International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET) Volume 1 Issue2 pp 016-017 May 2012 www.ijsret.

org ISSN 2278 - 0882

Wideband Micromachined Patch Antenna

Manidipa Nath
AICTR manidipa.deoghar@gmil.com

ABSTRACT
A rectangular patch centered over a cavity and fed by a microstrip line on high index Silicon based substrate is investigated using micromachined technology. This fabrication technique is used to laterally remove the material underneath the specified cavity region. It has been observed that bandwidth increases from 2.9% for the regular antenna to 5% for Micromachined patch. Keyword- Cavity, substrate, Microstrip line

developed can be applied to fabricate many passive components and can be used to replace other technologies gradually.

II.DESIGN
The rectangular microstrip patch antenna was designed using a standard design procedure, For excitation, a centre microstrip feed line was used using a relative permittivity of 11.7 for silicon and a substrate thickness of 500 micrometer .The antenna dimensions were calculated to a resonant length of l=1.21 mm and width 1.91 mm. The microstrip feed line is .65 mm wide corresponding to a 50ohm line. A commercial code is used for simulation and to maintain a good accuracy of simulation 15 cells per wavelength at the shortest wavelength is maintained Antenna parameters are extracted during post processing.

I.

INTRODUCTION

In this work cavity model is used to predict the effective dielectric constant of the mixed air-silicon region. A quasi-static model based on series capacitance is used to determine the patch capacitance. Effective dielectric constant of 2.2 is achieved for a mixed air-silicon ratio of 1:1. Rectangular patch designs are fabricated on Silicon substrate (relative permittivity of 11.7) having thickness of 500 microns. The patch is fed by a 50 ohm Microstrip feed line which is fabricated and mounted on the test fixture. Initial design has been etched into the wafer using a method called bulk micromachining. The parametric study gives the dimension of the patch and feed line under design consideration with a given thickness and resistivity of silicon substrate. The dimension of feed line circuits has been optimized using software tools. The design methodology can be readily applied to performance characterization and design optimization. The fabrication process involves 3-D photoresist mold, which fill both upper and lower recess regions with metals and finally the photoresist mold is removed. The micromachining technology offers small tolerances and favourable manufacturing costs. The technology once

Figure1. Micromachined configuration

patch

antenna

IJSRET @ 2012

International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering &Technology (IJSRET) Volume 1 Issue2 pp 016-017 May 2012 www.ijsret.org ISSN 2278 - 0882
The antenna was designed for an etch depth of 300 micrometer and etch profile with sloping walls was maintained at a inclination of 45 degree for the geometry. The synthesized dielectric constant of the composite substrate has been determined and simulations have been performed to obtain synthesized permittivity of the composite substrate. The comparison of the patch on RT duriod (2.2) substrate shows bandwidth of 1GHz compared to that on Silicon substrate as 1.48 GHz. Other antenna parameters like radiation efficiency and gain also improves with micromachined antenna. Measurement of the far field radiation pattern has been done and is shown in figure 3.The 3 dB beam width is 100 degree in the E & H plane. A scaled size model of the antenna at a lower operating frequency has been fabricated and measured.

III.FABRICATION
A cavity was etched under the area of microstrip antenna and then filled with lower permittivity material such as Silicon dioxide. A metal layer was added at the horizontal planar interface between the low permittivity material and the silicon dioxide. Simulation has been done in FDTD code and fabricated antenna radiation pattern has been measured. Silicon antenna pattern exhibits many ripples, but micromachined antenna pattern is much smoother. It was observed that H plane pattern is much smoother and almost same whereas the electric fields mounted on metallic holder that served as ground plane significant difference in the radiation pattern.

Figure 3: E and H plane radiation patterns for (a) patch antenna on Silicon substrate at resonance frequency 21.5 GHz and (b) scaled model on a duroid substrate at resonant frequency of 20.2 GHz

IV.RESULTS
The simulated results of the input match and the measured result from the fabricated patch antenna is shown in figure 3.A match better than -20 dB is observed with a -10 dB bandwidth of 1.48 GHz.

V. CONCLUSION
In this paper a planar antenna structure is presented and evaluated in terms of return loss. The SiO2 material was used to get better performance in terms of return loss bandwidth and radiation pattern. Antenna performance with different low dielectric constant material is under investigation.

VI. REFERENCES
[1] Papapolymerou I, Franklin Drayton R,Ketehi,L.P.B., Micromachined Patch Antenna IEEE Trans Ant & propagation, Vol 46, pp 275283,1998.

Figure 2 Reflection coefficient of the simulated and measured antenna

IJSRET @ 2012