Finite difference time domain analysis of fractal antennas used in wireless communications

The advances in wireless technology and the ever-growing demand for multiband and smaller antennas in wireless communications has led to the field of mathematics known as fractal. The use of fractal geometry in antenna design has created a significant amount of interest within the wireless communications societies and most importantly, antenna design. This thesis investigates the performance and optimization of fractal antennas used in wireless communications. The principle analytical tool utilized in the study is the Finite Difference Time Domain technique (FDTD). This numerical method was applied to calculate the electromagnetic propagation characteristics of the Sierpinski gasket and Koch snowflake fractal antennas. Numerical results were computed for the two fractal antennas and compared to a conventional antenna. The input impedance, radiation pattern, the return loss and far field condition of these antennas are computed and analyzed. The Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulated results were collected and showed to be in good agreement

Design and Analysis of Fractal Monopole Antennas for Multiband Wireless Applications

In this report three antenna designs using fractal geometry have been proposed. Fractal is a concept which is being employed in patch antenna to have better characteristics than conventional microstrip antenna. In the first design, a Sierpinski fractal antenna is proposed for multiband wireless applications. It consists of three-stage Sierpinski fractal geometry as the radiating element. The proposed antenna has compact dimension of 75×89.5×1.5 mm3. The multiband characteristic for a return loss less than 10dB is achieved. The model is applied to predict the behavior of fractal antenna when the height of the antenna is changed. The proposed antenna is considered a good candidate for Multiband Wireless applications. In the second proposal, a Sierpinski Carpet fractal antenna is proposed for multiband wireless applications. It consists of two-stage Sierpinski Carpet fractal geometry as the radiating element. The proposed antenna has compact dimension of 59.06×47.16×1.6 mm3. The multiband characteristic for a return loss less than 10dB is achieved. The major advantage of Sierpinski Carpet antenna is, it exhibits high self-similarity and symmetry. In the third proposal, multiband Koch curve antenna with fractal concept is presented. It consists of two-stage Koch curve as the radiating element. The proposed antenna is a compact dimension of 88×88×1.6 mm3. The multiband characteristic for a return loss less than 10dB is achieved. The proposed design is appropriate for mobile communication systems. CST Microwave Studio Suite 2012 is used to simulate these antennas. All the proposed antennas are fabricated on FR4 substrate of relative permittivity of 4.4 and height 1.6mm has been used

Fractal Antenna Applications

Non

Design of Pentagonal Fractal Antenna for Ultra Wideband Applications

Ultra Wide band fractal antenna based on pentagonal geometry has been proposed in this thesis. Fractal shapes and their properties are discussed. The proposed antenna is microstrip line fed and its structure is based on fractal geometry where the resonance frequency of antenna is lowered by applying iteration techniques. Analysis of fractal antenna is done by using Software named CST Microwave Studio Suite 12. This antenna has low profile, is lightweight and easy to be fabricated and has successfully demonstrated multiband and broadband characteristics. The antenna size inclusive of the ground plane is compact with dimensions 7 X 7 cm2 and has wide operating bandwidths of 8 GHz. The antenna exhibits omnidirectional direction radiation coverage with a gain from 2 to 6.5 dBi in the entire operating band. Measured results show that this antenna operates from 4.7 to 12.7 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of above 90% and has relatively stable radiation patterns over its whole operation band

Investigations on some compact wideband fractal antennas

Today’s small handheld and other portable devices challenge antenna designers for ultrathin, and high performances that have the ability to meet multi standards. In the context, fractal geometries have significant role for antenna applications with varying degree of success in improving antenna characteristics. In this thesis, we have investigated several wideband fractal monopole antennas. This work starts with design and implementation of Koch fractal, hybrid fractal, sectoral fractal, semi-circle fractal monopole antennas with discussion, covering their operations, electrical behavior and performances. The performances of these designs have been studied using standard simulation tools used in industry/academia and are experimentally verified. Frequency reconfigurable Koch snowflake fractal monopole antenna is also introduced. The present antenna can be used as an array element and has a wideband frequency of operation. A square Sierpinski monopole antenna has been designed, which is suitable for use in indoor UWB radio system and outdoor base station communication systems. Technique for obtaining a band stop function in the 5-6 GHz frequency band is numerically and experimentally presented. In addition to examining the performance of UWB system, the transfer function and waveform distortion are discussed. Finally, fractal antenna for array with MIMO environment is developed for mobile communication devices. Aim of this work is to achieve the acceptable performances in terms of isolation, envelope correlation coefficient, capacity loss, radiation patterns and efficiency. Furthermore, a wideband feed network prototype based on a modified Wilkinson power divider is designed. The designed feed network has been used in constructing 2-element and 4-element linear antenna arrays for high gain. This research work has addressed the effectiveness of fractal geometries in antenna and to bring-out the true advantages of their in antenna engineering

Fractal Antennas for Wireless Communications

When the length of the antenna is less than a quarter of the wavelength of the operating frequency, good radiation properties are difficult to obtain. However, size limitations can be overcome in this case using a fractal geometry antenna. The shape is repeated in a limited size such that the total length of the antenna is increased to match, for example, half of the wavelength of the corresponding desired frequency. Many fractal geometries, e.g., the tree, Koch, Minkowski, and Hilbert fractals, are available. This chapter describes the details of designing, simulations, and experimental measurements of fractal antennas. Based on dimensional geometry in terms of desired frequency bands, the characteristics of each iteration are studied carefully to improve the process of designing the antennas. In depth, the surface current distribution is investigated and analyzed to enhance the circular polarization radiation and axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW). Both, simulation and experimental, results are discussed and compared. Two types of fractal antennas are proposed. The first proposed fractal antenna has a new structure configured via a five-stage process. The second proposed fractal antenna has a low profile, wherein the configuration of the antenna was based on three iterations

New Compact Wideband Microstrip Antenna for Wireless Applications

In this paper, a miniature rectangular microstrip antenna over partial ground plane is presented by utilizing a space-filling property of fractal geometry in this design. It is simulated by High Frequency Software Simulator (HFSS) software, fabricated and tested by Vector Network Analyzer (VNA).Two types of slots are introduced in order to enhance antenna parameters such as bandwidth and return loss S1.1. This antenna is fabricated on FR4 substrate with a small size of (18 x 16 x 1.5) mm3, 1.5mm substrate thickness, 4.3 permittivity and 0.02 loss tangent. To feed this antenna,  microstrip line feed is used. This antenna is implemented for wide bandwidth (4.8-11.6) GHz, and has three resonant frequencies at 5.5GHz, 8.3GHz and 10.7GHz with impedance bandwidth of 6.8GHz. The gap value g between partial ground plane and rectangular patch at top layer is optimized in order to achieve optimal simulated return loss S1.1 is (-46,-32,-14) dB at three resonant frequencies (5.5, 8.3, 10.7) GHz and optimal radiation efficiency of 93.42% with gain of 3.63dB. The simulated results have tolerable agreement with measured results. This antenna is suitable for wireless computer applications within  C and X band  communications

Fractal Geometry: An Attractive Choice for Miniaturized Planar Microwave Filter Design

Various fractal geometries are characterized by the self-similarity and space-filling properties. The space-filling feature has been successfully applied to design multiband antenna structures for a wide variety of multifunction wireless systems. On another hand, the second feature has proved its validity to produce miniaturized antennas and passive microwave circuits including the band-pass filters (BPF). This chapter demonstrates the design of miniaturized microstrip BPFs that are derived from fractal-based DGS resonators. Many microstrip BPFs based on the Minkowski fractal DGS resonators will be presented together with those based on Moore and Peano fractal geometries. Simulation results, of all of the presented BPFs, show that an extra-size reduction can be obtained as the iteration level becomes higher. Measured and simulated results agree well with each other. A comparison has been conducted with other filters based on Peano and Hilbert fractal geometries. The results reveal that the proposed BPF offers acceptable performance and a significant decrease of higher harmonics

Fractals in Antennas and Metamaterials Applications

Recently, telecommunication systems have been requiring more advanced features in the design and operation. Among others a smaller size of devices, which can be integrated for multiple mobile communication systems, applied in one user’s device board, such as PDA or smart phone. Moreover, the cost of mass production should be minimized as much as possible. To meet part of that request, the antennas of these devices should have small size, lower weight, operating in multiple frequency bands and/or be broadband. There are many research methods to achieve this goal, one of which is using the fractal geometries for the shape of antenna elements. In recent years, there are many fractal shapes that have been proposed for such applications, and the designed antennas have significantly improved antenna features such as smaller size, operating in multi-frequency bands, with improved power gain and efficiency. In recent years, the new approach for modern antenna the metamaterials, MTM, is adopted, and sometimes that based on the fractal geometry is adopted

Synthetic aperture radar-based techniques and reconfigurable antenna design for microwave imaging of layered structures

In the past several decades, a number of microwave imaging techniques have been developed for detecting embedded objects (targets) in a homogeneous media. New applications such as nondestructive testing of layered composite structures, through-wall and medical imaging require more advanced imaging systems and image reconstruction algorithms (post-processing) suitable for imaging inhomogeneous (i.e., layered) media. Currently-available imaging algorithms are not always robust, easy to implement, and fast. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) techniques are some of the more prominent approaches for image reconstruction when considering low loss and homogeneous media. To address limitations of SAR imaging, when interested in imaging an embedded object in an inhomogeneous media with loss, two different methods are introduced, namely; modified piecewise SAR (MPW-SAR) and Wiener filter-based layered SAR (WL-SAR). From imaging system hardware point-of-view, microwave imaging systems require suitable antennas for signal transmission and data collection. A reconfigurable antenna which its characteristics can be dynamically changed provide significant flexibility in terms of beam-forming, reduction in unwanted noise and multiplicity of use including for imaging applications. However, despite these potentially advantageous characteristics, the field of reconfigurable antenna design is fairly new and there is not a methodical design procedure. This issue is addressed by introducing an organized design method for a reconfigurable antenna capable of operating in several distinct frequency bands. The design constraints (e.g., size and gain) can also be included. Based on this method, a novel reconfigurable coplanar waveguide-fed slot antenna is designed to cover several different frequency bands while keeping the antenna size as small as possible --Abstract, page iii