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A Study of Low-Profile, Broadside Radiation, Efficient, Electrically Small Antennas Based On Complementary Split Ring Resonators
A Study of Low-Profile, Broadside Radiation, Efficient, Electrically Small Antennas Based On Complementary Split Ring Resonators
AbstractThe designs and performance characteristics of sev- studied and applied extensively because of their many attrac-
eral electrically small antennas based on complementary split ring tive performance characteristics [1][3]. One of the important
resonators (CSRRs) are reported. A coaxial-fed monopole is first applications of SRRs and CSRRs has been in the design of
integrated with a CSRR that is cut from a grounded finite copper
disc. The presence of the electrically small CSRR element facili- microwave circuits [4]. Another has been for the design of
tates a nearly complete impedance match to the source, a nearly small antennas, mainly due to the advantage of their sub-wave-
broadside radiation pattern, and a high radiation efficiency. The length resonances [5][15]. They have been used for artificial
addition of a circular top-hat to the monopole then achieves an magnetic conductors (AMCs) to achieve low-profile antennas
ultra-low profile design and an improved broadside [5] and as magnetic loadings to achieve larger bandwidths [6],
pattern, while maintaining all other desirable features. Finally, to
enrich their potential usefulness, two additional enhancements of [9]. They have been used to obtain electrically small antenna
these designs were accomplished. One is a further miniaturization designs [7] and the miniaturization of known designs [8], [13].
that is achieved by introducing a more complex They have been used to realize notched filters in UWB antennas
CSRR element, while maintaining a high, 82%, radiation effi- [12], [15], to increase the number of resonance frequencies in a
ciency. The second is a further enhancement of the directivity and single antenna [10], [13], and to achieve impedance matching
front-to-back ratio through the introduction of a slot-modified
parasitic disc, while maintaining the original impedance matching, [11].
low-profile and electrically small properties. These designs were While the SRR and CSRR strategies have provided for an-
consummated and their performance characteristics evaluated tenna miniaturization, one witnesses certain drawbacks in the
with the frequency domain ANSYS-ANSOFT High Frequency resulting designs, which restricts their widespread engineering
Structure Simulator (HFSS) and were confirmed independently application. For instance, the radiation efficiency within the
using the time domain CST Microwave Studio (MWS) simulator.
A prototype of the basic system was fabricated and tested; the 10 dB impedance bandwidth may be quite low, leading to
agreement between the simulated and measured results validates small realized gain values [9]. Their fabrication may become
the design principles. quite cumbersome [6], [8], their inclusion may limit the actual
Index TermsAntenna directivity, antennas, complementary reduction in size [10], [13], or their materials may decrease the
split ring resonator, electrically small antennas, metamaterials. overall radiation efficiency [14].
In this paper, a CSRR element is introduced in a fi-
nite grounded disc and is then integrated with a traditional
I. INTRODUCTION monopole antenna in Section II. The performance character-
istics of the resulting electrically small antenna (ESA, i.e.,
, being the radius of the smallest sphere that com-
Fig. 4. The E- (zx-plane) and H-plane (yz-plane) directivity patterns for the
CSRR-based antenna at 300 MHz exhibit an asymmetrical dipole behavior (a).
Fig. 2. 3D view of the coax-fed monopole antenna augmented with the single The corresponding zx-plane and yz-plane directivity patterns at 628.3 MHz
CSRR-modified grounded circular disc designed to operate near 300 MHz. for the CSRR-based monopole and at 671.4 MHz for the reference monopole
Its design dimensions have the values in mm: , , having no CSRR in its grounded disc (b).
, , , and .
(1)
i.e., it is nearly in length. Note that there are two distinct
features of the radiation pattern at the 300 MHz resonance fre-
quency given in Fig. 4(a). The peak radiation direction is
away from z-axis in the zx-plane (E-plane), instead of being
strictly in the direction. Concurrently, the two nulls in the
E-plane occur at 80.6 and , instead of strictly being
at and ( direction), respectively. Although the
Fig. 3. The simulated values for the antennas whose grounded discs have pattern is tilted from broadside, the broadside directivity (in
or lack a single CSRR element. The subplots show the current distributions on
the upper surface of the grounded disc for the CSRR-based antenna at its two direction) is still high at 3.60 dB.
lowest resonance frequencies. At the higher resonance frequency, 671.4 MHz, the CSRR-
based antenna operates, like the reference case at its resonance
frequency, 628.3 MHz, in a fundamental monopole mode. The
given. The appearance of the desired low frequency res- vertically polarized monopole-like radiation patterns associated
onance is clearly seen in Fig. 3 at 300 MHz where the with these resonances are given in Fig. 4(b). The radial current
minimum value . This resonance fre- distribution on the grounded disc shown in Fig. 3 further con-
quency is more than a factor of two lower than the reference firms this monopole behavior. Comparing the current distribu-
monopole fundamental resonance frequency, 671.4 MHz, tions associated with these two resonances, the CSRR structure
where . The 10 dB impedance band- clearly created a new current pathway on the grounded disc,
width at 300 MHz is 2.334 MHz, which means the fractional leading to the pattern being broadside to it.
bandwidth is 0.78%. At 300 MHz, the value of this antenna The effect of the monopole length on the impedance match
is 0.854 and its radiation efficiency is 98.11%. Despite its in the lower resonance frequency range is illustrated in Fig. 5. It
electrically small size, it radiates very efficiently and the shows that the input impedance is impacted by the length of the
values demonstrate that the CSRR-based antenna is nearly monopole. Note that the resonance frequency decreases as the
completely matched to the 50 source. We note that there is a monopole length and, hence, its inductance increases. This be-
second resonance, similar in nature to the reference case one. havior indicates, as with many other metamaterial-inspired an-
While it is located at a slightly higher frequency, it shows a tennas [20], that tuning the shape of the driven element, here the
better match to the source. height , is a simple and effective way to refine the impedance
The simulated current distributions at the frequen- match.
cies are also shown in Fig. 3. At the lower 300 MHz resonance Returning now to Fig. 1(b), one finds that the CSRR element
frequency, the majority of the current on the grounded disc is with a single gap produces the lowest resonance frequency. One
concentrated in the CSRR gap and along its edges near the gap, way to understand this behavior is to remember that the res-
as was already shown in Fig. 1(b). The resulting radiation pat- onance wavelength is closely related to the total edge length
tern is given in Fig. 4(a). Its behavior is similar to a dipole of the slot. Smaller slots lead to higher resonance frequencies.
asymmetrically positioned with respect to the origin and ori- A circuit element view would recall that each gap acts like a
ented along the x-axis, i.e., similar to an asymmetrical dipole capacitor. More cuts (gaps) lead to more capacitors in series
4422 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 61, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2013
Fig. 5. Impact of the antenna height on the magnitude of the reflection coeffi-
cient .
Fig. 9. Impact of the height on several design parameters and the resulting
performance characteristics. (a) Radius values necessary to maintain the 300
MHz resonance, and (b) the corresponding values at 300 MHz and
10 dB impedance bandwidth value.
Fig. 10. Impact of on the tilt of the radiation pattern. (a) Angle of the max-
imum directivity from the direction, and (b) angles of the minimum direc-
tivities near the x-axis.
Fig. 21. Impact of the design parameter H_disc on the FTBR values of the
antenna given in Fig. 18.
Fig. 23. Comparison of the electric field distributions in the z0x-cut plane sim-
ulated for different phase angles at the resonance frequencies of the CSRR-based
antennas that are fed with a 100 mm long coaxial cable. (a) AUT without the
sleeve balun, ; and (b) AUT with sleeve balun,
.
TABLE I
VALUES FOR THE REPORTED ANTENNA DESIGNS
Fig. 25. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of the ESA with balun; (a)
E-plane (z0x-plane), (b) H-plane (z0y-plane). were confirmed with two computational electromagnetics
solvers, one in the frequency domain (HFSS) and one in the
time domain (CST). The inclusion of the CSRRs in the designs
With the presence of the sleeve balun, which still perturbs the led to several interesting properties, particularly their directivity
fields and currents of the AUT, the resonance frequency shift is patterns with their maxima nearly orthogonal to the CSRR ele-
much smaller and the impedance match remains quite good. Ac- ment, rather than orthogonal to their driven monopole element.
cording to our HFSS simulation results, also shown in Fig. 24, The addition of a copper hat to the monopole facilitated an
an acceptable matching level is obtained at ultra-low profile design. This design was modified to enhance
with and a 10 dB impedance band- its properties further for potential applications. One was an
width equal to 6.15 MHz when the sleeve balun is optimized. antenna that was miniaturized further; the other was an antenna
The corresponding measured results, also shown in Fig. 24, with higher directivity and a high FTBR value.
are in very reasonable agreement, i.e., with We note that the bandwidths of all of the presented CSRR-
and a 10 dB impedance bandwidth based ESAs are quite narrow. Their corresponding values
equal to 5.25 MHz. The difference between the simulated and are compared with the electric-based lower bound [28][30]:
measured resonance frequency is thus only 0.98%. Given this , where , and
outcome, the 3.2% difference between the base design without , in Table I. Nonetheless, given their low-pro-
the balun and the measured results with the balun, which it- file, electrically small and high radiation efficiency properties,
self is quite reasonable, could be alleviated, if desired, with a these types of ESAs are simple and may be attractive for a
straightforward retuning of the design parameters. The reason variety of narrow bandwidth wireless applications, including
for the reduction of the impedance bandwidth from the smaller precise transponders (e.g., friend-foe identification); sensor de-
coax length case is that the sleeve balun is also a narrow-band vices; and GPS, RFID and wireless power transfer (WPT) sys-
resonator [24], [25]. In addition, the simulation studies also re- tems. Moreover, given the NFRP nature of the CSRR antenna
vealed that the input impedance and the radiation patterns of design, we anticipate that we will be able to extend it with both
the AUT with the sleeve balun remained basically unchanged frequency agile and non-Foster augmentations to enhance its
regardless of the length of the feed line. operational frequency range and instantaneous bandwidth, re-
Fig. 25 gives the simulated and measured E- and H-plane di- spectively, for other applications. These possibilities are cur-
rectivity patterns. The measured values show very good agree- rently under investigation.
ment with the simulated results. They are both similar to those A prototype system based on the basic design was fabricated
given in Fig. 7(b) for the idealized case. We also note that the and tested near 1.0 GHz to coincide with the measurement setup
cross-polarizations (especially in the H-plane) are a little higher capabilities. Reasonable agreement between the simulated and
than those associated with the idealized design. One finds that measured performance characteristics was obtained, confirming
the peak gain around the -axis is 3.48 dB, which is a little the design principles reported.
lower than the idealized case value, 3.82 dB. The measured
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front-to-back-ratio, electrically small, near-field-resonant-parasitic an- Arizona, Tuscon, AZ, USA. He holds a joint appointment with the College
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of the influence of RF feed cables in small antenna measurements, of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society in 2005. He continues to be very
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