DEVELOPMENT OF ANTENNA ARRAY WITH SIMPLE BEAMFORMING CAPABILITY FOR DIRECTION OF ARRIVAL ESTIMATION

• Main Author: Rahardi, Rama
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/55938
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The fourth industrial revolution, which is triggered by the rapidly-evolving information and communication technology, opens up new possibilities in the manufacturing industry. Nowadays, autonomous devices and vehicles that can navigate themselves inside warehouses and plants, such as robots and drones, dominate the industry. Indoor navigation needs to be implemented as a conventional satellite-based GPS (global positioning system) cannot be relied upon in indoor usage scenario. As a solution, an indoor navigation system based on WLAN (wireless local area network) signals is proposed. The device employs beamforming technique as the basis for the navigation system. The device detects the direction of arrival of the signals transmitted from the autonomous vehicles. In this project, an antenna array for an indoor navigation device is developed. The antenna array employs patch antenna design printed on FR-4 substrate to provide a directional radiation pattern with a compact antenna form factor. A modification on the antenna design using double-resonance patch is used to increase the bandwidth of the antenna, to satisfy to the WLAN band requirement which spans from 2.4 - 2.5 GHz. The antenna is assembled in a 1×4 ULA (uniform linear array) form to provide beamforming capability based on phase shifts on each of the antenna elements. The antenna array is simulated to provide characterization of the antenna. Simulation results show that the designed antenna has an operating band of 2.38 - 2.53 GHz with a gain of 7.635 dBi at the frequency of 2.45 GHz. The return loss simulation results show that the antenna exhibits double-resonance, with resonant frequencies at 2.415 GHz and 2.495 GHz. The coupling simulated between the array elements are lower than -20 dB. The second resonance yields a gain of 1.383 dBi, lower than the gain on the first resonance, which shows a trade-off between gain and bandwidth of the antenna.