IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2005

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Microstrip Antennas With Suppressed Radiation in Horizontal Directions and Reduced Coupling
Marija M. Nikolic, Antonije R. Djordjevic, and Arye Nehorai, Fellow, IEEE
AbstractMicrostrip (patch) antennas usually strongly radiate in directions along the ground plane. This effect causes unwanted radiation patterns and increased coupling among array elements. Dielectric polarization currents are identied as physical sources of this radiation. A general technique is proposed to compensate these currents and suppress radiation in horizontal directions. Index TermsAntenna array mutual coupling, antenna radiation patterns, microstrip antennas, microstrip arrays.

I. INTRODUCTION

ICROSTRIP (patch) antennas are known to strongly radiate in directions along the ground plane [1]. The gain in a horizontal direction can be only a few dB below the gain in the zenith direction. This radiation is undesirable in many cases, so that it has to be suppressed. However, the radiation is low if antennas are printed on low-permittivity substrates (like foam) or located in the air, when the gain in horizontal directions is typically 20 dB lower than in the zenith direction. Another problem is encountered in arrays of patches that are printed on the same substrate: strong coupling among the array elements. For thicker substrates, the transmission coefcient to [1], among adjacent elements is on the order of [2]. This coupling is also undesirable in vector sensors [3], [4]. The coupling can be attributed to the following phenomena near-eld coupling; far-eld coupling; surface-wave coupling. The near-eld coupling occurs when one antenna is in the near-eld zone of another antenna. This coupling is not clearly recognized in the literature, although it can dominate when antennas are closely spaced. A typical example is an antenna array printed on a low-permittivity substrate. In this case, the wavelength in the substrate is close to the free-space wavelength. The dimensions of a patch are close to the center-to-center spacing between adjacent array elements, so that the clearance between two adjacent elements can be relatively small. The near-eld

coupling is reduced with increasing the separation between adjacent antennas. It diminishes typically for 12 or 18 dB when the distance between the antennas is doubled. The far-eld coupling is due to the patch radiation in horizontal directions. This coupling diminishes for 6 dB when the distance between the antennas is doubled. This coupling can be efciently reduced only if the antenna radiation in horizontal directions is suppressed. A patch antenna excites surface waves, which are guided by the substrate and the ground plane [5]. The surface-wave coupling diminishes only for 3 dB when the distance between the antennas is doubled. This coupling is important only when the is on the order of normalized substrate electrical thickness (1)

Manuscript received December 13, 2004, revised May 24, 2005. The work of M. M. Nikolic and A. R. Djordjevic was supported in part by the Serbian Ministry for Science and Environmental Protection. The work of A. Nehorai was supported by the Air Force Ofce of Scientic Research under Grants F49620-02-1-0339 and FA9550-04-1-0187. M. M. Nikolic and A. Nehorai are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL 60607 USA (e-mail: mnikolic@kondor.etf.bg.ac.yu; nehorai@ece.uic.edu). A. R. Djordjevic is with the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, 11120 Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro (e-mail: edjordja@etf.bg.ac.yu). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2005.858847

or larger [6], where is the substrate thickness, the freethe relative permittivity of the subspace wavelength, and strate. Extensive computed and experimental data are available in the literature for the radiation pattern of microstrip antennas and for coupling among such antennas. Various measures are suggested to reduce the far eld and the surface-wave coupling. However, the two coupling mechanisms and their contributions are not clearly distinguished in some papers: the surface-wave coupling is treated, whereas examples are given for cases when this coupling does not dominate. An efcient technique for reducing the coupling is machining the dielectric below the patch [2], so that there is air below the patch, but the authors say that they cannot provide an explanation why this technique is successful. Some techniques are explicitly designed to suppress the surface waves. They include optimizing the antenna dimensions so that the surface wave is not excited [1], [7], grooving the dielectric [2], covering the patch by additional dielectric layers [8], or making the dielectric be a bandgap structure by printing various patterns on it [9], [10]. The physics of the surface-wave coupling has been covered adequately in the literature. Hence, in Section II, we concentrate our attention on the rst two coupling mechanisms, which are usually dominant for antennas printed on thinner substrates. The strong radiation along the ground plane and the strong far-eld coupling occur simultaneously. We have established that they have the same cause and same remedies. In Section III, we identify the physical source of this radiation and coupling: polarization currents in the dielectric substrate underneath the

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patches. The effect of the polarization currents exists even when the surface waves cannot propagate at all. In Section IV, we propose an approach for suppressing this radiation and the related coupling. We introduce a system of conducting currents that cancel out the effect of the polarization currents. To that purpose, we design an array of pins that interconnect the patch and the ground. We adjust the currents of the pins by dimensioning their radii and locations. Computations presented in the paper were carried out using program WIPL-D1 of [11]. All major results and conclusions are veried by extensive experiments. The discussion and results are presented only for rectangular antennas, but they are applicable to any antenna shape and operating mode. II. NEAR-FIELD AND FAR-FIELD COUPLING We consider a rectangular patch antenna, shown in Fig. 1(a), as well as pairs of such antennas. As an example, followed throughout the paper, the substrate is FR-4 (unless stated oth, the relative erwise), the substrate thickness is , and the loss tangent is permittivity is [12]. FR-4 is a substrate with pronounced losses. To exclude the inuence of the losses on the conclusions presented in this paper, we have also investigated antennas on a lossless substrate of the same thickness and permittivity. We have obtained similar results as for FR-4. The patch length is and the width is . The antenna is designed for the rst resonant frequency at ( ). The patch is fed by a coaxial line, whose location is determined by the dimension . The conductor is copper, whose conductivity is , and the metallization . To model properly the increased conthickness is ductor losses due to the surface roughness, in the program, the conductivity is reduced 4 times. In the computational models, the ground plane is innite, unless otherwise stated. In the experimental models, the ground plane is nite and extends at least half wavelength around the antennas. According to (1), the surface waves on FR-4 can be neglected at 2.15 GHz and they become pronounced only above 4.5 GHz. To verify this statement, we have compared two distinct antenna designs. One is classic, shown in Fig. 1(a), where the dielectric extends far away from the antenna. The second design, shown in Fig. 1(b), eliminates any possibility of the inuence of the surface waves on the coupling and the radiation pattern. In this design, the dielectric exists only underneath a patch or just slightly around it. The surface waves cannot exist in this structure, as there is no dielectric slab to support them. An array of such antennas resembles cookies placed on a large metallic tray (the ground plane). In this design, only the near- and the far-eld coupling exist. For the given resonant frequency, the dimensions of the clas, , and . sical antenna are of a For the same resonant frequency, the dimensions and

Fig. 1. Top and side view of (a) classical microstrip antenna and (b) microstrip antenna with the dielectric only under the patch (cookie). (c) Coordinate system for coupled antennas.

cookie are slightly larger (for about 2 mm). This is due to different edge effects in the two cases. We have performed extensive computations and experimental verications comparing the two designs. No signicant difference in the coupling and the radiation pattern has been observed, for the given substrate data, the operating frequency, and the distances between coupled antennas consider here.

1In this program, the dielectric is always nite. The program properly calculates coupling due to surface waves. When evaluating the radiation pattern, the surface waves are not included.

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Fig. 2. Coupling between a pair of microstrip antennas, versus the distance between the antenna feeds, at the resonant frequency, when the offset is along coordinate (a) x and (b) y . Results for three cases are shown: antennas located in the air, classic antennas printed on FR-4, and antennas with compensated dielectric, printed on FR-4 (described in Section IV). Computed results for the printed antennas are shown for realistic substrate parameters, and also when dielectric losses are neglected. Isolated dots are experimental results.

In this section, we evaluate the coupling, at the resonant frequency, between a pair of identical microstrip antennas, printed on FR-4 and located on the same ground plane. In one case, the antennas are offset along the axis, like antennas #1 and #2 in Fig. 1(c). In another case, the antennas are offset along the axis, like antennas #1 and #3. The offset is varied beand . If one antenna is excited, the other antween tenna is located in the eld of the rst antenna, so that the two antennas are coupled. The coupling (Fig. 2) is substantially stronger when the antennas are offset along the axis. In this direction, the far-eld coupling dominates (decay of 6 dB per doubled spacing). The near-eld coupling dominates when the antennas are offset along the axis (decay of 12 dB per doubled spacing) because the radiation pattern has a deep null in the direction (as will be shown in Section III). In both cases, if the dielectric losses were not present, the coupling would be about

10 dB stronger. (The conductor losses have a negligible effect on the results.) This is illustrated in Fig. 2 by presenting results for lossless classic antennas. In Fig. 2, for comparison, we also show the coupling be, tween patch antennas without dielectric (with , and ). The antennas are located in the air at the same height above the ground plane as the metallization of the classic patches. In the experimental model, the antennas are made of a tin and supported by the pins of the SMA connectors. To obtain the same resonant frequency as for of the the antennas printed on FR-4, the dimensions and times larger than the antenna located in the air are about dimensions of the corresponding classic antenna on FR-4. (The effective permittivity is close to the relative permittivity of the .) substrate because the substrate is thin, i.e., because When the distance between the antennas is larger than about one wavelength, the maximal coupling between the antennas located in the air is smaller than for the classic patch antennas. (The if the dielectric losses are negligibly crossover point is at small.) This conrms the conclusion from [2] that the coupling is reduced when the dielectric under the patches is removed. In Fig. 2, we also give the coupling between two patch antennas described in Section IV, for which the inuence of the dielectric is compensated by pins. These antennas have reduced coupling and radiation in the horizontal directions. For the antennas in the air and for the antennas with pins, when the offset is in the direction, the coupling diminishes for 18 dB when the distance is doubled [Fig. 2(a)]. This behavior . Thereafter, the coupling diminishes for 6 is up to about dB per doubled spacing. For the classical antennas shown in Fig. 1(a), ultimately, at very large distances, the surface-wave term dominates. For all three antennas, the decay along the axis, in the range shown in Fig. 2(b), corresponds to the near-eld coupling (decay of 12 dB per doubled spacing). Hence, the near-eld coupling is the dominant effect for adjacent array elements in many practical cases, as the distance be. The tween these elements is typically in the range far-eld coupling mechanism is dominant for the classic patch antennas offset in the direction. This mechanism is also dominant for distant array elements in any case, until overwhelmed by the surface-wave coupling at very large distances (for antennas on a common dielectric substrate). III. RADIATION PATTERN AND FAR-FIELD COUPLING Fig. 3 shows the gain in the three principal planes of the classic microstrip antenna, the antenna suspended in the air, and the antenna with compensated dielectric. These are the same antennas as in Section II and they are assumed located above an ) is innite ground plane. The gain in the horizontal plane ( plotted versus the azimuthal angle, where 0 corresponds to the direction of the axis in Fig. 1. The gain in the vertical planes and ) is plotted versus the elevation angle, where, 90 ( corresponds to the direction of the axis in Fig. 1 The classic antenna has a prominent radiation along the horizontal plane. The gain in the direction of the axis is only for 3 dB lower than in the zenith direction (along the axis). (The

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Fig. 3. Computed gain (in dBi) in three principal planes of a microstrip antenna, at the resonant frequency. (a) Horizontal plane (Oxy ). (b) E -plane (Oxz ). (c) H -plane (Oyz ). Results for three cases are shown: antenna located in the air, classic antenna printed on FR-4, and antenna with compensated dielectric, printed on FR-4 (described in Section IV). Antennas are above an innite ground plane.

Fig. 4. Copolar gain (in dBi) in two principal planes of a microstrip antenna, at the resonant frequency. (a) E -plane (Oxz ). (b) H -plane (Oyz ). Results for three cases are shown: antenna located in the air, classic antenna printed on FR-4, and antenna with compensated dielectric, printed on FR-4 (described in Section IV). Antennas are above a nite ground plane.

gain of the antennas printed on FR-4 is reduced for about 6.5 dB due to the substrate losses.) In contrast to this, the gain of the antenna located in the air is for 27 dB lower in the horizontal direction than in the zenith direction. These results agree with the results shown in Fig. 2: the strong coupling among the classic microstrip antennas offset in the direction is associated with the strong radiation in this direction. Fig. 4 demonstrates a good comparison between measured and computed radiation patterns for a nite ground plane. The ground plane is a square plate, of 300 mm side. The antenna [shown in Fig. 1(b)] is located in the center of the plate. The key question is why the classic antenna on the dielectric substrate has a stronger radiation in the horizontal directions than the antenna in the air. The answer is in the following physical reasoning. An antenna can be visualized as a system of currents and charges in a free space, which are sources of the electromagnetic eld. In the far-eld zone of the antenna, the intensities of the electric and magnetic elds are inversely proportional to . The far the distance from the antenna, i.e., they decay as eld is determined solely in terms of the magnetic vector-potential, . The magnetic vector-potential due to a current element is parallel to the current-density vector. The electric eld in the

far-eld zone is given by , where and is the component of the magnetic vector-potential perpendicular to the radius , i.e., perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. We consider an antenna above an innite perfectly conducting ground plane. (The size of the dielectric slab is assumed nite.) In a horizontal direction (i.e., on the surface of the ground plane), the electric eld can have only the vertical component, i.e., the component perpendicular to the ground plane. The horizontal component (tangential to the ground plane) must be zero due to the boundary conditions. To avoid dealing with the ground plane, we introduce the mirror image of the antenna. Still, in the horizontal plane of symmetry, the electric eld has only the vertical component. Fig. 5 shows a qualitative sketch of the surface charges ( ) and currents ( ) in the patch and its image at two time instants that are quarter-period apart. Fig. 5 also shows the current in the protrusion of the inner conductor of the feeding coaxial line and its ), the electric eld under the patch ( ) and the poimage ( larization vector in the substrate ( ). The magnetic vector-potential in the horizontal plane of symmetry has only the vertical component. This component of the magnetic vector-potential can be produced only by vertically directed currents. The only vertical conduction current of the

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Fig. 6. Microstrip antenna with compensating pins: top view and side view.

Fig. 5. Qualitative sketch of currents, charges, and elds of a rectangular patch at two time instants when (a) the electric eld is maximal and (b) quarter-period later.

antenna is the current [Fig. 5(a)]. The current of this conductor is usually much smaller than the total current of the patch (obtained by integrating ) because the patch and the ground plane form a good resonator and the feeder is relatively loosely coupled to it. This is a simple explanation why the radiated eld (and, consequently, the gain) of the patch suspended in the air is small in the horizontal directions. In addition, this explains why the radiation pattern of the patch antenna suspended in the air, with a single coaxial feed, is omnidirectional in the horizontal plane. Furthermore, if the patch is fed by a microstrip structure, then there is no vertical conduction current. The radiation pattern of such a patch suspended in the air has a null in the horizontal plane. Of course, if the ground plane is nite, the radiation pattern is somewhat different than for an innite ground plane. In that case, the radiated electric eld has both the horizontal and vertical components. What can explain the strong eld of the antenna printed on a dielectric? The answer is simple: polarization currents in the dielectric! In the space between the patch and the ground plane, there exists a strong resonant eld, whose structure is close to a standing wave. For the rectangular patch considered here, the resonant eld resembles that of a half-wavelength microstripline resonator, whose length is . Due to the small spacing between the patch and the ground plane, the electric eld has practically only the vertical component [Fig. 5(a)], except near the patch edges. If the antenna is suspended in the air, nothing happens due to this eld. If, however, the antenna is printed on a dielectric substrate, the electric eld polarizes the dielectric. The polarization vector is given by and it has predominantly the vertical component [Fig. 5(a)]. The polarization is a time-harmonic function (as the electric eld). The charges of the dielectric molecules

move up and down in the rhythm of the electric eld. This is equivalent to having currents throughout the dielectric (polarization currents). The density of these currents is [Fig. 5(b)]. In the electromagnetic-eld analysis, the polarization currents are visualized as being located in a vacuum, in the same way as we visualize the bound charges in electrostatics. The polarization currents create a strong vertical component of the magnetic vector-potential. Hence, there is a strong radiated eld in the horizontal directions. For the rectangular patch considered here, at the rst resonance, the electric eld in the dielectric is counter-phased in the two halves of the resonator, as indicated in Fig. 5(a). The polarization currents are also counter-phased [Fig. 5(b)]. In the direction of the axis, the radiated elds of these currents cancel out. This explains the two deep nulls of the radiation pattern in the horizontal plane. In the direction of the axis, the radiated elds do not cancel out due to the difference in the traveled distance, resulting in a strong radiation. IV. REDUCTION OF RADIATION AND COUPLING In [2], the radiation along the ground plane is diminished by machining the dielectric under the patch. This agrees with our assumption: the radiation is reduced because the polarization currents are removed. The technique for suppressing the radiation in the horizontal directions by placing a superstrate over the patch [8] may also have an explanation in terms of the polarization currents. The superstrate has a high permittivity. Around patch edges, the polarization currents in the superstrate have an opposite direction with respect to the currents in the substrate. Hence, the inuence of the two polarization currents partly cancels out. These two solutions are efcient, but may be expensive in production. We propose another solution, which may be technically simpler for certain applications. The idea is to compensate the polarization currents by introducing a system of conduction currents that are counter-phased. These new currents are also vertically oriented, so that their magnetic vector-potential cancels out the magnetic vector-potential of the polarization currents. These compensating currents can be introduced by placing shorting posts (pins) between the patch and the ground (Fig. 6). (In the practice of patch antennas, shorting posts are

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introduced for various other purposes: to lower the resonant frequency and, hence, make the antenna more compact, to obtain dual-band antennas, or to improve the bandwidth [13][15].) A post is predominantly inductive. If properly designed, it can carry a current that would almost fully cancel out the effect of the polarization currents located in its neighborhood. The problem is how to design the post to carry the current of a proper amplitude and phase. We divide the surface of the microstrip antenna into a number of small square (or almost-square) patches (Fig. 6). Each patch and the ground plane form a parallel-plate capacitor. If is the surface area of the patch, the capacitance is , where is the portion of the capacitance that exists when the dielectric is removed and is the contribution due to the presence of the dielectric. We insert a pin into the center of the patch. This is equivalent to connecting an inductance between the electrodes of the capacitor. From the circuit-theory standpoint, canceling out the by the inpolarization currents is equivalent to resonating ductance of the pin. Hence, at the operating frequency of the , i.e., and form an antiresonant (tank) patch, circuit. The next step is to estimate the inductance of the pin. The inductance of just a straight piece of wire is meaningless without dening the return current path. In our case, this path consists of the polarization currents distributed throughout the dielectric underneath the patch. For simplicity, we replace the square patch by a circular patch of the same surface area. The radius . Approximately assuming the of the circle is , so that polarization currents to be uniformly distributed (which is not strictly true due to the presence of the pin), the per-unit-length inductance of this coaxial structure can be calculated from energy considerations as (2) ). The pin inductance is where is the pin radius ( . The antiresonant condition yields: (3) and the pin radius can be evaluated form (2) and (3). A pin and neighboring parts of the ground plane and the strip act like a resonated Hertzian dipole. Placing an array of such dipoles can be visualized as employing the concept of articial dielectrics or metamaterials [16]. The dipoles reduce the equivalent permittivity of the substrate to close to 1. The smaller the patches we take (i.e., the more pins we make), the better compensation of the far eld due to the polarization currents is achieved. Numerical experiments have shown that to obtain the pins should be located at a spacing of at most a good compensation of the dielectric. However, if we take more pins, the diameter of each pin diminishes. Consequently, limitations are imposed by the minimal diameter, as well as by the production cost. If the required pin diameter is too small for production, we can take a feasible pin diameter and increase the pin

Fig. 7. Reection coefcient of a microstrip antenna as a function of frequency. Three cases are shown: classic antenna printed on FR-4, antenna located in the air, and antenna with compensated dielectric, printed on FR-4. Computed results for the antennas on FR-4 are shown for realistic substrate parameters, and also when dielectric losses are neglected.

inductance by printing an inductive pattern at the pin-to-patch junction. For the example followed in this paper (the rectangular microstrip antenna printed on FR-4), we have adopted the diameter of the pin to be 0.6 mm. This corresponds to taking 12 pins (12 of small patches), as shown in Fig. 6. The dimensions and the microstrip antenna have to be increased compared with the classic printed antenna. Compensating the polarization currents effectively removes the inuence of the dielectric. The antenna behaves almost like being in the air. Hence, the dimensions of and ) are very the antenna with pins ( close to the dimensions of the antenna located in the air. Note ) is strongly that the optimal location of the feed ( inuenced by the substrate losses. The proposed technique dramatically improves the radiation pattern, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The radiation in the direction is deeply suppressed. The radiation in the direction is increased compared with the classic patch, but it is still very low and comparable with the antenna in the air. The backward radiation is suppressed for about 10 dB on average. The level of cross-polar components of the compensated patch is about the same as for the patch in the air. The bandwidth of the antenna with pins is narrower than for the classic antenna. This can be seen from the reection coefcient (Fig. 7). The computed results in this gure are in a good agreement with the measured data. The reduced radiation signicantly reduces the far-eld coupling between array elements, as plotted in Fig. 2. The near-eld coupling is also signicantly suppressed. The coupling is identical as for antennas in the air, except that the losses in FR-4 shift the coupling curves downwards for about 13 dB. V. CONCLUSION Microstrip antennas often have pronounced radiation in horizontal directions, i.e., along the ground plane. In antenna arrays and in vector sensors, an associated problem is strong coupling

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among antennas. These two unwanted effects are attributed in the literature primarily to the surface waves. We have identied polarization currents in the substrate to be the cause of these effects even when the surface waves are not pronounced at all. This explains why both problems can be cured by reducing the relative permittivity of the substrate or by removing the substrate underneath the patches. We have also proposed a technique for reducing the radiation and coupling by compensating the effect of the substrate. The microstrip antenna is printed on a substrate in the classical manner. An array of shorting pins between the patch and the ground is introduced and designed so that the inductive currents in the pins cancel out the capacitive polarization currents. As the result, in a narrow frequency band, the antenna behaves as if there is no dielectric at all. We have veried our conclusions by extensive computations and experiments. A very good agreement between the computed and measured results is obtained. For example, a classical rectangular patch designed for the and printed on FR-4, rst resonant frequency at thick, has very strong radiation in horizontal directions. For an innite ground plane, the peak is only about 3 dB below the radiation in the zenith direction. The radiation pattern of the antenna with compensated polarization currents is similar to a patch located in air. The radiation of the compensated antenna in horizontal directions is very low: the peak is about 15 dB below the classical microstrip antenna. The classical microstrip antennas exhibit a particularly strong coupling when they are offset in the -plane. This coupling diminishes for 6 dB when the spacing between the antennas is doubled. The coupling between antennas with compensated polarization currents is signicantly reduced. At the spacing of one wavelength, the coupling is 15 dB lower than for the classical antennas, and it decays for 18 dB when the spacing is doubled. The proposed technique for compensating the polarization currents is general, although it is elaborated only for rectangular patch antennas on thinner substrates. Once the compensation has been achieved, the microstrip antenna can be designed as being in the air. Further investigation may include other antenna shapes and antenna behavior on thick substrates (when the surface wave is important).

[5] R. E. Collin, Foundations for Microwave Engineering. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992. [6] G. Kumar and K. P. Ray, Broadband Microstrip Antennas. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1996. [7] D. R. Jackson, J. T. Williams, A. K. Bhattacharyya, R. L. Smith, S. J. Buchheit, and S. A. Long, Microstrip patch designs that do not excite surface waves, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 41, pp. 10261037, Aug. 1993. [8] N. G. Alexopoulos and D. R. Jackson, Fundamental superstrate (cover) effects on printed circuit antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-32, pp. 807816, Aug. 1984. [9] S. D. Cheng, R. Biswas, E. Ozbay, S. McCalmont, G. Tuttle, and K.-M. Ho, Optimized dipole antennas on photonic bandgap crystals, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 67, pp. 33993401, Dec. 1995. [10] R. Coccioli and T. Itoh, Design of photonic band-gap substrates for surface waves suppression, in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Symp., 1998, pp. 12591262. [11] B. M. Kolundija, J. S. Ognjanovic, and T. K. Sarkar, WIPL-D: Electromagnetic Modeling of Composite Metallic and Dielectric Structures, Software and Users Manual. Boston, MA: Artech House, 2000. [12] A. R. Djordjevic, R. M. Biljic, V. D. Likar-Smiljanic, and T. K. Sarkar, Wideband frequency-domain characterization of FR-4 and time-domain causality, IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. 43, pp. 662667, Nov. 2001. [13] H. Sanad, Effect of the shorting posts on short circuit microstrip antennas, in Proc. Antennas and Propagation Society Int. Symp., 1994. [14] R. B. Waterhouse and S. D. Targonski, Performance of microstrip patches incorporating a single shorting post, in Proc. Antennas and Propagation Society Int. Symp., 1996. [15] T. Chakravarty and A. Do, Novel method of extending frequency tunability of circular patch using two shorting pins, in Proc. Antennas and Propagation Society Int. Symp., 2003. [16] R. W. Ziolkowski and N. Engheta, Metamaterial special issue introduction, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 51, pp. 25462549, Oct. 2003.

Marija M. Nikolic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, on June 5, 1976. She received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from University of Belgrade in 2000 and 2003, respectively. Since 2001, she has been with the University of Belgrade as a Teaching Assistant. Currently, she is with the University of Illinois at Chicago pursuing the Ph.D. degree. Her interests are in numerical electromagnetics applied to antennas, signal processing, electrostatics, microwave circuits, and plasma etching.

REFERENCES
[1] M. A. Khayat, J. T. Williams, D. R. Jackson, and S. A. Long, Mutual coupling between reduced surface-wave microstrip antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 48, pp. 15811593, Oct. 2000. [2] J.-G. Yook and L. Katehi, Micromachined microstrip patch antenna with controlled mutual coupling and surface waves, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 49, pp. 12821289, Sep. 2001. [3] A. Nehorai and E. Paldi, Vector-sensor array processing for electromagnetic source localization, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 42, pp. 376398, Feb. 1994. [4] J. Li, P. Stoica, and D. Zheng, Efcient direction and polarization estimation with a COLD array, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 44, pp. 539547, Apr. 1996.

Antonije R. Djordjevic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 28, 1952. He received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and D.Sc. degrees from the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, in 1975, 1977, and 1979, respectively. In 1975, he joined the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, as a Teaching Assistant. He was promoted to an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor in 1982, 1988, and 1992, respectively. In 1983, he was a Visiting Associate Professor with the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. Since 1992, he has also been an Adjunct Scholar with Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. In 1997, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His main area of interest is numerical electromagnetics, in particular, applied to fast digital signal interconnects, wire and surface antennas, microwave passive circuits, and electromagnetic-compatibility problems.

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Arye Nehorai (S80M83SM90F94) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA. From 1985 to 1995, he was a faculty member with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT. In 1995, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), as a Full Professor. From 2000 to 2001, he was Chair of the departments Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Division, which is now a new department. In 2001, he was named University Scholar of the University of Illinois. Dr. Nehorai is Vice President (Publications) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, as well as Chair of the Publications Board, a member of the Board of Governors, and the Executive Committee of this Society. He was Editor-inChief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING during 2000 to 2002 and is the Founding Editor of the Special Columns on Leadership Reections in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. He was corecipient of the IEEE SPS 1989 Senior Award for Best Paper with P. Stoica, as well as coauthor of the 2003 Young Author Best Paper Award, and of the 2004 Magazine Paper Award with A. Dogandzic. He was elected Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE SPS for the term 2004 to 2005. He currently serves as Chairman of the Chicago Chapter of IEEE SPS. He is the Principal Investigator of the new multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) project entitled Adaptive Waveform Diversity for Full Spectral Dominance. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society since 1996.