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Wide bandwidth and small size LPDA antenna

Conference Paper · March 2012

DOI: 10.1109/EuCAP.2012.6206312

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 EuCAP 2012 1569525393

Wide Bandwidth and Small Size LPDA Antenna

A. Moallemizadeh, H.R. Hassani, and S. Mohammad ali nezhad
Electrical & Electronic Engineering Department, Shahed University
Persian Gulf Highway, Tehran, Iran
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— In this paper, a wideband log periodic dipole antenna Various techniques to foreshorten the dipole have been
(LPDA) with small size is proposed. The arms of the dipole are in considered by many researches and great achievements have
the shape of a second order fractal, which makes each dipole been made. The printed LPDA has been paid close attention in
element to resonate in more than one frequency. This results in a recent years. The initial work on printed LPDA antennas is that
LPDA antenna whose size can be greatly reduced. The proposed reported in [5] and since that work, a few papers have been
antenna has a substrate size of 90 × 60 mm2 and operates over 2- published on reducing the lateral size of such antennas. In [6],
8 GHz bandwidth with VSWR< 2. The antenna has stable using meandered lines a reduced size printed LPDA antenna is
pattern over the frequency range. reported, achieving 26% size reduction with low return loss and
high F/B over 1.8-4.2 GHz. A small planar log periodic Koch-
Key words- LPDA antenna; fractal; wide bandwidth dipole antenna (LPDKA) is reported in [2] resulting in some
12% size reduction. An improved fractal tree log-periodic
I. INTRODUCTION
dipole antenna resulting in a lateral size reduction of up to
39% operating over 0.4-1.5 GHz with good VSWR but with
The log-periodic dipole array (LPDA) antenna was the first degraded pattern over the lower frequencies is given [3]. In [7]
frequency independent antenna that immediately after its a rectangular patch loaded dipole LPDA design, reducing the size
of the planar LPDA up to 30% with good VSWR and low cross
conception made a huge impact on both commercial and
polarization performance over 2-5 GHz is reported. Microstrip
military applications throughout the world. A log-periodic
dipole antenna with top loading that uses T shaped dipole arms,
antenna is defined as a structure whose electrical properties covering 2.3-8 GHz bandwidth, with 50% size reduction in
vary periodically with the logarithm of frequency. If an antenna width for singular T shape arms and 54% for dual T
antenna is realized such that within each period its shaped antenna is given in [8]. In wire antennas at low
performance changes within bandwidth-defined conditions frequencies, size reduction can be achieved through top loading
then multi decade operation can be obtained. To produce the technique. In [9] theoretical impedance variation of such
required performance, similar mathematical relationships must antenna is given. In most of these works the size reduction
be applied to the antenna’s structural parameters. takes place over a limited bandwidth.
The LPDA antenna consists of two in-plane sets of
crisscrossed monopoles whose lengths and separations are In this paper, a wideband, covering 2-8 GHz bandwidth, log
related via the growth rate . The alternating feeding's is periodic dipole antenna (LPDA) with small size is proposed.
required to achieve the backward end-fire radiation in the The arms of the dipole are in the shape of a second order
direction of the small dipole pairs. The currents on the fractal, which makes each dipole to resonate in more than one
consecutive monopoles in the transmission line region are in frequency. This results in a LPDA antenna whose size can be
the opposite direction, thus contributing little to the overall greatly reduced. The proposed antenna has a substrate size of
radiation. 90 × 60 mm2. The antenna has stable pattern over the
The LPDA antenna, which is a simple antenna structure, has frequency range. Simulation results on VSWR and radiation
reasonable gain, narrow beam and constant input resistance pattern at the various frequencies over the band are provided
over a wide impedance bandwidth. This antenna is used in via software package HFSS.
versatile applications such as feed for reflector antennas, lens
and signal detection. Based on the application, the shape of the
radiating elements could be cylindrical dipole [1], printed
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
dipole [2, 3] or other kinds of shape [4]. Due to low cost, light
in weight, and simple to design, printed LPDA antennas are In the LPDA printed antenna the radiating elements are
well in demand. printed on the two sides of a dielectric substrate board. Along
The LPDA antenna size is proportional to the antenna the center line is a pair of strips that are used as the connection
bandwidth, increases in size as bandwidth increases, making line and are fed at the end of the shortest element through a
limitation in the antenna design. The lateral size of the LPDA coaxial feed line. LPDA is composed of N parallel dipoles. In
is determined by the lowest operating frequency. In certain the first stage, a straight strip LPDA is designed. This is the
applications due to limit in space, the antenna size should be reference antenna. Table I gives the dimension of a 9 straight
reduced. element simple LPDA on a substrate of 90 mm × 120 mm [8].

1
TABLE I. DIMENSION OF A 9 STRAIGHT ELEMENT SIMPLE LPDA (IN MM)

Figure 1 shows The LPDA structure with straight strip

elements. The straight arms of the LPDA are then replaced by
the proposed fractal elements. The typical fractal that would
replace the simple dipole is the second order Koch fractal
which makes each dipole to resonate in more than one Fig. 3. LPDA antenna with second order fractal arms
frequency. Higher-order versions of the Koch curve are
generated by simply repeating the iterative process until the
TABLE II. ANTENNA PROPERTIES AND PARAMETERS (MM)
desired resolution is achieved. The first four iterations of the
Koch curve are shown in Fig. 2. Wt1  
3 0.8 2.5
Wf L W
3.85 90 60

III. RESULTS
Figure 4 shows the VSWR of the printed log periodic dipole
antenna with second order fractal elements. The impedance
bandwidth of the fractal LPDA for a VSWR  2.0 is between 2-
8 GHz. The simulated results are obtained by HFSS software
Fig. 1. The LPDA structure with Straight strip elements.[8]
package.

Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Iteration 4

Fig. 2. The first four stages in the generation of the standard Koch fractal

Following an optimization of the size of the antenna, the

proposed antenna has a substrate size of 90 × 60 mm2 while Fig. 4. VSWR varaition of the proposed LPDA antenna with fractal arms
that of the straight dipole LPDA has a size of 120×90 mm2
[8]. Figure 3 shows the proposed printed fractal dipole LPDA
Figure 5 shows the radiated pattern of the proposed antenna
at frequencies of 2, 4, 6 and 8 GHz. It can be seen that the
antenna. The properties of this antenna are shown in Table II.
radiation pattern is stable over various frequencies within the
band.
In Table II,  is an antenna intrinsic property, n refers to the
dipole number n=1,2,3,…(the number of elements that we Figure 6 shows the measured peak gain of the LPDA antenna
have used in this antenna is 10) and wtn is nth element width. for various frequencies for the purposed antenna. Results show
The optimum number for  achieved for this antenna is 0.8. that, on average, the fractal elements give a high gain of 5.8 dBi
The substrate height is 1.5 mm. The size of the susbtrate for over the 2-8 GHz bandwidth.
the LPDA antenna with fractal elements shows some 25% size
reduction in length and 33.34% size reduction in width.

(J == wtn
(1)
wtn+l

2
 [6] A. A. Gheethan and D. E. Anagnostou, “Reduced Size Planar Log
Periodic Dipole Arrays (LPDAs) using Rectangular Meander Line
Elements,” IEEE AP-S, pp. 1-4, 5-11 July 2008

[7] Y. Zhengguang, S. Donglin, and L. Shanwei, “A Size-Reduced Log Periodic

Dipole Antenna,” J. Electron. (CHINA), vol. 23, no. 6, Nov. 2006.

[8] M.Pirai and H.R. Hassani, “Size reduction of microstrip LPDA

antenna with top loading,” IEICE Electronics Express, Vol.6,No.21 ,1528-
1534,October 2009.

[9] T. L. Simpson, “The Theory of Top-Loaded Antenna: Integral Equa-

tion for the Currents,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. Ap-19, no. 2, pp.
186-190, 1971.

Freq 2GHz
Freq 4GHz
Freq 6GHz
Freq 8GHz

Fig. 5. Radiated pattern in phi=90 at frequencies of 2, 4, 6 and 8GHz

Fig. 6. Variation of peak gain over 2-8 GHz range.

REFRENCES

[1] L. T. Pitzer, A. James, B. Gary, and A. J. Terzuoli, , “Linear Ensemble

Antennas Resulting From the Optimization of Log Periodic Dipole Arrays
Using Genetic Algorithms,” IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Com putations,
16-21 July, 2006

[2] D. E. Anagnostou, J. Papapolymerou, C. G. Christodoulou, and M.

Tentzeris, “A Small Planar Log-Periodic Koch-Dipole Antenna (LP KDA),”
IEEE APS/URSI Int. Symp., pp. 3685-3688, 2006.

[3] B. Wang, A. Chen, and D. Su, “An Improved Fractal Tree Log
Periodic Dipole Antenna,” Asia-Pacific Symposium on EM Compatibility&
19th International Zurich Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility,
Singapore, 19-22 May 2008.

[4] L. Shu, L. Hongmei, Q. Jinghui, and Y. Qidi, “A Log-Periodic Bow-tie

Dipole Antenna,” 5th IEEE - Conference, Memia, 2005.

[5] C. Campbell, I. Traboulay, M. Suthers, and H. Kneve, “Design of Strip line

Log-Periodic Dipole Antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 25, pp.
718-721, Sept. 1977.

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