Design of Planar Antenna for 5G Communication

Our final year project focuses on the Design of a Pattern Diversified Microstrip Patch Antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G Communication Applications.  Attenuation can cause major disruption in the data at higher frequencies such as that sub-6GHz 5G communication. The att

Project Title

Design of Planar Antenna for 5G Communication

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

Our final year project focuses on the Design of a Pattern Diversified Microstrip Patch Antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G Communication Applications. 

Attenuation can cause major disruption in the data at higher frequencies such as that sub-6GHz 5G communication. The attenuation is caused by multipath fading and can lead to unreliable processing of data at the receiver end. The proposed solution for this problem is to design a Microstrip Patch Antenna (MSA) which exhibits pattern diversity at 3.5GHZ.

Our proposed design consists of a radiating slot-loaded circular patch surrounded by an annular ring patch loaded with carefully calibrated novel semi-circular notches on the outer radius. Both radiating structures use the coaxial probe feeding technique.

The annular ring is designed to exhibit a conical pattern using its TM31 mode, while the circular patch is designed to exhibit a broadside rations pattern, at 3.5GHz using its TM11 mode. 

Project Objectives

The main objective of our project is to Design a Pattern Diversified Microstrip Patch Antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G Communication Applications.

The microstrip patch antenna exhibits a broadside radiation pattern when its slot-loaded circular patch is excited through one port and a conical radiation pattern when the notch-loaded annular ring patch is excited through the other port, at the resonant frequency of 3.5 GHz.

Another objective was to make sure that the isolation between the two radiating elements is very good and that their currents do not interfere with each other. 

Project Implementation Method

The two radiating elements, the circular patch and the annular ring were designed independently of each other to obtain broadside and conical radiation patterns respectively. During this process, it was kept in mind that the radius of the circular patch should be kept small enough to fit inside the annular ring’s aperture. 

To fit the circular patch inside the annular ring and to get maximum possible isolation, the circular patch was designed for the resonant frequency of 4.5GHz. This unperturbed circular patch when analyzed at TM11 mode gave a broadside radiation pattern. The circular patch was then loaded with two parallel slots that ran orthogonal to the current path. This increased the current path length, thereby shifting the resonant frequency down to 3.5 GHz. This also had a minimum effect on the radiation pattern. Thus, a broadside radiation pattern was achieved at 3.5 GHz.

The annular ring was designed to resonate at TM31 mode, to provide enough room for the circular patch to fit inside its aperture. This gave a relatively compact design, and a conical radiation pattern while also maintaining a good separation. For TM31 mode, resonant frequency decreases with an increase in the mean radius. The unperturbed annular ring was designed for the resonant frequency of 3.2 GHz, which is slightly less than the desired 3.5GHz. This offered enough room within the annular ring’s aperture for the slot-loaded circular patch to be placed in.

To shift the resonant frequency at 3.5GHz, the outer radius of the annular ring was loaded with two types of semicircular notches. This shifted the resonant frequency from 3.2GHz to 3.5GHz, by essentially reducing the current path.

The circular patch was then incorporated within the annular ring’s aperture and offered maximum isolation between the two radiating elements.

After achieving desired simulated results in Ansys HFSS software, the antenna is fabricated. 

Benefits of the Project

Once implemented, this antenna design will enable high-quality sub-6GHz 5G communication in a low-cost design. Since the design is based on a novel single-layer configuration with no complex feeding system, the fabrication will be relatively simple and large quantities of this antenna can be rapidly mass-produced at a cheap rate. As discussed earlier, owing to the pattern diversity exhibited by this antenna, the effect of common problems encountered in a generic urban environment, such as degradation of RF communication due to multipath reflection, will be significantly lessened. 

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The antenna has an area of 115x115mm2. The substrate used is Rogers RT/ Duroid 5870 with a dielectric constant of 2.33. The antenna is designed in a way that it has two patches - a circular patch, loaded with two parallel rectangular slots, surrounded by an annular ring with two sets of semi-circular notches on the outer radius. The circular patch is designed using TM11 mode to exhibit broadside radiation. It has a gain of 7.2 dB. The annular ring exhibits conical radiation using TM31 mode, when excited and has a gain of 4.6 dB. 

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Core Industry

Telecommunication

Other Industries

Core Technology

Others

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com