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Liquid metamaterial based microstrip antenna

Preprint  in  Microwave and Optical Technology Letters · July 2017

DOI: 10.1002/mop.30963

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Liquid metamaterial based microstrip antenna

S.K. Patelŧ,ϵ and Y. Kostaŧ

ŧ
Electronics and communication department, Marwadi Education Foundation's Group of
Institutions, Rajkot, Gujrat, India
ϵ
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE,
USA
*
shobhitkumar.patel@marwadieducation.edu.in

Abstract: The microstrip antenna loaded with liquid metamaterials is presented in the
manuscript. Liquid split ring resonator (SRR) is used as metamaterial inclusion in the
antenna. Distilled water and sea water are the two liquids used one after another to form
liquid SRR. The liquid metamaterial microstrip antenna is also compared with metal
(copper) metamaterial microstrip antenna. The design results in the form of return loss,
bandwidth and gain are compared. The tuning in the frequency spectrum is achieved by
using liquids instead of metal as metamaterial. The gain of the antenna is also improved
by loading it with liquid metamaterials. The frequency spectrum is tuned using liquid
metamaterial loading compared to metal metamaterial loading.

Introduction: Liquid antennas are mainly divided in two parts, One is water based and
another one is liquid material based. Water based antennas are very important because of its
salinity. When the water salinity is changed, its conductivity changes. This changed
behaviour can be used in making liquid based antenna for tuning the frequency response. The
concept of liquid antenna is determined by dielectric filled tube in 1970. Dielectric filled
tubes used in monopole antenna which became resonant at one frequency [1]. Broadband
monopole liquid antenna is presented in [2]. Dielectric resonator concept is used and
dielectric properties are changed to improve the frequency response. Liquid antennas are used
for wearable bio-monitoring applications in [3]. The change in salinity of aqueous material is
used for improvement in these applications. Hybrid antenna using solid and liquid materials
is presented in [4]. Sea water, distilled water and oil are injected in to dielectric to improve
the performance of antenna. Investigation on water antennas is presented in [5]. Comparative
analysis of the resonant frequency, bandwidth and radiation efficiency are considered in the
study of these water antennas.

1
A technique for using electrically conducting liquids such as mercury, salt solution to develop
antenna systems is introduced by our group in [6]. We have moved one step further and
introducing new water based SRR metamaterial inclusion in microstrip antenna. Water
salinity is changed to improve the frequency response. Split ring resonator and thin wires are
essential inclusion to create metamaterials [7-10]. Split ring resonator changed the
permeability of the material and thin wires changed the permittivity. The proposed design
uses three ring split ring resonator structure as metamaterial inclusion to improve the simple
antenna response. Water is used for the first time to form this three ring split ring resonator
metamaterial structure.

Design Modelling: The periodic array of SRRs and continuous wires can produce a region in
the microwave frequency spectrum where both permittivity and permeability behave
negatively [6]. Our interest here is only in effective negative permeability which can be
achieved by using symmetrically space conducting nonmagnetic SRRs. The SRR unit cell
and its equivalent circuit both for two ring SRR and three ring SRR are presented in Figure 1.
The inductance is induced due to the rings of SRR and the capacitance due to gaps and splits
between the rings. The equivalent circuit for multiple SRR is presented in Figure 1(b) and
1(d). Inductance is calculated using Equation 1 and capacitance is calculated using Equation
2[11]:

Inductance in SRR is calculated using its ring wire length b, ring wire width a, free space
permeability μ0. Capacitance of the SRR ring is calculated using permittivity ε, ring wire
width a, thickness of the ring t and gap between the splits g. Two ring SRR resonance
frequency can be calculated using Equation 3 and 4.

For three ring SRR, frequency can be calculated using equation 3 and 5. Here C12 and C23 are
the capacitance between the corresponding rings.

2
Fig. 1 Split ring resonator (a) With two rings (c) With three rings (b) Equivalent circuit of
two ring SRR presented in (a). (d) Equivalent circuit of three ring SRR presented in (b).C12
and C23 are the capacitances between the consecutive rings [12] .

Equations (6-10) show the permeability and permittivity equation for metamterials. Using
these equations we can find out the metamaterial permittivity and permeability.
 
 (f)   - r es (6)
eff r 2
 f 
1  G 
f 
 d 
Where the constants are given as follows.
Zc
fd 
2 0 h

G  0.6  0.0009Z c

3
 1 0  t  t  
2

Zc  log F1  1  2  
2  es  0  W W  
 

  t 
0.7528

F1  6  2  6 exp  30.666  
  W 
 ab
 r  1   r  1   t 
 es    1  10 
2  2   w 

 ( w / t ) 4  ( w / 52t ) 2  1   1 w 
3
1
a  1 log    
1   
49  ( w / t ) 4  0.432  18.7   18.1 t  
0.053
   0.9 
b  0.564 r 

 r  3.0 
( f ) ( f )
  eff ( f )   MTM ( f )  1   MTM ( f ) (7)
0 0

( f ) 1   MTM ( f ) 1
Z  Z0  Z0 (8)
( f )  eff ( f )   MTM ( f )  eff ( f )

 ( f ) ( f )
neff ( f )   eff  f  
0 0
  eff  f    eff  f    MTM  f  1   MTM ( f )  1 (9)

These conditions are satisfied if  eff ( f )[1   MTM ( f )]   eff  f    MTM  f  so that

 MTM  f    1,  MTM  f    eff  f  MTM  f 

1
(10)
 eff  f 

The microstrip based radiating structure loaded with a three ring SRR is presented in Figure
2. The square shape truncated microstrip based radiating structure is presented in Figure 2. It
has dimensions of 56.4×56.4 mm2. The three ring SRR has 1.3 mm thickness. The substrate
is placed below microstrip antenna and made up of Rogers material with 66.4×66.4×1.5 mm3
size. The designed antenna is simulated with three different SRR materials (Distilled water,
Sea water and Copper) one by one and their results are discussed in next section.

4
Fig. 2 Microstrip based radiating structure design loaded with three ring SRR (a) view of the
antenna from the top side (b) view of the antenna from front side. Patch has dimension of
56.4×56.4 mm2and made with copper material. Substrate is made with Rogers material with
dimension 66.4×66.4×1.5 mm3. Metamaterial inclusion is added in the form of SRR.

Results and Discussions: The designed antenna is simulated using High Frequency Structure
Simulator (HFSS). Simulations are carried out three times for three different materials
(Distilled water, Sea Water, Copper). The reason behind selecting these three materials is the
conductivity of these materials. The conductivity is increased by moving from one material to
the other. We want to show the behaviour of the designed antenna by increasing the
conductivity of loaded metamaterial. We simulated the return loss in terms of S11 parameter
and Gain in polar plot. Simulated results of S11 for Distilled water SRR and Sea water SRR is
shown in Figure 3 and All the three SRR loaded designs S11 is plotted in Figure 4.

5
Fig. 3 Comparative Return loss (S11) plot of microstrip based radiating structure design
loaded with Distilled water SRR and Sea water SRR. Sea water design has four bands
compare to eight bands of distilled water.

Reconfigurability is minor visible when sea water SRR and distilled water SRR plots are
compared in Figure 3 but when these two plots are compared with the copper SRR plot in
Figure 4, the clear change in frequency is visible. So antenna is frequency reconfigurable by
changing the SRR materials. Frequency shift of about 200MHz is clearly visible in the plot.

Fig. 4 Comparative Return loss (S11) plot of microstrip based radiating structure loaded with
Distilled water SRR and Sea water SRR and Copper SRR. Distilled water SRR design has
more number of bands compare to the other two.

6
Gain polar plot of all the three designs is shown in Figure 5. It is clear that the design with
sea water SRR has the highest gain of 6.85dB compared to two other designs. All the three
designs are compared in table 1 for their different parameters like Gain, Bandwidth,
conductivity, S11 and number of bands. Sea water design has better gain and bandwidth
compare to the other two designs.

Fig. 5 Gain polar plot measured in dB for microstrip based radiating structure loaded with
(a) Distilled water SRR design (b)Sea water SRR design (c) Copper SRR design. The
maximum gain of 4.80dB, 6.85dB and 5.18 dB for distilled water SRR design, sea water SRR
design and copper SRR design respectively.

7
Table 1: Comparative analysis of S11, Gain, Bandwidth, Number of bands and conductivity
for three designs

SRR design Number of S11 (dB) Max. Max. Conductivity

bands Bandwidth Gain (S/m)
(MHz) (dB)
Distilled water Eight -25 220 4.80 0.0002
Sea water Four -21 250 6.85 4
Copper Two -30 220 5.18 5.8×107

Conclusion: Microstrip patch antenna design with liquid metamaterial and conventional
(copper) metamaterial loading is presented in the manuscript. Liquid metamaterial loading in
terms of sea water SRR has maximum bandwidth of 250MHz and maximum gain of 6.85dB.
It is clear that liquid metamaterial loading with moderate conductivity like sea water give
better response compare to the conventional metamaterial loading. The frequency is also
reconfigured using liquid metamaterial loading. Frequency shift of 200MHz is achieved.
Broadband, high gain tunable antennas can be designed based on the proposed concept with
several potential applications in modern wireless communication systems.

Acknowledgments: This work was partially supported by the Office of Research and
Economic Development at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and MEFGI, Rajkot.

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