IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO.

1, JANUARY 2010 211

CATR. The design procedure, based on the one-dimensional quasi-op- [16] R. Leberer and W. Menzel, “A dual planar reflectarray with synthesized
tical approach, despite of its simplicity and approximations that are phase and amplitude distribution,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol.
made regarding the internal lens reflections, is quite efficient for com- 53, no. 11, pp. 3534–3539, Nov. 2005.
[17] [Online]. Available: www.scilab.org
puting the sectorial lens profile. The axisymmetry of the lens makes [18] J. Lanteri, C. Migliaccio, J.-Y. Dauvignac, and Ch. Pichot, “Reflec-
it easy, in principle, to fabricate. Nevertheless the choice of the di- tarray using a prolate feed at 94 GHz,” in Proc. IEEE AP-S, San Diego,
electric material is important since it has to be compatible with the Jul. 5–11, 2008, pp. 1–4.
milling technique for ensuring a good surface quality of finish. There- [19] M. Multari, C. Migliaccio, J.-Y. Dauvignac, L. Brochier, J.-L. Le Sonn,
Ch. Pichot, W. Menzel, and J.-L. Desvilles, “Investigation of low-cost
fore, polyurethane material is preferred to PVC. Very good agreement compact range W-band,” in Proc. EuCAP, Nice, Nov. 6–10, 2006, pp.
has been obtained between measurements and simulations carried out 1–6.
with SRSRD. This is a key point because the lens design procedure ne- [20] R. C. Rudduck and C. L. J. Chen, “New plane wave spectrum formu-
glects some important lens features such as the internal reflections or lation for the near-field of circular apertures,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
step shadowing. From this knowledge, we can perform quite accurate Propag., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 438–449, Jul. 1976.
simulations using SRSRD. The above-mentioned effects were quanti-
fied and their influences on the final CATR setup were studied.

REFERENCES A Single-Layer Ultrawideband Microstrip Antenna

[1] S. Qi and K. Wu, “Leakage and resonance characteristics of radiating Qi Wu, Ronghong Jin, and Junping Geng
cylindrical dielectric structure suitable for use as a feeder for high-ef-
ficient omnidirectional/sectorial antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 46, no. 11, pp. 1767–1773, Sep. 1998.
[2] T. Hirvonen, J. Tuovinen, and A. V. Räisänen, “Lens-type compact Abstract—A single-layer microstrip antenna for ultrawideband (UWB)
antenna test range at mm-waves,” in Proc. 21st Eur. Microw. Conf., applications, in which an array of rectangular microstrip patches was ar-
Stuttgart, Germany, Oct. 1991, vol. 2, pp. 1079–1083. ranged in the log-periodic way and proximity-coupled to the microstrip
[3] B. D. Nguyen, C. Migliaccio, Ch. Pichot, K. Yalmamoto, and N. feeding line, is presented. In order to reduce the number of microstrip
Yonemoto, “W-band fresnel zone plate reflector for helicopter colli- patches in the UWB log-periodic arrays, a large scale factor k = 1 1 was
sion avoidance radar,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 5, firstly reported and proved to be highly effective. Furthermore, instead of
pp. 1452–1456, May 2007. using an absorbing terminal loading, a novel loss-free compensating stub
[4] W. Mayer, M. Meilchen, W. Grabherr, P. Nüchter, and R. Gühl, “Eight was proposed. Detailed parameters study was also presented for better un-
channel 77 GHz front-end module with high-performance synthesized derstanding of the proposed antennas. The impedance bandwidth (mea-
signal generator for FM-CW sensor applications,” IEEE Microw. sured VSWR 2 5) of an example antenna with only 11 elements is
Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 993–1000, Mar. 2004. from 2.26–6.85 GHz with a ratio of about 3.03:1. Both numerical and ex-
[5] E. K. Walton and J. D. Young, “The Ohio state university compact perimental results show that the proposed antenna has stable directional
range cross-section measurement range,” IEEE Trans. Antennas radiation patterns, very low-profile and low fabrication cost, which are suit-
Propag., vol. 32, no. 11, pp. 1218–1233, Nov. 1984. able for various broadband applications.
[6] C. W. I. Pistorius, G. C. Clerici, and W. D. Burnside, “A dual chamber Index Terms—Directional antennas, log-periodic antennas, microstrip
Gregorian subreflector system for compact range applications,” IEEE
antennas, ultrawideband (UWB) antennas.
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 305–313, Mar. 1989.
[7] G. Forma, D. Dubruel, J. Marti-Canales, M. Paquay, G. Crone, J.
Tauber, M. Sandri, F. Villa, and I. Ristorcelli, “30-70-100-320 GHz
radiation measurements for the radio frequency qualification model I. INTRODUCTION
of the Planck satellite,” presented at the 1st Eur. Conf. on Antennas
Propag., (EuCAP2006), Nice, France, Nov. 6–10, 2006, paper 349443. Currently, there are increasing demands for novel ultrawideband
[8] J. Meltaus, J. Salo, E. Noponen, M. M. Salomaa, V. Viikari, A. Lön- (UWB) antennas with low-profile structures and constant directional
nqvist, T. Koskinen, J. Sáily, J. Hakli, J. Ala-Laurinaho, J. Mallat, and radiation patterns for both commercial and military applications [1],
A. V. Räisänen, “Millimeter-wave beam shaping using holograms,”
[2]. Unfortunately, most of the mature UWB antennas like equiangular
IEEE Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 1274–1279, Apr. 2003.
[9] J. Häkli, T. Koskinen, A. Lönnqvist, J. Säily, V. Viikari, J. Mallat, J. and Archimedean spirals [3], planar monopoles [4], [5] and wide slot
Ala-Laurinaho, J. Tuovinen, and A. V. Räisänen, “Testing of a 1.5-m antennas [6], [7] have inherently bi-directional or omnidirectional
reflector antenna at 322 GHz in a CATR based on a hologram,” IEEE radiation patterns, which were unsuitable for conformal placement on
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 3142–3150, Oct. 2005. certain platforms. Cavity-backed log-periodic slot antennas [8] could
[10] A. Lönnqvist, T. Koskinen, J. Hakli, J. Sáily, J. Ala-Laurinaho, J.
Mallat, V. Viikari, J. Tuovinen, and A. V. Räisänen, “Hologram-based be integrated compactly into various aircrafts, but they could only
compact range for submillimeter-wave antenna testing,” IEEE Trans. provide end-fire radiation patterns and have somewhat high profile.
Antennas Propag., vol. 53, no. 10, pp. 3151–3159, Oct. 2005. On the other hand, microstrip antennas have some attractive merits
[11] Menzel and B. Huder, “Compact range for millimeter-wave frequen- like very low-profile and broadside radiation patterns with medium
cies using a dielectric lens,” Electron. Lett., vol. 20, pp. 768–769, Sep.
gains, which have been considered as excellent conformal radiators
1984.
[12] G. Bruhat, Optique. France: Masson, 1959, 5ème edition, [9] for a long time. However, a traditional single-element microstrip
RO30013068. antenna has inherently narrow impedance bandwidth. In the 1980s, the
[13] A. Berthon and R. Bills, “Integral equation analysis for radiating struc-
tures of revolution,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 49, no. 4, pp.
159–170, Feb. 1989. Manuscript received January 06, 2009; revised May 10, 2009. First published
[14] C. Migliaccio, J.-Y. Dauvignac, L. Brochier, J.-L. Le Sonn, and Ch. July 14, 2009; current version published January 04, 2010.
Pichot, “W-band high gain lens antenna for metrology and radar appli- The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai
cations,” Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 22, pp. 1394–1396, Oct. 28, 2004. Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China (e-mail: wuqi_2004@sjtu.edu.
[15] A. P. Pavacic, D. L. Del Rio, J. R. Mosig, and G. V. Eleftheriades, cn).
“Three dimensional ray tracing theory to model internal reflections in Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
off-axis lens antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 54, no. 2, able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
pp. 604–612, Feb. 2006. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2009.2027728

0018-926X/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE

Authorized licensd use limted to: IE Xplore. Downlade on May 13,20 at 1:430 UTC from IE Xplore. Restricon aply.
212 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010

series-fed log-periodic microstrip antennas (LPMAs) were firstly intro-

duced for bandwidth enhancement [10], [11]. After that, other feeding
structures like =4-microstrip feeding [12], [13], direct feeding with
vias [14], slot-coupled feeding [15], inset feeding [16] for LPMAs were
also reported. However, all of the LPMAs mentioned above were based
on the combination of two substrate layers, in which very accurate col-
location between the two layers were required.
A UWB traveling-wave LPMA was usually terminated by a matched
load to absorb the terminal energy and prevent reflections from the end
Fig. 1. Structural configuration of the proposed LPMA and the coordinate
of feeding line, which could improve its impedance matching and radi- system.
ation patterns considerably at the band edges. However, the absorbing
loads could remarkably degrade the efficiency of LPMAs over their op-
TABLE I
erating bandwidths, especially at the band edges by the order of 10 % OPTIMIZED PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED LPMA WITH COMPENSATING
or more [10]. STUB
It is also well known that the operating bandwidth of a LPMA could
be determined by the scale factor k [10] and the number of microstrip
elements n, in a simple expression as kn01 . Therefore, for the LMPA
with a small scale factor, a large number of microstrip patches were
required to achieve ultrawide operating bandwidth and make the an-
tenna unacceptably large. Obviously, the number of elements in a UWB
LMPA could be significantly reduced with a larger scale factor. For ex-
ample, with a scale factor k as 1.05 or below like the reported LPMAs
in [10]–[16], about 21 elements were needed to achieve a 2.6:1 band-
width; however, for the LMPA with a scale factor k as 1.1, 11 microstrip
elements could be enough for the same bandwidth with a size reduction
of over 40%.
This communication presents a single-layer proximity-coupled log-
periodic microstrip antenna for UWB applications. A large scale factor
as 1.1 for UWB LPMAs is firstly reported and discussed. A novel
loss-free compensating stub is also proposed for the termination and
bandwidth enhancement of the proposed antennas. The configuration
of the proposed LPMA is described in Section II. Numerical results are
presented in Section III for better understanding of this antenna, while
the measured results are presented and discussed in Section IV. This
communication is concluded in Section V.

II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION

The proposed single-layer LPMA, as illustrated in Fig. 1, was
composed of a 50
–100
impedance transition, a 100-
microstrip
feeding line and an array of proximity-coupled rectangular microstrip
patches, which were all etched on a Teflon-based substrate with a
relative permittivity of 2.65 and a thickness of 3 mm. The microstrip
elements were arranged in a transposed log-periodic way with the
same coupling gap G. The log-periodic scale factor k was defined as
k=
In (1), Di;i+1 was the center distance between patch Pi+1 and Pi ; Wi
and Li were respectively the width and length of the patch Pi . The
proposed LPMA was terminated by a novel compensating stub with
length T, instead of a matched load or open-circuit. The LPMAs were
designed by a semi-empirical way like the design procedure of LPDAs
[3] except some parameters of the LPMAs should be optimized with
the assistance of full-wave simulator HFSS. Following discussions of
the proposed LPMAs were all based on the optimized parameters in
Table I.
Coupling gap G between the microstrip patches and the microstrip
feeding line could determine the power transmission efficiency of the
feeding line thus should be carefully optimized. Fig. 2 shows the simu-
lated results of the proposed LPMA at the reference plane BB0 (see
Fig. 2. Simulated reflection coefficient and antenna efficiency of the proposed
antennas with compensating stubs at the reference plane BB (k = 1:1).
Fig. 1), and the influence of the coupling gap G on the impedance
matching and antenna efficiency could be easily observed. The antenna
with G = 0 mm was no longer a travelling-wave array and exhibited a
multiresonant behavior. The antennas with G = 0:2 mm and G = 0:4
Wi Li Di;i+1 mm, which could be respectively referred as “critical coupled” and
= = : (1)
Wi01 Li01 Di01;i “under coupled” [17], have very similar reflection coefficient and ef-
ficiency above 2.55 GHz because the last several microstrip patches
could “absorb” the residual energy which was not properly coupled
to the corresponding patches due to the “under coupled” effects. So,
it is not surprising to find that the “critical coupled” one was better
impedance matched in the band from 2.25–2.55 GHz than the “under
coupled” one because this frequency band corresponds to the last mi-
crostrip elements PN .
The characteristics of compensating stubs with positive or negative
T value were different: when the stub went beyond the last patch PN
(known as positive T), the stub was actually an open-circuit microstrip
stub and behaved like a loss-free “series capacitive load,” the stub with
III. NUMERICAL RESULTS negative T could be considered as a loss-free “series inductive load.”
The compensating effects of the stub could be clearly observed by ex-
amining the simulated input impedance of the proposed LPMAs at the
reference plane BB0 as shown in Fig. 3. The input impedance of the
proposed antenna without compensating (T = 0 mm) was heavily

Authorized licensd use limted to: IE Xplore. Downlade on May 13,20 at 1:430 UTC from IE Xplore. Restricon aply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010 213

Fig. 4. Simulated and measured VSWR and gain of the proposed antennas with
compensating and absorbing terminations (k = 1:1).
Fig. 3. Simulated input impedance of the proposed antennas with compen-
sating stubs at the reference plane BB (k = 1:1).

capacitive just after its first resonant frequency at 2.36 GHz. The ca-
pacitive components were well compensated by the “series inductive
load” (T = 04 mm), and thus the impedance matching was signif-
icantly improved; but the situation got worse if the “series capacitive
load” (T = 4 mm) was applied. After the first resonant frequency, the
influence of different stub T was very slight, thus it could be observed
that the antennas were all well impedance matched.
The performance of two identical LPMAs with the compensating
and absorbing loads could be also evaluated and compared. The ab-
sorbing load was assumed to be positioned beyond the last patch PN
with T = 24 mm and set as a “Lumped RLC boundary” with 100-

resistance and a dimension of 2.4 2 3.0 mm2 in HFSS. Generally both

of the antennas were well impedance matched in the frequency band
between 2.4 and 6.8 GHz as shown in Fig. 4. In the frequency band
below 2.3 GHz, the one with an absorbing load still has good VSWR
for its terminal load could absorb all of the residual energy and prevent
possible terminal reflections, which also significantly degrades its effi-
ciency as shown in Table II. The radiation patterns of the LPMAs with
compensating and absorbing loads were very similar in the frequency
band above 3.3 GHz as shown in Fig. 5. But the patterns have some
differences in the x-z plane at 2.3 GHz, in which the pattern of the one
with absorbing load has narrower beamwidth and higher directivity.
That difference was mainly caused by the different dealing methods
of the residual energy: for the absorbing load, all of the residual en-
ergy was absorbed at the terminal, thus good radiation patterns could
be observed; for the compensating case, the residual energy was totally
reflected at the termination, thus some disordered modes of patch PN
appeared and the patterns were also influenced. Furthermore, although
the LPMA with absorbing load has higher directivity below 3.3 GHz,
its gain is obviously lower than the one with compensating stub for its Fig. 5. Simulated radiation patterns of the proposed LPMAs with compen-
extremely low efficiency. sating and absorbing stubs: (a) x-z plane, compensating stub, k = 1:1; (b) x-z
plane, absorbing stub, k = 1:1; (c) y-z plane, compensating stub, k = 1:1; (d)
In addition, the performance of the LPMAs with k = 1:05 should y-z plane, absorbing stub, k = 1:1; (e) x-z plane, compensating stub, k = 1:05;
also be examined. The simulated impedance bandwidth of the LPMA (f) y-z plane, compensating stub, k = 1:05.
with k = 1:05, defined by VSWR < 2:5, was from 3.35–6.95 GHz.
The radiation patterns and gain of the proposed LPMA with k = 1:05
were respectively illustrated in Fig. 5 and Table II. Generally the two thus the well-established theory of LPMAs could be an important guid-
LPMAs with k = 1:05 and k = 1:1 have very similar radiation pat- ance in the design of LPMAs.
terns, and the one with k = 1:05 has higher directivity, 0.65 dB on
average, than the one with k = 1:1, which shows the similar trend as IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
the log-periodic dipole array (LPDA) [18] and could be considered as An example antenna with k = 1:1 was fabricated based on the opti-
the main cost of large scale factor. Besides, the trend of patch gap D1;2 mized parameters in Table I. The impedance bandwidth was measured
was also found to comply with the best design curve for LPDAs, and by using an Agilent 8722ES Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) and the

Authorized licensd use limted to: IE Xplore. Downlade on May 13,20 at 1:430 UTC from IE Xplore. Restricon aply.
214 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 58, NO. 1, JANUARY 2010

TABLE II as the standard antenna, and the results could be found in Fig. 4. The
SIMULATED DIRECTIVITY, GAIN AND EFFICIENCY OF THE PROPOSED LPMAS simulated gains agree reasonably with the measured one, and the dif-
ferences between them may be caused by the numerical errors and the
calibration errors of the UWB standard horn. The gain bandwidth, de-
fined by the simulated and measured gain better than 6.5 dB, was from
2.4–6.6 GHz with a radio bandwidth 2.75:1. In its gain bandwidth, the
fluctuations of simulated and measured gain were also small and eval-
uated to be 2.4–2.0 dB, respectively.

V. CONCLUSION
A single-layer log-periodic microstrip antenna for UWB applica-
tions was presented. A large scale factor k = 1:1 was firstly reported
and proved to be highly effective for the purpose of size reduction.
Furthermore, instead of using an absorbing terminal loading, a novel
loss-free compensating stub was also proposed. The impedance band-
width (with measured VSWR < 2:5) of the example antenna with only
11 elements is from 2.26–6.85 GHz with a ratio of about 3.03:1. Both
numerical and experimental results show that the proposed antenna has
stable directional radiation patterns, very low-profile and low fabrica-
tion cost, which are suitable for various broadband applications.

REFERENCES
[1] Z. N. Chen, M. J. Ammann, X. Qing, X. H. Wu, T. S. P. See, and A.
Cai, “Planar antenna,” IEEE Microw. Mag., vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 63–73,
Dec. 2006.
[2] J. M. Bell, M. F. Iskander, and J. J. Lee, “Ultrawideband hybrid EBG/
Ferrite ground plane for low-profile array antennas,” IEEE Trans. An-
tennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 1, pp. 4–12, Jan. 2007.
[3] J. D. Karus and R. J. Marhefka, Antennas for All Applications. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
[4] N. P. Agrawall, G. Kumar, and K. P. Ray, “Wideband planar antennas,”
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 294–295, Feb. 1998.
[5] M. J. Ammann and Z. N. Chen, “A wideband shorted planar monopole
with bevel,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 901–903,
Apr. 2003.
[6] J. Y. Sze and K. L. Wong, “Bandwidth enhancement of a microstripline
fed printed wide-slot antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 47,
no. 7, pp. 1020–1024, July 2001.
[7] J. Lao, R. H. Jin, J. P. Geng, and Q. Wu, “An ultra-wideband mi-
crostrip elliptical slot antenna excited by a circular patch,” Microw.
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 845–846, Apr. 2008.
[8] A. G. Roederer, “A log-periodic cavity-backed slot array,” IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 756–758, Nov. 1973.
[9] D. M. Pozar, “Microstrip antennas,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 80, no. 1, pp.
79–91, Jan. 1992.
[10] P. S. Hall, “New wideband microstrip antenna using log-periodic tech-
nique,” Electron. Lett., vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 127–128, 1980.
[11] P. S. Hall, “Multi-octave bandwidth log-periodic microstrip antenna
array,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microw., Antennas Propag., vol. 133, no.
2, pt. H, pp. 127–136, 1986.
[12] H. Pues, J. Bogaers, R. Pieck, and A. van de Capelle, “Wideband quasi
log-periodic microstrip antennas,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microw., An-
tennas Propag., vol. 128, no. 3, pt. H, pp. 159–163, 1981.
Fig. 6. Measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna with compensating [13] R. Kakkar and G. Kumar, “Stagger tuned microstrip log-periodic an-
stub (k=1.1): (a) x-z plane; (b) y-z plane. tenna,” in IEEE AP-S Int. Symp. Digest, Jun. 1996, pp. 1262–1265.
[14] H. Ozeke, S. Hayashi, N. Kikuma, and N. Inagaki, “Quasi-log-periodic
microstrip antenna with closely coupled elements,” Elect. Eng., vol.
132, no. 2, pp. 58–64, 2000, in Japan.
results were shown in Fig. 4. It shows good agreement between the [15] H. K. Smith and P. E. Mayes, “Log-periodic array of dual-feed mi-
crostrip patch antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 39, no.
simulated and measured results, and the little difference between them
12, pp. 1659–1664, 1991.
may be caused by the soldering effect of the SMA connector and its [16] M. K. A. Rahim, M. N. A. Karim, T. Masri, and A. Asrokin, “Com-
mechanical tolerance. Its measured impedance bandwidth defined by parison between straight and U shape of ultra wide band microstrip an-
VSWR < 2:5 is from 2.26–6.85 GHz with a ratio of about 3.03:1. tenna using log periodic technique,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on UWB,
The radiation patterns of the example antenna were illustrated in Fig. 6. Sep. 2007, pp. 696–699.
[17] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering. Reading, MA: Ad-
Generally, the measured patterns agree well with the simulated one, dison-Wesley, 1990.
and the patterns were reasonably stable at the broadside. The gain was [18] R. Carrel, “The design of log-periodic dipole antennas,” IRE Int. Con-
also measured by using the comparison method with a corrugated horn vention Rec., pt. 1, pp. 61–75, 1961.

Authorized licensd use limted to: IE Xplore. Downlade on May 13,20 at 1:430 UTC from IE Xplore. Restricon aply.