Design, simulation, and fabrication of low-cost inkjet antennas

Date

2016

Author

Mutlu, Feza

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

189
views

0
downloads

In this study, low-cost inkjet-printed antennas are investigated from the design level to the end-pro duct level. As a substrate, commercial photograph paper is used. Antennas working in various frequency bands are designed using a sophisticated simulation environment based on the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). Antennas are printed via standard, low cost, and commercial printers using conductive 25% alloyed silver ink. After printing, a temperature curing process is applied in order to increase the conductivity of silver ink paths. Four different types of antennas are proposed and studied. As the first type, an S-monopole antenna is designed for both 50 Ω input impedance and microchip input impedance. Measurement results show that 50 Ω tuned antenna resonates at 1.66 GHz with a reflection coefficient of -12.4 dB. As the second type, a small (5 c m x 5.3 cm) symmetric dipole antenna with the input impedance of 50 Ω is introduce d. It resonates at 870 MHz with a reflection co efficient of -14 dB. As the third type, loop-meander antennas are proposed for radio frequency identification (RFID) applications at ultra-high frequency (UH F; 865-868 MHz ) band. First, a loop antenna which is conjugately matched to microchip impedance at 865 MHz is designed. The microchip is connected to the terminals of the antenna using conductive epoxy. Therefore, a working fabricated tag is obtained. Then, meander structures are added to the loop antenna as parasitic elements to increase the reading range of the antenna. For the read range tests, a simple measurement setup is develop ed. Reading range is measured for the loop-meander antennas using a reader which works in 865-868 MHz band with output power of 1W or 30 dBm (ATID AT870 Hand-Held UHF RFID reader). According to the measurement results, the maximum reading range is achieved as 60 cm. As the last and fourth type, cage-dipole antennas are designed by using genetic algorithms. An antenna that is matched to 50 Ω is measured, and it is observed that, it resonates at 1.56 GHz with a reflection coefficient of -23 dB. This antenna is re-designed for RFI D applications to resonate at 865 MHz. Reading range tests are conducted on the developed setup and also on the human body. It is observed that the tag is satisfactorily identified at distances larger than 1.5 meters in a wide range of observation angles. In addition to the designed and tested antennas, this thesis discusses low-cost inkjet printing steps, effects of curing time and temperature in inkjet printing, and importance of the impedance matching for RFID antennas.

Subject Keywords

Ink-jet printing., Antennas (Electronics)., Radio frequency identification systems.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12620268/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/25941

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Design and Analysis of a Cylindrical Array of Stripline Fed Slot Antennas For On-Board Telemetry Applications Ozcan, Mustafa; Aydın Çivi, Hatice Özlem (2016-07-01) In this study, cylindrical array of stripline fed rounded bow-tie slot antennas is designed to be used for avionics applications. The array element is fed by a T shaped strip line. Shape of the slot is modified from rectangular to rounded bow-tie to provide sufficient bandwidth for telemetry application. Furthermore, vias are placed around slots to prevent unwanted parallel plate modes of stripline structure. It is observed that, location of vias is critical in the design of the antenna. Thus, parametric st...
Development of K band microstrip patch antenna array for traffic radars Aydemir, Aslı Eda; Aydın Çivi, Hatice Özlem; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2017) In this thesis work, two microstrip patch antenna arrays are designed for the traffic radar applications. Both of them operate at the 24.125 GHz with 250 MHz bandwidth. Two different series feed networks are used, namely shunt connected series feed network and in line coupled series feed network. The one with shunt connected series feed network is manufactured and measured to make comparisons with the simulation results. It is observed that simulation and measurement results are very similar. 7 degree beamw...
Analysis of spherical-rectangular printed antennas and antenna arrays using cavity model Demir, Oğuz; Dural Ünver, Mevlüde Gülbin; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2017) Printed antennas are commonly used since these antennas are preferred in many applications due to their advantageous properties. In order to employ these antennas in such applications, a thorough investigation and analysis are generally required. Although this can be implemented with fully numerical methods for the sake of high accuracy, the complex calculations required in the process lead to heavy computational load, hence generally demands high quality simulation software. In this thesis, the spherical-r...
Design, Simulation, Fabrication and Testing of Flexible Bow-Tie Antennas Durgun, Ahmet Cemal; Birtcher, Craig R.; Allee, David R. (2011-12-01) 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 r...
Design and realization of a broad band antenna loaded with a metamaterial-inspired lens for subsurface microwave imaging applications Yeşilyurt, Ömer; Sayan, Gönül; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2019) Ultra-wideband antennas are critical sensors for microwave imaging. In this work, radiation performance of an antipodal Vivaldi antenna is enhanced by using a broadband metasurface lens structure in 1-6 GHz bandwidth. Radiation pattern for the lens integrated antenna is more directive due to electromagnetic properties of the metasurface lens. In order to create such a lens, electrically responsive metamaterial unit cells with high effective permittivity values are designed. As we want to obtain a broadband ...

Citation Formats

F. Mutlu, “Design, simulation, and fabrication of low-cost inkjet antennas,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2016.