Compact meander T‐shaped monopole antenna for dual‐band WLAN applications

A compact coplanar waveguide‐feed monopole antenna with dual‐band characteristics is proposed in this article. The proposed antenna mainly consists of meander T‐shaped monopole and small ground plane embedded with a pair of L‐shaped couple slots and two pairs of I‐shaped notched slots symmetrically. By elongating the meander T‐shaped arms and carefully selecting the positions and lengths of L‐shaped slot and I‐shaped slot, the antenna excites four resonant frequencies at 2.42, 2.52, 4.75, and 5.54 GHz which are formed into two wide bands to cover all the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) operating bands, and is with miniaturization structure. Moreover, the antenna can provide nearly dipole‐like radiation patterns and good gains across the dual operating bands. These results prove that the proposed dual‐band antenna is very suitable for WLAN applications. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2013.     

A new broadband circularly polarized square‐slot antenna with low axial ratios

A new broadband circularly polarized (CP) square‐slot antenna with low axial ratios is proposed in this article. The antenna is comprised of an L‐shaped microstrip line with tapered section and a square‐slot ground plane with some stubs and slots, which are utilized as perturbations for the desirable antenna performance. By loading stubs and slots in the square‐slot ground plane, the 2‐dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) and 10‐dB return loss bandwidth for the presented antenna can be markedly improved. The measured results show that its 2‐dB ARBW is 4.2 GHz (54.2% from 5.65 GHz to 9.85 GHz) and its 10‐dB return loss bandwidth is about 8.9 GHz (92.7% from 5.15 GHz to 14.05 GHz). The proposed antenna features compact structure and broad 2‐AR bandwidth which could completely cover the WLAN (5.725‐5.85 GHz) band. Therefore, the proposed antenna is suitable for circular polarization applications in C band.     

A simple planar monopole UWB slot antenna with dual independently and reconfigurable band‐notched characteristics

An extremely simple and compact planar monopole ultrawideband (UWB) slot antenna with dual band‐notched characteristics is proposed. The antenna is composed of a circular radiation patch, a microstrip‐fed line, and a partial ground. By etching an arc‐shaped slot on the radiation patch and a C‐like slot on the feed line, dual notched frequency bands at 3.3–3.7 GHz for WiMAX and 5.15–5.825 GHz for WLAN are achieved. And, the two notched bands can be adjusted independently by varying the length of the slots. Moreover, the band‐notched characteristics can be reconfigurable by shorting the corresponding slots. So, the antenna is capable of operating in one of multiple modes which makes it an excellent candidate for UWB applications. Meanwhile, experimental results indicate that the antenna has an available impendence bandwidth from 2.9 to 11 GHz which covers the UWB frequency band, and nearly omnidirectional patterns, stable gains, small group delay in operating band except rejected bands. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:706–712, 2014.     

Epsilon‐shaped circularly polarized strip and slot‐loaded ultra‐wideband antenna for Ku‐band and K‐band

A compact epsilon‐shaped (ε) ultra‐wideband (UWB) antenna for dual‐wideband circularly polarized (CP) applications has been investigated in this article. It consists of a stepped stub loaded modified annular ring‐shaped radiator and modified CPW ground plane. The ground plane is loaded with two semicircular notches and a spiral‐shaped slot. The impedance bandwidth (IBW) is 97.02% (10.4‐30 GHz) along with an overall footprint of 20 × 20 mm². The fractional axial ratio bandwidth (3‐dB ARBW) for two wide bands is 38.50% (13.30‐19.64 GHz) and 6.45% (26.25‐28.00 GHz), respectively. The proposed antenna is left‐hand circularly polarized with a peak gain of about 5.09 and 5.14 dB in both 3‐dB ARBW bands. The proposed antenna is dominating other reported CP antenna structures in terms of number of CP bands, 3‐dB ARBW, IBW, peak gain, and dimensions.     

A miniaturized ultra‐wideband planar monopole antenna with L‐shaped ground plane stubs

This article presents a miniaturized ultra‐wideband planar monopole antenna with an oval radiator. The proposed antenna is fed by a coplanar waveguide (CPW), and two L‐shaped stubs are extended from the ground plane of the CPW. This presented antenna is able to produce resonances in the lower frequency band and realize better impedance matching performance in the middle and higher frequency bands with the aid of the L‐shaped stubs. The antenna was built and tested. The total size of the proposed antenna is only 26 × 20 × 1.6 mm³. Its measured –10 dB impedance bandwidth is 10.1 GHz (3.1‐13.2 GHz). The measured far‐field radiation patterns are stable in the whole operating frequency band.     

Wideband cavity‐backed log‐periodic‐slot end‐fire antenna with vertical polarization for conformal application

A 6–18 GHz wideband cavity‐backed log‐periodic‐slot end‐fire antenna with vertical polarization for conformal application is presented. The log‐periodic folded slots and parasitic slots with 10 slot elements are applied to cover 6–18 GHz frequency band and the log‐periodic metallic cavity is placed under each slot element to keep wideband performance and prevent the effects of large metallic carrier on radiation patterns. The ground plane etched with log‐periodic slots is reversed and touched directly to the backed cavity and a dielectric cover is added to the antenna, to further improve the antenna performance. Meanwhile, a broadband microstrip‐coplanar waveguide transition is inserted in the antenna for measurements. With these designs, the proposed antenna shows good impedance matching (|S₁₁|<27 dB) and end‐fire gain (>4 dBi) performances in 6–18 GHz. The proposed antenna also keeps low‐profile and easy flush‐mounted characteristic which is suitable for conformal applications of high speed moving carriers.     

Design of a novel compact modified‐circular printed antenna for high data rate wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel compact circular patch Ultrawideband (UWB) antenna for sensor node applications. The microstrip‐fed low‐profile antenna comprises an elliptical ring slot, two crescent‐shaped slots and two dumbbell‐shaped slots in feedline. The antenna miniaturization is achieved by a novel combination of an elliptical ring slot, two crescent‐shaped slots in circular patch. The proposed prototype has been fabricated on inexpensive FR4 substrate and the relative permittivity is (ε_r = 4.3) with 1.6 mm thickness. The overall size of the proposed miniaturized antenna is about (0.1 λ_r × 0.15 λ_r), where λ_r is the resonating wavelength of the lowest UWB frequency (ie, 3.1 GHz). The measured radiation performances of the proposed antenna are nearly an omnidirectional pattern in H‐plane and bidirectional pattern in E‐plane for all the frequencies in the whole UWB band. The development process of the antenna, radiation properties and group delay is completely analyzed and discussed.     

Circularly polarized D‐shaped slot antenna for wireless applications

A multiband circularly polarized slot antenna for wireless local area networks (WLAN) and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) applications is designed, studied, and fabricated. Using modified ground plane structure, circular polarized characteristics are realized. An open rectangular loop is introduced on the ground plane to generate orthogonal modes at middle resonance frequency. At higher resonance frequency to improve axial ratio bandwidth, a D‐shaped radiator is used. Thus, the cooperation of modified ground plane, open loop resonator, and D‐shaped radiator improves performance of the antenna at all the required bands. The proposed microstrip antenna generates separate impedance bandwidths to cover frequency bands of WLAN and WiMAX applications. The realized antenna is relatively small in size 40 × 54 mm² or 0.26_ × 0.36_ where _ is the free‐space wavelength at the desired first resonant frequency 2.0 GHz and operates over frequency ranges 26% (2.0‐2.6 GHz), 8.9% (3.21‐3.51 GHz), and 50.6% (3.8‐6.38 GHz). In addition, the antenna exhibits 5% (2.32‐2.44 GHz), 5.8% (3.3‐3.5 GHz), and 5.2% (5.61‐5.91 GHz) Circular Polarization bandwidth, making it suitable for WLAN and WiMAX applications.     

A vertex‐fed hexa‐band frequency reconfigurable antenna for wireless applications

Present article embodies the design and analysis of an octagonal shaped split ring resonator based multiband antenna fed at vertex for wireless applications with frequency‐band reconfigurable characteristics. The proposed antenna is printed on FR4 substrate with electrical dimension of 0.4884 λ × 0.4329 λ × 0.0178 λ (44 × 39 × 1.6 mm³), at lower frequency of 3.33 GHz. The antenna consists of SRR based vertex fed octagonal ring as the radiation element and switchable reclined L‐shaped slotted ground plane. Antenna achieves six bands for wireless standards viz: upper WLAN (5.0/5.8 GHz), lower WiMAX (3.3 GHz), super extended C‐band (6.6 GHz), middle X band (9.9 GHz—for space communication), and lower K_U band (15.9 GHz—for satellite communication systems operating band). Stable radiation patterns are observed for the operating bands with low cross polarization. The proposed design achieves hexa band characteristics during switching ON state of PIN diode located at reclined L‐shaped slot in the ground plane. Experimental characteristic of antenna shows close agreement with those obtained by simulation of the proposed antenna.     

A wideband compact horizontally polarized omnidirectional antenna for 2G/3G/LTE

A compact horizontally polarized omnidirectional slot antenna with a wide working band is presented in this article. The proposed antenna consists of 4 shorter driven cross‐shaped slots, 4 longer parasitic cross‐shaped slots, and a feeding network. Four shorter slots, placed on the same side of a circular substrate, are fed by a feeding network printed on the other side with uniform phase and magnitude. To enhance the bandwidth of the antenna, 4 longer cross‐shaped slots are inserted between adjacent longer slots to produce an additional resonant frequency. All 8 slot radiators placed symmetrically along the circumference results in an omnidirectional horizontal polarized radiation pattern. By utilizing cross‐shaped slots, a compact size of 0.53λ_L × 0.53λ_L × 0.005λ_L (λ_L is the free space wavelength at the lowest operational frequency) is achieved. The prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured results reasonably agree with the simulated results. The measured working band for |S₁₁|<–10dB is from 1.62 to 2.81 GHz which successfully covers the 1.7 to 2.7 GHz 2G/3G/LTE bands. The measured gain variation in azimuthal angle is <1.7 dB within 1.7 to 2.7 GHz, and the cross polarization level is <–27 dB in the horizontal plane.     

A dual‐band dual‐polarized cubical DRA coupled with new modified cross‐shaped slot for ISM (2.4 GHz) and Wi‐MAX (3.3‐3.6 GHz) band applications

In this article, a new modified cross‐shaped coupled cubical dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) has been investigated for dual‐band dual‐polarized applications. The linearly polarized (LP) fields in DRA has been generated by using a single slot in the ground plane and kept at either 45° (S_L1) or ?45° (S_L2) from the microstrip feed line. Combining these two slots (S_L1 and S_L2) in the modified ground plane, the proposed structure able to generate circularly polarized (CP) field in DRA. But the generated CP field is not enough to cover ISM 2400 band. To achieve CP in ISM 2400 band, an extra slot (S_L3) to the existing slots and an extra strip (S_T) in the circular ring feed line have been included. This modified final antenna arrangement has been able to produce LP (due to loading effect, ie, slot and DRA) and CP fields (orthogonal modes have been generated, ie, TE ^x₁₁₁ and TE ^y₁₁₁), simultaneously. The measured CP and LP, ?10 dB impedance bandwidths are 11.85% (2.38‐2.68 GHz) and 9.11% (3.25‐3.56 GHz) in combination with the 3‐dB axial ratio bandwidth of 4.11% (2.38‐2.48 GHz). The generated CP and LP fields are used for different wireless communication bands such as ISM 2400 and Wi‐MAX (3.3‐3.7 GHz) bands.     

A wideband circularly polarized slot antenna with antipodal strips for WLAN and C‐band applications

A single‐fed circularly polarized square shaped wide slot antenna with modified ground plane and microstrip feed has been presented. The field in the slot is perturbed by introducing an antipodal strips section attached with a microstrip line to produce circular polarization in a wide band of frequencies. The antipodal strip section consists of a group of four strips of unequal length and separation. The presence of asymmetric perturbations in the slot is mainly responsible for exciting two orthogonal modes in the slot having equal magnitude and 90° phase difference which results in circular polarization. A wide bandwidth of 3.3 GHz (4.4 GHz‐7.7 GHz) has been achieved for an axial ratio value AR < 3 dB with the minimum axial ratio value being 0.3 dB. The impedance bandwidth for |S₁₁| < ?10 dB ranges from 4.3 GHz to 8 GHz, and therefore covers most of the C‐band communication systems. The antenna exhibits stable radiation patterns throughout the circular polarization bandwidth with a gain around 6 dBi in entire operational bandwidth. A prototype of antenna was fabricated and measured. The antenna has a planar size 0.40λ₀ × 0.40λ₀ and thickness of 0.02λ₀ where λ₀ is the wavelength in free space at the lowest frequency. With its compact size and low profile, the antenna is a favorable choice for WLAN (5.15‐5.85 GHz) and a wide variety of C‐band wireless applications.     

A novel wideband circularly polarized modified square‐slot antenna with loaded strips

In this article, a novel inverted L‐shaped microstrip‐fed wideband circularly polarized (CP) modified square‐slot antenna is designed. By cutting a pair of triangle chamfers and introducing a pair of triangle patches at the square‐slot, the antenna achieves a wideband CP radiation. Moreover, CP performance of the antenna can also be remarkably enhanced by protruding an L‐shaped strip and embedding a tuning rectangle slot into the slot ground. The measured results demonstrate that the axial‐ratio bandwidth for AR < 3 is 75.1% (from 4.45 to 9.8 GHz) and the impedance bandwidth (|S₁₁| < ?10 dB) reaches 65.8% (from 4.95 to 9.8 GHz). In addition, surface current studies are performed to illustrate the operating mechanism of CP operation, and the antenna has bidirectional radiation characteristics with an average gain of ~4 dBic within the CP band.     

A WiMAX circularly polarized antenna array using slot‐coupling feeding technique

In this letter, we present a circular polarization antenna array using the novel slot‐coupling feeding technique. This antenna includes eight elements which are installed in line, each array element is fed by means of two microstrip lines with equal amplitude and phase rotation of 90°. The feeding microstrip lines are coupled to a square patch through a square‐ring slot realized in the feeding network ground plane. With the presence of the slots, this antenna array is able to cover the range of frequency of 3 GHz to 4 GHz. The size of the proposed antenna array is 7λ × 1.8λ × 0.4λ. The measured gain is 15.2 dBi and the bandwidth of S11< ?10 dB is 1 GHz (3–4 GHz, 28%). The antenna array is suited for the WiMAX applications. With the use of slot‐coupling feeding technique, the measured bandwidth for axial ratio < 3 dB is about 24% in the WiMAX frequency band (3.3–3.8GHz). The measured HPBW of the y–z planes is larger than 62°. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:567–574, 2016.     

A 60‐GHz on‐chip slot‐array antenna in integrated‐passive‐device technology for antenna‐in‐package applications

A new millimeter‐wave antenna structure on a low‐cost, production platform integrated passive device technology is presented. The antenna consists of a 2‐by‐1 array of slot antennas at 60 GHz. An in‐house developed on‐chip antenna measurement setup was used to characterize the fabricated antenna. The measurement results show an antenna gain of more than 5 dBi with a return loss of 18 dB at 60 GHz. The better‐than‐10‐dB impedance bandwidth of the antenna covers the 60‐GHz unlicensed band from 57 to 64 GHz. The 3‐dB beamwidths of the antenna are 105° and 76° at E‐plane and H‐plane at 60 GHz, respectively. The size of the die of the antenna is 2 mm × 4.5 mm. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:155–160, 2014.     

Fork‐shaped patch printed ultra‐wideband slot antenna with dual band‐notched characteristics using metamaterial unit cells

In this article, a miniaturized fork‐shaped patch ultra‐wideband (UWB) planar wide‐slot antenna with dual band‐notched characteristics is proposed. With fork‐shaped patch, ultra‐wideband impedance matching from 3.1 to 13.2 GHz is easily achieved. Then, two novel and simple methods are applied to solve the difficulty for UWB slot antennas with fork‐shaped patch to realize band‐notched characteristics. By etching one pair of I‐shaped resonators on both branches of the fork‐shaped structure and adding a rectangular single split‐ring resonator in the rectangular openings of fork‐shaped patch, the wireless local area network (WLAN) band from 5.5 to 6.1 GHz and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) 8 GHz band from 7.9 to 8.7 GHz are rejected, respectively. The coplanar waveguide‐fed UWB antenna is successfully designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured and simulated results show a good agreement. The antenna provides nearly stable radiation patterns, high gains and high radiation efficiency.     

Reconfigurable ultra‐wideband monopole antenna with single‐, dual‐, and triple‐band notched functions

A miniaturized ultra‐wideband (UWB) monopole antenna with reconfigurable multiple‐band notched performance is demonstrated. By modifying the shape of the patch and the ground plane, the UWB operation is achieved. The first and second band‐notches are respectively generated by etching a rectangular slot with open ends and a U‐shaped slot in the patch, and the third band‐notch is produced by loading a C‐shaped parasitic element beneath the patch. To realize the reconfigurable band‐notched functions, four PIN diodes are inserted in three band‐rejected structures. The antenna has a compact dimension of 30 mm × 26 mm. It can switch between a UWB state and several band‐notch states by alternating the states of the diodes. Also, good radiation patterns are obtained.     

A broadband slant polarized cavity backed microstrip‐fed wide‐slot antenna array

This article deals with the design of a broadband cavity‐backed microstrip‐fed wide‐slot antenna array for L‐band applications. For verification purpose, a sample 1 × 4‐element antenna array has been designed, manufactured and tested. Experimental results have shown satisfactory agreement with the simulation. The proposed antenna array exhibits a measured impedance bandwidth of 1.4 GHz (90%) with frequency of 0.85 to 2.25 GHz and the gain is higher than 11 dBi. The designed antenna has small size and low weight and can be fabricated using a low‐cost fabrication process for easy integration with RF circuits and microwave components. This work is useful for some radar applications and radio frequency identification systems.     

Broadband compact CPW‐fed metasurface antenna for SAR‐based portable imaging system

A broadband and compact coplanar waveguide (CPW) coupled‐fed metasurface (MS)‐based antenna for C‐band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging application is proposed in this article, which is consisted of 16 uniform periodic square patches performed as radiators. The CPW feeding structure gives two following functions: (1) It excites an aperture coupling slot structure underneath the center of MS patch array. (2) It acts as a ground plane for the metasurface patch units. Different slots were investigated and eventually an hourglass‐shaped slot is applied to enhance bandwidth for imaging applications. A prototype with a dimension of 60 × 60 × 1.524 mm³ (1.1λ₀ × 1.1λ₀ × 0.03λ₀) operating at the center frequency 5.5 GHz (f₀) has been fabricated and measured to verify the design principle. This antenna has a measured impedance bandwidth of 12.4% from 5.14 to 5.82 GHz, a peak gain of 9.2 dBi and averaged gain of 7.2 dBi at broadside radiation. Microwave imaging experiments using the proposed antenna have been carried out and a good performance is achieved.