GNSS Patch Antenna Modeling Passive Gain Optimization Using FEKO, Design of Experiments and P-Transform Technique

The objective of this work was to design a compact new microstrip patch antenna for applications in support of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), and automotive. My GNSS patch antenna was created and developed in this dissertation to serve and represent the critical component from the system level perspective for the next generation of Automotive Radio Head Units, Navigation Systems, and L3 systems HD maps in autonomous domain. Conducted literature review and published papers studied, however observed a deficiency in the area of modeling, optimization of the design parameters, passive gain of rectangular patch antenna using FEKO, Design of Experiments, and P-Transform algorithm. Furthermore, there is no such antenna related to the Center Frequency of 1.555 [GHz] GNSS antenna, which has not been investigated. The proposed work involved a modeling of New GNSS rectangular patch antenna. The design focus was on the operating frequency range of 1.500 [GHz] to 1.610 [GHz] and FEKO 3D Electromagnetic simulation software package from Altair [4] was used, Design of Experiments (DoE) [5], and as well as applying the P-Transform algorithm [6] optimization method on the presented dual band GNSS (GPS and GLONASS) patch antenna passive v gain. The proposed antenna designed to operate at both bands, GPS (L1=1.57542 [GHz]) and GLONASS (L1=1.602 [GHz]) signal. Moreover, the ground plane length (X1[mm]), ground plane width (X2[mm]), and the substrate dielectric constant design (X3[mm]) parameters were varied at each FEKO simulation run, in order to obtain the simulation of GNSS patch antenna passive gain output results for the purpose of the optimization study by using P-Transform technique within the MATLAB environment. The presented GNSS patch antenna 2D far field and/or average passive gain measurement of GPS and GLONASS at center frequency of 1.555 [GHz] was plotted and analyzed. The computation and analysis of passive gain involved at taking the delta/difference between elevation angle at 30 and 90 degrees from the average passive gain 2D graph and this step was conducted for 120 FEKO simulation iteration runs. For each FEKO simulation run the far field (average passive gain=Y [dBi]) was computed separately unique for that specific design parameters (X1 [mm], X2 [mm], X3 [mm]) and recorded in a lookup matrix table (.csv). This four columns lookup table was called out for the purposed of the P- Transform algorithm utilization and execution within the MATLAB environment.