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Ground Plane Thickness - pifa and/or shorted monopole.

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catalyst101

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Hi,

Could anyone tell me typical ground plane thickness range for shorted monopole or PIFA antennas.(e.g 55x115mm)
I am simulating a paper and its not mentioned what ground plane thickness is. I'm doing parametric analysis but can't get any range to focus on. I need to know the range of interest.

Any help would be appreciated.
thnx
 

Do you mean thickness of copper traces on a PCB?

If the thickness is large with respect to say 10 times the skin depth, further increase will not reduce the loss in the ground plane or monopole radiator.

When doing UHF antennas, copper thickness of PCB material is many times the penetration (skin) depth, therefore it isn't specified in many planar antenna designs. Very thick layers may result in some change in center frequency, or characteristic impedance of transmission line sections.

In high power applications, one may use thick rounded conducting planes to reduce the fieldstrength at edges to avoid corona (partial discharge) effects.
 
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    catalyst101

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thank u WimRFP for ur reply.

I mean not the traces on the pcb but the whole ground plane under the substrate.(BTW. is it always copper?)
the range I use is 0.5-3GHz does this apply to what u've said.

In addition should traces and ground plane thickness be the same?
any help would be appreciated.
 
Last edited:

catalyst101 said:
I mean not the traces on the pcb but the whole ground plane under the substrate.
Click to expand...

That backside metalization has the same thickness as the top metalization.

catalyst101 said:
(BTW. is it always copper?)
Click to expand...

PCB metalization is usually copper with 17µm or 35µm thickness, and sometimes there is an additional metal plating on top of the copper.

catalyst101 said:
In addition should traces and ground plane thickness be the same?
Click to expand...

For your antenna, the effect of backside copper thickness should be very small. Using a thin lossless sheet should be fine.
 

Thanks you volker_muehlhaus for answering all the questions

volker_muehlhaus said:
For your antenna, the effect of backside copper thickness should be very small. Using a thin lossless sheet should be fine.
Click to expand...

1-WHY?

2-When utilizing hfss and simulating should I use a copper material thickness perfect-E or finite conductivity plane?

Thnx
 

catalyst101 said:
1-WHY?
2-When utilizing hfss and simulating should I use a copper material thickness perfect-E or finite conductivity plane?
Click to expand...

The loss contribution from the back side metalization is usually small (in case of doubt: simulate both cases and compare) and because of skin effect, the thickness of the plane does not really matter (as long as metal thickness > skin depth).

You can use a PEC conductor or PEC boundary, depending on the back side metalization shape.
 

Using an infinite ground plane speeds up simulation, but the impact on antenna impedance and radiation pattern depends on the antenna type.

For PIFA, difference between infinite and finite groundplane can be large, but gound plane thickness is not of importance as long as it is large w.r.t. skin depth.

If simulation goes faster for PEC finite groundplane, I should use that (assuming thickness >> skin depth).
 
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