Novel conformal mapping model for miniaturization of microstrip patch antennas with magneto-dielectric materials

Abstract

Magneto-dielectric (MD) materials have enabled significant miniaturization while theoretically improving bandwidth and efficiency of microstrip patch antennas (MPA), however computationally efficient design and performance models for MD are needed to enable rapid development. Conformal mapping (CM) provides an efficient algorithm which translates an orthogonal basis to another by rotating and scaling each point while the angle between them remains unaltered. This is an important methodology that can transform the potential electric and magnetic fields into a linear grid to simplify integration while preserving gradients and angle of incidence at boundary conditions. This research investigates utilization of CM on microstrip structures to evaluate the effective relative permeability for more robust modeling and analysis when MD media is incorporated. The methods are experimentally verified to microstrip structures fabricated on Rogers Corporation's MAGTREX 555 (MX), a commercially off the shelf (CoTS) MD substrate. The two-port microstrip transmission-lines (TL), microstrip low pass filter (LPF), and probe fed microstrip patch antenna (MPA) were simulated with these methods and compared to the measurement data. Additional validation of these novel CM methods was performed by parametric simulation in HFSS to evaluate a larger range of material parameters and strip widths.