A 3D Printed 2x2 Circular Planar Antenna Array for Wireless Communications Applications

Authors Ashraf E. Ahmed1, Wael A.E. Ali2 , Sudipta Das3
Affiliations

1Electronics & Comm. Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Higher Institute of Engineering and Technology, King Marriott, Alexandria, Egypt

2Electronics & Comm. Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Alexandria, Egypt

3Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IMPS College of Engineering and Technology, Malda, WB, India

Е-mail aeltyib_ahmd@yahoo.com
Issue Volume 13, Year 2021, Number 3
Dates Received 21 March 2021; revised manuscript received 15 June 2021; published online 25 June 2021
Citation Ashraf E. Ahmed, Wael A.E. Ali, et al., J. Nano- Electron. Phys. 13 No 3, 03028 (2021)
DOI https://doi.org/10.21272/jnep.13(3).03028
PACS Number(s) 84.40.Ba
Keywords 3D printing, PLA (43) , Circular (3) , Planar antenna array.
Annotation

In this work, a 3D printed 2x2 circular planar antenna array was designed to explain the usability of 3DP technique for RF systems. An innovative process with etching substrate in PLA dielectric is implemented. The designed planar array antenna consists of four circular antenna elements combined with power divider on the top layer of PLA substrate and the ground plane is mounted on the bottom layer of substrate, both the patch and the ground are made of red copper sheet with a thickness of 1 mm and an overall size of 133.14 x 146.5 x 2 mm3. The proposed array used PLA substrate material with relative permittivity of 3.1 and loss tangent of 0.001, and all parts of the antenna are fixed by screw nails. The novel circular planar antenna array operates with one input feeding by a coaxial connector connected directly to transmission line, which is merged with the designed power divider, the final power divider consists of two sections combined together and simulated individually to investigate their performance through the reflection coefficient and isolation between ports. The 3D printed circular planar array is simulated and the obtained results, such as S11 reached up to – 15.69 dB at 2.63 GHz and the total gain of 6.73 dBi, are obtained at the achieved band, and also other bands are generated which confirms the suitability of the proposed array for various wireless applications.

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