Artificial neural network application for novel 3D printed nonuniform ceramic reflectarray antenna

Abstract

The main inconvenience in design process of modern high performance reflectarray antennas is that these designs are heavily depended on full-wave electromagnetic simulation tools, where in most of the cases the design optimization process would be an inefficient or impractical. However, thanks to the recent advances in computer-aided design and advanced hardware systems, artificial neural networks based modeling of microwave systems has become a popular research topic. Herein, design optimization of an alumina-based ceramic substrate reflectarray antenna by using multilayer perceptron (MLP) and 3D printing technology had been presented. MLP-based model of ceramic reflectarray (CRA) unit element is used as a fast, accurate, and reliable surrogated model for the prediction of reflection phase of the incoming EM wave on the CRA unit cell with respect to the variation of unit elements design parameters, operation frequency, and substrate thickness. The structural design of a reflectarray antenna with nonuniform reflector height operating in X band has been fabricated for the experimental measurement of reflectarray performance using 3D printer technology. The horn feeding based CRA antenna has a measured gain characteristic of 22 dBi. The performance of the prototyped CRA antenna is compared with the counterpart reflectarray antenna designs in the literature. K E Y W O R D S 3D printer, artificial neural network, ceramic, reflectarray, surrogate-based modeling 1 | INTRODUCTION Alumina (Al 2 O 3) is a commonly used engineering ceramic material with high melting temperature, good strength, and hardness obtained via aluminum oxidation. Alumina is a ceramic based material in which the amount of sodium oxide (Na 2 O) inside is a decisive parameter for the engineering applications. For microwave applications where the RF durable substrates with high dielectric constant are required to design electrically small microwave circuits, the amount of Na 2 O should be less than 0.1% while in mechanical applications, the amount of Na 2 O can be in the range of 0.5%. 1,2 Alumina has been alternatively named as Korund (a-Al 2 O 3), which is one of the hardest structures after the diamond and some synthetic diamond formed structures used in industrial applications is a-Al 2 O 3. Although pure alumina can be found in many crystal forms, all these forms depending on time, crystal size, and atmospheric conditions can be transformed into a-Al 2 O 3 at the temperature of 750 C-1200 C. It is possible to speed up the transformation process by

Wideband 3D‐printed dielectric reflectarray in Ka‐band

“…Existing research have shown that dielectric reflectarray have low loss and well performance in microwave frequencies, which can achieve ultra-wideband. [20][21][22][23][24] The dielectric reflectarray of literature 20 adopts the fused deposition modeling (FDM) printed to achieve reconfigurable polarization mechanically. The dielectric resonator reflectarray 21 achieved a gain of 28 dBi at 30 GHz in FDM printed.…”

“…Broadband circularly polarized dielectric reflectarray with cross-shaped dielectric unit, 23 and 3D-printed to achieve a maximum gain of 24.2 dBi in Ka-band. The reflectarray printed with alumina-based ceramic was applied to artificial neural network, 24 and the gain reached 24.2 dBi at 10 GHz with a diameter of 200 mm. A broadband high-gain dielectric reflectarray operating at 220 GHz.…”

A trial to convert a polymer FDM 3D printer to handle clay materials

“…In fact, 3D printing of ceramic components is more rapid and efficient than traditional forms, with a lower manufacturing cost for ceramic shapes. A prototype sample of a 3D clay printer is developed and utilized to verify its efficiency before use to create high-precision shapes or make patch antenna substrates [20][21][22]. The procedures of 3D printing with ceramics [23][24][25] are shown in Fig.…”

Artificial intelligence–based design optimization of nonuniform microstrip line band pass filter

“…Some of the related work in literature on surrogate‐based modeling of microwave circuits and their applications can be named as follows: estimation of microwave transistors performance characteristics, 24‐28 prediction of reflection phase characteristic of reflect array antennas unit elements, 29‐31 for synthesis and analysis of microstrip lines, 32‐34 for estimation of a microstrip patch antenna's resonant frequency and modeling of microstrip antennas, 35,36 scattering parameter and frequency identification method for ANN‐based eye‐height/width prediction, 37 computationally feasible narrow‐band antenna, 38 and design optimization of microwave antenna designs 39‐43 …”