This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018
Compact Circularly Polarized Wide Beam Width
Fern Fractal Shaped Microstrip Antenna for
Vehicular Communication
Tapas Mondal, Sandip Maity, Member, IEEE, Rowdra Ghatak and Sekhar Ranjan Bhadra Chaudhuri, Senior
Member, IEEE
Abstract—A compact circularly polarized with wide
beamwidth patch antenna is presented here. The proposed
antenna can be used for blind spot detection in the smart
vehicle. Miniaturization and beam width enhancement of the
antenna are the main areas of discussion. The size of the
patch becomes 44% smaller than the conventional patch by
folding the edge of the radiating patch with loading slots. Due
to small size it can be placed in the compact aerodynamic
wireless devices. The half power beam width is enhanced by
100◦ and the axial ratio beam width is maximized by 187◦ with
the help of surrounding dielectric substrate and the metallic
block as necessitated by Intelligent Transportation System (ITS)
applications. The proposed antenna can capture signals from
wide elevation angle and a complete azimuth range to cover the
entire blind spot zone. The impedance bandwidth of antenna is
410 MHz with 90 MHz 3dB axial ratio bandwidth.
Index Terms—Antenna radiation patterns, beamwidth en-
hancement, microstrip patch antennas, antenna miniaturization,
Intelligent Transport System
I. I NTRODUCTION
In the present scenario compact wide band, wide beamwidth
microstrip patch antennas are in great demand in smart multi
standard wireless devices like communication enabled smart
vehicle [1] and [2]. The broad objective of this article involves
the smart designing of an automobile microstrip antenna in
order to provide an efficient and feasible method of improving
the safety features in a vehicle in the context of backing
up or changing lanes on the highway. The proposed feature
uses a miniaturized, low cost antenna to automatically scan
and analyze the blind spot zone and immediately warn about
the potentially critical presence of any object in the vicin-
ity of the vehicle [3]. To fulfil this demand a Fern fractal
Copyright (c) 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
However, permission to use this material for any other purposes must be
obtained from the IEEE by sending a request to pubs-permissions@ieee.org.
Manuscript received April 13, 2017; revised October 09, 2017 and January
7, 2018; accepted February 23, 2018. Date of publication XXXX XX, 2018;
date of current version XXXX XX, 2018. The review of this paper was
coordinated by Dr. Sun, Sumei (Corresponding author: Tapas Mondal.)
Tapas Mondal is with the ECE Department, Dr. B. C. Roy Engineering Col-
lege, Durgapur - 713206, West Bengal, India (e-mail: tapas2k@gmail.com).
Sandip Maity is with the ECE Department, Dr. B. C. Roy En-
gineering College, Durgapur - 713206, West Bengal, India (e-mail:
info.sandipmaity@gmail.com).
Rowdra Ghatak is with Microwave and Antenna Research Laboratory,
ECE Department, National Institute of Technology, Durgapur - 713209, West
Bengal, India (e-mail: rowdraghatak@yahoo.com).
Sekhar Ranjan Bhadra Chaudhuri is with the ETC Department, Indian
Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur - 711103, West
Bengal, India (e-mail: prof.srbc@ieee.org).
0018-9545 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
shaped hexagonal microstrip antenna is proposed here [4],
[5] and [6]. By introducing Fern Fractal in the hexagonal
geometry (Section III) more than 40% surface reduction is
achieved which helps to accommodate the fractal antenna
into the compact aerodynamic wireless devices. According
to the directional property, the antenna can be classified into
three categories: Omni directional, semi directional and highly
directional antenna. In general, the directional antennas are
able to launch or receive the electromagnetic radiation in
the desired direction and the gain of the directive antenna
is high due to its narrow beamwidth, but the size of the
antenna becomes large. Whereas, omni directional antennas
are able to cover very wide elevation and azimuth angles
both but the gain of that antenna is low with typical values
ranging from 0 to 4dB. However, semi directional antennas
possess higher gain at the same time it can cover most of
the broad side direction compared to the omni directional
antennas. Here, in this proposed antenna, a wide axial ratio
bandwidth is achieved by using a sequential feeding approach
[7] as well as the aperture coupling feeding mechanism helps
to achieve wide impedance bandwidth (Section III-C). But the
back lobes due to aperture coupling feeding technique reduce
the gain of the antenna. A metallic resonator is placed below
the PCB of the feed network to reflect the back radiation in
the broad side direction which helps to enhance the gain of
the antenna. The half power beam width is enhanced by 100◦
and the axial ratio beam width is maximized by 187◦ with the
help of surrounding dielectric substrate (Section III-D). The
experimentation of the antenna after placing it on the vehicle
body is presented in Section IV and the simulated results along
with measure results are discussed in Section V, followed by
conclusion in Section VII.
II. B LIND SPOT OF THE VEHICLE
A blind spot is an area around the vehicle that cannot
be directly observed by the driver while driving the vehicle
or sitting in the driving sit (Fig. 1). Blind spots may occur
in the front of the driver due to the position of the wind
shield pillar (called A-pillar), side-view mirrors, and interior
rear-view mirror which partly block a driver’s view of the
road. Behind the driver, the additional pillars of the vehicle
frame, improper alignment of mirrors, headrests, passengers,
and cargo may reduce visibility. It is shown that the blue car’s
driver sees the green car through both of the left view and rear
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018 2

view mirrors but cannot see the red car without turning which
cKmn
results in a blind spot to the blue car’s driver. Although they fr = √ (1)
are relatively small near the vehicle but that becomes a large 5.7138s ref f
area in the distance. where,
Another critical blind spot zone is the area directly behind Kmn = K11 (for T M11 mode)= 1.84118;
the vehicle has been described as a “killing zone” due to Kmn = K21 (for T M21 mode)= 3.05424;
the associated carnage. Several blind spot detector has been and ref f is the effective dielectric constant of the substrate
established in the literature to overcome that problem while material.
backing up the vehicle. A camera was installed in the back side The design process starts with designing a plain hexagonal
of the Buick Centurion concept car in the year of 1956 and that patch supposed to operate at 6.09 GHz. Using (1), the side
was the first approach presented in January 1956 at the General length of such a regular hexagonal microstrip antenna (HMSA)
Motors Motorama. After that, several modifications have been is computed to be 11 mm. From the excited TM11 mode it is
applied but the system is too costly as well as complex. The clear that the side length S is the average current path length
construction of the backup camera is distinct from the other L for the hexagonal patch antenna (Fig. 2). Hence,
cameras because the camera and the driver face are in opposite
directions. Hence the image should be horizontally flipped so L = S = 11mm (2)
that the output is a mirror image otherwise the camera’s right
would be on the driver’s left and vice versa. B. Design of the Fern fractal embedded Hexagonal Microstrip
patch Antenna
Blind Spot
The initial side length of the hexagonal patch antenna is 11
mm and the resonance frequencies are 6.09 GHz and 10 GHz
Visible Zone
V
at TM11 and TM21 mode respectively (Fig. 3). The computed
and simulated resonance frequencies of the radiating modes
Viewing Angle by Viewing Angle by
are compared in Table I.
Left View Mirror Right View Mirror
TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF THE CALCULATED RESONANCE FREQUENCY OF THE
HEXAGONAL PATCH ANTENNA WITH THE SIMULATED RESULT
Viewing Angle by Rear View Mirror
Calculated
Different modes
resonance Simulated reso-
of Hexagonal
Frequency nance frequency
patch
(MHz)
TM11 5.925 GHz 6.09 GHz
TM21 9.829 GHz 10 GHz
Fig. 1. Different blind spots of a vehicle
To reduce this complexity as well as to minimize the cost,
a microwave radar can be designed, where the antenna should
have 100◦ beam width to cover the entire blind spot zone of
the back side of the vehicle.

III. A NTENNA D ESIGN

A. Design of Hexagonal Microstrip Fractal Shaped Antenna
The formulation of the resonance frequency of a hexagonal
microstrip patch antenna (HMSA) can be obtained from the
resonance frequency equation of the circular microstrip patch
antenna (CMSA) [8], [9] by equating the respective areas (Fig.
2). The resonance frequency of the hexagonal microstrip patch
antenna is given by (1).
s=r
rc
r has developed by British mathematician Michael Barnsley
Fig. 2. A circular and a hexagonal patch antenna with equal areas
TM11 TM21
(a) (b)
Fig. 3. Current distribution on a hexagonal patch antenna at TM11 and TM21
mode
The antenna with less than one quarter wavelength dimen-
sion becomes inefficient radiator, so the slots or fractals are
introduced to operate the same antenna at lower resonance
frequency by increasing the current path. Here Fern fractal has
been applied into the antenna geometry for the miniaturization
purpose of the antenna. The Fern fractal is one of the basic
examples of self-similar fractals and that can be built from
repetitive use of mathematical formulas [10]. The Fern code
Fern [10], which is generated by an iterated function system
(IFS) to create the fractal geometry. This Fern fractal helps to
reduce the antenna geometry by 44% (Fig. 4) and the proposed
antenna has been found to operate at 3.675 GHz (Fig. 5).
This fractal geometry provides important facilities as space

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018 3

filling abilities provide size reduction and miniaturization 8.4 mm

characteristic.
11mm 11mm
6 mm

0.3 mm

0.3 mm

0.3 mm

Hexagonal Patch Sierpinski 1st Iteration 11 mm

11mm 11mm (a)

30 mm

8 mm 0.5 mm
1.6mm 0.8mm

1mm
2mm
7.8mm 11.75 mm

16.7 mm
30 mm
Sierpinski 2nd Iteration Fern Fractal
3mm

0.8mm

7.89 mm
Fig. 4. The geometry of the 0th , 1st and 2nd iteration of Sierpinski carpet
fractal and the Fern fractal antenna

0.
32
5m
0

m
y
Feed line
L x
-5 Slot

(b)
S11 (dB)

-10 Fig. 6. Structure of the proposed hexagonal Fern fractal antenna and the feed
network

-15 Hexagonal Patch

Sierprinski 1st iteration
Sierprinski 2nd iteration
-20 Sierprinski and Fern Fractal
2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 5.5 6.0 6.5 7.0 7.5
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 5. The comparative study of the S11 graph of 0th , 1st and 2nd iteration
of Sierpinski carpet fractal antenna with the hexagonal Fern fractal antenna
C. Impedance Bandwidth and Axial Ratio Bandwidth En-
hancement of the Hexagonal Fern Fractal Antenna
The Fern fractal is introduced into the inside perimeter of
the hexagonal ring structure (Fig. 6(a)) and it is excited by
electromagnetic couple feeding technique (Fig. 6(b)). From the
Fig. 5, it is clear that the impedance bandwidth of the planar
antenna is very less; hence the aperture coupling feeding
technique (Fig. 7(b)) is adopted to maximize the impedance
bandwidth (Fig. 14). A sequential feeding mechanism is
designed to excite the hexagonal patch antenna and that is
not only enhancing the impedance bandwidth by 410 MHz
(11.16%) from 3.49 GHz to 3.9 GHz, as well as it helps to
achieve 90 MHz (2.45%) 3dB axial ratio bandwidth from 3.62
GHz to 3.71 GHz of IEEE 802.11y.
D. Beamwidth Enhancement of the Hexagonal Fern Fractal
Antenna
For the betterment of the beamwidth of the antenna, two
techniques are used in this design: first, by surrounding the
radiating patch with a dielectric substrate; second, by adding
a metallic block at the back of the antenna (Fig. 7). The
concept in the first method is that the electromagnetic waves
transmitted to and received from the patch can be refracted by
the dielectric substrate, which would result in the increment
of the half power beamwidth, the 3dB axial ratio beam width
and enhanced gain in low elevation angles. A 4.5mm thick
hexagonal ring structured Teflon substrate (r = 2.65) is used
as a surrounded dielectric substrate. Whereas in the second
method, increasing the height of the metallic block changes
the current flow on the ground, which is parallel to the Z-
direction and the gain at low elevation angles is improved.
These two methods are compared in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 with
four different conditions of the surrounding dielectric substrate
and 12mm thick Iron block. The improved gain curves with
four different conditions of the surrounding dielectric substrate
and the metallic block at different frequencies are shown in
Fig. 10. The snapshot of the fabricated antenna is portrayed
in Fig. 11.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018 4

Surronded 11 mm
dielectric
substrate Folded patch
m 12 m 30 mm
30 m m

4.5 mm

1.5 mm
12 mm

13 m
m
z 30 m m
m 30 m Metal block

x y PCB

(a)

11 mm Folded patch

3mm Slotted ground plane

1mm
Feed point
Feed network Dielectric substrate

(b) Fig. 11. Different view of the fabricated Hexagonal Fern Fractal antenna

Fig. 7. Geometry of the proposed hexagonal Fern fractal antenna

5 IV. P LACEMENT OF THE A NTENNA ON THE V EHICLE
0 A detailed description of the vicinity of the vehicle is
-5
explained in the Fig. 1 for proper modeling of the blind spot
Gain (dBic)

zone. In this paper, a folded microstrip antenna is installed

-10
in the back side of the vehicle that can be used to detect the
-15 Without Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate blind spot zone while parking the vehicle or to maintain the
Without surrounding dielectric substrate safe distance between the vehicles in the running condition
-20
Without Metal block
With Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate on the road (Fig. 12). A good computational aids are needed
-25
-180 -120 -60 0 60 120 180 to simulate the on-vehicle antenna in Ansys HFSST M (Table
Theta (degree)
II). Besides simulated and measured results of the antenna
Fig. 8. The gain curve with or without metal block and surrounded dielectric prototype showed good agreement in Section V. The vehicle
substrate at four different elevation angles antenna can be suitably mounted on the back side of the
60 roof top or other locations on the vehicle such as on the
Without Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate trunk or bumper of the car. A RF cable was inserted through
Without surrounding dielectric substrate
Without Metal block the bumper of the vehicle and was connected to a spectrum
Axial Ratio (dB)

With Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate

40
analyzer to measure the received power. A printed dipole
antenna operating at 3.675 GHz was used to examine the test
antenna after placing it on the vehicle body.
20

0
-180 -120 -60 0 60 120 180
Theta (Degree)

Fig. 9. The Axial Ratio curve with or without metal block and surrounded
dielectric substrate at four different elevation angles
6

4
Gain (dBic)

2
Without Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate
Without surrounding dielectric substrate
1 With Metal block & surrounding dielectric substrate
Without Metal block
0
3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.0
Frequency (GHz)
Fig. 12. On-vehicle experimental set-up
Fig. 10. The gain curve with or without metal block and surrounded dielectric
substrate at different frequencies

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TABLE II achieved. The simulated impedance bandwidth of the proposed

T IME AND MEMORY USAGE BY THE ON - VEHICLE ANTENNA SIMULATION antenna is 410 MHz (11.16%) from 3.49 GHz to 3.9 GHz.
IN A NSYS HFSS T M AT 3.675 GH Z
This type of sequential feeding arrangement helps to achieve
Task
Real Time CPU Time
Memory circular polarization and the 3dB axial ratio bandwidth of the
(hh:mm:ss) (hh:mm:ss) proposed antenna is 90 MHz (2.45%) from 3.62 GHz to 3.71
Mesh (stitch) 00:00:09 00:00:09 263 MB
Mesh (surface GHz (Fig. 16). Fig. 17 shows the measured and simulated
00:00:00 00:00:00 72.7 MB
translation) gain variation of the proposed antenna at different operating
g3dmsimprove 00:00:01 00:00:01 66.4 MB frequency, whereas Fig. 20 shows the radiation pattern at four
Mesh (surface
lambda)
00:00:34 00:00:34 316 MB different elevation angles at 3.675 GHz. The proposed antenna
Get external near had a gain of more than 4.42 dBic over the entire bandwidth,
00:00:14 00:00:00 0 KB
field with a peak gain nearly equal to 5.16 dBic. The proposed
Simulation setup : antenna exhibits 100◦ wide half power beam width and 187◦
00:00:06 00:00:06 3.27 GB
machine 1
00:00:06 00:00:06 3.18 GB axial ratio beam width as shown in Fig. 18 and Fig. 19. The
machine 2
00:00:06 00:00:06 3.15 GB
machine 3
00:00:06 00:00:06 3.18 GB LHCP and RHCP radiation patterns reveal a relatively 10dB
machine 4 difference between them, which makes this antenna a good
Matrix Assembly :
00:28:50 00:52:22 3.27 GB candidate for LHCP radiation (Fig. 21 and Fig. 22).
machine 1
00:28:50 00:57:03 3.18 GB
machine 2 8 mm
00:28:50 00:56:38 3.15 GB
machine 3
00:28:50 00:52:44 3.18 GB
machine 4 1mm
Matrix Solve :
0.8mm
00:03:44 00:03:14 3.27 GB

9.4mm
machine 1
00:03:44 00:03:20 3.73 GB
machine 2
00:03:45 00:03:03 4.01 GB
machine 3
0.8mm

7.99 mm
00:03:44 00:03:16 3.4 GB

8.3 mm
machine 4

3mm
Post-process solution 00:00:21 00:00:17 3.27 GB
Distributed memory
00:33:02 03:52:21 14.4 GB
summary

V. V ERIFICATION OF S IMULATED R ESULTS WITH

E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS Fig. 13. Another proposed feed network with hexagonal microstrip line
0
The proposed antenna components are fabricated part by
part and assembled with the help of nylon spacer and nylon
-5
screw to develop the prototype (please see Fig. 11) and then
it was experimentally tested and compared with simulation
-10
results. The antenna prototype is consisting of a metallic
S11 (dB)

hexagonal shaped fractal patch, a double sided printed-circuit-

board (PCB), a dielectric substrate surround and a metallic -15

block. The final dimensions of the design parameters are

portrayed in Fig. 7. The hexagonal Fern fractal antenna -20 Circular Feed network
Hexagonal Feed network
prototype is fabricated with a 1 mm thick copper sheet and Normal Feed network
feed network is fabricated on a 1.5 mm thick F4B microwave -25
3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
laminate having a dielectric constant of 2.65 and a loss tangent Frequency (GHz)
of 0.0024. The fractal antenna is fed by a coaxial probe
Fig. 14. The compared simulated return loss graph of the proposed antenna
terminated with a 50Ω SMA connector at the bottom side of with two different feed network
the PCB for measuring purpose. The top side of the double
sided PCB is composed of four similar shaped slots etched 0
on the ground plane with an angle of 0◦ , 90◦ , 180◦ and 270◦
about the center of the patch. The width of the slot is 0.5 -5
mm and the total length of the individual slot is 19.75 mm
which is around quarter wave length at the center frequency. -10
S11 (dB)

The antenna is excited from the back side of the PCB with a
coaxial probe and impedance is matched using open circuited -15
circular microstrip line. This type of aperture coupling feed
arrangement enhances the bandwidth of the proposed antenna -20
Simulated
(Fig. 8). Another feed arrangementwith hexagonal microstrip Measured
line is also studied (Fig. 13) and its S21  response is compared -25
with the circular 3.0 3.3 3.6 3.9 4.2 4.5
  microstrip line embedded feed network (Fig. Frequency (GHz)
14). The S11  graph of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig.
15, where a good agreement of simulation and measurement is Fig. 15. Simulated and Measured return loss curve of the proposed Fern
fractal antenna

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15 0
10 330 30 0
0 10 330 30
12 -10 0
300 60

Axial Ratio (dB)

-10

Gain (dBic)
-20 300 60
-20

Gain (dBic)
9 -30 -30
-40 270 90 -40
270 90
6 -30 -40
-20 -30
240 120 -20 120
-10 240
3 LHCP -10 LHCP
Simulated 0 (XZ Plane) (YZ Plane)
0 Simulated
Measured 10 210 150 Simulated
210 150
180 Measured 10 Measured
0 180
3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9
Frequency (GHz)
(a) (b)
Fig. 16. Simulated and Measured axial ratio curve of the proposed Fern Fig. 21. Radiation patterns at 3.67 GHz for LHCP at XZ and YZ plane
fractal antenna A printed dipole antenna has been chosen as a receiving
6
antenna at the same frequency band. The receiving antenna
5
is placed in the broad side direction of the proposed antenna
4 along with power measurement set up at a distance of Fron-
Gain (dBic)

haufer region [24]. (1) Measure the received power keeping

3
Rx dipole horizontal. (2) Measure the received power keeping
2 Rx dipole in vertical position. Ratio of these two powers is
1 Simulated
axial ratio in linear or difference is axial ratio if measurement
Measured is in dB. The individual antenna is measured in an anechoic
0
3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 4.0 chamber but due to space limitation of the anechoic chamber,
Frequency (GHz)
it is not possible to measure the antenna performance after
Fig. 17. Simulated and Measured Gain curve at different frequencies placing it on the vehicle. So the On-vehicle measured data are
10 330
0
30 10
0 obtained in open space.
330 30
5 0 0
0 0 10 10 330 30
330 30
300 60 -5 0
-10 300 60 0
-10
Gain (dBic)

-15 -10 -10

-20 300 60 300 60
Gain (dBic)

-20 -20
-25 -20

Gain (dBic)
Gain (dBic)

-30 270 90 -30 270 90 -30

-25
-30
-20 -40
-20 -40 270 90 270 90
-15 -40
-10 240 120 -10 -30 -30
240 120
-5 -20
0 XZ Plane 0 YZ Plane -20
240 120 240 120
210
Simulated 5 Simulated -10 -10
10 150 210 150 RHCP
180 Measured 10 Measured 0 RHCP 0
180 (XZ Plane) (YZ Plane)
210 150 10 210 150
10 Simulated Simulated
180 180
Measured Measured
(a) (b)
Fig. 18. Half power beam width in XZ plane and YZ plane (a) (b)
Fig. 22. Radiation patterns at 3.67 GHz for RHCP at XZ and YZ plane
15

12
Axial Ratio (dB)

9
ф = 0°
ф = 90°
6

0
-180 -120 -60 0 60 120 180
Theta (Degree)

Fig. 19. 3dB Axial Ratio beam width in XZ plane and YZ plane
0
6 330 30
3
0
300 60
-3
Gain (dBic)

-6
-9
-12 270 90 Fig. 23. The vector current distribution on circularly polarized patch antenna
-9
-6 The vector current distribution (Fig. 23) at the excitation
-3
240 120 phase angle φ = 0◦ is entering into the hexagonal patch from
0
θ = 0º
3 θ = 30º the upper side and leaves the patch from the bottom side but
θ = 50º
6 210
180
150
θ = 70º opposite in direction to that at φ = 180◦ . Same in the case of
θ = 90º
vector current distribution horizontally from right corner to the
Fig. 20. Radiation pattern at four different elevation angles at 3.66 GHz left corner of the hexagonal patch at φ = 90◦ and reverse at φ

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TABLE III
P ERFORMANCE INDEX OF PROPOSED ANTENNA AND SOME CIRCULAR POLARIZED ANTENNA

3-dB Axial Ratio Half Power

Compared Frequency 10-dB Return loss Maximum Axial Ratio Beamwidth Beamwidth
Volume
Antennas (GHz) Bandwidth Gain Bandwidth (Degrees) (Degrees)
(MHz) (dBic) (MHz) xz yz xz yz
plane plane plane plane
[11] 0.315λ0 X 0.315λ0 X 0.05λ0 1.575 255 4.5 50 - - 112 110
[12] 0.373λ0 X 0.373λ0 X 0.012λ0 2.49 40.12 4.6 40.12 - - 110
[13] 0.45λ0 X 0.45λ0 X 0.15λ0 1.5 113 5.9 31.52 - - 89 87
[14] 0.35λ0 X 0.35λ0 X 0.005λ0 1.07 65 2.5 16 - - 96.4
[15] 0.78λ0 X 0.78λ0 X 0.12λ0 1.575 20 -0.6 12 131 132 – -
[16] 0.33λ0 X 0.33λ0 X 0.11λ0 1.443 90 4.6 17 - - 100 100
[17] 1.09λ0 X 1.09λ0 X 0.03λ0 7.49 610 7.93 260 76 – –
[18] 0.68λ0 X 0.68λ0 X 0.18λ0 1.58 880 7.7 120 254 245
[19] 0.475λ0 X 0.475λ0 X 0.013λ0 2.55 110 4.5 55 176 - -
[20] 0.373λ0 X 0.373λ0 X 0.016λ0 1.6 56 >5.0 24 180 180 - -
[21] 0.32λ0 X 0.32λ0 X 0.02λ0 1.6 90 4.65 35 >140 - -
[22] 0.253λ0 X 0.253λ0 X 0.008λ0 1.268 19.02 4.5 6.59 80 80 110
[23] 0.349λ0 X 0.358λ0 X 0.2λ0 2.4 1530 4.5 240 175 186 150 141
Proposed 0.36λ0 X 0.36λ0 X 0.22λ0 3.675 410 >5.16 90 194 187 100 100

= 270◦ . Hence the direction of rotation of the vector current is

clockwise at different phase angle and the sense of polarization
yielding a left-hand circularly-polarized (LHCP) wave in the
upper-half space. The vector current distribution on circularly
polarized patch antenna at 0◦ , 90◦ , 180◦ and 270◦ phase is
shown in Fig. 23.
VI. O N -V EHICLE S IMULATION AND E XPERIMENTATION
OF THE P ROPOSED F RACTAL S HAPED A NTENNA
Fig. 26. 3D radiation pattern of the antenna mounted on the vehicle
When the antenna is mounted on the car body, the measured
axial ratio bandwidth and the gain value at 3.675 GHz fre-
quency are found to be improved due to the electromagnetic VII. C ONCLUSION
effect of the car as shown in Fig. 24 and Fig. 25. The on- A new feeding technique to achieve wide beamwidth cir-
vehicle measured gain of proposed antenna at φ = 0◦ and cularly polarized radiating fields from a aperture coupled
θ = 0◦ are found to be 7.82 dBic. The simulated 3D radiation feed microstrip antenna using a Fern fractal shaped patch
pattern at 3.675 GHz frequency of the antenna along with the has been proposed. The technique is simple, and achieves
car body are shown in Fig. 26. 100◦ wide beamwidth compared to other techniques applied
15 to comparably sized patches. The wide beamwidth of a wide-
band circularly polarized Fern fractal shaped patch has been
12
designed, fabricated, and measured for the IEEE802.11y band.
An effective bandwidth of 410 MHZ (11.16%) from 3.49 GHz
Axial Ratio (dB)

9
to 3.9 GHz is obtained. The axial ratio response is also below
6 3dB from 3.62 GHz to 3.71 GHz. The proposed antenna had
a gain of more than 4.42 dBic over the entire bandwidth, with
3 Simulated
Measured
a peak gain nearly equal to 5.16 dBic. The proposed antenna
0 can be explored for various multi standard wireless systems
3.5 3.6 3.7
Frequency (GHz)
3.8 3.9
such as satellite phone, vehicular application due to its 100◦
Fig. 24. Simulated and Measured axial ratio curve of the proposed Fern wide beam width circularly polarized response.
fractal antenna mounted on the vehicle
0
10 330 30
0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
-10
-20
300 60 The research activities have been facilitated by Advanced
-30
Communication Laboratory (developed under the MODROB
Gain (dBic)

-40
-50 270 90 project funded by All India Council of Technical Educa-
-40
-30 tion, India; AICTE grant no. 8024/RIFD/MOD-63/2010-11) of
-20
-10
240 120 Electronics and Communication Engineering department, Dr.
0 Simulated B. C. Roy Engineering College, Durgapur, West Bengal, India.
10 210 150
Measured
180 The research work has also been supported by Microwave and
Fig. 25. 2D radiation patterns of the antenna mounted on the vehicle (at Antenna Research Laboratory, Department of Electronics and
φ = 0◦ plane) Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology

0018-9545 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018
Durgapur, West Bengal, India and Microwave Measurement
and Simulation Laboratory, Department of Electronics and
Telecommunication Engineering, IIEST Shibpur, West Bengal,
India.
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Tapas Mondal received the M.E. degree in Mi-
crowave Engineering from Birla Institute of Tech-
nology, Mesra (BIT Mesra), Ranchi, India and PhD
in Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering
Science and Technology, Shibpur (IIEST Shibpur),
West Bengal, INDIA in the year of 2003 and 2018
respectively. He is currently Associate Professor in
Electronics & Communication Engineering depart-
ment at Dr. B. C. Roy Engineering College, Dur-
gapur, India. His research interests include Planar
Antenna, Microwave devices, wireless communica-
tion and Intelligent Transport Systems applications. He has 14 publications in
various National/International journals and conferences. He is a member of
IEEE and life member of ISTE. He is a reviewer of Elsevier, John Wiley and
PIER journals. He has organized IEEE Workshop on Microwave Engineering
& Applications (IEEE MEA 2015).
Sandip Maity received his M.Tech and B.Tech de-
gree in the Department of Electronics and Commu-
nication Engineering from West Bengal University
of Technology in the year of 2012 and 2014 re-
spectively. He joined Nokia Solutions and Networks,
India, in 2014, as RF & Microwave Engineer. His
research interests include the Antenna, Digital Signal
Processing and Mobile Communication.
Rowdra Ghatak received his M.Tech (Microwave
Engineering) from The University of Burdwan and
PhD (Engg) from Jadavpur University. He initiated
his career in microwave engineering as a trainee at
CEERI Pilani in fabrication and testing of S-band
magnetrons. There after he served at the National
Institute of Science and Technology Berhampur,
Odisha and at the University of Burdwan. He is
presently a Professor in Electronics and Communi-
cation Engineering department of National Institute
of Technology Durgapur. He is a recipient of the
URSI Young Scientist Award in 2005. He received support under DST Young
Scientist scheme for development of UWB antennas for imaging RADAR.
He has more than 200 publications in various National/International journals
and conferences. His research interest lies in the areas of fractal antenna,
metamaterials, application of evolutionary algorithms to electromagnetic op-
timization problems, RFID, computational electromagnetic and microwave
passive circuit design. He is a reviewer of IEEE, IET, Elsevier, John Wiley
and PIER journals. He has organized workshops in the capacity of workshop
chair/ convener on Microwave circuits and Antenna and has been member
of technical program committee membership of numerous IEEE conferences
in Asia Pacific region. He was a student paper contest co-Chair in the IEEE
AEMC 2013 and Technical program co-chair at IEEE MicroCom 2016.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TVT.2018.2824841, IEEE
Transactions on Vehicular Technology
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY, VOL. XX, NO. XX, XXX 2018 9

Sekhar Ranjan Bhadra Chaudhuri received his

B.E. & M.E. degree in Electronics & Telecom-
munication Engineering from Bengal Engineering
College under Calcutta University in seventies and
Ph.D. (Engineering) degree from Jadavpur Univer-
sity, Calcutta, India in 1990. He is a Professor in
the Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Department, Indian Institute of Engineering Sci-
ence and Technology, Shibpur, (Formerly Bengal
Engineering and Science University, Shibpur) West
Bengal, India, and continuing there for more than
36 years. He is a Life Member of ISTE, and EMI/EMC Society of India, and
Senior Member of IEEE. He is a reviewer of John Wiley, IET, Francis and
Taylor, SPRINGER, and PIER journals. His research interest is mostly in the
area of Small Antennas for Mobile Communication and Electromagnetics for
Advanced Applications. He has graduated twelve (12) doctoral students. He is
the joint inventor of two Indian Patents (Product and Process as well). He has
more than 150 research publications in various international/national journals
and conferences in his credit. During 2013-17, he was associated with the
ISRO sponsored collaborative project with IIT-Kharagpur entitled Studies on
Retro-directive Arrays for Space Applications as the Principal Investigator at
IIEST, Shibpur, and completed the same successfully.

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