2009 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics

5-7 August 2009, Selangor, Malaysia

Optimization of Microstrip Patch Antenna using

Particle Swarm Optimization with Curve Fitting
Mohammad Tariqul Islam◊1, Norbahiah Misran◊*2, Tan Chuen Take*3, Mohd. Moniruzzaman*4
◊
Institute of Space Science (ANGKASA),
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
1
titareq@yahoo.com
*Dept. of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
2
bahiah@vlsi.eng.ukm.my
3
technetium@live.com.my
4
Mohd.Moniruzzaman@gmail.com

Abstract— An optimization technique for microstrip patch
antenna using particle swarm optimization (PSO) with curve
fitting is introduced in this paper. An inverted E-shaped
microstrip patch antenna designed for IMT-2000 band is utilized
to demonstrate the optimization technique. The data for curve
fitting is obtained from Zealand IE3D software by varying
different geometrical parameters of the antenna. Using the data,
the equations representing the relationship among different
parameters of a microstrip antenna are generated. Graphmatica
curve fitting software was used to generate the curve. The PSO
program was developed and executed in MATLAB and finally
the optimized antenna was simulated in Zealand IE3D.
Comparison between conventional antenna and curve fitting
based PSO optimized antenna showed remarkable improvement
over bandwidth. For the inverted E-shaped microstrip patch
antenna, the bandwidth increased by 15%.
Keywords— Particle swarm optimization, curve fitting,
microstrip patch antenna, inverted E-shaped.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless communication is widely recognized as one of the
fastest growing industries in today’s global marketplace [1].
As the demand continues to grow, and 3G voice and wireless
internet services move into the mainstream, wireless operators
will be facing a great challenge in providing adequate capacity
and high data rate services with a limited amount of radio
spectrum into the network as well as maintaining the quality
of services.
Microstrip antennas are low profile and lightweight. They
are also can be made conformal and well suited to be
integrated with microwave integrated circuit. In terms of
fabrication, such system offers simplicity, which allows mass
production and cost-effective manufacturing as well as high
performance [4], [5]. However, a conventional patch antenna
suffers from very narrow bandwidth [4], [5] and this pose a
challenge for the microstrip antenna designer to meet the
proposed broadband IMT-2000 band specification
(1.885-2.200GHz). Patch antennas that meet these
requirements generally involve complex geometries with no
analytical representation. Simulations generally allow analysis
of the antenna, but manual optimization requires hours of
human interaction. Therefore we must implement
optimization techniques to automate the process and speed it
up.
In this work, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) with
curve fitting is used to optimize antenna performance. PSO
alleviated the need for standard brute-force design techniques.
The PSO serves as an effective optimizing tool for difficult
multidimensional discontinuous problems for a large array of
fields.
In this paper, we investigated a PSO implementation with
curve fitting. Zealand IE3D, Graphmatica and MATLAB are
used as simulation, curve fitting and optimization tools. We
used a microstrip patch antenna designed in [6] targeted for
IMT-2000 band to evaluate the optimization technique.
II. PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION (PSO)
PSO is a kind of swarm intelligence, based on social-
psychological principles and provides insights into social
behaviour, as well as contributing to engineering applications.
The particle swarm optimization algorithm was first described
in 1995 by Kennedy and Eberhart [7].
It uses a number of agents (particles) that constitute a
swarm moving around in the search space looking for the best
solution. Each particle is treated as a point in an N-
dimensional space which adjusts its “flying” according to its
own flying experience as well as the flying experience of
other particles. Each particle tries to modify its position using
the information of the current positions, the current velocities,
the distance between the current position and the personal best
position (pbest), the distance between the current position and
the global best position (gbest).
Each particle keeps track of its coordinates in the solution
space which are associated with the best solution (fitness) that
has achieved so far by that particle. This value is called
personal best, pbest. Another best value that is tracked by the
PSO is the best value obtained so far by any particle in the
neighbourhood of that particle. This value is called gbest.
The basic concept of PSO lies in accelerating each particle
toward its pbest and the gbest locations, with a random
weighted acceleration at each time step as shown in Fig. 1.

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 The modification of the particle’s position can be A. Curve Fitting
mathematically modelled according the following equation: To generate the relationship equations over L, fc and BW,
Vik+1 = wVik + c1 rand1(…) x (pbesti-sik) the value of L is varied while keeping the values of other
+ c2 rand2(…) x (gbest-sik) (1) parameters in Table I as constant. The value of L in the
where, conventional antenna was 53mm. Therefore L was varied
vik : velocity of agent i at iteration k, from 42 to 60mm with an increment of 1 mm. For each value
w: weighting function, of L, one antenna is designed in IE3D and the resultant fc and
cj : weighting factor BW are recorded. Total 19 (42 to 60) antennas are designed to
rand : uniformly distributed random number between 0 and 1, get the data for L. For the sake of brevity, values of three
sik : current position of agent i at iteration k, antennas of the above 19 antennas are presented in Table II.
pbesti : pbest of agent i,
gbest: gbest of the group.

The following weighting function is usually utilized in the

above equation.
w = wMax - [ (wMax-wMin) x iter] / maxIter
where
wMax = initial weight,
wMin = final weight,
maxIter = maximum iteration number,
iter = current iteration number.

III. ANTENNA DESIGN

The geometry of the probe-fed inverted E-shaped
rectangular patch antenna is shown in Fig-2. The antenna is
designed with the parameters presented in Table I. The patch
Fig. 1 Basic concept of PSO
with a width W and length L is supported by a low dielectric
superstrate with dielectric constant ε1 and thickness h1. An
air-filled substrate with dielectric constant ε0 and thickness h0
is sandwiched between the superstrate and a ground plane.
The radiating patch is fed by a probe along the centreline (y-
axis) of the patch at a distance from the bottom edge of the
patch as shown in the Fig. 2. Two parallel slots with slot
length, width, and spacing between slots, ls, ws, and s
respectively are incorporated onto the rectangular patch,
symmetrically with respect to the centreline.

IV. OPTIMIZATION BY PSO

Over the 10 parameters stated in Table I, four parameters
are taken for optimization: L, ls, W, ws. The goal of the
optimization process was to maximize the bandwidth (BW) by
varying L, ls, W, Ws while keeping centre frequency (fc) near
to 2.1 GHz for the IMT-2000 band.
TABLE I
PARAMETERS FOR INVERTED E-SHAPED PATCH ANTENNA

Superstrate RT 5880 (ε1=2.2, h1=1.5748mm)

Substrate Air (ε0=1, h0=12.5mm)
Rectangular
Width and Length, {W, L} = {79, 53} mm
patch
Fig. 2 Geometry of the inverted E-shaped rectangular patch antenna
Feed fp= 13.5mm from bottom edge along y-axis
Position (centreline of the patch), TABLE II
Slots L VERSUS FC AND BW
{ls, s, ws} = {47, 15, 10} mm
parameters
Antenna # L fc BW
(mm) (GHz) (GHz)
1 52 2.15631 0.64219
2 53 2.10923 0.60641

712
 54 2.05273 0.56497
Applying the values of Table II in Graphmatica (curve
fitting software), the following equations are obtained, which
represent the relationship between L, fc and BW:
BW = 0.136 fc4 - 0.078 fc3 - 0.558 fc2 - 0.630 fc + 2.37
fc = -14.37 BW4 + 10.27 BW3 + 4.07 BW2 - 3.69 BW + 2.44
L = 2.02 fc4 - 2.09 fc3 - 8.95 fc2 - 2.42 fc + 75.7
L = 437.6 BW4 - 436 BW3 - 153.7 BW2 + 235.8 BW + 4.73
The parameter values are represented in Table III and the
return loss graph is presented in Fig. 3. The achieved
bandwidth at -10dB return loss for the conventionally
optimized antenna was 0.61GHz and for the curve fitting
based PSO optimized antenna, it was 0.70GHz which has
shown the overall bandwidth increase of about 15%.

Again ls is varied, while keeping the values of other

parameters in Table I as constant. For each value of ls, one
antenna is designed in IE3D and the resultant fc and BW are
recorded. Applying the values of ls, fc and BW in Graphmatica,
the following equations were obtained, which represent the
relationship between ls, fc and BW:

BW = 0.0147 fc4 - 0.032 fc3 - 0.15 fc2 - 0.086 fc + 1.39

fc = -10.66 BW4 + 12.7 BW3 - 1.19 BW2 - 3.82 BW + 3.44
ls = 0.7642 fc4 - 2.27 fc3 - 7.77 fc2 + 1.18 fc + 76.84
ls = -51.58 BW4 - 168.4 BW3 + 146 BW2 + 42.7 BW + 5.43

Similarly the relationship equations among W, fc, BW and

ws, fc, BW were obtained. Fig. 3 Return loss graph of the inverted E-shaped antennas

B. Fitness Function TABLE III

COMPARISON BETWEEN CONVENTIONAL OPTIMIZED ANTENNA AND CURVE
The fitness function was generated using the Root Mean FITTING BASED PSO OPTIMIZED ANTENNA
Squared Error (RMSE) based fitness function. The root mean
L ls W Ws fc BW
squared error Ei of an individual program-i is evaluated by the
Unit mm mm mm mm GHz GHz
equation:
1 n (2) Conventional
Ei =
n
∑ ( Pij − Tj ) 2
j =1
optimized 53 47 79 10 1.99 0.61
antenna
where Pij is the value predicted by the individual program i
for fitness case j (out of n fitness cases); and Tj is the target Curve fitting
value for fitness case j. For a perfect fit, all Pij = Tj and thus, based PSO
50.3 39.5 55.4 13.7 2.16 0.70
Ei = 0. Using the above RMSE based fitness function, our optimized
antenna
fitness function was
F(x) = sqrt( M*( fc–fctarget )2 + N* ( BW – BWtarget )2 ) (3) VI. CONCLUSION
Here M and N are the biasing constant to control the In this work, PSO program was developed using equations
contribution of each term to the overall fitness function and obtained by curve fitting. Employing the PSO program, the
fctarget and BWtarget are the desired central frequency and the bandwidth of the inverted E-shaped patch antenna was
desired bandwidth. Increasing M will bias the developed PSO increased by 15%. The optimization technique demonstrated
to optimize the Microstrip patch antenna towards the central its ability to generate IMT-2000 band antennas with an
frequency fc, while increasing N will bias the optimized value inverted E-shaped microstrip patch antenna.
towards bandwidth BW.
REFERENCES
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