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190 PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY, ISSN 0033-2097, R. 97 NR 11/2021
1. Hussam Keriee1,2, 2. Mohamad Kamal A. Rahim1, 3. Osman Ayop1, 4. Nawres Abbas Nayyef4,
5. Ahmed Jamal Abdullah Al-Gburi3, 6. B.A.F Esmail1, 7. Syed Muzahir Abbas5
1Advance RF and Microwave Research Group (ARFMRG), School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia, UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, 81310, Malaysia
2Department of Medical Equipment Techniques, Al-Hadi University Collage, 10022, Baghdad, Iraq
3Faculty of Electronics and Computer Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia (UTeM)
4Ministry of Interior Affairs, Baghdad, Iraq
5School of Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
ORCID: 1. 0000-0002-1445-6637; 2. 0000-0002-5488-9277; 3. 0000-0001-8162-739; 5. 0000-0002-5305-3937
doi:10.15199/48.2021.11.35
Wideband Planar Microstrip Antenna Based on Split Ring
Resonator For 5G Mobile Applications
Abstract. This paper presents a wideband planar microstrip antenna based on split ring resonator left-handed metamaterial (SRR-LHM) type at 3.5
GHz frequency for mid-band 5G mobile applications. The need to design a wideband antenna with good gain realising the proposed lower band
spectrum for 5G technology is urgently demanded. To meet the requirements, microstrip technology and metamaterial are proposed. Firstly, the
microstrip antenna is designed with a square patch and two longitude slots at 3.5 GHz. The metamaterial unit cell is designed individually based on
the split ring resonator (left-handed metamaterial) SRR LHM type and then integrated with the developed antenna at the same band. The
metamaterial is placed on the ground plane of the microstrip antenna. That will increase the bandwidth accordingly. The proposed metamaterial
antenna is simulated and optimised using CST software. A good return loss of greater than 10 dB and impedance bandwidth of 1.04 GHz is
obtained. This metamaterial antenna is a good candidate for mid-band 5G applications.
Streszczenie. W artykule przedstawiono szerokopasmową planarną antenę mikropaskową opartą na lewoskrętnym metamateriale z rezonatorem
pierścieniowym (SRR-LHM) o częstotliwości 3,5 GHz do zastosowań mobilnych 5G w średnim paśmie. Pilnie potrzebna jest potrzeba
zaprojektowania anteny szerokopasmowej z dobrym wzmocnieniem, realizującej proponowane dolne pasmo widma dla technologii 5G. Aby sprostać
wymaganiom, proponuje się technologię mikropaskową i metamateriał. Po pierwsze, antena mikropaskowa została zaprojektowana z kwadratową
łatą i dwoma szczelinami długości geograficznej o częstotliwości 3,5 GHz. Komórka elementarna metamateriału jest projektowana indywidualnie w
oparciu o dzielony rezonator pierścieniowy (metamateriał lewoskrętny) typu SRR LHM, a następnie integrowana z opracowaną anteną w tym samym
paśmie. Metamateriał umieszcza się na płaszczyźnie uziemienia anteny mikropaskowej. To odpowiednio zwiększy przepustowość. Proponowana
antena metamateriałowa jest symulowana i optymalizowana za pomocą oprogramowania CST. Uzyskuje się dobrą tłumienność odbiciową większą
niż 10 dB i szerokość pasma impedancji 1,04 GHz. Ta antena metamateriałowa jest dobrym kandydatem do zastosowań 5G w średnim paśmie.
(Szerokopasmowa planarna antena mikropaskowa oparta na rezonatorze z dzielonym pierścieniem do zastosowań mobilnych 5G)
Keywords: Metamaterials, SRR LHM, Wideband planar, Mid band 5G.
Słowa kluczowe: antena szerokopasmowa, antena planarna, 5G.
Introduction
5G technology is proposed to provide huge
communications and capacity. In order to accommodate
such communications, the cellular network has to
dramatically increase its capacity. In this regard, in order to
accommodate such massive communications, it is
forecasted that 5G network has to provide 1000 times
higher capacity than the current system [1]. The increasing
need for high gain antenna and compact size for industrial
[2-7], In the same time, 5G technology should also provide
the smallest size of devices and reduces the losses from
the path loss and components as well [8-11]. At lower
frequency (5G lower frequency), two important issues are
raised. The first one is the antenna should provide a higher
bandwidth of more than 1 GHz to achieve the required 5G
bands [1]. The second issue is the size of the whole
antenna integrated into other arrays [12-15]. Since 5G
technology needs to have compact size devices. Microstrip
technology was proposed for the implementation of the
antenna array since it's a low loss transmission line and can
provide wideband bandwidth [16-18]. At the same time,
metamaterial structures are proposed for compacting the
size of the antenna and devices and increasing the
bandwidth and the gain of the whole system [19],[20].
Microstrip technology is lower millimetre-wave bands
has low gain and power handling capabilities. Therefore,
metamaterials technologies have been proposed as a
promising solution to realise the lower millimetre-wave
antenna. Several works on microstrip metamaterials
antenna at millimetre-wave bands have been presented in
[21-25]. Microstrip with metamaterial antennas with high
gain is introduced in [21], [22]. However, the size of the
antennas is quite bulky, with a narrow bandwidth of 400
MHz. An omnidirectional microstrip metamaterial antenna is
introduced in [23]. The measured gain is relatively meagre,
4 dB, besides the bulky size and narrower bandwidth.
Another type of metamaterial antenna is proposed in [24].
The design is realised by implementing two radiation slots
on the cavity surface of the microstrip at 5 GHz. However,
high side lobes are reported. Additionally, to the wildly
CRLH structure mushroom structure implementation in [25].
Despite the excellent size reduction of up to 50%, these
designs exploit a fractional bandwidth of 1.75%, which is
not preferred at lower millimetre-wave bands
Therefore, this paper aims to design and simulate a
planar wideband microstrip antenna with CRLH
metamaterial at 3.5 GHz. Firstly, the design procedures are
discussed in section 2, including planar microstrip antenna
design, metamaterial unit design, and planar microstrip
antenna integrated with metamaterial. Secondly, the
simulated and measured performance of the proposed
metamaterial antenna is demonstrated in section 3. Finally,
the outcomes of this paper are concluded in section 4.
Planar microstrip antenna with metamaterial design
method
The proposed planar microstrip antenna structure is
illustrated in Figure.1. The parameters of the microstrip
antenna should be taken into consideration. The
parameters can be found by [4], [9]:
(1)
where w is the patch width, fr is the resonant frequency,
and ε_r is the substrate dielectric constant. The effective
dielectric constant can be calculated using [24].
PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY, ISSN 0033-2097, R. 97 NR 11/2021 191
(a) (b)
Fig.1. The proposed planar microstrip antenna. (a) available patch,
(b) modified patch with two slots.
The simulated return loss of the proposed modified
microstrip antenna is illustrated in Figure. 2. A parametric
study is done by investigating the effect of adding two slots
to the original patch in figure 1 (a). It can be noticed from
the simulated response that increases the slot number
leads to an increase in the return loss and shifts the
frequency to the desired 3.5 GHz.
Fig. 2. The initial response of the modified antenna with respect to
the general structure.
Metamaterial Unit Cell Design
The proposed design of the metamaterial CRLH unit cell
is shown in Figure 3. The desired goal of the unit cell is to
resonance at the frequency of 3.5 GHz for 5G mobile
applications as the first case. The unit cell consists of four
square metal strip square ring with a thickness of t1. The
length and width of each strip square are defined as Lm ×
Wm. The design parameters of the proposed unit cell are
found in Table 1. The unit cell structure is implemented on
FR4 substrate, with a dielectric constant of 4.6 and 0.002
loss tangent as implemented in [26-29].
Fig..3. The proposed CRLH metamaterial design. The variables of
the proposed CRLH metamaterial (All dimensions in mm)
Table 1. Geometries of the proposed antenna
Variable Definition value
Lm Length of outer square 6.5
Wm Width of outer square 6.5
g Gap between each square 0.25
s Width of all squares 0.5
d Split width of cut 0.5
L1 Length of second square 6
L2 Length of third square 4.5
W1 Width of second square 6
W2 Width of third square 4.5
L3 Length of fourth square 3
W3 Width of fourth square 3
The S-parameters (S11, S21) of the proposed CRLH
metamaterial is illustrated in Figure. 4(a). The simulated
responses show a 3 dB transmission peak at 3.5 GHz with
an impedance bandwidth up to 4 GHz, denoting a
left‐handed band. Figure. 4 (b) shows both permeability (μ)
and negative permittivity (ε) as negative values, which
covers a bandwidth from 2 GHz to 4 GHz.
a)
b)
Fig.4. Unit cell response. (a) S-parameters, (b) Permeability and
Permittivity.
Integrated Antenna with Metamaterial Unit
The geometric structure of the proposed antenna based
on previously‐designed, zero‐index with metamaterial unit
cell is shown in Figure 5 CRLH is placed on the back of
substrate with two units behind the feed line and four units
behind the patch.
192 PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY, ISSN 0033-2097, R. 97 NR 11/2021
a) b)
c) d)
Fig. 5. The proposed geometry of the antenna with metamaterial
unit cell. (a) front view, (b) back view with one unit cell, (b) with two
unit cells, (c) final configuration.
The comparison graph of the simulated reflection
coefficient of the proposed antenna is shown in Figure.6.
The antenna with six units MTT has a bandwidth of 1.04
GHz compared to the proposed antenna with 1 and 2 unit
cells of 600 MHz and 800 MHz, respectively. The reflection
of -23.5 dB is obtained when six units MTT at 3.5 GHz.
Fig. .6. The comparison of reflections between the proposed
antennas MTM at 3.5 GHz.
Fig.7. 2D radiation pattern with and without MTT at 3.5 GHz.
As a result, the comparison radiation pattern between
the antennas with and without MTT is shown in Figure.7. It
can clearly notice that when adding the MTT to the antenna,
the gain and directivity increase. The gain is increased to be
5.24 dB, and the directivity is about 5.3 dB compared to the
antenna without MTT OF 2.85 dB.
Hence, from the above parametric study, the final
design parameters for microstrip antenna and metamaterial
unit cell can be found in Table 2. The structure in
Table 2. The final parameters values of the proposed microstrip
metamaterial antenna at 3.5 GHz (All dimensions in mm) (obtained
from Figure 1 (b)).
Variable Value
Ls 30
Ws 40
L 33
W 11
LSlot 17
WSlot 2
WSlot2 1
Lfeed 15
Wfeed 2.6
Lgap 10.4
Wgap 2.5
Results and discussion
The prototype of the printed metamaterial antenna is
shown in Figure.8. A comparison graph of the simulated
and measured return loss of the proposed metamaterial
antenna is plotted in Figure 9. A measured return loss of -
15 dB with impedance bandwidth of 900 MHz has been
obtained compared to the simulated return loss of -23 dB
and bandwidth of 1.04 GHz at 3.5 GHz.
a) b)
Fig.8. The prototype of a metamaterial antenna. (a) Front view, (b)
back view.
Fig. 9. Simulated return loss of the proposed metamaterial antenna.
PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY, ISSN 0033-2097, R. 97 NR 11/2021 193
The comparison of measured and simulated radiation
patterns is shown in Figure. 10. It can be clearly noticed
that when adding the MTT to the antenna, the directivity
slightly increased. However, two beams are observed. This
could be related to the two slots in the structure which
produces a second beam. It is also observed that the back
lobe is about 0 dB. This mainly comes from the back
radiation of the unit cell of the antenna. Therefore, further
investigations should be done in the future on the
metamaterial array as an absorber on the back of the
antenna structure to reduce this unwanted radiation.
Fig. 10. Measured and simulated radiation pattern at 3.5 GHz.
Conclusion
A wideband metamaterial antenna at 3.5 GHz is
presented for lower 5G bands applications. The
metamaterial cell is designed based on CRLH SRR types at
3.5 GHz with negative permeability and permittivity values.
The CRLH SRR cell is integrated on the bottom metal layer
of the microstrip patch and placed behind the feed line. The
performance of the metamaterial antenna showed a good
response with a return loss greater than 10 dB and a
bandwidth of 1.02 GHz. The obtained gain is about 4.8 dB.
These results indicate a promising way to further work on
designing an antenna array based on metamaterials for the
5G applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Higher
Education (MOHE), School of Postgraduate Studies (SPS),
Research Management Centre, Advanced RF and
Microwave Research Group, School of Electrical
Engineering and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM),
Johor Bahru, for the support of the research under Grant
4B588, 09G19 and 4B590.
Authors Hussam Keriee, UTM university, sam22.utm@gmail.com.
Prof. Dr. Mohamad Kamal A. Rahim, UTM
university, mkamal@fke.utm.my. Dr. Osman Ayop, UTM university,
osmanayop@utm.my. Nawres Abbas Nayyef,
Nawrasabbas1@gmail.com. Dr. Ahmed Jamal Abdullah Al-Gburi,
UTeM university, engahmed_jamall@yahoo.com. Bashar Ali Farea
Esmail, UTM university, afbashar@utm.my. Syed Muzahir Abbas,
Macquarie University, syed.abbas @mq.edu.au.
Corresponding author: Ahmed Jamal Abdullah Al-Gburi
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