60 GHz Printed Yagi-Uda Beam-Deflector Integrated

Refractive Index Metamaterial

1st Abduladeem Beltayib
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
The College Of Technical Sciences
Bani_walid, Libya
adeem81@gmail.com
2nd Allafi Omran
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
The College Of Technical Sciences , Bani_walid, Libya
om.allafi@gmail.com

Abstract— An approach for deflection of the main radiation
pattern of the end-fire dipole antenna in a specific direction by
changing the effective constitutive parameters of metamaterials
are introduced. The concept of this phenomenon is creating a
new medium that has different characteristics (𝜺𝒓 ,𝝁𝒓 ), in front of
the electromagnetic waves to enforce it to propagate in a specific
direction. This act has been done by embedding Modified
Gradient Refractive Index Metamaterial (MGRIM) unit cells in
front of the dipole-printed antenna. However, by changing the
load dimensions of MGRIM, the permittivity and permeability of
unit cells are going to change. Because the refractive index of the
medium changed, the phase of entered EM waves to this medium
will be changed. So, the aim here is to create a new medium with
different properties to provide a proper phase shift to tilt the
end-fire radiation pattern. The challenge in this approach is are
provide a high tilting beam angle, high gain, and low side lobe
level simultaneously. Two unit cells are used in this paper to
provide a high deflection angle and keep a high gain with a low
side lobe level. First, one to get medium has a gradient refractive
index. The second one uses as a band stop structure in order to
reduce the side lobe level and enhance the gain. The simulation
results show that by using nonperiodicity arrangement of
MGRIM unit cells in front of a dipole-printed antenna, the main
beam of the radiation pattern in the E-plane can be tilted 𝟒𝟑𝒐 in
the end-fire direction at 60 GHz. The proposed design exhibits an
increasing gain of about 2.7db and reduces the side lobe level to -
11.2dB.
Keywords—metamaterials, millimeter-wave, Beam tilting.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, the rapid development of communication
technology and its applications that need great demand for
high-quality standards which lies in the amount of data and
high-speed flow of these data. Because of that, this kind of
application needs broad bandwidth, 60GHZ frequency
bandwidth has become more attractive and considers the best
candidate to provide requirements for this type of
communication especially fifth-generation mobile
communication system.
The big obstacles to designing an antenna working at
60GHZ range, are atmospheric absorption loss, penetration
loss, and interference effect. All loss can be reduced by using a
high gain antenna, also chose the proper application, for
example, indoor short-distance applications [1]. Using a multi-
beam antenna consider a good solution to reduce the
interference effect where the antenna power is still confined in
specific directions [2,3]. The issue here, designing a high-gain
antenna is going to cause the beam alignment very difficult
because the high-gain antenna and beam width are inversely
proportional [4].
There are many approaches to redirect the main beam to a
specific direction to overcome beam alignment problems. For
instance, using the beam forming network such as the Butler
matrix [5,6], the drawback of this kind of antenna the system
size is going to increase. Parasitic elements and using a
varactor diode is another approach for tilting the main radiation
of the antenna [7]. But this approach is not the proper choice
for working in 60GHZ because the gain will be small.
Recently, Dadgarpour et al. [8] built a 5×4 array of Gradient
Refractive Index Metamaterial (GRIM) unit cells with a simple
printed dipole antenna working at 60GHZ, which this design
offers beam deflection angle of 26° in end-fire direction
without dropping in the gain over the 57-64 GHz. In [8], the
beam angle is limited because any increase in the angle of the
beam tilting more than 26° will lead in dropping in the gain
and deterioration of the side lobe level.
In this paper, the beam deflection technique using Gradient
Refractive Index Metamaterial (GRIM) arrangement unit cells
to provide a high beam tilting angle with high gain and low
side lobe level of printed dipole antenna working at 60GHZ.
end-fire radiating antennas, such as dipole has been selected in
this paper for the millimeter-wave band because easy to
fabricate and easy to make beam-switching networks, beam
tilting, and beam steering. In fact, the GRIM unit cell is the
modified version of GRIM that was used in [9]. The concept in
this design is creating a new medium that has a different
refraction index from the refractive index of the antenna
substrate to provide different phase shifts between the
electromagnetic wave inside the antenna substrate and the
electromagnetic waves inside the new medium that is created
by metamaterial unit cells. However, according to Snell’s law,
the beam tilting of the main radiation pattern will occur. The
proposed antenna presents a high deflection angle in the main
beam of the radiation pattern of about 43° at 60 GHz and 45° at
60.5, 61, and 61.5 GHz with more than 2dB gain enhancement thickness of 0.254mm. The constitutive parameters of the
and -11.2 dB side lobe level. MGRIM unit cell (𝜀𝑟 , 𝜇𝑟 ) were retrieved based on Kramers–
Kronig relations [11].
II. THE CONCEPT OF THE BEAM TILTING TECHNIQUE
This technique based on passing the electromagnetic waves
throughout more than one medium, where is each medium has
a different refractive index. In this case, the electromagnetic
wave in each medium generates a different phase shift, which
leads to deflect the antenna beam radiation [10]. In beginning,
a medium of gradient refractive index is created using a array
of unit-cells as shown in Fig.1. According to Snell’s law,
when the electromagnetic wave moves from a medium that has
n1 to another medium that has n2, the EM wave refracts ∅.
 1  k 0 n1d  5  k0n5d

n1 n2 n3 n4 n5 d

L
Fig.3: Geometry of the MGRIM unit-cell.

Fig.1 Subarray of the unit cells has different refractive
indexes
To explain this mechanism and make it easy, if the phase
shift between two mediums, as is shown in Fig.2, β is given by
[3].
As shown in Fig.4, there is a variation in the refractive index
ranges from 1.3 to 2.55 over the operating bandwidth. The
designed unit cells array is implemented on Rogers RT5880.
By an arrangement of five unit cells as an array in front of a
printed dipole antenna or Yagi-Uda antenna, high beam tilting
is generated.

Fig.2 Two mediums have a different refractive index

𝛽 = 𝑘0 (𝑛2 − 𝑛1 )𝑑……….. (1)

Where: 𝑘0 is Wave number, 𝑛1 is Refractive index of the
medium1, and 𝑛2 is Refractive index of the medium2.
And the relationship between the phase shift and radiation
angle is given [3].
𝛽 = 𝑘0 𝑙𝑠𝑖𝑛∅…………… (2)
(a)
From Eq.(1) and Eq.(2) the radiation angle is:
𝑑(𝑛2 −𝑛1 )
∅ = 𝑠𝑖𝑛−1 [ ]………. (3)
𝑙

The proposed antenna presents a unit cell array, which is

integrated in front of the dipole arms on both sides of the
substrate to create new mediums that have a different refractive
index. This metamaterial cell enforces the electromagnetic
waves to propagate in a specific direction creating a deflection
to the antenna beam.
III. GRADIENT REFLECTIVE INDEX UNIT
CELLS
In fact, this unit cell is presented in [9]. Fig.3 shows the (b)
structure of the used MGRIM unit cells. The unit cell was
constructed on Rogers RT5880 with a permittivity of 2.2 and Fig.4: Relative permittivity, permeability, and
 MGRIM unit cells were loaded in a particular arrangement in
front of the dipole arms on both sides of the substrate as shown
in Fig.7.

GRIM unit cell

W

Wp

Lp
Fig.5 the structure of Reflector H-shaped unit-cell.

TABLE.1: REFLECTOR H-SHAPED UNIT-CELL DIMENSIONS

L
Lx Ly W W1 L1 G
0.88m 1.13m 0.08m 0.664m 0.57m 0.224m LD
m m m m m m
Reflector
Lf3 H-shaped
Fig.5 shows the reflector H shape unit cell. In fact, this Lcut Wf3 unit-cell
reflector unit cell is a modified structure of H shape in [12]. Lf2 Wf2
Because any tilting in the main beam will cause gain dropping
Wcut
and deteriorating in the side lobe level a new reflector H shape
was integrated at the back side of the printed dipole antenna in Lf1
order to enhance gain and improve SLL. All dimensions are Wf1
indicated in Table 1. Fig.6 shows that the reflector H shape unit
cell has a band stop response between 57 to 64 GHz.

Fig.7 Configuration of proposed antenna embedded with MGRIM

unit-cells on top and bottom of the substrate.

TABLE.2:THE PROPOSED ANTENNA DIMENSIONS

W L Lp Wp LD Lc W
Parameter
c

Value (mm) 7.625 13 4.11 3.6 1.25 1.5 2

7
Wf1 Wf2 Wf2 Lf Lf2 Lf
Value (mm)
1 3
0.8 0.43 0.2 2.8 0.9 2.2

Fig.6 S-parameters of the reflector H shape unit cell

IV. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION

The antenna is integrated to verify its high beam tilting beam
angle in the end-fire direction with enhance gain and reduce
SLL. The dipole-printed antenna with 6 × 6 array MGRIN unit
cells is shown in Fig.7. The antenna is built on RT/Duroid
5880 substrate, which has a dielectric constant of 2.2 and loss
tangent 0.0009 with a thickness 0.254 mm. As shown in Fig.7
the antenna consists of two driven dipole built on the top and
bottom sides of the substrate and the ground plane was
truncated on the bottom side which acts as a reflector. The Fig.8 Reflection-coefficient of the double-dipole GRIM antenna
radiation pattern and all the simulation results were done using
CST and the antenna dimensions were modified as in Table.2.
 As seen in the simulated return loss results of Fig.8, the
proposed antenna provides wide range impedance matching
over the band 52 –65 GHz. Fig.9 indicates that the proposed
antenna provides a gain of 10.3dB at the center frequency 60
GHz, efficiency about 88%.
Fig.9 Antenna’s gain and efficiency
Fig.10 Radiation patterns of proposed antenna in the E-plane (xy)
with MGRIM unit-cells and a conventional dipole antenna at 60
GHz.
Fig 10 shows the radiation pattern of the proposed antenna
with and without the MGRIM unit cells and H shape reflector
in E-plane of antenna. The figure indicates that, when using
MGRIM and H shape reflector unit cells and integrating them
in front of the dipole arms the main beam of the radiation
pattern will deflect by 43° in the E-plane. Moreover, the
antenna gain is increased by more than 2dB compared to the
antenna without the MGRIM and H shape reflector unit cells.
Also, the side lobe level will be improved, because when
using MGRIM and H shape reflector unit cells, there is no
dropping in the gain and deterioration in side lobe level
compared with the antenna without using the unit cells as it is
shown in Fig.10.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper describes an approach to deflect the main radiation
pattern of end-fire dipole antenna in a specific direction by
changing the effective constitutive parameters of
metamaterials. The concept of this phenomenon is creating a
new medium that has different characteristics (𝜀𝑟 , 𝜇𝑟 ), front of
the electromagnetic waves to enforce it to propagate in specific
direction. This act is done by embedding Modified Gradient
Refractive Index Metamaterial (MGRIM) unit cells in front of
the dipole-printed antenna. However, by changing the load
dimensions of MGRIM, the permittivity and permeability are
going to change. Because the refractive index of the medium
changed, the phase of entered EM waves to this medium will
be changed. So, the aim here is based on creating a new
medium that has different properties to provide a proper phase
shift to tilt the end-fire radiation pattern. The challenges in this
approach it are providing a high tilting beam angle, high gain,
and low side lobe level simultaneously. For providing a high
deflection angle and keep high gain with a low side lobe level,
two unit cells are used in this paper. First, one to get medium
has a gradient refractive index. The second one uses as band
stop structure in order to reduce the side lobe level and
enhance the gain. The simulation results show that by using a
non-periodicity arrangement of MGRIM unit cells in front of a
dipole printed antenna, the main beam of the radiation pattern
in the E-plane can be tilted 43𝑜 in end-fire direction at 60
GHz. The proposed design exhibits increasing in gain of about
2.7db and reducing the side lobe level to -11.2dB.
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