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.     

A CPW‐fed band notched wideband circularly polarized ZOR antenna based on CRLH‐TL approach

This article presents design and analysis of three wide band zeroth‐order resonance antennas (antennas I, II, and III) using composite right and left‐handed transmission line (CRLH‐TL) approach. Coplanar waveguide technology, single layer via‐less structures are used to have the design flexibility. The bandwidth characteristics are analyzed by using lumped parameters of CRLH‐TL. By introducing a simple slot in the ground plane of antenna I both bandwidth enhancement and circularly polarization characteristics are achieved in antenna II. Another quarter wave L‐shaped slot has been introduced in the ground plane of antenna II to introduce a notch band in the frequency response of antenna III. Achieved measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth of antenna I and antenna II are 960 (3.3‐4.26 GHz) and 2890 MHz (2.77‐5.66 GHz), respectively. Antenna III offers measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth of 3220 MHz (2.32‐5.54 GHz) with a band notch from 2.39 to 2.99 GHz that isolates the 2.4 GHz WLAN and 3.5 GHz WiMAX band. Antenna II and antenna III have circular polarization property with measured axial ratio bandwidth of 440 MHz. The measured peak realized gain of antennas II and III is around 1.53‐2.9 dBi.     

Miniaturized frequency reconfigurable pentagonal MIMO slot antenna for interweave CR applications

In this article, a miniaturized 4‐element frequency reconfigurable multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna system is presented. The proposed design is low profile with planar configuration. The design consists of pentagonal slot‐based frequency reconfigurable antenna elements. Varactor diodes are used to change the capacitive reactance of the slot. The MIMO antenna system can be tuned over a frequency band covering 3.2 to 3.9 GHz with at least 100 MHz bandwidth within each band. The proposed antenna covers several commercial standards including WiMAX (3.4‐3.6 GHz), TDD LTE (3.6‐3.8 GHz), and Wi‐Fi 802.11y (3.65‐3.7 GHz), along with several other bands. The proposed design was realized on a board of dimensions 60 × 120 mm². The isolation between adjacent antenna elements is improved using slot‐line based defected ground structures (DGS). The antenna maintains a minimum isolation of 10 dB in its entire covered operating bands. The antenna is also analyzed for its far‐field characteristics and MIMO performance parameters. The proposed design is suitable to be used in mobile handsets for cognitive radio (CR) platforms.     

A miniaturized multi‐wideband Quasi‐Yagi MIMO antenna system

A multi‐band directional multiple‐input–multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna system is presented based on a rectangular loop excited Quasi‐Yagi configuration. A 64% reduction in size is obtained using a rectangular meandered element as well as a small ground plane. The proposed two‐element MIMO antenna system covers the Telemetry L‐band and several LTE/WLAN bands. It has a wide measured bandwidth of 689 MHz (1.897–2.586 GHz) in the desired band centered at 2 GHz, and a measured bandwidth of more than 168 MHz across rest of the bands. The MIMO antenna system has a total size of 45 × 120 × 0.76 mm³, with a single element size of 55 × 60 × 0.76 mm³. The non‐desired back‐lobe radiation which is obtained using a small ground plane, is significantly reduced by using a novel defected ground structure (DGS) as compared with the complex techniques present in literature. The proposed DGS provides a high measured front‐to‐back ratio of 14 dB at 2 GHz and 11 dB in other bands. A maximum measured realized gain of 5.8 dBi is obtained in the desired band using a single parasitic director element. The proposed MIMO antenna system has a minimum measured radiation efficiency of 70%, isolation of 12 dB, and envelope correlation coefficient of 0.098 within all bands which ensures very good MIMO performance.     

Miniaturized dual‐band metamaterial inspired antenna with modified SRR loading

A miniaturized dual‐band CPW‐fed Metamaterial antenna with modified split ring resonator (SRR) loading has been presented in this paper. Proposed antenna comprises a tapered rectangular patch with a slot in which an elliptically SRR has been loaded to achieve miniaturization. Proposed antenna shows dual band operations in the operating band 3.25‐3.42 and 3.83‐6.63 GHz, respectively. It has been observed that lower mode (at 3.36 GHz) is originated by means of modified SRR. SRR is being modified by small meandered line inductor which is placed instead of strip. This provides an extra inductance to SRR resulting miniaturization. Overall electrical size of the proposed antenna is 0.222 × 0.277 × 0.017 λ₀ at 3.36 GHz. Second band is due to coupling between feed and ground planes. The antenna offers an average peak gain of 1.72 and 3.41 dB throughout the first and second band respectively. In addition to that this antenna exhibits perfect omnidirectional and dipolar radiation patterns at xz‐ and yz‐ plane respectively. Due to consistent radiation pattern, ease of fabrication, and compact nature this antenna can be used for wireless applications such as worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band, WLAN/Wi‐Fi bands.     

Modified octahedron shaped antenna with parasitic loading plane having dual band notch characteristics for UWB applications

The design of a compact modified octahedron shaped dual band notched ultra wide‐band antenna is presented in this article. The impedance bandwidth of the designed antenna has been enhanced by modifying the shape of the radiator by introducing fractal geometry and a modified ground plane. The proposed antenna offered an impedance bandwidth of 2.4 GHz–19.5 GHz (156% Fractional bandwidth). Two rectangular split ring resonator structures are introduced in the radiator to achieve two notched bands which ranges from 3.3 GHz to 3.7 GHz (WiMAX) and 5.15 GHz–5.85 GHz (WLAN) band. The antenna gain varies from 1 to 4 dBi over the operating band except the notched bands. The overall dimension of the designed antenna has a compact size of 33 × 40 mm². The experimental and simulation results are in good agreement. The proposed antenna has wider bandwidth and smaller dimension over the already reported in the literature. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:426–434, 2016.     

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.     

Design and development of enhanced bandwidth multi‐frequency slotted antenna for 4G‐LTE/WiMAX/WLAN and S/C/X‐band applications

A multi‐frequency rectangular slot antenna for 4G‐LTE/WiMAX/WLAN and S/C/X‐bands applications is presented. The proposed antenna is comprised of rectangular slot, a pair of E‐shaped stubs, and an inverted T‐shaped stub and excited using staircase feed line. These employed structures help to achieve multiband resonance at four different frequency bands. The proposed multiband slot antenna is simulated, fabricated and tested experimentally. The experimental results show that the antenna resonates at 2.24, 4.2, 5.25, and 9.3 GHz with impedance bandwidth of 640 MHz (2.17‐2.82 GHz) covering WiMAX (802.16e), Space to Earth communications, 4G‐LTE, IEEE 802.11b/g WLAN systems defined for S‐band applications. Also the proposed antenna exhibits bandwidth of 280 MHz (4.1‐4.38 GHz) for Aeronautical and Radio navigation applications, 80 MHz (4.2‐4.28 GHz) for uncoordinated indoor systems,1060 MHz (5.04‐6.1 GHz) for the IEEE 802.11a WLAN system defined for C‐band applications and 2380 MHz (7.9‐10.28 GHz) defined for X‐band applications. Further, the radiation patterns for the designed antenna are measured in anechoic chamber and are found to agree well with simulated results.     

Dual ISM band printed antenna with omnidirectional radiation pattern and better radiation efficiency

Designing a high gain planar antenna on the low‐cost FR4 substrate is one of the major challenging tasks for the researchers. The omnidirectional radiation pattern is desired for 360° coverage. Both of these requirements have been addressed in this article. This article presents a dual band printed antenna designed on an FR4 substrate of 1.6 mm thickness. The proposed antenna operates in the ISM band of 2.4 and 5.8 GHz for the application of dual‐band WLAN/WIFI. The proposed antenna consists of a circular patch and ring‐shaped ground plane. The overall dimension of the antenna is 66 × 66 × 1.6 mm³. Excellent impedance matching and radiation efficiency for both the bands have been achieved. The proposed antenna shows omnidirectional radiation pattern at 2.4 GHz ISM band and nearly omnidirectional pattern along with high gain of 4.7 dBi at 5.8 GHz ISM band.     

A penta‐band hybrid fractal MIMO antenna for ISM applications

A miniature two‐element MIMO multiband planar patch antenna with potential applications in the ISM bands is presented. The elements of the antenna have been designed using a novel hybrid fractal geometry based on an altered Dragon Curve and the Inverted Koch. Reduced antenna dimensions are obtained with acceptable performance even at lower frequency ranges. The antenna elements are placed adjacent to each other with a very small spacing of 0.004 λ₀ (λ being the free space wavelength of 433 MHz), confining the antenna dimensions to 51 × 50 mm². The antenna resonates at the 433 MHz (ISM), 2.4 GHz (ISM), 3.9 GHZ (Fixed Satellite), 4.7 GHz (UWB) and 5.8 GHz (ISM) frequency bands. The antenna exhibits |S₁₁| ≤ ?10 dB, |S₂₁| ≤ ?16 dB, an ECC ≤ 0.01 for all operating frequencies, with circular polarisation at the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands and linear polarisation at the others. The simulated structure was fabricated and tested, with the simulated and measured results displaying acceptable agreement.     

A compact multi‐band multi‐input multi‐output antenna for 4G/5G and IoT devices using theory of characteristic modes

A compact four element multi‐band multi‐input multi‐output (MIMO) antenna system for 4G/5G and IoT applications is presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is developed using the theory of characteristic modes helping in systematic design of MIMO antenna system. It consists of four L‐shaped planar inverted‐F antenna (PIFA) elements each operating at 3.5, 12.5, and 17 GHz bands with the bandwidth of 359 MHz, 1 GHz, and more than 3.7 GHz, respectively. The proposed antenna system is suitable for both 4G/5G and internet of things devices as it shows the satisfactory MIMO system performance. Good isolation characteristics are observed by implementing complimentary Metamaterial structure on the ground plane resulting in isolation level lower than ?21 dB between the antenna elements. The proposed antenna is fabricated and experimental results are also presented and discussed.     

A dual‐band case‐printed planar inverted‐F antenna design with independent resonance control for wearable short range telemetric systems

In this article, a novel 3D meandered planar inverted‐F antenna (PIFA) is proposed for dual band application targeting Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). The proposed antenna is printed on the casing of a 3D‐base‐station model having a size of 88 × 95 × 10.2 mm³. The proposed PIFA covers two bands including medical implant communication service (MICS) (402‐405 MHz), as well as the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) (2.4‐2.48 GHz) bands. Each of the two bands can be controlled independently. The 3D configuration contains two linked meandered resonators to downsize the structure. Due to its conformal shape, omnidirectional radiation pattern, and low‐profile nature, the proposed PIFA is a potential candidate for targeting the WBAN applications. The proposed antenna, covering the MICS and ISM bands, works with an optimally matching (VSWR<2) at the aforementioned bands. The design concept was validated by fabricating the antenna prototype and measuring its characteristics.     

A thin‐layer dielectric and metamaterial unit‐cell stack loaded miniaturized SRR‐based antenna for triple narrow band 4G‐LTE applications

This article presents the design of a miniaturized dual‐band antenna for long‐term evolution (LTE) application is presented. In the basic antenna design, split ring resonator was loaded in the radiating plane of the patch and frequency of resonance was further modified with the help of E‐shaped stub. The antenna has been fabricated using FR‐4 substrate and the measured dual bands at 2.11 and 2.665 GHz are found in a close match with the simulated data. By placing a thin dielectric resonator of permittivity ε _r = 10.2 and thickness of 1.27 mm, two closely spaced narrow bands are obtained at 2.217 and 2.28 GHz. A novel metamaterial unit‐cell having near‐zero refractive index is designed and mounted above the dielectric resonator. This stack configuration generates triple narrow frequency band in the LTE 2 GHz spectrum range. The overall size of the proposed antenna is 20 × 25 mm².     

Performance enhancement of nested hexagonal ring‐shaped compact multiband integrated wideband fractal antennas for wireless applications

In this paper, nested hexagonal ring‐shaped fractal antennas are designed and investigated which are different from each other in patch orientation. Initially, the multiband integrated wideband hexagonal nested ring antenna is designed (antenna‐I). To improve the multiband/wideband behavior, the patch orientation of antenna‐I is changed to ?60°/60° (antenna‐II), ?120°/120° (antenna‐III), and ?180°/180° (antenna‐IV). Antennas are designed on low cost FR‐4 glass epoxy substrate with relative permittivity of 4.4 and overall dimension 30 × 30 × 1.6 mm³. Comparison among antennas have been made and found that the antennas with negative orientation exhibit better results in terms of bandwidth, impedance matching, number of frequency bands, and gain. Designed antennas have been compared with each other and found that antennas‐II and III are better in performance as compared to antennas‐I and IV. Antenna‐II exhibits wider bandwidth of 1.26 (2.52‐3.78 GHz), 2.75 (4.03‐6.78 GHz), and 6.1 GHz (7.82‐13.92 GHz) with maximum gain of 7.14 dB. Similarly; antenna‐III exhibits the bandwidth of 340 MHz (1.92‐2.26 GHz), 820 MHz (3.04‐3.86 GHz), 4230 MHz (5.38‐9.61 GHz), and 3040 MHz (10.41‐13.45 GHz) with a maximum gain of 6.19 dB. Prototype of the designed antennas with satisfactory orientations are fabricated and tested for the validation of results. Simulated and measured results are also juxtaposed and observed in good agreement with each other. Antennas exhibit bidirectional and omnidirectional pattern in E‐plane and H‐plane, respectively, also the radiation efficiency of antennas are in acceptable range from 75% to 95%. Due to the wider bandwidth of designed antennas, they can be used for different wireless standards such as Advance Wireless Services AWS‐1, AWS‐2, AWS‐3, Wi‐MAX, WLAN, X‐band satellite communication, point‐to‐point wireless applications, ITU band, military satellite communication, television broadcasting, and military land and airborne systems.     

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 modified split ring resonator based printed compact monopole UWB antenna with spiked elliptical radiator having five band rejection features

A coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed printed compact monopole antenna with five band rejection features is presented. Wide bandwidth was achieved by beveling the lower part and adding a modified ellipse on the upper portion of the patch. An inverted circular arc, single circular split ring resonator (SRR) with wide opening and two symmetrical circular single SRRs were embedded for obtaining three stop‐band characteristics. Two symmetrical slits were inculcated in the ground forming defected ground structure (DGS) to get another stop‐band characteristic. Two concentric rectangular modified SRRs were etched to obtain a higher frequency stop‐band feature. The proposed antenna was designed, fabricated, and experimentally tested for the validation of results. The overall dimensions of the proposed antenna were 29 mm × 24 mm × 1.6 mm. The measured impedance bandwidth of the antenna was 2.87 to 13.3 GHz at | S₁₁ |< ? 10 dB. The measured results show that the proposed antenna has five band notches centred at 3.96, 4.35, 5.7, 8.54, and 9.95 GHz to reject WiMAX band (3.65‐4.04 GHz), ARN band (4.29‐5.18 GHz), WLAN band (5.5‐6.9GHz), ITU‐8 band (7.37‐8.87), and amateur radio band (9.2‐10.3 GHz) respectively. The proposed antenna maintains omnidirectional radiation pattern in H‐Plane and dumbbell‐shape radiation pattern in E‐plane. Further, stable gain over the whole UWB except at notched frequency bands was reported.     

A miniaturized patch antenna with enhanced bandwidth by using reactive impedance surface ground and coplanar parasitic patches

In this article, a miniaturized hybrid patch antenna is proposed that shows improved matching bandwidth and almost invariant radiation patterns. This antenna consists of a driven patch, reactive impedance surface (RIS) based ground plane in addition to the coplanar parasitic patches. The simulated and measured results show that the proposed antenna offers fractional bandwidth of 28% (S₁₁ = ?10 dB, from 2.38 GHz to 3.18 GHz). When this antenna operates at 2.38 GHz, 2.68 GHz, 2.98 GHz, and 3.18 GHz, shows realized gain of 6.46 dBi, 6.69 dBi, 7.84 dBi, and 7.59 dBi, whereas the front‐to back (F/B) ratio is 15.62 dB, 20.15 dB, 20.67 dB and 20.92 dB, respectively. The pattern quality is very consistent over the matching bandwidth. Compared to the conventional patch antenna, dimension of the hybrid patch antenna has decreased by about 36%.     

Compact slot‐loaded ultra‐wideband multiple‐input multiple‐output antenna with fractal‐inspired isolator

In this paper, a compact multielement ultra‐wideband (UWB) multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna is presented. The proposed antenna is designed by integrating novel technique of stub‐loaded slot, split square ring (SSR), and fractal‐inspired isolator. The antenna size is effectively miniaturized by implementing three‐sided symmetrical stub‐loaded Koch slot and square split ring. The impedance bandwidth is broadened by using small notched partial ground plane. The mutual coupling between the element is impressively reduced by isolating the structure with a Sierpinski fractal. As a result, the proposed antenna achieves a UWB response with a very broad impedance bandwidth of 3.1 to 19 GHz. Moreover, the proposed antenna obtains high peak stable gain and diversity gain of up to 10 dBi, lower group delay (<1 ns), and lower envelop correlation coefficient of <.01. The proposed antenna has electrically small dimensions of 35 × 53 × 0.8 mm. With this low‐profile configuration, the proposed antenna is especially a good candidate for portable UWB‐MIMO wireless communication system.     

A wideband patch antenna with a pair of antisymmetric balun as differentially fed network

A novel singly differentially‐fed microstrip patch antenna (DFMA) is proposed, which is composed of a radiating patch, a differentially‐fed network with a twin antisymmetric miniaturized baluns and a ground plane for unidirectional radiation. In the differentially‐fed network, the signal is coupled to the two feedlines on both sides by the two miniaturized baluns. The radiating patch is excited by the coupling feed sheet located below the radiating patch, and the coupling feed sheet is connected to the upper end of the feedline. The lower end of the feedlines is connected to the ground plane, and there is a slot on the ground of the feeding network. Due to the existence of coupling feed sheet and slot, a second nonradiating resonant is achieved, and a wideband property is obtained. Finally, the prototype of the antenna is fabricated and studied experimentally. Simulated and measured results show that the impedance bandwidth of the antenna is 30.3% (1.71‐2.32 GHz) for S₁₁ < ?10 dB. Besides, a stable symmetric radiation pattern is obtained with gain around 9.6 dB and cross‐polarization less than ?21 dB, which demonstrates the designed antenna has the property of wideband, high gain and low cross polarization.     

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.