Design and Data-Efficient Optimization of a Dual-Band Microstrip Planar Yagi Antenna for Sub-6 GHz 5G and Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything Communication

The booming number of electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous vehicles is driving the demand for the development of 5G and connected vehicle technologies. However, the design of compact, multi-band vehicular antennas with multiple communication standard support is complex. Traditional experience-based and parameter-sweeping approaches to antenna optimization are often inefficient and limited in scalability, while machine learning-based methods require extensive datasets, which are computationally intensive. This study proposes a microstrip planar Yagi antenna optimized for Sub-6 GHz 5G and cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication. As a way to approach antenna optimization with lower computing cost and less data, a hybrid optimization strategy is presented that combines parametric analysis and curve fitting based data visualization approaches. The proposed antenna exhibits a reflection coefficient of −31.68 dB and −29.36 dB with 700 MHz and 900 MHz bandwidths for frequencies of 3.5 GHz and 5.9 GHz, respectively. Moreover, the proposed antenna exhibits a peak gain of 7.55 dB with a size of 0.44 × 0.64 λ2, while achieving a peak efficiency of 90.1%. The antenna has been integrated and simulated in a model Mini Cooper to test the effectiveness of vehicular communication.