Design and Optimization of SIW Patch Antenna for
Ku Band Applications using ANN Algorithms
M. Chetioui*, A. Boudkhil, N. Benabdallah, N. Benahmed
Laboratory of Telecommunications, University of Abu Bou Bekr Belkaid of Tlemcen, Algeria
*Corresponding author, e-mail: chetioui.mohammed@yahoo.fr
Abstract—Substrate Integrate Waveguides (SIW) present very
compatible components to planar technologies since recent years
that have has been widely implemented in microwave antennas as
a class of effective integrated transmission lines to provide high
quality factor capacities and incomparable self-consistent
shielding. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) present ones of the
fundamental electromagnetic (EM) design automations through
numerical optimizations which become nowadays ubiquitous in
various modeling fields such as microwave engineering.
Accordingly, this paper provides for the Ku microwave band
(12-18 GHz), a new design of a patch antenna based on SIW
technology using a tree-dimensional electromagnetic (EM)
simulation based on structured supervised learning alternative to
neural networks to provide accurate geometric dimensions for the
target requirements. The SIW patch antenna is designed to
operate in Ku frequency band and resonate at 16.10 GHz. The
optimized antenna shows very low return losses of less than -
10dB to -19dB for the selective band resulting in good
performance. ANN algorithms implemented for the training
process present than a reliable tool of estimating the antenna
performance to provide precise geometrical dimensions with the
specific requirements.
Keywords—SIW technology, Patch antennas, Ku band, ANN
optimization, EM simulation.
I. INTRODUCTION
SIW technology [1] becomes today a promising design
trump to realize high performance microwave devices by using
periodic metallic via holes to render the advantages of
conventional rectangular waveguides and microstrip lines,
such as high quality factors, high power handling capabilities,
low profiles, low costs, low radiation losses and
soft connections. Recently, antennas employing SIW [2-4]
have achieved excellent electromagnetic properties such as
high gain, wide bandwidth, and easy modeling into planar
forms, due to the open and uniform wave-guiding structures
excited in an appropriate mode. This has provided over the
past few years a large class of microwave SIW antennas with
numerous wireless applications after using automatic modeling
techniques to bring the Computer-Aided Tuning (CAT) [5] for
such high frequency structure to its current state of the
art. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) [6] present a relevant
optimization technique widely used for the modeling of
microwave antenna design problems to obtain a surrogate
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based model instead of a computationally intensive EM
simulation in design. They consist of complex information
processing systems inspired by the studies of the ability of the
human brain to learn from observations and to generalize by
abstraction, used to develop new models or enhance the
accuracy of the existing models with fast high-level design [7].
This paper, proposes in fact the Ku band applications, a
novel design of a SIW antenna [8] with a tulip-shaped patch
and microstrip feeding. The antenna parameters are optimized
by developing an accurate MATLAB-based ANN model
trained by the back-propagation technique as a fitness function
for efficient learning of the antenna’s geometry. ANN
algorithms are trained by a set of existent input and output
relations obtained by High Frequency Structure Simulator
(HFSS) software to test data for the algorithms and analyze the
SIW patch antenna parameters for the selective bandwidth.
The optimized antenna resonates at 16.10 GHz and shows very
good performance demonstrated by very low return losses of
less than -10dB to -19dB over the entire bandwidth.
II. SIW PATCH ANTENNA
A. EM Design
The proposed SIW patch antenna as illustrated in Figure 1,
consists of metalized rows via holes with center-to-center
distance (WSIW) embedded into a dielectric substrate,
embedded into a dielectric substrate and by the top and the
bottom metallization of the dielectric substrate. The SIW
structure can be synthesized in a planar form with arrays of
metallic vias used to realize a bilateral edge of walls in which
the SIW width should be instead of a normalized equivalent
width (Weq). To guarantee a minimum leakage of power
through the sidewall of the cavity where (λ0) denote free space
wavelength. To design SIW resonance cavity, the dimensions
can be chosen according to desired resonance frequency (fmnp)
of (Tmnp) mode that can be calculated according to [9]:
2 2
c P  
+
pπ 
   (1)
nm
fmnp =
2π εr μr  R   h 
In which (R: R1 or R2) is the radius of the circular SIW
cavity, (μr and εr) are relative permeability and permittivity of
the filling material used for the cavity, and (m, n and p) refer to
the numbers of variations in the standing wave pattern.
 TABLE I The (Pnm) represents the corresponding root of Bessel
INITIAL SIW PATCH ANTENNA GEOMETRICAL CONFIGURATION
function and (c) stands for light speed in free space.
Accordingly, a set of antenna geometrical configuration is
Longer Width Thick- Dielec. Tang.
Substrate (LS) (WS) ness cst loss proposed for the analysis and optimization including both
(h) (εr) (δ) microstrip line and tulip-shaped patch parameters as illustrated
24 15.4 0.95 3.2 0.0018 in Table 1 and Figure 1 (a, b). The parameters W, D, R1, R2
Microstrip Width present then the main factors to be optimized over Ku
2
line (W)
Diameter Walls Center-to-center
frequency band by training an ANN model to validate the
SIW (d) distance (p) antenna’s resonate frequency, and support its return losses.
0.6 0.8
Diameter Inner ray Outer ray B. ANN Modeling
Patch (D) (R1) (R2) Geometrical parameters of the proposed SIW patch antenna
4.6 3.9 4.6
have been optimized using MATLAB-based ANN model in
order to improve the performance and accuracy of the antenna
structure through an automated data training process. A
Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) network structure has been
adopted for the calculation of the antenna dimensions using
back propagation algorithms [10, 11] in which neurons are
grouped into three layers divided into: First layer which
consists of input neurons, output layer which contains the
output neurons, and remaining layer presenting the hidden
layer. Figure 2 illustrates the MLP-ANN architecture used for
the simulation and optimization.
Input layer
S11 f0

2 1

(a)

Hidden
layer

R1 4 3 2 1

LSL
LS R2
W D R1 R2
D Output layer

Fig.2. MLP-ANN model architecture used for the optimization

TABLE II
d ANTENNA TRAINING DATA RANGE

Parameters Optimized values

Training algorithm Feed-forward MLP/ Backpropagation
W N° of hidden neurons 15
WS f0 (GHz) S11 (dB)
Inputs definition
15.5–17.5 (-22)–(-18)
(b) Outputs definition W D R1 R2
Fig.1. Front view of (a) upper and (b) bottom metal face of the proposed SIW (mm) 2.0–2.4 4.2-5.2 3.2-4.2 4.2-5.2
patch antenna Learning rate 0.02

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 For the considered SIW patch antenna the developed neural 0
model is designed to produce output parameters divided into D,
R1, R2, and W, having the return loss S11 and resonance
frequency f0 as inputs. The range of inputs for training data
and modeling problem are gathered in the Table 2. After
-5
having defined the antenna’s input and output variables as a

S 1 1 (d B )
first stage known as neurons process, training data are
generated using multi-HFSS simulations to provide a neural
network model that will be incorporated into the simulator
again for fast and accurate optimization as a second stage of -10
the overall device called network training process, to
determine a new antenna configuration providing simulation
results (XEM) close to the target design specifications (Xtarget)
initially proposed. The key technique used in this adaptive
-15
Computer Aided Tuning (CAT) procedure is explained in 15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5
details in Figure 3 [12]. Frequency (GHz)

Fig.4. Return loss graph of the proposed SIW patch antenna in Ku band before
Target Specifications optimization
Xtarget = [f0, S11]
0

Start Tuning of physical dimensions

W D R1 R2 -5
S 1 1 (d B )

Simulation of the SIW Antenna Results -10

f0 S11

Initial parameters
MATLAB script ANN input -15
f0(1) S11(1) Fisrt iteration
Second iteration
Third iteration
MATLAB script ANN output -20 Fourth iteration
W D R1 R2
15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5
Frequency

Simulation of the Device results Fig.5. Return loss graph of the SIW antenna in Ku band during the
XEM = [f0, S11] optimization

No || XEM – Xtarget || ≤ ε
Specification Satisfied? -5
S 1 1 (d B )

Yes -10

End Tuning

-15
Fig.3. Adaptive CAT procedure for the optimization process

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

-20
The antenna parameters are optimized using a trained ANN
model, and then implemented in HFSS software to compare 15 15.5 16 16.5 17 17.5
the optimized antenna performance obtained in each iteration Frequency (GHz)
with the initial performance obtained by the initial antenna
Fig.6. Return loss graph of the optimized SIW antenna in Ku band based on
geometrical configuration shown in Figure 4. The results of ANN modeling
optimization show that the antenna structure comes with very

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low return losses over the entire band after each iteration as
shown in Figure 5. Finally, the antenna has been found to
resonate at 16.10 GHz with a return loss of -19.74dB as
indicated in Figure 6.
ANN model becomes very useful to obtain at resonance
band very low return losses, and offer the advantage of
superior computational ability to provide an optimal SIW
patch antenna geometry due to its high degree of efficiency
and interconnectivity for solving complex problems. Table 3
shows the final geometrical configuration reported from the
fourth iteration and used in developing the SIW antenna design
after optimization.
TABLE III
OPTIMIZED SIW ANTENNA GEOMETRICAL CONFIGURATION
Optimized parameters Values (mm)
W 2.343
D 4.3434
R1 3.3903
R2 4.6785
based artificial neural networks,” TELKOMNIKA, Vol. 16, Issue 2, pp.
215-221, Apr. 2018.
[9] F. Xu and K. Wu, “Guided-wave and leakage characteristics of
substrate integrated waveguide,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn.,
Vol. 53, Issue 1, pp. 66–73, Jan. 2005.
[10] T. Y. Kwok and D. Y. Yeung, “Constructive algorithms for structure
learning in feed forward neural networks for regression problems,”
IEEE Trans. Neural Networks, Vol. 8, Issue 3, pp. 630–645, May 1997.
[11] K. Hornik, M. Stinchcombe, and H. White, “Multilayer feedforward
networks are universal approximators,” Neural Networks, Vol. 2, Issue
5, pp. 359-366, 1989.
[12] M. Chetioui, A. Boudkhil, N. Benabdellah, and N. Benahmed, “A novel
dualband coaxial-fed SIW cavity resonator antenna using artificial
neural networks modeling,” International Journal of Microwave and
Optical Technology, to be published.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new SIW patch antenna design fed by a
microstrip line is proposed for Ku band applications by
developing an accurate MATLAB-based MLP-ANN model
and carrying out multiple HFSS simulations to achieve best
parameters providing a high structure precision as well as high
performance level. Lower than -19dB return losses at
approximately 16.10 GHz resonance frequency have been
obtained to be excellent characteristics for the proposed
antenna design to operate in Ku frequency band. ANN model
selected for the optimization offers the advantage of superior
computational ability to provide an optimal SIW patch antenna
geometry due to its high accordance with user’s setting
resonance frequencies and return losses.

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