HANOI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATION

FINAL PROJECT
ANTENNA AND PROPAGATION

Topic:
Printed Log-Periodic Monopole Array Antenna
with a Simple Feeding Structure Simulation
and Comparison with a Referred Paper

Student: VU HOANG LONG - 20182926

class CTTT Dien tu 01 - K63
Instructor: DR. PHAN XUAN VU

Hanoi, June 15, 2021

Printed Log-Periodic Monopole Array Antenna
with a Simple Feeding Structure
Hoang-Long.Vu
June 15, 2021

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PLPMA Simulation Hoang-Long.Vu - 20182926

List of Figures
1 Geometry of the simulated antenna, (a) 3-D structure. (b) The conductors
on the top (orange) and bottom (green) layers, where substrate is in the
middle (gray) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Designing Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Bottom Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4 The position and length of the first monopole element . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5 The position and length of the last monopole element . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6 Object After Defining Top Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
7 Assign Excitation for Balun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
8 Assign Radiation Boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
9 Radiation Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
10 Analysis Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
11 Sweep Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
12 Rectangular Plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
13 Select Multi-Line Graphing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
14 V SW R versus Lg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
15 V SW R versus Lg Compared to the paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
16 V SW R versus Le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
17 V SW R versus Le Compared to the paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
18 Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 9Hz . . . . . . . . . . 19
19 Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 11.5Hz . . . . . . . . 19
20 Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 15Hz . . . . . . . . . 20
21 Current distributions of bottom layer for the PLPMA at 11.5Hz . . . . . . 20
22 Create Rectangular Plot from Far Field Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
23 Modify Plotting Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
24 Realized gains of the proposed antenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
25 Realized gains of the proposed antenna in the paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
26 Radiation patterns in E-plane compared with the corresponding references
in the paper: at 10Hz, 12Hz and 14Hz from up to downside . . . . . . . . . 24
27 Radiation patterns in H-plane compared with the corresponding references
in the paper: at 10Hz, 12Hz and 14Hz from up to downside . . . . . . . . . 25

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Contents

I Introduction 7

II Design 8

III Simulation and Result 12

1 Setup 14

2 Investigate the Feeding Structure and

VSWR comparison 16

3 Compare the Current Distribution for

Different Frequencies 19

4 Compare the Gain of the Antenna 21

5 Radiation Pattern in E-plane and H-plane

of the Antenna 22

IV Conclusion 26

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ABSTRACT
Antenna and Propagation is an essential subject for every Electronics and
Telecommunications Engineering student. This subject covers a huge amount of
knowledge about the basis and application of antenna techniques, which helps
students to profoundly understand the fountain of the related concepts, also
how to apply them to the real life. Accordingly, when trying to deep into those
tough topics, I have found that simulation is also a very important gadget for
everyone who want to have a good look of how each type of antennas works.
Throughout this report, I have covered almost the detailed process of how
I make the simulation and comparison with the referred paper Printed Log-
Periodic Monopole Array Antenna with a Simple Feeding Structure
by Xiaoshuai Wei, Juhua Liu and Yunliang Long. I will not divide the
report into too separated parts by purpose like simulation and comparison as
mentioned in the above title, yet my report was partitioned following the work-
ing procedure, so that it will takes less effort to follow and cover up the entire
contents.
This report is insignificant compared to its referred paper’s contribution.
Nevertheless, this little achievement helps me to understand more about the
related concepts, also improve my simulation skill using HFSS Sofware, and
from some aspects it makes me feel so happy about what I have done. However,
due to the first time I do an antenna simulation, the obtained results are not the
most well-being ones, even sometimes I stuck in difficulties. Anyway, it is very
kind of you that you are always ready to help me overcome those drawbacks
and accomplish my achievement.
Sincerely,
Long.

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Part I
Introduction
As mentioned in the paper, log-periodic antennas play a very important role in the
contribution of the antenna industry. Aside their undeniable efficiency when being inte-
grated with devices, they have advantages of easy design and fabrication, exhibiting wide
bandwidth and medium high gain. Furthermore, the concept of log-periodic antennas
lays the foundation for the development of log-periodic dipole antenna array later, that
will be discussed in detailed by other letters.
In the range of this report, I only concentrate on the working with simulation, aside
correlating with the referred paper as mentioned above. While the paper focused on
the foundation concepts, simultaneously working on calculation and analyzing obtained
results, I spend my efforts on making a comprehensive guide of working on simulation
using HFSS Design Tools. Throughout this contribution, I look forward to becoming
more familiar with antennas simulation, also related theoretical concepts, and hope that
anyone who reads it will have a more visual view of how antennas work, and how we know
they works.
The antenna which I have simulated is a printed log-periodic monopole array (PLPMA)
antenna with 12 printed monopole elements distributed along a transmission line, parallel
with the bottom layer over a substrate (Figure 1). In the sections below, we will see that
the design has an operation band from about 8GHz to 15GHz, in which the VSWR is
lower than 2.0 and the gain is from 6.5dBi to 9.5dBi.

Figure 1: Geometry of the simulated antenna, (a) 3-D structure. (b) The conductors on
the top (orange) and bottom (green) layers, where substrate is in the middle (gray)

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Part II
Design
From Figure 1 above, we have some important parameters that we need to design the
antenna. The antenna is fabricated on a substrate with a relative permittivity of r = 2.2
and a height of h = 0.8mm. The substrate also have a loss tangent of tan δ = 0.001. In
the table of given materials, we find a kind of material named Rogers RT/duroid 5880 (tm)
with relative permittivity coefficient of r = 2.2 and the loss tangent of tan δ = 0.0009.
It is not necessary to design a new material with loss tangent of tan δ = 0.001, so that I
choose this material to define the material of the substrate.
As mentioned in the paper, the array is composed of N printed monopoles, which works
as a log-periodic style antenna. The array with N elements can be briefly described by a
scaling factor τ and a spacing factor σ, namely,
pn Ln fn+1
(1) τ= = =
pn+1 Ln+1 fn
pn
(2) σ=
4Ln+1
where n is the serial number, Ln and fn are the length and resonant frequency of the nth
and (n + 1)th elements.
The total number of the elements is determined by the following formula:
log(B × Bar )
(3) N =1+
log(1/τ )
where B is the bandwidth ration
fmax
(4) B=
fmin
and Bar is the active region bandwidth:
(5) Bar = 1.1 + 7.7(1 − τ )2 cotα
For the PLPMA, the length of the longest element is obtained by the formula:
λmax
(6) Lmax = √
4 ef f
where λmax is the longest wavelength in free space:
c
(7) λmax =
fmin
In eq. (6), ef f is the effective dielectric permittivity:
r + 1 r − 1 1
(8) ef f = + ×p
2 2 1 + 12h/w
where r and h are the relative permittivity and height of the substrate, and w is the
width of the radiation element. In this PLPMA, the length of the longest element is
determined by
(9) LN = Lmax

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Here, a design example of PLPMA is given to cover a band from 10GHz to 13GHz.
From the given equations above, the number N of the monopole elements is 12 for an
optimized set of τ = 0.91 and σ = 0.35. The optimized parameters are shown in the
following table.

Symbol Value Symbol Value Symbol Value

τ 0.91 W 25.5mm L1 2.0mm
σ 0.35 L 75.0mm LN 5.7mm
N 12 h 0.8mm p1 3.1mm
r 2.2 Wf 1.0mm Lg 5.5mm
B 1.3 Wg 1.0mm Le 2.0mm
α 3.68◦ Wm 2.5mm Lp 9.25mm

Table 1: Parameters for the proposed antenna in Fig.1

Choosing Parameters
To ensure that the designing antenna is exactly the same as the one in the paper, I start
from the factor L1 = 2.0mm to calculate the remained monopole’s lengths using eq.(1)
(L is depent on scaling factor τ = 0.91 and the adjacent L). Obtaining L’s, I derived
spaces p’s using eq.(2) (p is relied on spacing factor σ = 0.35 and the corresponding
L). Consequently I get the required value of corresponding parameters, named Design
Properties in HFSS, as show in the below figure (Fig.2)

(Figure 2 below)

From those parameters, I start by define the bottom layer as the combination of two
rectangle plane. After positioning them, I merge them and declare the boundary Perfect
E for it, so that it acts as an ideal conductor material.

(Figure 3 below)

Then I define the position of the first monopole element, so that it will refer to the next
element by the defined space p1, the same with the remained ones till the last element.

(Figure 4&5 below)

Finally, I define the top layer as Perfect E boundary and obtain the completed antenna:

(Figure 6 below)

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Figure 2: Designing Parameters

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Figure 3: Bottom Layer

Figure 4: The position and length of the first monopole element

Figure 5: The position and length of the last monopole element

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Figure 6: Object After Defining Top Layer

Part III
Simulation and Result
Now we have already finished the design. However, the antenna will not work without
a supplier. Accordingly, I add a balun between top layer and bottom layer, which lies on
the edge of the substrate and acts as the input impedance of the antenna. To this, I right
click on the balun after putting it to the right position, then click Assign Excitation →
Lumped Port, choose the value of Zin = 50Ω and assign the direction.

Figure 7: Assign Excitation for Balun

The antenna also need an environment around so that it can transmit the radiation.
Therefore we need to define a radiation, here we choose air as the environment for radi-
ation.

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Figure 8: Assign Radiation Boundary

Figure 9: Radiation Dimension

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1 Setup

Figure 10: Analysis Setup

To do the simulation, we have to set up the analysis properties. As in the figure above
(Fig.10), there are some important fields that we have to pay attention:

• Setup Name: We should name each individual setup by a clear label with the sum-
mary of its characteristics, for instance ”10Hz” for the case of frequency 10Hz,
etc.

• Frequency: the solution frequency, modified by each particular case in the paper
(when investigating the current distribution, the radiation pattern).

• Maximum Number of Passes: the more it is, the longer time the analysis process
runs, but the figures will be smoother.

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After setting up the analysis properties, there is an option to modify the sweep:

Figure 11: Sweep Setup

This option will be useful when we analysis the VSWR parameters and the Gain of the
antenna, also there are some important fields that we have to pay attention:

• the Enabled checkbox will allow us to include the sweep with the analysis or not

• Sweep Type: Here I choose Discrete, so that the analysis procedure will investigate
each individual point of variable field.

• Distribution: Depend on the type of interval we want to use: Linear Step when we
want to set up the properties using frequency step, Linear Count when we care about
the number of analyzing points.

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2 Investigate the Feeding Structure and

VSWR comparison
Within the above configuration, I use the Rectangular plot tool to create the report of
VSWR and then obtain the graph after analyzing the project.

Figure 12: Rectangular Plot

To create the multi-graph in a single chart of varied Lg I modify the value of parameter
Lg by the corresponding values in the below figure, which leads to the change in the
value of substrate length. After that, I navigate to the Families tab and change the
shown-in-figure lines (Fig.13).

Figure 13: Select Multi-Line Graphing

Consequently, I obtain the final result, compared to the corresponding figures in the
paper.

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Figure 14: V SW R versus Lg

Figure 15: V SW R versus Lg Compared to the paper

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Similarly, I obtain the comparison of V SW R versus Le parameter

Figure 16: V SW R versus Le

Figure 17: V SW R versus Le Compared to the paper

Considering from these above comparisons, we see that the distance Lg (between the
longest element and the ground plane) has a major effect on the radiation of the longest
monopole element, since the inverted-L shaped ground plane is closest to the longest
element. As shown in Fig.14 and Fig.15, the distance has a major influence on the
V SW R at the low frequency (8.7 GHz) where the longest monopole element works. The
optimum value of Lg is between λg /4 and λ0 /4 (f = 11.5 GHz). Here, an optimized value
of 5.5mm is selected. Whereas, the distance Le may have an influence on the shortest

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monopole element. Fig.16 and Fig.17 show the VSWR for the antenna with different
Le . It is seen that the curve is not smooth at 14.8 GHz, which is about the resonant
frequency of the shortest monopole element. At about 14.8 GHz, the VSWR increases
abruptly. Here, an optimized value of 2 mm (about is λ0 /4 at this high frequency) is
adopted, with the optimization of simulation using HFSS.
In this section, the result from the paper and the one from my simulation is nearly
similar, except the slight differences at 8Hz (the referred paper’s is a little bit higher), so
that it leads to the same conclusion.

3 Compare the Current Distribution for

Different Frequencies
The current distributions are obtained by right-clicking on the object, then choose Plot
fields → J → Mag Jsurf. When analyzing in this mode, it is no need to include the sweep,
so that it takes less time to do those assignments.
In the below comparisons, the upside figure is of the referred paper, while the remained
one is my simulation

Figure 18: Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 9Hz

Figure 19: Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 11.5Hz

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Figure 20: Current distributions of top layer for the PLPMA at 15Hz

Figure 21: Current distributions of bottom layer for the PLPMA at 11.5Hz

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From these figures above, we see that the simulation result is nearly the same as in
the report, so it leads to a consideration that fig.18-19-20 show the current distributions
of the top layer for the printed log-periodic monopole array (PLPMA) working at 9 GHz,
11.5 GHz and 15 GHz. It is found that the energy is guided into the resonating ele-
ments by the feeding line and only the elementsaround the quarter-wavelength resonate
strongly. The active region moves from longer to shorter elements as the operating fre-
quency increases, as expected. Fig. 3(b) shows the current distributions of the bottom
layer for the PLPMA working at 11.5 GHz. This part is actually the feeding structure
which consists of the inverted-L shaped transition part and the transmission line loaded
with monopole elements. Fig.21 shows that the power is well guided from the microstrip
line to the transmission line loaded with monopole elements. In transmission line loaded
with monopole elements, the currents decay with the distance away from the input port,
with the radiation of the monopole elements. No significant reflected power is found at
the end of the antenna, implying that the antenna works as a traveling-wave antenna.
Therefore, the antenna exhibits an inherent broadband characteristic.

4 Compare the Gain of the Antenna

To plot the gain, we have to create a far field report and adjust the unit of axis. We
also need to choose the value of θ and φ in the families tab and change the solution into
sweep kind. (Fig.22 and 23)

Figure 22: Create Rectangular Plot from Far Field Report

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Figure 23: Modify Plotting Configuration

Therefore, we obtain the plotting result, comparing with the gain from the paper

Figure 24: Realized gains of the proposed antenna

From the two shown figures (Fig.24-25), we conclude that the variation of the gain
is less than 3 dB in the band from 8.4 GHz to 14.6 GHz. In the band of interest, the
antenna has a peak gain exceeding 9.5 dBi, and an average gain of about 8 dBi.

5 Radiation Pattern in E-plane and H-plane

of the Antenna

Those figures (Fig.26-27) show that the re-simulation results are almost the same with
the results from the paper, which helps to further strengthen the conclusion of the paper

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Figure 25: Realized gains of the proposed antenna in the paper

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Figure 26: Radiation patterns in E-plane compared with the corresponding references in
the paper: at 10Hz, 12Hz and 14Hz from up to downside

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Hoang-Long.Vu - 20182926 PLPMA Simulation

Figure 27: Radiation patterns in H-plane compared with the corresponding references in
the paper: at 10Hz, 12Hz and 14Hz from up to downside

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Part IV
Conclusion
Comprehensively, my simulation seems to work well, while almost the results match
with the reference paper. Therefore, it helps to consolidate the theoretical basis and
conclusion of the paper, also to make it clear for whom want to profoundly understands
the paper. Respectfully, the working procedure gives me the familiarity of how antenna
works, particularly the use and the advantage of printed log-periodic monopole array
antenna. Furthermore, throughout this assignment, I get used to the use of a very effective
antenna simulation software, particularly HFSS, which will be very helpful for my higher
studying on the field of Antenna and Propagation Subject.
Anyway, though I have worked hare and achieve a desirable accomplishment, actually
I have still not understood totally everything of the antenna. My simulation works well
and I hope it will help others much while working with simulation. Howerver, I myself
have to try harder, to be more familiar with the theoretical concepts of many kinds of
antennas, aside with the great supporter namedSimulation
On the way I gain my goal, without a great guide, I an not easily get it. Sincere thanks
to my instructor Dr.Phan Xuan Vu, who lighten the procedure step by step, so that I can
get the right path to accomplish my simulation with the minimized consumed effort. Due
to the limitation of time, perhaps my presentation is not the perfect one. Anyway, I am
really looking forward to receive your feedback on my project so that I know my lackage
and do better on the next time.
One again, thank you very much for your devotion.
Thank you!

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Reference
1. Xiaoshuai Wei, Juhua Liu, Member, IEEE, and Yunliang Long, Senior Member,
IEEE, Printed Log-Periodic Monopole Array Antenna with a Simple Feeding Struc-
ture. IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, 2017

2. Dr.Nguyen Tien Hoa, Thesis Template. HUST, 2020.

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