1038

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 39,NO. 7, JULY 1991

Characteristics of Circular Patch on Thick Substrate and Superstrate

Arun K. Bhattacharyya
Abstract- Accurate formulation for the wall admittance of a circular patch on a thick substrate/superstrate is presented. The principle of equivalence is invoked at the physical aperture of the patch, which yields equivalent electric and magnetic surface currents for the outside fields. The unknown electric current, in terns of the aperture electric field, is obtained from the field continuity condition on the aperture surface. Numerical results reveal that for a small substrate thickness, the equivalent electric current may be ignored. However, it should be included in the analysis for larger substrate thicknesses. Numerical results for the wall conductance, wall susceptance, and the radiation efficiency of a patch with various substrates and superstrates are presented.

electric and magnetic fields are known. Since there is no tangential electric field on the patch surface, the magnetic surface current will not exist on the patch surface. Some electric current, however, will flow on the top surface which is basically induced by the fringing fields from the physical aperture. The amount of current on the top surface presumably is small compared to the equivalent currents on the aperture, and therefore, the effect of electric current on the external surface of the patch will be neglected in our analysis. Moreover, due to the negative image effect of this current, the contribution to the external field will be insignificant. k t za ,$Ha be the tangential electric and magnetic fields and On the ape*re surface' The magnetic and sur-

face currents are f91

I. INTRODUCTION
A number of analytical and numerical techniques are reported in the literature for the analyses of printed antennas 111-[6]. Among them, the cavity model is the simplest both conceptually and computationally. In the cavity model, the antenna is thought of as a perturbation of a magnetic wall cavity, which is based on the high quality factor of the antenna. The quality factor, however, decreases with the substrate thickness and the cavity model becomes inaccurate for a larger substrate thickness. The mode matching technique [4], [5], on the other hand, is more realistic, since this model assumes an impedance wall boundary condition. If the wall impedance is known accurately, the mode matching technique will yield accurate results for a thicker substrate. In the present work, the wall admittance of a circular patch on an electrically thick substrate is formulated. The principle of equivalence is invoked at the physical aperture of the patch. Both electric and magnetic surface currents are considered to be the sources of outside radiation. In order to obtain a generalized expression for the wall admittance, an additional dielectric layer on the top surface of the patch is also considered. These dielectric layers are normally used to protect the antenna from environmental hazards [7]. For the external fields, the analysis is carried out in the Hankel transformed domain [ 8 ] . Numerical results for the radiation characteristics of patches on thick substrates with superstrates are shown. These results will be useful in designing an antenna on a thick substrate with and without superstrate, especially at millimeter wave frequencies.

7, = A x fi = (jx ,$)flu= sa.

Note that in the conventional magnetic curren: model of a patch on electrically thin substrate, the contribution of J, to the radiated field was ignored primarily due to the small value of H , on the aperture (Ha/E, for+h < X/50). For electrically thick substrates, the contribution of J, should be considered in order to have an accurate wall admittance. and Let HQ"f H$ be the &directed magnetic fields produced by + M , and J,, respectively, at p = a. Since Maxwell equations are linear, H r should be proportional to E, and H; will be proportional to H,. Mathematically,

HT

+ H;

= --E,

Ym

+ C,Ha

(3)

where - y , / a and C, are proportionality constants and ym is $e wall admittance when the effect of the aperture electric current, J,, is ignored. C, is another constant (unitless), which is equal to the ratio of the magnetic field to the electric current when the magnetic current source is absent. These quantities will be determined later. To calculate the wall admittance, the left-hand side of (3) is equated with H,. The modified wall admittance including the electric surface current on the aperture thus becomes
(4)

Determination of y, requires the expressions for y m and C,. These quantities will be obtained in the following subsections.

II. FORMULATION
Consider a circular patch antenna shown in Fig. 1. The patch is located at the interface of two dielectric media with relative dielectric constants of E , and E * , respectively. The thicknesses of the dielectric layers are h, and h, , Lespectively . To determine the wall admittance of the patch, the principle of equivalence [9] is invoked at the physical aperture of the patch. Here, in our analysis, the external surface includes the physical aperture of the patch and the top surface of the patch metallization. The eauivalent magnetic and electric surface currents on the physical aperture of i e patch can be obtained once the tangential
Manuscript received November 22, 1989; revised December 20, 1990. This work was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The author is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada S7N OWO. IEEE Log Number 9100272.

A . Determination of y ,
T~ derive an expression for ym, the stationaryexpression the for admittance is invoked. The stationary expression for the wall admittance of a circular patch is given by [6]
Ym =

rh,E;

( a , a)

(5)

where ( a , a) is the self-reaction of the equivalent magnetic current at = a' which is given by

( a , a) = -

lh'

k2'EaHTadS dz

(6)

where Ea = E, COS n+ is the aperture elxtric field for the TM,, mode. H? is the +directed by he quivafield lent magnetic current MS given in (l)' To derive the expression for H T , we do the analysis in the spectral domain. The expression for Hm produced by a magnetic line current source is derived in [8]

OO18-926X/91/07~-1038$01 .OO 0' IEEE 1991

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 39, NO. 7, JULY 1991

1039

z0 .
2

z=h

z=hl

Z=H=h,th2

h2

Fig. 2. Transmission line equivalent circuit for the TM, mode in the spectral domain for magnetic current source.

GROUND PLANE Fig. 1 . Configuration of a circular patch with substrate and supestrate.

The term T, has a similar expression as T,,, but yoi should be replaced by &. Combining (5) and (12), the expression for y m is obtained.

B. Determination of C ,
using the transmission line analogy in the spectral domain. In the present case, the magnetic current is a surface current on the cylindrical surface at p = a and o < z < h . The modified expression for H? is derived as

As previously mentioned, C, is the ratio between H$ (at p = a Ha, where H$ is the magnetic field produced by the equivalent electric current in (2). The equivalent electric current being in the z-direction, the field produced by it will be transverse magnetic (TM) type and all the field components can be determined from D,, where D, is the electric displacement vector in the z-direction [8].From the Maxwell equations, it can be shown that in a stratified media, D, satisfies the following differential equations:

+ 0) and

V'D,

-a ape + k2D, = -(V, . E,) + - + j u p e J, az az

- + ( V , . 2,) = p, az

(14)

,, where f , is proportional to the voltage in the transmission line (Fig. 2) when the source is at z = h , and yin is the input admittance seen by the source. Expressions for f m and yinare
f m ( k p , z , h ) =cos(k,,z)/cos(k,,h), z s h

and

(9)
where

where J , is the electric current density in the z-direction and p, is the electric charge density. V, . E, = aE,/ax + aE,/ay, where E, and E,, are the x and y directed electric fields, respectively. To obtain the solution for D,,the Green function technique is employed. First, we assume J, to be a Dirac-delta function of z and obtain the solution for D, (= E,). To that end, the transmission line analogy in the spectral domain is-used [8]. From QZ on+e can obtain the magnetic vector potential A and using V x A = H, the magnetic field can be determined. The average value of H$ in the interval 0 < z < h, and at p = a o is derived as

and
yo; = jki,/eoei,

k:, = u 2 ~ e 0 e i k : , -

i = 1 , 2 , 3 . (11)
From (16), we can obtain the expression for H $ / H a , which is equal to c. ,

Expressions for f, and y: are the same as that of f,,, and y c except that yo, should be replaced by rbi in j , ,y c and y L where ',, y or. = -jp/k;,. Using (6), the self reaction for the magnetic ' current is derived as

III. RADIATION EFFICIENCY

The real part of (4) gives the wall conductance of the patch which is representative of the total power output. This power has two components, the space wave power Psp and the surface wave power P,,. The surface wave does not contribute to the radiated field and c p be considered to be loss. The radiation efficiency of a printed antenna on a dielectric layer thus can be defined as the ratio between the radiated power and the total power which comes out of the patch. For a given aperture yoltage, the total output power is proportional to the wall conductance g. The radiation efficiency therefore, , + , can be defined as 7 = gsp/(gSp gSJ, where g, and g, are the space and surface wave conductances, respectively. The space wave conductance is equal to the real part of y , when the integrals in (12) are computed for a range of k p between 0 and k , [ ] The 8.

where

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 39, NO. I, JULY 1991

surface wave conductance arises from the singularity of the integrals at the zeros of y: and U,. The zeros of yE correspond to the TM surface wave modes and the zeros of ye, correspond to the transverse electric (TE) surface wave modes. Using the singalarity extraction technique [8], the contribution of the integrals to the surface wave conductance can be obtained, resulting in

0.08

E,=2.5, f=5GHz

- ---0.06

-PRESENT

THEOF7Y

dh (17)
where kpo and kE0 are the zeros of y g and U,,, respectively, and the summation is taken over all possible zeros. 6yE and S y i are the derivatives of y z and y: with respect to k , at k, = k,o and kp = kEO,respectively. The expression for the space wave conductance is obtained from the relation

d:

0.02

,=2.5 , h, =0.2 cm 0 0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

10 .

H (cm) Fig. 3. Variations of space wave conductances with substrate and superstrate thickness ( U = 1.1 cm, f = 5 GHz).

0.3
1

The radiation efficiency, q , is given by

0.2

In the preceding sections, the expressions for the wall admittance and the radiation efficiency are derived. Numerical result for these quantities will be presented in the following section.

a
0

0.1

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 10 . Equations (4), ( S ) , and (16) were computed numerically to obtain H(cm) the surface and space wave conductances of a circular patch. The Fig. 4. Surface wave conductances versus dielectric thickness (a = 1.1 cm, f = 5 GHz). radius of the patch was a = 1.1 cm. Also computed is the wall conductance using [4]. Fig. 3 shows the variation of the wall 0.075 conductances with the dielectric thickness, H (= h , h 2 ) . The E,=2.5,a = 3 c m wall conductances are found to vary with the substrate thickness. To PRESENT THEORY see the effect of electric current on the wall admittance, C, was ---REF cl] 0 also computed using (16). It was found that when h, is small, h,=O (h, < h/30) the value of C, was of the order of so that the I * effect of the electric current on yw is negligible. However, when h increases ( h , > X/IO), the value of C, increases and the value of y , differs considerably from y,. For example, when h = 0.16 &, and, E, = 2.5, the value of C , is computed as 0.21 + 0.018j, and the value of the wall conductance is equal to 1.26 g, where g m is the conductance obtained from the magnetic current model. For a thick substrate, the equivalent electric current, therefore, must to be considered in order to determine the wall conductance accurately. In addition, the space wave conductance is found to vary with the superstrate thickness. I I , I Fig. 4 shows the variation of surface wave conductance with the 0.05 0.IO 0.15 dielectric thickness. The conductance initially increases with the H / A, substrate/superstrate thickness, reaches a maximum, and then de- Fig. 5. Equivalent extension for the fringing fields versus substrate/supercreases. For a given dielectric thickness, an antenna without super- strate thickness of a patch. ( a = 3 cm, f = 5 GHz) -this theory, ---Ill. strate layer exhibits the largest surface wave conductance. The wall susceptance is also computed and expressed in terms of the equivalent extension, A a , which is obtained from the relation The agreement between the two results is good for small substrate Aa = qb/(k,E,a), where b represents the wall susceptance. The thickness ( h < &/IO.). For larger substrate thickness, the two solid curves in Fig. 5 are the results obtained from (4). The dotted results differ considerably. In the present formulation the suscepline is the equivalent extension when Kirchhoff s formula [ 1. p. 901 tance is found to initially increase, reach a maximum, and then is used, which is applicable only when there is no superstrate layer. decrease. The value of the susceptance should be very small when

w .RESULTSAND DISCUSSIONS

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 39, NO. I, JULY 1991

1041

IO0

-\

6o

500 0.04 0.08 0 1 0.16 0.20 0.24 .2

t,
V. CONCLUSION

on which the patch was etched was 15 x 15 cm2. Fig. 7 shows the comparison between the theoretical and measured impedances. A reactance of -20j Q was added to the theoretical impedance to include the dc mode capacitance of the patch. The capacitive reactance, -jxc, was calculated using the formula X, = 60 &,h, / ( r a * ~ , ) where E , is the effective dielectric constant [l]. , The agreement between the theoretical and measured impedances is found to be good. It was noted that when the conventional wall admittance formulation 141 was used, the computed input impedance at resonance was 25% more than the measured value. The present formulation, however, agrees well with the measured results. The wall conductance, wall admittance, and the radiation efficiency of a circular patch on a thick dielectric substrate with and without a cover layer on the top are determined. It is found that for a small substrate thickness, the magnetic current model yields fairly accurate results; however, the accuracy deteriorates with an increase in the substrate thickness. The radiation efficiency decreases initially and then increases with the thickness of the dielectric layer. The maximum value of the radiation efficiency is higher in the case of an antenna with different substrate and superstrate materials than that of an antenna with substrate and superstrate of same dielectric material.
REFERENCES

Fig. 6. Radiation efficiency versus normalized SubstrateJsuperstrate thickness. a = 1 cm, f = 5 GHz. - .- h, = 0 and e, = 2.5; . . . . h I A J h 3 = 0.053 and E , = e, = 2.5; - (this theory), ---- [7] when h , 6 1 %= 0.1, E , = 2.45 and e, = 3.2.

60
40
20

0 / 0 - .0 0

@A
\\
0

o\

-20

\O

I -60 I 4.50 4.75

5.00 5.25 5.50

f (GHz) Fig. 7. Comparison between the theoretical and measured input impedance of a circular patch antenna ( a = 1 cm, h, = 0.318 cm, h , = 0, e, = 2.2) .-, ---- theory, e, 0 0 0 measured.

the electrical thickness of the substrate is about a quarter of a wavelength (resonant condition), which is supported by the present theory. This confirms the validity of the formulation. This plot is very useful in calculating the resonant frequency of a patch antenna. The radiation efficiency is computed and plotted against the normalized substrate/superstrate thickness in Fig. 6. The efficiency, in general, decreases initially and then increases after a certain value of the dielectric thickness. The effect of dielectric superstrate obtained from the present model is compared with that reported by Alexopoulos and Jackson [7, fig. 3(a)]. The comparison is found to be good. The locations of minimum and maximum efficiencies coincide with that reported in [7]. A slight difference in magnitude to the shape of the patches-which are different in is different cases. The impedance Of a probe-fed patch with a = cm, hi = 0.318 cm, and 1 = 2.2 was measured using an HP 8510B network analyzer. The probe was located at a distance of 0.3 cm from the center of the patch. The dimension of the ground plane

I. J. Bahl and P. Bhartia, Microstrip Antennas. Dedham, MA: Artech House, 1980. J. R. James, P. S. Hall, and C. Wood, Microstrip Antenna Theory and Design. London, U.K. IEE Electromagnetic Waves Series, Peregrinus, 1981. K. R. Carver and J. W. Mink, Microstrip antenna technology, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-29, pp. 2-24, Jan. 1981. L. C. Shen, :Analysis of a circular disc printed circuit antenna, Proc. Int. Elec. Eng., vol. 126, no. 12, pp. 1220-1222, Dec. 1979. S. Yano and A. Ishimaru, A theoretical study of the input impedance of a circular microstrip disk antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-29, pp. 77-83, Jan. 1981. A. K. Bhattacharyya and R. Garg, Generalized transmission line model of microstrip patches, Proc. Inst. Elec. Eng., vol. 132, pt. H,no. 2, pp. 93-98, Apr. 1985. N. G. Alexopoulos and D. R. Jackson, Fundamental superstrate (cover) effects on printed circuit antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-32, pp. 807-816, 1984. A. K. Bhattacharyya and R. Garg, Spectral domain analysis of the wall admittances for circular and annular microstrip patches and the effect of surface waves, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-33, pp. 1067-1073, Oct. 1985. R. F. Hamngton, Time-Harmonic Electromagnetic Fields. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Q.Liu and W. C. Chew, Simple formulas for the resonant frequencies of microstrip patches, in IEEE Antennas Propagat. Soc. Int. Symp. Dig., June 1988, pp. 14-17. [11] I. J. Bahl, P. Bhartia, and S. S. Stuchly, Design of microstrip antennas covered with a dielectric layer, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-30, pp. 314-318, 1982.

Scattering Theorems with Anisotropic Surface Boundary Conditions for Bodies of Revolution Kane S.Y e and Albert H. Chang e
Abstruct-Two theorems relating the scattered fields are proved in this communication when a special anisotropic boundary condition is
Manuscript received December 19, 1989; revised November 26, 1990. The authors are with Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories, Los Altos, CA 94022. IEEE Log IQ~mber 9100287.

0018-926X/91/0700-1041$01.00 0 1991 IEEE