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Study on Radiation Characteristics of Microstrip Antennas Based on


Flexible Materials

Chaoqun Zhang,Ting Wang* ,and Qunlei Yao

AbstractAntenna for the outer surface of fighter jets, missiles and other aircraft can not be
very good conformal with the carrier surface,increasing drag and radar-scattering cross section area
of problems.Adopted on polyimide as a microstrip antennas flexible substrate, and based on this
substrate designed a omnidirectional broadband conformal microstrip antenna. Research process using
electromagnetic simulation software based on finite element to modeling and parameter optimization of
microstrip antenna. The antenna deformation models were built along edge L and W of the microstrip
antenna substrate, and studied the influence of the curvature radius of the two models on the radiation
characteristics of the microstrip antenna. The results demonstrated that the impedance matching of
two kinds of flexible antennas both got worse with the shifted of the radius of curvature. The maximum
radiation direction of the two antenna models will shift with the decrease of the bending radius and the
offset of the two models in the opposite direction, the gain of the microstrip antenna was more stable
along the W edge,and the gain will decrease by about 1dB along the edge of the L.

1. INTRODUCTION

With the airplanes, missiles, rockets and other aircraft of the rapid development and a variety of
wireless electronic devices in a large number of applications on the aircraft which causes the aircraft
antenna up to dozens [1]. But some antennas are larger and do not conform well to the aircraft surface
.This not only increases the scattering cross-sectional area of the radar but also increases the flight
resistance of the aircraft. And that is extremely unfavorable for fighter aircraft, missiles and other
weapons and equipment which require a smaller flight resistance and better stealth performance[2-3].
About this issues, the comfortable microstrip antenna based on flexible substrate,which as a missile
and other high-speed moving objects part of the surface and can conform to the carrier surface, will
significantly reduce the air resistance of the missile and the radar cross-sectional area of the scattering.
In addition,the flexible conformable microstrip antenna ,which has a series of advantages ,such as low
profile, light weight, can be integrated with active circuits, low cost,and easy to mass production,also
has been one of the hot spots in recent years[4-6].
In the literature [7],they constructed a new antenna radiating elements which had good flexibility
and conformability.In this antenna unit,they used polydimethylsiloxane flexible materials as the
substrate of the microstrip antenna,crystalline gallium-indium (melting point is(of) 15.7 C) liquid metal
as the metal layer of the antenna which was injected by the microfluidic channel in the substrate.But
it greatly limits the use of the antenna range ,the radiation unit must be at least 15.7 C to work
properly.Moreover,in the literature [8], a butterfly-shaped microstrip antenna with a working frequency
of 7.66 GHz was fabricated using polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) as a flexible substrate material.In
this paper, the change of return loss, center resonant frequency and radiation pattern of a flexible
butterfly microstrip antenna conformal with a 50.8mm radius bubble was compared with the planar
state.In addition,in the literature[9],a slot-coupled microstrip antenna fabricated with textile fibers was
Received 15 January 2017
* Corresponding author: Ting Wang(1979-),female,associate professor,engaged in RF MEMS;Email:Tina@bit.edu.cn
The authors are with the National Key Laboratory for Mechatronical Engineering and Control,School of Mechatronical Engineering,
Beijing Institute of Technology,Beijing 10081,China
2 Zhang and Wang

described and the change of the S-parameter and the antenna gain was studied when the antenna
was conformal with the cylinder whose diameter was 8cm.However,the aperture-coupled feed is not
conducive to rapid mass production.Although the microstrip antenna fabricated with textile fibers
has a good performance,the good water absorption will seriously affect the antenna performance in
the air humidity larger environment.The reason is that the entry of water molecules increases the
dielectric constant and dielectric dissipation factor,and then this will reduce the resonant frequency of
the antenna, the relative bandwidth and radiation efficiency[10].In the literatures of above[7-9],these
documents studied the variation of radiation characteristics when bending along the radiation side of
the antenna,but the variation of radiation characteristics when bending along the non-radiating edge of
the antenna was not studied.
In this paper,we used a polyimide flexible material ,which has good flexibility, low dielectric
constant, good thermal stability, poor hydrophilicity ,as the conformal microstrip antenna substrate.In
addition, a simple wideband omnidirectional antenna is designed on the 0.12mm thick substrate. The
radiation performance of the designed antenna is studied when the antenna is deformed along the
radiating edge and non-radiating edge.

2. ANTENNA DESIGN AND ANALYSIS

2.1. Material Selection


Flexible conformal antenna has a high standard in the selection of substrate materials. That not only
have good flexibility, fatigue resistance but also have better electrical properties. The tensile limit
strength of the 0.025 mm thick polyimide ,which had excellent abrasion resistance ,was 231 MPa, the
maximum tensile modulus was 2.5 GPa,folding resistance can reach 28500 times. Moreover, it could
work properly in the range of -200 C400 C and its dielectric constant is about 3.4.In addition, when
fluorine is dispersed in the polyimide, the permittivity can be reduced to about 2.5 and the dielectric loss
is 103 .Because of these properties could be maintained over a wide temperature range and frequency
range,so we chose polyimide as the substrate material to study the radiation performance of flexible
conformal antenna.

2.2. Structural Design and Simulation of Planar Antenna


In order to study the radiation characteristics of microstrip antenna based on polyimide substrate, this
paper designs a broadband omnidirectional antenna with simple structure and superior performance.
The antenna structure is shown in Fig.1, the blue part is the radiation patch and the microstrip line,and
the orange indicates the ground plane. And the antenna was fed by a microstrip line, the impedance was
matched by adjusting the width of the microstrip line, and the central resonant frequency was adjusted
by changing the length of the ground plate and the rectangular patch. The parameter of microstrip
antenna is: the center resonant frequency is 3 GHz, the dielectric constant of the substrate is 3.4, the loss
tangent is 0.0018, the substrate W L = 58.31mm53.7mm,the patch W 1L1 = 33.5mm31.3mm,the
microstrip line W 2 L2 = 0.32mm 11.2mm,the ground plate W 3 L3 = 58.31mm 10.8mm. In
this paper, the simulation software HFSS15.0 based on the finite element analysis was used as the
research platform. Fig.2 and Fig.3 are S11 graphs and radiation patterns of the antenna simulated in
the plane state.From Fig.2 and Fig.3,we can see that the resonance point of the microstrip antenna is
3GHz ,the S-parameter at that point S11 = 27.4078, the bandwidth of the antenna is 1.5 GHz and
the omni-directional radiation pattern does not have large ripple, omni-directional performance is very
good.

2.3. Effect of Deformation on Antenna Performance


Because it is paramount for conformal antennas to meet the shape requirements and then that as far
as possible to meet the antenna performance requirements is considered, therefore, in this paper, we
mainly studied the influence of the antenna shape change on radiation performance. The antenna was
deformed in two ways: the first was that the W -edge of the antenna base, which as the arc length, is
curved along the cylindrical surface, the structure diagram was shown in Fig.4 and the second was that
Study on Flexible Conformal Antenna 3

Fig. 1. A planar antenna structure based on a flexible substrate.

Fig. 2. A planar antenna S11 graph based on Fig. 3. Radiation pattern of planar antenna
a flexible substrate based on flexible substrate

the L-edge of the antenna base, which as the arc length, was curved along the cylindrical surface, the
structure diagram was shown in Fig.5.

Fig. 4. An antenna struc- Fig. 5. An antenna struc-


ture in which the W -side is ture in which the L-side is an
an arc length arc length

2.3.1. Radiation Characteristics of Microstrip Antenna with W -side as Arc-length


The flexible microstrip antenna changed the shape in the first method.And when the bending radius is
30mm,60mm,90mm,120mm,+, the main parameters of the antenna are shown in Tab.1.
It can be seen from Tab.1 that the resonant frequency of the antenna does not change significantly
4 Zhang and Wang

Tab. 1. The influence of antenna variation along W -edges on antenna radiation parameters.

Bending Radius(mm) Resonant frequency f(Hz) Resonance Point s11(dB) Bandwidth B(GHz) Gain G(dB)
+ 3 -27.4078 1.5 3.0166
120 3.1 -14.1313 1.2003 2.6091
90 2.9 -20.3149 1.0936 3.2059
60 2.8 -17.9843 1.126 3.0455
30 3.1 -11.4849 0.6217 3.4689

as the bending radius decreases and it remain in the vicinity of 3Gh.Besides, by observing the S11 value
of the resonant point and the variation of the absolute bandwidth, it can be seen that the larger the
antenna distortion, the worse the impedance matching. In addition, the influence of deformation on the
gain of the microstrip antenna is less than others.Fig.6 shows the influence of the bending radius on the
radiation pattern. As can be seen from the figure, as the shape of the antenna changes, the H-plane
remains substantially constant and has no large ripple.And although as the antenna shape changes,the
maximum radiation direction of the E-plane will shift in the direction of the negative radiation of the
main radiation direction, the entire E-plane does not distort with the deformation of the antenna.

(a) + (b) 120mm (c) 90mm

(d) 60mm (e) 30mm

Fig. 6. Radiation patterns of microstrip antennas based on polyimide substrates at different bending
radii:a e corresponding to the bending radius of +,120mm,90mm,60mm,30mm.

It can be seen from Tab.1 that the resonant frequency of the antenna does not change significantly
as the bending radius decreases and it remain in the vicinity of 3Gh.Besides, by observing the S11 value
of the resonant point and the variation of the absolute bandwidth, it can be seen that the larger the
antenna distortion, the worse the impedance matching. In addition, the influence of deformation on the
gain of the microstrip antenna is less than others.Fig.6 shows the influence of the bending radius on the
radiation pattern. As can be seen from the figure, as the shape of the antenna changes, the H-plane
remains substantially constant and has no large ripple.And although as the antenna shape changes,the
Study on Flexible Conformal Antenna 5

maximum radiation direction of the E-plane will shift in the direction of the negative radiation of the
main radiation direction, the entire E-plane does not distort with the deformation of the antenna.

2.3.2. Radiation Characteristics of Microstrip Antenna with L-side as Arc-length


The flexible microstrip antenna changed the shape in the second method.And when the bending radius
is 30mm,60mm,90mm,150mm,+, the main parameters of the antenna are shown in Tab.2.

Tab. 2. The influence of antenna variation along L-edges on antenna radiation parameters.

Bending Radius(mm) Resonant frequency f(Hz) Resonance Point s11(dB) Bandwidth B(GHz) Gain G(dB)
+ 3.0 -27.4078 1.5000 3.0166
150 3.1 -17.0323 1.5204 2.3737
90 3.1 -13.3137 1.1606 2.3676
60 3.1 -17.4875 1.5137 2.3353
30 3.2 -17.5668 1.4831 2.1998

From Tab.2,we can see that as the bend radius decreases , the resonant frequency of the antenna will
shift in the direction of the higher frequency. And that the change of the resonance point S11 parameter
shows that even if the impedance matching of the antenna will deteriorate, this will not be as sensitive
to the curvature change as the first method.Besides, with the change of the radius of curvature, the
absolute bandwidth can be maintained at about 1.5GHz and does not decrease significantly. And the

(a) + (b) 150mm (c) 90mm

(d) 60mm (e) 30mm

Fig. 7. Radiation patterns of microstrip antennas based on polyimide substrates at different bending
radii:a e corresponding to the bending radius of +,150mm,90mm,60mm,30mm.

influence of the bending radius on the antenna gain is that the smaller the antenna bend radius the
6 Zhang and Wang

smaller the gain.Fig.7 shows the change of the antenna radiation pattern when changing the shape of the
antenna.As can be seen from the figure,the deformation of the antenna has little effect on the H-plane
and this has great effect on E-plane.In addition, as the bending radius becomes smaller, the E-plane
radiation pattern will distort, and as the antenna shape changes, the maximum radiation direction of
the E-plane will shift in the direction of the negative radiation of the main radiation direction, this is
in contrast to the case of deformation along the W -edge.

3. CONCLUSIONS

In this paper,a polyimide materials with excellent mechanical, chemical and electrical properties was
chosen as the substrate material for the flexible antenna.Based on this material, an omnidirectional
wideband antenna is designed.And the optimized planar flexible antenna had good performance and
the effect of deformation on antenna radiation performance was studied under the same size.Furthermore
When the shape changes along the L-edge or W -wdge,the impedance matching of the flexible
antenna,which used a polyimide material as the substrate,will have a degree of deterioration.When
the shape changes along the L-edge,the gain of the microstrip antenna will decrease about 1dB due
to bending.And the influence of antenna deformation on other performance parameters is small.Finally
because of that the flexible conformable microstrip antenna designed in this paper has good deformation
stability and environmental adaptability,so the antenna has a certain reference value for practical
engineering application.

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