Implementation of Raspberry Pi-Based
Azimuth/Elevation Control on the Measurement of
Antenna Radiation Patterns
Muhammad Yusuf
Electrical Engineering
Salsacomm
Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia
muh.yusuf1@icloud.com
Abstract— In this study we have designed a prototype modeling
of antenna tower that will be used to help measuring the
radiation pattern diagram of single element microstrip antenna
and 2 element microstrip array antenna. The system established
in this study utilized a raspberry pi microcontroller as controller
and DC servo motor as the rotation driver of the antenna tower
mounted with 1 pcs for azimuth movement and with 2 pcs for
elevation movement. PWM signal via DMA that became the
driver of the movement of the rotation angle of the antenna tower
is generated through the Python interfaces programming
language.
I. INTRODUCTION
Each application requires an important magnitude as the
antenna characteristics that determine whether it works on it or
not and ensure the success of the process of designing an
antenna. One of the important magnitudes of the antenna
characteristics is the radiation pattern diagram. The diagram
illustrates the radiation pattern of the distribution of energy
radiated by the antenna in space [1],[2]. The measurement of
radiation pattern diagram is helpful in distinguishing antennas
with isotropic radiation characteristics that can distribute the
energy to all fields with the same strong signal, which is
fictitiously illustrated, isotropic omnidirectional antennas only
in a certain particular field, and a directional antenna that could
concentrate its energy toward a certain angle. The measurement
can be carried out with the method of near-field and far-field
by sampling the electric field and magnetic field generated by
the measured antenna called AUT (Antenna Under Test) and
the referred antenna. Regarding the level of difficulty and cost,
near-field measurement method became an option as long as it
meets the conditions of the far-field.
To support the measurement of the radiation pattern
diagram on the near-field, it is necessary to design an
intelligent and simple system that can assist to indicate the
measurement with variation of azimuth angle and elevation
angle. There are two related previous studies using MSP430
controller [3] and the Teensy controller ++ 2.0 [4], each using
the C and the Java programming languages as an interface
program that requires downloader to translate the script into
Copyright © 2014 by Muhammad Yusuf, Mudrik Alaydrus
All rights reserved
Mudrik Alaydrus
Universitas Mercu Buana, Jakarta
mudrikalaydrus@mercubuana.ac.id
machine code, and still requires a connection to host computer
for the initial setup.
In this study, the writer designed a modelling prototype
antenna tower that can be applied on the measurement of the
desired rotation angle. Tower which serves as the mounting of
antenna requires trigger and controller tools for its movement.
The trigger used is a DC servo motor and its motor movement
is controlled by a controller-based raspberry pi and a spectrum
analyzer functioned to acquire the data received from the
antenna. The raspberry pi controller is selected as the system
control centre for the raspberry pi has more complete ports than
the controller used by the two previous studies. Complete port
of the raspberry pi allows its operation simply by inserting the
SD card that contains the OS (operating system), connecting
peripheral devices to the available port, and the power supply.
Also, the python programming language is chosen as an
interface program not only because the interpreter downloader
does not need to translate the script into machine code, but also
it has the library that instructs PWM signal generation directly
to the raspberry pi.
II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
In order to provide a clear understanding of the
measurement system, the system is described as follows: First
of all, the AC voltage was set on regulator resulting 12 volts.
Because the input voltage required by the Rasberry Pi and the
servo motor is 5 volts, the researcher used IC 7805 to handle it.
After the booting process, the next step was to enter python
program through the LX terminal on the desktop. The program
was stored in the SD card to run in the file menu. The program
ran and was ready to be executed through F5. After it
successfully ran, the process of tower calibration was
automatically proceeding. This calibration was resulted by the
designed program based on the pulse width set on the vertical
side of 1500μs and 1450μs on the horizontal side. Finally, the
instruction vertical and horizontal tower rotation was ready to
proceed by following the instruction and the desired
elevation/azimuth angle. The formed angle and the rotational
direction depended on the given pulse width on the servo motor
control circuit.
 The pattern was formed as 900*(y)/90 + 1500 for the whose operation speed is 0.24sec / 60 degrees with no load.
elevation side angle, and 900*(y)/90 + 1450 for the azimuth Torque that can be issued 7.7 kg / cm weighs about 55.2 grams.
side angle.
Raspberry pi as a real computer with complete ports serves
as a system control storage that contains all the programs and
instructions to operate the system as a whole, becoming an
option as the controller centre in this study. Raspberry Pi is a
computer that works as well as a desktop such as creating
documents, processing the data with spread sheets, watching
movies, playing games, and also coding. Figure 1 shows the
back and front sides of raspberry pi board [5] [6] as follows.

Figure 2. Servo motor S03T (left) and 645MG (right).

In general, the PWM signal (Pulse Width Modulation) is a

square wave and is used in the electronic control system to
control such things like the position of the servos, the motor
speed, and the brightness of the LED. This is done on the basis
of two important parameters: frequency and duty cycle. The
frequency is the number of wave cycle repetitions in one
second. Duty cycle means that the width of the modulated
signal expressed as the percentage measurement of the active
signal, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Definition of duty cycle.

On (Ton) is the time when the output voltage remains at

Figure 1. Front and back side Raspberry Pi of a model B. high or 1 while Off (Toff) position is the time when the output
voltage is at a low position or 0, and T is the time of one cycle
The Abbreviated servomechanism servo is a device used to or the sum of Ton and Toff, known as "period of one wave".
provide mechanical control on the distance. Servo motor has an Duty cycle or duty cycle of a wave is defined as follows:
output shaft. This shaft can be placed in a specific angular
position by sending a code signal to the servo motor control (1)
circuit. As long as there is a code signal in the control circuit,
the servo will remain in the shaft angular position. If the code
signal changes, the position angle of the shaft does too.
Pulse width modulation (PWM) is obtained with the help
In this study, for the rotation or the elevation rotation, the
of a square wave in which the wave duty cycle can be varied to
writer used S03T servo motor which is one of the GWS servo
obtain an output voltage varied in the average value of the
motor production. This type of servo motor can work as well at
the voltage 4.8-6.0 V. The operation speed at voltage of 4.8 V wave, expressed by:
is 0:33 sec / 60 ° at no load, while the speed at 6 V is 0:27 sec /
60 ° without load. Torque that can be issued ranges from 7.2kg (2)
/ cm - 8.0kg / cm. It weighs about 46 grams.
From the equation above, it is known that changes in duty
For rotation or azimuth rotation, the writer used the HS cycle will change the output voltage or the average voltage of
645MG servo motor which is one of the HI-TECH productions the motor controlled by a generated PWM signal.
 III. SCHEME OF THE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM OF ANTENNA IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
RADIATION DIAGRAM
Instrumentation scheme compiled according to Figure 4 is
A. The Measurement of Radiation Pattern Diagram of a
used to measure the parameters/characteristic magnitude of the
Single Element Microstrip Antenna
test antenna on the various position angles in the range of up
to + 90o -90o, both the position angle of the vertical side The results of measurements of radiation pattern diagram of
(elevation) and the angular position of the horizontal side. a single element microstrip array antenna were the data
collected by reading the value of rs level appearing on the
spectrum analyzer for each increment at 100, shown in Table I
and figure 5.
TABLE I. RESULT FOR SINGLE ELEMENT.
Angular
Rs Level
Setting (degree
(dBm)
of angle)
-90 -55
-80 -54.3
-70 -52.2
-60 -51.1
-50 -50.1
-40 -49.5
-30 -48.6
Figure 4. Measurement system of antenna radiation pattern. -20 -48.4
-10 -47.5
0 -47
The transmitter contains a reference antenna, an antenna 10 -47.8
20 -47.7
HyperLOG AARONIA located on the steady existing tower, 30 -48.2
passes through the probe cable connected to a signal generator 40 -49.3
that serves to emit electromagnetic waves toward the AUT. 50 -49.7
The receiver contains a microstrip antenna as measured 60 -50.5
antenna (AUT), located on a tower with servo motor which is 70 -53.6
80 -54.1
capable to rotate 180°. In this study, the positioning between
90 -54.4
the transmitting antenna and the AUT is placed in a parallel
position at the height of 110 cm from the floor, with 3.2
meters in distance and 2.45 GHz frequency used and the tx
power of 13 dBm. Electromagnetic waves received by the
AUT is then displayed in the form of a sinusoidal wave and
power level (rs level) by the spectrum analyzer. Changes in
the measurement angle will result in different rs levels. The rs
levels generated through direct observation will be normalized
and pass through MATLAB, then is resulted in radiation
pattern diagram.
To obtain the rs-level data of the radiation pattern diagram
on the vertical side, the researcher rotated the antenna axis is
measured by the position of the servo motor on the horizontal
side at 00 on a slab. Meanwhile, to get the rs-level data of the
radiation pattern diagram on the horizontal the rotation was
conducted after the position of the servo motor +90° on the
vertical side. The movement of the angular position of a servo
motor, in this study, were set by a given pulse width through
the control centre of raspberry pi by using python as its
interface program.

Figure 5. Horizontal radiation diagram of a single microstrip

antenna.
B. The Measurement of Radiation Pattern Diagram of 2-
Element Microstrip Array Antenna
The radiation pattern diagram formed from these
measurement results shows the characteristics of a single
The result of measurement of the radiation pattern diagram element antenna with wide beam (beamwidth) of
of 2-element microstrip array antenna was collected by reading approximately 500, while the maximum beam width is at an
rs level values that appear on the spectrum analyzer for each angle 00.
increment of 100, shown in Table II and figure 6.
TABLE II. RESULT FOR 2-ELEMENT ARRAY V. CONCLUSION
Angular
Setting Rs Level After designing and manufacturing the antenna
(degree of (dBm) measurement tower, it can be concluded as follows. Python as
angle)
an interface program is able to communicate the raspberry pi
-90 -36.1
with the DC servo motor through the GPIO pins on GPIO 17
-80 -34.3
GPIO 23 and GPIO 24 with the pulse width modification
-70 -31.7
(PWM). The radiation pattern diagram on a single element
-60 -32.5
microstrip antenna has a larger wide beam (beamwidth) than
-50 -33.8
the 2-element microstrip antenna array. In short, according to
-40 -32.1
these two points, this system is applicable. However, to reduce
-30 -32
the angular deviation, it is suggested to attach a servo stretcher.
-20 -26
-10 -23.6
0 -22.8
10 -23.9 REFERENCES
20 -26.8
30 -31.7
40 -35.6 [1] Balanis, C. A. (2005). ANTENNA THEORY : ANALYSIS AND
DESIGN (3rd ed.). New York: Wiley, John & Sons.
50 -35.7
[2] Yi, H., & Boyle, K. (2008). Antennas : from theory to practice (1 ed.).
60 -32.5
United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
70 -31.4
[3] Zhang, T., Du, L., Lv, J. J., Zhou, B., Yang, Y., Zhou, X. Y., et al.
80 -31.2 (2013). A Simple System for Measuring Antenna Radiation Patterns in
90 -31.6 the Wi-Fi Band. (K. F. Warnick, Ed.) Antenna and Propagation
Magazine, 55(1).
[4] Brown, R. A., Couch, A. M., Grayson, D. T., Brennan, N. W., & Huff,
G. H. (2013). Reconfigurable Antenna Test-Bed: A Low Cost
Educational System for Electromagnetics, Wireless Communication, and
Electronics.
[5] Richardson, M., & Wallace, S. (2012). Getting Started with Raspberry Pi
(1 ed.). (B. Jepson, Ed.) Sebastopol, California: O'REILLY Media.
[6] Schmidt, M. (2012). A Quick-Start Guide Raspberry Pi (1 ed.). (J.
Carter, Ed.) United States of America: The Pragmatic Programmers,
LLC.

Figure 6. Horizontal radiation diagram of a 2-element

microstrip array antenna