TY - JOUR
T1 - Design, simulation, fabrication and testing of flexible bow-tie antennas
AU - Durgun, Ahmet Cemal
AU - Balanis, Constantine
AU - Birtcher, Craig R.
AU - Allee, David
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received February 15, 2011; revised April 26, 2011; accepted June 06, 2011. Date of publication August 22, 2011; date of current version December 02, 2011. This work was supported by the ASU Advanced Helicopter Electromagnetics (AHE) Program and ASU Flexible Display Center (FDC) under US Army agreement W911NF-04-2-0005.
PY - 2011/12
Y1 - 2011/12
N2 - Design, simulation, fabrication and measurement of two different novel flexible bow-tie antennas, a conventional and a modified bow-tie antenna with reduced metallization, are reported in this paper. The antennas are mounted on a flexible substrate fabricated at the Flexible Display Center (FDC) of Arizona State University (ASU). The substrate is heat stabilized polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) which allows the antennas to be flexible. The antennas are fed by a microstrip-to-coplanar feed network balun. The reduction of the metallization is based on the observation that the majority of the current density is confined towards the edges of the regular bow-tie antenna. Hence, the centers of the triangular parts of the conventional bow-tie antenna are removed without compromising significantly its performance. The return losses and radiation patterns of the antennas are simulated with HFSS and the results are compared with measurements, for bow-tie elements mounted on flat and curved surfaces. The comparisons show that there is an excellent agreement between the simulations and measurements for both cases. Furthermore, the radiation performance of the modified bow-tie antenna is verified, by simulations and measurements, to be very close to the conventional bow-tie.
AB - Design, simulation, fabrication and measurement of two different novel flexible bow-tie antennas, a conventional and a modified bow-tie antenna with reduced metallization, are reported in this paper. The antennas are mounted on a flexible substrate fabricated at the Flexible Display Center (FDC) of Arizona State University (ASU). The substrate is heat stabilized polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) which allows the antennas to be flexible. The antennas are fed by a microstrip-to-coplanar feed network balun. The reduction of the metallization is based on the observation that the majority of the current density is confined towards the edges of the regular bow-tie antenna. Hence, the centers of the triangular parts of the conventional bow-tie antenna are removed without compromising significantly its performance. The return losses and radiation patterns of the antennas are simulated with HFSS and the results are compared with measurements, for bow-tie elements mounted on flat and curved surfaces. The comparisons show that there is an excellent agreement between the simulations and measurements for both cases. Furthermore, the radiation performance of the modified bow-tie antenna is verified, by simulations and measurements, to be very close to the conventional bow-tie.
KW - Bow-tie antenna
KW - broadband antenna
KW - flexible antenna
KW - heat stabilized PEN
KW - microstrip-to-coplanar feed network balun
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U2 - 10.1109/TAP.2011.2165511
DO - 10.1109/TAP.2011.2165511
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:82455187739
SN - 0018-926X
VL - 59
SP - 4425
EP - 4435
JO - IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
JF - IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
IS - 12
M1 - 5993500
ER -