San Jose State University Antenna Project EE172 Extra Credit Project Ivan Moon, Teera Songatikamas, and Ryan Wall 12/20/20092 ABSTRACT Two antennas will be designed, constructed, and tested to operate at 2.4GHz and have a 10dB output. The two designs that will be used are the Omni-Antenna, and the Biquad antenna. These two antennas will be physically constructed out of available materials. These antennas will be simulated to construct a generalized radiation pattern. Both antennas will be tested in a laboratory to measure their radiation pattern. INTRODUCTION Antenna Characteristics Four main characteristics of an antenna are important in characterizing the behavior of the antenna. • Antenna radiation patterns • Power Gain • Directivity • Polarization Antenna Radiation Patterns An antenna radiation pattern is plot that can be done in both 2-D and 3-D. In 2-D, there are two planes correspond to vertical and horizontal plane of the antenna. The elevation pattern shows the behavior of the antenna in the vertical plane. The behavior on the horizontal plane is described by the azimuth pattern. Combining two graphs together and we can get a 3-D plot of the radiation pattern. Power Gain Power gain is the parameter that we usually see on datasheets of antenna. The unit that is used to describe the power gain is dBi. The "i" stands for isotropic antenna. The isotropic antenna is used as reference for all antennas since it has perfect spherical radiation pattern and unity gain. Directivity Directivity is a measure of how good an antenna can direct its power in particular direction. One can measure the directivity by taking a ratio of radiation intensity to the radiation angle. Usually, directivity and power gain is proportional to one another. An antenna that has high directivity usually has higher power gain since it can concentrate its radiation in one direction rather than radiate into arbitrary direction. Polarization Polarization is a very important concept in antenna use and design. One can have the best antenna and still get poor reception if the polarization of signal and the antenna do not match. Polarization is the orientation of Electric field. It is a convention to refer to only E field when we talk about EM waves in general, since we only need E field to know the direction of H field. Several type of polarization exists. The basics types are Linear, Circular and Elliptical3 polarizations. Biquad antenna THEORY The BiQuad antenna is a simple antenna design that offers many advantages. First is the simplicity of the design. Biquad antenna can be built with materials found in most hardware stores. It offers good directivity due to the metallic reflector used in the design. The radiating element are two square with the side length equal to 1/4 midband wavelength, 32mm for 2.440GHz in our case. The theoretical beam width is 70 degrees but can vary widely with the reflection plane size and shape. Typically, the gain is about 10-12 dBi. Typical use of the biquad is standalone directional antenna or feeder of a parabolic dish. Polarization of the antenna is 90 degrees from the position of orientation of the biquad, i.e. horizontal biquad has vertical polarization. DESIGN The biquad antenna was constructed using the following materials: • 400 mm long Copper Wire with a thickness of 1.5mm • 40 mm long Coaxial cable with a impedance of 50 Ohms • A Reflector in 140 mm in diameter • Solder with a Soldering Iron • N-type connector The Copper wire was bent into a "Bow-tie" shape. The following figure shows the "Bow-tie" shape in more detail: Figure 1. "Bow-tie" design. Each angle of the bowtie was measured to be at 90 degrees. Each length of the copper wire was measured to be 32 mm. The Coaxial cable was cut open to expose the shielding wire and the core wire. These wires were soldered onto middle portion of the "Bow-tie" copper wire. The top section of the "Bow-tie" was connected to the shielding part of the coaxial cable. The bottom section of the "Bow-tie" was connected to the inner core part of the coaxial cable.4 Figure 2. BiQuad Design Schematic. The reflector was created out of aluminum foil and a hefty stack of paper. The aluminum foil covered the whole outer surface while the stack of paper filled the middle of the reflector. This reflector was placed onto the coaxial cable. The back side of the coaxial cable was connected to the N-type connector. The coaxial cable was stripped to reveal the wiring. The inner cable was soldered to the probe portion of the N-type connector. The shielding was soldered to the outer ground part of the N-type connector. The figure below shows the completed design of the BiQuad antenna.5 Figure 3. Fabricated BiQuad Antenna. Pictured above is our completed BiQuad Antenna. ANALYSIS AND MEASUREMENTS The radiation pattern of the BiQuad Antenna was first simulated on the program 4NEC2X. Below is the simulated radiation pattern: Figure 4. (PROGRAM NAME) Simulation of BiQuad Radiation Pattern. From this simulation we can see that the waves expand out directionally. The waves that hit the reflector get reflected back onto the "Bow-tie" antenna. A quarter-wavelength dipole antenna was built to act as a reference while the radiation pattern was measured for the BiQuad antenna.6 Figure 5. Measured Radiation Pattern Figure 5 is the measured azimuth radiation pattern of the biquad antenna showing the basic directionality of it.7 Omni collinear antenna THEORY Omni-directional antenna is an antenna that has 360 degrees of coverage. The antenna that we built for this project is called collinear antenna. Collinear antenna is one of the most popular designs due to its high gain at reasonable cost. Collinear antenna falls under the classification of a multiple element dipole antenna. This type of antenna behaves like dipole. The radiation pattern becomes more directional as more elements are stacked up on each other. The azimuth pattern is still roughly circular. The elevation pattern, however, becomes more directional. Therefore, the user should adjust the direction of this antenna accordingly to his or her location. Even with only 3 add sections of dipoles the beam width becomes -3dB at ±45°. DESIGN The Omni-Antenna was designed using the