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A $2 \times 2$ Inset Feed Circular Patch Antenna Array for 1.8GHz LTE
Application

Conference Paper · July 2018

DOI: 10.1109/ICWT.2018.8527823

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 A 2×2 Inset Feed Circular Patch Antenna Array
for 1.8GHz LTE Application
Octaviansyah Setyo Baskoro
Department of Electrical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Udayana University
Bali, Indonesia
octaviansyahsetyo@gmail.com
Pande Ketut Sudiarta
Department of Electrical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Udayana University
Bali, Indonesia
sudiarta@unud.ac.id
Abstract—This paper presents the design and characterization
of 2×2 circular patch antenna array for 1.8GHz Long Term
Evolution (LTE) application. The antenna array consists of 4
circular patches designed on a 1.6mm thick FR4 epoxy dielectric
substrate with relative permittivity (ǫr ) of 4.2. An inset feed
method is applied to feed each circular patch to improve overall
performance of the antenna array. The physical parameter
of proposed antenna array is analyzed through simulation to
obtain the optimum performance satisfying the requirement of
application. The experimental characterization is conducted for
the realized antenna array to be compared with the simulation.
It shows that realized antenna array resonates at the frequency
of 1.8GHz with the gain of 8.12dBi in which this is agreed very
well with the simulation result.
Index Terms—antenna array, circular patch, inset feed, Long
Term Evolution (LTE).
I. I NTRODUCTION
During the last decade, the development of communica-
tion technology has grown up remarkably and driven the
orientation of wireless communication systems. Some wireless
communication systems including Long Term Evolution (LTE)
as well as its service applications are recently becoming very
popular [1]. This is due to the numerous advantages such as
providable communication services at anytime and anywhere
for the users. It is well-known that LTE is the forth generation
of wireless communication technology which can be mobile
as in smartphone or static by using a modem for home
or office purposes [2]. However, the use of such wireless
communication technology is often constrained by the distance
between the mobile station (MS) of user and the site coverage.
So the received power was becoming low caused by many
losses on the transmitting signals.
In case of using a modem, there are often encountered
by low signal throughputs due to the weak receiving signal
and the distance between MS and base transceiver station
(BTS) [3]. Therefore, it mostly requires an external antenna to
increase the power of receiving signal. A Yagi antenna is one
I Putu Ardana
Department of Electrical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Udayana University
Bali, Indonesia
ardana@unud.ac.id
Achmad Munir
Radio Telecommunication and Microwave Laboratory
School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, ITB
Bandung, Indonesia
munir@ieee.org
kind of antennas available for increasing the gain of recipient
signal [4]– [5]. Unfortunately Yagi antenna has a high profile
shape, so it seems to be impractical for a compact external
antenna. Another antenna type which can be the candidate
as external antenna is a microstrip antenna, as it is a low
profile antenna type and has some advantages such as easy
to implement and designable for dual-band frequency [6]–
[7]. However, microstrip antenna has some disadvantages such
as narrow bandwidth and low directivity [8]– [9]. Hence,
numerous efforts have been reported in overcoming those
issues including the use of array method to improve the
directivity yielding the high gain achievement [10]– [12].
In this paper, the design and characterization of 2×2 inset
feed circular patch antenna array is presented. The antenna
array is designed to operate at the center frequency of 1.8GHz
suitable for LTE application. It is constructed by 4 circular
patches arranged in 2×2 configuration to achieve a high
gain required by the application. In the design process, the
characteristic of single circular patch antenna is investigated
to be used for analyzing the configuration of antenna array. To
feed each circular patch, a microstrip line feeding network with
inset feed method is applied. The distance between circular
patches is also analyzed to minimize grating lobes of antenna
array. The proposed array antenna is designed on a 1.6mm
thick FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate with relative permittivity
(ǫr ) of 4.2. Based on the design, the antenna array is then
realized for experimental characterization where the measured
results are to be compared to the design results.
II. B RIEF OVERVIEW OF C IRCULAR PATCH A NTENNA
A RRAY D ESIGN
The design of patch antenna array consists of four identical
circular patches arranged in 2×2 (row × column) config-
uration. The use of such configuration is aimed to acquire
high gain required by LTE application. Fig. 1 illustrates the
proposed circular patch antenna array which is designed on an
 TABLE I
wa F INAL GEOMETRY OF CIRCULAR PATCH ANTENNA ARRAY.

circular Parameter Value (mm)

a patch a 23.9
da
la 198.9
wa 176.8
da 56.7
w1 0.6
w1 w2 2.4
da w3 5.2
lf 12
w2 la
wf 3

circular
patch
wf
lf impedance matching yielding the overall improvement of
the antenna array performance. Table I summarizes the final
geometry of proposed 2×2 inset feed circular patch antenna
w1
array which is used for the hardware realization.
w3 III. H ARDWARE R EALIZATION AND E XPERIMENTAL
FR4 epoxy dielctric subsrate
C HARACTERIZATION
Fig. 1. Design of 2×2 inset feed circular patch antenna array. Fig. 2 depicts the pictures of proposed 2×2 inset feed
circular patch antenna array prototype which is realized based
on the optimum design of simulation. The hardware realization
FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate with the relative permittivity is carried out through wet etching technique. An SMA con-
(ǫr ) of 4.2 and the thickness of 1.6mm. Each circular patch nector is connected to the feeding network for experimental
is fed using a microstrip line feeding network with inset characterization. The characteristics of realized antenna array
feed method. The copper thickness of circular patches and is measured using Vector Network Analyzer. The measured
feeding networks which are located on the top side of dielectric results for reflection coefficient, voltage standing wave ratio
substrate as well as the groundplane at the bottom side of (VSWR), gain, and radiation patterns are plotted in plotted
dielectric substrate are set to be 0.035mm. The dielectric loss in Figs. 3–6, respectively, with the simulated results depicted
of substrate and the conductive loss of copper are taken into together in each corresponding figure as comparison.
account for obtaining high accuracy design. From Fig. 3, it shows that measured resonant frequency
The dimension of each circular patch plays important role is 1.8GHz and has a good agreement with the simulated
in determining resonant frequency of the antenna, i.e. 1.8GHz. one. However, there is a slight difference in the achievement
Basically, the resonant frequency (f0 ) can be theoretically of reflection coefficient. The simulated reflection coefficient
calculated from its radius (a) using (1) [8]. is -24.78dB at the frequency of 1.8GHz and the measured
c reflection coefficient is -19.49dB. The different result of re-
a= √ X′ (1) flection coefficient is probably evoked by the loss value of
2πf0 ǫr mn
dielectric substrate. Meanwhile the measured -10dB fractional
where c, ǫr , and Xmn ′
are the speed light in vacuum, the bandwidth is 2.5% (45MHz) in which this is narrower than
relative permittivity of dielectric substrate and the nth root the simulated result of 2.7% (48.6MHz).
of Bessel function with m and n represent the wave number
of resonant mode, respectively. Since the dominant mode of
resonant is used, hence its value is 1.842. The effective radius
(ae ) of circular patch can be obtained by including the fringing
effect using (2) based on Long-Shen formula with h denotes
the thickness of dielectric substrate [8].
r
2h h πa i
ae = 1 + ln( ) + 1.7726 (2)
πaǫr 2h
Some parametric studies are performed through simulation
to obtain the optimum physical parameters of proposed anten-
na array. The distance between circular patches is also included
in the parametric studies to obtain the minimum grating lobes
of antenna affecting to the radiation pattern. It is noticeable Fig. 2. Prototype of proposed 2×2 inset feed circular patch antenna array;
that the use of inset feed method is helpfully obtaining good left is top side; right is bottom side.
 The same tendency also appears in the VSWR results shown
in Fig. 4. It is seen that the measured result at the frequency
of 1.8GHz is 1.23, whereas the simulated result is 1.12 at the
frequency of 1.8GHz. Furthermore, the characterization result
for the gain of proposed antenna array plotted in Fig. 5 has also
a good agreement each other. The measured gain of realized
antenna array is 8.12dBi at the frequency of 1.8GHz in which
this is 1.57dB higher than the simulated result of 6.55dBi. The
discrepancy in gain achievements is also probably caused by
the dielectric substrate loss where the loss value in simulation
is worse than the loss value in measurement. The similar
trend of measurement and simulation results also happens
for the radiation patterns as plotted in Fig. 6. It shows that
the proposed circular patch antenna array has unidirectional
radiation pattern that satisfies for 1.8GHz LTE application.
Fig. 5. Measured and simulated gains of proposed 2×2 inset feed circular
patch antenna array.

(a) E-field
Fig. 3. Measured and simulated reflection coefficients of proposed 2×2 inset
feed circular patch antenna array.

(b) H-field

Fig. 6. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of proposed 2×2 inset feed
circular patch antenna array.

IV. C ONCLUSION

Fig. 4. Measured and simulated VSWR of proposed 2×2 inset feed circular The design and characterization of 2×2 inset feed circular
patch antenna array. patch antenna array for 1.8GHz LTE application has been
presented. The antenna array which has been deployed on a
1.6mm thick FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate has taken the di-
mension of 198.9mm (length) × 176.8mm (width). It has been
shown that the measured results of realized antenna array has
good agreement with the simulated ones. Although there were
some discrepancies in terms of reflection coefficient, gain,
and radiation pattern, however in general the performance
of realized antenna array has accomplished the specifications
required by 1.8GHz LTE application.
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