Design of Fractal UWB Antenna

Mohammadi Bharmal
Center for Electronics Design & Technology
Dr. K. J. Vinoy
Department of Electrical Communication Engineering
Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore – 560 012
E: mohammadi.bharmal@gmail.com
kjvinoy@ece.iisc.ernet.in

Abstract—Fractal shapes and their properties are discussed. Design of a miniature

coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed Wideband Antenna is presented. This antenna
consists of a fractal radiator, which has multiple resonances and CPW ground plane
which are used to extend the bandwidth and reduce the overall size of this antenna.
Measured results show that this antenna operates from 6.2 to 10.0 GHz and has
relatively stable radiation patterns over its whole operation band. This antenna also
has a very compact size, only 29 × 24 mm2. Further tuning of fractal parameters
may give operation in UWB.

I. Introduction to fractals

“A fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of
which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole." The term is coined
by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin word fractus, meaning
"broken" or "fractured."[1] A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes
iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.

A fractal often has the following features:

 It has a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales.
 It is too irregular to be easily described in traditional Euclidean geometric
language.
 It is self-similar (at least approximately or stochastically).
 It has a Hausdorff dimension which is greater than its topological dimension
 It has a simple and recursive definition.

II. Fractals as Antennas

All the basic trigonometric shapes are already utilized in antenna design and their
radiation mechanisms are well explored. And we also know that any arbitrarily random
shape can pick up EM waves. So why not have a discipline in chaos. That means, using
fractals as antennas may offer better radiation pattern and may also offer more controlling
parameters to designer.

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Fractal antennas are multi-resonant and smaller in size. Qualitatively, multi-band
characteristics have been associated with the self-similarity of the geometry and
Hausdorff dimensions are associated with size. Research towards quantitative relation
between antenna properties and fractal parameters is going on extensively. Any variation
of fractal parameters has direct impact on the primary resonant frequency of the antenna,
its input resistance at this frequency, and the ratio of the first two resonant frequencies. In
other words, these antenna features can be quantitatively linked to the fractal dimension
of the geometry. This finding can lead to increased flexibility in designing antennas using
these geometries. These results have been experimentally validated. [1]

A fractal antenna's response differs markedly from traditional antenna designs, in that it
is capable of operating with good-to-excellent performance at many different frequencies
simultaneously. Normally standard antennas have to be "cut" for the frequency for which
they are to be used—and thus the standard antennas only work well at that frequency.
This makes the fractal antenna an excellent design for wideband and multi-band
applications.

Various Fractal Types used in Antennas are shown below: [1]

Fig 1. Various Types of Fractals Used As Antenna

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 III. Pythagorean Tree

The Pythagorean tree is a plane fractal constructed from squares. It is named after
Pythagoras because each triple of touching squares encloses a right triangle, in a
configuration traditionally used to depict the Pythagorean Theorem.

Fig 2. Pythagorean Tree

In microstrip line implementation, the definition is often modified. Here the initial
segment, i.e. generator, is not a square anymore but it is a rectangle. Hence we will refer
to as tree.

The initial segment is divided by a scale factor, moved at an angle and placed at the top
of the initial segment. The same pattern is repeated to construct the tree of any order.
After some order, depending on the scale factor and angle, the branches start overlapping
each other. For this project, such an overlap is avoided.

Such an antenna can be thought of as a virtual combination of capacitors and inductors,

loading the previous structure. This makes the antenna so that it has many different
resonances which can be chosen and adjusted by choosing the proper fractal design.

Here different variable parameters of the fractal are the size of the initial segment, scale
factor, branching angle and number of iterations.

Increasing the number of segments may increase the coupling between branches. Size of
the first segment determines the one of the resonant frequency of the antenna. Scale
factors may decide the ratio between the successive resonant frequencies. [1] The
branching angle also affects the coupling. However it does not affect the ratio of resonant
frequency if the lengths and widths of the branches are not dependent on the angle. [1]

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 IV. Wideband Fractal Antenna

It is intuitive that the self similarity property of fractals will result in multiple resonances.
The multiple resonances can be converted into wide band characteristics by bringing the
resonance frequencies closer and letting the bands overlap. If the fractal parameters are
controlled properly, this can be achieved.

In general, for any antenna to have wide band characteristics, the parameters discussed
below have to be taken into account.

The impedance bandwidth[2] of a microstrip antenna can be determined from frequency

response of its equivalent circuit. For parallel-type resonance, the half power bandwidth
is given as:

……………………………………… (1)
where Y = G + jB is the input impedance at the resonance frequency.

This bandwidth is also defined as VSWR ~ 2 bandwidth. Hence, in terms of VSWR,

…………………………………. (2)

where Q is the quality factor of the structure. As Q decreases, the system becomes lossier
and bandwidth increases. Hence, if εr decreases, BW increases and if thickness of
substrate increases, bandwidth again decreases. Further achievement of antenna
bandwidth can be obtained by increasing gap coupling or direct coupling with the ground
plane. And slow resistance transformation also helps in increasing bandwidth.

V. Proposed Antenna Design

A 5-iternation, tree is applied as the radiation part here. In order to increase the degrees of
freedom of the radiator for the optimization of its performance, such a fractal is chosen.
The geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Figure 3. The coupling of ground
plane near the tree structure and tapering of the feed line can significantly increase the
bandwidth of the proposed antenna.

This antenna is designed using ADS 2005. The fractal is generated by program written in
AEL. It is simulated using momentum.

In [3], tapering and notching of ground planes are proposed, which also result in very
large bandwidth. They are all useful to reduce the antenna’s size. But the procedure to

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design the notched ground plane is easier than to design the tapered one. Moreover they
use wedge shaped [4] and half-ring shaped [3] radiators, respectively. Another factor
which affects the bandwidth significantly is the separation between ground and radiator
[3].

Fig 3. Proposed Wide Band Antenna

The proposed antenna is printed on a 1.5mm-thick substrate (εr = 3.5) and conductor
thickness of about 5um. The width of the feed line is w = 1.88mm and the width of the
gap between the feed line and the ground plane is gap = 0.4mm. These make the feed
line’s characteristic impedance Z0 = 50Ω. Thus it can be connected with a 50Ω SMA
connector directly.

The other optimized parameters are mentioned in Fig 3. Thus, this antenna has a compact
overall size of 29 × 24 mm2. The simulated and experimental results are given in what
follows.

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 VI. Simulation Results

(1) S11

S11
0

-5
Mag. [dB]

-10

-15

-20
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Frequency

This curve shows that the antenna maintains 10- db bandwidth is from 6.2 GHz to 6.8
GHz and 7.5-8.2 GHz and 8.5-10 GHz. This can be approximated as 6.2 to 10 GHz
bandwidth because by tuning some variables it is quite easy to achieve the same.

(2) Smith Chart:

S11

freq (3.000GHz to 12.00GHz)

Here the smith chart has three encirclements. It means presence of 3 resonant cavities.

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(3) Radiation Pattern:

-1 0

-2 0
Mag. [dB]

-3 0

-4 0

-5 0

-6 0
-200

-150

-100

-50

50

100

150

200
THETA

This shows that the co-planar and cross polarization field intensity are almost same.

(4) Gain

10

-10
Mag. [dB]

-20

-30

-40

-50
-200 -150 -100 -50 0 50 100 150 200
THETA

The gain of the antenna is less than 0 db at almost all the angles, which proves omni-
directional characteristics

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 VII. Experimental Results

(1) S11

S11 Vs f

Billions
0.00
0.00 2.00 4.00 6.00 8.00 10.00 12.00
-5.00

-10.00
S11 (dB)

-15.00

-20.00

-25.00

-30.00
f

(2) Radiation Pattern

a. 4 GHz

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b. 6 GHz

c. 8 GHz

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 d. 10 GHz

(3) The fabricated Antenna

VIII. Future Work: Application in UWB

UWB communication system is attracting more and more attention since it was released
by FCC because of its advantages such as low power consumption, high speed data rate
[4], etc. It requires an antenna which is small in size and has a wide bandwidth and
omnidirectional radiation patterns [5]. Many kinds of UWB planar antennas are available.

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Moreover, many of these antennas are microstrip-fed. So the metal layers should be
printed on both sides of the substrate. In order to simplify the fabrication process, the
CPW-fed antennas have been widely used owing to their attractive features such as wide
bandwidth, simple structure of a single metallic layer, easy integration with MMICs and
other active circuits etc. Many of the UWB antennas have a quasi-monopole/dipole
architecture which is used to provide the omnidirectional pattern and broad bandwidth.

The proposed miniature CPW-fed UWB antenna will be explored for UWB bandwidth.
Its usage as an UWB antenna is very audacious because it offers more control variables
to achieve the desired radiation pattern and it may also achieve the small size as desired
in this band.

IX. Conclusion

The proposed antenna has more variables to tune to desired response, like length of stem,
separation between ground and feed, iterations, scale factor, angle. It has CPW Feed
which simplifies fabrication process. And has small size of 29x24 mm2. It can be
matched to desired impedance because there is possibility that other variables will rectify
the response. Hence it is a good candidate for future UWB applications.

X. Reference

[1] Vinoy, K. J., “Fractal shaped antenna elements for wide and multi-band wireless
applications,” Thesis, Pennsylvania, Aug. 2002.
[2] Garg, Bhatia, Bahl, Ittipiboon, “Microstrip Antenna Design Handbook”, Artech
House, London, 2000.
[3] Yahui Zhao, Jinping Xu, and Kang Yin, “A Miniature Coplanar Waveguide-Fed
Ultra-Wideband Antenna”, State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast
University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, P.R.China, 210096
[4] Masahiro Yanagi, Shigemi Kurashima, Takashi Arita, Takehiko Kobayashi, “A
Planar UWB Monopole Antenna Formed on a Printed Circuit Board”

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