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Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, WC1E 7JE London, United Kingdom. (fisa@ee.ucl.ac.uk)
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, International Islamic University Malaysia, Jalan Gombak 53100, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (farahn@iium.edu.my)
Abstract
This paper described the design and construction of a preliminary microstrip array antenna at 5.3 GHz. The antenna is going to be applied to an FMCW avalanche radar. The antenna design which composed of an array of 4 X 2 patches could achieve the high gain of 15.6 dB with a wideband of 90%. The high gain and wideband attributes is also achieved by separating the feed network from the main patches and increasing the antenna height. In order to ensure the power is transferred smoothly from the main input port, the feed network is designed in a nover spider-like tapered feed while ensuring the antenna performance is not affected.
1. Introduction
Catastrophic movements of granular and particle laden fluids such as pyroclastic flows and snow avalanches are significant natural hazards. Gaining an improved insight into the dynamics of such flows is thus not merely of scientific interest, but of great practical importance. A new C-band FMCW radar system has been developed in University College London (UCL) to gather high-range resolution, two-dimensional, animated radar images of entire avalanche events in the proposed testing site; Vallee de La Sionne (VDLS) in Switzerland. The radar system uses full deramp harware architecture, with separate single-transmit and eight-receive modules with nine antennas [1]. Due to the space constraints in the bunker, the feasibility of installing the radar and to be able to integrate with the radar transmitter and receiver, a microstrip antenna design is proposed. Microstrip antennas are particularly suitable for integration with other active devices to create a design that is low profile, reduced in weight, small size and low cost. Unfortunately, it also comes with some drawbacks such as narrow bandwidth, low gain and low efficiency. The radar and the received array are going to be placed inside a bunker in front of the avalanche track as depicted in figure 1. Some of the ways to increase the antenna gain is to increase the number of the elements and arranged it in an array arrangement; adding multiple superstrates over the substrates layer [2] and stacked parasitic patches [3]. A new way to enhance the gain is by using metamaterial substrates [4]. In this paper, the design of microstrip array antenna has been chosen due to the limiting factor of cost and fabrication tools. In microstrip array antenna system, the design of the feed network should also be of importance since it will control the antenna efficiency. In order to achieve a broadside beam with uniform distribution, normally a corporate feed network is used. However, this type of feeding structure takes a considerable amount of space as the number of patches increases. The increasing number of patch elements would also increase the amount of feedlines needed to feed the patch, which would also increase the conductor and dielectric losses and spurious radiation; which would increase the overall losses of the antenna design. Therefore, it is important to separate the patches from the contributing losses of the feed network from the overall performance of the antenna system as reported in [5]. An improvement to the antenna performance could be seen as the feed network is separated from the main radiating parts.
Figure 1. The placement of the bunker in front of the avalanche track in VDLS & the antenna side profile
This paper will report the design, development and measurement of two layers microstrip array antenna, with separate feeding network on the second layer to achieve a high gain compact antenna as well as keeping the feed radiation at a minimal from the antenna performance equation. A H-type feeding network, employing the quarter wave transformer is used to achieve a uniform distribution as well as keeping the sidelobe level at a minimum and maintaining the gain at the desired level.
azi = 2 tan 1
(1)
Gt ( ,)Gr ( ,) Pr ( ,) = P 4 4R 2 t
(2)
The elevation beamwidth is calculated using the radar range equation as depicted in equation (2) and the minimum detectable signal (MDS) of the radar which is calculated from [matt] to be -110 dBm. The backscatter coefficient of the snow, is obtained from [6] and is found to be approximately 0.0316.This leads to an elevation beamwidth of 3.
Figure 2. Antenna beamwidth estimation from VDLS characteristics.( real image removed to shorten the abstract submission. It will be included in the real paper if accepted)
3. Antenna Design
The main concern while designing this antenna is to achieve a comparable high gain antenna while maintaining the low weight, small size and low profile antenna due to the over crowding situation already occurring in the bunker at VDLS. We have determine three ways to achieve this while ensuring the gain and the size of the antenna is not compromised:
(i) (ii) Figure 4 The i) top view of the fabricated antenna and ii) the antenna feed network
Figure 5 (i) Antenna Return Loss from Network Analyzer, Antenna radiation pattern in (ii) Azimuthal Plane and (iii) Elevation Plane The fabricated antenna is also tested in the Spherical Near Field Chamber (SNFM) to determine the radiation pattern and the gain of the antenna. The cross-polarization and co-polarization of both azimuthal and elevation angle is displayed in Figure 6. From the plot we could see that the achieved beamwidth from the fabricated antenna is 25 for the azimuthal plane and 45 for the elevation plane. From the SNFM software, the gain of 15.6 dB is achieved from the fabricated array antenna.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, a high gain microstrip array antenna for avalanche radar was designed, fabricated and tested. The high gain traits are achieved by the combinations of three design criterias of the antenna: the multilayer substrates; an array of 4 X 2 patches; and a novel spider-like feeding network. The targeted design gain is 18 dB with beamwidth of 15 X 40 for the azimuthal and elevation plane. The measured pattern of the fabricated antenna achieved beamwidth coverage of 25 X 45 with a gain of 15.6 dB. Although the achieved beamwidth and gain differ slightly from the calculated target, it is still acceptable for the use of avalanche radar. In Future, in order to improve the gain and make the beamwidth narrower, more patches could be added in the design. This result could also be improved with a careful approach in fabricating the antenna as it was done manually in this paper. The advantage of achieving ultra wideband is a bonus and would be useful for other projects. Overall, the antenna is suitable to be used in a high gain application requiring an ultra wideband bandwidth as has been demonstrated in this paper.
6. Acknowledgments
Farah Nadia Mohd Isa is receiving the scholarship from Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia and International Islamic University (IIUM) Malaysia, for her doctorate studies.
7. References
1. M. Ash, K. Chetty, P. Brennan, J. Mcelwaine and C. Keylock, FMCW radar imaging of avalanche-like snow movements, 2010 IEEE Radar Conference, pp 102-107 2. Alexopoulos, N. and Jackson, D. Fundamental superstrate (cover) effects on printed circuit antennas. s.l. : IEEE, 2002, Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, Vol. 32, pp. 807-816 3. Legay, H. and Shafai, L. New stacked microstrip antenna with large bandwidth and high gain 2002. IET. Vol. 141, pp. 199-204. 4. Feresidis, A.P. and Goussetis, G. and Wang, S. and Vardaxoglou, JC, Artificial magnetic conductor surfaces and their application to low-profile high-gain planar antennas, Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 209-215, 2005. 5. Mailloux, R.J , Phased array theory and technology, s.l. : IEEE, 2005, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 70, pp. 246291 6. Ulaby, F.T., et al, Experiments on the radar backscatter of snow. s.l. : IEEE, 2007, Geoscience Electronics, IEEE Transactions on, Vol. 15, pp. 185-189 7. Ruoskanen, J. and Eskelinen, P. and Heikkila, H., Millimeter wave radar with clutter measurements, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, 2003, vol. 18, pages 19-23.