2022 4th IEEE Middle East and North Africa COMMunications Conference (MENACOMM)

The Design of a Multi-Band Millimeter-Wave

Microstrip Antenna for 5G Applications
Amro M. Naser Yanal S. Faouri Abdul Jabbar
Electrical Engineering Department Electrical Engineering Department James Watt School of Engineering
2022 4th IEEE Middle East and North Africa COMMunications Conference (MENACOMM) | 978-1-6654-9411-3/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/MENACOMM57252.2022.9998239

The University of Jordan The University of Jordan University of Glasgow

Amman, Jordan Amman, Jordan United Kingdom
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Masood Ur Rehman
James Watt School of Engineering
University of Glasgow
United Kingdom

Abstract—A multiband compact crescent-shaped array of two elements [16] for the purpose of enhancing the
microstrip patch antenna is designed and proposed in this covered bandwidth and the achieved peak gain and radiation
paper. The antenna is fed by a microstrip feed line matched to efficiency.
50 Ohm. The designed antenna operates at four 5G resonant
frequencies: 25.6 GHz, 28 GHz, 31.7 GHz, and 37.35 GHz. The In this paper, a multi-band antenna crescent-shaped
antenna has a peak gain of 11.48 dBi at 32 GHz, with a antenna design is proposed for 5G communication. The
maximum radiation efficiency of 87 % at 34 GHz. The proposed proposed antenna resonates at 25.6, 28, 31.7, and 37.35 GHz
antenna design has a compact footprint of 26 x 20 mm. The with fractional bandwidths of 3.13%, 2.86%, 11.86%, and
antenna is easy to integrate with RF circuitry and is suitable for 6.29% respectively. In the next sections, the antenna design,
high throughput mmWave 5G communication. results, and performance will be discussed in detail, and
important characteristics will be discussed.
Keywords—5G antenna, mm-Wave, multi-band antenna,
28/38 GHz coverage. II. PROPOSED ANTENNA DESIGN
I. INTRODUCTION The proposed antenna is designed on an FR4 substrate with a
dielectric constant of 4.4 and a thickness of 1.6 mm. The
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication has attracted optimized size of the antenna is 26⨉20⨉1.6 mm3. The design
the attention of both academics and industry due to its evolution steps included a circular antenna shaped with a
numerous advantages such as high available bandwidth, high single resonance band. Then, a crescent-shaped patch was
throughput, narrow beams, low spectral interference, and constructed by two circles subtracted from each other with a
compact antenna sizes [1]. The demand for high data rates for shift of 3.05 mm between their centers, to obtain multiple
transmission and reception of high-definition videos, high- resonant bands. The width of the feed line, as well as substrate
speed communication, and large volumes of traffic is on a dimensions, were optimized to get better performance. The
constant rise. The sub-6 GHz microwave frequency bands finalized optimized dimensions and antenna geometry are
cannot meet the requirements in terms of high bandwidth. shown in Fig. 1.
These unprecedented demands necessitate taking
additional measures toward a new spectrum and reallocating
big operating bands to higher frequencies. Consequently,
mmWave bands offer huge potential for 5G and beyond
communication systems [2].
Since an antenna is the gateway of a communication
system, thus a huge proliferation in mmWave antenna designs
research has occurred. Because of the short wavelength of
mmWaves, compact and directive array antenna designs can
be achieved. Given the current trend of integrating systems
and numerous applications on a single-user platform, ultra-
wideband (UWB) or multi-band antennas containing the
required multiple bands for compact RF circuitry are very
desirable. In [3], a compact UWB antenna has been proposed
from 23.5 GHz to 65 GHz covering most of the 5G frequency
bands. Moreover, a plethora of mmWave antennas have been
reported in the literature for 5G communication, for instance
[4-7], to list but a few.
Several antennae to support 5G communications, mainly
the sub-6 GHz band, have been reported in the literature [8-
16]. A compact microstrip antenna with a circular slot and an
E-parasitic element inside it has been proposed in [10] above (a)
a partially elliptical ground to cover most of the FR1 and FR2
bands belonging to 5G communication. Then this antenna is
easily expanded to operate in a MIMO system [13] or as an

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978-1-6654-9411-3/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE 1
 2022 4th IEEE Middle East and North Africa COMMunications Conference (MENACOMM)

imaginary part is around zero at the four resonant frequencies

which indicate good impedance matching.

Fig. 2. The reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna.

(b)

(c) Fig. 3. The VSWR of the proposed antenna design.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed antenna. (a) Top view. (b)
Bottom view. (c) Fabricated sample.

TABLE I. THE OPTIMIZED DIMENSIONS OF THE PROPOSED

ANTENNA
Parameter Size (mm) Parameter Size (mm)
LS 20 WS 26
Lf 10.3 Wf 4.8
Ri 4.84 RO 6

III. SIMULATED RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The proposed antenna design is simulated in ANSYS
HFSS. Simulations were performed using the SMA connector
model to include realistic connector effects in the results. The
reflection coefficient of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. Fig. 4. The real and imaginary impedance of the designed antenna
2. It exhibits four resonant bands of 25.08 to 26.24 GHz, 27.6
to 28.4 GHz, 30.62 to 34.68 GHz, and 36.36 to 38.71 GHz The peak realized gain of the proposed antenna along with
with a 10 dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 3.13%, 2.86%, its radiation efficiency is shown in Fig. 5. The antenna
11.86%, and 6.29% respectively. The antenna covers the n258 achieves a gain of 7.94 dBi, 7.13 dBi, 11.44 dBi, and 8.41 dBi
(26 GHz), n257 and n261 (28 GHz), and n260 (38 GHz) bands at the proposed bands as shown in Fig. 5(a), whereas the
which belong to the primary bands of the 5G FR2 spectrum. radiation efficiency plotted in Fig. 5(b) shows an efficiency of
The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) is less than 2 (1.7, 80%, 62%, 83%, and 68% for the four resonances
1.5, 1.33, and 1.56 at the four mentioned resonances respectively. The maximum peak realized gain of the
respectively), as shown in Fig. 3. proposed antenna is 11.48 dBi at 32 GHz and the maximum
Figure 4 demonstrates the real and imaginary input radiation efficiency of 87 % is achieved at 34 GHz.
impedance, where the real part is closer to 50 ohms while the

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 2022 4th IEEE Middle East and North Africa COMMunications Conference (MENACOMM)

(a)

(a)

(b)

Fig. 5. Proposed antenna a) peak realized gain and b) radiation efficiency.

Figure 6 shows the co-polarized radiation pattern of the

designed antenna at the four resonant frequencies. Both E-
plane (𝜙 = 0°) and H-plane (𝜙 = 90° ) are acquired with (b)
several major and side lobes due to the higher number of
modes that are propagated at these frequencies. When the
antenna operates at a frequency of 28 GHz, the directivity is
maximized at 𝜃 = 90°, with another main lobe at 𝜃 = 40° as
viewed in Fig. 6(b). On the other hand, at 37.35 GHz, the
directivity is oriented towards 𝜃 = 75° as plotted in Fig. 6(d).
The radiation patterns exhibit grating lobes in the H-plane,
which might be occurred due to the sharp endings of the
crescent-shaped patch. Some techniques such as chamfering
the edges of the path, and smooth transition in a crescent shape
might be useful to reduce the side love levels.
Figure 7 reveals the three-dimensional view of the
proposed antenna gain at one of the resonances namely 28
GHz. The pattern has a deteriorated behavior due to the higher
number of modes being propagated at this frequency and the
total gain reaches 7.31 dB.
Table II lists a comparison of the proposed antenna with
other related works in the literature. Based on the table the
proposed antenna has a compatible size with better gain and
efficiency even for multiband operation. (c)

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 2022 4th IEEE Middle East and North Africa COMMunications Conference (MENACOMM)

IV. CONCLUSION
A compact and low-cost planar multi-band mmWave
microstrip patch antenna is designed in this paper. The
proposed antenna resonates at multiple 5G mmWave bands
such as 25.6, 28, 31.7, and 37.35 GHz. The antenna manifests
sufficient average realized gain of about 8 dBi and radiation
efficiency at the designed bands. It is worth mentioning that
the designed antenna reflection coefficient based on the -6 dB
line which can be considered as a threshold for multiband
antenna has a super wide band starting from 24 GHz to beyond
40 GHz. The proposed antenna is easy to integrate with the
mmWave RF front and is suitable for mmWave 5G
communication.

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