Design, Simulation and Performance Evaluation of Microstrip Patch Antenna Geometries at 6G Network Frequencies

Abstract

Recent study suggests 5G frequencies may not be able to manage complex networks beyond 20 GHz and this necessitates the evolution of 6G network which is expected to drive ultra-reliable low-latency communications. However, this cannot be realized without high-quality Microstrip Patch Antennas (MPAs) due to their prominence in wireless communication devices. Hence, this study presents the results of designing and simulating Rectangular Microstrip Antenna (RMPA), Circular Microstrip Patch Antenna (CMPA) and Triangular Microstrip Patch Antenna (TMPA) for 6G mobile network applications using Matlab R2015a and Computer Simulation Technology (CST) Microwave studio. Single-element patch geometrics were first designed and simulated at 6G mid-band and W-band frequencies before arraying them in 10, 20, and 30 elements. Performance parameters, namely, directivity, gain, bandwidth, Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR), return loss, radiation efficiency, power radiation and antenna efficiency of the designed and simulated RMPA, CMPA and TMPA were analyzed at the aforementioned frequencies. The designed results obtained show that the three MPAs can only be realized at 6G frequencies of less or equal to 85.4GHz. CMPA gave on average, the highest directivity, highest gain, quality bandwidth, best VSWR, least reflection coefficient, least mismatch loss, highest return loss, highest radiated power and above all highest antenna efficiency of 84 per cent, followed by RMPA while TMPA demonstrated the least performance. The three MPAs’ arrays depicted an increase in directivity and gain with an increase in the number of elements which implies their suitability for beamforming technique. The radiation pattern obtained also showed that the three MPAs can be suitably applied for creating point-to-point strong wireless connections at the mid-band and W-band 6G network frequencies