A novel dual‐wideband inscribed hexagonal fractal slotted microstrip antenna for C‐ and X‐band applications

This paper presents a novel geometry of inscribed hexagonal slotted microstrip antenna for dual‐band performance where the fractal iteration has been made by introducing concentric slots in the patch geometry. Using the equivalence principle and cavity model, the basic geometry of the hexagonal slotted patch is analyzed, and the resonant frequencies of different modes of the patch are computed. Higher‐order modes of the patch antenna are used to obtain dual band. Good performance in terms of the reflection coefficient is proved with the help of parametric analysis. The antenna geometry is simulated using electromagnetic simulation software based on the finite‐element method. The prototype of this antenna is fabricated and tested. The practical results match with the simulated results. The proposed antenna provides improved average gain. The peak values of measured gain are found to be 5.238 and 7.023 dBi—in the two bands 5.85 to 6.48 GHz and 7.28 to 8.63 GHz, respectively. Stable radiation patterns with good average gain make the proposed antenna appropriate for long‐range transmission. Furthermore, low profile and low cost make this antenna suitable for the future point‐to‐point high‐speed wireless communication applications.     

Miniaturization and bandwidth enhancement of a cavity backed circular microstrip patch antenna

The resonant frequency of a circular patch antenna with and without circular cavity is measured. The patch miniaturization in the presence of the cavity is proved. Different methods of reducing resonant frequencies and broadening bandwidth without significantly reducing antenna gain are presented. Capacitively loaded patch and slits on the patch stimulate the patch at lower frequencies and multiple resonances, thus help miniaturization. Finally ferrite loading on the feed probe further increases the bandwidth without significantly reducing the antenna gain. The method is much more improved than that for a resistive loaded patch and a deformed patch. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2007.     

An UWB trapezoidal rings fractal monopole antenna with dual‐notch characteristics

An ultra‐wideband planar fractal monopole antenna with dual‐notch characteristics is presented in this article. The microstrip fed antenna consists of nested trapezoidal rings and defected ground plane. Measured results show that the proposed antenna operates with a 10 dB return loss bandwidth from 2.2 to 10.8 GHz with notch bands at (2500‐2690) MHz and (3300‐4200) MHz covering LTE 2500, WiMAX and part of C‐band.     

Dual‐band circularly polarized aperture‐coupled stack antenna with fractal patch for WLAN and WiMAX applications

This article presents a novel circular polarized (CP) aperture coupled stack antenna for wireless local area network and worldwide interoperability for microwave access dual‐band systems. The compact stack antenna consisted of square fractal patch, aperture couple, feed line and the perturbation. The square patch is constructed with the complementary Minkowski‐island‐based fractal geometry. By way of adjusting the relevant parameters, we can obtain the dual‐band responses at 3.5 and 5.25 GHz respectively. The CP of each band are presented. The measured 10 dB return loss impedance bandwidth are 270 MHz (7.5%) for 3.5 GHz band and 450 MHz (8.6%) for 5.25 GHz band. The 3 dB axial ratio bandwidths for each bands are 1.4 and 0.76%, the polarization of radiation patterns are both left‐hand CP, and the antenna power gain are 2.84–3.1 and 0.16–2.2, dBic respectively. The proposed antenna is successfully simulated and measured with frequency responses, radiation patterns and current distributions. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:130–138, 2014.     

Design and fabrication of a new high gain multilayer negative refractive index metamaterial antenna for X‐band applications

This article presents the design of a planar high gain and wideband antenna using a negative refractive index multilayer superstrate in the X‐band. This meta‐antenna is composed of a four‐layer superstrate placed on a conventional patch antenna. The structure resonates at a frequency of 9.4 GHz. Each layer of the metamaterial superstrate consists of a 7 × 7 array of electric‐field‐coupled resonators, with a negative refractive index of 8.66 to 11.83 GHz. The number of layers and the separation of superstrate layers are simulated and optimized. This metamaterial lens has significantly increased the gain of the patch antenna to 17.1 dBi. Measurements and simulation results proved about 10 dB improvement of the gain.     

Design of dual‐band microstrip patch antenna with right‐angle triangular aperture slot for energy transfer application

This work focusing on the dual‐band antenna design with rectifying circuit for energy transfer system technology for enhancement gain performance. The air gap technique is applied on this microstrip antenna design work to enhance the antenna gain. The work begins with designing and analyzing the antenna via the CST Microwave Studio software. After validation on acceptable performance in simulation side is obtained, the return loss, S₁₁ of the antenna is measured using vector network analyzer equipment. The rectifier circuit is used to convert the captured signal to DC voltage. This projected dual‐band antenna has successfully accomplished the target on return loss of ?44.707 dB and ?32.163 dB at dual resonant frequencies for 1.8 GHz and 2.4 GHz, respectively. This proposed antenna design benefits in low cost fabrication and has achieved high gain of 6.31 dBi and 7.82 dBi for dual‐band functioning frequencies.     

Wideband linear microstrip array antenna with high efficiency and low side lobe level

In this letter, the design and fabrication of the linear microstrip array antenna by series fed are presented. The array antenna consists of 16 reflector slot‐strip‐foam‐inverted patch (RSSFIP) antennas. The gain and efficiency of the linear array antenna is 16.6 dBi and 61% at 10 GHz, respectively. The antenna has a bandwidth (BW) of 45% from 8.1 to 12.8 GHz (S₁₁ < ?10 dB) and side lobe level (SLL) of ?25.6 dB across the BW of 19.2% from 9.4 to 10.4 GHz. These are achieved by using a microstrip series fed with defected ground structure (DGS) to feed the patch array antenna. Good agreement is achieved between measurement and simulation results.     

Bandwidth and gain improvements of low‐profile H‐shaped microstrip patch antenna under quadruple‐mode resonance

A wideband low profile H‐shaped microstrip patch antenna (MPA) with reallocated quadruple‐mode resonance is presented for indoor wireless communication application. In this paper, the TM₂₀ (mode 1), TM₀₂ (mode 2), TM₂₂ (mode 3), and additionally notch mode 4 of the proposed MPA are simultaneously employed. First, the rectangular radiating patch is reshaped as an H‐shaped radiator so as to separate a pair of degenerate modes (mode 1 and mode 2). Then, a pair of linear notches is cut on the diagonal of the patch to excite an additional notch resonance (mode 4). Finally, in order to improve the frequency of mode 1, four shorting pins are placed at the four corners of the H‐shaped patch. Therefore, the bandwidth of the antenna is dramatically increased up by utilizing four resonant modes (modes 1, 2, 3, and 4). A prototype of H‐shaped patch antenna with notches and shorting pins is manufactured and measured. The results show that the antenna achieves a broad bandwidth of about 31.7% (2.31‐3.18 GHz), and its profile is only 0.036 wavelength of center frequency. It is particularly noticed that a relative high gain of around 9.8 dBi is successfully acquired, while keeping relative stable dual‐beam radiation patterns.     

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filter with the modified Minkowski‐island‐based fractal patch

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filters (BPFs) using modified Minkowski‐island‐based (MIB) fractal patch are proposed in this article. The BPF is mainly formed by a square patch resonator in which a modified MIB fractal configuration with second‐order iteration is embedded in the patch. By the equivalent circuit model with diamond structure, the wide‐band responses are analyzed. The design procedure included equivalent circuit model is available for wide‐band design. For wide‐band characteristics, at 5.0 GHz central frequency, it has good measured characteristics including the wider bandwidth of 3.14–6.89 GHz (3‐dB fractional bandwidth of 75%), low insertion loss of 0.39 dB, and high rejection level (?48.5/?44.9 dB). The patch size is 7.4 λ 7.4 mm² (0.25 λ_g × 0.25 λ_g) with 14.1% reduction. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:170–176, 2014.     

Reduced mutual coupling of compact MIMO antenna designed for WLAN and WiMAX applications

This communication describes a simple compact wide band multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) applications. The proposed antenna is integrated with an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure which is used to reduce the mutual coupling between the ports. The structure is excited by a line feed mechanism and investigated experimentally. The antenna covers the frequency range from 2.01 to 3.92 GHz with the corresponding fractional bandwidth of 64.42%. It fulfills the bandwidth requirements of WLAN (2.35‐2.5 GHz) and WiMAX (3.2‐3.85 GHz) bands where minimum port isolation is obtained around 29 dB throughout the entire application band. The proposed MIMO antenna has very low envelope correlation co‐efficient (ECC < 0.01) and high diversity gain (DG > 9.8). It also has very low channel capacity loss (CCL) which is found to be less than 0.2 Bit/s/Hz. The simulation results are compared with the measurement outcomes and found a good agreement between them.     

Isolation enhanced circularly polarized patch antenna array using modified electric‐field‐coupled resonator

A modified electric‐field‐coupled (MELC) resonator featuring negative permittivity is proposed to enhance the inter‐element isolation of a circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna array operated at Chinese compass navigation satellite system (CNSS) downlink band. The resonator comprises two capacitive gaps and a common inductive strip connected to the ground plane by two metal vias. A suspended microstrip line excitation is employed to efficiently design and investigate the MELC resonator whose constitutive parameters are subsequently extracted. A dual‐element CNSS antenna array has been prototyped and measured. The experimental results demonstrate that under the assistance of the proposed MELC resonator, a mutual coupling reduction of 15 dB has been achieved while maintaining good impedance matching and CP radiation performance. Details of the design considerations along with simulation and measurement results are presented and discussed.     

High isolation two‐port compact MIMO fractal antenna with Wi‐Max and X‐band suppression characteristics

This article features about an ultra‐wideband (UWB)‐multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna that exhibits the potentials of good port isolation and dual‐band suppression. The proposed antenna model consists of a unique fractal‐shaped radiating patch, a common ground interface leading to the incorporation of an intuitive approach; parasitic inverted neutralization stubs, which is located at the central co‐ordinate axis system, protruded vertically, where its extension is twisted with a motive of enhancing the port isolation. In addition to that, contiguous notches are implemented to achieve band‐notching at WiMAX (3.35‐4.45 GHz) and X‐band (9‐10 GHz). The total electrical area of UWB MIMO antenna is 0.179(λ₀)² at 2.25 GHz. To rationalize the counterparts of MIMO and band‐notching, diversity performance is studied through the electromagnetic (EM) solver and the corresponding circuit analysis is pursued through a electronic design automation (EDA) solver. The prototype has been fabricated, measured, and agreed well with the simulated results. The feasibility of proposed antenna model is considered to be quite optimum, with due consideration of its outcomes from applications point‐of‐view.     

Gain and isolation enhancement of patch antenna using L‐slotted mushroom electromagnetic bandgap

In this paper, the application of the L‐slotted mushroom electromagnetic bandgap (LMEBG) structure to patch antenna and antenna array is investigated. A coaxial fed patch antenna and antenna array are designed at 5.8 GHz, center frequency for ISM band (5.725‐5.875 GHz). Two layers of LMEBG are placed around the patch to achieve a gain enhancement of 1.9 dB. Measured results show a bandwidth enhancement of 300 MHz with an additional resonant frequency at 5.6 GHz with 4.5 dB of gain. A 5 × 2 array of LMEBG is used to achieve a 2 dB mutual coupling reduction and 2 dB gain enhancement for a two‐element H‐coupled patch antenna array.     

Efficient design of compact millimeter wave microstrip linear array with bandwidth enhancement and sidelobe reduction

In this article, a novel linear mmWave antenna array with series‐feed network is proposed to enhance the bandwidth and reduce sidelobe level without increasing the patch size. The proposed linear array is consisted of four identical wideband array elements, which are all under operation TM₁₀ and TM₀₂ modes by loading shorting pin and rectangular slots. Additionally, through loading symmetry circle‐shaped slots for the four elements, impedance matching of linear array is achieved. Furthermore, multi‐parameters unified‐optimization (MPUO) based on imperial competition algorithm (ICA) is proposed to uniformly optimize all linear array parameters. To verify this design, the proposed linear array is fabricated with a small patch area of 7.5 × 3.914 × 0.254 mm³. The measured results show that the bandwidth is enhanced to 2.05GHz, which is 0.57GHz wider than that of simulation. The simulated peak gain reaches 13dBi while the sidelobe level is reduced to about ?19 dB at 28.6GHz. Moreover, the computation cost using MPUO is reduced by 98.12% compared with that of independent parameters optimization.     

Design and analysis of slot antenna with band notch function

In this article, the design, simulation, and construction of a novel wide rectangular slot antenna fed by a 50 Ω coplanar waveguide (CPW) are presented and investigated for multifunctional communication systems. The physical dimension of the antenna is 29 mm (length) × 32 mm (width) × 1.6 mm (thickness). Detailed simulations and experimental investigations are performed to understand its behavior and to optimize for 2.4 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) and ultra wideband (UWB) operations. The proposed slot antenna is etched on an FR4 substrate with a thickness of 1.6 mm and relative permittivity of 4.4. To improve the impedance matching, a stepped stub structure with CPW feed technique is used. According to the measured results, the proposed antenna has a large bandwidth from 2.1 to 11.6 GHz for voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) less than 2, totally satisfying the requirement of 2.4 GHz WLAN and UWB systems, while providing the required band notch function from 5.1 to 5.9 GHz. The study of time domain characteristics and surface current distributions also indicate the band‐notched function of the antenna. The radiation patterns display nearly omnidirectional performance and the antenna gain is stable except for the rejected frequency band (5.1–5.9 GHz). Moreover, group delays are within 1.5 ns except for the notch‐band. It is observed that the simulated and experimental results have good agreement with each other. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2012.     

Penta‐band notched ultra‐wideband monopole antenna loaded with electromagnetic bandgap‐structures and modified U‐shaped slots

In this article, a planar monopole penta‐notched ultra‐wideband (UWB) antenna is designed and investigated. Three notches (2.81 GHz radar surveillance, 3.38 GHz WiMAX, and 3.87 GHz C‐band satellite downlink) have been realized by integrating three modified U‐shaped slots on the radiating surface. Furthermore, to create two additional notches (2.33 GHz ISM band and 5.75 GHz WLAN), two meander line electromagnetic bandgap (EBG); one located near to the feed line and another on the radiating surface, have been introduced in the design. These unit cells play a fundamental role in generating notches at higher as well as lower frequencies. The proposed antenna possesses an overall size of 34.9 × 31.3 × 1.6 mm³ and has been designed over FR4 substrate. A 50 Ω microstrip line is used to feed the antenna. The antenna without any extra arrangement exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 7.6 GHz. A parametric analysis is studied in detail to observe the band rejection characteristics. The ANSYS HFSS simulation software is used for simulating the proposed design structures. For validation purpose, a prototype is fabricated and characterized. A very good agreement is achieved between simulated and measured results.     

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.