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A Compact Ultra-wideband Single Element Planar Yagi Antenna

Preprint · January 2018

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A Compact Ultra-wideband Single Element Planar Yagi Antenna
Muhammad Awais1, Muhammad Hamza2, Wasif Tanveer Khan3
Lahore University of Management Sciences
Lahore, Pakistan.
{m.awais1, 171001412, wasif.tanveer3}@lums.edu.pk

Abstract—In this paper, we present a planar, single element
ultra-wideband Yagi-Uda antenna. To feed the radiating
element, a tapered microstrip balun is designed. The proposed
antenna covers a wide frequency band of (1.2 GHz െ 2.16 GHz),
achieving a fractional bandwidth of 60%. The gain of the
antenna lies above 5.2 dBi throughout the band, having a
maximum gain of 7.23 dBi, within the smallest form factor (0.4λo
x 0.54λo) reported so far for this frequency range. The antenna
is fabricated on a low-cost FR4 substrate (1.5mm) and the
measured results are in accordance with the simulations.
Keywords—Directional antennas; Planar Yagi Antenna; LTE;
UWB
I. INTRODUCTION
The main motivation of this work is to miniaturize the
system by developing an ultra-wideband end-fire antenna,
which could simultaneously cover major LTE communication
bands in the range of 1.2 GHz to 2.16 GHz and will find
applications in portable spectrum sensing systems.
In order to design smart and compact wireless products
such as portable spectrum monitoring systems, it is crucial to
reduce the total number of antennas and overall size of each
antenna; therefore, researchers are actively looking for
innovative solutions to improve the performance of antennas
in terms of bandwidth and gain, while keeping the minimum
possible antenna size.
The first printed planar Yagi antenna was proposed by
Qian in 1998 [1]. Later on, many researchers have proposed
various configurations by utilizing different element shapes
and feeding techniques [2 െ 8]. Typically, researchers use
multiple directors and radiating elements to increase the front
to back ratio of the antenna and achieve wideband or multiple
bands features [2െ4]. But, this increases the overall size of the
antenna as a whole. For example, the design proposed in [2]
demonstrates the widest bandwidth (78.4%) but the overall
size of the antenna is much larger (1.12λo x 0.72λo) which
limits its applications and it may not be used where compact
size is required. Most of the proposed planar Yagi antennas in
literature exhibit relatively narrower bandwidth (~ 40% –
45%) and suffer from larger physical dimensions [2െ8]. A
recent work has reported a compact size (0.41λo x 0.54λo) with
a frequency bandwidth of 41.4% by using a log-periodic array
(LPA) architecture which involves multiple radiating elements
[3]. The impedance bandwidth (VSWR<2) of this antenna is
relatively narrower and it does not include major LTE bands
in the range of 1.8 GHz – 2.16 GHz.
Moreover, the designs incorporating multiple radiator
elements suffer from the fact that the phase center of the
antenna changes with operating frequency which degrades the
integrity of transmission and is not desirable in many ultra-
wideband applications [9]. We have proposed a miniaturized
design (0.4λo x 0.54λo), which exhibits a much larger
bandwidth (60%) and covers all of the major LTE bands in the
range 1.2 GHz – 2.16 GHz, utilizing a single radiating element.
The proposed antenna is more compact and has a frequency
bandwidth of 60%, which is 18.6% more than the state of the
art work, reported in literature so far. The following sections
explains the design flow of the proposed planar UWB Yagi
antenna followed by the simulation and measurement results
section, leading to the conclusion.
II. YAGI-UDA ANTENNA DESIGN
A. Yagi-Uda Antenna Design Flow
The Yagi antenna consists of a single 'feed' or 'driven'
element, typically a dipole antenna. The rest of the elements
are parasitic - they reflect or help to transmit the energy in a
particular direction. The length of the feed element is typically,
0.45 െ 0.48 wavelengths long for a dipole antenna. The
reflector is kept longer than the resonant length of feed element
(~0.5λ). The director elements are kept shorter than resonant
length of feed element (~0.4λെ0.45λ). This will cause a phase
distribution to occur across the elements and the antenna
becomes an end-fire array with the radiation opposite to
reflector and along the direction of director [10].
The feed point impedance of Yagi-Uda antenna is affected
by the location and geometry of directors [11]. In this work,
we have exploited this fact to achieve a widest bandwidth
while keeping the size of our antenna compact.
Fig. 1. 3D Model of the printed Yagi-Uda Antenna in HFSS
B. Antenna Model
Typically, director elements are placed at 0.15λ – 0.3λ to
achieve gain performance. But we observed that when
director is placed in close proximity (0.003λ – 0.01λ) to the
radiating element then the feed point impedance starts to
become constant over a wide frequency range. Also, by
increasing the width of the first director (Wdir1) the return-loss
performance is improved in the pass-band. A 2nd director response of the fabricated antenna and Fig. 3 shows the gain
element is used to increase the gain performance of the with respect to frequency plot of the antenna.
antenna. In order to improve the front-to-back ratio of the
proposed antenna, the ground plane of tapered balun is
extended and a careful distance between this ground plane and
radiating dipole is selected such that it starts to act like a
reflector.
The antenna is fed though a tapered microstrip balun with
a very low insertion loss (~0.5 dB). The optimization of the
balun also improved the impedance matching performance of
the proposed antenna. The antenna was simulated in Ansoft
HFSS. The 3D model of the antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The
detailed dimensions have been tabulated in Table I. The Fig. 4. Measured and Simulated S11 Response of the antenna
designed antenna covers an ultra-wide frequency range
TABLE II. PERFORMANCE COMPARISON TABLE
(1.2GHz െ 2.16 GHz) with a decent gain performance (5.2
BW Center Max. Gain
dBiെ7.23 dBi). An excellent minimum front-to-back ratio of Ref. Antenna Size
(%) Frequency (dBi)
13dB is also achieved. This
60 1.6 GHz 0.43λo x 0.58λo 7.23 dBi
work
[2] 78.4 2.4 GHz 1.12λo x 0.72λo 7.4
[3] 41.4 1.45 GHz 0.41λo x 0.54λo 7.2
[4] 44 9.6 GHz 0.67λo x 1λo 7.4
[5] 40 10 GHz 2λo x 1λo െ
[6] 41.7 4.796 GHz 1.33λo x 0.96λo 7.8
[7] 43.3 5.27 GHz 0.88λo x 0.7λo 7

IV. CONCLUSION
A compact, ultra-wideband planar Yagi-Uda antenna is
presented. The antenna has a very wide frequency bandwidth
(a) (b) of 60% with a compact size of 0.4λo x 0.54λo and it covers
Fig. 2. Fabricated printed Yagi-Uda antenna (a) Bottom view (b) Top View major LTE bands in the frequency range of 1.2 GHz െ 2.16
GHz. The measured results of the fabricated antenna exhibit
TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF YAGI-UDA ANTENNA an excellent match with the simulations. The proposed
Parameter
Value
Parameter
Value antenna may find applications in portable spectrum
(mm) (mm) monitoring systems and other applications in LTE
Lref. /Ls 110 Ldip 44 communication bands.
Ws 82 Wdip 7
Wref 15 Ldir 45 REFERENCES
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