] depending
on whether a linearly polarized or a circularly polarized wave will be
generated. In [2], a parallel feed configuration which contains several
Wilkinson’s power dividers to accurately control the amplitude and
phase of the coupling slots is demonstrated. In [3], a serial feed config-
uration which uses an open-ended microstrip line to sequentially excite
the coupling slots is presented. In [4], an antenna array with cross-slot
coupled elements is reported by Chang etc. To excite a ring-antenna,
the direct connecting method is seldom used as it is hard to match
to a 50
system [5]. In [6], an open-ended microstripline is bent in
U-shape to proximity couple to a square ring-antenna. The achieved
axial-ratio bandwidth is about 1.3%. In [7], the microstripline is cou-
pled to a square ring-antenna with an embedded small square patch.
The achieved axial ratio bandwidth is only 0.03%.
In this communication, a simple idea to design CP antenna using
coupled slot-ring to a ring-antenna is presented. One advantage of the
ring-antenna is that it occupies less space in comparison with a patch
when both resonate at the same frequency. Though different methods
to excite the ring have been investigated in [5], none of them can be
directly applied to generate circularly polarized waves. On the other
hand, the method proposed in [6] and [7] can generate only very narrow
axial-ratio bandwidth for circularly polarized waves. It is also of in-
terest to note that the usual cross-slot aperture-coupled method ap-
plied to the patch antenna was not considered to excite the ring-an-
tenna in [5] or in any other papers. In [8], a square ring-slot aper-
ture-coupled method has been presented. But, it was used to realize
Manuscript received January 31, 2011; revised June 11, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 17, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Tatung Univer-
sity, Taipei, Taiwan 104 (e-mail: tnchang@ttu.edu.tw; uart3000@gmail.com;
lichfinix@hotmail.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173138
a circularly polarized 2 2 2 patch array. In [9], a ring-antenna is aper-
ture-coupled through three slots by Chang etc. However, the ring-an-
tenna aperture-coupled by a ring-slot has not been thoroughly inves-
tigated. In this communication, we integrate the ring-antenna with a
modified square ring-slot to generate circularly polarized waves. The
modification is through adding four branch slots to the square ring-slot.
The four branch slots are placed inside the square ring-slot. Therefore,
both the ring-slot and the ring-antenna can be kept compact.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION AND ANALYSIS
Fig. 1 depicts the geometry of a ring-antenna. The metal ring-an-
tenna is attached on the topside of two distinct stacked layers. The first
layer is 13 mm foam which has a relative dielectric constant close to
1. The second layer is a 0.8 mm thickness FR4 substrate. It should be
pointed out that the use of a thicker air layer may enlarge the size of the
square ring compared with the use of a thinner FR4 substrate. However,
considerable enhancement in gain can be achieved through the use of
an air layer. It also enhances the return-loss and axial-ratio bandwidths.
The feed network consists of a square slot-ring with four inward branch
slots on the top surface of the FR4 substrate. Below it, there is a mi-
crostrip line.
Since a metal ring instead of a patch is used as the antenna. The
antenna size can be reduced. In [3], a patch with physical dimensions
45 mm by 45 mm is required to radiate at a center frequency of 2.4 GHz.
The patch is coupled by an on-FR4 microstrip line through a cross slot.
Each side length of the cross slot is 28.55 mm.
In our structure, the ring-antenna is with an outer side length of
Ro = 35 mm and with an inner side length of Ri = 24 mm. We
will show that the ring-antenna along with a novel coupling configura-
tion can not only reduce the size of the antenna but also largely enhance
the axial-ratio and return-loss bandwidths of the antenna. Detailed cou-
pling configuration is shown in Fig. 2.
The design starts with replacing the patch of [3] by a ring-antenna. In
[3], the microstrip line is associated with a cross slot. The cross slot in
[3] is placed close to the central area of a patch. Since there is no metal
in most central area in a ring-antenna, the cross slot is better replaced
by a ring-slot. To strengthen our idea, the ring-slot is stacked to the
ring-antenna. In Fig. 2, the outline of the ring-slot is completely within
the ring-antenna while viewing downward along the z axis. By this
way, the size of the rectangular ring-slot is compatible to the size of the

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1133

Fig. 2. Details to show (a) the relative positions between the patch, the slot and
the feed line (b) the relative positions between the slot and the feed line.

ring-antenna. The outer side-length of the ring-slot is s W = 33 mm

,
which is 1 mm smaller than the outer side-length of the ring-antenna. In

T = 0 9 mm
Fig. 2, the optimized widths of the square slot-ring and the four branch

L = 12 mm
slots are all equal to s : . The optimized four branch slots
are of equal length of s .
Like the conventional structure of [3], a microstrip line running
under the new slot configuration is required. The four extended short
slots are arranged to be sequentially excited by the microstrip line.
It is investigated that the new coupling method can also effectively
generate rotation of current along the surface of the metal ring-antenna
resulting in a left-hand circularly polarized wave. If the microstrip
line traces counterclockwise inside the slot-ring, i.e. symmetrically
with respect to the center vertical line in Fig. 2(b), the antenna would

F = 1 5 mm
produce a right-hand CP radiation. The width of the microstrip line

L
is w : . The microstrip line is open ended, where an open
stub length is denoted by os . The length of the open stub is crucial Fig. 3. The effect of the stub length on the (a) return-loss, (b) axial-ratio, and
to affect the antenna’s performances. Fig. 3 shows the tuning effect (c) gain of the antenna.

L = 15 47 mm
by varying Los while other parameters are listed in Table I. When
os : , it is seen that the simulated 10 dB return-loss
TABLE I
bandwidth covers from 2.27 to 2.61 GHz, or 13% centered at 2.44 MAIN GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS USED IN THE PROPOSED ANTENNA
GHz. Within this bandwidth, the simulated 3 dB axial-ratio bandwidth
is limited from 2.42 to 2.64 GHz, or 8.7% centered at 2.53 GHz. It is
also seen that the simulated gains are all greater than 7 dBic within the
overlapped bandwidth. If the foam is replaced by 1.6 mm thickness
FR4 substrate, the gain is dropped to 2 dBi at 2.45 GHz; the CP
characteristic is completely destroyed.

T
The effect of tuning length and width of the branch slots (include
the width of the square-ring) on antenna’s return-loss and axial-ratio and decrease of s may even worsen the axial-ratio value in the

T
value is respectively shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5. In this simulation, all whole region.

L L T
parameters are taken from Table I except that s is fixed at 0.9 mm
while s is varied and s is fixed at 12 mm while s is varied. It is
III. EXPERIMENTS
shown that both parameters are crucial to promise for wide return-

L T
loss and axial-ratio bandwidths. If we focus on only the return-loss The test sample is fabricated with the main geometrical parameters
in Table I. It has a ground plane dimensioned with 90 2 90 mm. The
L
bandwidth, we can decrease either s or s from its optimum value.
However, decrease of s will narrow down the axial-ratio bandwidth simulated and measured return-loss, axial-ratio, and gain responses of
1134 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. The effect of the length (L ) of the branch slots on (a) return-loss and
(b) axial-ratio of the antenna.
Fig. 5. The effect of the width (T ) of the branch slots on (a) return-loss and
(b) axial-ratio of the antenna.
the antenna are shown in Fig. 6. The simulation is obtained by electro-
magnetic software of IE3D. The gain is denoted in unit of dBic which is
Fig. 6. The simulated and measured (a) return-loss, (b) axial-ratio, and (c) gain
responses of the antenna.
referred to an ideal isotropic circularly polarized antenna. The CP gain
can be measured by a partial gain method [4]. Since the return-loss
bandwidth is larger than the axial-ratio bandwidth, it is concluded that
the ring-antenna can effectively be excited by the present method to
yield an overlapped bandwidth around 8.7%. The measured XZ-and
YZ-plane radiation patterns at 2.5 GHz are shown in Fig. 7. The pat-
terns are measured by a spinning linear (or rotating source) method. In
this method, the axial-ratio value is the difference in dB between ad-
jacent ripples. It is shown in Fig. 7 that the ripples are less than 3 dB
within 630 from the boresight direction in either plane.
IV. CONCLUSION
Aperture coupling through a cross-slot is conventionally used to sep-
arate the microstrip line from the patch antenna. In this communication,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Measured radiation patterns of the antenna at 2.5 GHz.
the method is extended to excite a ring-antenna. A ring-slot instead of a
cross-slot as the coupling aperture is employed to cope with the shape
of the ring-antenna. It is investigated that the axial-ratio bandwidth is
8.7% which is wider than 4.6% in [3] of a conventional design. The
size of the proposed antenna is also smaller than the contrast one.
REFERENCES
[1] D. M. Pozar, “Microstrip patch antenna aperture-coupled to a mi-
crostripline,” Electron. Lett., vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 49–50, 1985.
[2] D. M. Pozar and S. M. Duffy, “A dual-band circularly polarized aper-
ture-coupled stacked microstrip antenna for global positioning satel-
lite,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 45, no. 11, pp. 1618–1625,
1997.
[3] H. Kim, B. M. Lee, and Y. J. Yoon, “A single-feeding circularly po-
larized microstrip antenna with the effect of hybrid feeding,” IEEE An-
tennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 2, pp. 74–77, Apr. 2003.
[4] K. H. Lu and T. N. Chang, “Circularly polarized array antenna,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 3288–3292, Oct. 2005.
[5] P. M. Bafrooei and L. Shafai, “Characteristics of single-and double-
layer microstrip square antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol.
47, no. 10, pp. 1633–1639, Oct. 1999.
[6] K.-F. Tong and J. Huang, “New proximity coupled feeding method
for reconfigurable circularly polarized microstrip ring antennas,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 1860–1866, Jul. 2008.
[7] H.-M. Chen, Y.-K. Wang, Y.-F. Lin, C.-Y. Lin, and S.-C. Pan,
“Microstrip-fed circularly polarized square-ring patch antenna for
GPS applications,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 4, pp.
1264–1267, Apr. 2009.
[8] R. Caso, A. Buffi, M. R. Pino, P. Nepa, and G. Manara, “A novel
dual-feed slot-coupling feeding technique for circularly polarized patch
arrays,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 9, pp. 183–186,
Apr. 2010.
[9] T. N. Chang and J.-M. Lin, “Serial aperture-coupled dual-band circu-
larly polarized antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 6,
pp. 2419–2423, Jun. 2011.
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1135
A Pseudo-Normal-Mode Helical Antenna for Use With
Deeply Implanted Wireless Sensors
Olive H. Murphy, Christopher N. McLeod,
Manoraj Navaratnarajah, Magdi Yacoub, and Christofer Toumazou
Abstract—A pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna as part of a deeply im-
planted wireless sensor was designed. Justification for using this type of
antenna along with simulation, in vitro and in vivo experimental results are
presented in this communication. The circumference of the helical coil is
0 43 (wavelength in-body) and its height is 0 23 which includes
substantial insulation. While losses from such a deeply implanted antenna
are inevitable, the work presented here shows accurate frequency tuning
can be achieved prior to implantation. The relative size, safety of use and
results presented here make this pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna an
excellent candidate for use with deeply implanted wireless sensors.
Index Terms—Biomedical applications of electromagnetic (EM) ra-
diation, biomedical telemetry, helical antennas, implantable biomedical
devices.
I. INTRODUCTION
The medical community has embraced the use of intelligent implants
and are utilizing the data that is gathered to promote early detection,
effective treatment and long term healthy living [1], [2]. There have
been many advances in various different aspects of health-care: car-
diac implants for the continuous monitoring of blood pressure [3], [4];
ocular implants for the restoration of sight [5] and treatment of disease
[6]; cochlear implants which have provided partial hearing [7] and the
use of swallowable devices for disease detection, imaging and drug de-
livery [8]–[10].
The methods of communicating with implanted devices vary de-
pending on: the architecture of the implant; the depth of implantation;
and the frequency of operation. Inductive telemetry has been used for
many years for powering pacemakers [11] and for data transmission to
and from implants [12], [13] but its use is limited by the size and quality
of the implanted coil and even at low frequencies (1 MHz) where the
near-field is large the depth of the implanted coil is limited to just a cen-
timeter [13]. Antennas for use with higher frequency telemetry have also
been developed. Planar loops, inverted F antennas, monopoles, dipoles,
spirals and meanders have all been investigated for use with deeply
implanted devices due to their low profile [14]–[18] and while planar an-
tennas are easy to tune, the achievable power transmission and radiation
efficiency are poor and few in vivo results have been provided [17]. It has
been shown that making a planar antenna multi-dimensional, by adding
volume, leads to higher gain [19]. A novel approach using pre-existing
vascular stents as antennas has been examined, but unfortunately in
vivo results are either not presented or those presented show relatively
good power transmission is achievable but from an non-vessel, shallow
implanted test site [20], [21]. While the stent-antenna uses pre-approved
bio-compatible materials it is still too long for use in certain vessels
and cannot be used in the chambers of the heart [21].
Manuscript received July 21, 2010; revised March 11, 2011; accepted July 02,
2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported by a Wellcome Trust Technology Transfer
Translation Award.
O. H. Murphy, C. N. McLeod and C. Toumazou are with the Centre for Bio-
Inspired Technology, Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ,
U.K. (e-mail: o.murphy@imperial.ac.uk).
M. Navaratnarajah and M. Yacoub are with the Heart Science Centre, Hare-
field Hospital, Harefield, Middlesex UB9 6JH, U.K.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173106
1136 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
This communication investigates the constraints when designing an
implanted antenna and suggests the use of a pseudo-normal-mode he-
lical antenna for use with a passive transponder in cavities deep within
the human body. The results concentrate on in vitro and in vivo mea-
surements which show the frequency response and transmission losses
incurred within the body, showing the importance of understanding the
modes of operation of the antenna within a complex multi-boundary
media such as the human body.
Section II will present the challenges of designing an antenna for use
within the human body and the reasons for choosing a normal-mode he-
lical antenna design in terms of its electrical size, its modes of operation
and the power absorption associated with it. Section III will present the
geometric design of the pseudo-normal mode helical antenna, while
Sections IV–VI will present the electromagnetic simulations, in vitro
and in vivo measurements, respectively.
II. DEEPLY IMPLANTED ANTENNAS
When designing an antenna for use deep within the human body
extra constraints exist in comparison to designing an antenna for use
in free space. Most important are (A) the limitations on the geometric
size of the antenna and (B) the strict regulations regarding the amount
of power absorption within the human body which is considered a lossy
multi-boundary media.
A. Electrically Small Antennas—Normal-Mode Helical
To fit an antenna within a vessel or cavity, whilst operating at high
frequencies results in electrically small antennas. Historically, work
has been carried out in a similarly lossy environment, the sea, when
designing antennas for submarine use [22]. It was found that electri-
cally small antennas in the form of a magnetic dipole within a loss-
less radome performed better than an electric dipole, due to the fact
that the magnetic properties of air and water were similar while the
electric conductivity differed largely, this is also the case within the
human body [23]. For simpler magnetic dipoles it has been shown there
was a direct proportionality between the radiation power factor and the
volume occupied by the antenna; therefore, extending a single loop to
multiple loops adds volume and increases the efficiency of the antenna
[24], [25]. Such a multiple loop antenna can also be referred to as a he-
lical antenna but it can no longer be considered a pure magnetic dipole.
Wheeler first described the normal-mode helical antenna (NMHA) as
a superposition of electric and magnetic dipoles to radiate a wave with
circular polarization [26]. Kraus later adopts and expands this theory to
provide the well documented foundations for NMHA operation [27],
[28]. It is this NMHA which is of particular interest as an implanted
antenna as it meets the criterion of size and is suitable for use within
an environment such as the human body.
B. Safety and Performance of a NMHA Antenna in the
Multi-Boundary Human Body
By analyzing the mechanisms of both the near and far field of elec-
trically small antennas it is possible to determine the performance and
safety of an implanted antenna. Normal-mode antennas do not have any
radiating near-field, just a reactive near-field which can occupy just a
few millimeters of the surrounding tissue [29]. The far-field radiation
extends through the remainder of the body and into free space [30].
Applying this analysis to implanted antennas is non-trivial but for-
tunately it has been shown that the well documented specific absorp-
tion rate (SAR) can be applied to both the near and far field [31]–[33].
In the body there is no magnetic field component as the permeability
of the tissue is similar to that of air; therefore all interactions occur
through mechanisms described by the electric field, including the cur-
rent induced by the magnetic field. With this in mind the electric field
induced by a particular antenna design is of significant interest [34].
For a NMHA, it can be seen that the short electric dipole has a normal
TABLE I
FREE-SPACE AND IN-BODY PARAMETERS
TABLE II
PSEUDO-NORMAL-MODE HELICAL ANTENNA GEOMETRY
electric field while the magnetic dipole, in the form of a small loop, has
a tangential electric field. This angle of incidence is of considerable in-
terest when the antenna is implanted and surrounded by insulation and
tissue of different permittivity [35], [36].
6
The human body consists of many interfaces between tissues of dif-
ferent conductivity and permittivities and if 1 1 = 2 2 for two dif-
ferent media, the interface is charged at a rate which is proportional to
the difference in the current densities in the media. If the electric field
is tangential to the interface, no interfacial dispersion is observed [37].
Therefore to reduce the amount of absorbed power the implanted an-
tenna should approach the characteristics of a magnetic dipole; how-
ever as shown, the better performing NMHA with circular polariza-
tion consists of both electric and magnetic dipoles and it is clear that a
compromise between radiation efficiency and absorption loss is neces-
sary. It has already been proved using theoretically implanted helical
antennas (in an air capsule) at multiple frequencies that power levels
lower than 36 mW and 11 mW meet ICNIRP and IEEE safety stan-
dards, respectively [33], [38], [39]. This NMHA will be implanted with
a transducer and the received and transmitted power will be of the order
of fractions of milliwatts and therefore falls well below this range.
For implanted antennas, the previously mentioned radomes are repli-
cated using biocompatible insulation material, which has already been
shown to improve the radiation efficiency [35], [40]. While some work
has been carried out on the radiation characteristics of implanted he-
lical antennas [33], [41], there has been relatively little work examining
the transmission losses between a deeply implanted NMHA and an ex-
ternal antenna [42]; therefore, this communication will concentrate on
the frequency response of a deeply implanted NMHA and the trans-
mission losses incurred.
III. DESIGN OF A NORMAL-MODE HELICAL ANTENNA
This NMHA is designed to work in the high power short-range-de-
vices European frequency band which exists between 863–870 MHz
[43]. For a particular frequency within this band Table I shows the cor-
responding wavelength (), relative permittivity () and conductivity
() for free-space (f s) and in-body (ib), respectively [29]. Table II
shows the geometry of the implanted antenna.
The criteria for a NMHA is that nL  which as can be seen
from Table II is valid in free space as nL  fs ; however, is not valid
within the human body as nL > ib . If the wavelength within the body
is approximately 8 times smaller than that in free-space all of the cor-
responding geometries should also be 8 times smaller to satisfy nL
ib . In reality this would result in prohibitively small antenna dimen-
sions. It is extremely difficult to tune such a small antenna without ad-
ditional passive components whilst having so few turns. Also, to main-
tain such a narrow spacing requires a wire diameter which is currently
not available using Nitinol, the preferred material due to its proven
bio-compatibility and memory shaping. Increasing the number of turns
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. (a) Pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna surrounded by insulation and
simulated in a homogenous human body environment, and (b) Polarization pat-
tern of implanted pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna, E ,  = 90 and E ,
 = 90 .
to achieve tuning would result in an antenna approaching an electric-
dipole; therefore this pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna (pNMHA)
will be implemented in the body based on the dimensions satisfying
normal-mode operation in free-space.
In addition, the axial ratio (2S= 2 D2 ) for ib is 0.5, which
means there will not be the perfectly circular polarization as predicted
when the axial ratio is unity, but the polarization approaches that
of a magnetic dipole with the major axis of the polarization ellipse
horizontal. For free-space the axial ratio approaches that of an electric
dipole with the major axis of the polarization ellipse vertical. This
geometry is designed to resonate in the body and will have a resonance
at a much higher frequency in free-space, reducing f s significantly
and matching the theoretical axial ratio to the physical geometrical
axial ratio which approaches unity.
For ease of implantation it is necessary to keep the length of the
antenna to a minimum but this is governed by the tuning of the antenna.
The insulation thickness and the position of the antenna within the body
also determine the performance of the antenna; therefore, extensive 3D
electromagnetic simulations are necessary to help design this pNMHA.
IV. 3D ELECTROMAGNETIC SIMULATION
CST Microwave Studio™ has been used to perform a full 3D elec-
tromagnetic simulation of the pNMHA within the human body, using a
simple homogenous human body model [44]. By varying the number of
turns and consequently the height of the pNMHA it is possible to tune
the antenna. The insulation thickness is chosen to be 6 mm in diameter
to maximize the radiation efficiency, whilst remaining within the geo-
metric constraints of the heart cavity, the entire antenna and insulation
is surrounded by a homogenous box of heart tissue whose permittivity
and conductivity is known, as seen in Table I [29]. The antenna is en-
visaged to sit vertically in a cavity of the heart. Fig. 1(a) shows the
antenna and insulation within the homogenous environment and Fig. 2
shows the tuned response of the antenna (S11 -CST). It is known, that
while the antenna itself is the radiating element, once implanted in the
body, the antenna, insulation and surrounding tissue becomes the radi-
ating element [40]. Fig. 1(b) shows the simulated polarization pattern
and it is seen that almost perfectly circular polarization still exists, as
expected when implanted within a homogenous body model. A max-
imum radiation efficiency of 027 dB and directivity of 2.65 dBi was
achieved during simulation.
V. IN VITRO MEASUREMENTS
The antenna is formed using 0.33 mm Nitinol and a suitable mandrel,
it is then attached to a co-axial cable. The higher frequency response in
free space is recorded and then the insulation is added to arrive at the
desired frequency response. Any substantial tuning needs to be carried
1137
Fig. 2. Simulated (CST), in vitro (bio-phantom) and in vivo (implant) fre-
quency response of a pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna.
TABLE III
INGREDIENTS AND QUANTITIES FOR BIO-PHANTOM MATERIAL
out by changing the number of turns which is not possible once the
insulation is added so the higher frequency free space response is used
as a calibration point. The insulation is added using a mould and is then
tested in a bio-phantom material to emulate the characteristics of the
body.
The bio-phantom material used is a mixture of sodium-chloride,
deionized water, polyethylene powder and a mixing agent, TX-151
[45] and the permittivity and conductivity is tested using an Agilent
85070E Dielectric Probe Kit. The correct ratio of the bio-phantom
ingredients is vital and Table III shows the amounts required to get a
permittivity of 60.10 and a conductivity of 1:21Sm01 at the frequency
of interest. This quantity of bio-phantom is approximately equivalent
to the size of the human heart. Due to environmental factors during
mixing and the fact that the bio-phantom mixture is a highly viscous
suspension and is not fully homogenous, an average response within
5% is considered successful. The bio-phantom has a life of approxi-
mately 48 hours but was retested for any drift before each experiment.
The antenna is shown in Fig. 3(a) and is approximately 1 cm in length
(0:23ib ) of which approximately 70% is insulation. The diameter,
including insulation is equivalent to 0:43ib . Fig. 2 shows the reflection
coefficient (S11 —bio-phantom) for the insulated antenna on the end of
a long co-axial cable which is connected to a Rhode and Schwarz ZVL
Vector Network Analyzer. For both the in vitro and in vivo experiments
the long cables form part of the network analyzer’s calibration. At this
stage any frequency de-tuning can be rectified by increasing the amount
of insulation. While the emphasis is on tuning the antenna, S21 was also
recorded using a simple tuned dipole also with circular polarization to
reduce polarization mismatch. Fig. 2 shows S21 for the bio-phantom.
This was measured at a distance of approximately 5 cm.
VI. IN VIVO RESULTS
The pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna was placed within the
right ventricle of a live but anesthetized porcine test subject (30 kg lan-
drace) and connected to the Rhode and Schwarz ZVL Vector Network
Analyzer. The test subject’s chest was stitched closed so that accurate
transmission measurements could be taken. Fig. 3(b) shows the cable
protruding from the chest of the live test subject while Fig. 3(c) shows
the angiographic image of the implanted antenna within the heart with
1138 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. (a) Miniature pseudo-normal-mode antenna with insulation, scale in cm, (b) Porcine test subject, co-axial cable visible protruding from its chest, and (c)
Fluoroscopic image showing co-axial cables and the implanted antenna and two external medical clamps used as markers.

external medical clamps used as markers to verify the position for
the transmission measurements. The test subject is kept alive for the
The authors would like to thank the staff of Elpen Pharmaceuti-
duration of the experiment as upon death the physiological differences
cals, Pikermi Attikis, Greece, in particular Dr. A. Papalois for pro-
which occur immediately within the heart such as thrombosis can
viding experimental facilities and also Dr. T. Sakelaridis, Dr. V. Pan-
effect the results.
giotakopoulos and Dr. M. Argiriou of Evangelismos General Hospital,
Fig. 2 shows the reflection coefficient (S11 -implant) for the implanted
Athens, Greece, for their time and expertise during the experimental
antenna. The reflection coefficient (S22 -implant) of the external dipole is
procedures.
also shown in Fig. 2. (S21 -implant) between the implanted antenna and
the external dipole was recorded at a distance of 5 cm from the surface
of the porcine test subject’s chest, directly above the implanted antenna.
An inert spacer was used to maintain the correct distance and angle
between the dipole and the skin of the porcine test subject.
As seen in Fig. 2 the frequency response of the simulated antenna,
while giving similar frequency values for S11 minima to the in vitro
and in vivo experiments, are substantially different in their broadband
response. The electromagnetic simulation predicts a relatively nar-
rowband response, indicative of the abrupt variation of impedance
versus frequency for this antenna topology. In reality, as shown in the
in vitro and in vivo measurements, which are very closely matched, the
impedance response, while of a higher value, does not vary to the same
extent, giving a broadband response. On closer inspection this is related
to the real impedance or, more precisely, the resistive losses as the
radiation resistance is based on the geometry which is the same for both
simulation and measurements. The resistive losses are substantially
higher in reality than those theoretically reported for Nitinol which can
be attributed to the impact of annealing, the resultant oxide and the
poor electrical contact due to the difficulty in soldering to Nitinol. The
discrepancy in S21 between the in vitro and in vivo experiments, while
large, is a factor of the depth of implantation, indicating that larger
bio-phantom volumes should be used for more accurate results.
VII. CONCLUSION
The results presented in this communication show the feasibility and
suitability of placing an insulated pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna
within the cavities of the heart from a functional, geometric and safety
point of view. The minute design was easily simulated and then fine
tuned using an in vitro procedure involving a bio-phantom mixture to
mimic the human body. It has been shown that there is a very close cor-
relation for the tuned frequency response between the in vitro and in vivo
measurements and that the simulation provides a good starting point,
but that care must be taken when simulating and using materials such
as Nitinol, in particular when the bandwidth response is important. The
bio-phantom mixture is vital for realizing accurate frequency responses
but it is most beneficial for relatively broadband responses which is the
case with this pseudo-normal-mode helical antenna. While S21 is not
as closely predicted the tuning of the antenna is foremost in facilitating
communication and the promising results presented here will lead to
future work involving even smaller pNMHA with less insulation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
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Dec. 2000.
A Novel Folded UWB Antenna for Wireless Body
Area Network
Cheng-Hung Kang, Sung-Jung Wu, and Jenn-Hwan Tarng
Abstract—A novel folded ultrawideband antenna for Wireless Body Area
Network (WBAN) is proposed, which can effectively reduce the backward
radiation and proximity effects of human bodies. The proposed antenna
has a low-profile 3D structure that consists of a bevel-edge feed structure
and a metal plate with folded strip. The bevel edge feed structure achieves
broadband impedance matching and the metal plate acts as the main radi-
ator. Moreover, the folded strip not only extends the lower frequency band
but also provides additional resonant frequency around 6 GHz. The final
bandwidth covers from 3.1 GHz to 12 GHz. The proposed antenna shows
the directional patterns with low backward radiation due to the patch-
like structure and the ground plane also prevents from the proximity ef-
fects of human bodies. Furthermore, the simulated SAR values of the pro-
posed antenna are lower than the values of omnidirectional disc planar
monopole. These features demonstrate that the proposed antenna is suit-
able for WBAN application.
Index Terms—Body-area network, 3-D antenna, ultrawideband.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless body area network (WBAN), a communication system
which transmits large amount of information/data near the human
body, is attracting more and more attention in wireless communi-
cations [1]. WBAN integrated with proper sensors can observe and
transmit vital signs of patients, police or fire personnel without cables.
With increasing attention directed toward WBAN, the ultrawideband
(UWB) technology becomes an active solution for these applications
because of its low transmission power and high data rates.
The antenna and propagation measurements for WBAN are dis-
cussed in [2], [3]. The results show that the path loss and the rms
delay spread are highly related to antenna structure. Several studies
provide various antenna designs used in WBAN [4]–[7]. In [2], a 3-D
monopole antenna placed perpendicular to the human body is designed
for WBAN. However, the 3-D monopole antenna is too high so it
Manuscript received May 21, 2010; revised May 15, 2011; accepted July 25,
2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported by the National Science Council, R.O.C.,
under Grants NSC-99-2219-E-009-001 and NSC-99-2221-E-009-028-MY2.
The authors are with National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 300,
ROC (e-mail: chkang.cm97g@g2.nctu.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this comunication are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173101
1140 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. Simulated return loss of various lengths of L and L .

Fig. 1. (a) Configuration of the proposed ultrawideband antenna. (b) The an-
tenna unbent into a planar structure.

Fig. 4. Simulated return loss of various lengths of H .

Fig. 2. Measured and simulated return loss of the proposed antenna.

will obstruct the human daily activities when applied to the human
body. Therefore, planar monopole antennas with low antenna height
are widely developed in the UWB community. However, when these
antennas lie on the human body, the operating frequency, bandwidth
and radiation efficiency are easily interfered with by the human body.
Except the aforementioned influences, specific absorption rate (SAR)
is another important issue in WBAN. In [5], it has been shown sim-
ulated results that the antenna with omnidirectional pattern exhibits
low radiation efficiency and high SAR values compared to directional
antenna when placed on human model.
Low backward radiation, low height with compact form, and low
mutual effect between the antenna and the human body are three major
requirements [5]–[7] for WBAN antennas. These features increase the Fig. 5. Simulated return loss of various ground size.
difficulty of antenna design. To solve this issue, some studies propose
using a reflector in antenna design to reduce the backward radiation and
enhance directionality. In [5], a reflector was added to a 3 GHz–6 GHz edge feed structure and a truncated metal plate with folded strip. The
slot antenna and this additional reflector enhanced the directionality size of the proposed antenna is 25 2 22 2 10 mm3 with ground plane
and radiation efficiency. But the additional reflector affects the antenna 50 2 50 mm2 and the bandwidth covers from 3.1 GHz to 12 GHz.
bandwidth which becomes 4 GHz to 6.5 GHz and is not wide enough Section II presents the geometry and design concept of the proposed
for the UWB system. antenna. The design parameters and simulated SAR values are also in-
In this communication, a novel directional UWB antenna is proposed troduced in Section II. Radiation patterns are shown in Section III. Fi-
for the WBAN application. The proposed antenna consists of a bevel nally, Section IV draws some conclusions.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 6. Current distribution of the proposed antenna at (a) 4 GHz, (b) 7 GHz, (c) 10 GHz.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN CONCEPT AND PERFORMANCE
Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed antenna. The proposed
antenna consists of a bevel edge feed structure and a truncated metal
plate with folded strip. To enlarge bandwidth, the bevel edge structure
achieves slow impedance variation by using traveling wave concept.
The metal plate is designed as a main radiator. The truncated edge
and the folded strip of the metal plate extend the current path to lower
the operating frequency. In addition, because of the patch-like struc-
ture, the wave radiates toward the z direction and the ground plane re-
duces the backward radiation. The whole antenna size is 25 mm 2 22
mm 2 10 mm with a 50 mm 2 50 mm ground plane. The final param-
eters of the proposed antenna are H1 = 4 mm, H2 = 6 mm, H3 = 3
mm, W1 = 20 mm, W2 =W 3 = 5 mm, L1 = 22 mm, L2 = 8 mm,
L3 = 7 mm, L4 = 10 mm.
Fig. 2 shows the simulated and measured return losses. The sim-
ulation was performed using a commercial simulator while the mea-
surements were taken by an E8364B network analyzer. The measured
bandwidth covers from 3.1 GHz to 12 GHz and agrees with the simu-
lated results. The minor discrepancies of simulation and measurement
may be attributed to the connector, which is not considered in the sim-
ulation. Fig. 2 also shows the simulated result of the proposed antenna
without the folded strip. It is evidenced that the folded strip not only
determines the lower operating frequency from 3 to 4 GHz but also cre-
ates an additional resonant frequency around 6 GHz. The folded strip
is the key factor of antenna design.
The effect of folded strip is presented in Fig. 3. The folded strip
extends the current path and creates lower resonant frequencies. Ac-
cording to Fig. 3, the length of L3 affects the lowest frequency and when
the length of L4 increases, the impedance in the middle frequency be-
comes mismatched. By suitably adjusting the length of the strip, we can
make the whole frequency band under the 10 dB return loss condition.
The effect of the feed structure is shown in Fig. 4. The tapered pro-
file of the feed structure achieves the slow impedance variation for ob-
taining the ultra-wide bandwidth. The slope of the bevel edge should be
carefully designed to achieve wideband matching. In our experiments,
the H1 should be 4 mm to obtain better impedance matching for the
whole operating frequency.
Fig. 5 shows the parametric simulations with regard to the different
ground plane size. For the proposed antenna which radiates as a
patch antenna, the ground plane should be large enough to resonant
the desired frequency. In the simulating results, it can be observed
that the impedance match is interfered and the bandwidth becomes
narrow when the ground plane becomes 30 2 30 mm2 which is close
to the main radiator. Therefore, the ground plane size of the proposed
antenna should be larger than 40 2 40 mm2 to generate the wanted
resonance mode. In the final design, 50 2 50 mm is chosen for the
ground plane by the dimension and better impedance match.
Furthermore, the current distribution of the proposed antenna in
4 GHz, 7 GHz and 10 GHz is exhibited in Fig. 6. In the low frequency,
the current distributes along the edge of the truncated plate and the
folded strip, which is like a patch antenna. Therefore, the truncated
1141
Fig. 7. Comparison measured return loss between in free space and on the
body.
part and the length of the folded strip determines the lowest frequency.
In addition, a resonance mode can be observed at the folded strip in
middle band. For high band, the tapered profile fed structure travels
the energy to the plate and radiate as combination of general monopole
and patch antenna. Moreover, the shape of the tapered profile crucially
affects the impedance match within the whole band. The proposed
antenna combines the patch-like radiator and traveling wave concept
to achieve the ultra-wide bandwidth and directional patterns.
In order to verify the proximity effect of human body, return loss of
the proposed antenna in free space and on the body are measured, as
shown in Fig. 7. The spacing between the proposed antenna and the
human skin is 2 mm. The proximity effect of the human body slightly
affects the impedance matching of the proposed antenna because that
directivity of the proposed antenna is outward from the human body.
Furthermore, a truncated body model is considered in simulation
to estimate the specific absorption rate (SAR) value and radiation
efficiency by software SEMCAD X. Two different body model is con-
sidered in the simulations, one is single layer muscle model and another
is three layers body model with skin, fat and muscle according to the [5].
Full dimensions of the models are skin: 120 2 110 2 1 mm3 with "r =
38,  = 2:7 [S/m], fat: 120 2 110 2 3 mm3 with "r = 5:1;  = 0:18
[S/m] and muscle: 120 2 110 2 40 mm3 with "r = 50:8;  = 3 [S/m]
according to [5]. Moreover, in order to reveal the SAR values in relative
way, a planar disc monopole antenna with omnidirection pattern, as
shown in Fig. 8, is also involved in the simulation for comparison. For
keeping the same distance from the model to the top of the antenna (an-
tenna height: 10 mm), the proposed antenna is 1 mm away from the body
model and the planar disc monopole antenna (antenna height: 1.6 mm) is
10 mm away from the body model. Table I shows the simulated results of
peak SAR values and the total radiation efficiency included the muscle
and body models. As expected, the SAR values of the proposed antenna
are lower than one of the planar UWB monopole antenna due to the
patch-like structure and directional patterns of the proposed antenna.
1142 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 8. Geometry of the planar disc monopole antenna and its simulated return
loss.

TABLE I
PEAK SAR VALUES AND RADIATION EFFICIENCY (NORMALIZE TO 1 W)

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured radiation patterns (a) at 4 GHz XZplane, (b)
at 4 GHz YZplane, (c) at 7 GHz XZplane, (d) at 7 GHz YZplane, (e) at 10 GHz
XZplane, (f) at 10 GHz YZplane.

values are lower than the omnidirectional disc planar monopole. The
patch-like structure can reduce the backward radiation and enhance the
directionality. These features demonstrate that the proposed antenna is
suitable for WBAN applications.
III. RADIATION PATTERNS
The antenna power gain radiation patterns in free space are measured
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1143

Hybrid Mode Wideband Patch Antenna Loaded With a

Planar Metamaterial Unit Cell
Jaegeun Ha, Kyeol Kwon, Youngki Lee, and Jaehoon Choi

Abstract—A wideband patch antenna loaded with a planar metamate-

rial unit cell is proposed. The metamaterial unit cell is composed of an
interdigital capacitor and a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR)
slot. A dispersion analysis of the metamaterial unit cell reveals that an in-
crease in series capacitance can decrease the half-wavelength resonance
frequency, thus reducing the electrical size of the proposed antenna. In
addition, circulating current distributions around the CSRR slot with in-
creased interdigital finger length bring about the TM mode radiation,
while the normal radiation mode is the TM mode. Furthermore, the
TM mode can be combined with the TM mode without a pattern
distortion. The hybridization of the two modes yields a wideband property Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed antenna. A patch with an interdigital ca-
(6.8%) and a unique radiation pattern that is comparable with two indepen- pacitor is on the top side, and a CSRR slot is etched on the bottom side as a
dent dipole antennas positioned orthogonally. Also, the proposed antenna
achieves high efficiency (96%) and reasonable gain (3.85 dBi), even though
2
ground plane. The size of the ground plane is 40 mm 35 mm.
the electrical size of the antenna is only0 24 0 24 0 02 .
Index Terms—Hybrid mode, metamaterials, patch antennas, wideband
antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION
While the extraordinary electromagnetic features of the negative
index medium were predicted by Veselago in 1968 [1], it took over Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit model of the CRLH unit cell of the proposed antenna.
thirty years to experimentally verify the feasibility of an artificial
negative index medium [2]. Since then, it has been expected that this
In this communication, a small and wideband microstrip patch an-
state-of-the-art technology will uncover enormous possibilities in
tenna loaded with a planar CRLH unit cell is presented. In order to
electromagnetics and optics [3]. This achievement has encouraged
impose CRLH properties on a patch antenna, the antenna includes an
many researchers to study the exotic properties of metamaterials,
interdigital capacitor for series capacitance and a complementary split-
leading to the development of diverse applications [4]–[8].
ring resonator (CSRR) slot for shunt inductance. CSRR slots can be
The transmission line (TL) approach of metamaterials was es-
coupled with a TL or a waveguide in order to achieve CRLH charac-
tablished in 2002 [9]–[11]. Metamaterial TLs are called composite
teristics [12], [24]. Owing to the CSRR and the interdigital capacitor, a
right/left-handed (CRLH) TLs because they have both right- and
CRLH unit cell is implemented in fully planar technology, and its dis-
left-handed properties. In other words, a CRLH TL supports not only a
persion characteristics are analyzed for small antenna application. In
positive phase constant, but also a negative phase constant in a specific
addition, the current distributions circulating around the CSRR slot in-
frequency region and a zero phase constant at a nonzero frequency.
duce a unique radiation mode that is orthogonal to the normal radiation
The introduction of CRLH TL theory led to the rapid development
mode. Moreover, combining two radiation modes provides a wideband
of metamaterials for TL applications, including filters, mixers, and
property and a unique radiation pattern with high antenna efficiency,
couplers [12]–[14]. At the same time, extensive studies have been
which is verified both numerically and experimentally.
performed on CRLH resonant antennas. Owing to the unique dis-
persion curves of CRLH TLs, compact CRLH resonant antennas
can be realized [15]–[20], although they have inherent drawbacks of II. ANTENNA DESIGN
narrow bandwidth. To achieve a wideband characteristic, left-handed Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed antenna. In order to
metamaterial was used as a compact radiating element [21]. However, construct a single planar CRLH unit cell in the antenna, an interdigital
the proposed antenna in [21] requires an additional matching circuit, capacitor is inserted into the patch for series capacitance, and a CSRR
which increases the overall antenna size. Also, coplanar waveguide-fed slot is etched on the ground plane for shunt admittance. The equivalent
monopole antennas with metamaterial loading were reported in [22], circuit model of the CRLH unit cell is shown in Fig. 2. The patch with
[23]. Even though the broadband [22] or multi-band properties [23] an interdigital capacitor is represented as a series LC circuit (LR and
were achieved by loading metamaterial, the radiation patterns were CI ), while the CSRR slot is represented as a shunt LC resonant tank (LC
largely dependent upon the operating frequency. and CC ). In addition, the capacitance between the patch and the ground
plane (CR ) connects the shunt resonant tank to the patch [24]. From the
Manuscript received October 07, 2010; revised July 05, 2011; accepted July equivalent circuit model, the dispersion relation can be written as:
20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported by the IT R&D program of KCA (Korea d = cos01 1 +
ZY
Communications Agency) [KI002071, Study of technologies for improving the 2
!2 =!C2 0 1 !2 =!R2 0 CR =CI
= cos01 1 +
RF spectrum characteristics by using the meta-electromagnetic structure].
2 (1 0 !2 =!z2)
The authors are with the Department of Electronics and Computer Engi-
neering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea (e-mail: choijh@hanyang.ac.kr).
p p
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
!R = 1= LR CR ; !C = 1= LC CC ; and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173114 !z = 1= LC (CR + CC ): (1)

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

1144 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 3. The return loss characteristics of the proposed antenna for various in- Fig. 4. Simulated s-parameters of the transmission line with the CRLH unit
terdigital finger lengths (L3). cell for the proposed antenna (when L3 = 1 mm).

The resonance frequencies of the proposed CRLH unit cell can be

derived from the dispersion relation in (1). The zeroth-order resonance
(ZOR), where d = 0, occurs at !C . At the ZOR, the phase constant
() becomes zero and infinite wavelength propagation is allowed. The
negative first-order resonance, where d = 0 , also occurs at !Z . The
negative resonances support backward wave propagation with the same
field distribution of positive order resonances. In addition, the positive
order resonances arise where d = +n , but the equations for those
resonances are not given here for the sake of simplicity. We note that
the slope of the dispersion curve can be controlled by adjusting the
series capacitance (CI ). For example, an increase in series capacitance
(CI ) will give rise to the increase in the slope of the dispersion curve
so that the positive resonances occur at the lower frequencies.
Fig. 3 depicts the numerical return loss characteristics of the pro-
posed antenna for various interdigital finger lengths (1 mm to 5 mm). Fig. 5. Return loss characteristics of the proposed antenna when the interdigital
The numerical simulations were performed using Ansys HFSS v. 12 finger lengths are between 6 mm and 8 mm.
[25]. The first-order resonance frequency (n = 1), or the positive half-
wavelength resonance frequency, decreases from 5.5 GHz to 4.3 GHz
as interdigital finger length (L3) increases from 1 mm to 5 mm. This is
because the increase of L3 provides the increased series capacitance.
Therefore, the electrical size of the proposed antenna can be reduced
by increasing the interdigital finger length. However, the ZOR (n = 0)
frequency is almost fixed at 2.18 GHz regardless of the value of L3,
since it is only related to the capacitance and inductance of the CSRR
slot (CC and LC in Fig. 2). Also, the ZOR is suppressed as the inter-
digital finger length becomes longer. Since the bandwidth of the ZOR
is extremely narrow, it is not practical to use in an antenna application.
In addition, it is interesting to note that the negative order resonance
does not occur in the proposed antenna. In order to understand this Fig. 6. HFSS-simulated current distributions of the proposed antenna (L3 =
phenomenon, let us consider the equivalent circuit model depicted in 8 mm) at the TM mode (3.83 GHz) (a) on the patch and (b) on the ground
Fig. 2 and the full-wave simulated frequency response of the CRLH TL plane.
shown in Fig. 4. At the ZOR frequency of 2.18 GHz (!C ), the shunt
admittance of the CRLH unit cell (Y) becomes zero because the reso-
nant tank of the CSRR is open-circuited. Therefore, the reflection zero For a conventional patch antenna, the current distributions at the fun-
occurs at this frequency as shown in Fig. 4. In regard to the CRLH damental mode form a half-wavelength resonance, and the fundamental
antenna, the impedance matching can be achieved at this frequency radiation mode of the patch antenna oriented along the x-direction is the
if the resistance is properly matched to the port impedance. However, TM10 mode [26]. For the proposed antenna, an increase in the interdig-
the shunt admittance at the negative first-order resonance (n = 01) ital finger length can be used not only to reduce the size of the antenna,
frequency of 1.86 GHz (!Z ) is infinity and short-circuited, causing a but also to excite another novel radiation mode. Fig. 5 shows the return
transmission zero to occur at this frequency as shown in Fig. 4. For an loss properties of the proposed antenna for various interdigital finger
antenna with short-circuited shunt admittance, the impedance matching lengths (6 mm to 8 mm). The first-order resonance frequency (n = 1)
cannot be attained, regardless of the value of resistance. Therefore, un- can be decreased further from 4.1 GHz to 3.6 GHz as the interdigital
like other CRLH resonant antennas, the proposed antenna does not have finger length increases. Moreover, when L3 is larger than 7 mm, another
a negative order resonance. radiation mode is induced on the proposed antenna. Fig. 6(a) and (b)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1145

Fig. 8. HFSS-simulated electric field distributions of the proposed antenna

(L3 = 7 mm) at 3.80 GHz when the input signal phases are (a) 0 , (b) 90 ,
Fig. 7. HFSS-simulated electric field distributions of the proposed antenna (c) 180 , and (d) 270 .
(L3 = 8 mm) (a) at 3.61 GHz for the TM mode and (b) at 3.83 GHz for
the TM mode.

show the current distributions on the patch and the ground plane, re-
spectively at 3.83 GHz when L3 is 8 mm. The circulating current dis-
tributions around the CSRR slot on the ground plane induce y-oriented
currents on the patch, which allows the TM01 mode to be supported
in the proposed antenna, even though the feeding currents are directed
along the x-direction. The resonance frequency of the TM01 mode de-
pends on the width of the patch, rather than the length. The electric
field distributions of the proposed antenna (L3 = 8 mm) at the normal
TM10 mode (3.61 GHz) and at the TM01 mode (3.83 GHz) are illus-
trated in Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively. At the TM10 mode, the electric Fig. 9. The prototype of the proposed antenna. L3 was optimized to 7.3 mm
for wideband property. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.
field distributions on the x-oriented two edges are 180 out-of-phase as
shown in Fig. 7(a). In contrast, at the TM01 mode, the electric field dis-
tributions on the y-oriented two edges are 180 out-of-phase as shown
in Fig. 7(b). Therefore the two radiation modes that are orthogonal to
each other can be attained in the proposed antenna.
Furthermore, the TM01 mode can be combined with the TM10 mode
in order to achieve a wideband characteristic. Owing to the adjustability
of the TM10 mode (n = 1) frequency described in Fig. 3, the oper-
ating frequency of the TM10 mode can approach and combine with
that of the TM01 mode when L3 is 7 mm as shown in Fig. 5. Thus, we
can achieve a wide bandwidth with hybrid mode for the proposed an-
tenna. Although the operating frequency bands of the TM10 and TM01
modes overlap, they do not interfere with each other due to the phase
difference. Fig. 8 shows the electric field distributions of the proposed
antenna (L3 = 7 mm) at 3.80 GHz for different input signal phases
(0 , 90 , 180 , 270 ). In Fig. 8(a) and (c), when the input signal phases
are 0 and 180 , the TM01 mode dominates the antenna radiation. On
the contrary, when the input signal phases are 90 and 270 , the TM10 Fig. 10. Simulated and measured return loss characteristics of the proposed
mode dominates as shown in Fig. 8(b) and (d). Therefore, the two ra- antenna.
diation modes can operate independently because they have a phase
difference of 90 .
The measured data were in good agreement with those of the simula-
tion. The measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth was 260 MHz (6.8%)
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
extended from 3.67 GHz to 3.93 GHz. The bandwidth of the proposed
Fig. 9 shows the prototype of the proposed antenna fabricated on a antenna was more than three times wider than that of a conventional
Teflon substrate ("r = 2:1, tan  = 0:001) with a thickness of 1.57 patch antenna operating at the same frequency band (2.1%) because
mm. L3 was optimized to 7.3 mm to achieve a wide bandwidth without the two radiation modes are combined. The electrical size of the patch
changing the other design parameters. The simulated and measured re- was 0:240 2 0:240 2 0:020 (19 mm 2 19 mm 2 1:57 mm) at
turn loss characteristics of the proposed antenna are shown in Fig. 10. the center frequency of 3.80 GHz. Owing to the CRLH structure and
1146 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 11. Radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at 3.80 GHz obtained
from the full-wave simulation and the measurement in (a) the xz- and (b) the
yz-planes.
the increased interdigital finger length, a 55% reduction in antenna size
has been achieved, as compared to a conventional patch antenna size
(30 mm 2 26 mm 2 1:57 mm).
A patch antenna directed along the x-direction at the fundamental
radiation mode (TM10 mode) has a monopolar pattern in the xz-plane
for a vertical polarization and an omnidirectional pattern in the yz-plane
for a horizontal polarization. Fig. 11 shows the numerical and experi-
mental radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at 3.80 GHz. The pro-
posed antenna exhibits a dipolar pattern for a vertical polarization and
a near-omnidirectional pattern for a horizontal polarization in both the
xz- and yz-planes. The proposed antenna supports back radiation due
to the CSRR slot, and this back radiation is not significantly affected
by the size of the ground plane. In fact, the increase in the size of the
ground plane yields only a higher broadside radiation. For the proposed
antenna, the TM10 mode illustrated in Fig. 8(b) and (d) brings about a
dipolar pattern in the xz-plane and a near-omnidirectional pattern in the
yz-plane, whereas the TM01 mode illustrated in Fig. 8(a) and (c) causes
a dipolar pattern in the yz-plane and a near-omnidirectional pattern in
the xz-plane. Therefore, the radiation pattern of the proposed antenna
is like that of an antenna consisting of two x- and y-directed dipoles
without destructive interference because of the existence of the hybrid
Fig. 12. HFSS-simulated 3D radiation patterns at 3.80 GHz for (a) a horizontal
polarization and (b) a vertical polarization.
Fig. 13. Simulated and measured antenna efficiency and peak gain. Solid line:
simulation. Dotted line: measurement.
mode with 90 phase difference. In other words, the radiation pattern
of the proposed antenna is near-isotropic with a maximum deviation of
11 dB for a horizontal polarization, and it is dipolar in all planes for a
vertical polarization as shown in Fig. 12(a) and (b). Furthermore, the
radiation pattern has the frequency-independent property over the fre-
quency band of interest.
Fig. 13 shows the simulated and measured antenna efficiency and
peak gain of the proposed antenna. A 3D spherical far-field measure-
ment system was used for the measurement. The measured antenna ef-
ficiency was higher than 80% over the 10 dB return loss bandwidth with
the peak value of 96%. Also, the measured peak gain of the TM10 mode
was 3.85 dBi and that of the TM01 mode was 2.36 dBi. The TM10
mode gain represents the vertical-polarization gain in the xz-plane or
the horizontal-polarization gain in the yz-plane, and vice versa for the
TM01 mode. Although the physical size of the proposed antenna is
much smaller than a conventional patch antenna, the gain and the effi-
ciency are not much degraded.
IV. CONCLUSION
A novel wideband patch antenna with a hybrid of TM10 and TM01
modes is proposed. The proposed antenna contains a single planar
CRLH unit cell composed of a CSRR slot and an interdigital capacitor.
By increasing the interdigital finger length, the electrical size of the
antenna was decreased due to the increased series capacitance. The
proposed antenna achieves a 55% reduction in patch size compared to
a conventional patch antenna. Additionally, the increased interdigital
finger length along with the CSRR slot generates the TM01 mode
radiation, which can be combined with the normal TM10 mode. The
combination of these two modes provides a wideband property (6.8%)
and unique radiation pattern that are near-isotropic for the horizontal
polarization and dipolar for the vertical polarization. Regardless of
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
the small size of the proposed antenna, very high efficiency (96%)
and moderate gain (3.85 dBi) are attained. The gain of the proposed
antenna is only 2.2 dB lower than that of a conventional one operating
at the same frequency band with the same ground size. Based on the
antenna performances mentioned in the previous sections such as
small size, high efficiency, and near-isotropic radiation pattern, one
can conclude that the proposed antenna is applicable for a mobile
RFID reader system requiring isotropic coverage.
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U.K.: Artech House, 2003, ch. 2.
Explicit Relation Between Volume and Lower Bound for Q
for Small Dipole Topologies
Guy A. E. Vandenbosch
Abstract—A rigorous relation is derived between any local change of the
volume of an electrically small radiating device and the lower bound of its
radiation Q factor. The relation concerns the actual volume and not the cir-
cumscribing volume. This means that also (incremental) changes in volume
can be studied where the circumscribing volume remains the same. The re-
lation clearly proves that any arbitrary increase in volume decreases the Q,
and any arbitrary reduction in volume increases the Q. When directly ap-
plied to volumes embedded within a sphere, it is almost trivial to rigorously
prove the well-known fact that the full sphere provides the absolute min-
imal Q. The communication ends with a simple analytical proof of the limit
as introduced by Thal for dipole type spherical TM modes. To the knowl-
edge of the author, these explicit relations between Q factor and occupied
volume have not been described in literature yet.
Index Terms—Radiation Q factor, small antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
Since the beginning of the study of Q factors for electrically small
radiating devices, the spherical shape always has played a crucial role.
In the early days, Chu [1] derived an approximating minimum by Q
expanding the field around a vertically polarized antenna into a series of
spherical TMn0 wave functions. Collin and Rothschild [2] calculated
Q
the exact value of , also based on spherical modes. Later, McLean [3]
Q
calculated the minimum directly from the fields outside a sphere with
a
radius completely enclosing the device. Thal [4] upgraded McLean’s
result for spherical wire antennas, incorporating the internal reactive
Manuscript received December 06, 2010; revised May 25, 2011; accepted
August 08, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Division
ESAT-TELEMIC (Telecommunications and Microwaves), Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium (e-mail: guy.vanden-
bosch@esat.kuleuven.be).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173127
1148 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

energy. Very recently, Hansen and Collin proposed simple formulas the gradient of the squared distance function and taking into account
to reach the same goal as Thal [5]. Best has published several papers that the integrated charge within V is zero yields
describing designs of antennas with Q factors as close as possible to the
0 r
1 dV 0 =
2k03 Qr 0 r0 dV 0 =
2k03Qr P
fundamental limits [6], [7]. Best’s papers use the spherical topology as
a basis. The use of magnetic materials inside the sphere seems also to
R 3 3 (4)
V V
be promising in this respect [8].
with P the electric dipole moment of the charge distribution. Equation
Since the early days in the study of Q factors, it was well-known that
smaller spheres yield higher Q factors. However, if we don’t change (4) shows that (2) is equivalent to solving the topology statically for
the radius of the sphere containing the radiator, but modify the volume a constant incident electric field, simultaneously requiring that the re-
sulting electric dipole moment is parallel to this field. Note that this is
internally, what will happen then to the Q?
In [9] rigorous expressions were presented to calculate the reactive only possible for certain directions of the incident field. Expression (4)
energies stored in the electromagnetic field surrounding an electromag- forms the link between the practical numerical calculation procedure
introduced in [10] and the theoretical approach as explained in [11].
netic device. These expressions were used there to find the Thal limit,
but starting from an a priori current flowing on an a priori defined Note that, although the result is obviously the same, the procedure to
obtain this result is quite different. This can be seen as a mutual valida-
sphere. In [10], a procedure was given to calculate the lower bound of
tion. Our result is fundamentally based on the equations for the reactive
Q for any arbitrary volume carrying any possible current. This resulted
again in Thal’s limit for an a priori defined sphere. The current a priori energies as stated in [9]. [11] is based on considering the topology as
a scatterer.
assumed in [9] was now found as part of the solution. In this communi-
cation, a fundamental relation between the lower bound for the Q factor
III. INFINITESIMAL CHANGE OF A TOPOLOGY
of a device and a local change of the volume occupied by this device is
derived. Its interpretation is extremely simple: any increase in volume, Assume an infinitesimal change dV in the volume V . The condition
in any direction, yields a smaller lower bound for Q. Based on this, it is for the new lower bound for the Q factor Qr + dQr can be expressed
almost trivial to prove the well-known fact that the sphere is indeed the as
topology yielding the lowest Q factor. It has to be emphasized that we
0 + d0
1 + k03 (Qr + dQr ) R2 dS mod
0
=0
do not start from the spherical shape a priori, but we find the spherical R 3 (5)
shape a posteriori. At the end of the communication, an alternative and S
very simple analytical proof is given for the limit as set by Thal [4] for
spheres carrying a dipole type current. on an infinitesimally modified surface S mod . Straightforward working
out and neglecting infinitesimally small contributions of the second
II. THE MINIMUM Q OF AN ARBITRARY TOPOLOGY order leads to
Consider an electrically small volume V . For cases where no mag- 0
1 + k03 Qr R2 dS mod
0

netic materials are present, in [10] a technique is given to calculate the R 3

S
Q factor Qr in terms of the current J flowing inside V . The Qr is ac-
tually determined by the charge distribution  generated by J. Using
+ d0
1 + k03 Qr R2 dS mod
0

the same nomenclature as in [10] R 3

S
0 3 R1 dV 0 dV
k03 dQr
Qr = V V
+ 0 R2 dS mod
0
= 0 on Smod :
0 k
3 
0 3
R2 dV 0 dV
(1)
3 (6)
S
V V

with R = jr 0 r0 j = (x 0 x0 )2 + (y 0 y 0 )2 + (z 0 z 0 )2 the dis- The last two contributions in (6), integrals over S mod , differ from the
tance between source point r0 and observation point r. The prime indi- corresponding integrals over S infinitesimally to the second order. This
cates source coordinates. Also in [10] a rigorous technique is given to means that S mod can be replaced in these integrals by S . The distance
derive the lower bound for Qr for any possible current. The necessary R in the first contribution can be written as
condition is given by R(S mod ) = r + ndn 0 r0 0 n0 dn0
1+
1 jrr 00 rr j
k03 Qr
R2 dV 0 = 0 inside V:
0
0
R 3 (2)  r0r + 0
ndn 0 n dn 0 0
0

1 rR0(Sr)
V 0

It was obtained for the volume V filled with vacuum and assuming  R(S ) + ndn 0 n dn 0 0
(7)
lossless conductors. The solution of (2) with the lowest Qr yields the
largest intrinsic bandwidth of the topology. Since both for perfect con- where r and r0 are located on S , n and n0 are the unit vectors normal
ductors and homogeneous dielectrics the charge distribution is actually to S at these locations, and dn and dn0 are the distances between S and
located only at the surface, we only need to consider the integration of S mod at these locations. This means that
a surface charge distribution  over the surface S of the volume V , 1  1 1 0 (ndn 0 nRdn ) 1 (r 0 r ) 0 0 0

yielding R(S mod ) R(S ) (S )2

0
1 + k03 Qr R2 dS 0 = 8(0 ) = 0 on S: R(S mod )2  R(S )2 + 2 ndn 0 n dn 1 (r 0 r ): 0 0 0
(8)
R 3 (3)
S Using the principal radii of curvature in each point of S , we can write
Note that the operator 8 is “singular” on S . It projects a non-zero func-
tion into the zero function on S . Also note that (3) is actually valid in-
dS mod
0
= 112 1 + dn0 2 + dn0 dS 0
side the entire volume V , i.e., at the inside of S . Since (2) is valid at all
points inside V , its gradient also has to be zero inside V . Working out
 1 + 1 + 1 0 0
dn0 dS 0 : (9)
1 2
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1149

1 k03 Qr
Using (8) and (9) in the first term of (6), and taking into account (3), + 3 d0 + R2 dS 0 dS
this term can be written as R 3
S S
1 k03 Qr k03 dQr
0 + R2 dS mod
0
+ 3 0 R2 dS 0 dS = 0: (12)
R 3 3
S S S
3
 0 0 R13 + k03Qr 2 r 0r 1 0
ndn 0 n dn 0 0
dS 0 Since r = 0r0 the first term can be made symmetrical in source and
observation coordinates
S
6 0 (2@ (r)n 1 ndn) 0 02@ (r)n 1 n dn 1 k03 Qr
dS 0 3 0 r R2
0 0
+
R 3
S S S
+  0 1
+
k03 Qr
R 2 1
+
1
dn dS 0 0 1 ndn 0 n dn 0 0
dS 0 dS
R 3 01 02 1 k3 Qr
S =  r
3 0
+ 0 R2 1 ndn dS dS 0

1 k03 Qr R 3
 0 r(
R
+
3
R2 ) 1 (ndn 0 n0 dn0 )dS 0 6 4dn S S
1 k03 Qr
S + 3 0 r0 + R2 1 n dn dS dS
0 0 0

1 k03 Qr 1 1 R 3
+ 0 ( + R2 )( + )dn0 dS 0 : (10) S S
R 3 01 02 1 k03 Qr
S =2 3 0 r + R2 1 ndn dS dS 0

R 3
The occurrence of the two Dirac impulses in the right hand side of (10) S S
deserves a more detailed explanation. It is well known that the 01=R3 1 k03 Qr
=2 3 r 0 + R2 dS 0 1 ndn dS: (13)
term in the integrand of the first term at the right hand side in the limit R 3
(r 0 r0 ) ! 0 produces a Dirac impulse. The sign of the Dirac im- S S
pulse depends on how r approaches r0 . If this approach follows a path
Working out the third term, and taking into account (3), we obtain
with positive dn the sign is negative, if it follows a path with nega-
tive dn the sign is positive. It is this effect that produces the sudden 1 k03 Qr 1 1
3 0 + R2 + dn0 dS 0 dS
jump of the normal electric field across a surface with a charge distri- R 3 01 02
bution. However, in the integral considered, this effect does not occur, SS
due to the fact that the local charge, producing the effect, is actually
1 k03 Qr 1 1
not located on S . This local charge has been moved to the new surface = 0 3 + R2 dS + dn0 dS 0 = 0: (14)
S mod by modifying the volume. This means that the Dirac impulses R 3 01 02
S S
inherently incorporated in the 01=R3 term have to be canceled out ex-
plicitly by the Dirac impulses introduced. For a positive dn this leads Working out the fourth term, and taking into account (3), we obtain
to a canceling positive sign (top), and for a negative dn this leads to a
1 k03 Qr
canceling negative sign (bottom). For the n0 dn0 term the path (i.e., how 3 d0 ( + R2 )dS 0 dS
r approaches r0 ) is always at the other side compared to the ndn term.
R 3
S S
Together with the additional minus sign in the expression this leads to 1 k03 Qr
the same sign as for the ndn term. Equation (6) now becomes = d0 ( 3 ( + R2 )dS )dS 0 = 0: (15)
R 3
S S
1 k03 Qr
0 r + R2
R 3 Working out the fifth term, taking into account the fact that the total
S charge has to remain zero, delivers
1 ndn 0 n dn dS 0 6 4dn
0 0

k03 dQr
1 k3 Qr 1 1 3 0 R2 dS 0 dS
+ 0 + 0 R2 + dn0 dS 0 3
R 3 01 02 S S
S
k03 dQr
+ d ( 0 1
+
k03 Qr 2
R )dS 0 =
3
3 0 r2 + r02 0 2r 1 r 0
dS 0 dS
R 3 S S
S
k03 dQr =
02k03 dQr 3 rdS 1 0 r0 dS 0
+ 0 R2 dS 0 = 0 on S: (11) 3
3 S S
S
=
02k03 dQr jPj2 (16)
Multiplying with  3 and integrating over S delivers then 3

1 k03 Qr with P the electric dipole moment of the charge distribution. The equa-
3 0 r + R2 1 ndn 0 n dn0 0
dS 0 dS tion becomes
R 3
S S
1 k03 Qr
6 4 3 dndS 2 3 r 0 (
R
+
3
R2 )dS 0 1 ndn dS
S S S
1 k03 Qr 1 1 2k03 dQr
+ 3 0
R
+
3
R2
1
0
+
2
0
dn0 dS 0 dS 64 3 dndS 0
3
jPj2 = 0 (17)
S S S
1150 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

where the top sign has to be chosen for positive dn, and the bottom sign
has to be chosen for negative dn. Since (3) is valid inside the whole
volume V , its gradient inside V is also zero. This can be exploited by
choosing dn negative, which yields
3
04 jj2 dndS 0 2k03dQr jPj2 = 0: (18)
S
Solving for dQr delivers

6
jj2 dndS 6 S
jj2 dndS
dQr = 0 3 S
k0 jPj2 = 0 k03 rdS 2 : (19)

S
Note that (19) is also valid for positive dn. This is because the sum
of the first two terms in (17) is continuous at the surface S , as a con- Fig. 1. (a) The spherical dipole (b) the cylindrical dipole with normal-to-axis
polarization, and (c) the cap antenna.
sequence of the introduction of the explicit Dirac impulses in (10) to
remove the discontinuity.
Expression (19) is the key novelty in this communication. Its main
feature is that it allows to study in a very simple way the effect of local first topology is bounded in three dimensions, the second one in two
changes in the volume on the Q factor bound in terms of the charge dis- dimensions (solution expressed per meter length), and the last one in
tribution. The change in Qr for a small modification of the surface at one dimension only (solution expressed per square meter).
a specific location is proportional to the square of the amplitude of the The spherical dipole (Fig. 1(a)) consists of a current flowing on a
charge density there. The change is always negative for any increase spherical surface with radius a, in a spherical coordinate system given
of the volume, and thus positive for any reduction of the volume. This J i
by = sin   . The charge distribution is  = 02=(j!a) cos  . In [9]
means that any increase of the volume of a device always leads to and [10] it was already shown numerically that, in the limit k0 a ! 0,
a smaller lower bound for Q, even if the increase is towards the for this structure
inside, thus not enlarging the circumscribing sphere, and any de- 1:5 2
lim Qr = = 3
crease of the volume of a device always leads to a larger lower !
k a 0 (k0 a)3 k0 V
(21)
bound for Q. To the knowledge of the author, this is the first time that
this very simple and practical property is rigorously proven. which perfectly agrees with Thal [4]. For a uniform positive dn over
Since in most cases the currents are flowing on surfaces rather than the whole surface of the sphere, i.e., make the sphere a little bit bigger
within volumes, we need to derive a similar statement for surface cur- by choosing a new radius a + da, the integral in (19) is easily calculated
rents. Since a surface can always be considered as a volume for a as
thickness going to zero, it can also be concluded that any increase
of the current carrying area of a device always leads to a smaller jj2 dndS = 316!2 da: (22)
lower bound for Q, even if the increase does not enlarge the cir- S
cumscribing sphere, and any decrease of the current carrying area The electric dipole moment is easily calculated as
of a device always leads to a larger lower bound for Q.
2
Also an open surface can be considered as the limit of a volume with
the thickness going to zero. An infinitesimal change of the shape of the
P = 83a
j!
iz : (23)

open surface can be decomposed into first changing the volume at one
Inserting in (19) delivers
side of the infinitesimal small thickness, then followed by the other
6 316! da 9
dQr = 0 = 0 3 4 da
side. Applying (19) then delivers for surfaces
(24)
limt!0 ( j+ j2 dndS 0 j0 j2 dndS ) k03 649! a 2k0 a
6 S S
dQr = 0 3 :
k0 jPj2 (20) which is indeed the derivative of expression (21).
The cylindrical dipole (Fig. 1(b)) with normal-to-axis polarization
The plus and minus sign stand for the side of the surface in the posi- consists of a current flowing on a cylindrical surface with radius a
tive and negative n direction. The charge density on the surface is dis- and length l >> a, in a cylindrical coordinate system given by = J
tributed over the two sides of the surface in such a way that the total i
cos ' ' . The charge distribution is  = 01=(j!a) sin '. Using ex-
field inside is zero. This total field takes into account the “constant in- pression (1), while neglecting any end effects and formulating the inte-
cident electric field” due to the right hand side of (4). The expression grals per meter length, the Q factor can be calculated analytically. The
(20) says that in order to lower the Q factor, any change of the surface result is
has to be in the direction of the largest charge density, or in other words, 3 3
lim Qr = 3 2 = 3 :
the largest electric field component normal to the surface. !
k a 0 k0 a l k0 V
(25)

IV. VALIDATION AND APPLICATION
In this section first expression (19) is proven analytically for two
canonical topologies: the spherical dipole and the cylindrical dipole
with normal-to-axis polarization. Also for the thin plate with normal
polarization, the proof can be given analytically. For these topologies,
the current delivering the minimum Q factor is analytically known. The
For a uniform positive dn over the whole surface of the cylinder, i.e.,
make the cylinder a little bit bigger by choosing a new radius a + da,
the integral in (19) per unit length becomes
2
jj2 dnad' = !21a2 sin2 'ad'da = !2 a da: (26)
' 0
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 2. The lower bound for the Q factor of the cap antenna as a function of
 , for three values of  . For  =0
the structure is actually a cylinder
closed at the top and bottom by the caps.
The electric dipole moment per unit length is calculated as
P = 0 a i:
j! y
(27)
Inserting in (19) delivers
dQr = 0
6 
! a lda
= 0 k36a3 l da (28)
k03  a l 2 0
! well-known value known in literature already, from numerical calcu-
which is indeed the derivative of expression (25).
The cap antenna (Fig. 1(c)) consists of a central cylinder of diam-
eter D and height h feeding two spherical caps. In a spherical coor-
dinate system the top cap extends from the connection between the
cylinder and the cap at cyl up to the opening angle of the cap cap .
The bottom cap is the image of the top cap. The lower bound for the Q
factor obtained with the technique of [10] as a function of cap is pre-
sented in Fig. 2 for three different values of cyl . For this structure the
lower bound for Q shows a maximum, located at cap = cyl (where
the cap disappears). At these points the Q factor is of course the same
as the Q factor of the corresponding cylinder dipole antenna, depicted
in the top curve. These curves illustrate clearly that starting from the
cylinder (with zero cap), enlarging the surface, i.e., by enlarging the
cap, in either direction, decreases the lower bound, as predicted by (19).
Note that for small cyl , the lower bound approaches the absolute lower
bound of a sphere for cap = 90 .
Expression (19) can be used also to study the lower bound for Q as a
function of the thickness t of the conductor used. To this goal, starting
from an infinitely thin conductor, we move both sides of the conductor
equally and in opposite directions over half the thickness dt. Realizing
that in (20) a uniform change in conductor thickness to the first order
does not have effect on the charge distributions at both sides of the
conductor, we obtain easily
j+ j2 + j0 j2 dS dt
dQr = 0
6 S
2
:
k03 jPj2 (29)
This shows that the change in Q is just proportional to the change in
conductor thickness, as long as the thickness of the conductor is much
smaller than its transversal dimensions. Also, it is easily seen that any
increase in the thickness lowers the lower bound for Q.
A practical case can be considered, the rectangular plate. The current
delivering the minimum Q is not analytically known, but an approxima-
tion is used, based on physical insight. The approximation can always
be improved by using the charge distribution obtained from numerical
tools.
1151
Assume a rectangular plate with dimensions Lx and Ly , in the x
polarization regime. The thickness t of the plate is small compared to
its x and y dimensions. Since the current has to be smooth, and it has to
be zero at the ends, the simplest current approximation is an x directed
current of the form
J = 1 0 L2xx
2
ix : (30)
Deriving the charge, equally dividing it over both sides, and inserting
it in (29), the calculation of the change of the lower bound for Q is
straightforward. All integrals can be calculated analytically
dQr = 0
9dt : (31)
k03 Lx3 Ly
Q becomes
Qr = Qr (t = 0) 0
9t : (32)
k03 Lx3 Ly
Such an approximate calculation, based on assumed currents can be
useful to estimate the order of magnitude of the effect of the thickness.
V. THE SPHERICAL SHAPE
In this section, first it is rigorously proven that the sphere is the
topology with the smallest lower bound for Q for a given radius. Then,
this smallest value is derived analytically. Evidently, this yields the
lations [9], [10], or based on the proof in [4].
It has been long known that the spherical dipole has the absolute min-
imal Q factor for any topology with a maximum dimension of 2a. With
(19) this is almost trivial to prove. Consider any topology with max-
imum distance 2a between any two points. This means that the topology
can be completely embedded within a sphere of radius a. According to
(19) any increase in the volume leads to a decrease of the lower bound
for Q. By increasing the volume up to the complete sphere, we reach
the absolute minimum lower bound for Q. Any further increase of the
volume would result in a larger sphere to contain the topology.
We conclude this theoretical communication by proving (21) analyt-
ically. Since (3) is valid inside the entire volume V , all its derivatives
are also zero inside this volume. Taking the gradient and evaluating it
at the origin, located in the center of the sphere, yields
0
1 0 2k03 Qr r0 dS 0 = 0:
r03 3 (33)
S
Since for a sphere r0 = a, we obtain
1 02 k03 Qr
0 r0 dS 0 =
1 0 2k03Qr P = 0:
a3 3 a3 3 (34)
S
P
Since differs from zero, the term between brackets has to be zero,
which directly yields (21).
VI. CONCLUSIONS
A simple relation is found between a change in volume and the cor-
responding change in lower bound for the Q factor of a small radiating
device. From his relation, it is seen that a larger volume always results
in a lower Q, independent of the way in which the volume is enlarged.
The relation is validated for two canonical topologies, for which ana-
lytical solutions are available. It is illustrated through a numerical ex-
ample. The effect of conductor thickness can be studied using the rela-
tion. The well-known value of the lower bound for Q for a sphere, the
topology yielding the absolute minimum lower bound for Q, is derived
analytically.
1152 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
REFERENCES
[1] L. J. Chu, “Physical limitations on omni-directional antennas,” J. Appl.
Phys., vol. 19, pp. 1163–1175, Dec. 1948.
[2] R. E. Collin and S. Rothschild, “Evaluation of antenna Q,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. AP-12, pp. 23–27, Jan. 1964.
[3] J. S. McLean, “A re-examination of the fundamental limits on the radi-
ation Q of electrically small antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 44, pp. 672–676, May 1996.
[4] H. L. Thal, “New radiation Q limits for spherical wire antennas,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 10, pp. 2757–2763, Oct. 2006.
[5] R. C. Hansen and R. E. Collin, “A new Chu formula for Q,” IEEE
Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 38–41, Oct. 2009.
[6] S. R. Best, “Low Q electrically small linear and elliptical polarized
spherical dipole antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no.
3, pp. 1047–1053, Mar. 2005.
[7] S. R. Best, “A low Q electrically small magnetic (TE mode) dipole,”
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 572–575, 2009.
[8] O. S. Kim, O. Breinbjerg, and A. D. Yaghjian, “Electrically small mag-
netic dipole antennas with quality factors approaching the Chu lower
bound,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 1898–1906,
Jun. 2010.
[9] G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Reactive energies, impedance, and Q factor
of radiating structures,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 4,
Apr. 2010.
[10] G. A. E. Vandenbosch, “Simple procedure to derive lower bounds
for radiation Q of electrically small devices of arbitrary topology, ac-
cepted,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 2217–2225,
Jun. 2011.
[11] A. D. Yaghjian and H. R. Stuart, “Lower bounds on the Q of electrically
small dipole antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 10,
Oct. 2010.
On the Generalization of Taylor and Bayliss n-bar Array
Distributions
Srinivasa Rao Zinka and Jeong Phill Kim
Abstract—Taylor’s asymptotic analysis theory is used to design the gen-
eralized Taylor and Bayliss patterns. Such a design technique allows gen-
erating array factors with arbitrary sidelobe level and envelope taper. For
both the Taylor and Bayliss patterns, array excitation is obtained by the
Elliott’s pattern zero matching technique. A few examples are provided to
validate the presented theory. Also, variation of different array character-
istics with respect to the sidelobe tapering is explained through graphical
data.
Index Terms—Array synthesis, Bayliss, Chebyshev, optimum difference
pattern, optimum sum pattern, sidelobe taper, Taylor, Zolotarev.
I. INTRODUCTION
Dolph-Chebyshev linear arrays [1] are ideal in the sense that they
provide the narrowest first null beamwidth possible for a given side-
lobe ratio (SLR). In a discussion [2], Riblet noted that the formula-
tion by Dolph is optimal only for inter-element spacing d  =2. For
Manuscript received March 11, 2011; revised June 06, 2011; accepted August
03, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Korea (e-mail: srinivas.zinka@gmail.
com; phill@cau.ac.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173146
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
d < =2, Riblet provided a modified formulation to achieve the op-
timal distribution for odd numbered arrays only. In a recent paper [3],
McNamara broadened the Riblet’s formulation to even numbered ar-
rays with d < =2 by using the more general Zolotarev polynomials.
When it comes to the difference patterns, McNamara-Zolotarev differ-
ence1 pattern [4] is optimum in the Dolph-Chebyshev sense [5], [6]. It
has the narrowest first null beamwidth and largest normalized differ-
ence slope on boresight for a specified sidelobe level.
Even though all the sum and difference patterns mentioned till now
are ideal from the perspective of the SLR, these distributions suffer
from poor array taper efficiency (ATE) [7] and edge brightening (un-
desirable upswing in the amplitude of the excitations near the array
edges). In addition, equal far-out sidelobes tend to pickup undesired in-
terference and clutter. In order to overcome these limitations, a dilation
technique can be used, in which a sidelobe taper is introduced after the
first n
 array factor zeros [8]–[10]. All these n  distributions are contin-
uous sources. An equivalent discrete distribution can be obtained either
by sampling the continuous distribution or by using a different method
proposed by Elliott [11]. In [12], [13], authors inherently used the El-
liott’s method to obtain discrete Taylor and Bayliss array analogues.
The patterns corresponding to the continuous (or discrete) Taylor and
Bayliss distributions possess sidelobe taper of the order 1=kx , which
corresponds to the special case2 of  = 0 [8]. If a higher order sidelobe
taper (i.e., 1=kx+1 ) is required, then the  values greater than 0 should
be used as done by Rhodes [14]. However, the Rhodes distribution is a
continuous source. The present authors have previously provided a for-
mulation for obtaining a discrete equivalent of the Rhodes distribution
[15]. In this communication, authors extend their technique to gener-
alize the discrete Bayliss distribution too. Also, authors would like to
point out that the array factor zeros used in this communication are
different from those used in [13], [16] by McNamara. The reason for
choosing different sets of array factor zeros is explained in Section II
from the view point of Taylor’s asymptotic analysis. Finally, array ex-
citation coefficients are computed from the chosen array factor zeros
by using the Elliott’s technique [11].
II. SUMMARY OF THE TAYLOR’S ASYMPTOTIC ANALYSIS
Due to the drawbacks of equal sidelobe distributions mentioned in
Section I, a sidelobe taper is required in most of the practical situations.
In [8], Taylor provided a comprehensive analysis regarding the effect of
the array excitation edge tapering on the pattern’s asymptotic behavior.
For the sake of continuity, Taylor’s theory is briefly reproduced here.
Let the line source shown as embedded in Fig. 1, which has a total
length 2a, have a distribution function A(x). Then the array factor is
given as
a
AF (kx ) = A(x)ejk x dx: (1)
0a
From the view point of asymptotic analysis, the degree of abruptness
with which the source distribution begins and ends at x = 6 a will be
a matter of importance. Then suppose that
A(x)  K 0 (x + a) as x ! 0a
A(x)  K + (a 0 x) as x ! +a
(2)
Thus if  = 0, A(x) assumes the fixed non-zero values K 0 and K +
at the edges and the distribution is said to have a pedestal. If  = 1,
1Authors used the word difference in order to avoid confusion with another
distribution by the same author [3].
2For physically realizable continuous distributions, the parameter  can be
any real number greater than 0.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1153

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of a linear array of M elements having an interele-

ment spacing of d.

9
!0
Fig. 1. The distribution function embedded in the complex -plane.  is ar-
bitrarily small but non-vanishing and  . Furthermore, it is assumed that as n ! 1 for sum and difference3 patterns, respectively, where n =
A (9) is holomorphic in the race court shaded region. 1; 2; 3; 1 1 1. A comprehensive proof for the above equation was given
in [8, Theorem IV].

the distribution falls to zero linearly at its ends (e.g., cosine distribu-
tion). All values of  greater than 01 were considered. However, it
III. SYNTHESIS OF THE GENERALIZED DISCRETE TAYLOR AND

should be noted that for  values in the domain 01 <  < 0, the dis-
BAYLISS ARRAY DISTRIBUTIONS
tribution function will be non-uniformly-bounded (i.e., physically non Generalized discrete Taylor and Bayliss array distributions were al-
realizable). Evidently, it is possible to write the distribution function ready addressed by McNamara in [16] and [13], respectively. However,
A(x) as the array factor zeros used by McNamara were different from those
given by (6). The reasons for choosing different sets of zeros com-
A(x) = B (x)(a2 0 x2 ) (3) pared to (6) were not mentioned in those papers. Also, choosing such
zeros will not provide enough information regarding the array factor
where B (x) does not vanish at x = 6a. sidelobe tapering rate. So, in this communication, authors provide a
Now, let the variables x and kx be embedded in the complex domains different formulation for synthesizing the generalized discrete n
 array
9 and
respectively, such that 9 = x + jxI and
= kx + jkxI . The distributions.
functions A(x) and AF (kx ) are then profiled on the axes of reals of the
functions A(9) and AF (
), respectively. Furthermore, it is assumed A. Generalized Discrete Taylor Distribution
that B (9) is different from zero at 9 = 6a and regular in the racetrack
shaped region of Fig. 1. Then, asymptotic forms of integrals along the A symmetric linear array of M elements with uniform inter-element
deformed paths C1 and C3 (Fig. 1) are given respectively as spacing d as shown in Fig. 2 is considered. For the time being, it is
assumed that d  0:5. For a given sidelobe ratio R, M 0 1 array
I1  B (0a)(2a) 0(+ 1) 0j
a+j
e factor zeros of the Dolph-Chebyshev array pattern are given as

+1
n 0 1)
I3  B (a)(2a) 0( + 1) ej
a0j (4)
DC
kxn = 6 d2 cos01 1c cos (2 2(M 0 1)

+1
n = 1; 2; 3; 1 1 1 ; ceil [(M 0 2)=2]
as j
j ! 1. Also, it can be shown that for large j
j, jI2 j will always
(7)
be negligible compared to jI1 j or jI3 j (I2 is integral along the path C2 ).
where c = cos h(cos h01 R=(M 0 1)). These zeros will be referred to
In [8], Taylor chose B (9) as an even function because he was con-
as parent array factor zeros. Similarly, zeros given by (6) will be named
cerned primarily with the sum patterns. In order to extend Taylor’s re-
as generic array factor zeros [16].
sults to the difference patterns, the present authors choose B (9) as an
In designing simple Taylor distribution, far end array factor zeros
odd function. So, by combining I1 and I3 , asymptotic forms of the in-
(n  n  ) are equated to those of the uniform array of M elements
tegral (1) for both sum (6) and difference (1) patterns are as given
[8]. In order to extend the original Taylor distribution for higher order
below
sidelobe tapering, the authors choose far end zeros as (from (6))
AF 6  2B (a)(2a) 0(+ 1)
cos kx a 0
( + 1)
6
kxn = 6 n+
 2
kx +1 2
2 Md
0( + 1)  ( + 1) n = n ; n + 1; . . . ; ceil [(M 0 2)=2)]
AF  j 2B (a)(2a)
1  sin kx a 0 : (8)
kx+1
(5)
2
where  is a real number greater than 0. When  = 0, the above zeros
From (5), it can be intuitively perceived that the array factor zeros tend
simply become the zeros of the uniform array.
to
So, after the dilation procedure, array factor zeros corresponding to
6
kxn ! 6 n + 2 a the generalized Taylor distribution are given as

kxn = 6 kxn ; n  n :
T DC
and 0

n  n
(9)
kxn ;
1
kxn ! 6 n +  +2 1 a (6)
3For the difference patterns, the default array factor zero k = 0 is not in-
cluded in (6).
1154 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

where dilation factor T is defined as

kx6n
T = DC : (10)
kxn
In comparison, the array factor zeros chosen by McNamara are [4]:
MT kxn
DC ; n  n
kxn
00
= DC
kxn + ( + 1) 2Nd n 0 kDC ; n  n (11)
xn
where, dilation factor  MT is defined as
kxn
MT = DC
00

: (12)
kxn
From (11), it is evident that for n  n
DCthe array factor zeros kxn
00
depend
upon the Dolph-Chebyshev zeros kxn , which is not the case with the
formulation (9). When  = 01, the modified zeros kxn 00
reduce to the
Dolph-Chebyshev zeros kxn . On the other hand, when  = 0, kxn
DC 00
Fig. 3. Generalized discrete Taylor distributions with different  values.
are equal to those of the simple Taylor distribution. When  > 0, the
sidelobe tapering is more rapid than 1=kx . But, the exact amount of
tapering cannot be estimated from the formulation (11). This is not Analogous to the Taylor distribution, to obtain the generalized
a problem with the formulation (9) because of the readily available Bayliss distribution, far end zeros are replaced by (again, from (6))
asymptotic relation between  and AF (5). From (5), it is understood
that the sidelobe tapering is of the order (1=kx )+1 . For d < 0:5, the 1 =
kxn 6 n +  +2 1 Md 2
same dilation technique but with the McNamara sum pattern zeros as
the parent zeros should be used [3]. n = n ; n + 1; . . . ; ceil [(M 0 2)=2)] : (16)

B. Generalized Discrete Bayliss Distribution When  = 0, the above zeros approach the zeros of the maximum
slope difference pattern (which corresponds to the linear odd array ex-
The Bayliss array distribution is the difference pattern counterpart citation) as n ! 1.
of the Taylor distribution [10]. But, Bayliss was not aware of the exis- So, after the dilation procedure, array factor zeros corresponding to
tence of the optimum difference pattern. So, he started with a polyno- the generalized Bayliss distribution are given as
mial which was obtained by taking the derivative of the optimum sum
MZd ; n  n
B kxn
pattern. Then an iterative procedure was used to make all the sidelobes
equal. Later, McNamara devised a technique to obtain the optimum
kxn
0
= 1
kxn ; n  n
: (17)

where dilation factor  B is defined as

difference patterns using the Zolotarev polynomials [4]. The same au-
thor also provided a method to synthesize discrete Bayliss distributions
kx1n
B = MZd
[13]. However, for higher order tapering, the array factor zeros used
: (18)
by McNamara do not coincide with those given by (6). So, a different kxn
formulation is provided here to obtain the generalized discrete Bayliss
distribution. In comparison, the array factor zeros chosen by McNamara are [13]:
MB kxn
MZd ; n  n
Since the Zolotarev polynomials are less familiar compared to the
Chebyshev polynomials, a simple graph is provided with relevant kxn
00
= kxn +  (kxn
MZd msd 0 kMZd ); n  n (19)
parametric equations (Fig. 5). For a complete treatment, refer [4], [6]. xn
K (m) is the complete elliptic integral of the first kind, to the param-
where, dilation factor  MB is defined as
eter m. H (#; m) is the Jacobi eta function. The sn(#; m), cn(#; m)
and dn(#; m) are the Jacobi elliptic functions, while zn(#; m) is the kx00n
MB = MZd : (20)
Jacobi zeta function [17]. Open source routines for implementing kxn
these functions using arbitrary-precision floating-point arithmetic are msd represents the zeros of the maximum slope difference
In (19), kxn
available, e.g., [18].
Similar to the Dolph-Chebyshev array, array factor of the McNa- pattern.
mara-Zolotarev difference pattern array is given in terms of the (M 0 Both Taylor and Bayliss distributions for different  values are
1)th order Zolotarev polynomial as [4] plotted in Figs. 3 and 6, respectively. As can be seen, for all  values,
the array excitation does not change much in the central region.
kx d
AF (kx ) = ZM 01 c sin ;m However, the array excitation changes considerably at the edges by
2 (13)
varying the . When  = 0, which is the case for the simple Taylor
where and Bayliss patterns, array excitation terminates abruptly in a pedestal
c = csc k d
2 ; if d  =2 : at its edges. For all other  values, the array excitation drops to zero
c=1 if d  =2
(14) at the edges. The decreasing rate of the array excitation at the edges
is a function of  which can be observed from Figs. 3 and 6. Also,
The parameter m is decided by the amount of SLR required. For the array factors corresponding to Figs. 3 and 6 are plotted in Figs. 4 and
computational aspects, refer to [4, Appendix]. From the above formu- 7, respectively. From these figures, it can be seen that all the sidelobes
lation and Fig. 5, array factor zeros are given as closer to  = 0 are almost at the same level. But, the tapering rate of
MZd = 6 2 sin 1 xn
 zeros) corresponding to each  value
the far end sidelobes (i.e., after n
kxn 0
(15) is significantly different from those of others. Also, the authors would
d c
like to note that the far end sidelobes corresponding to  < 0 actually
where n = 1; 2; 3; . . . ; ceil[(M 0 2)=2)]. increase with the  value, as expected from (5).
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. Array factors corresponding to the excitations shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. Representation of a 9th order Zolotarev polynomial and it’s zeros.
Fig. 6. Generalized discrete Bayliss distributions with different  values.
IV. EFFECT OF THE SIDELOBE TAPERING ON VARIOUS ARRAY
CHARACTERISTICS
Various characteristics of the n array distributions are examined in
this section. Also, comparison of the n  array distributions with respect
to their ideal counterparts is included. These charts are helpful when
there is a need for tradeoff among different array performance criteria.
The ATE versus SLR for arrays with different  values are plotted in
Fig. 8. The ATE initially increases, reaches a peak and monotonically
decreases with the SLR. Also, it is observed that the ATE peaks shift to
the left side as the  value increases. This is because for smaller SLR,
1155
Fig. 7. Array factors corresponding to the excitations shown in Fig. 6.
Fig. 8. ATE versus SLR for Taylor array distributions.
Fig. 9. ATE versus n
 for Taylor array distributions.
the power in the main-lobe increases rapidly with the  value which
in turn increases the ATE. However, as the SLR increases the power
in the main-lobe saturates and beamwidth starts controlling the ATE
[7]. So, for larger SLR values, all arrays exhibit approximately equal
efficiency. As a matter of fact, the Dolph-Chebyshev array performs
slightly better than the other arrays due to its smaller beamwidth.
In Fig. 9, ATE versus n is shown for different  values. When n
 = 1,
all the arrays attain their maximum ATE values. The ATE initially de-
creases, reaches a minimum and eventually saturates to the ATE of the
corresponding Dolph-Chebyshev array. Next, beam broadening with
respect to the SLR and n  can be observed in Figs. 10 and 11. Similar
1156 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 13. Boresight slope versus n

 for Bayliss array distributions.
Fig. 10. Beamwidth versus SLR for Taylor array distributions.

Fig. 14. Beamwidth versus SLR for Bayliss array distributions.

Fig. 11. Beamwidth versus n
 for Taylor array distributions.

Fig. 15. Beamwidth versus n

 for Bayliss array distributions.

Fig. 12. Boresight slope versus SLR for Bayliss array distributions.
then the boresight slope of the gain pattern is given as [19]

explanations can be provided for all the other Bayliss pattern related Karray = @k@ x (Garray )
diagrams (Figs. 12–15). k =k
Before concluding this section, the definition of the boresight slope
G k
M
jA x
m=1 ( m m ) :
K 0
array used for plotting Figs. 12 and 13 is provided. If the squinted  e ( xscan ) (22)
complex gain pattern is defined as [7]
M
A
m=1 j m j
2

Garray :(kx ) = Ge (kx)

M
A jk k scan
m=1 f m exp [ ( x 0 x ) m ]g (21) x In deriving the above equation it is assumed that the variation of the
G k k
element gain pattern ( e ( x )) with respect to the x is negligible. This
M
m=1 j m jA2 approximation is indeed acceptable as long as the boresight direction
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
is close to the broadside direction. For the exact definitions of Am and
Ge (kx ), refer to [7]. From (22), it is evident that the effect of the array
coefficients on the slope is solely determined by the term inside the
square brackets. So, the parameter Karray 0
which is used to plot the
diagrams is defined as
M (Am xm )
m=1
Karray =
0
M Am 2 : (23)
m=1 j j
Also, it can be observed that Karray
0
is independent of the scan direc-
tion. The effect of the scan direction is entirely incorporated into the
term Ge (kxscan ) of (22).
V. CONCLUSION
Theory related to the design of the generalized Taylor and Bayliss
patterns has been presented. With this design technique, one can
achieve arbitrary sidelobe level and envelope taper. Even though [16]
and [13] dealt generalization of the n-bar patterns, the theory presented
in those papers does not comply with the Taylor’s asymptotic analysis.
The theory presented in this communication is exact and eliminates
this drawback. In addition, this theory eliminates the necessity of
Bayliss’ cumbersome (but not accurate enough) coefficient and pa-
rameter tables [10]. Also, various comparison charts are presented
which are important when it comes to tradeoff among different array
characteristics.
REFERENCES
[1] C. L. Dolph, “A current distribution for broadside arrays which opti-
mizes the relationship between beam width and side-lobe level,” Proc.
IRE, vol. 34, no. 6, pp. 335–348, 1946.
[2] H. J. Riblet and C. L. Dolph, “Discussion on “a current distribution for
broadside arrays which optimizes the relationship between beam width
and side-lobe level”,” Proc. IRE, vol. 35, no. 5, pp. 489–492, 1947.
[3] D. A. McNamara, “An exact formulation for the synthesis of broadside
Chebyshev arrays of 2n elements with interelement spacing d < =2,”
Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 48, pp. 457–463, 2006.
[4] D. A. McNamara, “Direct synthesis of optimum difference patterns
for discrete linear arrays using Zolotarev distributions,” IEE Proc. H
Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 140, no. 6, pp. 495–500, 1993.
[5] O. R. Price and R. F. Hyneman, “Distribution functions for monopulse
antenna difference patterns,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 8, no.
6, pp. 567–576, 1960.
[6] R. Levy, “Generalized rational function approximation in finite inter-
vals using Zolotarev functions,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech.,
vol. 18, no. 12, pp. 1052–1064, 1970.
[7] A. K. Bhattacharyya, Phased Array Antennas, Floquet Analysis, Syn-
thesis, BFNs, and Active Array Systems. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2006.
[8] T. T. Taylor, “Design of line-source antennas for narrow beamwidth
and low sidelobes,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-3, pp.
16–28, 1955.
[9] T. T. Taylor, “Design of circular apertures for narrow beamwidth and
low sidelobes,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 17–22,
1960.
[10] E. T. Bayliss, “Design of monopulse difference patterns with low side-
lobes,” Bell Syst. Tech. J., vol. 47, pp. 623–650, 1968.
[11] R. S. Elliott, “On discretizing continuous aperture distributions,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 25, no. 5, pp. 617–621, 1977.
[12] A. T. Villeneuve, “Taylor patterns for discrete arrays,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 32, no. 10, pp. 1089–1093, 1984.
[13] D. A. McNamara, “Performance of Zolotarev and modified-Zolotarev
difference pattern array distributions,” IEE Proc. Microw. Antennas
Propag., vol. 141, no. 1, pp. 37–44, 1994.
[14] D. R. Rhodes, “On the Taylor distribution,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 143–145, 1972.
[15] S. R. Zinka, I. B. Jeong, W. K. Min, J. H. Chun, and J. P. Kim, “On the
generalized Villeneuve distribution,” in Proc. Asia Pacific Microwave
Conf., 2009, pp. 17–20.
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1157
[16] D. A. McNamara, “Generalised Villeneuve n  distribution,” IEE Proc.
H Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 136, no. 3, pp. 245–249, 1989.
[17] M. Abramowitz and I. Stegun, Handbook of Mathematical Functions,
5th ed. New York: Dover, 1972.
[18] F. Johansson et al., 2011, mpmath: A Python Library for Arbitrary-Pre-
cision Floating-Point Arithmetic (Version 0.17) [Online]. Available:
http://code.google.com/p/mpmath/
[19] G. Kirkpatrick, “A relationship between slope functions for array and
aperture monopulse antennas,” IRE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 10,
no. 3, p. 350, May 1962.
Amplitude-Only Low Sidelobe Synthesis for Large Thinned
Circular Array Antennas
Will P. M. N. Keizer
Abstract—This communication presents results for the low sidelobe syn-
thesis using amplitude-only tapering applied on the turned ON elements of
large circular thinned arrays. The low sidelobe synthesis was carried out
with the same iterative Fourier transform method that was developed ear-
lier to restore the original sidelobe performance in case of defective array
elements. The presented low sidelobe results refer to highly thinned circular
arrays with diameters ranging from 25 to 133.3 wavelengths and involved
both sum and difference patterns. In addition, sector nulling in combina-
tion with low sidelobes was numerical investigated.
Index Terms—Array antennas, low sidelobes, pattern synthesis, thinned
arrays.
I. INTRODUCTION
Array thinning involves the removal (turning off) of radiating ele-
ments from an array antenna. The main motivation to use thinning is
the reduction in cost and weight. This technique allows getting nearly
the same narrow beamwidth as for a filled array of equal size. Another
advantage is that when the turned ON elements operate with equal am-
plitude, lower sidelobes can be obtained as for the same filled array
illuminated with uniform weighting.
For these reasons thinned array antennas are over more than 40 years
in use with high performance US military phased array radar systems
such as Pave Paws [1] (operating at UHF, 22 m diameter aperture, 2677
elements with 1792 active), HAPDAR [2] (L-band, 69 m diameter
aperture, 4300 elements with 2165 active), Cobra Dane [1] (L-band,
29 m diameter aperture, 34 768 elements with 15 360 active) and Sea-
Based X-Band (SBX) Radar [3] having a 248 m2 aperture populated by
> 45000 transmit/receive (T/R) modules. SBX is presently the largest
solid-state phased array radar in the world in terms of element posi-
tions and the number of T/R modules. All these radars provide large
instantaneous wideband operation, feature monopulse target tracking
capability and are intended for the detection, tracking and recognition
of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The use of thinned arrays in the
Manuscript received November 01, 2010; revised June 14, 2011; accepted
August 09, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
The author, retired, was with the TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory,
2597 AK, The Hague, Netherlands. He is now at 2343 JH Oegstgeest, The
Netherlands (e-mail: willkeizer@ieee.org).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173119
1158 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

above mentioned high performance radar systems, makes obvious the

importance of this category of array antennas.
In order to improve the sidelobe performance of thinned arrays Mail-
loux and Cohen [4] proposed to use a three-level discrete amplitude
weighting scheme to approximate a 050 dB sidelobe Taylor amplitude
distribution in combination with statistical thinning of the elements.
The thinning was arranged to smooth the average amplitude illumi-
nation in order to reduce the peak sidelobes caused by the amplitude
quantization. In [5] an almost similar multi-level amplitude weighting
scheme was described for thinned arrays.
This communication addresses the synthesis of “continuous” ampli-
tude tapers for the illumination of the turned ON elements to lower the
maximum peak sidelobe level of the receive patterns, sum and differ-
ence, of four large thinned circular array antennas. It is worth to men-
tion that the use of difference patterns with thinned planar arrays was
not dealt before in open literature.
The considered circular array antennas have diameters ranging from
25 to 133.3 wavelengths and fill factors between 27% and 50%. The
fill factor is defined as the ratio of the number of turned ON elements
versus the total number (turned ON and OFF) of elements. Each of the
four considered arrays has an already defined turned ON element distri-
bution that did not change during the synthesis of the amplitude taper.
The motivation to perform the low sidelobe synthesis on existing planar
thinned arrays, was to get a substantial lower maximum peak sidelobe
performance then offered by analytical tapers. Low sidelobe circular
Taylor distributions applied to the considered four arrays reduced the
peak sidelobe level with only about 1.5 dB compared to equal ampli-
tude illumination.
The used technique to synthesize an amplitude taper is the iterative
Fourier transform (IFT) method [6] that is able to restore the original
far-field pattern of a planar array antenna in case of defective elements Fig. 1. Computed far-field sum pattern of the thinned 100  circular array with
across the aperture. By considering defective elements as turned OFF 30% fill factor when illuminated by the synthesized amplitude taper for 400
elements, the IFT method of [6] is directly, without any modification, dB sidelobes. (a) Principal u-cut. (b) Main beam and PSL distribution of whole
applicable for the synthesis of low sidelobe tapers with thinned planar visible u-v space of the far-field.
arrays. The published pattern synthesis results include also sector
nulling combined with low sidelobes obtained with amplitude-only
tapering. space were incorporated in the synthesis to assure that the array side-
lobe performance will not be degraded when the main beam is scanned
away from broadside.
An extended description of the used IFT method is included in [6].
II. LOW SIDELOBE SYNTHESIS APPROACH
A MATLAB program listing of exactly the same IFT method suited for
the pattern recovery of linear arrays troubled by defective elements is
Since the IFT method [6] has the ability to deal with a large number
given in [7]. This MATLAB program takes the amplitude range con-
of defective elements randomly dispersed across a planar aperture, this
straint for the active elements into account and is implemented in such
method is very well suited for the synthesis of amplitude-only low side-
a way that any synthesized taper always fulfills the used dynamic range
lobe tapering of thinned circular arrays. Furthermore, the IFT method
requirement; see the MATLAB listing in [7]. The same remark applies
allows to take user defined element excitation constraints into account.
to the IFT method described in [6].
For the sum patterns without sector nulling, a 10 dB dynamic range
requirement for the amplitudes of the turned ON elements, defined as
the ratio of the maximum and minimum amplitude, was applied, while III. NUMERICAL RESULTS
with sector nulling the dynamic range requirement was raised to 15 Three of the four array configurations considered in this communi-
dB. For the difference patterns the dynamic range of the amplitudes of cation are the same thinned array antennas as described in [8]. These
the turned ON elements was set to 20 dB, for both with and without arrays have a circular aperture shape and the turned ON and OFF el-
sector nulling. For all considered arrays the elements were positioned ements are positioned in a square grid at 0.5 wavelength spacing. The
in a square lattice spaced 0.5 wavelengths apart. Due to this element fourth thinned array has a diameter of 133.3 wavelengths and uses the
spacing the array factor of each of the considered arrays covers in u 0 v same square element grid. The applied fill factors yield for equal illu-
space the area defined by f01  u  1; 01  v  1g where mination of the turned ON elements about the lowest maximum peak
u = sin  cos '; v = sin  sin ';  and ' the angular far-field posi- sidelobes for the considered array diameters. The elements of the con-
tions. A substantial part of the far-field directions of those array factors sidered arrays feature an isotropic embedded element pattern.
are therefore sited in invisible u 0 v space defined by u2 + v 2 > 1. Fig. 1(a) shows for the thinned circular array, having a 100-wave-
The low sidelobe synthesis was considered fully successful when all length diameter and a 30% fill factor, the u-cut of its far-field going
far-field directions of the sidelobe region, including those of invisible through the main beam peak for the amplitude tapering arranged by the
u-v space, did not exceed the user defined peak sidelobe level (PSL) re- IFT method. The synthesis was carried out with a 040 dB maximum
quirements. The far-field directions located into the invisible part of u-v PSL requirement. The obtained far-field, representing the sum pattern,
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1159

TABLE I
FAR-FIELD RESULTS FOR FOUR THINNED CIRCULAR ARRAYS WHEN A SUM
AMPLITUDE TAPER IS SYNTHESIZED USING THE IFT METHOD

TABLE II
FAR-FIELD RESULTS FOR SAME FOUR THINNED CIRCULAR ARRAYS OF TABLE I
WHEN A N AZIMUTH DIFFERENCE AMPLITUDE TAPER IS SYNTHESIZED USING
THE IFT METHOD

Fig. 2. Computed far-field azimuth difference pattern of the thinned 100  cir-
cular array with 30% fill factor when illuminated by the synthesized amplitude
0
taper for 34 dB sidelobes. (a) Principal u-cut. (b) Main beams and PSL dis-
tribution of the whole visible u-v space of the far-field.

matches the 040 dB maximum PSL requirement as can be noted from

the peak sidelobe distribution depicted in Fig. 1(b) that covers all side-
lobes (including the main lobe) located in visible u 0 v space. The syn-
thesis terminated after 51 iterations when the design requirements were
completely fulfilled. For a plot of the far-field for the equal amplitude
distribution of the turned ON elements featuring a 035:4 dB maximum
PSL, the associated peak sidelobe distribution and the thinned element
distribution across the aperture, the reader is referred to [8].
The u-cut of the azimuth difference pattern of the same array syn-
thesized for 034 dB peak sidelobes using amplitude-only tapering is
shown in Fig. 2(a). The corresponding histogram of the far-field peak
sidelobes and two main lobes, is depicted in Fig. 2(b). This result re-
quired 47 iterations and matches completely the maximum PSL design
requirement of 034 dB including the dynamic range requirement of
Fig. 3. Computed far-field sum pattern of the thinned 100  circular array with
20 dB for the amplitude taper. 0
30% fill factor when illuminated by the synthesized amplitude taper for 40 dB
Table I summarizes the low sidelobe synthesis results using ampli- 0
sidelobes and a 65 dB sector null.
tude–only tapering obtained for the sum patterns of four circular arrays
with diameters ranging from to 25 wavelengths to 133.3 wavelengths.
On examination Table I one can see that by applying amplitude ta- that could be obtained with the IFT method. The listed parameter Kr
pering for the turned ON elements, the maximum PSL improves with denotes the relative angle sensitivity. Comparing the PSL results of
more than 4 dB compared to equal amplitude illumination of the turned Table I with those of Table II it can be noted that for each of the four
ON elements. The reduction in antenna directivity due to amplitude ta- considered arrays the maximum PSL value of the difference pattern is
pering is small and varies between 0.09 dB and 0.3 dB. The increase in 6 dB higher than the maximum PSL of the corresponding sum pattern.
3 dB beamwidth due to amplitude tapering is modest. Fig. 3 displays the far-field of the sum pattern of same thinned cir-
Table II summarizes the far-field results when a low sidelobe dif- cular array of Fig. 1 synthesized for a 040 dB maximum PSL in com-
ference amplitude taper is synthesized using the IFT method for the bination with a 065 dB rectangular null sector located in the far-field
same four arrays as shown in Table I. The listed results apply to the az- at f0:4  u  0:5; 0:2  v  0:3g. The second null region present
imuth difference pattern and represent the lowest peak sidelobe values in the far-field at f00:5  u  00:4; 00:3  v  00:2g is a mirror
1160 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE III
FAR-FIELD RESULTS FOR FOUR THINNED CIRCULAR ARRAYS WHEN A SUM
AMPLITUDE TAPER IN COMBINATION WITH SECTOR NULLING IS SYNTHESIZED
USING THE IFT METHOD
Fig. 4. Computed far-field azimuth difference pattern of the thinned 100  cir-
cular array with 30% fill factor when illuminated by the synthesized amplitude
0 0
taper for 34 dB sidelobes and a 60 dB sector null.
image of the original null sector that is typical for sector nulling accom-
plished by amplitude—only tapering of the aperture. This result was
obtained after 4449 iterations when the design objectives were fully
matched. The synthesis of a sector null in combination with lower side-
lobes was also performed for the three other considered arrays. Table III
summarizes the sector nulling results for the sum pattern of the four
thinned circular arrays. In each case the location of the nulling sector
was specified at f0:4  u  0:5; 0:2  v  0:3g. For the array with a
diameter of 25 wavelengths the depth of the was limited to 060 dB. On
comparing the directivity and 3 dB beamwidth results of Tables I and
III, one can notice that the presence of the nulling sector in the far-field
hardly degrades the directivity, less than 0.23 dB difference, and the
change in 3 dB beamwidth is almost negligible.
The high number of iterations, 4449, needed to the realize the nulling
sector of Fig. 3, is due to the 065 dB depth requirement for this sector, a
very tough one for massively thinned planar arrays. The result of an al-
most similar synthesis applied to a filled 15 2 15 element square array
[9] supports this conclusion. The far-field pattern of this array was de-
signed for 020 dB sidelobes including two rectangular nulling sectors,
one with a depth of 030 dB and the other with a 060 dB depth. The
060 dB nulling depth requirement was only partially met despite the
not very demanding 020 dB PSL requirement for all sidelobes outside
the two nulling sectors and the use of complex weighting. Furthermore
the design of [9] experienced a huge 1.4 dB loss in directivity due to
the presence of the two nulling sectors.
Fig. 4 shows the azimuth difference far-field pattern of the same
thinned aperture as of Fig. 2 synthesized for a 034 dB maximum PSL
TABLE IV
FAR-FIELD RESULTS FOR FOUR THINNED CIRCULAR ARRAYS WHEN AN
AZIMUTH DIFFERENCE AMPLITUDE TAPER IN COMBINATION WITH SECTOR
NULLING IS SYNTHESIZED USING THE IFT METHOD
in combination with a 060 dB rectangular null sector located at f0:4 
u  0:5; 0:2  v  0:3g in u 0 v space. This result required 3605
iterations to match fully the design requirements.
Table IV summarizes the sector nulling results of the considered four
thinned arrays when operating with an azimuth difference pattern. For
each array the locating of the nulling sector was specified at f0:4 
u  0:5; 0:2  v  0:3g. For the 25 wavelength diameter array the
depth of the null was limited to 055 dB. For the three larger arrays a
null depth of 060 dB could be realized.
All the presented far-field patterns match fully the specified far-field
design requirements while none of the associated tapers did violate the
dynamic range constraint for the turned ON element amplitudes.
When the considered arrays will be applied in phased radars, the best
way to implement the amplitude taper is using active weighting [6].
With active weighting the taper is realized by appropriate settings of the
amplitude control devices inside the T/R modules instead of using fixed
tapering arranged by a passive beamforming network. Pattern calcula-
tions for quantized tapering performed for amplitude control devices
with 15 dB control range for the sum patterns and 20 dB control range
for the difference patterns, revealed that quantized tapering with six bit
resolution degraded the peak level of the sidelobes with less than 0.2
dB for all considered arrays. The increase of the PSL in the nulling
sector did not exceed 3 dB.
A comparative assessment with earlier published results was not pos-
sible due the very limited information about the maximum PSL results
in [4], [5] of the simulated far-field patterns. Furthermore no numerical
values for the degree of thinning were disclosed in [4] for the consid-
ered circular arrays. As far as is known, no other papers on amplitude
tapering, discrete of continuous, applied to thinned planar arrays have
been published.
Even publications for large filled planar arrays featuring the type of
results presented in this communication, are scarce.
IV. CONCLUSION
The presented results show for the first time that for large thinned
circular arrays amplitude weighting is quite feasible for both sum and
difference patterns and can improve the maximum peak sidelobe level
of the sum pattern with at least 4 dB compared to equal amplitude il-
lumination of the active elements. It is also demonstrated that sector
nulling for both sum and difference patterns is possible to a depth of at
least 055 dB even for massively thinned arrays and with very minor
degradation of directivity and 3 dB beamwidth.
REFERENCES
[1] E. Brookner, Aspects of modern radar, 1st ed. Norwood, MA: Artech
House, 1988.
[2] P. J. Kahrilas, “HAPDAR—an operational phased array radar,” Proc.
IEEE, vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 1967–1975, 1968.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
[3] “Raytheon datasheet,” Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) for Mis-
sile Defense, Raytheon Datasheet [Online]. Available: www.
raytheon.com/capabilities/rtnwcm/groups/rms/documents/con-
tent/rtn_rms_ps_sbx_datasheet.pdf
[4] R. J. Mailloux and E. Cohen, “Statistically thinned arrays with quan-
tized element weights,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 39, no. 4,
pp. 436–447, Apr. 1991.
[5] T. Numazali, S. Mano, T. Katagi, and M. Mizusawa, “An improved
method for density tapering of planar array antennas,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propag., vol. 35, no. 9, pp. 1066–1070, Sep. 1987.
[6] W. P. M. N. Keizer, “Element failure correction for a large monopulse
phased array antenna with active amplitude weighting,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 8, pp. 2211–2218, Aug. 2007.
[7] W. P. M. N. Keizer, “Low sidelobe pattern synthesis using iterative
Fourier techniques coded in MATLAB,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag.,
vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 137–150, Apr. 2009.
[8] W. P. M. N. Keizer, “Large planar array thinning using iterative
FFT techniques,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 10, pp.
3359–3362, Oct. 2009.
[9] O. M. Bucci, L. Caccavale, and T. Isernia, “Optimal far-field focusing
of uniformly spaced arrays subject to arbitrary upper bounds in non-
target directions,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, no. 11, pp.
1539–1553, Nov. 2002.
Power Synthesis for Reconfigurable Arrays by Phase-Only
Control With Simultaneous Dynamic Range Ratio and
Near-Field Reduction
Giulia Buttazzoni and Roberto Vescovo
Abstract—An iterative method of power synthesis for reconfigurable ar-
rays of arbitrary geometry is presented, which is based on the method of
successive projections. The algorithm allows to synthesize a number of de-
sired patterns, each reconfigurable into any of the others by phase-only
control. The excitation amplitudes are optimized, and their dynamic range
ratio (DRR) is reduced below a given threshold. Furthermore, the radiated
field can be reduced below a prescribed level in a given region close to the
antenna. As a particular important case, the method allows to perform a
“discrete” phase controlled beam-scanning.
Index Terms—Dynamic range ratio reduction, near-field reduction,
phase control, power synthesis, reconfigurable arrays, scanning, successive
projections.
I. INTRODUCTION
In many practical applications, such as for example air traffic control
radars, satellites and wireless communications, antennas are required to
generate different patterns, each reconfigurable into any of the others.
With antenna arrays of many elements, the reconfigurability is often
obtained by modifying only the excitation phases, thus allowing the
use of simpler feeding networks. Hence the excitation amplitude of
each array element holds constant, even if it may be different from
the excitation amplitudes of the other elements. The amplitude vari-
ations can be reduced by reducing the dynamic range ratio (DRR).
Moreover, the environment surrounding the antenna can include elec-
tronic devices that can be disturbed by the radiated field, or mounting
Manuscript received June 08, 2010; revised January 26, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 08, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012.
The authors are with the University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy. (e-mail:
giulia.buttazzoni@phd.units.it, vescovo@units.it).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173103
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1161
equipments that produce interference. A convenient way to reduce such
interferences is to reduce the radiated electric field in the region of in-
terest. Several synthesis techniques are available in the literature, most
of which are based on powerful tools such as stochastic algorithms
[1]–[3] and the method of projections [4], [5]. In [6], a least square
solution is described for the phase synthesis of planar and conformal
arrays. In [7] a constrained least square optimization is used to study
the phase-only control in spherical conformal arrays, with comparison
to the combined phase and amplitude control. In [8] an algorithm based
on the discrete Fourier transform is used to solve a beam-scanning
problem for circular arrays, in presence of null constraints. In [9] a
linear array beam-scanning is performed by phase control, with pat-
tern reduction in constant directions and DRR control. In [10] a syn-
thesis procedure for reconfigurable arrays is proposed, based on the
method of projections, which reduces the DRR when linear or rect-
angular arrays are involved. In [11] a power synthesis problem for
phase controlled reconfigurable conformal arrays is solved by a gen-
eralized projection algorithm, which however does not allow DRR re-
duction. In [12] a simple method is proposed, based on the method of
projections, to solve a power synthesis problem for phase-only recon-
figurable arrays of arbitrary geometry, in presence of an upper bound
on the DRR. Several techniques have also been devised to reduce the
near-field. In [13] a pattern synthesis technique is proposed that forms
nulls in given points of the near-field region, based on a constrained
least-mean-square approximation. This approach is generalized in [14],
where the near-field radiated power is minimized only in the boundary
of an obstacle, thus allowing to isolate large objects. Also in [15], [16]
electric field nulls are imposed in assigned points of the near-field re-
gion, but the radiation pattern is synthesized imposing that it belong
to a prescribed mask, and using the method of projections. However,
the techniques in [13]–[16] are not suitable for reconfigurable arrays.
In [17] the method of projections is used in conjunction with a version
of the Broyden-Fletcher-Golfarb-Shanno (BFGS) iterative method, to
solve a power synthesis problem for reconfigurable conformal arrays
in presence of an upper bound on the near-field in a region close to the
antenna. The approach also allows to control the cross-polar compo-
nent, but does not control the DRR.
In this communication, we propose a simple and accurate method for
the power synthesis of reconfigurable arrays of arbitrary geometry. The
method allows to generate a given number of patterns, each reconfig-
urable into any of the others by phase-only control, simultaneously re-
ducing the DRR below a given threshold and, in addition, the near-field
amplitude below a prescribed threshold in a given region close to the
antenna.
II. FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM
N
Let us consider an array of radiating elements, referred to a Carte-
sian system (O x; y; z '
). The radiation pattern in the direction of the
x y
0 plane and the electric field in a point r are given by
N
F (a; ') = an Fn (') (1)
n=1
N
( ; )=
E a r an En (r) (2)
n=1
where a = [ 1 . . . N ]T is the column vector of the complex exci-
a ; ;a
F '
tations, while n ( ) and En (r) are the pattern and the electric field,
respectively, of the excitation vector vn = [0 . . . 1 . . . 0]T having
; ; ; ;
n
unity in the -th position. The dynamic range ratio of a is DRR(a) =
a = a
maxn fj n jg minn fj n jg.
1162 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
We want to determine a number S of array patterns belonging to
S suitable masks Ms = ffs ('): ms1 (')  jfs (')j  ms2 (')g ; s =
1; . . . ; S , where ms1 (') and ms2 (') are the lower and the upper
bounds, respectively, of the s-th mask, in such a way that each pattern
can be transformed into any of the others by modifying only the
excitation phases. We also require that the DRR of the excitation
amplitudes do not overcome a prescribed threshold, and that, in a
region Vr close to the antenna, the electric field amplitude do not
overcome an assigned value.
This problem can be formulated as follows: find S excitation vectors
a1 ; . . . ; aS , as = [a1s ; . . . ; aNs ]T , in such a way that
F (as ; ') 2 Ms ; s = 1; . . . ; S (3a)
jan1 j = 1 1 1 = janS j = n ; n = 1; . . . ; N; (3b)
DRR()  D0 ; where  = [1 ; . . . ; N ]T (3c)
E(as ; r)  E0 ; s = 1; . . . ; S; r 2 Vr : (3d)
Condition (3a) imposes that each pattern belong to a mask. Condition
(3b) imposes that the excitation amplitude of each array element be
constant during the reconfiguration process, so as to ensure phase-only
control. The amplitudes n in (3b) may vary from one element to the
others, but (3c) imposes that their DRR do not overcome a prescribed
threshold D0 . Condition (3d) imposes an upper bound E0 on the field
amplitude in the region Vr close to the antenna.
III. THE SOLVING PROCEDURE
The proposed algorithm is an evolution of the method in [12], where
the solution is searched in a set of vectors having, as components, S
scalar functions and S column vectors aimed to provide the far-field
patterns and the optimal excitations, respectively. We here modify the
research space in [12] to include vectors containing, as additional com-
ponents, S vector functions aimed to approximate the constrained near-
fields. Thus, we introduce the set W of the 3S -tuples
~ = (g1 ('); . . . ; gS ('); k1 (r); . . . ; kS (r); w1 ; . . . ; wS )
w (4)
where gs (') is a complex scalar function defined in I' = [0; ],
ks (r) a complex vector function defined in Vr , and ws = on the z –axis of the Cartesian system O(x; y; z ). The arcs lie on
[w1s ; . . . ; wNs ]T a complex column vector.
In W we introduce the subset U of the 3S -tuples
u~ = (f1 ('); . . . ; fS ('); e1 (r); . . . ; eS (r); u1 ; . . . ; uS ) (5)
where fs (') 2 Ms , jes (r)j  E0 for r 2 Vr , us = [u1s ; . . . ; uNs ]T
with jun1 j = 1 1 1 = junS j = n , and DRR()  D0 ( =
[1 ; . . . ; N ]T ).
We also introduce the subset V of W of the 3S -tuples
v~ =(F (v1 ; '); . . . ; F (vS ; ');
E(v1 ; r); . . . ; E(vS ; r); v1 ; . . . ; vS ) (6)
where vs is an arbitrary excitation vector, while F (vs ; ') and E(vs ; r)
are the corresponding radiation pattern and electric field, respectively.
Following [12] we adopt, as a solution, a point of U minimizing
a suitable distance from V . To reach such a point, starting from a
~ 0 2 U we perform the iterative procedure u~ n+1 =
suitable point u
PU PV u~ n ; n = 0; 1; 2; . . ., where PU and PV are the projection op-
erators onto U and V , respectively, implemented in the Appendix. The
sequence fn g of the distances from u ~ n to V is non-increasing [12],
thus it converges. Therefore, this iteration generates a sequence fu ~ng
of points of U closer and closer to V . We stop the iteration at u~k 2 U
such that k < " or (k01 0 k ) =k <  , where " and  are suitable
Fig. 1. Array geometry and near-field region for examples 1 and 2.
thresholds. The last S components u1 ; . . . ; uS of u
(k) (k)
~ k are consid-
ered as the S optimal excitation vectors. Then, the S optimal radiation
patterns are F (us ; '), and the S optimal near-fields are E(us ; r),
(k) (k)
respectively. Since u ~ k 2 U , the vectors us satisfy (3b) and (3c) rig-
(k)
orously (so phase control and DRR reduction are always ensured),
fs(k) (') 2 Ms and je(sk) (r)j  E0 . But, F (us(k) ; ') = 6 fs(k) (')
and E(us ; r) = 6 es (r), so (3a) and (3d) are not satisfied exactly,
(k) (k)
in general. However, in the examined cases the distance from u ~ k to
V resulted to be small, and our solution satisfied (3a) and (3d) with
quite satisfactory approximation. Moreover, if both sets U and V were
convex, the iterative procedure would converge toward the global min-
imum of the distance [18]. In our problem, V is a linear subspace of
W , and therefore is convex. Instead, U is non-convex. Therefore, the
sequence fu ~ n g may provide a local minimum of the distance. In this
regard it is to be noted that the constraint (3d) is convex in the space of
the excitations, so it does not contribute to produce traps [19]. To re-
~ 0 should be close
duce the risk of falling into traps, the starting point u
to the solution, which however is unknown. In our examples u ~ 0 is se-
lected in such a way that, for each s, fs (') 2 Ms , es (r) = 0, and
(0) (0)
s = 0. This choice gave very good results. However, to analyze the
u(0)
effects of different choices, in Section IV the algorithm is tested using
a great number of random starting points.
IV. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
Let us refer to the array of Fig. 1, consisting of N = 70 elementary
Huygens radiators having the maximum radiation intensity in the
radial direction and equally spaced on two circular arcs centered
the two planes jz j = =4, have radius 10:83 and aperture angle
from  = 045 to  = 45 . The near-field constraint is imposed
in Vr = f(x; y; z ): jxj; jy j; jz jg. We set " = 1005 and
 = 1006 for the stop test. Each integral on I' is approximated with
a summation by dividing I' into 360 equal subintervals, and taking
the values of the integrand function at the center of each subinterval.
Similarly, each integral in Vr is approximated with a summation by
dividing Vr into equal cubes of side =8. We used Matlab 7.9.0 on a
PC with eight Intel Xeon CPUs (E5430 @ 2.66 GHz) and 16 GB of
RAM.
A. First Example: A Reconfigurability Problem
With reference to the above array, let us consider the S = 4 masks
in Fig. 2. The maximum values of the four masks are equal, and are set
to unity. In other words, at a given (large) distance from the array, the
four far-field patterns are required to have the same maximum value.
We first solved the problem in presence of only the constraints (3a) and
(3b). This will be referred to as the “reduced” problem. After 395 itera-
tions (0.4 sec) the synthesized patterns resulted to belong to the masks,
with maximum side lobe level SLL = 020:00 dB in the worst case,
and (3b) was satisfied exactly. It resulted DRR = 35:58, and we also
evaluated the maximum near-field amplitude Emax r
(r means “reduced”
problem) in Vr . In order to reduce both the DRR and the maximum
field amplitude in Vr , we then solved the “complete” problem setting
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1163

Fig. 4. Contour plots of the electric field amplitude in the worst case (a),(b) and
in the best case (c,)(d). (a),(c): “reduced” problem; (b),(d): “complete” problem.
The square line in each figure represents the intersection between V and the
Fig. 2. Assigned masks (solid lines) and synthesized patterns for the “com- considered plane.
plete” problem, with the presented algorithm (dashed line) and with the algo-
rithm in [17] (dotted lines). The bounds of the masks, m '
( ) and m '
( ) are
m 0 m
TABLE I
piecewise linear, with ( 180 ) = (180 ) = 0, EFFECT OF THE RANDOM STARTING POINTS (FIRST EXAMPLE)

m (010 ) =m (10 ) = m (15 ) = m (35 ) = m (024 )

= m (24 ) = m (021 ) = m (31 ) = 0;
m (02:5 ) =m (2:5 ) = m (22:5 ) = m (27:5 )
= m (012 ) = m (12 ) = m (19 ) = 0:89;

m (09 ) = 0:43; m (0180 ) = m (180 ) = 0:1,

m (012 ) = m (12 ) = m (13 ) = m (37 ) For comparison purposes we solved the “complete” problem also
with the method in [17]. Since the latter does not control the DRR
= m (025 ) = m (25 ) = m (020:5 )
= m (32 ) = 0:1;
and the presented method does not control the cross-polar pattern, the
comparison was performed in absence of constraint (3c). The starting
m (03:5 ) = m (3:5 ) = m (21:5 ) = m (28:5 ) '
vectors c0 and p0 in [17] were set to zero. Furthermore, to carry out
= m (012 ) = m (12 ) = m (20 ) = 1; the projections and to approximate the integrals in [17, Eq. (6)] we kept
I V
our partitioning of ' and r . Finally, we adopted our convergence
m (011 ) = 0:48. test. The algorithm in [17] required 1128 iterations (4872 sec). Fig. 2
shows the synthesized patterns, which exhibit SLL = 018 73 dB in :
the worst case. The DRR was 337. The reduction of the maximum field
V
amplitude in r was 14.01 dB in the constraint points, and 13.66 dB
using the thicker mesh.
1) Effect of the Starting Point: With reference to the above problem,
the proposed algorithm was tested in correspondence of 1000 random
' f '
starting points: for each , the modulus of s ( ) was uniformly dis-
(0)

tributed between the lower and the upper bounds of the mask, and the
;  V
phase was uniformly distributed in [0 2 ]; for each r 2 r , the mod-
;E
ulus of es (r) was uniformly distributed in [0 0 ] and the phase of
(0)

Fig. 3. Distance  from set V of the n-th point u~ , for the first example. ; 
each component was uniformly distributed in [0 2 ]; finally, each com-
(0)
ponent of each vector us was chosen with phase uniformly distributed
;  s
in [0 2 ] and random amplitude independent of and uniformly dis-
D0 = 5 in (3c) and selecting E0 in (3d) such that Emaxr
=E0 = 15 dB =D ;
tributed in [1 0 1]. On average, 14 561 iterations were required to
(i.e., we required a 15 dB reduction of the maximum electric field am- achieve a solution. Conditions (3b) and (3c) were always satisfied ex-
plitude in Vr ). Our algorithm required 14 452 iterations (361 sec), and actly. For each trial, we calculated the highest SLL among the so- S
Fig. 3 shows the distance from the set V as a function of the iteration lutions and the minimum near-field reduction. Then, we calculated the
number. The synthesized patterns are shown in Fig. 2. Conditions (3b) mean value of such SLL values and field reductions. We also calcu-
and (3c) were satisfied exactly. The reduction of the maximum field lated the highest among these SLL values and the minimum among
V r
in r , with respect to maxE , was 14.93 dB in the worst case using the these field reductions. We considered each trial as good if each of the
V =
partitioning of r into cubes of side 8, and 13.89 dB using a thicker S synthesized patterns belongs to the corresponding mask or exceeds
= s z
partitioning into cubes of side 16 ( = 4, = 00 97 ). The max- :  the upper or the lower bound by maximum 1 dB, and, simultaneously,
s
imum field reduction (best case) was obtained for = 3 in the plane S
if each of the radiated fields satisfies (3d) or its amplitude exceeds 0 E
z : 
= 00 78 . Fig. 4 shows the contour plots of the electric field ampli- by maximum 1 dB. The obtained values and the percentages of good
tude in these planes. trials are listed in Table I, together with the percentage of good trials
1164 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 6. Third example: synthesized patterns for the “complete” problem. (a)
Method in [16]; (b) presented algorithm.

= 46
Fig. 5. Second example: overlapping of all S synthesized patterns that
solve the “complete” beam-scanning problem. The reference mask, M , is such D
problem with the proposed algorithm, setting 0 = 10 and, to obtain
that m (07 5 ) = (7 5 ) = 0 (01 3 ) = (1 3 ) = 0 89
: m : ,m : m : : , the same maximum field amplitude already obtained with the method in
and m (08 ) = (8 ) = 0 1 (02 ) = (2 ) = 1
m : ,m m . E E
[16], we imposed 0 = max c
E c
, where max is the maximum field am-
plitude previously obtained in the “complete” problem, corresponding
to a near-field reduction of only 3.53 dB. Our algorithm required 27
when the tolerance is 2 dB instead of 1 dB. In conclusion, conditions 206 iterations (54 sec) and gave DRR = 10, thus (3c) was satisfied
(3b) and (3c) were always exactly satisfied, while (3a) and (3d) were exactly. Condition (3a) was well approximated, as is shown in Fig. 6(b)
almost always satisfied with a tolerance of 2 dB. However, when re- (also the pattern solving the “reduced” problem, not shown here, sat-
quiring 1 dB tolerance, the percentage of good trials reduces to nearly isfies (3a)). Constraint (3d) was satisfied with good accuracy, resulting
91%. E  E
max = 0 . Thus, we obtained the same final maximum field ampli-
c

B. Second Example: A Beam-Scanning Problem

V
tude in r as with the method in [16], but with a strongly reduced DRR
value. We also solved the “complete” problem (with the proposed al-
With reference to the above array, we introduced the masks in Fig. 5,
M '
gorithm) imposing a 20 dB reduction of the maximum field amplitude
selected starting from a reference mask 0 , centered at = 0 , V E =Er
0 = 20 dB) without DRR increase with respect to the
;
in r ( max
and scanning it over the angular sector [045 45 ], with angular step
 
D :
reduced case ( 0 = 87 38). The algorithm required 11 740 iterations
of 2 . This produced S= 46 masks close to each other, with an- (23 sec), and (3c) was satisfied exactly; (3a) and (3d) were satisfied
gular separation of 2 , so as to obtain a discrete beam-scanning. All :
with good accuracy, resulting SLL = 034 99 dB, NL = 049 92 dB :
; ;
masks include the null intervals [080 070 ] and [70 80 ], where and max E =E
c
:
0 = 019 97 dB. Thus the final maximum field amplitude
the pattern amplitude has an upper bound of 040 dB. The “reduced” V
in r resulted to be 16.44 dB lower than that obtained with the method
problem required 1159 iterations (5 sec). Condition (3b) was satisfied
:
in [16]. In addition, the proposed method allows also the phase-only
exactly, in the worst case we obtained SLL = 020 00 dB and the reconfigurability and the DRR reduction. It is to be noted that a DRR
maximum pattern level in the null region NL = 039 99 dB, and :
: D
reduction can also be obtained by simply switching off the array ele-
DRR = 2 46. We then solved the “complete” problem setting 0 = 1 ments having the minimum excitation amplitudes. Such an approach,
in (3c), and requiring a 15 dB reduction of the maximum field ampli- however, in general does not allow to obtain the desired DRR values,
V
tude in r . The algorithm required 29 128 iterations (2497 sec). Fig. 5 and furthermore may strongly deteriorate the radiation pattern. More-
shows an overlapping of all the synthesized patterns, which shows that over, in [16] the near-field reduction is obtained by nulling the radiated
good results were obtained for all patterns. In particular, we found
: :
field in suitably chosen points located in the near-field region, thus re-
SLL = 020 00 dB and NL = 040 00 dB, in the worst case. Condi- ducing the field in a neighborhood of such points. Instead, the presented
tions (3b) and (3c) were satisfied exactly. Also (3d) was essentially sat-
E =E :
algorithm allows an accurate near-field control by simply imposing the
max = 14 92 dB,
r c
isfied, as the minimum field reduction was max
E E
maximum near-field level. As a final remark we note that, although the
r c
where max and max are the maximum field amplitudes in the grid
=
algorithm requires several iterations, each iteration involves simple op-
points (step = 8) in the “reduced” and in the “complete” problems,
=
erations. Thus, the global CPU time is quite acceptable.
respectively. The field reduction on the thicker mesh (step = 16)
was maxE =E
r c
:
max = 13 35 dB. V. CONCLUSION
We proposed an algorithm of power synthesis for reconfigurable ar-
C. Third Example rays of arbitrary geometry, which is an evolution of the recent approach
We here compare the presented method to that described in [16], described in [12]. The method allows to synthesize a number of patterns
S
which refers to the case = 1, is based on the method of projections having a desired shape and possibly including null regions aimed to re-
and gives very high near-field reductions. The array, the desired pattern ject interferences. The switch from one beam to another is performed by
and the geometry of the problem are those of the first example in [16]. phase-only control. Furthermore, an upper bound on the dynamic range
We first solved the “reduced” problem (771 iterations, 0.5 sec) and sub- ratio can be imposed, to control the variations of the excitation ampli-
sequently the “complete” problem (508 868 iterations, 290 sec) with tude from one array element to the others, and a threshold can be im-
the method in [16]. The synthesized pattern solving the “complete” posed on the maximum field amplitude in a region close to the antenna.
problem is shown in Fig. 6(a) (also the pattern solving the “reduced” Very good results have been obtained with the proposed choice of
problem, not shown here, satisfies the mask constraint). We obtained the starting point. However, satisfactory results can often be obtained
: :
DRR = 42 63 (“reduced” problem) and DRR = 618 61 (“complete” also with random starting points.
problem), and the maximum field amplitude reduction (evaluated on The solving procedure is easy to implement and the examples show
=
a mesh of 2 spaced points) was max r
E =E :
max = 48 89 dB. Then
c
its effectiveness. As a particular important application, the algorithm
the problem was solved using the proposed algorithm. The “reduced” allows to perform the phase-only beam-scanning on large scan zones,
problem required 2173 iterations (1 sec), giving DRR = 87 38 and : even in presence of stringent constraints on the DRR, on the near-field
the maximum field level max r
E V
in r . Then we solved the “complete” and on the desired radiation patterns.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1165

APPENDIX Imposing, for p = 1; . . . ;N and s = 1; . . . ;S , the conditions

W the scalar product
@2 = N (Fpn + Epn + pn ) vns 0 (Hps + Kps + wps) = 0
Extending [12], we define in

S @vps n=1
3

h~ w; w~ i = 0
h gs;gsi + hks; ks iV + wsH ws
0 0 0

s=1

where pn is the Kronecker delta, yields the S matrix equations
g ;g
where h s s0 i is defined in [12, Eq. (8b)], the superscript H means J vs = zs ; s = 1; . . . ;S (10)
transpose and conjugate, and

where J = F + E + IN and zs = hs + ks + ws , with F = [Fmn ],

ks ; ks iV
h
0
= ks (r) 1 ks (r) dV
0 3
(7)
E = [Emn ], IN the identity matrix of rank N , and hs , ks the s-th
columns of the matrices H = [Hms ] and K = [Kms ], respectively.
V

Solving (10) to minimize (9), we obtain vs = J 1 zs , where J 1 is the

w
0 0

inverse of J. If J is singular or badly conditioned, J 1 can be replaced

with the asterisk denoting conjugate. This yields the norm k ~ k =
w; w w w  w; w
0

by the pseudo-inverse matrix of J.

h ~ ~ i, thus a distance between ~ and ~ is given by ( ~ ~ ) =
0 0

w w
k ~ 0 ~ k.
0

P w W
The Projector U : Given ~ 2 , we want to find the point ~ = u
Pw U
U ~ 2 minimizing the squared distance
REFERENCES
[1] J. A. Ferreira and F. Ares, “Pattern synthesis of conformal arrays by
S the simulated annealing technique,” Electron. Lett., vol. 33, no. 14, pp.
2(w~ ;u~ ) = kgs 0fs k2 + ks0es 2
w u2
V + k s 0 s kE (8)
1187–1189, Jul. 1997.
[2] F. J. Ares-Pena, J. A. Rodriguez-Gonzalez, E. Villanueva-Lopez, and
s=1 S. R. Rengarajan, “Genetic algorithms in the design and optimization
of antenna array patterns,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47, no.
3, pp. 506–510, Mar. 1999.
where k1k and k1kV are the norms given bypthe scalar products [12, Eq.
(8b)] and (7), respectively, and k kE = H . We must minimize u u u [3] J. R. P. Lopez and J. B. Verdeja, “Synthesis of linear arrays using par-

f e u U f
ticle swarm optimisation,” in Proc. EuCAP, 2006, pp. 1–6.
(8) with respect to s , s and s with ~ 2 : s and s are given inu u [4] H. Elmikati and A. Elsohly, “Extension of projection method to
e r
[12], while s ( ) is given by nonuniformly linear antenna arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 507–512, May 1984.

ks (r) ks (r)  E0
[5] G. M. O. M. Bucci, G. D’Elia, and G. Panariello, “Antenna pattern

ks (r) > E0 :
if
es (r) = E0 k (r)
synthesis: A new general approach,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 82, no. 3, pp.
358–371, Mar. 1994.
if
jk (r)j [6] L. Vaskelainen, “Phase synthesis of conformal array antennas,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 48, no. 6, pp. 987–991, Jun. 2000.

The Projector PV : Given w ~ = PV w

~ 2 W , we want to find v
[7] L. Vaskelainen, “New optimising techniques in conformal array an-
~ 2
V minimizing the squared distance
tenna design,” in Proc. EuCAP, 2007, pp. 1–6.
[8] R. Vescovo, “Scanning circular array with null constraints on the radi-
ation pattern,” Electron. Lett., vol. 32, no. 9, pp. 790–791, Apr. 1996.

2 (w~ ; v~)
[9] R. Vescovo, “Constrained beam-scanning for linear arrays of an-
tennas,” Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 20, pp. 1242–1243, Sep. 2004.
S [10] O. M. Bucci, G. Mazzarella, and G. Panariello, “Reconfigurable arrays
= kgs 0F (vs )k2 + ks0E(vs) 2V + kws 0vs kE2 : (9)
by phase-only control,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 39, no. 7,
pp. 919–925, Jul. 1991.
s=1 [11] O. M. Bucci and G. D’Elia, “Power synthesis of reconfigurable con-
formal arrays with phase-only control,” IEE Proc. Microw. Antennas
Substituting (1) and (2) into (9) yields Propag., vol. 145, no. 1, pp. 131–136, Feb. 1998.
[12] R. Vescovo, “Reconfigurability and beam-scanning with phase-only
control for antenna arrays,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56,
S N
2 (w~ ; v~) = vnsvms(Fmn + Emn)
no. 6, pp. 1555–1565, Jun. 2008.
3
[13] H. Steyskal, “Synthesis of antenna patterns with imposed near-field
s=1 n;m=1 nulls,” Electron. Lett., vol. 30, no. 24, pp. 2000–2001, Nov. 1994.
[14] L. Landesa, F. Obelleiro, J. Rodriguez, J. A. Rodriguez, F. Ares, and
N
0 ( ns
3
v H K
( ns + ns ) + ns ( ns
3
+ ns
3
)) v H K A. G. Pino, “Pattern synthesis of array antennas with additional isola-
tion of near field arbitrary objects,” Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 16, pp.
n=1 1540–1542, Aug. 1998.

+
I
gs gs d' + 3

V
ks 1 ks dV 3 [15] O. M. Bucci, F. D’Agostino, C. Gennarelli, G. Riccio, and C. Savarese,
“Array pattern synthesis with null field constraints in the near-field re-
gion,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas Propagat. Soc. Int. Symp., 2001, vol. 3,
pp. 716–719.
0( ws 0 vs )H (ws 0 vs ) [16] R. Vescovo, “Power pattern synthesis for antenna arrays with null con-
straints in the near-field region,” Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 44,
no. 6, pp. 542–545, Mar. 2005.
[17] O. M. Bucci, A. Capozzoli, and G. D’Elia, “Power pattern synthesis
of reconfigurable conformal arrays with near-field constraints,” IEEE
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[18] L. G. Gubin, B. T. Polyak, and E. V. Raik, “The method of projections
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Fn(') Fm(') d'; Hms = I gs (') Fm(') d';
3 3 for finding the common point of convex sets,” USSR Comput. Math.
Math. Phys., vol. 7, pp. 1–24, 1967.
[19] T. Isernia and G. Panariello, “Optimal focusing of scalar fields subject
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En (r) 1 Em (r)dV; Kms = ks (r) 1 Em (r)dV:
V
3 3 to arbitrary upper bounds,” Electron. Lett., vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 162–164,
Jan. 1998.
1166 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Design and Experiment of a Single-Feed Quad-Beam
Reflectarray Antenna
Payam Nayeri, Fan Yang, and Atef Z. Elsherbeni
Abstract—Reflectarray antennas show momentous promise as a cost-ef-
fective high-gain antenna, capable of generating multiple simultaneous
beams. A systematic study on various design methods of single-feed
multi-beam reflectarray antennas is presented in this communication. Two
direct design methods for multi-beam reflectarrays, geometrical method
and superposition method, are investigated first. It is demonstrated that
although both methods could generate a multi-beam radiation pattern,
neither approach provides satisfactory performance, mainly due to high
side-lobe levels and gain loss in these designs. The alternating projection
method is then implemented to optimize the phase distribution on the
reflectarray surface for multi-beam performance. Mask definition and
convergence condition of the optimization are studied for multi-beam
reflectarray designs. Finally a Ka-band reflectarray prototype is fabricated
and tested which shows a good quad-beam performance.
Index Terms—Alternating projection method, intersection approach,
multi-beam, optimization, reflectarray.
I. INTRODUCTION
Reflectarray antennas combine the advantages of both printed arrays
and parabolic reflectors and create a high gain antenna with a low-pro-
file, low-mass and low-cost [1], [2]. They have received considerable
attention over the years and are quickly finding applications in satel-
lite communications, cloud/precipitation radars, and commercial us-
ages [3], [4]. In addition to these advantages that are mainly due to the
use of printed circuit technology, the reflectarray allows for an indi-
vidual control of the phase shift of each element in the array. As a re-
sult, the reflectarray can achieve contoured beam performance without
any additional cost [5]. Similarly, multi-beam performance can also be
realized by designing the phase shift of the elements appropriately.
Multi-beam antennas have numerous applications, such as electronic
countermeasures, satellite communications, and multiple-target radar
systems [6]. These multi-beam antennas are typically based on reflec-
tors with feed-horn clusters [7] or large phased arrays [8]. Horn array
feeds for reflector antennas on communication satellites can provide
multiple beams with tailored earth coverage patterns. For phased array
antennas, multiple simultaneous beams can be generated by connecting
the array to a beamforming network with multiple ports. Considering
the complexity of fabricating these antennas and deployment for space
applications, these multiple beam designs are relatively high cost. The
numerous advantages of reflectarrays, in particular the low-mass and
low-cost features, makes the multiple beam reflectarray a suitable an-
tenna candidate.
Manuscript received November 29, 2010; revised June 14, 2011; accepted
August 26, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the NASA EPSCoR
program under contract number NNX09AP18A.
P. Nayeri and A. Z. Elsherbeni are with the Electrical Engineering De-
partment, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677 USA (e-mail:
pnayeri@olemiss.edu; atef@olemiss.edu).
F. Yang is with the Electrical Engineering Department, The University of
Mississippi, University, MS 38677 USA and also with the Electronic Engi-
neering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (e-mail: fyang@ole-
miss.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173126
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Reflectarrays can generate single or multiple beams with single or
multiple feeds. A two-beam reflectarray prototype using a single feed
was demonstrated in [9] while [10], [11] present a single-feed reflec-
tarray generating four simultaneous beams. Multi-feed multi-beam re-
flectarrays with shaped patterns were also studied in [12]. In addition,
multi-feed single-beam reflectarray antennas were investigated in [13].
In these papers, different design approaches have been introduced to
achieve the multi-beam performance. The main objective of this com-
munication is to provide a comprehensive and systematic comparison
of various multi-beam design approaches, including both direct design
methods and iterative optimization techniques, through a case study of
a single-feed quad-beam reflectarray.
II. DIRECT DESIGN METHODS FOR MULTI-BEAM REFLECTARRAYS
A. Basics of Two Direct Design Methods
Two direct design methods are available for multiple beam reflec-
tarray antennas. The basic idea behind the first approach, geometrical
method, is simply to divide the reflectarray surface into N
sub-arrays
where each sub-array can then radiate a beam in the required direction
[10]. Although the array division and beam allocation can be arbitrary,
it is feasible to define them based on the directions of the beams they
are designed to generate. It should be noted that with this approach each
zone receives 1 =N of the power from the feed horn while using 1 =N
of the aperture surface.
Another approach for multi-beam reflectarray designs is by using the
superposition of the aperture fields associated with each beam on the
N
reflectarray aperture [2]. To generate beams with a single feed, the
tangential field on the reflectarray surface can simply be written as
N
ER (xi ; yi ) = An;i (xi ; yi )ej (x ;y ) : (1)
n=1
Here n;i and n;i are the required amplitude and phase of the th ele-
A 8 i
ment which will radiate the th beam. In reflectarrays the amplitude of
n
each element is fixed by the feed position and element location, which
are independent of the beam direction, therefore
N
ER (xi ; yi ) = AFeed
i (xi ; yi ) 1 ej (x ;y ) : (2)
n=1
The summation of the complex field distributions in (2) will give the
overall required amplitude and phase distributions. A basic problem
exists here which is due to the fixed amplitude distribution imposed by
the feed in reflectarray antennas. Although the required phase in (2)
can be satisfied by proper element designs, the amplitude requirement
cannot be satisfied in reflectarray antennas. The reason is that in (2)
N
ej (x ;y ) =
6 1: (3)
n=1
As a result of this difference in the amplitude distribution on the aper-
ture, reflectarrays designed using the superposition approach may show
a deteriorated performance.
B. Comparison of Direct Design Methods
To demonstrate the multi-beam design capabilities of these ap-
proaches, we study a quad-beam reflectarray antenna. The antenna is
designed for the operating frequency of 32 GHz and has a circular

aperture with a diameter of 17 at the design frequency. The ele-
=
ment periodicity is 2 and ideal phasing elements are used here to
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 1. Normalized radiation patterns of the single- and quad-beam designs.
compare different design approaches. A centered prime focus left
hand circularly polarized (LHCP) feed is used for this design and
positioned with an F=D ratio of 0.735 that gives an edge taper of
012.39 dB. The reflectarray elements are dual-linear, which reflect
the LHCP incident wave to a right hand circularly polarized (RHCP)
wave. The radiation patterns of the reflectarrays are calculated using
spectral transformation of the aperture fields as described in [2]. This
quad-beam reflectarray is designed to generate four beams in the
directions of (1;2;3;4 = 30 , '1 = 0 , '2 = 90 , '3 = 180 ,
'4 = 270 ). Here  is the angle between the axe normal to the
reflectarray plane and the beam direction.
To compare the performances of these two reflectarrays, we also de-
sign a single-beam reflectarray antenna as a reference whose beam is in
the direction of ( = 30 , ' = 0 ). In Fig. 1 the normalized radiation
pattern of this single beam design is compared with the multi-beam re-
flectarrays. Since the reference beam is in the ' = 0 plane, only this
plane is given here, and a similar pattern was observed in the orthog-
onal plane. From these results it can be seen that both design methods
can realize a quad-beam performance with a single-feed horn. In both
designs the four beams are generated in the required directions. Com-
parison of the radiation patterns shows small beam deviations in the
multi-beam reflectarray designs. The radiation patterns also show that
the side-lobe level is below 011 dB for the geometrical design and
below 017 dB for the superposition design. The side-lobe levels (SLL)
are much higher than the reference single-beam design. Furthermore,
the quad-beam antenna designed using the superposition method shows
a beamwidth identical to the reference single-beam design, while in the
geometrical design the beamwidth is much wider. The antenna direc-
tivity is an important measure to compare the radiation performance
of these multi-beam design methods. For multi-beam reflectors using
a single-feed, theoretically the power of each beam will be reduced by
1=N . Therefore ideally it is expected that generating four beams will
reduce the antenna directivity by 6 dB. However, the geometrical de-
sign has a directivity reduction of 11.73 dB and the superposition de-
sign exhibits a directivity reduction of 7.02 dB. Some important results
of these three reflectarrays are summarized in Table I.
For the multi-beam reflectarray designed with the geometrical ap-
proach, the amplitude distribution in each zone is maximum at the
corner of that zone (near the array center) and minimum at the outer
edge, which results in a significant increase in the side-lobe level. The
wider beamwidth and lower directivity in the geometrical designs how-
ever requires further attention. The reduction in antenna directivity is
the result of using one fourth of the array surface and one fourth of
the power from the feed horn to generate each beam. This reduction of
array surface is also the reason for the increase in beamwidth. For the
1167
TABLE I
CALCULATED RADIATION CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SINGLE-BEAM AND
MULTI-BEAM REFLECTARRAYS
multi-beam reflectarray designed using the superposition method, the
high side-lobes are due to the amplitude error in (2) which alters the
required illumination taper on the aperture. Also in comparison of the
calculated antenna directivity with the reference, this design approach
shows a directivity loss about 1 dB higher than the ideal directivity re-
duction (6 dB), which is mainly due to the high side-lobe levels of this
design.
In summary the shortcomings of both these direct design approaches
are tabulated here.
Geometrical design method:
1) High side-lobe due to illumination taper;
2) Gain loss and beam broadening due to dividing the array sur-
face into sub-arrays;
3) Small beam deviation.
Superposition design method:
1) High side-lobe due to amplitude error;
2) Gain loss due to the increase in side-lobe level;
3) Small beam deviation.
As a result of the above problems associated with the direct methods
of multi-beam reflectarray design, it is necessary to implement some
form of optimization routine to achieve desirable performance.
III. ALTERNATING PROJECTION METHOD FOR MULTI-BEAM
REFLECTARRAY DESIGN
A. The Alternating Projection Method
Another approach in multi-beam reflectarray design is to view this
as a general array synthesis problem. In reflectarrays however the syn-
thesis of radiation patterns is restricted by the fact that the amplitude
of each reflectarray element is fixed by the feed properties and ele-
ment location. As a result, design of multi-beam reflectarrays requires
a phase only synthesis approach. The alternating projection method
(APM) also known as the intersection approach [14] has been applied
successfully to the phase synthesis of antenna arrays. A simple example
of a two-beam reflectarray has been demonstrated using this method
[9]. This method is basically an iterative process that searches for the
intersection between two sets, i.e. the set of possible radiation patterns
that can be obtained with the reflectarray antenna and the set of radia-
tion patterns that satisfy the mask requirements (set M ). Comparing to
other phase synthesis methods developed for array antennas, the main
advantage of the alternating projection method is the significantly re-
duced computational time for convergence of the solution [14], which
makes it suitable for large reflectarray antennas.
The pattern requirements for the design are usually defined by a
mask, i.e., two sets of bound values, between which the pattern must
lie. The general form of the radiation patterns that satisfy the mask re-
quirements is
set M  fF (u; v) : M (u; v)  jF (u; v)j  M (u; v)g ;
L U
u = sin  cos '; v = sin  sin ' (4)
1168 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 2. 2D view of the mask model for the quad-beam reflectarray.
where F is the far-field radiation pattern of the array and (u; v ) are
the angular coordinates. MU and ML set the upper and lower bound
values of the desired pattern in the entire angular range. With set M de-
fined, the alternating projection method can be implemented to obtain
the desired radiation pattern. Implementing the alternating projection
method requires definition of two projection operators: the mask pro-
jector (PM ) and the inverse projector (PI ) [15]. The mask projector
uses the upper and lower bounds of the mask to correct the radiation
pattern. The inverse projection (PI ) consists of a series of functions
which projects the pattern back to the array excitation coefficients. It
calculates new phase values for the reflectarray elements while the el-
ements amplitude remain unchanged.
B. Implementing APM for Multi-Beam Reflectarray Design
The first step is to define the mask for multi-beam operation. Typ-
ical masks for different contour beams can be found in the literature
[16]; however for multi-beam designs the mask definition is different.
The required masks for multi-beam radiation patterns are typically cir-
cular contours defined in the direction of each beam. Since in this
quad-beam design we don’t want to change the beamwidth, which is di-
rectly related to the aperture size and illumination, the mask upper and
lower bounds in the beam area were defined according to the reference
single-beam design. This upper and lower bounds are defined as
If (u; v ) 2 main beam : MU (u; v) = 0 dB
If (u; v ) 2 0 3 dB beamwidth : ML (u; v) = 03 dB: (5)
The main objective of this optimization is to minimize the side-lobe
level. While it is possible to control the side-lobe level by defining an
upper bound (MU ) at certain values, in order to further minimize the
side-lobe level, both upper and lower bounds in the side-lobe area were
set to zero. A 2D figure of this beam mask model for the quad-beam
reflectarray is plotted in Fig. 2 using dashed lines. It should be noted
that in practice it was found that for this quad-beam reflectarray design,
defining mask levels to zero or to an achievable level showed almost
similar results.
In all optimization routines, it is necessary to define a cost function
that should be minimized and can also control the number of iterations
required for the convergence of the solution. Since in this optimization
the requirements in the main beam will be satisfied by the projection
operators with the bounds set in (5), the cost function need only to take
into account the side-lobe performance of the array [17]. Thus, the cost
Fig. 3. Radiation pattern of the optimized design at 32 GHz.
is evaluated over every point in the (u; v ) space which does not belong
to the main beams using the following equation:
If jF (u; v)j > MU (u; v)
Cost = 2
(jF (u; v )j 0 MU (u; v )) : (6)
u +v 1
With the mask and cost function defined, the optimized phase distribu-
tion of the reflectarray elements can be obtained with an iterative pro-
cedure. It should be noted here that the optimization is considered to
be converged when the cost function becomes stable. In most cases the
optimization converges with only a few iterations; however a suitable
starting point can reduce the number of iterations. In this design the
phase distribution obtained by the superposition method in Section II
is used as the starting point for the optimization. The alternating pro-
jection method is then implemented to improve the reflectarray perfor-
mance by optimizing the phase distribution on the reflectarray aperture.
A far-field pattern of 400 2 400 points evenly spaced in the angular
coordinates was computed for each candidate reflectarray at each cost
evaluation.
For this quad-beam design, the solution converges after 23 iterations.
Although the number of iterations required for the optimization gener-
ally depend on the problem at hand, in most cases the APM will con-
verge with just a few iterations [14]–[16]. The radiation pattern of the
optimized design is given in Fig. 3. A quad-beam performance is ob-
tained for the reflectarray with side-lobes below 026 dB. It can be seen
that implementing the optimization here has corrected the amplitude
problems associated with the initial superposition design ((3)). As a re-
sult, the side-lobe level has been reduced by about 9 dB and all four
beams are exactly scanned to 30 off broadside. Also the calculated di-
rectivity for this antenna is 26.95 dB, which is about 1 dB higher than
the initial superposition design (Table I). These results clearly demon-
strate the effectiveness of the phase optimization process. The com-
putational time for the APM optimization with 30 iterations was 456
seconds on a 2.2 GHz Intel core Duo CPU with 4 GB RAM. This is to
be compared with 16.5 seconds for both direct design methods.
It is important to point out that although in some cases the APM op-
timization might converge to local minima, for this symmetric quad-
beam design the optimization did not get trapped and the solution con-
verged smoothly. Similar radiation pattern results were observed when
the phase distribution obtained by the geometrical approach was used
for the starting point. For non-symmetric multi-beam designs how-
ever the problem with local minima is more challenging and some ap-
proaches that can circumvent the local minima problem such as [9] may
be required.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1169

Fig. 4. (a) Optimized phase distribution of the reflectarray elements, (b) fabri-
cated quad-beam reflectarray.

IV. KA-BAND QUAD-BEAM REFLECTARRAY PROTOTYPE

A. Prototype Fabrication
The optimized quad-beam prototype is fabricated on a 20 mil Rogers
5880 substrate. The reflectarray has a circular aperture with a diameter
of 15.94 cm. The phasing elements are variable size square patches
with a unit-cell periodicity of =2 at the design frequency of 32 GHz.
The unit-cell simulations are carried out using the commercial soft-
ware Ansoft Designer [18], where the fabrication limit of our LPKF
ProtoMat S62 milling machine is also taken into account by enforcing
the minimum gap size between the elements and the achievable fabri-
cation tolerance. It is worthwhile to point out that in general the reflec-
tion characteristics of the phasing elements are angle dependent and
oblique incidence needs to be considered. Our simulations showed that
for these elements normal incidence can present good approximations
for oblique incidence angles up to 35 ; thus the prototype was designed
based on the simulated reflection coefficients obtained with normal in-
cidence. The optimized phase distribution for the reflectarray elements
and the photograph of the fabricated array with 848 square patch ele- Fig. 5. Measured and simulated co-polarized radiation patterns of the reflec-
ments are shown in Fig. 4. tarray antenna: (a) '= 45 plane, (b) ' = 135 plane.
The centered prime focus LHCP feed horn is mounted on a mechan-
ical alignment system and positioned with an F/D ratio of 0.735. To
avoid blockage from the supporting strut of the feed horn, the array
is rotated 45 in the reflectarray plane so the main beams are in the
directions of (1;2;3;4 = 30 , '1 = 45 , '2 = 135 , '3 = 225 ,
'4 = 315 ). Since dual-linear square patch elements are used in this
design, the reflected co-polarized radiation of the reflectarray system is
RHCP.

B. Measured Radiation Patterns

The radiation pattern is measured using our planar near-field mea-
surement system. Comparisons of the simulated and measured co-po-
larized radiation patterns at 32 GHz are shown in Fig. 5. The simulated
radiation pattern of the single beam reference design in Section II is
also plotted here for comparison.
For the quad-beam design, the simulated radiation patterns here also
include the aperture blockage caused by the horn and the alignment
system, which is calculated using the approach given in [19]. Note that Fig. 6. Measured and simulated cross-polarized radiation patterns of the reflec-
four beams are generated in the required directions which are correctly tarray antenna in ' = 45 plane.
scanned to 30 and the side-lobe levels are below 018 dB. The mea-
sured and simulated results show good agreements in the main lobes
where the measured 03 dB beamwidth is 4.35 for both vertical and for any beams. Both simulated and measured cross-polarized radia-
horizontal planes. Some discrepancies exist in the side-lobe regions, tion patterns of the reflectarray are given in Fig. 6 for the ' = 45
which are mainly due to fabrication errors and element design approx- plane. Almost similar results were observed in the orthogonal plane
imations. The beam level reduction is primarily due to the alignment (' = 135 ). The relatively high cross-polarization level of the re-
errors of the measurement setup and the azimuth non-symmetry of the flectarray here is due to the high cross polarization of the feed horn.
feed horn radiation pattern; however this reduction is less than 2.15 dB To reduce the cross polarization, one approach is to use a better feed
1170 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Measured gain and efficiency of the quad-beam reflectarray antenna.
horn with lower cross-polarization level. This was confirmed by re-
peating the simulations with an idealized horn antenna model [2]. For
this case the cross-polarization level of the reflectarray was reduced to
023.1 dB. Another approach is to use the element rotation technique
[2] for phase compensation, since it will only compensate the phase of
the co-polarized CP components to form a focused beam.
C. Gain and Efficiency
The measured gain and aperture efficiency vs. frequency are given in
Fig. 7. It should be noted that although all beams showed a similar gain
performance vs. frequency, the gain results presented here are for the
beam in the direction of  = 30 , ' = 45 . At 32 GHz, the measured
gain is 25.3 dB, and the 1 dB gain bandwidth is 8.6%. For multi-beam
antennas, the classical definition of aperture efficiency might not be
appropriate; therefore a modified definition is used here to calculate
the aperture efficiency, i.e.
N 2 i G
a = 4 (7)
i=1 A
where N represents the number of beams and A is the aperture area.
This definition takes into account the measured gains of all four beams,
and the aperture efficiency is calculated to be 35.26%. Besides the
spillover and illumination effects, the loss in the aperture efficiency
comes from the cross-polarization effect, the element loss, and the feed
blockage.
D. Beam Squint
The bandwidth of a reflectarray antenna is usually defined by the 1
dB gain bandwidth [20], [21]. For multi-beam reflectarrays however,
the practical bandwidth of the antenna is also limited by the fact that
the beams shift with frequency. This is due to the fact that the main
beam direction depends on the progressive total phase on the aperture
(including all time delay effects from feed radiation and total reflection
phase of the elements). It was shown in [22] that beam squint can be
minimized in reflectarray antennas by enforcing the condition o = i ,
where i is defined as the angle from the phase center of the feed to the
center of the array and o is the main beam direction. It is clear that this
condition cannot be satisfied for multi-beam designs and beam squint
would become a limiting factor. The measured radiation patterns at the
center and extreme frequencies are given in Fig. 8 for the ' = 45
plane. Similar results were observed in the orthogonal plane.
Fig. 8. Measured radiation patterns of the reflectarray antenna across the 1 dB
gain band in the ' = 45 plane.
The radiation patterns show quad-beam patterns across the entire
band with a slight increase in side-lobe level at the extreme frequen-
cies. The beam squint across the 1 dB gain bandwidth of the antenna
is about 2.5 . Considering that the beamwidth of the antenna is more
than 4 , the effect of this beam squint is acceptable for this quad-beam
prototype.
It is interesting to point out that in comparison between the
multi-beam design methods, the direct geometrical approach shows
the smallest beam squint. While the quad-beam prototype here did not
show a very large beam squint across the band, it should be pointed
out that in general for multi-beam reflectarrays, beam squint could
limit the operating band of the antenna. Thus, for multi-beam designs
where a minimum beam squint requirement is specified, additional
constraints over the frequency bandwidth needs to be imposed when
optimizing the phase distribution of the elements.
V. CONCLUSION
A systematic analysis of single-feed multi-beam reflectarray an-
tennas is presented in this communication through a case study of
a quad-beam design. Two direct design approaches for multi-beam
reflectarrays are investigated first, and their performance suggests that
an optimization procedure on the elements phase distribution is neces-
sary to achieve a satisfactory performance for complicated multi-beam
reflectarrays. The alternating projection method is then implemented
to optimize the performance of the multi-beam reflectarray antennas.
Required masks, cost definition, and convergence conditions are
discussed for multi-beam reflectarrays. Based on the optimization
results, a Ka-band reflectarray antenna is designed and measured,
which shows a good quad-beam performance using a single feed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors want to thank the reviewers whose thoughtful com-
ments added to the quality and efficacy of this communication. The
authors also acknowledge Rogers Corporation for providing free di-
electric substrates.
REFERENCES
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power-combining reflectarray antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 17,
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0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1171
Oblique Diffraction of Arbitrarily Polarized Waves
by an Array of Coplanar Slots Loaded by Dielectric
Semi-Cylinders
John L. Tsalamengas and Ioannis O. Vardiambasis
Abstract—We study oblique diffraction of arbitrarily polarized plane-
waves by a finite array of slots of infinite length on a common ground plane,
backed by an array of dielectric semi-cylinders. The formulation is based
on a combined eigenfunctions expansion and integral equation approach.
For the diffracted field, series expansions in cylindrical wave functions are
used to which several singular integral terms are superimposed that fully
account for the presence of each of the slots. The relevant system of singular
integral equations is discretized by an exponentially convergent Nyström
method. Noticeably, all matrix elements take simple closed-form expres-
sions. Numerical examples and case studies illustrate the convergence of
the algorithm and bring to light the influence of the dielectric loads on the
characteristics of the structure.
Index Terms—Dielectric cylinders, electromagnetic diffraction, integral
equations, Nyström method, slot arrays.
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1 shows an array of S slots of infinite length on the ground
plane y = 0, loaded by dielectric semi-cylinders ("i ; i ) of radii Ri
whose axes are located at y = 0, x = hi , i = 1; 2; . . . ; S . Without
loss of generality it is taken that h1 = 0. Region 0 (y > 0) has the
properties of vacuum ("0 ; 0 ), and the background medium (region a),
taken to be lossless, has parameters ("a ; a ). Dielectric losses in the
cylinders may be accounted for via complex constitutive parameters.
The primary excitation is an arbitrarily polarized plane wave obliquely
incident from region 0. This structure may be used as a polarization
selector, a radiation suppressor over a given frequency bandwidth, and
a multi-slot/multi-dielectric open waveguide.
Previous related studies [1]–[8] only concern certain special (or lim-
iting), definitely simpler, two-dimensional cases wherein a single slot
is illuminated by a z -invariant primary excitation in presence of either
dielectric or perfectly conducting cylindrical loads. In such cases TEz
and TMz waves decouple and can be treated separately [9]. The case
S = 1 of the present quasi three-dimensional problem has been treated
in [10] via a combined Green’s function and singular integral equation
approach. Nevertheless, when S (S > 1) semi-cylinders coexist in re-
gion y < 0, as in Fig. 1, the method of [10] breaks down due to insu-
perable difficulties in obtaining the Green’s function of the structure.
To overcome such difficulties, in the present communication a new
hybrid formulation technique, flexible and easily implemented, is pro-
posed (Section II). The main idea is to use series expansions in cylin-
drical wave functions, in addition to properly selected singular integral
Manuscript received December 18, 2010; revised April 08, 2011; accepted
August 31, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current ver-
sion February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the “THALES”
Project ANEMOS, funded by the ESPA Program of the Ministry of Education
of Greece.
J. L. Tsalamengas is with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
National Technical University of Athens, GR-15773 Zografou, Athens, Greece
(e-mail: itsal@central.ntua.gr).
I. O. Vardiambasis is with the Department of Electronics, Technological
Educational Institute (TEI) of Crete, 73133 Chania Crete, Greece (e-mail:
ivardia@chania.teicrete.gr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173129
1172 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Let (E exc; H exc) be the known field excited in region 0 when
all slots are absent (slots short-circuited). Then (E  0; H 0 ) =
 tot  tot  exc  exc
(E ; H ) 0 (E ; H ) defines the scattered field in re-
gion 0. The transmitted (total) field in region i for i = 1; 2; . . . ; S or
i = a will be denoted by (E  i ; H i ). All fields and current densities

will vary as X ( 
r) = X ( )ejk z
, just like the incident field, where

kz = k0 cos 0 : (3)

B. Field Representations
For i = 0; 1; 2; . . . ; S , let
Fig. 1. Geometry of the structure and details of the incident field.
2
; 0 ) =
Gei ( 0 4 !" ( R0 ) 0 H0(2) ( R+ )
i (2)
H0 i i (4)
i
2
; 0 ) = H0 ( R0 ) + H0 ( R+ )

Ghi ( 0 4! (2) i (2)
terms, for the field inside each cylinder. The important point is that i i (5)
i
the proposed field representations automatically satisfy the boundary
conditions for the tangential electric field on the entire y = 0 plane. R6 = (x 0 x0 )2 + (y 6 y 0 )2
1 2 =
;
 
Following the method of scattering superposition, expansions in cylin- = (k 0 k ) ; 0  arg <
2 2 1 2 =

drical wave functions are, also, used for the field transmitted in the outer
i i
2 z
2 i (6)

region a. Finally, for the field in region 0 integral representations in

be auxiliary quantities to be used shortly.
terms of equivalent surface magnetic current densities across the slots
1) Region 0: Let M  q (x) = E tot(x; 0)2 y^ = Mxq (x)^x + Mzq (x)^z
denote the equivalent surface magnetic current density across the q 0 th
are used as in [10].
The continuity of the tangential magnetic field on each slot, and the
slot. Then [1], [10], [12]
continuity of the tangential electric and magnetic fields on the boundary
of each cylinder, yield a system of coupled singular integral equations
@Ge0 (x0 ; 0+ ; ) 0
S

Ez0 (
) = 0 j!" Mxq (x0 )
0
dx
@y 0
(Section III). This system is amenable to a highly accurate solution (7)
2 0 q =1
by the sophisticated Nyström method of [11] as outlined in Section IV. C
Numerical examples presented in Section V reveal the exponential con- S
vergence of the developed algorithm and bring to light the influence of Hz0 (
) = Mzq (x0 )G0h (x0 ; 0+ ; )dx0
the dielectric loads on the characteristics of the structure. As a useful q =1
C

@Gh0 (x0 ; 0+ ; ) 0

by-product, the proposed algorithm may be directly used to obtain the S

0 j k2 Mxq (x0 )
characteristics (e.g., propagation constants and modal fields) of the hy- z
dx
@x0
(8)
brid modes supported by the configuration of Fig. 1. 0 q =1
C
The extension to the more general problem where each slot is cov-
ered by two dielectric semi-cylinders (one in region y < 0, as in Fig. 1,
where Cq = fx : hq 0 wq  x0  hq + wq g denotes the x-axis
and another in region y > 0, with axes at x = hi ; i = 1; 2; . . . ; S , and interval occupied by the q 0 th slot.
possibly different radii), which reside on the y = 0 plane, is straight- 2) Region i, i = 1; 2; . . . ; S : For the field in region i we make use
forward and only requires trivial modifications of the analysis. of the representations
In what follows, the assumed ej!t time-dependence is suppressed.
1
Ezi (
) = ain Jn ( i i )sin(n'i )
II. FORMULATION n=1

@Gei (x0 ; 00 ; ) 0

+ j!" Mxi (x0 )
i
dx
@y 0
(9)
A. Preliminaries 2 i

The incident field E inc (r) = E0 ue0jk k 1r , H inc (r) =

^
1
C

^ 2 E (r) (Y0 = 1=Z0 = "0 =0 ; k0 = !p"0 0 ),

Y0 k inc inc
H (
i
z ) = b Jn ( i i )cos(n'i )0
i
n
originating from region 0, propagates in the direction of n=0

^inc 0 Mzi (x0 )Gih (x0 ; 00 ; )dx0

k = 0^x sin 0 cos '0 0 y^ sin 0 sin '0 0 z^ cos 0 (1)
C

 = @Ghi (x0 ; 00 ; ) 0

+ jk Mxi (x0 )
as in Fig. 1. The polarization is described by the unit vector u z
dx
(0; '0 ; ) = ux x^ + uy y^ + uz z^, where
u 2 i @x0
(10)
C

= sin '0 cos 0 cos 0 cos '0 sin

ux
where ( ; ' ) are the polar coordinates of the observation point  in
u = 0 cos '0 cos 0 cos 0 sin '0 sin
i i
y the local coordinate system associated with the i 0 th semicylinder.
u = sin 0 sin
z (2) The integral terms in (9) and (10) represent the z -components of
the field that would have been excited in the semi-infinite region y <
which is normal to k^ , with the particular direction specified by the 0 if the surface magnetic current density 0M had been impressed
inc i

polarization angle ; the special cases = 0;  and = =2; 3=2 across C assuming that a) all slots are absent (short-circuited) and b)
i
correspond to the TE and TM polarizations, respectively.
z z
the entire region y < 0 is filled with the medium (" ;  ). i i
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1173

Fig. 2. Translation of the reference system of the p 0 th cylinder. Fig. 3. Addition theorem for the Hankel function.

3) Region a: Finally, for the field in region a we make use of the where
expansions xi = x 0 hi (18)
S 1 q
z;x (x) =
q
Mz;x (2)
(x )H0 ( 0
0 jx 0 x0 j)dx0 (19)
Eza (
) = Aqn Hn(2) ( a q ) sin(n'q ) (11)
C
q=1 n=1
S 1 (i) (x) =
z;x
i
Mz;x 0 (2) 0 0
(x )H0 ( i jx 0 x j)dx : (20)
Hza () = Bnq Hn(2) ( a q ) cos(n'q ): (12)
C
q=1 n=0
0 (2) 6
In (17), the relations (@=@y )H0 ( i R ) = 6(@=@y)H0 ( i R )
(2) 6
Equations (11) and (12) will be supplemented with the following (2) 6
and (@x2 + @y2 0 kz2 + ki 2 )H0 ( i R ) = 0 have been used, with R 6
addition-translation formula (parameters are specified in Fig. 2): given in (6).
(2) (  p )ejm'
Hm
1 (2) B. The Second Set
= Hm0n (  Dpq )Jn (  Rq )ejn' ej (m0n)' (13) We substitute (9) and (11) into the continuity condition
n=01 Ezi (Ri ; 'i ) = Ez (Ri ; 'i ), 0  'i  0, and make use of
a
(4), (13), and the addition theorem for the Hankel functions [13]
where 'pq = 0, if p > q , otherwise 'pq =  , which enables one to 1 (2)
express the elementary cylindrical wave referred to the local coordinate H0(2) ( i R) = Hn ( i Ri )Jn ( i xi )ejn' (21)
system of the p 0 th cylinder as a series of cylindrical wave functions n=01
referred to the local coordinate system of the q 0 th cylinder. (the parameters involved in (21) are specified in Fig. 3). Next,
Remark 1: In terms of Ez () and Hz (), the transverse (to z -axis) we multiply both sides of the resulting equation by sin(m'i ) for
components E t (
) and H t (
) can be obtained everywhere from m = 1; 2; . . . ; 1, and integrate from 'i = 0 to 'i =  . After
j (! 2 " 0 kz2 )Et 0 kz rt Ez 0 !z^ 2 rt Hz
some lengthy but otherwise straightforward manipulations, omitted
= (14) here for brevity, we end up with the following set of IEs:
j (! 2 " 0 kz2 )Ht 0 kz rt Hz + !"z^ 2 rt Ez : (2) ( i Ri )J + (m; i)
aim Jm ( i Ri ) 0 j i Hm
= (15)
x
Remark 2: It is important here to stress out that, in the context of the
0 Aim Hm(2) ( a Ri ) 0 Jm ( a Ri )
S
01 0 (q; i) = 0
Aqn Fmn
proposed field representations, both Ez (x; 0) and Ex (x; 0) 1) vanish
q=1 n=1
m = 1; 2; . . . ; 1; i = 1; 2; . . . ; S
on the metallic parts of the ground plane and 2) are continuous on the
(22)
slots, i.e., the boundary conditions for the tangential electric field are
satisfied on the entire y = 0 plane. where
x0i =x
0 0 hi (23)
III. INTEGRAL EQUATIONS Jx6 (m; i) = 1
2
0
Mxi (x ) Jm01 ( i xi0 ) 6 Jm+1 ( i x0i ) dx0 (24)
C
A. The First Set
6 (q; i) = Hn(2)0m ( a Dqi )ej(n0m)'
Fmn
By satisfying for i
= 1; 2; . . . ; S the continuity
0 6 (01)m Hn(2)+m ( a Dqi )e0j(m+n)'
conditions
i (x; 0 ) = H 0 (x; 0+ ) + H exc (x; 0+ ), x
Hz;x 2 C after some (25)
z;x z;x i,
manipulations omitted here for brevity we obtain the following with
(2S)2(2S) set of coupled singular IEs: 'qi = 0; if q > i; otherwise 'qi = : (26)
i2
S q (x)
d The prime in the summation over q in (22) is used to remind that the
02 (i)
1 q x
z (x) + jkz + z (x) term with q = i is excluded from the sum.
2!0 dx 2!i
q=1
jkz d (xi) (x)
1
bni Jn ( i xi ) = Hzexc (x; 0+ )
C. The Third Set
+ +
2!i dx n=0 In a similar way, from Hzi (Ri ; 'i ) = Hza (Ri ; 'i ),   'i  0, for
x 2 Ci ; i = 1; 2; . . . ; S (16) i = 1; 2; . . . ; S and for m = 0; 1; . . . ; 1, one obtains the IEs:
S
d q (x) d2 i " (2) ( i Ri ) i Jz (m; i) 0 jkz J 0 (m; i)
Jm ( i Ri )+ i m Hm
k02 + 2 bm
1 z q x
jkz + x (x) 2!i
2!0 dx dx
01
q=1 S
d (zi) (x) d2 0 Bmi Hm(2) ( a Ri ) 0 "2m Jm ( a Ri ) + (q; i) = 0
Bnq Fmn
ki2 + 2 (i) (x)
1
+ jkz + x q=1 n=0
2!i dx dx
1 1 (27)
bi Jn 0 ( i xi ) where "m = 2 0 m0 and
j!"i n jk
ai Jn ( i xi ) + z
i2 n=1 n xi Mzi (x0 )Jm ( i xi0 )dx0 :
+
i n=0 n Jz (m; i) = (28)
exc +
= Hx (x; 0 ); x 2 Ci ; i = 1; 2; . . . ; S (17) C
1174 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

D. The Fourth Set (L has to be selected as high as needed to assure any prescribed ac-
The remaining boundary conditions curacy, as specified in Section V). After carrying out the relevant in-
tegrations we satisfy the resulting two equations, respectively, at the
'^i 1 E i(Ri ; 'i ) = '^i 1 E a(Ri ; 'i )
i a
; 0  'i  0 collocation points x = xim and x = m i
, where
H (Ri ; 'i ) H (Ri ; 'i )
treated along the same lines end up with the following set of IEs: xim = hi + wi tm ; m
i
= hi + wi m : (37)
H Aim m0 "m U J S 1
Aqn Fmn (q; i)
0

This yields the following discrete counterparts of (16) and (17) for m =
U mi Bmi + mi
0 n=1
Bnq Fmn
+
(q; i)
2 q=1
1
n=0 1; 2; . . . ; L and for i = 1; 2; . . . ; S :
H
V mi 0j i Jx+ (m; i) 1 S L
( (m; i) 0 jkz Jx (m; i))
0 " 0
2! i Jz
bni Jn ( i wi tm ) + Fzq (tn )Kmn
iq

J a  i
m m0
0 n=0 q =1 n=1
0 V mi = 
b i
m 0 L
m = 0; 1; . . . ; 1; i = 1; 2; . . . ; S: (29) + Fxq (n )Lmn
iq
= Hzexc (xm
i
) (38)
Here, n=1

Hm(2) ( a Ri ) !a Hm(2) ( a Ri )

U mi = j jkz bni Jn ( i wi m ) + j!"2 i nain J ( w  )
mk 0 1 1
H
R 0
(30)
a (2)
0!"a Hm ( a Ri )
mk
R
Hm(2) ( a Ri )
0 0
i n=0 i n=1 wi m n i i m
Hm(2) ( i Ri ) !i Hm(2) ( i Ri )
V mi = j R (2)
mk 0 S L L
H
(31) + Fzq (tn )Pmn
iq
+ Fxq (n )Qmn
iq
= Hxexc (m
i
): (39)
i 0!"i Hm ( i Ri ) mk R
Hm(2) ( i Ri )
0 0
q =1 n=1 n=1
J J H H
whereas U mi and V mi result from U mi and V mi , respectively, after re- The matrix elements Kmniq
, Lmn
iq
, Pmn
iq
, and Qmn
iq
have simple closed
(2) (2)0
placing Hm (1) and Hm (1) in the right side of (30) and (31) by Jm (1) form expressions, omitted here for brevity.
(2)0
and by Jm (1). The primes in Hm (1) and Jm 0 (1) denote derivatives
0

with respect to the argument. B. Discretization of (22), (27) and (29)

The discrete counterparts of these IEs can be obtained by simply
IV. SOLUTION BY THE NYSTRÖM METHOD substituting in each of them Jx6 and Jz by
In view of the edge conditions, Mzi (x0 ) and Mxi (x0 ) will be sought
in the form
(m; i) =
wi  L (1 0 2 ) J i wi n )
1(
6

2 L + 1 n=1
Jx m

Mzi (x0 ) = Fz ( ) ; Mxi (x0 ) = 1 0 ( i )2 Fxi ( i ) (32)

i i n 0

1 0 ( i )2
where 6 Jm+1 ( i wi n ) Fxi (n ) (40)

i = x i x hi :
0 0
0
= (33)
wi wi wi  L J ( w t )F i (t )
(m; i) = (41)
L n=1 m i i n z n
Jz

A. Discretization of (16) and (17)

respectively. Equation (40) and (41) result from (24) and (28) by ap-
Substitute from (32) into (19) and (20). Then, working in the frame- plying the rules (34) and (35), respectively.
work of the Nyström method of [14], any singular integrals encountered
can be analytically treated as in [11] (see, also, [15]), and any regular C. Far-Scattered Field
integrals can be computed via the Gauss-Chebyshev rules [13]
In polar coordinates (; ') the z -components of the far scattered
1
p  L field in region 0 and of the total far-field in region a have the following
1 0  2 f ( )d = (1 0 n2 )f (n ) (34)
L + 1 n=1 asymptotic expressions.
01 1) Region 0:
Ez0 (; ') = 2j 0 e0j  sin 'Ez ( 0 cos ')
1
f ( ) d =  L f (t ) (35) 
(42)
L n=1 n
p
1 0 2
0 1
Hz0 (; ') = 0 0 2j 0
e 0j 
( 0 cos ') (43)
2!0 
Hz
where
tn = cos (2n 0 1) ; n = cos n (36) where, for  = 0 cos ', see (44) and (45) at the bottom of the page.
2L L+1

S L
1
( ) = wq (1 0 n2 )Fxq (n )ej (44)
2(L + 1) q=1 n=1
Ez 0

( ) =
S

wq 1
L

Fzq (xn )ejx +

kz cos '
L

(1 0 n2 )Fxq (n )ej : (45)

L n=1 L+1
Hz

q =1 n=1
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1175

of the relative error of M and M versus L n ,

w  = , R  = , h :  , " ,  ' = ,
Fig. 4. log (0) (0) =

f GHz.
when S=2, = 4 = 2 = 1 5 = 2 = = = 4
= 10

!t = when S , 
mm w :  R : h :  " , ' = ,
Fig. 5. Snapshot of the near magnetic field at = 2 = 3 =

=
2) Region a: 3 , 2 = 1 5 , = 0 8 , = 1 75 , = 10 = = 2
and = 2.

Eza (; ') =  2j  e0j 

a
1 S 1
1 n') A1n +
sin( Aqm G0q (m; n) (46)
n=1 q=2 m=1

Hza (; ') =  2j  e0j 

a
1 S 1
1 cos( n') Bn1 + "2n Bmq G+q (m; n) (47)
n=0 q=2 m=0
where
G6q (m; n) = Jn0m ( a hq ) m
Jm+n ( a hq ) Fig. 6.  versus R when S , mm, w :  , '
(01)
= , = , and " 0j : .
6 (48) = 1 = 3 = 0 25 = =
2 = 2 = 10 0 5

The transverse (to z -axis) field components in regions 0 and a can be

obtained via (14) and (15).
2w = 1:50 , R = 0:80 , h = 1:750 , "r = 10, 0 = '0 = =2, and
= =2 (TMz case). As seen, the field is strongly localized inside the
V. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION dielectric resonators.
In the following it is assumed, unless otherwise specified, that E0 = The absorption efficiency abs will be defined by
1V=m, ("a ; a ) = ("0 ; 0 ), and that the semi-cylinders have identical 1 Pabs
geometrical and physical parameters: "i = "r "0 , i = 0 , wi = w , abs = 2wS inc (49)
Ri = R, i = 1; 2; . . . ; S . Only the symmetric case, hi = (i 1)h (i =0
S

1; 2; . . . ; S ), wherein the distance between any two consecutive slots is
the same, equal to h, will be considered. In obtaining numerical results,
the size of the infinite linear algebraic system derived in the preceding
section is truncated to the finite value 2LS + 4nmax S by retaining
nmax terms in each of the infinite series in (9)–(12) (and, similarly, in
(38), (39)).
The correctness of the results has been tested by following the crite-
rion of energy balance. Moreover, in the special case S = 1 our results
= =2, and "r = 10 0 j 0:5. The observed standing
were found to coincide with those of [10].
For increasing L (the number of points of the Gauss-Chebyshev
rules used in evaluating the matrix elements) and for nmax = L,
Fig. 4 shows the logarithm (base 10) of the relative errors jMp1 (0) 0
Mp1;asym (0)j=jMp1;asym(0)j (p = x; z) at the center x = 0 of the first
slot when S = 2. Here Mz1;asym (0) and Mx1;asym (0) are the values
to which Mz1 (0) and Mx1 (0) settle down for sufficiently large L (and
nmax ). Apparently, the convergence is exponential. (Note: Our compu-
tations in this example show that jMz1 (0)j and jMx1 (0)j settle down to
their final values 0.4712579942343935 and 0.7371905396420925, re-
spectively, for L = nmax  22; these asymptotic values can be treated
as exact values.)
The fast convergence of the algorithm enables one to very accurately
evaluate both the near-field and the far-field. As an example, for S = 3,
Fig. 5 shows a typical snapshot of the total magnetic field at !t = =2
both inside and around the dielectric semi-cylinders when 0 = 3mm,
where 2wS is the total width of the slots, Pabs is the (per unit length
of z-axis) power absorbed by the lossy material inside the dielectric
semi-cylinders, and S inc = E02 =2Z0 is the power associated with the
incident wave. Typical results indicating the connection of abs to sev-
eral physical and geometrical parameters of the structure are presented
in Figs. 6–8.
Fig. 6 shows abs versus R when S = 1, 0 = 3 mm, w = 0:250 ,
0 = '0 = =2,
wave pattern is due to reflections at the boundary of the cylinder. Both
the amplitude of the wave and the power which eventually reaches the
boundary decrease with increasing R owing to attenuation (skin effect).
This means that, for sufficiently large R, the power which arrives at the
boundary becomes negligibly small, i.e., the entire power transmitted
inside the cylinder is being absorbed and, thus, abs reaches a core
value.
For S = 2, Fig. 7 shows how abs varies with the distance h between
the two slots. The dashed straight line about which abs oscillates per-
tains to the case S = 1 of a single slot. As expected, the amplitude
of the observed standing-wave-like pattern is large for small h, due to
strong interactions between the cylinders, but it gradually diminishes
as h increases.
For several values of S , Fig. 8 shows how the absorption efficiency is
affected by possible uncertainty of the complex permittivity value. As
seen, abs can be effectively controlled by properly selecting S and "r .
1176 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
versus h=R when S = 2,  = 3mm, w = 0:25 , R =
Fig. 7. 
05
:  , = ' = =2,
= =2, and " = 10 0 j 0:5. ties: E-wave case,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 2, pp.
Fig. 8.  versus Re(" ) for S = 1; 2; 5; 10 when  = 3 mm, w =
0:25 , R = 0:5 , h = 1:5 ,  = ' = =2,
= 0, and Im(" ) = characterizing electromagnetic radiation by conformal microstrip arrays
00:5.
VI. CONCLUSION
A computationally efficient Nyström method for analyzing oblique
scattering of arbitrarily polarized waves by an array of slots loaded by
dielectric semi-cylinders has been presented. Filling the system matrix
requires no numerical integration. The algorithm converges exponen-
tially and, thus, extremely accurate results may be obtained both for
the near and far fields.
REFERENCES
[1] J. L. Tsalamengas, “TE/TM scattering by a slot on a ground plane and
in the presence of a semi-cylindrical load,” J. Electromag. Waves Ap-
plicat., vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 613–646, 1994.
[2] R. A. Hurd and B. K. Sachdeva, “Scattering by a dielectric-loaded slit in
a conducting plane,” Radio Sci., vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 565–572, May 1975.
[3] A. Z. Elsherbeni and H. A. Auda, “Electromagnetic diffraction by two
perfectly conducting wedges with dented edges loaded with a dielectric
cylinder,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 136, no. 3, pt. H, pp. 225–234,
Jun. 1989.
[4] T. J. Park, H. J. Eom, W.-M. Boerner, and Y. Yamaguchi, “TM scattering
from a dielectric-loaded semi-circular trough in a conducting plane,”
IEICE Trans. Commun., vol. E75-B, no. 2, pp. 87–91, Feb. 1992.
[5] T. J. Park, H. J. Eom, Y. Yamaguchi, W.-M. Boerner, and S. Kozaki,
“TE plane wave scattering from a dielectric-loaded semi-circular
trough in a conducting plane,” J. Electrom. Waves Applicat., vol. 7, no.
2, pp. 235–245, 1993.
[6] M. A. Kolbehdari, H. A. Auda, and A. Z. Elsherbeni, “Scattering from a
dielectric cylinder partially embedded in a perfectly conducting ground
plane,” J. Electrom. Waves Applicat., vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 531–554, 1989.
[7] M. K. Hinders and A. D. Yaghjian, “Dual-series solution to scattering
from a semicircular channel in a ground plane,” IEEE Microwave
Guided Wave Lett., vol. 1, pp. 239–242, Sep. 1991.
[8] B. K. Sachdeva and R. A. Hurd, “Scattering by a dielectric-loaded trough
in a conducting plane,” J. Appl. Phys., vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 1473–1476, Apr.
1977.
[9] A. Ishimaru, Electromagnetic Wave Propagation, Radiation, and Scat-
tering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991, pp. 317–318.
[10] I. O. Vardiambasis, J. L. Tsalamengas, and J. G. Fikioris, “Plane wave
scattering by slots on a ground plane loaded with semicircular dielectric
cylinders in case of oblique incidence and arbitrary polarization,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 46, no. 10, pp. 1571–1579, 1998.
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
[11] J. L. Tsalamengas, “Exponentially converging Nyström methods for
systems of singular integral equations with applications to open/closed
strip- or slot-loaded 2D structures,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol.
54, no. 5, May 2006.
[12] J. L. Tsalamengas and E. C. Pitsavos, “Diffraction of plane waves by
a finite array of dielectric-loaded cavity-backed slots on a common
ground plane for oblique incidence and arbitrary polarization,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1070–1079, Apr. 2004.
[13] M. Abramowitz and I. A. Stegun, Handbook of Mathematical Func-
tions. New York: Dover, 1972.
[14] R. Kress, Linear integral equations. Berlin: Springer-Verlang, 1989.
[15] A. A. Nosich and Y. V. Gandel, “Numerical analysis of quasioptical
multireflector antennas in 2-D with the method of discrete singulari-
399–406, Feb. 2007.
Analysis of Radiation Characteristics of Conformal
Microstrip Arrays Using Adaptive Integral Method
Wei-Jiang Zhao, Le-Wei Li, Er-Ping Li, and Ke Xiao
Abstract—A new surface integral equation formulation is presented for
on finite curved bodies of arbitrary shapes. The surface equivalence prin-
ciple is used to reduce the original problem to two equivalent problems, one
for the external medium and another for the internal medium. Electric field
integral equations are applied to the conducting surfaces, and weighted
sums of the field integral equations corresponding to the external and in-
ternal dielectric regions with appropriate weighted coefficients are applied
to the dielectric interface. The integral equations are solved via the method
of moments (MoM) procedure, to which the memory requirement and com-
putational complexity pertinent is reduced by employing the adaptive in-
tegral method (AIM). Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the
validity and accuracy of the method.
Index Terms—Antenna arrays, antenna radiation patterns, conformal
antenna, moment method, patch arrays.
I. INTRODUCTION
In many practical applications, antenna platforms are nonplanar and
antennas are required to conform to the surfaces of curved platforms for
structural reasons [1]. In general, an array is regarded as a conformal
array only if it is comparable or large with respect to the radius of
curvature of the mounting surface [2], otherwise it behaves nearly like
Manuscript received January 20, 2011; revised May 03, 2011; accepted
July 15, 2011. Date of publication October 24, 2011; date of current version
February 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the Agency for Science
Technology and Research (A*STAR) via a SERC Aerospace Project (No.
0921550102) and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grants 61072020 and 61171046.
W.-J. Zhao is with the Department of Electronics and Photonics, Institute of
High Performance Computing, A*STAR, Singapore 138632, Singapore (e-mail:
zhaow@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg).
L.-W. Li is with Institute of Electromagnetics and School of Electronic En-
gineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu
611731, China (e-mail: lwli@ieee.org).
E.-P Li is with the Department of Electronics and Photonics, Institute of High
Performance Computing, A*STAR, Singapore 138632, Singapore and also with
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China (e-mail: erpingli@ieee.org).
K. Xiao is with the School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National
University of Defense Technology, Hunan, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173135
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1177

a planar one and its characteristics can be approximately determined

from its corresponding planar array. Among the most suitable antennas
for conformal applications are microstrip patch antennas due to their
low profile.
The integral equation technique based on the Green’s functions of an
infinite ground dielectric slab [3] is one of the popular analysis tech-
niques for microstrip patch antennas, which has an assumption that the
dielectric substrate and the ground plane are infinite in extent. It can
yield, in most cases, reasonably accurate results for impedance behav-
iors since the impedance is primarily determined by the patch. How-
ever, it may fail to provide accurate results for radiation characteristics
because the radiation behavior may be severely affected by the finite
size and shapes of the substrate. Some integral equation techniques via
three-dimensional (3-D) modeling of the dielectric substrates were pro-
posed for rigorous treatment of finite microstrip structures, where the
dielectric substrate can be modeled by either the volume integral equa-
tion (VIE) [4], [5] or the surface integral equation (SIE) [4], [6], [7]. In
general, the SIE approach is more efficient than the VIE approach for
homogeneous dielectric problems [8] because it uses a smaller number Fig. 1. Problem definition and its equivalence. (a) Original problem; (b) ex-
of unknowns. An EFIE-PMCHWT formulation originally proposed in ternal equivalence; (c) internal equivalence.
[9] for conductors with partial dielectric coatings was successfully ap-
plied to the analysis of electromagnetic (EM) radiation from circular
microstrip antennas excited by a dipole source [7], EM scattering by The equivalent electric currents J c1 and 0J c2 are assumed on the
combined conducting and dielectric structures of arbitrary shapes [10], mathematical surface Sc1 and Sc2 , respectively, while the equivalent
and EM radiation from arbitrary-shaped microstrip antennas excited by electric current J d and magnetic current M are considered on the math-
a localized voltage source [11], where the integral equations are solved ematical surface Sd . Since tangential components of electric and mag-
by the method of moments (MoM) [12]. However, the formulation used netic fields on a dielectric interface are continuous, the electric and
in [11] has poor convergence performance which makes it difficult to magnetic currents on the opposite side of Sd are hence known as 0J d
be used for solving the problems involving electrically large structures. and 0M , respectively. By enforcing the continuity of the tangential
In [11], only electrically small structures were considered, hence the electric and magnetic field components on surfaces just internal to Sc1
Gaussian elimination process can be employed to solve the resulting and Sd and just external to Sc2 and Sd , the following fundamental in-
matrix system, and this is the reason that the poor convergence of the tegral equations are obtained:
formulation did not cause concern.
In this communication, an innovative formulation based on SIE is
j 0E ci11 (J i1 ; M i1 ) tan ; on Sc1 (1a)
E sc11 (J c1 ; J d ; M ) tan =
presented for accurately predicting the radiation characteristics of con- E ds1 (J c1 ; J d ; M )jtan = 0E di1 (J i1 ; M i1 ) 0
on Sd (1b)
formal patch arrays. Weighted sums of the field integral equations in tan
the formulation were calculated, corresponding to the external and in- H s1 (J c1 ; J d ; M )jtan = 0H i1 (J i1 ; M i1 ) 0
on Sd (1c)
ternal dielectric regions with appropriate weighting coefficients on the tan
dielectric interface. The convergence achieved in this communication E cs22 (0J c2 ; 0J d ; 0M )jtan = 0E ci22 (J i2 ; M i2 ) ; on Sc2 (2a)
tan
E ds2 (0J c2 ; 0J d ; 0M )jtan = 0; on Sd+
is found to be better than that of the EFIE-PMCHWT formulation used
in [7], [10], [11]. It has a smaller number of unknowns than that in [4], (2b)
[6], it avoids singularity due to the overlapping of conducting and di- H s2 (0J c2 ; 0J d ; 0M ) tan = 0; on Sd+ (2c)

where the subscript “tan” stands for the tangential component, and Sd0
electric surfaces, and it is free of the interior resonance. The integral
equations are solved using the MoM, and the adaptive integral method
(AIM) [13], [14] is employed to accelerate numerical solutions in the and Sd+ refer to approaching the dielectric surface Sd from outside and
MoM. the interior region, respectively. The terms on the right-hand side of
the above equations are the incident electric and magnetic fields. The
II. SIE FORMULATION FOR CONFORMAL PATCH ARRAYS terms on the left-hand side of the above equations denote the scattering
Consider a conformal microstrip patch array on a curved dielectric electric and magnetic fields. The scattered electric field E s and mag-
substrate of arbitrary shapes, which is modeled by a hybrid structure netic field H s due to the electric current J and magnetic current M are
of conducting and dielectric materials as shown in Fig. 1(a). The re- given by
0 jk J (r 0 )+ 2 rr0s 1 J (r 0 ) G(r ; r 0 )dS 0
1
gions exterior and interior to the dielectric substrate are characterized E s (J ) = (3a)
by medium parameters ("1 ; 1 ) and ("2 ; 2 ), respectively. The sur- k
S
faces Sc1 , Sc2 and Sd represent, respectively, the interfaces between
the conductor and free space, the conductor and the dielectric mate- E s (M ) = 6 21 n^ 2 M + 00M (r0 ) 2 rG(r ; r 0 )dS 0 (3b)
rial, and the dielectric region and free space. The excitation considered S

M (r 0 )+ 2 rr0s 1 M (r 0 ) G(r ; r 0 )dS 0 (3c)

jk
0
here is from either a plane wave for scattering problems or a local- s 1
ized voltage source on the conducting patch for radiation problems. H (M ) =
 k
The sources of the excitation are provided by the impressed electric S
and magnetic currents, J i1 or M i1 in free space and J i2 and M i2 in-
side the dielectric region. According to the equivalence principle, the
s
H (J ) = 7 2 n^ 2 J 0 00J (r 0 ) 2 rG(r ; r 0 )dS 0
1
(3d)
S
problem shown in Fig. 1(a) can be solved by considering its two equiv-
alent problems, i.e., exterior and interior equivalences which are shown where k and  denote the wave number and wave impedance
in Fig. 1(b) and (c), respectively. of the medium, respectively, which are either k1 and 1 or
1178 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

k2 and 2 depending on the medium surrounding the currents, tern results. By applying the Galerkin MoM procedure, a set of parti-
G(r ; r 0 ) = exp(0jkR)=(4R) represents the 3-D scalar Green’s tioned matrix equations can be written as (6) shown at the bottom of
function for the medium, R = jr 0 r 0 j identifies the distance from a the page, where the first superscript of the impedance matrix elements
source point r 0 to a field point r , n
^ represents the unit vector normal represents the medium in which the source radiates, the second and
to the surfaces and pointing toward the free space, the bar integral third superscripts denote respectively the surfaces on which the testing
symbol is used to represent the principal value, the positive and nega- field points and equivalent sources locate, with c associated with the
tive signs in (3b) are used when E s1 (M ) and E s2 (M ) are computed, surfaces Sc1 and Sc2 , and d associated with the surface Sd . The ele-
respectively, and the negative and positive signs in (3d) are used when ments of impedance sub-matrices in (6) can be expressed as follows:
H s1 (J ) and H s2 (J ) are computed, respectively.
Multiplying (2b) by 1 =2 and substituting the new equation into
1;2ab
Zmn = j!1;2 f am (r ) 1 A 1n;2b (r )dS
(1b), and at the meantime multiplying (1c) and (2c) respectively by T
1 and 2 and combining the resultant equations, we establish the fol-
lowing two new equations on Sd
+
1
j!"1;2
[r 1 f am (r )] 8n1;2b(r)dS (7a)
T
1 s2
E ds1 (J c1 ; J d ; M ) + E (J c2 ; J d ; M ) 1;2ab
Ymn = j!"1;2 f am (r) 1 A1n;2b (r)dS
2 d tan
= 0E id1 (J i1 ; M i1 ) tan (4a)
T

1 H s1 (J c1 ; J d ; M ) + 2 H s2 (J c2 ; J d ; M )
+
1
j!1;2
[ r 1 f am (r )] 8n1;2b(r )dS (7b)
tan
T
= 01H i1 (J i1
;M i1
) : (4b)
tan 1;2ab
Cmn = f am (r ) 6 21 n^ 2 f bn (r )
Equations (1a), (2a), (4a) and (4b) form a new formulation set for deter- T
mining the above unknown currents. When the linear equation system
is cast into a matrix form, the diagonal blocks will have well-balanced + 00 f bn (r ) 2 r G1;2 (r ; r )dS
0 0 0 0
dS (7c)
scales. T

III. NUMERICAL SOLUTION PROCEDURE

1;2ab
Dmn = 0 Cmn
1;2ab
: (7d)

where
A. Discretization of Integral Equations
The set of integral equations, (1a), (2a), (4a) and (4b), is first dis- A 1n;2b (r ) = f bn (r 0 )G1;2 (r ; r 0 )dS 0 (8a)
cretized in the MoM procedure. The equivalent surface current distri- T
butions, J c1 , J c2 , J d and M , are expanded in terms of the Rao-Wilton-
Glisson (RWG) basis functions f n [15]. Let Nc1 , Nc2 and Nd repre-
1;2b
8n (r ) = rs 1 f bn (r )
0 0
G1;2 (r ; r 0 )dS 0 (8b)
sent the total numbers of interior edges of the triangles approximating T

the surfaces Sc1 , Sc2 and Sd , respectively. Then, we have with Tm 2 Sa , and Tm 2 Sb . a and b each represents either d or c.
N The elements of excitation matrices in (6) can be given by
J c1 (r ) = Inc f cn (r ) (5a)
n =1 Vmc = f cm (r ) 1 E ci11 dS (9a)
N T
J c2 (r ) = Inc f cn (r ) (5b)
n =1 Vmc = f cm (r ) 1 E ci22 dS (9b)
N T
J d (r ) = Ind f dn (r )
f dm (r ) 1 E di1 dS
(5c)
n=1 Vmd = (9c)
N T
M (r ) = 1 Mn f dn (r ):
f dm (r ) 1 H i1 dS:
(5d)
n=1
Hm = (9d)
T
It should be noted that the edges at the interface between Sc1 and Sd
1dd 2dd 1dd 2dd
and the interface between Sc2 and Sd have not been considered. The [Zmn + 1 =2 Zmn ] and 1 [1 Ymn + 2 Ymn ] in (6) are equal,
edges were also discarded in [11]. From the results presented in [11], hence well-balanced scales of the diagonal blocks in the equation are
the discarding of the edges will not affect the RCS and radiation pat- achieved.

1cc 1cd 1cd

Zm n 0 Zm n 1 Cm n c
[In ]
c
[Vm ]
2cc 2cd 2cd
0 Zm n Zm n 1 Cm n c
[In ]
c
[Vm ]
1dc
Zmn 
 Z 2dc
mn
1dd
Zmn +


2dd
Zmn 1 1dd
Cmn 
+  Cmn
2dd 1 Ind
=
Vmd
1dc
1 Dmn 2dc
2 Dmn 1dd
1 Dmn 
+  Dmn
2dd 1dd
1 1 Ymn + 2 Ymn
2dd [Mn ] [1 Hm ]

m1 m2 m
= 1; 2; 1 1 1 ; Nc1 ; = 1; 2; 1 1 1 ; Nc2 ; = 1; 2; 1 1 1 ; Nd (6)
n1 n2 n
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1179

Fig. 2. Bistatic radar cross section of a conducting cylinder capped by a dielec-

Fig. 3. Comparison of the convergence behavior of different formulations.
tric cone, at   -polarization.

B. Application of AIM
The memory requirement and computational complexity for solving
integral equations using an iterative MoM solver are O (N 2 ) and
O(N 2 ) per iteration, respectively, where N is the number of un-
knowns. Such a memory requirement and computational complexity
is too expensive for designing and characterizing electrically large
conformal microstrip arrays. Hence the AIM is employed in this com-
munication to make the solutions more efficient. The implementation
of AIM is quite similar to that presented in [14]. For dielectric involved
problems, the computational complexity and memory requirement of
AIM for surface scatterers are less than O(N 1:5 log N ) and O(N 1:5 ),
respectively [14].

C. Input Impedance
Transmission lines are used to feed the antenna patches. The feeding
lines are modeled with only one RWG edge element per line width, and
a voltage source is applied across the delta gap (a gap with small width)
in the feeding edge (assumed as the j th edge on Sc2 ). Let V denote
the voltage across the gap. The element of excitation matrices in (6) is
equal to lj V for m2 = j and 0 otherwise. The input impedance is the
ratio of the feeding voltage V to the total current normal to the feeding
edge given by lj Ijc , where lj is the length of the feeding edge. Once Ijc
is solved, the antenna input impedance can be obtained directly by
Fig. 4. Bistatic RCS for the structure of a dielectric hemisphere capped by a
conducting disk,  polarization.
between our result and the published data in [6]. The number of un-
knowns needed by the present method is 992, and that needed by other
integral equation method introduced in [6] is 1630.
To compare the convergence behavior of the EFIE, EFIE-PMCHWT,
EFIE-PMCHWTm formulations and the present formulation, EM scat-
tering by a dielectric cylinder capped by a conducting disk is consid-

Z V
in =
lI :
j
c
j
(10)
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
Numerical examples are considered in this Section to demonstrate
the accuracy and capability of the proposed method. A testing case
which was used in [6] is revisited firstly. The geometry is a dielec-
tric cone placed on the top of a conducting cylinder, as shown in Fig. 2.
The cylinder and cone have the same radius of 0:3 and the same height
of 0:6, where  is the wavelength in free space. The relative permit-
tivity of the dielectric cone is assumed to be 2. The structure is illumi-
nated by a plane wave which is propagating from the tip of the cone
toward the cylinder with the incident electric field along the +x-axis
direction. The bistatic radar cross section (RCS) in the XOZ plane
for   -polarization versus the polar angle  is calculated using the pre-
sented method and its values are shown in Fig. 2. The cylinder and cone
without its top face are modeled by 442 and 234 triangular patches, re-
spectively. The result obtained with a different formulation [6] is also
plotted in the figure for comparison. A very good agreement is observed
ered, where the EFIE is constituted of (1a), (1b), (2a) and (2b), the
EFIE-PMCHWT is formed by (1a), (2a), (1b) + (2b) and (1c) + (2c),
and the EFIE-PMCHWTm represents the modified EFIE-PMCHWT
by multiplying the magnetic field equation by 1 and using M =1 as
unknowns instead of M . The dielectric cylinder has a radius of 0:3
and a height of 0:8, where  is the wavelength in free space. The ma-
terial with relative permittivity of "r = 6 is considered. The structure
is illuminated by a normally incident plane wave with the incident elec-
tric field along the +x-axis direction. The normalized residual norm in
the generalized conjugate residual (GCR) method as functions of the
number of iterations for the four different formulations is plotted in
Fig. 3. It is found that the EFIE and EFIE-PMCHWT do not converge,
and the present formulation converges faster than EFIE-PMCHWTm.
To validate the AIM algorithm, we consider a structure of dielec-
tric hemisphere capped by a conducting circular disk shown in Fig. 4.
The hemisphere and disk are of a same radius of 1, where  is the
wavelength in free space, and the dielectric material has a relative per-
mittivity of "r = 2. The structure is illuminated by a plane wave in-
cident along the 0z -axis direction with the incident electric field in
the +x-axis direction. Two methods, i.e., the MoM and AIM are used
for calculating the bistatic RCS of the structure. In the calculation by
1180 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 6. H -plane pattern for the 4 2 4 cylindrical microstrip array.

Fig. 5. Geometry of a microstrip patch array mounted on a cylindrical body.

AIM, the expansion order is chosen as 3, the Cartesian grid, extending

slightly beyond the structure boundary, has 20 2 20 2 12 nodes, and
the near field range is chosen as 0:3. The comparison of the results in
the X OZ plane is shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen that the AIM result
agrees very well with the MoM result.
In the following examples, conformal microstrip arrays on curved
bodies are considered. First, radiation patterns are calculated for a
cylindrical microstrip patch array of 4 2 4 elements printed on a
cylindrical ground body of radius a = 7:6 cm as shown in Fig. 5.
The cylindrical substrate is of thickness t = 0:254 mm and relative
permittivity "r = 2:94. Each array element has the same dimension
L 2 W , where L = 7:2 mm and W = 5:0 mm. The inter-element

spacing between the centers of two adjacent elements in the - and

z -directions are S and Sz , respectively, and here they are both chosen

as 15 mm. The ground plane is a part of cylindrical surface with a

length of Lg = 90 cm and width of ag , where g = =2. Each
element is connected with a feed line around the center of its bottom
edge. Each feed line, with a length of 3.6 mm and width of 1 mm, has
a feed edge on it which is parallel to and at a distance of 0.9 mm away
from its bottom edge. A 1-V source is placed across a delta gap in each
feed edge. In such case, the array is an axial array. The patches with
ground plane and the dielectric surface are modeled by 5232 and 4522
Fig. 7. Directive gain patterns for the 4 2 4 microstrip array at 16.2 GHz in
triangular patches, respectively. In the calculation by AIM, the expan-
sion order is chosen as 3, the Cartesian grid has 14 2 50 2 42 nodes,
H E
- and -planes.
and the near field range is chosen as 0:4 which is slightly larger than
that used for scattering problems. Fig. 6 shows the calculated radiation After validating the method, curvature effects on the radiation pat-
pattern in X OY plane at 16.2 GHz. Also shown in the figure is the terns and directivities of conformal microstrip arrays on curved bodies
measurement result for a very similar model previously considered in are studied. Cylindrical microstrip arrays with three different radii of
[16], where the ground plane is a complete cylindrical surface. The 4.6 cm, 7.6 cm, and infinite (for the planar case) are considered. The
different simulation and measurement structures will lead to quite geometries of the arrays and most geometrical parameters except for
different radiation patterns in the backward direction (90 –270 ), the radius are the same as those of the previous examples. H -plane
but may yield similar radiation patterns in the forward direction. In (X OY plane) and E -plane (X OZ plane) directive gain patterns for
Fig. 6, the radiation patterns in the forward direction are compared. the arrays at 16.2 GHz are calculated, and their results are shown in
The agreement is reasonable considering the measurement error. Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively. It is observed that the directivities in
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 8. Vertical directive gain patterns (in the E -plane) of the 16-element mi-
crostrip patch array on conical and hemispherical bodies at 8 GHz.
both planes are affected by the curvature and they will decrease as the
curvature increases. The three radiation patterns are almost the same
in the E -plane, but apparently different in the H plane. This indicates
that the curvature effects on radiation patterns of cylindrical arrays vary
significantly on different cutting planes.
Finally, two conformal microstrip arrays on conical and hemi-
spherical bodies are considered. For some practical applications of
conformal arrays on bodies of revolution, an omnidirectional pattern
in the roll plane is often required. This type of radiation patterns can
be produced by either wrapping a microstripline around the circum-
ference and feeding it at a number of points evenly distributed along
the circumference or using a number of discrete radiators arrayed
along the circumference and excited with the same amplitude. The
arrays considered have 16 patches distributed along the circumference
with an even inter-element spacing of 22.5 and excited uniformly.
Such arrays can provide an omnidirectional pattern in the roll plane.
The central angles corresponding to the widths of the patches are
13.86 for conical array and 12.09 for the hemispherical array.
The z -coordinates for the bottom and top edges of the patches are
respectively 2.6414 cm and 3.8538 cm for the conical array, while
they are respectively 2.6203 cm and 3.8387 cm for the hemispherical
array. Both the conical surface and the hemispherical surface have the
same radius of 7.5 cm. Their substrates are of thickness t = 1:4 mm
and relative permittivity "r = 2:94. Vertical directive gain patterns (in
the E -plane) are calculated for the two arrays at 8 GHz, as shown in
Fig. 8. The two patterns, appearing as difference patterns, have similar
main lobes but quite different side lobes.
V. CONCLUSIONS
An efficient approach has been developed in this communication for
accurate characterization of conformal patch arrays on finite curved
bodies of arbitrary shapes. The numerical results of far-field radiation
patterns are obtained and compared with published experimental data,
and a good agreement is observed and it serves as a good validation of
the presently derived formulation and in-house developed codes. The
present formulation exhibits better convergence behavior compared to
the well-known EFIE-PMCHWT formulation. In the application of the
AIM to antenna problems, to guarantee the solution accuracy, the near
field range must be chosen as at least 0:4 for radiation problems, while
it can be as small as 0:3 for scattering problems. The application of the
present approach to the mutual coupling analysis of conformal patch
arrays on singly and doubly curved surfaces will be considered in the
future work.
1181
REFERENCES
[1] Conformal Antenna Array Design Handbook, R. C. Hansen, Ed.
Alexandria, VA: NTIS, 1981, AP-A110091.
[2] J. Ashkenazy, S. Shtrikman, and D. Treves, “Conformal microstrip ar-
rays on cylinder,” IEE Proc., vol. 135, pt. H, pp. 132–134, Apr. 1988.
[3] J. R. Mosig, R. C. Hall, and F. E. Gardiol, “Numerical analysis of mi-
crostrip patch antennas,” in Handbook of Microstrip Antennas, J. R.
James and P. S. Hall, Eds. London: Peter Peregrinus, 1989, ch. 8.
[4] T. K. Sarkar, S. M. Rao, and A. R. Djordjevic, “Electromagnetic scat-
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[5] K. Y. See and E. M. Freeman, “Rigorous approach to modelling elec-
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[6] S. M. Rao, T. K. Sarkar, P. Mydia, and A. R. Djordjevic, “Electromag-
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[9] J. R. Mautz and R. F. Harrington, “Boundary formulation for aper-
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Apr. 1980.
[10] J. Shin, A. W. Glisson, and A. A. Kishk, “Analysis of combined
conducting and dielectric structures of arbitrary shapes using an
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[11] W. J. Zhao, L. W. Li, and K. Xiao, “Analysis of electromagnetic scat-
tering and radiation from finite microstrip structures using an EFIE-
PMCHWT formulation,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, pp.
2468–2473, Jul. 2010.
[12] R. F. Harrington, Field Computation by Moment Methods. New York:
Macmillan, 1968.
[13] E. Bleszynski, M. Bleszynski, and T. Jaroszewicz, “AIM: Adaptive in-
tegral method for solving large-scale electromagnetic scattering and
radiation problems,” Radio Sci., vol. 31, pp. 1225–1251, Sep.–Oct.
1996.
[14] W. J. Zhao, L. W. Li, and Y. B. Gan, “Efficient analysis of antenna radi-
ation in the presence of airborne dielectric radomes of arbitrary shape,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, pp. 442–449, Jan. 2005.
[15] S. M. Rao, D. R. Wilton, and A. W. Glisson, “Electromagnetic scat-
tering by surfaces of arbitrary shape,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
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[16] K. L. Wong and G. B. Hsieh, “Curvature effects on the radiation pat-
terns of cylindrical microstrip arrays,” Microw. Opt. Tech. Lett., vol.
18, pp. 206–209, Mar. 1998.
1182 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Generalized Multilevel Physical Optics (MLPO) for
Comprehensive Analysis of Reflector Antennas
Christine Letrou and Amir Boag
Abstract—Recent developments of the multilevel physical optics
(MLPO) algorithm aiming at the comprehensive analysis of complex
reflector antenna systems are presented. The physical theory of diffraction
(PTD) line integral along the rim of a reflector is combined with the
physical optics (PO) surface integral within the multilevel algorithm. The
multilevel scheme is also generalized to combine fields radiated by various
components of different sizes, as encountered in complex antenna systems
with multiple feeds and/or reflectors. Comparison with published results
demonstrates the ability of the MLPO algorithm to cope accurately and
efficiently with realistic reflector antenna problems.
Index Terms—Fast algorithms, physical optics, physical theory of diffrac-
tion, radiation pattern, reflector antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
The physical optics (PO) approximation provides an attractive com-
putational tool for the analysis of large reflector antennas [1]. The PO
combined with the PTD (e.g., in the form of incremental length diffrac-
tion coefficients [2], [3]) often strikes a balance between the computa-
tional burden and accuracy requirements for the reflector antenna anal-
ysis. The PO-PTD combination facilitates uniformly accurate evalua-
tion of the co- and cross-polarized radiation patterns, including the far
sidelobe regions.
Numerically rigorous techniques such as the method of moments,
though more accurate, are considerably more computationally de-
manding and, therefore, mostly employed for small and moderately
sized antennas. Combining or hybridizing a method of moments
technique with a PO-type surface integration is often the preferred
method to address reflector antenna problems involving evaluation of
the current on the reflector surface [4]. In contrast, computationally
inexpensive geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD), often used to
compute fields in far-out sidelobes, is subject to well-known limi-
tations due to the presence of caustics [5], [6] and to the possibly
large number of diffraction points in the case of shaped reflectors or
reflectors with irregular edges. Also, GTD is valid only when edges
are illuminated from the far field, which is not always the case in
multireflector antennas. Hence GTD computations of cross-polarized
patterns and far sidelobe levels are not considered accurate enough in
the case of high performance reflector antennas [7]. A modified PO
formulation recently proposed in [8] and [9] promises to describe the
diffraction effects while performing only PO type surface integrals
with normal vector directions modified based on the observation
direction. This approach however is yet to be fully developed for
arbitrary three-dimensional geometries.
Manuscript received October 29, 2010; revised May 27, 2011; accepted July
20, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by a grant from the Ministry of
Science and Technology, Israel, and from the Ministry of Research, France.
C. Letrou is with the Institut Télécom, Télécom SudParis, CNRS Lab.
SAMOVAR, Evry, France (e-mail: christine.letrou@it-sudparis.eu).
A. Boag is with the School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel
Aviv 69978, Israel (e-mail: boag@eng.tau.ac.il).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173118
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
The combined PO/PTD approach does not suffer from the above lim-
itations, but for large reflectors and wide angle patterns, the straight-
forward evaluation of the pertinent integrals for a wide range of ob-
servation directions is inefficient due to its high computational com-
plexity. This computational burden can pose a significant limitation
in situations such as reflector shaping and optimization [10], as well
as multibeam multifrequency systems, where repeated evaluation of
antenna characteristics is required. The fast Fourier transform (FFT)
facilitates numerically efficient evaluation of radiation integrals, but
only for planar apertures. The MLPO was introduced in [11] in order
to reduce the complexity of evaluating the PO integrals over arbitrary
shaped surfaces to a level comparable to that of the FFT-based tech-
niques. The efficacy of the MLPO approach for antenna analysis has
already been demonstrated in the case of simple PO analysis (surface
integrals only) of lens and reflector antennas.
In this communication, we show how the MLPO algorithm can be
generalized for the efficient computation of wide angle radiation pat-
terns, accommodating both diffraction and spill over effects. For the
sake of simplicity, we present the new algorithmic developments for
the case of a single reflector antenna system. In Section II, we formu-
late the problem under study reducing it to the evaluation of PO and
PTD integrals. The presentation of the generalized MLPO algorithm in
Section III starts with an outline of the basic multilevel approach and
proceeds with the computation of elemental sub-patterns including the
PTD contribution followed by a hierarchical aggregation of reflector
sub-patterns and additional contributions, such as the feed radiation,
into the final pattern. A numerical example is worked out in Section IV
to demonstrate the main features of the proposed approach.
II. PROBLEM SPECIFICATION
Consider a PO-based computation of the radiation pattern of an ide-
alized reflector antenna comprising a primary feed and a single reflector
surface. We define an antenna far field pattern U (^
r ) in direction r^ as:
r!1
U (^r ) = 4r ejkr E (r) (1)
where k is the wavenumber and E (r ) is the far electric field radiated
by the antenna at observation point r = rr^. In order to compute the
reflector antenna wide angle pattern, the PO surface integral contribu-
tions have to be augmented with those of the PTD line integral along
the reflector rim and further combined with the primary feed pattern.
The resulting expression for the far field pattern radiated by the single
reflector antenna system is then of the form:
U (^r ) = A(^r ; r s )ejkr^ r ds +
1
D (^r ; r c )ejkr^ r dzl
1
S C
U r ejkr^ r
+ f (^)
1
(2)
where S and C denote the reflector surface and rim contour, respec-
tively. The elemental surface contribution A(^ r ; r s ) is related to the
equivalent currents on the surface and D (^ r ; r c ) stands for the incre-
mental length diffraction coefficients (ILDCs). Also in (2), U f (^ r ) is
the feed pattern in the feed centered coordinate system. It can be either
known analytically or obtained via measurement, or from a separate
numerical analysis of the feed system. Also, r s denotes a point on the
reflector surface S , r c a point on the reflector rim C , and r f the posi-
tion of the primary feed. These position vectors are defined in the same
coordinate system, called the “observation” coordinate system.
The fields over surface S are assumed to be known thanks, e.g., to a
known incident field and local impedance boundary conditions. In the
following, we assume that S is a perfect conductor. Then:
A(^r ; r s ) = j 2kr^ 2 [^r 2 (^n(r s ) 2 H f (r s ))]
(3)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1183

where  = 120 is the intrinsic wave impedance, while H f (r s ) and

^(r s ) denote, respectively, the incident magnetic field produced by the
n
feed and the outward unit vector normal to S , both at point r s on the
surface.
Along the rim, D (^ r ; r c ) is the far field pattern of the ILDCs given
in [2], [3], normalized to the elemental length dzl :

r ; r c ) = D (TM) + D (TE)
D (^
Fig. 1. Reflector surface decomposition along polar coordinates in the projec-
with tion plane.
sin l 2 sin 
= Ez sin ^l
2
D (TM) f

 l cos 
2
0 + sin 
the surface integrals of the equivalent currents (function A(^r ; r s ) de-
2 2

D (TE)
= 0 sgn( 0  l ) Hz sin1
0
f
fined in (3)) and the line integrals of ILDC contributions for patches
l situated along the rim C , as defined in (4). This integration phase is
1
0

2  thus performed for each patch (n = 1; . . . ; NsM ) in its self-centered

sin 2
cos  + sin 2

2
coordinate system (i.e., with the origin at point rnM
for patch SnM ),
yielding:
2 sin l ^l 0 cos l cos l + 1 + 2 U n (; ) = e0jkr 1r
M ^ 

2 cos 2 l sin 2 sin l cot( l ) ^l 2 r ; r s )ejkr 1r ds +

0
(4)
0
where zl is the curvilinear coordinate along the rim. A local coordinate
^l ; y^l ; z^l ) is defined with Ol (r c ) on the rim, z^l tangent to
system (Ol ; x
the rim, and x ^l orthogonal to z^l in the plane tangent to the reflector
surface at Ol . Ezf and Hzf are the zl components of the incident (feed
produced) electric and magnetic fields, respectively, in this local co-
ordinate system. The local spherical angular coordinates of the obser-
vation direction are denoted (l ; l ) and those of an incident (locally)
plane wave are (0l ; 0l ). Also, in (4),
 = cos01
sin l
sin  l cos l
0
; 0  l < 2:
In general, full characterization of the far field pattern requires com-
putation of O(Na2 ) of its samples. Here, Na = kRa provides a measure
of the antenna electrical size with Ra being the radius of the smallest
sphere enclosing the whole antenna system. Complexity of the direct
evaluation of (2) for O(Na2 ) observation directions is of O(Na4 ). This
estimate is dominated by the cost of calculating the PO surface inte-
gral. However, the complexity of directly computing the PTD contour
integral is of O(Na3 ) and, therefore, must also be addressed. Our goal
is to reduce this overall computational cost to O(Na2 log Na ), which is
comparable to that of the FFT-based techniques that are used for planar
apertures.
III. GENERALIZED MLPO ALGORITHM
The generalized PO-PTD based numerical scheme is developed by
extending the original MLPO approach. In a preprocessing phase, the
reflector surface is hierarchically subdivided into subdomains: surface
subdomains (also called “patches”) at level L are denoted by SnL , with
n = 1; . . . ; NsL . Also, we denote rnL and RnL the center and the ra-
dius of the smallest sphere circumscribing patch SnL , while RL =
maxn fRnL g. If a binary subdivision scheme is used along each of the
two coordinates spanning the surface, a parent patch of level L is subdi-
vided into four patches of level L +1, called its “children.” An example
of a binary subdivision in polar coordinates of the reflector projection
plane is shown in Fig. 1. The subdivision process is stopped at level
L = M when RM is of the order of the wavelength. The multilevel
algorithm starts with the PO surface integration over each of the ele-
mental patches of level M . These elemental subpatterns involve both
A(^ r ; r c )ejkr 1r dzl : (5)
D (^
^ ^
S S \C
Due to the size of these patches (kRM is of O(1)), these radiation pat-
terns are fully described by sampling the directions of observation very
coarsely, according to Property 3 in [12]. The integrals are thus evalu-
ated for a very sparse grid comprising O(1), i.e., a small fixed number
of directions. The number of quadrature points needed for surface and
line integrals over each level M patch is also of O(1). The computa-
tional complexity of evaluating the integrals for each level M patch is
then of O(1), and the total computational complexity of evaluating the
surface and line integrals via (5) for all level M patches is of O(Nr2 ),
where Nr = kRr denotes the electrical size of the reflector. Here, Rr
denotes the radius of the smallest sphere circumscribing the whole re-
flector surface. It is noteworthy that the additional cost due to the eval-
uation of the PTD line integrals scales as O(Nr ), and is expected to be
quite small compared to that of the PO surface integrals.
The remainder of the algorithm involves multilevel aggregation of
subdomain radiation patterns [11]. At each level from M to 1 during the
aggregation phase, the “children” patterns must be interpolated prior to
aggregation, due to the need to increase the grid density with increasing
subdomain size from level L to level L 0 1. Thereafter they must be
expressed in their “parent” patch coordinate system: the coordinate sys-
tems SnL with their origins at the rn
L
points are translated to the coordi-
L01 L01
nate system Sm with origin rm . Such translations are performed
through phase changes in far field patterns. The obtained patterns can
be summed and the resulting pattern is amenable to interpolation at the
next aggregation step.
The computational complexity of such multilevel interpolation and
aggregation process has been shown in [11] to be of O(Nr2 log Nr ).
Assuming that Nr is comparable with Na , the computational cost of
this process is expected to asymptotically dominate the total cost of the
radiation pattern evaluation for electrically very large antennas. On the
other hand, for moderately sized reflectors, the level M integration time
tends to be the dominant computational burden, due to a large constant
hidden in its O(Nr2 ) complexity estimate.
If an antenna system comprises multiple radiating components such
as the main and sub-reflectors, illuminated by single or multiple feed
elements, the minimum sufficient sampling rates of individual radiation
patterns can be applied to each object in its self-centered coordinate
system. Interpolation and origin translations are then used to aggregate
partial patterns into the global one, in the same way as for reflector
subdomains. The density of angular grids is increased proportionally to
1184 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. Vertical cross section of the offset single reflector antenna system
and spheres circumscribing the radiating components and the whole system.
O ;R
( ) are the center and radius of the smallest sphere circumscribing

the feed ( = f ), the reflector ( = r), and the whole antenna ( = a),
respectively.

the ratio of electrical sizes of individual components, leading to a final

interpolation and aggregation step similar to the two-level fast physical
optics algorithm [12].
In the case of an offset single reflector antenna system presented in
Fig. 2, the reflector and the feed can be considered as radiating objects
N N U
with electrical sizes r and f , and radiation patterns r and f , re- U
U U
spectively. Here, r and f are assumed to be computed in coordi-
nate systems Sr and Sf with their origins at the centers of the smallest
spheres circumscribing the reflector and the feed, respectively. Both
the reflector and the feed patterns must be interpolated to the sampling
R
rate associated with the radius a of the smallest enclosing sphere of
the whole antenna. These interpolated patterns can then be translated Fig. 3. 3D patterns computed with MLPO, including PTD contribution. is 
to the global coordinate system with its origin at the center of the an-   =
varying from 0 to along the radial coordinate. The black circle is for = 2,
tenna. Finally, the reflector and feed patterns can be summed to obtain i.e., the boundary between the front and rear patterns. (a) Copolarized pattern.
U
the pattern a of the whole antenna system. This final aggregation of
(b) Crosspolarized pattern.

the antenna pattern components is characterized by the complexity of

ON 2
( a ).

IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS

We apply the generalized MLPO algorithm to a single offset para-
bolic reflector antenna system used in the GRASP9 Technical Descrip-
tion document as an illustrative example of the computation of wide
angle patterns (see [5, p. 241]). The antenna configuration is defined
by the following initial data (cf Fig. 2): parabolic reflector with di-
D 
ameter r = 40 , magnification factor F=D :
r = 0 8, height of the
h
reflector “center” with respect to the paraboloid axis = 30 , half  Fig. 4. Co-polarized pattern cut in the symmetry plane: comparison between
angle subtended by the reflector from the source point at the reflector GRASP9, MLPO, and direct PO results.
 :
focus: = 29 1 . A Gaussian feed is taken as the primary source, with
its radiated fields computed by complex source point formulas (see [5,
b : 
p. 99]) with the complex shift parameter equal to 1 66 (12 dB taper formed with 8 integrand points along the reflector rim for each edge
at the edge of the reflector). patch at level .M
From these data, the MLPO code computes the radii of the spheres Fig. 3 presents the full 3D co- and crosspolarized patterns of the
circumscribing the reflector and the whole antenna system, respec- antenna system, including the PTD integral contribution and the feed
tively. Using notations previously introduced for the reflector, the an- spillover. These patterns were computed by our MLPO code in 253
tenna system, and the feed, we obtain for the case under study: r = R seconds on a single processor, and comprise 2945 cuts with constant 
:  R :  R
22 09 and a = 25 98 (cf Fig. 2). f is taken equal to . The b 
value, and 1473 values in each of these cuts. To compute the same
number of decomposition levels M
for the multilevel computation of patterns with approximately the same accuracy (1 dB down to 080 dB
the reflector pattern is then computed so as to obtain sufficiently small on amplitude patterns) GRASP9 requires about 30 min on the same
M
patches at level . For the above case, the computed value for M is 5, single processor machine.
leading to M = 1 37 for the maximum radius of the level
R :  M patch Fig. 4 illustrates the accuracy of the MLPO results by comparison
circumscribing spheres. A Gauss quadrature with 8 integrand points with the patterns obtained with our home made direct PO code, and
along each projected variable describing the reflector surface is used with GRASP9 reference results obtained with a large number of inte-
for surface integration over level M
patches. The PTD integral is per- gration points on the reflector surface. The cut shown on this figure is
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 5. Comparison of the patterns computed by the PO surface integral only,
and by the PO + PTD integrals. The fields radiated by the feed are added in
both cases. (a) Copolarized pattern in the symmetry plane. (b) Crosspolarized
pattern in the  = =4 plane.
in the plane of symmetry of the patterns (xOz plane:  = 0;  ), where
the requirements on the surface and edge integrals are particularly high
to reach the prescribed accuracy of 1 dB down to 080 dB.
For the considered antenna, the shadow boundaries in the symmetry
plane occur in the t = 104:2 (top of the reflector) and b = 162:2
(bottom of the reflector) directions, shown on Fig. 2 (black dashed
lines). The feed radiation is shadowed in the [t ; b ] interval of  values.
As a consequence, the pattern shown in Fig. 4 exhibits an increase of
the back radiation around these directions. It should be noted that the
respective fields computed by surface integration and edge integration
in PO-PTD simulations are quite different from the fields obtained in
GO-GTD based simulations from specular reflection of space rays and
from edge diffracted rays, respectively. In the latter type of simulation,
the rays originating from the feed are blocked by the reflector, yielding
a GO field discontinuity along the shadow boundary. On the contrary,
the far field obtained by PO surface integration is not null in the angular
region “shadowed” by the reflector. Combination of the field obtained
by PO integration with the direct radiation from the feed yields the
shape of the “shadow” pattern, except in angular regions where the PTD
contribution is dominant. For instance, the peak which is observed for
  130 in Fig. 4, corresponds both to the direction of maximum ra-
diation of the feed and of equiphase combination of contributions from
elliptical slices of the reflector surface parallel to its edge; in GO-GTD
simulations, it appears as a caustic for GTD rays, while GO rays are
blocked in that direction [5].
The influence of the PTD integral is illustrated in Fig. 5 on two cuts
of full 3D patterns obtained with and without the PTD integral con-
tribution. This influence is visible, both on the copolarized pattern in
the symmetry plane ( = 0) and on the crosspolarized pattern in the
 = =4 plane. The most critical region with respect to the integration
accuracy is in the symmetry plane, in the interval of  values ranging
between 0140 and 090 , i.e., in the back radiation pattern not only
of the reflector but also of the feed (cf Fig. 2). The other region where
the PTD contribution is clearly dominant on this pattern, approximately
between 40 and 70 , shows the importance of taking into account the
PTD fields in far sidelobe regions, even in the front radiation pattern.
1185
TABLE I
COMPUTATION TIMES IN SECONDS OF THE MLPO AND DIRECT PO
ALGORITHMS, FOR THE SCALE 1 AND SCALE 4 PROBLEMS, WITH AND
WITHOUT THE PTD LINE INTEGRAL
Finally, we illustrate the robustness of the MLPO algorithm, by in-
creasing the size of the problem, showing that parameters tuned for
a small wide angle pattern problem lead to prescribed accuracy for
large sized problems. Increasing the problem size leads to an increased
number of decomposition levels, which is determined by the code it-
self. Oversampling values and numbers of quadrature points are kept
the same for all problem sizes, as they only depend on the patch size
at the highest level of decomposition. To validate this approach, large
antenna problems are constructed by scaling the previously described
one, considered as the “scale 1” configuration. Scaling by a factor q is
performed by multiplying the frequency by q .
Applying the MLPO algorithm to the scale 4 configuration, with the
scale 1 oversampling values and numbers of quadrature points, leads
to an observed accuracy of 1 dB down to 090 dB on the amplitude
3D patterns. Table I shows representative values for MLPO and direct
PO computation times in seconds, obtained for the scale 1 and scale 4
problems with a single Intel Xeon X5460@3.16 GHz processor on a
multiuser server for pattern computations without PTD integral (“only
PO” column) and with PTD integral (“with PTD” column). The in-
crease in the computation time when accounting for the PTD contri-
bution is presented in the last column. Computation times are subject
to variations from one run to another, but these values are “representa-
tive” in the sense that they were obtained repeatedly with less than 1%
or a few seconds of error. The direct PO computation times for suffi-
ciently sampled wide angle patterns of the scale 4 antenna system were
obtained by multiplying by a proper factor the computation times mea-
sured when computing undersampled subsets of the full patterns (with
no adaptive quadrature rule being used, CPU times are essentially pro-
portional to the number of directions of the computed patterns for large
antenna systems). The “ratio” row in the Table is obtained by dividing
computation times of scales 4 and 1: in the case of computations in-
volving only surface integrals, this ratio is expected to be close to 16
for the MLPO, and of the order of 256 for the direct PO. The measured
values are clearly in good agreement with these predictions.
The data of Table I support the claim that the PTD contribution must
also be computed by a multilevel algorithm, in order to keep its compu-
tation time negligible with respect to the MLPO surface integral com-
putation. The ratio of computation times devoted to the PTD integral
should theoretically vary as Nr with MLPO and Nr3 with regular PO
(leading to ratios of 4 and 64 respectively). The orders of magnitude
of the experimental data presented here (4.3 and 92., respectively) are
coherent with these predictions. Computation of the PTD contribution
by the direct numerical integration at scales 1 and 4 requires minutes
and hours, respectively, in contrast to the computation times of a few
seconds (less than 20 s at scale 4) observed with the MLPO.
1186 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
V. CONCLUSION
The MLPO algorithm augmented with the PTD integral has been
developed and applied to a single reflector antenna. Furthermore, the
PO and PTD contributions of the reflector have been combined with the
feed radiation to obtain the total far field pattern of the antenna over
the whole angular range. The algorithm accuracy and computational
efficiency have been tested on the case of full 3D pattern computations
by comparison to reference results. It has been shown to easily satisfy
the accuracy required for wide angle patterns in the demanding case of
a single offset reflector antenna.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. E. Jorgensen of TICRA for pro-
viding reference results obtained with the GRASP9 software.
REFERENCES
[1] Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Reflector antennas,” in Antenna Handbook, Y. Lo
and S. Lee, Eds. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993, vol. II, ch.
15, pp. 1–124.
[2] R. Shore and A. Yaghjian, “Application of incremental length diffrac-
tion coefficients to calculate the pattern effects of the rim and surface
cracks of a reflector antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 41,
pp. 1–11, Jan. 1993.
[3] R. Shore and A. Yaghjian, “Correction to application of incremental
length diffraction coefficients to calculate the pattern effects of the
rim and surface cracks of a reflector antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 45, p. 917, May 1997.
[4] A. Miura and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Spaceborne mesh reflector antennas
with complex weaves: Extended PO/periodic-MoM analysis,” IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, pp. 1022–1029, Apr. 2007.
[5] K. Pontoppidan, Ed., “Technical Description of GRASP9,” TICRA,
2005 [Online]. Available: www.ticra.com
[6] V. Galindo-Israel, T. Veruttipong, S. Rengarajan, and W. Imbriale, “In-
flection point caustic problems and solutions for high-gain dual-shaped
reflectors,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., pp. 202–211, Feb. 1990.
[7] D.-W. Duan and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “A generalized diffraction syn-
thesis technique for high performance reflector antennas,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 43, pp. 27–40, Jan. 1995.
[8] Y. Z. Umul, “Modified theory of physical optics solution of impedance
half plane,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, pp. 2048–2053,
Jul. 2006.
[9] T. Shijo, L. Rodriguez, and M. Ando, “The modified surface-normal
vectors in the physical optics,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56,
pp. 3714–3722, Dec. 2008.
[10] R. Hoferer and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Subreflector shaping for antenna
distortion compensation: An efficient Fourier-Jacobi expansion
with GO/PO analysis,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 50, pp.
1676–1687, Dec. 2002.
[11] A. Boag and C. Letrou, “Multilevel fast physical optics algorithm for
radiation from non-planar apertures,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 53, pp. 2064–2072, Jun. 2005.
[12] A. Boag and C. Letrou, “Fast physical optics algorithm for lens
and reflector antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 51, pp.
1063–1068, May 2003.
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Fast Dipole Method for Electromagnetic Scattering From
Perfect Electric Conducting Targets
Xinlei Chen, Changqing Gu, Zhenyi Niu, and Zhuo Li
Abstract—A new fast dipole method (FDM) is proposed for the elec-
tromagnetic scattering from arbitrarily shaped three-dimensional (3D),
electrically large, perfect electric conducting (PEC) targets in free space
based on the concept of equivalent dipole-moment method (EDM) and
the fast multipole method (FMM). The electric-field, magnetic-field and
combined-field integral equations (CFIE) for this algorithm have been
developed and implemented. Although the basic acceleration idea in the
FDM has been borrowed from the FMM, the specific implementation
of these two algorithms is completely different. In the FDM, a simple
Taylor’s series expansion of the distance between two interacting equiva-
lent dipoles is used, which transforms the impedance element into another
aggregation-translation-disaggregation form naturally. Furthermore, this
algorithm is very simple for numerical implementation for it does not
involve the calculation of a number of Bessel functions, Legendre functions
for the addition theorem and complex integral operators. The FDM can
achieve O( ) computational complexity and memory requirement,
where is the number of unknowns. Numerical results are presented to
validate the efficiency and accuracy of this method through comparison
with other rigorous solutions.
Index Terms—Combined filed integral equation (CFIE), electromagnetic
scattering, equivalent dipole-moment method (EDM), fast dipole method
(FDM), fast multipole method (FMM).
I. INTRODUCTION
The method of moments (MoM), which converts the integral equa-
tion to a dense matrix equation, has been widely studied. However, for
large scale electromagnetic (EM) problems the cost to directly solve
this dense matrix equation is very expensive and formidable, which
requires O(N 2 ) memory consumption and computational complexity
for iterative solvers, where N is the number of unknowns.
Fortunately, some effective methods have been proposed and ap-
plied in recent years, among which the fast multipole method (FMM)
[1], [2] and multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) [3], [4] are
the most representative ones. The FMM reduces both the complexity
of a matrix-vector product (MVP) and memory requirement from
O(N 2 ) to O(N 1:5 ). And the MLMFA can achieve O(N log N )
complexity and memory requirement using translation, interpolation,
anterpolation (adjoint interpolation) and a grid-tree data structure.
Recently, MLFMA has been demonstrated to solve an equivalent
dense matrix system resulting from MoM with close to 620 million
unknowns [5]. Although the FMM and MLFMA are sufficiently
efficiency, the formulas are very complicated and hard for coding
considering that a large number of integral operators, Bessel functions
and Legendre functions are involved. A fast far-field approximation
(FAFFA) [6], [7] has simple formula and can be viewed as a smooth
transition from FMM, but it can be used only when the two groups are
Manuscript received August 19, 2010; revised March 16, 2011; accepted July
23, 2011. Date of publication September 15, 2011; date of current version Feb-
ruary 03, 2012. This work was supported in part by the National Nature Science
Foundation of China under Grant 61071019 and in part by the Jiangsu Innova-
tion Program for Graduate Education under Grant CXZZ11_0229.
The authors are with the College of Electronic and Information Engineering,
Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China
(e-mail: chenxlnuaa@gmail.com; gucq0138@sina.com; nzynj@nuaa.edu.cn;
lizhuo@nuaa.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2167906
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1187

well separated. Therefore, it is often mixed with other methods to get

good precision, such as the FAFFA-FMM [8], the FAFFA-MLFMA
[9] and the RPFMA-FAFFA-MLFMA [10].
More recently, the equivalent dipole-moment method (EDM) [11],
[12] has been developed to simplify and accelerate the impedance
matrix element filling procedure for surface integral equations (SIE).
The EDM is based on the commonly used Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG)
[13] basis function, in which each RWG triangle pair is viewed as a
dipole model with an equivalent dipole moment. Later the EDM is
extended and applied to deal with the electric isotropic media and
electric anisotropic media based on Schaubert-Wilton-Glisson (SWG)
[14] basis function [15], [16]. The main advantage of EDM is that the
impedance matrix element can be expressed in an extremely simpli-
Fig. 1. Geometry of the nth and mth RWG elements and their equivalent dipole
fied form, which avoids the integral operators, whereas the memory
models.
requirement does not change.
In this communication, a fast dipole method (FDM) is proposed for
solving the EM scattering from arbitrarily shaped three-dimensional
(3D), electrically large, PEC targets in free space based on the con- Then using a set of RWG basis functions fn (n = 1; . . . ; N ) to
cept of the EDM and FMM. All the RWG basis functions on the target expand the induced surface current density J(r0 ) = N I f (r0 ),
n=1 n n

surface are modeled as equivalent dipole models and divided into sev- where N is the number of degrees of freedom and In is the unknown
eral uniform cubes. Each cube is called a group, and contains a few ^ 2 fm (r) as the testing function to dis-
current coefficient, and using n
equivalent dipole models. If two groups are in each others’ nearfield, cretize (1), we obtain a matrix equation
the corresponding impedance matrix elements are computed by con- N
ventional MoM/EDM. Otherwise, through a simple Taylor’s series ex-
pansion of the distance R between the interacting equivalent dipoles,
Z I
E
mn n = V ; m = 1; 2; . . . ; N
m (2)
n=1
we can transform the impedance element into an aggregation-transla-
tion-disaggregation form naturally. Moreover, the CPU time as well as where
the memory requirement can also be reduced to O(N 1:5 ). Furthermore,
compared with the FMM, the Bessel functions, Legendre functions and Z E
mn = jk
most of integral operators do not participate in the whole computation
procedure, which makes the formula derivation and coding procedure
1 fm (r) 1 fn (r ) 0
0

k2 r1 f (r)r 1 f (r ) G(r; r )dr dr

1
m
0
n
0 0 0

f f
much easier. In addition, the complexity and memory requirement for (3)
computing translation operators are just only O(N ) and the disaggre-
gation process does not require extra memory when the CFIE is used. are the elements of the impedance matrix, and V m is the excitation
Compared with the FAFFA method, the computation complexity of the vector element given by
FDM for the far group pairs is close to its when the FAFFA doesn’t use
interpolating.
The remainder of the communication is organized as follows. In
Vm = fm (r) 1 Ei (r)dr: (4)
f
Section II, the EDM is briefly presented for the integrity of the new
method. Then in Section III, the derivation and implementation of the As shown in Fig. 1, Zmn
E
represents the interaction between the mth
FDM is illustrated in detail. The computation complexity and memory and the nth RWG triangle pair, which consist of two adjacent triangles
requirement are analyzed in Section IV. In Section V, some numerical Tm6 (Tn6 ) with the common edge of length lm (ln ) separately. The
results about bistatic radar cross section (RCS) of several canonical equivalent dipole moment for the nth RWG element can be expressed
targets are given to verify the efficiency and accuracy of the method. as [11]–[13]
Finally, conclusions and suggestions for future work are discussed in
Section VI. mn = fn (r )dr
0 0
 l (r 0 r + );
n
c0
n
c
n (5)
T

where rcn6 are the position vectors of the centroid of Tn6 defined in the
II. BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE EDM
In this section, the basic principles of the EDM are briefly pre- global coordinate and ln is the length of the nth common edge of Tn6 . It
sented. Considering the problem of EM wave scattering by an can be seen from the above equation that the equivalent dipole moment
arbitrarily shaped PEC surface
whose normal is denoted by n ^ . The of a RWG basis function can be simply represented by its geometric
formulations for the electric-field integral equation (EFIE) is derived parameters.
from the electric-field boundary conditions on the conducting surface In EDM method [11], [12], the terms Zmn E
usually obtained by
Gaussian quadrature can be regarded approximately as an interaction
jkn^ 2 G(r; r )J(r ) + k12 rG(r; r )r 1 J(r ) dr
0 0 0 0 0 0 between two infinitely small dipoles with equivalent moments instead
of two common RWG basis functions.

=n ^ 2 E (r)
i
(1)
Z E e 0jkR

mm 1 mn jk + C
where J denotes the induced surface current, k and  denote
mn =

4 R
the free-space wave number and impedance, and G(r; r0 ) =
e0jkjr0r j =(4jr 0 r0 j) denotes the free-space Green’s function, Ei 0 m 1 R^ R^ 1 m jk + 3C
stands the incident field.
m n
R (6)
1188 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

R r r r
in which = mn = m 0 n is the vector from the center point n of r
r
the nth equivalent dipole to the center point m of the mth equivalent
dipole. R = j j, ^ = =R. n = ( cn+ + cn0 )=2 and m =
R R R r r r r
( mc+ + cm0 )=2 are denoted in Fig. 1 and
r r
C= 2
1 1+ 1 : (7)
R jkR

Similarly, for the magnetic field integral equation (MFIE), the mu-
tual impedance element can be expressed as

M = jkCe0jkR
Zmn
4 (mm 2 n^ m ) 1 (R 2 mn ) (8)
n
where ^ m = (^ +n n n n
m + ^ 0m )=j^ +m + ^+0m j is0 the average normal vector
n n
of the mth equivalent dipole, and ^ m , ^ m represent the unit normal
+ and Tm0 respectively.
vectors of Tm
We note that the distance between the center points of the source
and field equivalent dipoles must be greater than 0:15, as elucidated
in [12]. In other words, if two RWG triangle pairs are very near and
the distance between them is less 0:15, this equivalence is no longer
valid and the conventional MoM must be used. It can be seen from
the above equations for the EDM the calculations of mutual terms of
the impedance matrix for both EFIE and MFIE do not contain integral
operators, thus greatly simplifying the matrix filling process and saving
much computation time.
III. BASIC PRINCIPLES AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FDM
A. Basic Principles Comparison Between the FDM, FMM and FAFFA
In the FMM, the addition theorem is fully utilized for relating far
group pairs by expanding the three dimensional Green’s function with
a series of the product of spherical Bessel function, spherical Hankel
function and Legendre polynomial. Physical interpretation of this ex-
pansion is that a spherical wave in free space can be expanded by the
sum of an infinite number of plane waves, which transforms the inter-
action between the source and field points in non-nearby groups into
aggregation, translation and disaggregation operators.
A fast far field approximation (FAFFA) with simple formulations
was developed to estimate RCS of conducting scatterers in [6]. The
FAFFA method can be viewed as the natural far field approximation of
the FMM and it simplifies the integral operation over every sampling
directions on the unit sphere surface to one sampling computation in the
direction between two far group centers [6], [9], [10]. Such approxima-
tion is valid only when two groups are far enough, otherwise a bigger
error will be introduced.
The FDM in this work is very similar to the FMM and the FAFFA
in the sense that all these three methods are developed to accelerate the
MVP in an iterative solver without needing to store many of the matrix
elements. For the FDM, the EFIE and MFIE matrix elements are rep-
Fig. 2. The mth and nth RWG elements and the groups they belong to.
B. Implementation of the FDM
In this work, for the FDM each group’s size is chosen longer than
0:15 and the relative position of two Group i (Gi ) and Group j (Gj )
is classified into two types:
• Near group pair: Gi and Gj are overlapping or adjacent;
• Far group pair: Gi and Gj are nonoverlapping or nonadjacent.
So a MVP can be divided into two parts as follow:
N
Zmn In = Zmn In + Zmn In ; m 2 Gj (9)
n=1 G 2N n2G G 2F n2G
in which G 2N n2G Zmn In denotes the near group interac-
tion and G 2F n2G Zmn In denotes the far group interaction
respectively.
For the near group interaction computation in (9), the traditional
MoM and EDM are employed. For the far group interaction, we con-
sider two RWG elements m (m 2 Gj ) and n (n 2 Gi ) and suppose
Gi belongs to the far group of Gj (Gi 2Fj ) shown in Fig. 2. These
two elements can be viewed as two equivalent dipoles considering that
r r r
the distance R = j mn j = j m 0 n j between the centers of the two
RWG basis function is definitely larger than 0:15 according to the
approximation rule of the EDM and the impedance element Zmn can
be represented as (6) and (8) for the EFIE and MFIE respectively. The
r
vector mn can be rewritten as (see Fig. 2)
R = rmn = rji + rmj 0 rni ; (10)
in which rji = ro 0 ro , rmj = rm 0 ro , rni = rn 0 ro . ro and
ro are the center positions of Gi and Gj , and rm and rn are the center
positions of the mth and nth equivalent dipoles.
Now, we consider R carefully and expand it using the Taylor series
as
R = jRj = jrji + rmj 0 rni j
 rji + ^rji 1 rmj + rmj 0 (^2rrjiji 1 rmj )
2
2

+ 0^rji 1 rni + rni 0 (^2rrjiji 1 rni ) :

resented by (6) and (8) respectively. For nearfield pairs, the impedance 2 2
matrix elements are calculated by the traditional MoM and the EDM, (11)
while for the far group interaction, a simple Taylor’s series expan-
sion of the distance R between the source and field points transforms For the amplitude and phase approximation of (6) and (8), R can be
the impedance element into another aggregation-translation-disaggre- simplified as
gation form naturally, also leading to memory reduction and speed ac- R  rji (12)
celeration in the MVP. In the following formulas we can find that the for amplitude variations and
main difference between the FDM and the FAFFA [9], [10] is that the
second order term of R is introduced in the phase approximation. In e0jkR  e0jkr e0jk(^r 1r +(r 0(r^ 1r ) )=2r )
addition, the formulas involved in FDM are much more simpler than e0jk(0r^ 1r +(r 0(r^ 1r ) )=2r ) (13)
those of the FMM, thus significantly simplifying the formula deriva-
tion and coding procedure. for phase variations.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1189

Substituting (12) and (13) into (6), the impedance matrix element for in which TMji (rji) is the magnetic field translator
EFIE can be rewritten as
0jkr
E  m e0jk(^r 1r +(r 0(^r 1r ) )=2r )
TMji (rji) = jkCe4 rji: (22)
Zmn m
0jkr
1 4 I rjkji + C 0 ^rji^rji rjkji + 3C
e For the MFIE, we can find that the translator is a vector and the disag-
gregation function differs from the aggregation function with a normal
1 mn e0jk(0r^ 1r +(r 0(^r 1r ) )=2r ) (14) unit vector. However, these aggregation and disaggregation functions
in the MVP for the MFIE do not need any additional memory.
rr I
in which ^ji ^ji is a dyad,  is the unit dyad and
For the CFIE case, we can obtain the MVP easily through the fol-
lowing equation
C = r12 1+
1
jkrji : (15)
CFIE = EFIE + (1 0 )MFIE
ji (23)

In (14), the product of the dipole moment mn and the phase term where  2 [0; 1] is the combination parameter of the CFIE.
e0jk(^r 1r +(r 0(^ r 1r ) )=2r ) It is obvious that the aggregation, translation and disaggregation
processes don’t require the calculation of higher order spherical
Mn(rij ) = mn e0jk r
(^ 1r +( r 0(r^ 1r ) )=2r )
(16) Hankel functions, the Legendre polynomial and spherical integration.
The computational complexity and memory requirement of the FDM
can be considered as a aggregation function which aggregate the signal will be analyzed in the next section.
from the nth equivalent dipole to the group center Oi it belongs to. The
term in the brace of (14)
IV. COMPLEXITY ANALYSIS

T r
E e0jkr I
 jk + C 0 ^rji ^rji
jk + 3C If we assume there are N unknowns for a problem, we divide them
ji ( ji ) = 4 rji rji (17)
into G nonempty groups. Each group has M = N=G unknowns in av-
erage and P near-region groups (including itself) in average. First we
can be regarded as an electric field translator which transform the
signal from the source group center Oi to the field group center Oj .
consider the computational complexity of a MVP. The total amount of
Finally, the product of the dipole moment m and the phase termm computation consists of four parts: near-region, aggregation, transla-

e0jk(^r 1r +(r 0(r^ 1r ) )=2r )

tion, disaggregation.
• Near-region: Because each group has P groups in its near-re-

Mm(rji) = mme0jk
gion, the total number of groups needed to be calculated and as-
r
(^ 1r r 0(r^ 1r ) )=2r
+( )
(18) sociated with near-region interaction is GP . And there are M 2
impedance elements needed to be calculated in each group. So the
can be viewed as a disaggregation function which disaggregate the CPU cost relevant to near-region interaction T1 = 1 GP M 2 =
signal from the group center Oj to the mth equivalent dipole. Thus 1 P N 2 =G;
the impedance element for the EFIE in the (14) can be rewritten con- • Aggregation: Each group has about (G 0 P ) groups in its far-
cisely as region. So there are G(G 0 P ) far-group pairs, and each pair needs
M operations. Therefore the time cost of the aggregation process
E  Mm (rji ) 1 T
Zmn Eji (rji ) 1 Mn (rij ): (19) T2 = 2 G(G 0 P )M  2 GN ;
• Translation: Every far-group pairs need the transfer operations,
Then, the MVP (9) including both near and far group interactions for so the overall cost of the transfer process T3 = 3 G(G 0 P ) 
the EFIE can be written as 3 G2 ;
• Disaggregation: The disaggregation process is very similar to the
N
E In =
Zmn E In +
Zmn Mm(rji) 1 T Eji(rji) aggregation process. Thereby the cost for computing all disaggre-
gations T4 = 4 G(G 0 P )M  4 GN .
n=1 G 2N n2G G 2F Then the total computational cost of a MVP for the FDM is
1 In Mn (rij ): (20)
n2G
Ti  1 P NG
4 2
T = + (2 + 4 )GN + 3 G2
It can be seen from the above equation that the calculation process i=1
 c NG
2
of the MVP for far group interaction can be naturally divided into three
steps: 1 aggregation
n2G In n ( ij ); M r E
2 translation  ji ( ji ); T r 1 + c2 GN: (24)
M r
3 disaggregation m ( ji ). The aggregation and disaggregation
The total cost is minimized by choosing G = c1 N=c2 , and the
Tmin = 2pc1 c2 N 1:5 . Here, 1  4 , c1 and c2 are constants which
functions are exactly the same, so only the aggregation function and
translator are needed and stored for the MVP, which expedite the
calculation of the MVP. are platform and software dependent. It can be seen from the above
In a similar way, the MVP for the MFIE can be derived as formula that the FDM can reduce the total computational complexity
of the MVP to O(N 1:5 ).
N
MI =
Zmn MI
Zmn
The memory requirements of the FDM also consists of four parts:
n n near-region, aggregation, translation, disaggregation.
n=1 G 2N n2G • Near-region: Memory consumption S1 = GP M 2 = P N 2 =G;
+ Mm(rji) 2 n^m )1 TMji (rji) 2
( In Mn (rij ) (21) • Aggregation: Memory consumption S2 = G(G 0 P )M  GN ,
G 2F n2G only the phase terms of aggregation functions are stored;
1190 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

2 2
Fig. 3. Bistatic RCSs in  polarization of a 2 m 2 m 2 m PEC cube illumi-
Fig. 4. Bistatic RCSs in  polarization of a PEC sphere of radius 3 m illumi-
nated by a uniform plane wave with the incident direction of (; ) = (0 ; 0 ).
nated by a uniform plane wave with the incident direction of (; ) = (0 ; 0 ).

TABLE I
TOTAL CPU TIME AND MEMORY COST OF THE TRADITIONAL MOM, EDM AND
FDM FOR THE SCATTERING PROBLEM OF A PEC CUBE WITH SIDE LENGTH
OF 2 m

• Translation: Memory consumption S3 = 3 G(G 0 P )  3 G2 ,

in which 3 is a constant;
• Disaggregation: Memory consumption S4 = 0.
Disaggregation process does not require extra memory for the EFIE,
MFIE and CFIE considering that the disaggregation and aggregation
M r
functions are the same in the EFIE and the disaggregation function is
just the cross product of the aggregation function m ( ji ) and the
n
average normal vector ^ m for the MFIE. So the total memory require-
ment is S =p 4i=1 Si P N 2 =G + GN . It can be seen that if we
choose G  N , the memory requirements of the FDM can achieve
O(N 1:5 ).
V. NUMERICAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
In this section, we present some numerical results to test the effi-
ciency and validity of the FDM compared with the traditional MoM,
EDM, Mie series solution and our FMM code [17]. We remark that in
the following examples, the CFIE ( = 0:5) is chosen and all the sim-
ulations are performed on a personal computer with the Pentium(R)
Dual CPU E5500 with 2.80 GHz (only one core is used) and 2.0 GB
RAM. The single-precision code of FDM and the GMRES iterative
solver are employed to obtain an identical residual error  0:001 and
no preconditioning is used in all the simulations.
First we consider the scattering problem of a PEC cube with side
length of 2 m. The cube is divided into triangular patches with an
average edge length of 0:1, and the total number of unknowns is
7200. All the unknowns are divided into 152 nonempty groups and
the size of each group is 0:4. The bistatic RCS for  polarization
calculated by the FDM is agree excellently with the conventional
MoM and the EDM as shown in the Fig. 3. Table I summarizes the
CPU time and memory requirements. It can be seen that the FDM
saves much more time and memory than the conventional MoM and
the EDM.
Fig. 5. Bistatic RCSs in  polarization of a PEC pencil target illuminated by
a uniform plane wave with the incident direction of (; ) = (0 ; 0 ).
Then the bistatic RCS of a PEC sphere of radius 3 m is considered.
The total number of unknowns is 40851. The geometry is grouped into
397 nonempty groups and the size of each group is set to 0:65. The
total computation time is 234 s and 658 MB memory is used. The
bistatic RCSs in  polarization are shown in Fig. 4. The result ob-
tained by the FDM agrees well with the Mie series solution, which is
exact and used as a reference.
Furthermore, we consider a PEC pencil target mentioned in [18].
This target was formed with a 3 m capped cylinder with a 0.1 m
radius, and a tip extending 0.173 m pointing towards 0 azimuth and
elevation. This pencil is meshed into 11342 triangular patches and
there are total 17013 unknowns, which are grouped into 315 nonempty
groups with the size of 0:4. The total computation time is 72 s
and 144 MB memory is used by the FDM. The bistatic RCS in 
polarization obtained by the FDM agrees very well with the FMM as
shown in Fig. 5. And the FMM costs 79 s and 168 MB memory using
the same grouping.
Finally, the bistatic RCSs of a 252.3744-mm PEC NASA almond is
calculated. The almond is divided into 24150 triangular patches and the
number of unknowns is 36225. Totally 430 nonempty groups with the
size of 0:55 are obtained. The CPU time is 216 s and the memory cost
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1191

[7] A. McCowen, “Efficient 3-D moment-method analysis for reflector an-

Fig. 6. Bistatic RCSs in  polarization of a 252.3744-mm PEC NASA almond
illuminated by a uniform plane wave with the incident direction of (; ) =
(0 ; 0 ).
is 505 MB. The bistatic RCS in  polarization is compared with the
FMM shown in Fig. 6. And the FMM costs 238 s and 579 MB memory
using the same grouping.
From the pencil and NASA almond simulations results, it’s can been
seen that the FDM and the FMM have the same order cost in CPU time
and memory requirement. We remark that the single point Gaussian
quadrature is used to calculate the aggregation functions, disaggrega-
tion functions and the near group interaction of the FMM.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this communication, the FDM is proposed and implemented to ac-
celerate solving the CFIE in the EM scattering of 3D PEC targets. The
new method can reduce both the CPU time and memory requirement
to O (N 1:5 ). Also the FDM is base on the concept of the EDM and it is
very simple for implementation compared with the FMM. Numerical
results show that the FDM method can obtain acceptable results for
practical engineering applications. In the near future, the FDM will be
extended to solve volume integral equation (VIE) and combined with
the characteristic basis function method (CBFM). Also the multi-level
FDM will be implemented.
tennas using a far-field approximation technique,” Proc. Inst. Elect.
Eng., vol. 146, pt. H, pp. 7–12, Feb. 1999.
[8] C. C. Lu, J. M. Song, W. C. Chew, and E. Michielssen, “The applica-
tion of far-field approximation to accelerate the fast multipole method,”
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21–26, 1996, vol. 3, pp. 1738–1741.
[9] W. C. Chew, T. J. Cui, and J. M. Song, “A FAFFA-MLFMA algorithm
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[10] T. J. Cui, W. C. Chew, G. Chen, and J. M. Song, “Efficient MLFMA,
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[11] S. N. Makarov, Antenna and EM Modeling with MATLAB. New
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[12] J. Yeo, S. Köksoy, V. V. S. Prakash, and R. Mittra, “Efficient gen-
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3405–3410, Dec. 2004.
[13] S. M. Rao, D. R. Wilton, and A. W. Glisson, “Electromagnetic scat-
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[14] D. H. Schaubert, D. R. Wilton, and A. W. Glisson, “A tetrahedral mod-
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AP-32, no. 1, pp. 77–85, Jan. 1984.
[15] J. D. Yuan, C. Q. Gu, and G. D. Han, “Efficient generation of method
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Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 8, pp. 716–719, 2009.
[16] J. D. Yuan, C. Q. Gu, and Z. Li, “Electromagnetic scattering by arbi-
trarily shaped stratified anisotropic media using the equivalent dipole
moment method,” Int. J. RF Microw. Comput.-Aided Engrg., vol. 20,
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[17] Z. Y. Niu and J. P. Xu, “Near-field sparse inverse preconditioning of
multilevel fast multipole algorithm for electric field integral equations,”
presented at the IEEE Asia-Pacific Conf., 2005.
[18] M. L. Hastriter, “A study of MLFMA for large-scale scattering prob-
lems,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Illinois, 2003.

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theory,” J. Comput. Phys., vol. 60, pp. 187–207, Sep. 1985.
[2] R. Coifman, V. Rokhlin, and S. Wandzura, “The fast multipole method
for the wave equation: A pedestrian prescription,” IEEE Antennas
Propag. Mag., vol. 35, pp. 7–12, Jun. 1993.
[3] J. M. Song and W. C. Chew, “Multilevel fast-multipole algorithm
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[4] J. M. Song, C. C. Lu, and W. C. Chew, “Multilevel fast multipole
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1997.
[5] J. M. Taboada, M. G. Araújo, J. M. Bértolo, and L. Landesa,
“MLFMA-FFT parallel algorithm for the solution of large-scale
problems in electromagnetics,” Progr. Electromagn. Res., vol. 105,
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238–241, 1995.
1192 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
An Efficient Hybrid GO-PWS Algorithm to Analyze
Conformal Serrated-Edge Reflectors for Millimeter-Wave
Compact Range
Alfonso Muñoz-Acevedo and Manuel Sierra-Castañer
Abstract—A method to analyze parabolic reflectors with arbitrary piece-
wise rim is presented in this communication. This kind of reflectors, when
operating as collimators in compact range facilities, needs to be large in
terms of wavelength. Their analysis is very inefficient, when it is carried out
with fullwave/MoM techniques, and it is not very appropriate for designing
with PO techniques. Also, fast GO formulations do not offer enough accu-
racy to reach performance results. The proposed algorithm is based on a
GO-PWS hybrid scheme, using analytical as well as non-analytical formu-
lations. On one side, an analytical treatment of the polygonal rim reflectors
is carried out. On the other side, non-analytical calculi are based on effi-
cient operations, such as order 2-dimensional FFT. A combination of
these two techniques in the algorithm ensures real ad-hoc design capabil-
ities, reached through analysis speedup. The purpose of the algorithm is
to obtain an optimal conformal serrated-edge reflector design through the
analysis of the field quality within the quiet zone that it is able to generate
in its forward half space.
Index Terms—Compact range, hybrid algorithm, millimeter wave, plane
wave spectrum, serrated edge reflector.
I. INTRODUCTION
Plane wave spectrum (PWS) theory offers a solution to Maxwell’s
equations representing the electromagnetic field distributions as a sum
of independent plane waves. The simplicity, in terms of mathematical
treatment, for each one of these elementary contributions, makes PWS
formulations quite attractive when dealing with half-space radiation
and propagation schemes in both near and far field conditions.
Reflectors have classically been analyzed with different order physics
techniques. The two most common techniques are GO and PO.
As commented in [1], PO techniques are high frequency solving
techniques, which offer a realistic solution to most problems. GO
is a much simpler approach, while, as stated in [2], does not offer
enough accuracy to carry out design—stage tasks. Hybrid approaches
to the problem combine different order electromagnetic physics in
order to reach more accurate results and, if possible, computational
speedup.
As studied in [3], PO techniques are in some cases insufficient to
analyze serrated edge reflectors, since they assume a high-frequency
hypothesis for which surface currents are not affected by edge effects
at the serrated reflector rim. As pointed out in [3], [4], a common solu-
tion consists on using MoM techniques to evaluate the reflector’s im-
pressed currents and integrate them through PO techniques to calculate
the radiated field. This approach is able to offer very accurate results of
both near and far fields of the reflector, although it is highly inefficient
Manuscript received April 29, 2010; revised October 04, 2010; accepted July
23, 2011. Date of publication October 20, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012. This work was supported by a Spanish Government FPI scholarship
for Ph.D. students and both CROCANTE (TEC2008-06736-C03-01/TEC) and
TERASENSE (CSD2008-00068) projects.
The authors are with the Radiation Group, Technical University of Madrid
(UPM), Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain (e-mail: alfonso@gr.ssr.
upm.es).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173100
0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
for reflectors which are electrically very large, as those of CATRs are.
Another hybrid approach to reach more realistic surface currents con-
sists on assuming edge currents which also contribute to the radiated
field (PTD techniques [2], [5]). Edge modeling is critical in the anal-
ysis and design of serrated-edge reflectors inside compact ranges. As
commented in [6], simple approaches can offer sufficient results, while
it is important to bound the maximum admissible error and also to be
able to analyze different geometrical serrations alternatives [7]. GTD
techniques [8] are an improvement of GO techniques, and are able to
offer more accurate results by using information of the diffracted rays
from the reflector’s edges, but its utility is limited to scattering angles
distant from the reflector’s broadside, above a minimum reliable angle.
GTD itself is not able to offer a complete solution to an arbitrary scat-
tering problem. Common convergence criteria establish dense meshes
(1x; y < o =30) over the surface currents [2]. Different techniques
have been developed setting an adaptive mesh over the surface, or con-
formal meshing schemes [2], [9]. The evaluation of the Fresnel inte-
gral is itself a O(N4 ) complexity problem, given that for each one of
the O(N2 ) points of interest, a O(N2 ) complexity integral must be per-
formed, so PO techniques are a computational bottleneck when solving
electrically large reflectors.
The motivation of performing integration through a plane wave
spectrum (PWS) approach is the substantial reduction of the computa-
tional cost. PWS formulations evaluate the radiated fields of arbitrary
scatterers through complex variable integral formulations and Fourier
analysis [10]–[12]. In particular, parabolic scatterers are modeled
with their aperture field distribution [13], in a half-space problem,
which suits simple planar geometry formulations. The treatment of
the planar field distribution is carried out through Fourier analysis,
and practical implementations use of FFT. Thus, if the sampling of
the field is carried out at general Nyquist rate (1x; y = o =2), the
discretization of the aperture field is dense enough [11], [13]. These
lower density meshes are an intrinsic computational advantage of
plane wave spectrum formulations.
On the side of feed modeling, different order physics should be
used depending on the particular setup to be analyzed. When low gain
feeders and high F=D facilities are used, as in the case of CATRs, the
reflector’s surface can be assumed to be in the far-field region of the
feeder. Consequently, the impressed currents are calculated through
GO techniques and feeder radiation pattern weighting. However, if this
hypothesis is not accomplished, a complete near-field model of the
feeder should be used to calculate the impressed currents distribution.
Thus, PO techniques might be needed between the feeder and the
reflector [15].
In the proposed algorithm, the impressed currents are projected to
obtain the aperture distribution. As discussed in [15], this aperture field
has an intrinsic phase error, due to the projection of the currents in the
parabolic surface to the projected surface. The main consequence of
computing the radiated field from this projected surface instead of the
scatterer surface is the reduction of the angle validity in the radiated
field. For the CATR case of study, scatterers with high F=D figures
do not introduce high phase errors, while CATRs operate in a narrow
margin of radiation angles.
This communication is divided in five sections. After this introduc-
tion, Section II shows the mathematical formulation of the algorithm,
explaining separately the PWS and the GO contributions. Section III of-
fers field results of particular setups. Quantitative information is offered
and field acquisitions are related to GRASP8 acquisitions. Section IV
concludes some ideas for the use of this algorithm in the design of
CATR facilities, and establishes the future lines.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1193

Fig. 2. Maximum usable angle seen by the reflector geometry.

Fig. 1. Analysis problem: focused offset reflector CATR.

II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION OF THE ALGORITHM

A. The Plane Wave Spectrum Representation

As mentioned in the introduction, formulations of the Plane Wave
Spectrum theory are shown for the planar acquisition surface canonical
case. Clemmow studied deeply these formulations in [10]. There, it is
shown that (1) and (2) constitute a solution to Maxwell’s equations in
a free space source-free region, where r is the acquisition point vector,
respect to the sources distribution coordinate system Os . This coordi-
nate system is the one respect to which the plane wave spectrum of the Fig. 3. Spectral domains involved in the propagation problem.
fields is calculated
1 1
E(r) =
1 ~ (kx ; ky )e0j k1r dkx dky
E
2 01 01
(1)
larger than
s , there is a spatial “domain widening”, which might be
1 1 understood as an oversampling of the transformed variables (kx ky )
H(r) =
2 Z0 k0
1
whenever the space between spatial samples is kept
1 1 1

k E ~ (kx ; ky )e0j k1r dkx dky : (2) Smin;x ; Smin;x Smin;y ; Smin;y
01 01
1 2

S = 0 2 0 (4)
2 2 2 2
Equations (1) and (2) become Fourier Transforms between the spa-
xy =
Sacq;x ; Sacq;x Sacq;y ; Sacq;y :
tial (x; y ) domain and the spectral (kx ; ky ) one. This approach requires
0 2 0 (5)
2 2 2 2
the definition of the longitudinal propagation constant kz , as in [12].
The transformed function of the field at the acquisition plane is the For this case, and without loss of generality, an oversampling vector 
z-propagated plane wave spectrum distribution. The sources distribu- can be defined as in (6)
tion is located at zs = 0 (Fig. 1), so the spectral distribution is obtained
performing the inverse Fourier Transform shown in (3). A practical ap-  = [kx ; ky ] = 2 Smin Smin;y
Sacq;x ; 2 Sacq;y
;x

proach to this equation consists on setting a rectangular xy mesh of M

1 1

times M points over the zs = 0 plane, with uniform distance between

Mmin;x ; Mmin;y :
2 Macq;x 2 Macq;y
= (6)
samples 1x = 1y = o =2.
1 1

The continuous and vectorial E(xs ; ys ; zs = 0) field is sampled and A  component close to 0 implies that the corresponding spectral vari-
separated in components, obtaining 3 scalar 2-dimensional discrete set able is strongly oversampled, and the field is being calculated out of
of complex fields (for each one of the rectangular components x, y the reflector’s projected surface for the transformed spatial direction.
and z ). The Fourier transform of (3) becomes a DFT, which can be The modulus of the 2 vector states for the fraction of total field which
implemented with an efficient M 2 order 2-dimensional FFT is being calculated out of the reflector’s projected surface. It is recom-
1 1 mendable to choose components kx , ky  0:5 that also make the
k ; ky ) =
~( x
E E(x ; y ; z = 0)ejk 1x ejk 1y dx dy: (3)
01 01 s s s
1 1
number of samples per direction a power of two, in order to perform
the calculations via FFT.
For a fixed
xy , the number of PWS modes that this domain is
B. Sampling Criteria able to integrate is decreasing when increasing the zs distance be-
As pointed out in [13], Nyquist sampling in the spatial domain tween
s and
xy . This fact was already pointed out in [14], where
(1 x = 1y = o =2) is enough to avoid the aliasing effects, in the some numerical examples for particular reflectors were given. It can be
most general case. Moreover, the extension of the spatial domain
xy reached, moreover, an analytical expression for the required number
must contain the region where the field is of interest. In particular of PWS modes to determine univocally the quiet zone field in
xy .

s 
xy , where
s is the minimum spatial support which includes The explanation of this lies on the relationship between the spectral
the projected currents distribution, as defined in (4) and (5). If
xy is variables (kx ; ky ) and their corresponding geometrical angles (x ; y ),
1194 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. Blocks scheme of the algorithm.
depending on the separation zs1 between
s and
xy . It is easily con- D. Spectral Contributions to the Algorithm
cluded that (kx ky ) do not reach their boundary values 6ko whenever
zs > 0, and these bounds define the usable fraction of the whole com-
plex spectrum (Fig. 2). Equations (7) and (8) relate (kx ky )max with
the geometrical and electromagnetic parameters. The spectral domain
of these contributing modes is described with (9) and the amount of
usable samples in a spatial direction is stated by (10)
[kx ; ky ]max = k0 1 [sin(max;x ); sin(max;y )]
(7)
(x=y ) + Smin;(x=y )
tan max;(x=y) = Sacq; 2 1 (zs 0 zoffset )
;(x=y ) 1 0
= 4M1 (min
zs 0 zoffset )
1 + 2 1 k1 (8)
(x=y )
~
QZ = [0kx;max ; kx;max ][0ky;max ; ky;max ] (9) a conformal mesh of the serrations is considered, as proposed in [2].
Musable(x=y) = int Mwid(x=y) 1 sin max;(x=y) :
(10)
C. GO Contributions to the Algorithm
The setup to be analyzed, depicted in Fig. 1, consists of an offset par-
abolic shaped-edge reflector fed by a low gain horn, with an acquisition
plane inside the Fresnel region of the reflector. There are three coordi-
nate systems: Oo is centered in the vertex of the parabolic surface and
z-directed according to the propagation of the scattered field by the re-
flector. Os is centered in the projected surface of the reflector, with the
same z axis orientation as previous, but linearly shifted zoffset . Of is
the feeder’s local system, z-directed with the maximum radiation pat-
tern direction. The projected surface is located as close as possible to
the reflector, but keeping all the surface currents at zs < 0 values.
A block scheme of the whole hybrid algorithm is shown in the matrix
of Fig. 4. The lower row corresponds to the calculation of the aperture
fields (2nd column) through GO formulations (operation A) and current
projection (op. C) over an analytical model of the CATR (1st column).
A legend of the operations involved in the task flow is attached. The
aperture field distribution (2nd column) is calculated through GO tech-
niques, since the use of GO is a simple approach to the field represen-
tation. Two main hypothesis are assumed to use GO in the feed mod-
eling: first the reflector is in the farfield of the feeder; the second one
requires a large reflector, in terms of wavelength [16], to assume the
high frequency hypothesis for the surface currents. At low frequencies,
for which the GO approach would be insufficient, a higher order formu-
lation for the aperture fields should be added. In our case of study, the
serrations are assumed to be large (much larger than 5 wavelengths),
so HF assumption can be taken.
According to Fourier theory, the spatial window can be obtained by
performing an IFT over the PWS of the projected surface. As presented
in [12], [16]–[19], this calculation can be accurate and flexible for an
arbitrary polygonal projected shape. In [14], it is approached through
a convolution of the window’s spectral distribution with the Fourier
coefficients of the feeder’s GO pattern projected over the acquisition
plane, assuming that this pattern is spectrally very narrow banded. Our
approach doesn’t work on this assumption but avoids the spectra convo-
lution by performing the windowing in the spatial domain. Moreover,
the use of the closed form expression proposed in [17] avoids the trun-
cation of rim information through analytical analysis of the geometry.
Truncation effects can be noticed in [14], and can also be minimized if
The proposed approach requires two M 2 -order O(M 2 log M 2 ) FFT
calculations (Operations C,E), in addition with a O(M 2 )M times M
multiplication (1st row, 1st column) to reach the spectral information
of the reflector tapered by the feeder pattern. This spectral distribution
is propagated towards the za = 0 acquisition plane multiplying each
discrete spectral plane wave contribution by a propagation factor (Op.
D). The electric field at the acquisition plane za = 0 is obtained per-
forming a M 2 -order FFT (Op. E) over the propagated spectrum. Oper-
ation F evaluates if more acquisition planes are of interest and, in that
case, loops back to Op. D.
In practical terms, this means that the computation time used by the
hybrid formulation is inelastic with respect to the number of acquisi-
tion planes and, thus, it is suitable for quiet zone volumetric character-
ization. It must be noted that the furthest the acquisition plane is set,
the less time Ops. D, E take, since increasingly lower number of plane
waves need to be processed. The tasks have been described for one field
component, potentially the co-polar contribution. The process to obtain
the other electric field components requires the analogous replication
of columns 3rd and 4th for the other aperture field components.
E. Accuracy of the Algorithm
The hybrid algorithm is designed as a chain of different order Physics
approximations based on certain hypothesis: the “feed in farfield” can
be assumed for most CATR facilities and the “currents projection” ap-
proach should also be valid whenever the GO-PWS fields are of interest
and the reflector is parabolic. However, the HF hypothesis is not valid
if the frequency of operation is very low. Consequently, the accuracy
analysis will focus on reaching an evaluator of the algorithm’s relia-
bility for this hypothesis. A pragmatic approach to this evaluation deals
with the achievement of a signal to error figure which may determine
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1195

if the proposed algorithm is valid to analyze a CATR reflector, for a

particular setup.
It is realistic to obtain this signal to error figure through the energy
ratio between two magnitudes (11). The numerator of this fraction is
the best achievable approach to the quiet zone field (reference value).
The denominator is the committed error when the quiet zone field is
based on the HF approximation, as in (12).

snr
@
= ffEEQZ (x; y; z; )g
3 (x; y ; z; )g (11)
QZ
3 (x; y; z ; ) = E @ (x; y; z ; ) 0 E
EQZ (x; y; z; ):
QZ QZ (12) Fig. 5. (a) Logarithmic SNR vs. frequency and acquisition plane distance using
as reference the CST calculation and (b) the polynomial best fit SNR figure, as
a function of the acquisition plane distance.
It is convenient to express the numerator of (11) through Parseval’s
theorem (13). This expression states that only the PWS modes inside

QZ contribute to the energy  of the reference distribution. It also

states that the integration of the spectral distribution within
QZ at an
arbitrary zs > 0 plane leads to the same  figure as when the sub-
integral distribution is the spectrum existing at zs = 0.

( ;
 fE x; y z;  g ) = ( ; )
E x; y z;  1 dx 1 dy

xy
= 4 112 ~ ( ; = 0; )dkx 1 dky : (13)
E x; y zs

~ Fig. 6. Circular and serrated reflector projected rim respect to O coord. sys.

Some numeric results can be offered and particular signal to error

figures can be extracted. To this purpose, the formulation used as refer-
ence is the time-domain full wave technique implemented by CST soft-
ware. The test structure is a 400 mm-wide PEC plate placed in xy plane,
over which a y -polarized plane wave impinges. Periodic boundary con-
ditions on its y -axis and freespace boundary conditions over its x-axis
are set. This offers a realistic approach for a 1-D analysis along the x
dimension. The purpose of this setup is to test the HF hypothesis for a
fixed physical size scatterer between 5 GHz and 80 GHz.
The induced homogeneous HF-currents Jind are compared with the
full wave solution. These results are evaluated with (11) and (13) to Fig. 7. Normalized amplitude, horizontal and vertical cuts.
reach the snr figures (Fig. 5(a)). The full-wave accuracy results are
taken as the “reference” accuracy of the algorithm. It is relevant to
point out the increase of accuracy obtained when moving up in fre-
III. RESULTS—VALIDATION
quency or shifting the acquisition plane away from the scatterer, as it is
the algorithm’s scenario of interest: mmWave CATRs. The scatterer’s Our purpose is to obtain plane acquisitions of electric field inside
edge conformation is not considered with this canonical 1D problem. the Fresnel region of a serrated-edge reflector. Thus, the results to
However, this lack of generality is overcome through the uniform il- be studied will be E/H-plane cuts of the diffracted electric field, in
lumination scheme, which is the HF hypothesis worst case scenario, a compact-range, where the feeder is pointing to the center of the
given that it has the strongest impact on edge effects. reflector. The obtained results are compared to electric field results
An empirical expression of SNR as a function of frequency is ex- from GRASP8, that is the reflector analysis tool more widely used to
tracted from the full wave results. The logarithmic figure of accuracy carry out PO analysis over reflector antennas [22].
SN R(f [GHz ]) is best-fit to a second order polynomial, as in (14), and
the ai coefficients (Fig. 5(b)) are calculated along the evaluated lon-
gitudinal shift domain. For sake of generality, it is also reached (15), A. Circular Offset Reflector
which draws the SNR figure from the electrical size of the scatterer 3,
in wavelengths. This is obtained bearing in mind that the physical size A first test structure is a circular offset scatterer, with the acquisition
of the scatterer remains constant and equal to 400 mm among all the setup proposed in Fig. 1. The corresponding parameters of simulation
simulations are indicated in Table I. The circular projected surface is modeled by
constructing a 60 vertices piecewise polygonal rim. Isotropic feeder
is chosen in order to weight as uniformly as possible all the surface
2
(
SN RdB fGHz )= (
ai 1 fGHz )i (14)
contributions on the scatterer and, thus, avoid weighting down certain
regions, which could mask algorithm eventual inaccuracies. Normal-
i=0 ized amplitude and phase for both E and H planes are depicted in
2 3 1 3 i:
SN RdB (3) = ai 1
4 (15) Figs. 7 and 8. As it can be deduced from these figures, good agree-
i=0 ment is achieved, in general terms, between PO and GO-PWS results.
1196 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 8. Normalized phase, horizontal and vertical cuts.
TABLE I
TEST REFLECTOR A: CIRCULAR REFLECTOR SIMULATION
TABLE II
TEST REFLECTOR B: SERRATED CIRCULAR REFLECTOR SIMULATION
Fig. 9. Normalized amplitude, horizontal and vertical cuts; serrated reflector.
B. Serrated Circular Offset Reflector
A circular offset reflector with linear serrated edge is now studied.
The setup is the same as previous, with the definition of Table II. This
second reflector has a higher F/D, which minimizes the amplitude slope
in the vertical cut; 36 test serrations of 0.1 m length are placed around
a circular rim with 0.2 m of radius.
The feeder follows a Gaussian pattern, with 01 dB at  = 10 and
non -dependent. Amplitude and phase cuts are shown in Figs. 9 and
10. A good agreement is observed for both magnitudes in the vertical
cut, whereas horizontal acquisition has not the same level of agree-
Fig. 10. Normalized phase, horizontal and vertical cuts; serrated reflector.
ment. The analysis performed in [16] using MoM, observes similar
discrepancies between PO and MoM. In any case, this hybrid method
can give accurate results to bound the ripple and the tapering in a
single reflector CATR, if the hypotheses introduced in Section II-C are
accomplished.
C. Performance of the Algorithm
After simulation results have been shown, speedup notes must be
added to offer a clear idea of the algorithm’s global performance. Sim-
ulation times are considered, as overall indicators. The algorithm has
been implemented in FORTRAN code, and uses high performance FFT
external modules. Simulations were carried out in a 2.8 GHz double
core Pentium 4 processor, with 4 GB of RAM. GRASP8 took 51.200 s
and 31.500 s to reach the results concerning reflectors A and B respec-
tively. On the other side, the implementation of the algorithm took 47
s and 11 s to reach its results.
IV. CONCLUSIONS: APPLICATION TO CATR DESIGN
The development of this algorithm has, as main goal, to speed up the
design of conformal serrated edge reflectors operating as wave collima-
tors in compact range facilities. By performing serrations in the edge
of parabolic reflectors, amplitude as well as phase ripples of the dif-
fracted electric field decrease. Thus, the field distribution gets closer to
the local plane one, which is our ideal situation. Typical peak to peak
values are 1 dB for amplitude and 10 degrees for phase. The design
process uses as unknowns the geometrical variables which define the
CATR facility, while the cost functions are the amplitude and phase
ripple of the electric field inside the quiet zone. High time-consuming
unitary simulations have as main consequence prohibitive or, at least,
incomplete design processes. The use of efficient algorithms, such as
the one proposed in this communication, is necessary if complete de-
sign processes are desired.
In this work, an algorithm to analyze arbitrary piecewise rim reflec-
tors has been presented. The propagation problem was divided into re-
gions, for each one of which, a different analysis solution was used.
To carry out joint optimization of the different order electromagnetic
physics, a deep study of the field sampling was presented and analytical
formulation of the sampling problem was proposed for the general case.
These formulations were implemented in order to reach both more ac-
curate results and a computational speedup. Some clear ideas were
given about the extension of the algorithm to higher order physics.
In order to test the algorithm, a closed form expression of the algo-
rithm’s accuracy was reached and experimentally developed with a full
wave method. Moreover, field acquisitions were compared with theo-
retical results obtained through GRASP8, which uses PO-order tech-
niques, for two different canonical reflectors.
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0018-926X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
1197
Time-Domain Microwave Imaging of Inhomogeneous
Debye Dispersive Scatterers
Theseus G. Papadopoulos and Ioannis T. Rekanos
Abstract—A time-domain inverse scattering method for the reconstruc-
tion of inhomogeneous dispersive media described by the Debye model is
presented. The method aims to the simultaneous reconstruction of the spa-
tial distributions of the optical and static permittivity as well as of the relax-
ation time. The reconstruction of the scatterer is based on the minimization
of a cost functional, which describes the difference between measured and
estimated values of the electric field. The fulfillment of the Maxwell’s curl
equations is set as constraint by means of Lagrange multipliers in an aug-
mented functional. The Fréchet derivatives with respect to the scatterer
properties are derived analytically and can be utilized by any gradient-
based optimization technique. The proposed reconstruction technique is
based on the Polak-Ribière nonlinear conjugate-gradient algorithm, while
the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is employed for the solu-
tion of the direct and the adjoint electromagnetic problem. Numerical re-
sults for the reconstruction of one-dimensional layered scatterers illustrate
the performance of the proposed method.
Index Terms—Debye model, dispersive media, finite-difference time-do-
main (FDTD), inverse scattering, Lagrange multipliers.
I. INTRODUCTION
Microwave imaging is an electromagnetic inverse scattering problem
of significant interest because of its numerous applications in medical
imaging, geophysical prospecting, nondestructive testing, etc. In gen-
eral, the problem can be described as follows. Given a set of known
electromagnetic wave excitations that illuminate a scatterer, the total or
the scattered field is measured at locations around the scatterer domain.
The objective is to reconstruct the spatial distribution of the electromag-
netic properties of the scatterer by inverting the measurement data. This
problem is nonlinear because the scattered field is a nonlinear function
of the scatterer properties. Furthermore, it is an ill-posed problem be-
cause the operator that maps the scatterer properties to the scattered
field is compact [1].
Depending on the time variation of the excitations used, two ap-
proaches and associated methodologies appear. In the first approach,
namely the frequency-domain one, the excitation is considered
monochromatic and the inverse scattering problem is formulated in
the frequency domain by neglecting the time dependence of the fields
[2]–[7]. In single frequency-domain microwave imaging, the case
of dispersive scatterer properties is treated similarly to the case of
nondispersive ones, because dispersion phenomena are not generated
by monochromatic excitations. Finally, the reconstruction resolution
of the scatterer properties is governed and actually limited by the
wavelength of the excitation [5], [8]. It should be mentioned that
frequency-domain microwave imaging could still be applicable to the
case of dispersive scatterers, if multiple distinct excitation frequencies
are utilized. To improve the reconstruction resolution and at the same
time to cope with dispersive scatterers, a second microwave imaging
approach, namely the time-domain one, has been proposed where the
excitation field is wideband and the microwave imaging problem is
Manuscript received April 19, 2011; revised June 30, 2011; accepted August
03, 2011. Date of publication October 21, 2011; date of current version February
03, 2012.
The authors are with the Physics Division, School of Engineering, Aris-
totle University of Thessaloniki, GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece (e-mail:
thiseasp@gen.auth.gr; rekanos@auth.gr).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2173150
1198 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

formulated in the time domain [9]–[14]. In time-domain inversion B. Augmented Cost Functional
techniques, the reconstruction resolution depends on the bandwidth of
Our objective is to estimate the three parameters characterizing a
the excitation. In particular, the resolution is limited by the shortest
effective wavelength of the excitation field. Time-domain microwave 1
Debye medium, i.e., "~ ; 1", and ~ (tilde is used to denote the orig-
inal scatterer properties), by inverting the electric field measurements
imaging can enhance the reconstruction resolution of nondispersive ~
E~ ik . This inverse scattering problem is treated as an optimization one.
scatterers and it is also capable to reconstruct the spatial distribution
of the characteristic parameters of dispersive ones. Thus, it is pos- 1
In particular, if p = [" ; 1";  ] is an estimate of the scatterer prop-
sible to reconstruct the time-domain representation of the complex erties, the scatterer reconstruction is achieved by minimizing the cost
relative permittivity of a scatterer [9], or the spatial distributions of functional that describes the discrepancy between the measured and
estimated electric field. The estimated electric fields, E~ ik , at the mea-
the characteristic parameters of dispersion models [13]. Furthermore,
a time-domain inverse scattering technique to estimate the average surement positions, are derived by the solution of the direct scattering
dielectric and conductivity properties of Debye media has been pro- problem. Moreover, the fulfillment of the Maxwell’s curl equations as
posed [14]. well as of the Debye polarization relation can be introduced in the cost
In this communication, a time-domain microwave imaging method functional by means of Lagrange multipliers. Thus, the augmented cost
for the reconstruction of the characteristic parameters of Debye functional is given by
scatterers is presented. The Fréchet derivatives of an augmented
cost functional with respect to the scatterer properties are derived I K T
analytically utilizing the calculus of variations [15]. These derivatives F (p; E;
~ H;
~ J;
~ ~e; ~h; q~) =
1
2
kE~ ik 0 E~~ ik k2 dt
are utilized by the Polak-Ribière nonlinear optimization algorithm i=1 k=1 0
I T
1 r 2 E~ i + @t H~ i )
[16], while the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method [17] is
employed for the electromagnetic analysis. In previous attempts only + [~
hi (
i=1 0 V
the static and optical permittivities were reconstructed simultaneously,
whereas the relaxation time was considered known [14], [18]. The +~ 1 r 2 H~ i 0 "0 "1 @tE~ i 0 J~i 0 J~si )
ei (
novelties of the present work are, first, the derivation of the Fréchet qi 1 (J~i +  @t J~i 0 "0 1"@t E
+~ ~ i )] dvdt (4)
derivative with respect to the relaxation time of the Debye medium
and second, the simultaneous reconstruction of the static and optical
relative permittivities as well as of the relaxation time. In Section II, where J~si is the current density that generates the ith incidence and
the mathematical formulation of the problem is presented. The inver- J~i = @t P ~i is the polarization current density that arises inside the
sion algorithm is described in Section III. The proposed method is scatterer, both corresponding to the ith incidence, and V is the do-
applied to the reconstruction of layered planar Debye scatterers and main of computation. The vector fields ~ei ; ~hi , and ~
qi are the Lagrange
numerical results are given in Section IV. Finally, Section V provides multipliers.
the conclusions.
C. Maxwell’s Equations for the Estimated Fields and the Lagrange
Multipliers
II. MATHEMATICAL FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM
The minimization of the augmented cost functional (4) requires that
its first variation is zero, i.e.,
A. Debye Dispersion Model
The relative complex permittivity of an inhomogeneous scatterer ex- F (p; E;
~ H;
~ J;
~ ~e; ~h; q~) = 0: (5)
hibiting Debye dispersion is given by [19]
1"(~
r)
"r (!; ~ 1
r) = " (~
r) +
1 + j! (~
r)
(1) If we express F in terms of variations of the arguments of the cost
functional, then we derive the relations that have to be fulfilled by the
where " 1 is the optical relative permittivity,  is the relaxation time, estimated fields and the Lagrange multipliers. This approach has been
1" = "s 0 "1 ("s is the static relative permittivity), and ! is the presented in [10] for the case of nondispersive scatterers. The first ob-
vious result of the stationarity condition (5) is that, for each incidence
angular frequency. The time-domain polarization relation for a Debye ~ i , and J~i are derived by the solution of the
~ i; H
i, the estimated fields E
medium is given by
direct scattering problem, which is formulated by the coupled differen-
~ (t; ~
D 1
r ) = "0 " (~ ~ (t; ~
r)E ~ (t; ~
r) + P r) (2)
tial equations

where D~ is the electric flux density, E

~ is the electric field intensity, and r 2 E~ i + @t H~ i = 0 (6)
~ is the polarization field satisfying the differential equation
P r 2 H~ i 0 "0 "1 @tE~ i 0 J~i 0 J~si = 0 (7)
J~i +  @t J~i 0 "0 1"@t E
~ i = 0: (8)
~ (t; ~
P ~ (t; ~
r ) +  @t P r) = "0 1"(~ ~ (t; ~
r )E r): (3)
The initial conditions for the direct scattering problem are
We assume that the Debye scatterer is nonmagnetic ( = 0 ) and
lies within the scatterer domain S . The domain S is excited by I inci-
dent waves, while for each incidence the electric field is measured at K E j
~ i t=0 = 0; H j
~ i t=0 = 0; j
J~i t=0 = 0 (9)
positions around the scatterer for the time interval [0; T ]. Hence, a set
of I 2 K electric field measurements is obtained, which are denoted as while appropriate boundary conditions according to the particular ge-
~
~ ik where i = 1; . . . ; I and k = 1; . . . ; K . We note that the time T of
E ometry of the problem are set.
measurement is selected in a way that the measured field at the farthest Furthermore, the stationarity condition, F = 0, results in the equa-
receiver has significantly faded out. tions that have to be satisfied by the Lagrange multipliers as well as
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012 1199

their initial and boundary conditions. Actually, the Lagrange multi-

pliers corresponding to the ith incidence are governed by the following
equations:

r 2 ~e 0 @ ~h = 0
i t i (10)

r 2 ~h + "0 "1 @ ~e 0 ~j + (E~ 0 E~~ ) = 0

K

i t i i ik ik (11)
=1 k

j 0  @ j + "0 1"@ ~
~i
~ t i e = 0 t i (12)
e j = = 0;
~i t T h j = = 0;
~ j j = = 0
~ i t T i t T (13) Fig. 1. Geometry of the layered planar Debye scatterer.

0 1
where ~ji = "0 " @t q~i .
In contrast to the estimated fields, the initial conditions for the La- Hence, we form the gradient vector G of the cost functional with re-
grange multipliers are defined at t = T . From (10)–(12), it is clear that p
spect to , i.e.,
the Lagrange multipliers, the so-called adjoint fields, expose a sim-
ilar to the electromagnetic waves attitude. The source of the adjoint G= G" ; ...;G " ; G1" ; . . . ; G1 " ; G ; ...;G 
T
: (19)
fields is the difference between the measured and the estimated values
The steps of each iteration of the Polak-Ribière inversion algorithm
p
of the electric field. Moreover, from the signs of the partial time-deriva-
tives in (10)–(12), which are opposite compared to the corresponding are as follows. Given an estimate of the scatterer (l) where l de-
signs in (6)–(8), we conclude that the Lagrange multipliers are waves notes the iteration, the direct scattering problem is solved for each in-
propagating backwards in time. However, by time-reversing, i.e., if we cidence and the estimated values of the electromagnetic fields are ob-
0
change the time variable (t = t T ), the time-transformed Lagrange tained at the measurement points as well as inside the scatterer do-
multipliers satisfy Maxwell’s equations similar to (6)–(8). main S . The next step is the solution of the equations satisfied by the
time-reversed Lagrange multipliers. Having calculated both the elec-
D. Fréchet Derivatives tromagnetic fields and the adjoint ones (using the FDTD method), we
are in a position to compute the gradient of the cost functional (19)
The Fréchet derivatives of the cost functional with respect to the using (14)–(16) and (18). Then, the properties vector (17) is updated
scatterer properties are obtained from the terms of F that include according to the scheme [16]

p( +1) = p( ) + ( ) v( )
the first-order variations of the scatterer properties. In particular, the
l l l l
Fréchet derivatives are given by (20)

I T where
G" = "F1 = 0"0 (~e 1 @ E~ ) dt (14)
G( ) 1 G( ) 0 G( 01) ( 01)
i t i
i=1 0 l l l

v( ) = 0G( ) +
l l
v l

= 1" = 0 11" kG( 01) k2

I T (21)
G1"
F
(E~ 1 ~j ) dt i i (15)
l

=1 0 i and

G = F = "011" (J~ 1 ~j ) dt:

I T
(16)

(l)
= arg min
F p( ) + v( )
l

l
: (22)
i i

=1 0
It should be mentioned that for the first iteration of the algorithm (l =
i

The derivatives (14)–(16) can be utilized by any gradient-based opti- 1) we set v(1) = 0G(1) . The aforementioned scheme is repeated iter-
mization algorithm to reconstruct " ; 1", and  . 1 atively until the discrepancy between the estimated and the measured
fields is lower than a predefined threshold or until a total number of
iterations is performed.
III. INVERSION ALGORITHM
In the proposed inversion approach, the reconstruction of the scat- IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
terer properties is achieved by use of the Polak-Ribière conjugate gra- In order to illustrate the validity of the proposed inverse scattering
dient algorithm. The scatterer domain S is partitioned into N subdo- methodology we have applied it to the reconstruction of layered planar
f g
mains, Sn : n = 1; 2; . . . ; N . Within each individual subdomain Debye scatterers (Fig. 1). The total width of the scatterer is d and is
Sn , the scatterer properties are assumed constant and are represented surrounded by air. The electric field of the plane wave excitation is
by the variables "n ; 1"n , and  n . Thus, the discretized representation
1 polarized parallel to the layers, thus the direct scattering problem is
of the scatterer is described by the vector one-dimensional. Two excitation sources (I = 2) are placed at distance
equal to d=2 and two receivers (K = 2) at distance d=4 from both sides
p= 11 ; . . . ; "1 ; 1"1 ; . . . ; 1" ...;
T
N N 1 N
" ; ; (17) of the scatterer. The excitation current density is a modulated Gaussian
pulse given by
which has 3N components.
As a result, the derivative of the cost functional with respect to the pa- ( ) = e0 ( 04 ) sin(2f t)u(t)
Js t
a t =a
(23) c

rameter xn (x stands for " ; 1", and  ) is given by the spatial integral
1
of the corresponding Fréchet derivative on the area of the subdomain where fc = 52108 Hz and a = 5 2108 sec01 . As shown in Fig. 1 the
Sn , i.e.,
computational domain is truncated by means of PML absorbers placed
at distance d from each side of the scatterer. For each excitation, the
Gx = Gx dv (18)
two measurement time series at the receivers’ positions are simulated
by solving the direct scattering problem using the FDTD method. We
S
1200 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012

Fig. 2. Cost function vs. the number of iterations, for the case of a two-layered
Debye scatterer.

mention that in order to avoid the “inverse crime” the space discretiza-
tion during the simulation of measurements is two times denser com-
pared to the one applied in the inversion procedure.
Two reconstruction examples have been considered. In both exam-
ples, the total width of the scatterer is d = 0:15 m. For the simulation
of the measurement the FDTD spatial grid size and the time step were
1z = 3:75 2 1003 m and 1t = 6:25 2 10012 sec, respectively. The
corresponding discretization when the FDTD is applied in the inver-
sion procedure is 1z = 7:521003 m and 1t = 1:25210011 sec. In
the first example, the scatterer consists of two Debye layers with equal
widths d=2 where their properties differ. Actually, the original parame-
ters of the first layer are "~1
1
= 2; 1"1 = 4, and ~1 = 1 ns, whereas the
corresponding parameters of the second layer are "~1 = 4 ; 1" = 1,
2 2

and ~2 = 1 ns. It is assumed that the widths of the two layers are a
priori known for the solution of the inverse problem. Consequently,
the unknowns of the inverse problem are six; three for each layer. The
initial estimate of the scatterer properties, which are the same for both
layers, are "1 1;2
= 1:1; 1"1;2 = 1:1, and  1;2 = 2 ns. The presented
inversion algorithm has been applied for 1500 iterations, whose com-
pletion is the actual stopping criterion of the iterative procedure. The
cost function versus the number of iterations is illustrated in Fig. 2.
Table I presents the values of the original and the finally estimated scat-
terer properties. In addition, Table I exhibits the absolute and the rela-
tive reconstruction errors for each parameter of each layer. The relative
reconstruction errors for each parameter versus the number of iterations 1
Fig. 3. Relative reconstruction error of (a) " , (b) ", and (c)  vs. the number
of iterations, for the case of a two-layered Debye scatterer.
are presented in Fig. 3. It is more than obvious that the properties of the
two-layered Debye medium are accurately reconstructed.
The second example involves the reconstruction of a four-layered
Debye scatterer, where the layer widths are all equal to d=4. The
TABLE I
RECONSTRUCTION RESULTS OF A TWO-LAYERED DEBYE SCATTERER—
original values of the properties are given in Table II. The initial ORIGINAL PARAMETER VALUES (TILDED), ESTIMATED VALUES,
estimates of the scatterer properties are "n 1 = 1:1; 1"n = 1:1, and ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE RECONSTRUCTION ERRORS
 n = 2 ns (n = 1; 2; 3; 4). Table II presents the values of the orig-
inal and the finally estimated scatterer properties for each layer as
well as the absolute and the relative reconstruction errors after 1500
iterations. The cost function versus the number of iterations is pre-
sented in Fig. 4. The relative reconstruction errors for each parameter
versus the number of iterations are presented in Fig. 5. From both
Table II and Fig. 5 we conclude that the reconstruction of the prop-
erties of the four-layered Debye medium is very accurate. However,
the reconstruction accuracy is lower compared to the two-layered
case. This is a reasonable result because in the second example the
number of unknowns is doubled (12 unknowns) and the scatterer
structure is more complicated compared to the first example. Finally, Debye scatterer by inverting simulated noisy measurements. In par-
the proposed method has been applied to reconstruct the four-layered ticular, the measurements have been contaminated by additive white
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 4. Cost function vs. the number of iterations, for the case of a four-layered
Debye scatterer.
1
Fig. 5. Relative reconstruction error of (a) " , (b) ", and (c)  vs. the number
of iterations, for the case of a four-layered Debye scatterer.
1201
TABLE II
RECONSTRUCTION RESULTS OF A FOUR-LAYERED DEBYE SCATTERER—
ORIGINAL PARAMETER VALUES (TILDED), ESTIMATED VALUES,
ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE RECONSTRUCTION ERRORS
TABLE III
RECONSTRUCTION RESULTS OF A FOUR-LAYERED DEBYE SCATTERER USING
NOISY MEASUREMENTS (SNR = 30 DB)—ORIGINAL PARAMETER
VALUES (TILDED), ESTIMATED VALUES, ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE
RECONSTRUCTION ERRORS
Gaussian noise with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) equal to 30 dB. The
reconstruction results derived after 1500 iterations are presented in
Table III. From Table III, we conclude that, even in the case of noisy
measurements, the reconstruction of the original scatterer parameters
is adequate; the relative reconstruction errors for all parameters are
lower than 2.5%. However, by comparing the reconstruction using
noiseless measurements (Table II) with the one using contaminated
measurements (Table III), we observe that the presence of noise dete-
riorates significantly the reconstruction accuracy of the method. Thus,
regularization techniques should be adopted.
V. CONCLUSION
In this communication, a time-domain microwave imaging tech-
nique for the reconstruction of Debye dispersive scatterers is proposed.
The Fréchet derivatives of the cost functional with respect to the Debye
1 1
scatterer properties (" ; ", and  ) are derived analytically. These
derivatives can be utilized by any gradient-based inverse scattering
technique along with any time-domain computational method em-
ployed for the solution of the electromagnetic problem. In the present
work, the FDTD and the Polak-Ribière optimization algorithm have
been combined and the reconstruction of the spatial distribution of all
1202 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 60, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2012
the properties of the Debye scatterer has been achieved. Moreover,
a novelty of the present work is the fact that all three parameters
characterizing Debye scatterers have been reconstructed simultane-
ously. Future work is focused on the investigation of 2D and 3D
reconstruction problems as well as on regularization to cope with the
ill-posedness of the problem.
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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2186327
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2012.2186326
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