Resonance Frequency Evaluation of Rectangular Microstrip Antenna on thick substrate using a Neuro-Fuzzy Approach

V. Sathi F. Arvin C. Gharapet Sh. Sahranavard Iranian Academic Center for Education Engineering Dept. Engineering Dept. Culture and Research Sadjad Uni. Sadjad Uni. ACECR Naeibi St. Ardabil Azadshahr , Sadjad Uni. Azadshahr, Sadjad Uni. Iran Mashad , Iran Mashad , Iran vahid_sathi@yahoo.com farshadarvin@yahoo.com kamm_gh@yahoo.com sh_sahranavard@yahoo.com
Abstract: - The accurate evaluation of resonance frequency of microstrip antennas is a key factor to guarantee their correct behavior. To this aim, the method of moments technique is currently employed. A fast technique to evaluate the resonance frequency of microstrip antennas over thick substrates using neuro-fuzzy networks is proposed. Numerical results obtained by this technique agree quite well with previous works, HFSS software results and experimental results. The proposed technique can be fruitfully used in microwave CAD applications.

Index Terms: -Improved Cavity Model, Microstrip Antenna, Neuro-Fuzzy networks, Resonance frequency.

1 Introduction
over the past several years microstrip patch antennas have been broadly investigated in the technical literature. One of the drawbacks of the microstrip antennas is their narrow bandwidth. As a consequence, printed antennas can work efficiently only close to their resonance frequency. For this reason, the accurate evaluation of this parameter is of fundamental importance. The rectangular microstrip antenna shown in Fig. 1 is normally designed on electrically thin substrates of the order of h < 0.02g , where g is the guided wavelength in the substrate of relative permittivity given by g = 0 r at the operating wavelength 0 . On thick substrates between
0.037g 0.229g , Chang et al. [1] and Kara [2] have

et al. and Kara. In this paper we propose a new neurofuzzy approach to evaluate the resonance frequency of microstrip antennas over thick substrates and we will

Fig. 1 Rectangular patch on thick substrate

obtained the resonance frequency of rectangular patches experimentally to achieve the bandwidth up to 22%. For such patches the transmission line model and the cavity model compute the resonance frequency with average deviation between 3%-16% [1], [3], [4]. Software, Ensemble [5], provides deviation up to 12% for the patches of Chang et al. and up to 36% for the patches of Kara. An improved form of the cavity model, called modified Wolf model (MWM), has been developed by Verma and co-workers [6], [7] to compute the resonance frequency of rectangular patches on the isotropic/anisotropic substrate. The results of MWM method [8] shows up to 2% deviation against of experimental results of Chang

show that, our method has the same or better accuracy compared to previously mentioned methods, with less computational effort. Neuro-Fuzzy networks (NFNs) combine some of the fuzzy set methods with some neural network configurations, for improving the disadvantages and enhancing the performances of each of the two techniques acting alone. In fact a neural network has good learning abilities but it is not suitable for expressing rule-based knowledge, while fuzzy logic is good at expressing approximate and quantitative knowledge but has poor learning abilities. As a result of a combination of these techniques in an NFN, some initial experiences and knowledge can

induce some rules directly from the original data; on the other hand, using learning capability of neural networks to tune some fuzzy logic parameters, the efficiency of function approximation improves [9], [10]. The paper is organized as follows. In section (II) a brief discussion about the full-wave technique (MWM) for evaluation of resonance frequency is presented. In section (III) we describe the basics of neuro-fuzzy approach. Section (IV) illustrates our network architecture and discusses results. Finally, in section (V) we draw our conclusions.

2 Improved Cavity Model

The improved cavity model or modified Wolf model, developed by Verma et al. [7], replaces the uniaxial anisotropic substrate by the equivalent isotropic dielectric layer of equivalent relative permittivity req , and equivalent substrate thickness heq [7]

r = r r , heq = h
eq xx yy

r r

xx

(1)

yy

fuzzy logic operators, and if-then rules. There are two types of FIS: Mamdani and Sugeno type. In the following work, we only use the Sugeno type inferences in which the inputs and outputs are presented by fuzzy sets and fuzzy singletons respectively. Generally, Sugeno type inference is performed by the four following steps: Step1) fuzzification of the inputs The first step is to take the inputs and determine the degree to which they belong to each of the appropriate fuzzy sets via membership functions. Step2) Application of fuzzy operator Once the inputs have been fuzzified, we know the degree of which each part of the antecedent has been satisfied for each rule. If the antecedent of a given rule has more than one part, the fuzzy operator is applied to obtain one number that represents the results of the antecedent for that rule. This number will then be applied to the output function. The input to the fuzzy operator is two or more membership function values from fuzzified input variables. The output is a single truth value. For that purpose in this work we have exploited the AND operation. Step 3) Application of implication method Before applying the implication method, we must take care of the rules weight. Every rule has a weight ranging into [0,1], which is applied to the number given by the antecedent. Once proper weighting has been assigned to each rule, the implication method is implemented. A consequent is a fuzzy singleton represented by a membership value, which weights appropriately the linguistic characteristics that are attributed to it. The consequent is reshaped using a function associated which single number given by the antecedent and the output is a fuzzy singleton. Step 4) deffuzification The input for the deffuzification process is the whole of the singletons carried out by means of the application of membership method. The input value is computed by a sort of linear combination of the single fuzzy singletons. However, in order to extract inferences more effectively, we have exploited an extraction automatic algorithm. In particular, we generate an FIS using fuzzy subtractive clustering to determine the number of rules and antecedent membership functions and then uses linear least squares estimation to determine each rule's consequent equations.

where, h is the actual thickness of substrate. The above anisotropy relation has been obtained in the literature for the microstrip line on the anisotropic substrate by solving the boundary value problem [11]. The optic axis of the substrate is aligned to the geometrical axis of the patch. The modified Wolf model (MWM) computes the resonance frequency of a rectangular patch on the lossy equivalent isotropic substrate [6], [7] by
v0 f r = Re * 2 r dyn n 2 m + W L eff eff
2

(2)

The results of the MWM model are based on the above relation. The MWM model gives more accurate results for the resonance frequency compared to the other full-wave techniques, for patches over thick substrates. More detailed description of this method can be found in [6], [7], [8].

3 Neuro-Fuzzy Approach
The neuro-fuzzy approach or Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) is the process of formulating the mapping from a given input to an output by means of fuzzy logic. The mapping provides a basic from which a decision can be made, or patterns discerned. Generally, an FIS can be presented by three parts: membership functions,

4 Exploited Neuro-Fuzzy Network and Numerical Results

Chang et al., Kara and Verma have used different methods for measuring the resonance frequency of the rectangular patch on the thick PTFE substrates. Chang et al. have kept distance of the probe (1.5mm) fixed from edge of the patch.

Fig. 2 Architecture of the designed FIS.

Thus, in their case, at the resonance frequency, the imaginary part input impedance is not zero. They have obtained the resonance frequency of the patch corresponding to the maximum value of real part of the input impedance. Kara has measured the resonance frequency after experimentally optimizing the probe distance to get the return loss better than 30 dB. Verma used MWM method for determining the resonance frequency. Every FIS need some data pairs for training. In our case, the FIS has four inputs namely W (patch width), L (patch length), h (substrate thickness), and h . The data pairs needed for training of the FIS g are generated using the experimental works of Kara [2] and Chang et al. [1]. We divide the data pairs into two different parts, one to build the fuzzy logic system, and the other to check the validity of the system function. We call the former the training data pairs and the latter checking data pairs. For this purpose we need to build a fuzzy system with four inputs (W, L, h, h ) and one output f r . We used 17 g data pairs for training process. And 11 data pairs for checking validity of the FIS. Fig. 2 shows the architecture of the designed FIS, which posses 5 rules. The training of the NFN has been realized employing an algorithm of automatic extraction of FIS from the numerical data by means of MATLAB ANFIS command line function.

ANFIS stands for "Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference Systems". In particular, the network FIS scheme facilitates the computation of the gradient vector to compute how parameters can be corrected to reach the minimum training error. The estimated resonance frequencies by the neuro-fuzzy approach for 11 patches of Chang et al., are organized in TABLE I. The table also contains the computed resonance frequency by the cavity model of Reichards et al., as adopted by Pozar in his commercial software PCAAD [4], transmission line model of James [1], Hammerstad [1], multiport cavity model (MCM) of Benalla et al. [12], MoM of Ensemble [5], modified Wolf model (MWM) by Verma et al. [8] and finally the results obtained by FEM base software, HFSS by ANSOFT. It is obvious that, the proposed neuro-fuzzy method, has effectively estimated the resonance frequency, with less computational effort. Thus we can safely use this algorithm to compute the resonance frequency of patches with thick substrates. In Fig. 3 you can see a comparison between the results of our proposed neurofuzzy network with experimental and HFSS results. In Fig. 4 depicted a typical estimation surface obtained by using the proposed NFN. It shows the trend of the output approximation varying the inputs. Because the surface does not posses any discontinuity, the developed network is able to estimate the resonance frequency with precision without faults within the range of the training parameters.

5 Conclusions
This paper has investigated the use of the NFNs for evaluation of the resonance frequency of printed antennas over thick substrates. The performance of the proposed NFN has been evaluated after training it of a set of data produced by experimental results. As seen, after training phase, the estimated results, obtained by NFN with a low computational effort, compare favorably with experimental and other methods results. Since with this approach, most of the computational burden is shifted from online to offline training of NFN, it can be used to realize fast NFN models to be employed in microwave CAD applications.

Fig. 3 Comparison between Experimental, Neuro-Fuzzy and HFSS results for 11 designed antennas of TABLE I.

Fig. 4 Sample fuzzy surface obtained by Neuro-fuzzy system.

Table1 Patches of Chang et al. [1]: Nonwoven glass microfiber reinforced substrate, anisotropy ratio=1.05, r = 2.33 0.02 , tan = 0.001 , t = 0.005 mm.

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