Author(s)

Ofem U. Omini¹, Donatus E. Baasey^2*, Sulaiman A. Adekola³

¹Electrical Engineering Department, Cross River University of Technology, Calabar, Nigeria.
²Faculty of Engineering, University of Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria.
³Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Nigeria.

In recent years, several attempts have been made in designing planar array antennas with high directivity. This paper is aimed at investigating the impact of element spacing on the directivity of planar array of monopole antenna. The directivity of antenna with reduced grating lobes can be obtained by carefully varying the inter-element spacing of array antenna. Based on this conception, this paper presents the investigation carried out on the relationship between inter-element spacing and the directivity of planar array of monopole antenna. It went further to highlight the effect on the total fields radiated by the antenna. The inter-element spacing is one of the most important antenna parameters that determine the directivity of the antenna. For a planar array of monopole, the directivity can be improved by varying the inter-element spacing. Four elements uniform planar array antenna and Hadamard matrix method was used to determine element positioning in the array matrix. The simulated results obtained using Matlab, showed that good directivity was obtained by using element spacing between 0.1λ - 0.5λ. Increasing the spacing beyond 0.6λ - 1.0λ also improved the directivity, but generated many grating lobes. As inter-element spacing increased, the grating lobes increased in size, number and levels. The study, therefore, inferred that the best directivity (radiation pattern) can only be obtained when the element spacing is within 0.1 - 0.5λ.

Grating Lobes, Array Antenna, Planar Array, Array Factor, Directivity, Element Spacing

Omini, O. , Baasey, D. and Adekola, S. (2019) Impact of Element Spacing on the Radiation Pattern of Planar Array of Monopole Antenna. Journal of Computer and Communications, 7, 36-51. doi: 10.4236/jcc.2019.710004.