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Antenna of Adjustable Bandwidth Based on a Pentagonal Array

Article in Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering · August 2011
DOI: 10.1117/12.901998

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 Antenna of Adjustable Bandwidth Based on a Pentagonal Array
M. Tecpoyotl-Torres∗a, J. G. Vera-Dimas a, R. Cabello Ruiza, O. García-Garcíaa, J. Escobedo-
Alatorre a, J. Sanchez-Mondragonb, M. Torres-Cisnerosc, J. Varonad and R. Vargas-Bernale.
a
Centro de Investigación en Ingeniería y Ciencias Aplicadas, CIICAp, Universidad Autónoma del
Estado de Morelos, UAEM, Av. Universidad 1001, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México, 62209.
b
Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, INAOE, Luis Enrique Erro No. 1,
Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico, 72000.
c
Facultad de Ingeniería Mecánica, Eléctrica y Electrónica, FIMEE, Universidad de Guanajuato,
Carretera Salamanca-Valle de Santiago Km 3.5+1.8 Km Comunidad de Palo Blanco, Salamanca,
Gto. México, 36885.
d
Universidad Paramericana, Campus Bonaterra. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer No 101
Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, México, 20290.
e
Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Micro y Nano Tecnologías, CIDEMYNT,
Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Irapuato. Carretera Irapuato-Silao Km. 12.5
Irapuato, Guanajuato, México, 36821

ABSTRACT

Antenna characteristics are chosen according to the features determined by the systems where they will be used. While
some systems require a very narrow bandwidth, others may operate with a much wider bandwidth. Some techniques used
for increasing the bandwidth of a given antenna have considered mechanical adjustment of the air layer thickness, with
the consequent change on the effective permittivity and performance. Some other systems consider a suitable choice of
feeding techniques and impedance matching network. However, approaches for reducing the bandwidth have not
received the same level of attention. Narrow bandwidth antennas are of particular interest in security and surveillance
systems. In this work we present a technique, based on the design of a pentagonal antenna array, which allows for
adjusting the bandwidth in either direction. The array is formed by an inner patch designed at the desired operating
frequency of the system and a gap coupled external ring centered at a different frequency (lower or very near the
operating frequency), which determines the potential bandwidth increment or decrement. The feed point is located on the
inner patch. As a proof-of-concept, this work offers a tuning range that goes from -40% of the center frequency up to
+50% of the center operating frequency of the patch antenna. The single patch antenna of this work was designed and
simulated at an operating frequency of 4.9 GHz on RT/Duroid 5880.

Keywords: Patch antennas, Antenna arrays, RT/Duroid 5880, Prototypes.

1. INTRODUCTION
The pentagonal geometry is one of the various shapes for microstrip antennas capable to produce circular polarization
operation that has been reported in the literature1. In1, 2, the analysis of a pentagonal antenna of irregular lateral sizes is
developed. Regular pentagonal patches have also received attention, for example, in the design of pentagonal dipole
fractal antenna3.
In this research, a prototype of the pentagonal antenna has been developed, which has in its central part an inner
pentagonal patch of equal sides. It was designed considering the invariance of the electrostatic energy below the
pentagonal and circular patches, designed at the same frequency, as it was realized in4 for rectangular and circular

* [email protected]; phone +52 777 329-7084; fax +52 777 329-7984; www.uaem.mx

22nd Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Light for the Development of the World,
edited by Ramón Rodríguez-Vera, Rufino Díaz-Uribe, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8011, 80115X
2011 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/11/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.901998

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8011 80115X-1

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 geometries, keeping constant areas. This process allows the simplification of the design equations through the
application of basic algebraic concepts. An external ring is then coupled through a gap. The width of this ring conforms
one of the elements that determines the bandwidth response of the antenna. The tuning of the desired bandwidth
responses is also supported by the location of the feed point and the shorting pin. As it is known, the loading by an
electrical short pin may be used as a convenient mean for reducing the size of the antenna5, for dual operation
frequency6, for change of polarization and so on1. A review of shorting post loaded microstrip antenna as well as its need
can be found in7.
This paper is organized as follows: The antenna array design and its corresponding simulations are provided in Section 2.
In Section 3, the simulation results of the tuning of the pentagonal antenna array when increasing or decreasing the size
of its bandwidth are shown. A discussion of the results is developed in Section 4; and finally in Section 5 some
concluding remarks are given.

2. ADJUSTABLE PENTAGONAL PATCH ANTENNA DESIGN

2.1 Pentagonal patch design

As it was described in the previous section, the pentagonal patch will be designed considering its equivalent area
compared to a circular one designed at the same operation frequency. The circular patch antenna is one of the
fundamental microstrip geometries; it has a simple geometry and can operate on circular polarization. In this work we
use the common design equation8:

F
a= . (1)
12
⎧⎪ 2h ⎡ ⎛ πF ⎞ ⎤ ⎫⎪
⎨1 + πε F ⎢ln⎜ 2h ⎟ + 1.7726⎥ ⎬
⎪⎩ r ⎣ ⎝ ⎠ ⎦ ⎪⎭
with F = 8.791x10 9 / f r ε r , where h is the substrate thickness (in cm), εr is the dielectric permittivity, and fr is
the operating frequency.
The relationship between the circle patch antenna (r1=a) to the circle r2 where the pentagonal patch is inscribed that
results in equivalent areas is given by9:
πr12
r22 =
2.37 . (2)
Considering the radius length r2 of the circle equal to 0.01392 m., the corresponding length of each side of the
pentagonal patch is 0.01637 m., with an apothem equal to 0.1265 m., using the cosines law and the Pythagoras theorem
respectively. The feed point was located at 0.006 m. on the Y axis. The single pentagonal patch antenna is also shown in
figure 1.
The ground plane of the antenna has a rectangular shape, whose sides are separated from the pentagon as it is also shown
in figure 1. The chosen substrate is RT/Duroid 5880, with: εr= 2.2, and h= 0.00317 m.

Fig. 1. Pentagonal patch antenna geometry.

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 In figure 2, the gain of the single pentagonal patch antenna under linear polarization is presented.

Fig. 2. Gain of the single pentagonal patch antenna.

Figure 3 shows the simulation results corresponding to the S11 parameter (reflection coefficient). The bandwidth has a
value of 0.3559 GHz.

Fig. 3. S11, parameter of the pentagonal patch antenna.

2.2 External ring design

The external pentagonal ring was also designed considering equations (1) and (2). For the particular case considered
in this section, an operating frequency of 4.1 GHz was used; this frequency is slightly smaller than the operating
frequency of the inner patch. The width of the gap between the external and the inner pentagons is 0.00051 m. The width
of the gap is determined as 5% of the radius of the circle where the inner pentagonal patch is inscribed. The feed point
was not moved and it was kept as indicated in section 2.1 at 0.006 m on Y axis in the inner patch, where the center of the
arrangement is considered to be the origin. The shorting pin is located on the external ring at 0.015m on the Y axis. A
simple way for realizing a short in a patch antenna was used by inserting a via hole joining the patch metallization and
the ground plane at the desired location1. Simulations of the antenna array were also performed considering a rectangular
ground plane separated from the array in the same way as in figure 1, by a distance equal to 3h. The pentagonal antenna
array with an external ring is shown in figure 4.

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 Fig. 4. Geometry of the pentagonal patch antenna array with an external ring.

In figure 5, the gain of the pentagonal patch antenna array is presented under linear polarization. A gain increment of
0.45 dBi is obtained compared to the case of the single pentagonal patch antenna.

Fig. 5. Gain of the pentagonal patch antenna array.

Simulation results corresponding to the S11 parameter (reflection coefficient) are shown in figure 6. The bandwidth of the
antenna array is 0.2451 GHz; this is slightly smaller than the single patch antenna case.

Fig. 6. S11 parameter of the pentagonal patch array.

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 As a summary, the sizes of the arrangement shown in figure 4 are given in Table 1 and Table 2. The radiuses correspond
to the circles where the inner pentagonal patch and the external pentagonal ring are inscribed (for the cases of the internal
and external borders). In Table 3, the coordinates of the feeding point and shorting pin are given.

Table 1. Sizes of the pentagonal antenna array.

External ring
Sizes Internal patch antenna
Internal sizes External sizes
Radius [m] 0.0125 0.0131 0.0167
Apothem [m] 0.0101 0.0106 0.0135
Length of the Sides [m] 0.0146 0.0154 0.0196

Table 2. Sizes of the substrate.

Width [m] 0.05082332

Large [m] 0.04926676
Thickness [m] 0.00317

Table 3. Location of feeding point and shorting pin.

Coordinates Feeding point Shorting pin

X [m] 0 0
Y [m] 0.006 0.015

3. SIMULATION RESULTS OF THE ADJUSTABLE PENTAGONAL ANTENNA

In order to observe the sensitivity in the bandwidth response of the S11 parameter, several designs of the external
rings were analyzed with varying sizes and under different operating frequencies. Results for bandwidth increase are
shown in Table 4. Table 5 shows the results of the bandwidth decrease case. The corresponding graphs are shown in
figures 7 and 8.

Table 4. Bandwidth of the patch antenna with an external ring. Increase case.

External patch antenna Bandwidth width % of increase compared with

(operation frequency design) [GHz] value [GHz] the pentagonal antenna
3.3 0.4805 35.0098
3.4 0.4597 29.1654
3.5 0.5446 53.4138

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 Fig. 7. Increase of the bandwidth. The reference level is given by the green curve (4.9 GHz) which corresponds to the case of the
single pentagonal antenna shown in figure 1.

Table 5. Bandwidth of the patch antenna with an external ring. Decrease case.
External patch antenna Bandwidth width % of decrease compared with
(operation frequency design) [GHz] value [GHz] the pentagonal antenna
4.1 0.2425 31.8628
4.3 0.2403 32.481
4.4 0.2081 41.5285
4.5 0.2034 42.8491

Fig. 8. Decrease of the bandwidth. The reference level is given by the black (bottom) curve at 4.9 GHz which corresponds to the
case of the single pentagonal antenna shown in figure 1.

As it can be observed in figures 7 and 8, the bandwidth increase is produced when the external ring is designed at
frequencies smaller than the operating frequency of the inner patch (wider rings). The bandwidth decrease corresponds to

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 the case when the external ring is designed at frequencies very near to the operating frequency of the central patch
(thinner rings).
The antenna with the largest bandwidth value, which produces an increment of 53.4138%, is shown in figure 9 and is
compared to the bandwidth of the single pentagonal antenna. The width of the external patch is of 0.0051 m.
The antenna case with the highest selectivity is shown in figure 10, which provides a decrease of 42.8491% compared to
the single pentagonal patch antenna. In this case, the width of the external patch is of 0.0016 m.

Fig. 9. Widest bandwidth obtained with the pentagonal antenna array (in black) and the response of the single pentagonal patch
antenna (in red).

Fig. 10. The response with the highest selectivity was obtained with the pentagonal antenna array (in red) and the response of the
single pentagonal patch antenna (in black).

4. DISCUSSION
An annular pentagonal array was chosen to obtain an antenna with adjustable bandwidth. The feed point was located
inside the pentagonal patch while a shorting pin is located on the external ring in order to produce a dual antenna array.
When the objective is increasing the bandwidth, these points are employed to locate one operating frequency very near to
the other one until they are joined producing a wide bandwidth response. The use of these points for tuning the resonance
frequencies has been employed in10.
Whereas when the objective is decreasing the bandwidth, a similar criterion is applied but the feed point and the shorting
pin are used to join the operating frequencies just to the point where they are overlapped. The size of the bandwidth
response is smaller than the case of the individual pentagonal antenna designed to operate at 4.9 GHz.

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 The last element that determines the bandwidth is the width of the external ring. When it is designed at frequencies near
the operating frequency (i.e. thinner width), the tuning of the points allows to obtain a smaller bandwidth. But when the
ring is designed to operate at smaller frequencies (i.e. wider rings) and again with the support of the feed point and
shorting pin locations, is it possible to get the operating frequencies responses very near, until de case where they
produce a wider bandwidth.

5. CONCLUSIONS
It has been demonstrated that with the configuration of a pentagonal antenna array including an external ring it is
possible to increase or decrease the bandwidth of the antenna. These results can be applied for designing prototypes
based on the desired application and operating frequency range. Bandwidth tuning is obtained based on three factors: the
duality produced by the patch antenna array, the location of the feed point and the shorting pin, and the width of the
external ring.
Although the simulated tuning range is relatively small for the particular antenna configuration presented in this work, it
is possible to further increase or decrease the bandwidth by means of additional rings. If this is to be the case, it is also
necessary to consider other substrates in order to yield smaller sizes and overall device footprint.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank to EM Software & Systems (USA) Inc., for FEKO license. J. G. Vera-Dimas and R. Cabello
Ruiz gratefully acknowledge financial support from CONACYT scholarships under grants 270210/219230 and
376566/248576, respectively.

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