International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.

©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

OPTIMIZATION OF RESONANCE FREQUENCY

OF CIRCULAR PATCH ANTENNA AT 5 GHZ
USING PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION
Falguni Raval, Jagruti Makwana
Vitthalbhai T. Patel Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Chandubhai S. Patel Institute of Technology Changa,
District - Anand, Gujarat State, India.
[email protected]

A BSTRACT
The microstrip antenna is small in size, simpler and less expensive to manufacture. They are more compatible
than reflector antennas with printed-circuit technology. The microstrip patch antenna is a type of antenna that is
thin, and has easy manufacturability, which provides a great advantage over traditional antennas. The Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been introduced to the electromagnetic community for few years. In this paper
PSO has been used for optimization of resonant frequency of circular probe-fed patch antenna. The investigation
is made at a microwave frequency of 5 GHz. This Optimization problem has two variables which are height of
dielectric substrate (h) and radius of the circular patch (a). The PSO algorithm is developed using ‘Turbo C’.In
order to verify the PSO algorithm, the Rosenbrock function is used as a performance test problem.

K EYWORDS
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Rosenbrock function (RBF), Microstrip patch antenna, Circular patch

1. INTRODUCTION
In its most basic form, the microstrip patch antenna consists of a radiating patch on one side of a
dielectric substrate which has a ground plane on the other side as shown in Fig. 1.The patch is
generally made up of conducting material such as copper or gold and can take any possible shape. The
radiating patch and the feed lines are usually photo etched on the dielectric substrate. They are usually
employed at UHF and higher frequencies because the size of the antenna is directly tied to the
wavelength at the resonant frequency.

Figure 1 Circular patch antenna

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

The resonant frequency of operation of such antenna depends normally upon different parameters of
the patch. This report presents a method for resonant frequency optimization of a circular microstrip
patch antenna where the optimization parameter are patch-radius and height of substrate having
dielectric constant 2.4 (normally height of substrate remain constant) fed by an SME co-axial
connector with radius 0.6mm. Our aim is to design a circular microstrip antenna for operating at a
desired frequency (5 GHz). PSO algorithm has been developed for obtaining the optimal values of
antenna parameters (a and h) using ‘Turbo c’. PSO optimizes a problem by maintaining a population
called particles and moving these particles within a search-space. The movements of the particles are
guided by the best found positions in the search-space, which are continually being updated as better
positions are found by the particles.
2. THEORY OF MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA
In telecommunication, there are several types of the microstrip antennas (also known as printed
antennas) the most common of which is the microstrip patch antenna or patch antenna. A patch
antenna is a narrowband, wide-beam antenna fabricated by etching the antenna element pattern in
metal trace bonded to an insulating dielectric substrate, such as a printed circuit board, with a
continuous metal layer bonded to the opposite side of the substrate which forms a ground plane.
Common microstrip antenna shapes are square, rectangular, circular and elliptical, but any continuous
shape is possible.
The microstrip patch antennas radiate primarily because of the fringing fields between the patch edge
and the ground plane. For good antenna performance, a thick dielectric substrate having a low
dielectric constant is desirable since this provides better efficiency, larger bandwidth and better
radiation. However, such a configuration leads to a larger antenna size. In order to design a compact
microstrip patch antenna, higher dielectric constants must be used which are less efficient and result in
narrower bandwidth. Hence a compromise must be reached between antenna dimensions and antenna
performance.

3. DESIGN OF CIRCULAR PATCH ANTENNA:

The resonant frequency of a circular patch antenna is approximately given without considering the
effect of probe radius by [6]:
F = ( Knm * c)/(2πae√εr) (1)
Where ae =effective radius of the circular patch
c = velocity of light in free space
εr=relative permittivity of the medium

Figure 2 Microstrip patch antenna

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

Knm = mth zero of the derivative of the Bessel function of order n. In our application we have
considered the fundamental mode TM11, for which K value is1.84118. The expression for ae is given
by [6] as

ae =a{1+(2H/πaεr)[ln(πa/2H)+1.7726]}1/2 (2)

Where H = height of the dielectric substrate

εr= relative permittivity of the medium
a = radius of the circular patch

4. PSO TECHNIQUE
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a robust, stochastic evolutionary computation technique based
on the movement and intelligence of swarms. This technique has been applied for electromagnetic
optimization recently. A swarm of bees flying in a field try to find the location with the highest density
of flowers. A bee starts from a random location with a random velocity. At each step the bee changes
its velocity and position. Each position is represented by an N-dimensional co-ordinate, where each
dimension corresponds to a parameter to be optimized. The velocity and position of a particle can be
determined from the following equations[1]:

VN = W*VN + C1 rand ( )* (PBEST,N - XN) + C2 rand ( )* (GBEST - XN) (3)

Where VN is the velocity of the particle in the Nth dimension and XN is the co-ordinate of the particle
in that dimension. W is known as the ‘internal weight’ and its value is chosen to be between 0 and 1
which determines to what extent the particle remains along its original course unaffected by the pull of
PBEST and GBEST. C1 & C2 are the scaling factors which determine the relative ‘pull’ of PBEST
and GBEST. C1 is a factor determining how much the particle is influenced by PBEST and C2 is a
factor determining how the particle is influenced by the rest of the swarm. The random function ‘rand’
is introduced to incorporate the slight unpredictable component of natural swarm behavior[1].
XN = XN + ∆T*VN (4)
This equation updates the location of the particle for a given time step ∆T whose value is chosen to be
unity.

5. PSO BASED OPTIMIZATION OF RESONANT FREQUENCY

The objective of the work is to optimize the resonant frequency of a probe-feed circular patch antenna.
The range selected for optimization of parameters is as follows:

Radius of the circular patch: 0.2 cm to 2 cm

Height of the substrate: less than (1/20)th of the wavelength of operation=0.13 cm to 0.16 cm

Using equation (2), as the fitness function and values of a and h as agents the value of ae, i.e., the
effective radius, is evaluated.
The fitness function is defined as:

P= ((1.84118 * c)/ (2πae√εr) – f) (5)

Where ae is the effective radius of the patch;

εr is the relative permittivity of the medium,
c is the speed of light in that medium and ‘f’ is the theoretical frequency of resonance.
When the calculated resonant frequency matches to the desired value of the same, the value of the cost
function P becomes zero.

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

For each particle a fitness value is calculated which is the local best for the particle. This value is
compared with the global best and if any local best value is better than the global best, the global best
value is replaced by that local best value as shown in Fig. 3.
6. VERIFICATION OF PSO USING ROSEN BROCK FUNCTION
In mathematical optimization, the Rosenbrock function is used as a performance test problem for
optimization algorithms. In order to analyses the PSO, benchmark function of two dimensional
Rosenbrock function is used in experiment, whose equation is given as follow [7].
f(x, y) = (1-x) 2+100(y-x2)2 (6)
7. SOFTWARE TOOLS USED
For PSO optimization of antenna parameters we have used ‘turbo c’, and for plotting the surface plot
of Rosen Brock function ‘GNU plot’ is used.

8. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The investigation is made at a microwave frequency of 5 GHz; number of particles are 20; inertia
vector varies from 0.4 to 1; iteration 100; c1=c2=1.4.The table 1 shows the optimum values of a and h
obtained from PSO. The fig 4 shows that after 20 iterations, the fitness function value becomes zero.
The fig. 5 and 6 show that values of a and h (all the particles) converges to the same value which is
1.05 cm (a) and 0.001544 m (h). The fig. 7 shows that as inertia increase, the fitness value deteriorates.
The fig. 8 shows the results of verification of the PSO algorithm using Rosenbrock function and have
optimum value 0.001341 at (1.001901, 1.000148).

Initialize the random position and Parameter range

velocity vector: a ,h ,va ,vh Radius a=0.002 to .02 m,
Height of substrate
respectively
h=0.0013 to 0.0016 m

For each agent

Evaluate fitness function (Resonance Next agent

freq. equn 5)

If fitness(x)> fitness (Gbest),

Gbest=x Update position equn no
4

If fitness(x)> fitness (Pbest), Update velocity equn no 3

Pbest=x

Gbest= Parameters of best solutions

Figure 3 Flow chart of PSO of resonance freq. of circular patch antenna

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

Figure 4 Fitness function (resonant frequency) vs no of iteration

Figure 5 Radius vs number of iteration

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

Figure 6 Height of substrate vs no of iteration

Figure 7 Fitness function vs inertia weight

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

Table 1 Calculated (optimum) parameters using PSO

No of No of Optimum Value of Optimum Value Fitness function

particles iteration a(m) of h(m) Value

5 100 0.0106 0.001381 13077

10 100 0.010577 0.001440 0.00056517
15 100 0.010523 0.001579 0.0000
20 100 0.0106099 0.001358 0.0
25 100 0.01060966 0.001358 0.0
30 100 0.010567 0.001466 0.0
35 100 0.010591 0.0014037 0.0

Figure 8 Surface plots of simple rosenbrock and rosenbrock using PSO

9. CONCLUSION
The particle swarm optimization procedure for optimizing resonance frequency of circular patch
antenna and results of optimized parameters of it are described. From the graphical results, we can
conclude that the fitness function value becomes 0 after 20 iteration, optimized radius found 0.010537
m, and height of substrate is 0.001546 m. The Rosenbrock function is used to verify the particle
swarm optimization technique and at (1.001901, 1.000148) getting fitness value 0.001341. On the
basis of results obtained, it can be concluded that the PSO can be efficiently used for optimization of
different parameters of antenna .The advantage of PSO is its simplicity. There is an increasing demand
for the use of microstrip antennas in wireless communication due to their low back radiation, ease of
conformity as compared to wire antennas.

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International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, May 2011.
©IJAET ISSN: 2231-1963

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We express our thankfulness to Prof. Kartik Pandya, CSPIT, Changa and Dr. Rajesh Thakkar,
Professor, Vishwakarma Collage of Engineering, Chankheda, for providing us with their knowledge
and their timely suggestions.
REFERENCES

[1] Jacob Robinson , Yahya Rahmat-Samii,” Particle Swarm Optimization in electromagnetics”, IEEE
Transactions On Antennas And Propagation, Vol. 52, No. 2, February 2004
[2] T.F.Lai, Wan Nor Liza Mahadi, Norhayati Soin,” Circular Patch Microstrip Array Antenna for KU-band”,
World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology 48 2008
[3] Hadi Sadoghi Yazdi, Mehri Sadoghi Yazdi ,” Particle Swarm Optimization-Based Rectangular
MicrostripAntenna Designing”, International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering, Vol. 1, No.
4, October, 2009
[4] T.B. Chen, Y.B. Chen, Y.C. Jiao, and F.S. Zhang, “Synthesis of Antenna Array Using Particle Swarm
Optimization”, Microwave Conference Proceedings 2005 APMC 2005, Volume: 3,
[5] Russell C. Eberhart, Yuhui Shi, “Particle swarm optimization: developments, applications and resources”,
Evolutionary Computation, 2001. Proceedings of the 2001 Congress on, Vol 1, pp 81-86
[6] Ramesh Garg, Prakash Bhartia, Inder Bahl, Apisak Ittipiboon, “Microstrip Antenna Design Hand Book”,
Norwood, MA 02062:Artech House, 2001, ch. 5.
[7] Yutaka Maeda, Naoto Matsushita “Simultaneous Perturbation Particle Swarm Optimization and Its FPGA
Implementation”, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 49, No. 4,34-47

Prof. Falguni Raval , a life time member of ISTE did her B.E. in Electronics
& communication Engg, M.E. in Communication System Engineering.
Presently she is working with the V. T. Patel Dept of E & C Engineering in
Chandubhai S. Patel Institute of Technology, Changa – Gujarat as Assistant
Professor.

Prof. Jagruti Makwana, a life time member of ISTE did her B.E. in
Electronics & communication Engg, M.E. in Electronics & Communication
System Engineering. Presently she is working with the V. T. Patel Dept of E
& C Engineering in Chandubhai S. Patel Institute of Technology, Changa –
Gujarat as Assistant Professor.

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