A compact double‐layer wideband circularly polarized microstrip antenna with parasitic elements

In this article, a new broadband circularly polarized (CP) microstrip patch antenna (MPA) with a sequential phase (SP) square‐loop feeding structure is proposed. The presented antenna is composed of a square‐loop feeding structure, four L‐shaped parasitic patches with L‐shaped slots, four parasitic square patches, and a corner‐truncated square patch. At first, a SP square‐loop is designed as a feeding structure. Then, four L‐shaped parasitic patches with L‐shaped slots are utilized to generate one CP mode by a capacitive coupled way. At last, four parasitic square patches and a corner‐truncated square patch are together placed above the SP feeding structure to broaden the circularly polarized bandwidth (CPBW). The presented antenna has a wide 3‐dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 16.7% (5.4 GHz, 4.95‐5.85 GHz), and a wide 10‐dB return loss bandwidth of 25.5% (5.5 GHz, 4.8‐6.2 GHz). The proposed antenna features compact structure and broad 3‐AR bandwidth which could completely cover the WLAN (5.725‐5.85GHz) band. Therefore, the proposed antenna is suitable for circular polarization applications in C band.     

A multistate high gain antenna based on metasurface

A multi‐state high gain antenna based on metasurface is proposed. The antenna is composed of two stacking layers and a ground plane. The metasurface is constituted by two layers with the same size. And both of the two layers contain a copper patch array which is formed by 4 × 4 square copper cells uniformly distributed along x and y directions. The metasurface antenna is excited by the aperture coupled structure. The structure is consists of an anomaly microstrip line and a narrow slot etched in the ground plane. Genetic algorithm (GA) is adopted to optimize all the parameters and obtain the best performance of the metasurface antenna. By appropriately choosing the dimensions of the antenna, the proposed antenna can be achieved with the impedance bandwidth (RL≥10 dB) of about 340 MHz (7.8% at 4.36 GHz), 180 MHz (3.6% at 5.02 GHz), and 2800 MHz (41.1% at 6.81 GHz). The peak gain of the proposed antenna is 10.1dBi, 6.9 dBi, and 10.5dBi at 4.26 GHz, 5 GHz, and 7 GHz. In addition, the proposed metasurface antenna can work in multistate, which makes it an excellent candidate for practical applications.     

Microstrip tapered traveling wave antenna for wide range of beam scanning in X‐ and Ku‐bands

In this work, a broadband traveling wave antenna (TWA) is presented as a microstrip design that is capable of a wide range of beam scanning by changing the operation frequency within 8 to 14 GHz. For this purpose, a rhombus shaped microstrip patch is used as a unit element and TWA is built as a tapered microstrip line consisting of the cascaded rhombus shaped unit elements and terminated by a rectangular antenna instead of traditional resistive termination which can be called patch loaded traveling wave antenna (PLTWA). Optimization and simulation of the PLTWA is carried out using 3‐D Microwave simulation software CST and its dimensions are resulted as 130 × 30 mm. From the simulations, it should be noted that the patch termination increases the maximum gain almost 3 dB and the total efficiency up to 90% compared to the traditional resistive load over the operation band at the expanse of a small distortion on S₁₁ characteristics. Then the PLTWA is fabricated and measured along its operation band 8 to 14 GHz and it exhibits a peak gain of 9.5 dBi at 11 GHz. The measured gain of the proposed antenna is found between 9 dB and 12 dB and its beam direction is steerable with the range of 80° (?65°‐15°) over the operation band 8 to 14°GHz.     

A reconfigurable multiband rhombic shaped microstrip antenna for wireless smart applications

This article proposes a reconfigurable multiband rhombic shaped microstrip antenna (RMRS‐MSA) up to 20 GHz based on wireless smart applications. In this article radio frequency (RF) PIN diodes are loaded with microstrip feed line on radiating patch for frequency switching. It has a rhombic shaped copper loaded radiating patch. This radiating patch has two more connected rhombic patches inside with a 1 mm gap named as radiating patch 1 and radiating patch 2. These rhombic shaped radiating patches are enclosed with a square parasitic patch for achieving directional radiation pattern. A prototype of reconfigurable multiband rhombic shaped reconfigurable MSA is fabricated using a 30 × 30 mm² on FR‐4 substrate with a dielectric thickness of 1.6 mm. The proposed RMRS‐MSA is designed, fabricated, and experimentally validated. The experimental report at center frequency 5.21, 9.41, 10.46, 12.69, 14.39, and 17.09 GHz have reflection coefficients of ?16.89, ?25.54, ?24.86, ?28.62, ?26.80 and ?43.02 dB, respectively, when all diodes are OFF. Similarly, when all diodes are ON, at center frequency 14.57 and 15.18 GHz have reflection coefficients of ?26.15 and ?28.99 dB, respectively. The measured and simulated results agree well. The proposed antenna is more suitable for C, X, and Ku band‐based applications.     

Design of a 16‐beam pattern‐reconfigurable antenna for vehicular environment

This article presents the design of a multipattern antenna with pattern switching for vehicular communications. The proposed antenna has four triangular patches integrated onto a split square ring (SR) resonator to operate at two distinct frequencies, viz. 2.4 and 3.5 GHz. The proposed antenna is designed with a view to enhancing the link reliability of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), WiMax, and vehicle to vehicle communication frequencies. Each triangular patch is separately excited using a microstrip line feed to enable beam steering. The ground plane of the antenna is embedded with two SR slots to improve the bandwidth and radiation performance. Further gain enhancement is achieved by loading the antenna with a plane reflector located at a distance of 20 mm from the antenna's ground surface. In reality, this reflector is realized using the vehicle's roof which provides gain enhancement up to 5.2 dBi at 2.4 GHz and 4 dBi at 3.5 GHz. By exciting single to multiple ports sequentially 16 different radiation patterns are obtained, which provides high‐gain omnidirectional coverage. The prototype antenna is fabricated and the simulation results are verified using experimental measurements. From the results, it is evident that the proposed antenna is suitable for vehicular communication applications.     

A high gain wideband circularly polarized antenna with asymmetric metasurface

An asymmetric‐metasurface based wideband circularly polarized (CP) microstrip antenna using a coaxial probe is proposed for L‐band applications. The antenna involves a stacked asymmetric‐metasurface, a radiating rectangular‐patch and a coaxial feed. An asymmetric‐metasurface is designed using rectangular unit cells and smaller size unit cells along one of the diagonal lines. The asymmetric‐metasurface is placed above a radiating rectangular‐patch with support of foam layer to achieve a wideband CP radiation. The measured performance of the prototype antenna achieves an impedance bandwidth (?10 dB return loss bandwidth) of 15.7% (1.58‐1.85 GHz) with CP bandwidth (3‐dB axial ratio) of 13% (1.58‐1.80 GHz) and gain of ≥9 dBic.     

A compact slot antenna configuration for ultrawideband (UWB) terminals and mobile phones

A novel technique to design a mobile phone antenna by using an ultrawideband (UWB) antenna configuration is proposed. The technique is validated with a novel printed slot antenna configuration. The slot is composed of a circle connected to a trapezoid and fed by means of a 50 Ω microstrip line connected to a patch with similar shape to the slot. An UWB antenna with size of 19 mm × 24 mm and measured ?10 dB bandwidth of 2.97‐11.32 GHz is developed based on the configuration. When the configuration is applied in a system circuit board of 60 mm × 115 mm to design a mobile phone antenna, the simulated ?6 dB bandwidths are 1.0‐1.2 GHz and 2.25‐15 GHz. To enhance antenna bandwidth, another slot with rectangular shape is etched in the ground plane, and the microstrip line is moved to the center of the circuit board and folded to distribute along the rectangular slot. The measured ?6 dB bandwidths of the mobile phone antenna are 0.69‐1.09, 1.68‐2.75, 3.45‐3.52, and 3.62‐15 GHz.     

A high‐gain compact circularly polarized microstrip array antenna with simplified feed network

A broadband high‐gain circularly polarized (CP) microstrip antenna operating in X band is proposed. The circular polarization property is achieved by rotating four narrow band linearly polarized (LP) microstrip patch elements in sequence. Since the conventional series‐parallel feed network is not conducive to the miniaturization of the array, a corresponding simplified feed network is designed to realize the four‐way equal power division and sequential 90° phase shift. With this feed network, the impedance bandwidth (IBW) of the CP array is greatly improved compared with that of the LP element, while maintaining a miniaturized size. Then, parasitic patches are introduced to enhance the axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW). A prototype of this antenna is fabricated and tested. The size of proposed antenna is 0.93λ₀ × 0.93λ₀ × 0.017λ₀ (λ₀ denotes the space wavelength corresponding to the center frequency 10.4 GHz). The measured 10‐dB IBW and 3‐dB ARBW are 13.6% (9.8‐11.23 GHz), 11.2% (9.9‐11.07 GHz) respectively, and peak gain in the overlapping band is 9.8 dBi.     

Direct and electromagnetically coupled compact microstrip antenna design with modified fractal DGS

This article proposes ultra‐miniature microstrip patches with direct and electromagnetically coupled feeding mechanism for wireless communications at 10 GHz. Antenna size reduction is achieved here by loading a modified Minkowski fractal (type‐2) defected ground structure (MFDGS‐II) exactly beneath the radiating patch. The proposed method involves the selection of best DGS configuration through sensitivity analysis of the antenna structure. From different applications point of view, three different designs: a single layer direct fed patch and two electromagnetically coupled fed multi‐layered microstrip patch antennas are proposed here and designed with MFDGS‐II. The resonant frequencies of the antenna designs are reduced in a significant manner incorporating MFDGS‐II without any change in the physical size of the antenna. The prototypes of the proposed antennas are fabricated, and the performance parameters are measured. Compared with other existing structures, with a lower patch size of 0.20 λ₀ × 0.15 λ₀, the proposed single layered antenna with microstrip feed achieves a patch size reduction up to 67% and an overall volumetric reduction of 84%, respectively. Similarly, the proposed multi‐layered patch with proximity feed exhibits a maximum impedance bandwidth of 600 MHz and the aperture coupled fed patch has a realized gain of 6.2 dBi with radiation efficiency of 91% centered at 10 GHz. All three proposed compact antenna structures are best in three different aspects and have the potential to meet the practical requirements for X‐band portable wireless applications.     

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.     

Circularly polarized planar monopole antenna for ultrawideband applications

A broadband circularly polarized (CP) planar monopole antenna is proposed here for ultrawideband (UWB) communication. The antenna is composed of a modified annular ring patch fed by a tapered microstrip line and a rectangular semiground plane on the opposite side of the substrate. Capability of generating wide axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) is another feature of the proposed antenna. Wide ARBW is achieved by introducing a rectangular slot and a stub in the ground plane. The CP antenna has an impressive ARBW of 5.52 GHz (81.42%, 4.02‐9.54 GHz) within the UWB frequency range (3.1‐10.6 GHz). Measured 10‐dB return loss bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 120.86% centered at 7.48 GHz (2.96‐12 GHz). The proposed antenna is well used for wireless local area network (5.2 and 5.8 GHz), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (5.5 GHz), and other wireless systems in C band as well as CP‐UWB antenna communication.     

Circular microstrip antenna with off‐centered Y‐slot

A novel dual‐frequency broadband design of a single‐layer single‐feed circular microstrip antenna with an off‐centered Y‐slot is demonstrated in this communication. By selecting a suitable location of the Y‐slot in the circle, the proposed antenna on glass epoxy FR‐4 substrate not only resonates efficiently at two closely spaced frequencies (2.736 and 2.868 GHz) but also offers improved bandwidth (210 MHz or 7.5%) in comparison with a conventional circular microstrip patch antenna (～2%). From the measured results, almost identical broadside radiation patterns are obtained at two resonant frequencies, and the variation of less than 1 dBi in gain values is achieved in the frequency range where broadband behavior is observed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2011.     

Ultra‐wideband slot antenna for wireless communication systems

In this article, a new ultra‐wideband rectangular‐slot antenna is proposed and developed for multiband wireless communication systems. The radiating slot is fed by a microstrip line with a microstrip fork‐shaped tuning stub. The frequency characteristic and radiation performance of the proposed antenna are successfully optimized, and a prototype is fabricated and tested. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidth can cover the band from 1.85 to 6.1 GHz with return loss of better than 10 dB, and the corresponding radiation displays omnidirectional patterns across the interested bands. With these frequencies, the proposed structure is especially suitable for applications in wireless communication systems, where a single antenna is needed to operate simultaneously at different bands, such as PCS (1.85–1.99 GHz), UMTS (1.92–2.17 GHz) and all WLAN bands (2.4–2.48 GHz and IEEE802.11a WLAN applications at 5.15–5.35 GHz and 5.725–5.825 GHz). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

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.     

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.     

Single‐feed wideband circularly polarized patch antenna using dual mode defected ground waveguide coupling structure

A dual mode square‐ring defected ground waveguide (SR‐DGW) with defected square patch is first proposed to excite a single‐feed dual mode circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna, which can improve the impedance bandwidth and achieve the CP radiation pattern. The defected square patch is called the perturbation element. By optimizing the size of the perturbation, the degenerate modes of the dual mode SR‐DGW are split and their orthogonal modes can be excited simultaneously. Due to the dual mode of the SR‐DGW, the TM₀₁ mode, and TM₁₀ mode of the square patch antenna are excited simultaneously, which can improve the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. Meanwhile, owing to the orthogonal modes, CP radiation pattern of the antenna is obtained. Then, for a better impedance matching, an L‐shaped spurline embedded in the feedline is introduced. The simulated and measured results show a good performance of the proposed antenna. The measured ?10 dB impedance bandwidth is 10.4% (3.56 GHz‐3.95 GHz). The measured 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is 5.36% (3.63 GHz‐3.83 GHz). Detailed designs and experiments are described and discussed.     

A novel microstrip Yagi antenna with an improved end‐fire radiation pattern under operation of the TM20 mode

In this article, a novel microstrip Yagi antenna under operation of the TM₂₀ mode is proposed to obtain an enhanced end‐fire radiation pattern. First, a two‐element microstrip Yagi antenna is theoretically analyzed under different dimensions of the parasitic element. The results demonstrate that the parasitic element can act as either a reflector or director when its size is smaller or larger than the size of the driven patch, respectively. After that, the equivalent magnetic currents and electric fields of the two‐element antenna are formed to provide physical insight into the working principle and radiation performance of the antenna. With these arrangements, an array of four patch elements including one driver, one director, and two reflectors are selected for the antenna design. Unlike the traditional microstrip Yagi operating with the TM₁₀ mode, all the patch elements involved in this design resonate with the TM₂₀ mode, thus effectively enhancing the tilted beam angle toward the desired end‐fire direction on an infinite ground. Finally, the proposed antenna is designed, fabricated and tested. The measured results show that its impedance bandwidth is maintained at approximately 3.3%, ranging from 4.76 to 4.92 GHz. Most importantly, the maximum deviation angle of the antenna is significantly improved to approximately 58° from the broadside direction at the center frequency (4.84 GHz), while maintaining a low profile and compact size.     

Compact triple‐band stacked monopole antenna for USB dongle applications

In this article, a novel compact triple‐band stacked monopole antenna for USB dongle applications is proposed. The antenna consists of an e‐shaped monopole connected directly to the feedline and a square patch‐shaped monopole at another layer connected to feedline by a metallic pin. The e‐shaped monopole is used to obtain WLAN band (2.4‐2.48 GHz) and WiMAX band (3.4‐3.69 GHz). On the other hand, square patch‐shaped monopole is introduced to get WLAN bands (5.15‐5.35 and 5.725‐5.825 GHz) and WiMAX band (5.25‐5.85 GHz). The antenna is compact with the dimension of 17 × 13 mm².     

Dual‐band circularly polarized antenna with harmonic suppression performance

A dual‐band circularly polarized (CP) antenna with harmonic rejection property is proposed in this paper. Four T‐shaped slits and two corner cuts are etched on the proposed microstrip patch antenna. Those structures can be used to tune the resonant frequencies of TM₀₁ mode and TM₀₃ mode of the antenna into the desired bands of 2.45 and 5.8 GHz with CP radiation. A shunt transmission line is employed not only to improve the impedance matching at 5.8 GHz but also to suppress the radiation at 4.9 GHz (second harmonic of 2.45 GHz). Meanwhile, two L‐shaped slits are etched on the feeding line to realize the harmonic rejection at 11.6 GHz (second harmonic of 5.8 GHz). The simulated and measured results show that this antenna has good dual‐band CP radiation property and harmonic suppression performance, which makes it a good candidate for the wireless energy harvesting system.     

Numerical simulation of a UC–PBG lens for gain enhancement of microstrip antennas

Because of their versatility and ease of fabrication, Uniplanar Compact–Photonic Band Gap (UC–PBG) structures have been recently applied to microstrip antenna design. However, when the PBG structure is embodied on the ground plane of a conventional microstrip antenna, the resulting configuration suffers from strong backward radiation and reduced efficiency. In this article, a combined UC–PBG/ antenna structure is proposed to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks. The performance characteristics of a microstrip antenna positioned below a UC–PBG are examined using CST and Ansoft commercial software packages, which are based on the Finite Integration Technique (FIT) and the Finite Element Method (FEM), respectively. The proposed antenna demonstrates a remarkable improvement in the bore‐sight gain, about 7.8 dBi at 2.64 GHz, compared with the corresponding conventional microstrip antenna and front‐to‐back ratio in excess of 22.8 dBi. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.