Multilayer Composite for Below Ground Embedded Sensor Networking

Seongheon Jeong, Chin-Lung Yang, John R. Courter+, Seung-il Kim*,

R. Byron Pipes*, and William J. Chappell
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Chemical
Engineering+, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering*,
Purdue University
E-mail: {jeong11,chappell}@purdue.edu

Abstract
Sewage systems are being retrofit with sensor networks to reduce their deleterious
effects on human health and the environment. To implement the sensor networks a
conventional cast-iron manhole cover is replaced with a robust composite manhole
cover antenna. The difficulties in designing the antenna in a manhole cover are that the
antenna must radiate in a harsh environment, at ground level, and maintain low-profile.
The cover must maintain structural loads as large as 2,000 pounds, due to the presence
of traffic, while simultaneously being relatively “transparent” for RF radiation from
below ground sensors. To verify a prototype, a simple composite sandwich structure is
designed, fabricated, and integrated with an aluminum slot antenna. This composite
manhole cover antenna is analyzed with full-wave simulations and measured in an
anechoic chamber. The simulated results show a good agreement with measured results.
The magnetically center-fed slot antenna shows 2.13 dB of measured gain within the
fiberglass sandwich structure.

Introduction

About 772 cities containing about 40 million people in US are struggling with a
condition known as combined sewer overflow (CSO) and sanitary sewage overflow
(SSO) [1]. These CSO and SSO conditions contribute to environmental and human
health impacts. Some of the cities have already spent many millions of dollars to
reduce CSO and SSO. One means of combating this epidemic problem which is
polluting our natural waterways is to dynamically monitor the sewage network and
intelligently redirect or suspend the flow of water. This requires that sensing
mechanisms be placed inside of roadways with sensors monitoring both flow and water
quality.

Towards this effort, we utilize a structurally strong, yet relatively low dielectric
constant composite made of fiberglass and high strength foam. Previously, a
conventional cast-iron manhole cover was studied and converted to a thick slot antenna
[2]. The slot is implemented by milling the thick cast-iron manhole cover. However,
the antenna was not fully protected from the loads and harsh environment of an active
road bed and the feeding wire corroded. The new antenna will be exposed to the
similar conditions and therefore a solution which acts as a radome while
simultaneously providing support for extreme structural loads and corrosive
environments is desired. To implement the radiating aperture, a thin slot antenna is
completely protected by a rigid fiberglass sandwich structure and a magnetic coupling
feed is applied by designing a microstrip transmission line on a low-loss substrate. This
sandwich structure was mechanically simulated and found to be very strong even
though a foam core was utilized to make it light weight and to have a low dielectric
constant. The sandwich structure and materials have been applied in wide applications

978-1-4244-2042-1/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE

such as aerospace shuttles, military vehicles, and cars [3],[4]. Through the use of
composites, the entire surface of a structure can become a radiator since they provide
mechanical strength while allowing for the passing of electromagnetic waves. This
robust composite manhole cover is attached to a rectangular slot antenna to
communicate above-ground nodes for the embedded sensor network designed to
mitigate CSO and SSO events.

Prototype of Antenna

The conventional cast-iron manhole

cover is replaced with a sandwich
structure composed of an woven
fiberglass fabric reinforcement on
top and bottom and in a round ring fiberglass metal plate with foam
along the edge of the sandwich fiberglass/polyester slot antenna coating
structure to fit into the manhole (a) Prototype
tunnel and make the structure shown 0.08 inches
in Fig.1 (a). In this paper the ring is
omitted for simplicity and only the 1.5 inches
core sandwich structure is
considered as shown in Fig.1 (b) antenna layer
since this is the region which affects (b) Sandwich structure without a ring
the antenna performance. Each Fig1. Composite manhole cover slot antenna with
composite fiberglass skin is 0.08 sandwich structure
inches thick. The sheets are formed
from 8 plies of woven fiberglass fabric, which is impregnated with commercial epoxy
resin. The original fabric is woven in an eight harness weave pattern to maximize
strength. These plies are then laid at 45 degree angles from each other so the
orientation of the fiberglass lay-up is [0 45 -45 90 90 -45 45 0]o as shown in Fig.2. This
symmetric lay-up is to avoid bending after the curing and promote structural integrity.
The orientation simultaneously provides relatively homogeneous dielectric properties
for fields in the plane of the composite fibers. These composite skin sheets are then
autoclave cured at 250ºF for 60 minutes. Epoxy film adhesive is used to join the foam
core to the fiberglass skins and the lower skin to the antenna.

For the radiating layer, a metal layer is included on the bottom of the multilayer stack.
Milled in this layer is a center-fed slot antenna designed to radiate at 916 MHz by
creating a slot with a length ( Ls ) which is equivalent to half a wavelength in the
fiberglass material as shown in Fig.3. The slot is fed through magnetic field coupling
and the input impedance of the slot antenna is adjusted by changing the width of the
slot ( Ws ). For the feed, a 50Ω microstrip transmission line is fabricated on a low-loss
substrate (Rogers® RO3010), positioned at a right angle to the slot, and screwed into
the metal plate on the bottom of the sandwich. The open stub length ( Lm ) is a quarter
wavelength to maximize magnetic field at the slot. The aluminum plate of the slot
antenna has a common ground with the feeding transmission line.

Analysis

To analyze the structure with a full wave simulator it is necessary to approximate the
electrical characteristics of the woven fiberglass structure. Without this approximation
it would be necessary to completely mesh the microscopic details of the woven
fiberglass; this presents a computationally insurmountable problem due to the length
scales involved. In this paper, each multi-layered fiberglass sheet is modeled as a
single anisotropic sheet because the wavelength is much longer than thickness of a
fiberglass sheet. The anisotropic fiberglass is expressed in permittivity tensor. Due to
the symmetry of the lay-up in the xy plane, ε XX in equation (1) is identical to ε YY in far
field. ε ZZ is expected to be smaller than ε XX because of the perpendicular nature of the
electric field to the strands of the fibers.
ε XX 0 0 
ε =  0 ε YY 0 
 (1)
 0 0 ε ZZ 
Around the slot, ε XX might not be the same as ε YY due to the relatively confined
electric fields in the near field of the slot. However, each layer of fiber is only 0.254
mm thick and the eight harness weave means that the aligned fibers in any one
direction are spaced less than 300 µm apart before overlapping with fibers in the
orthogonal direction (1/1000th of a wavelength) creating a mosaic as shown in figure 4.
This arrangement helps ensure homogeneity of the dielectric constant for the horizontal
fields. The radiation pattern is explained by regarding the slot as being complementary
to dipoles [5] according to the principle of duality. The simulated radiation pattern and
reflection coefficient are shown in Fig. 5. The 3dB beamwidth is broad, approximately
124 degrees ( θ =-62o ~ +62o) in the upper part of the circle at φ =90 degrees. The
simulated reflection coefficient, gain, and efficiency are -30.52 dB, 5.16dB, and 91.3%,
respectively. Meanwhile, the mechanical strength is also simulated to predict the
weight which can be endured upon the designed manhole cover antenna. The
mechanical finite element numerical analysis shows that this manhole cover antenna is
rigid enough to support two thousand pounds of loaded pressure with only the foam
core as the support structure. With the surrounding fiber rims, the manhole cover will
easily support the weights needed for in road use.

Measurement Results

A cross section of the composite manhole cover antenna is shown in Fig.4 and
measured in anechoic chamber with HP8753 network analyzer. The measured results
of the reflection coefficient and the radiation pattern are in good agreement with the
simulated results as shown in Fig.5. The 3.5MHz resonant frequency shift occurs,
which might come from the approximations used in obtaining ε ZZ or variations in the
density or orientation of the fibers throughout the cover. The simulated value of ε ZZ is
obtained by measuring the capacitance at z direction through RLC meter. The
measured value is 5.2 which is smaller than that obtained for ε XX =5.6 as anticipated,
and these were used to model the protective skins surrounding the foam in the
simulation. Using these values in a simulation gave us the 0.38 % accuracy and the
return loss is below 10 dB across the 902 to 928 MHz band of interest for the sensor
network. The measured gain is 2.13dB at 919.5MHz meaning that there is not undue
loss caused by the composite material.

Conclusions

The proposed robust manhole cover antenna can be used as an efficient radiator for
embedded sensor network system. The full-wave simulation predicts the performance
of composite antenna accurately using the approximation of a single-layered
anisotropic fiberglass sheet. The techniques to design and analyze composite antennas
are shown and the simple prototype is fabricated to prove the accuracy and feasibility
of a manhole cover antenna using sandwich structure composite materials.

Acknowledgement
This work was supported by Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology fund. The author
would like to thank Dr. Luis Montestruque at EmNet, LLC.

References
[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Report to Congress: Impacts and Control of CSOs
and SSOs, Washington, D.C. http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/cso/cpolicy_report2004.cfm
[2] J. F. Mastarone, W. J. Chappell, “Urban sensor networking using thick slots in manhole
covers,” Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium 2006, IEEE,
Page:779-782.
[3] H. F. Seibert, “Applications for PMI foams in aerospace sandwich structures,” Reinforced
Plastics, Vol.50, Issue1, Jan. 2006, page:44-48.
[4] M. T. Nobuo, O. Y. Shu, “Smart composite Sandwich structures for Future Aerospace
Application – Damage detection and Suppresion,” J. Solid Mech Mater Eng, Vol.1, No.1,
Page:3-17,2007.
[5] R. Garg, P. Bhartia, I. Bahl, and A. Ittipiboon, Microstrip Antenna Design Handbook,
Artech House, 2000.

0o
0o +45o
-45o +45o
-45o
90o
90o 90o
+45o
Y Z -45o
0o
X
Y X

Fig.2 Lay-up of a fiberglass sheet Fig.3 Magnetically fed slot antenna

fiberglass antenna
foam
500X
200X

(a) Cross-section view of fabricated antenna (b) Fabricated woven fiberglass with
mosaic of different orientations
Fig.4 Photograph of antenna cross section and fiberglass

(a) Reflection coefficient (b) Radiation pattern (gain) in xz plane

Fig.5 Simulated (___) and measured (---) results