Wireless communication has become ubiquitous in almost every sector, both in military and commercial systems. Communicating objects are getting smaller and smaller. Therefore, the antennae which are the fundamental elements of this circuit must meet the requirements of their integrating environment in terms of bandwidth, multiple frequencies, smaller size and affordability. Microstrip patch antenna (MPA), a priori, should have been the preferred candidate, but the narrowness of its bandwidth is a limitation. Therefore, many techniques have been explored including the use of fractal shapes for improving the performance of this type of antenna. Multiform fractal shapes have been used in various works to achieve the results expected in specific cases to effectively meet the requirements of wireless communication. In this paper, we will do an overview by highlighting the various kinds of fractal geometries which have been the most used in recent years by clearly specifying that the options of miniaturization of microstrip antennae by the theories of Sierpinski and Minkowski are ideal methods and therefore, will drive our future work on miniaturized antenna designs.
In this paper we have proposed an improved miniaturization design of a rectangular microstrip patch antenna based on Minkowski fractal. The design methodology consists in considering a rectangular patch on which the conventional and modified Minkowski curve are successively applied until the second iteration. In total, three miniaturized antennae are proposed. They are structured by a fractal patch engraved on an FR-4 epoxy substrate. Design and simulation are performed by CADFEKO 7.0.1 software, better suited for small size antennae. The proposed miniaturized fractal models operate at the same frequency F= 15.53 GHz, as the conventional Rectangular Microstrip patch antenna. Moreover, each of them enables a good impedance matching, as can be confirmed by the low return loss obtained (< -15 dB) at the same resonance frequency. The proposed antennae presented a significant size reduction of 89.76 % for Minkowski model, 88.8 % and 86% for both modified Minkowskimodels when compared to the conventional inset-fed rectangular patch antenna. Overall, our study illustrated that, after a modified Minkowski miniaturization technique was introduced a better performance and impedance matching was achieved. According to the IEEE Standard Classification of Satellite Frequency Bands, the results of the miniaturized and optimized fractal patch antenna can effectively contribute to Ku-band communications.
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