A compact monopolar patch antenna with bandwidth‐enhancement under dual‐mode resonance

A compact monopolar microstrip patch antenna (MPA) with enhanced‐bandwidth is proposed. In order to achieve the miniaturized patch, the zeroth‐order mode of the MPA instead of its higher‐order modes is employed at first by loading the shorting pin around the center of the patch. After that, a L‐shaped microstrip line with a shorting pin is introduced at the periphery of the patch radiator to excite an additional non‐radiative mode for bandwidth enhancement. In final, the proposed MPA is fabricated and measured. The results illustrate that the antenna generates an enhanced‐bandwidth of about 4.1% ranging from 2.39 to 2.49 GHz, which is significantly larger than that of the traditional MPA around 1%. Meanwhile, the dimensions of the radiating patch are obviously decreased down due to the employment of zeroth‐order mode, which are kept as small as about 0.17 λ₀ × 0.22 λ₀ × 0.026 λ₀ (λ₀ is the free‐space wavelength).     

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 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 wideband omnidirectional filtering patch antenna with high selectivity

A wideband omnidirectional filtering patch antenna with high selectivity is proposed in this article. The annular ring is surrounded by the hexagonal patch with inner circle, whereas a series of shorting vias are regularly distributed among them and a copper top hat is suspended right on the top of the radiator, respectively. And, omnidirectional pattern is mainly performed on account of the symmetry and center‐fed structure. In addition, broadband performance is achieved by merging three resonant modes, which include the TM₀₁ and TM₀₂ modes of the annular ring and the TM₀₂ mode of the hexagonal patch with inner circle. Taking advantages of the hexagonal patch and six shorting vias in it, two radiation nulls are provided in the upper band. Besides, another radiation null is generated in the lower band by reason of the top hat and other shorting vias. As a result, an ideal quasi‐elliptic bandpass response, high selectivity, and good out‐of‐band rejection are obtained simultaneously. The proposed filtering patch antenna, with a profile of 0.056 λ ₀, shows a wide impedance bandwidth of 30.2% from 2.05 to 2.78 GHz. The average gain in the passband is about 6.5 dBi, and the out‐of‐band suppression level is greater than 15 dB in the wide stopband.     

New Compact antenna based on simplified CRLH‐TL for UWB wireless communication systems

This letter presents the experimental results of a novel planar antenna design which is synthesized using simplified composite left/right‐handed transmission‐line (SCRLH‐TL), which is a version of a conventional composite left/right handed‐transmission‐lines (CRLH‐TL), however, with the omission of shunt‐inductance in the unit‐cell. SCRLH‐TL exhibits a right‐handed response with nonlinear dispersion properties and a smooth Bloch‐impedance distribution. Arranged within the inner slot of the antenna are three smaller rectangular patch radiators. Each patch radiator is embedded with an E‐shaped notch, and located in the antenna conductor is a larger E‐shaped notch next to the 50‐Ω termination. The E‐shaped notches constitute SCRLH‐TL property. The gap in the slot between the smaller patches and the conductor next to the larger E‐shaped notch determines the impedance bandwidth of the antenna. The dimensions of the smaller patches determine the radiation characteristics of the antenna. The antenna is excited using a conductor‐backed coplanar waveguide transmission‐line. The antenna covers a bandwidth of 7.3 GHz between 0.7 GHz and 8GHz, which corresponds to 167.81%. In this band, the antenna resonates at 4.75 GHz and 7 GHz; the gain and radiation efficiency at these frequencies are 4 dBi—80% and 3.6 dBi—73%, respectively. The antenna's performance was validated through measurement. The antenna has dimensions of 0.0504λ₀ × 0.0462λ₀ × 0.0018λ₀, where λ₀ is free‐space wavelength at 700 MHz. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:217–225, 2016.     

A multi‐mode wideband omnidirectional monopolar patch antenna for indoor wireless communication systems

A wideband omnidirectional monopolar patch antenna merged multi‐mode with a simple structure is proposed in this article. The antenna consists of a circular patch and a concentric annular ring, which is coupled‐fed by a T‐shape monopole at its center. A wideband performance is achieved by converging multi‐mode: TM₀₂ mode of the circular patch, TM₀₂ mode of the annular ring and monopole mode of the T‐shape monopole. The measured results show that the proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 55.3% from 4.45GHz to 7.85GHz. All of the three resonant modes lead to conical radiation patterns in the elevation plane and omnidirectional radiation patterns in the azimuth plane, and the measured peak gain varies from 6.1 to 10 dBi within the operating band, which verifies it can be a good choice for indoor wireless communication systems.     

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.     

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.     

A low‐profile circularly polarized dielectric patch antenna and array

A square dielectric patch (DP) resonator fusing with the bottom substrate is studied for designing low‐profile circularly polarized (CP) antenna. Based on the theoretical investigation using the constructed analysis model, it can be found that the proposed DP resonator possesses a pair of degenerate dominate modes (TM₁₀₁ and TM₀₁₁), which can be split by introducing perturbations on the DP resonator and then used to design CP antenna fed by a microstrip line directly. To verify the proposed idea, a 2 × 2 array fed by a dual Marchand balun network is designed and implemented. Reasonable agreement between the measured and simulated results is observed. Experimental results show that a measured impedance bandwidth is 380 MHz (5.18‐5.56 GHz) for |S₁₁| < ?10 dB and the 3‐dB axial ratio bandwidth is 90 MHz (5.32‐5.41 GHz). The measured gain is up to 11.77 dBic with a cross polarization of about ?20 dB in the boresight direction.     

A novel dual‐mode patch antenna with pattern diversity and beam‐tilting for aircraft applications

A dual‐mode patch antenna with pattern diversity that is beam‐tilted in a specific direction is presented. By placing a rectangular metal cavity below the circular patch and simultaneously shorting one end of the patch, the antenna produces tilted beams for dual‐mode radiation patterns. One pattern is excited using a proximity‐fed L‐shaped probe that generates a beam with a tilt angle of 25° from the broadside direction. The second pattern is excited using a coplanar waveguide (CPW)‐based feeding network that generates two beams with a tilt angle of θ_max = ±45° in the directions of ?_max = 70° and ? 70°. The tilt angle can be varied by adjusting the metal cavity's length. A prototype antenna for operation at 2.38 GHz was fabricated and measured. The results indicate that the overlapped bandwidth (|S₁₁| < ?10 dB) for the two patterns is 330 MHz (2.22‐2.55 GHz). The measured peak gains for the two patterns are 6.74‐6.94 dBi and 5.82‐6.74 dBi, respectively. The isolation between the two ports is 18 dB.     

A dual‐band dual‐mode microstrip Yagi antenna with quasi‐end‐fire radiation

A dual‐band dual‐mode microstrip Yagi antenna with quasi‐end‐fire radiation patterns is proposed in this paper. It consists of five radiating patches driven by a single slot‐loaded patch placed in the middle. Meanwhile, two slot‐loaded parasitic patches are symmetrically located on two sides of the driven patch, respectively. In the lower band, the five patches involved resonate at TM₀₁ mode. While in the upper band, all the patches resonate at TM₀₂ mode. In order to ensure quasi‐end‐fire radiations in the both bands, four slots are symmetrically etched around the strongest surface currents of each patch resonating at TM₀₂ mode. As a result, the resonant frequency of TM₀₂ mode is decreased dramatically, while the resonant frequency of TM₀₁ mode almost remains unchanged. With these arrangements, the separations between any two of the adjacent patches at their centers satisfy the requirements in design of the microstrip Yagi antenna in both bands, so as to realize the dual‐band dual‐mode microstrip Yagi antenna on a single‐layer substrate. Finally, an antenna prototype is fabricated and tested. The measured results reveal that the dual operating bands of 2.76~2.88 and 4.88~5.03 GHz for |S₁₁| < ?10 dB are satisfactorily achieved. Most importantly, the proposed antenna can indeed realize the quasi‐end‐fire radiation patterns in dual operating bands.     

A substrate integrated cavity‐fed dual‐polarized filtering patch antenna with high isolation

This article presents a dual‐polarized filtering patch antenna, which uses two orthogonal modes (TE₂₁₀/TE₁₂₀) of the substrate integrated cavity (SIC) to couple with two orthogonal modes (TM₁₀/TM₀₁) of the patch by the cross slot, respectively. The second‐order filtering response on dual polarizations can be achieved by using just one SIC resonator and one slotted square patch, which display simple structure of the proposed antenna. The slotted square patch provides a new way to obtain same external quality factor of the radiator on dual polarization, which makes the performances on two polarizations agree well with each other when changing the bandwidth. High isolation can be achieved by controlling the space of the vias of the SIC. Radiation nulls can be produced by connecting the coupled lines with the feeding lines in parallel. A prototype with the entire height of 0.019 λ₀ (λ₀ is the free‐space wavelength at center frequency) achieves a 10‐dB bandwidth of 1.6%, the gain of 4.9 dBi at the center frequency, the port isolation of 43 dB, and the out‐of‐band rejection level of 25 dB.     

Broadband circularly polarized antenna with moon‐shaped parasitic element

A broadband circularly polarized (CP) circular patch antenna with an L‐shaped ground plane and parasitic element is studied. The use of this L‐shaped ground is to achieve short probe feed connection to the circular patch, while maintaining a certain height between the circular patch and ground plane, so that good impedance matching and bandwidth enhancement can be attained. To achieve CP radiation, two notches are initially loaded diagonally into the circular patch, and to further enhance the CP bandwidth, a novel technique of loading a small size moon‐shaped parasitic element into the notched circular patch is proposed. By doing so, the CP bandwidth of proposed antenna can be tremendously increased by approximately 10%. The experimental results show that the proposed CP antenna can yield impedance bandwidth and CP bandwidth of 835–1150 MHz and 839–968 MHz, respectively, with good gain level of 7.6 dBic. Therefore, this proposed wideband CP antenna can be used for UHF (ultrahigh frequency) RFID (radio frequency identification) reader antenna that operates within the universal RFID bands (840 ? 960 MHz). © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:387–395, 2016     

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.     

Design of a compact dense dielectric patch antenna based on half‐cut technique

In this article, a half‐cut rectangular dense dielectric patch (DDP) with one grounded side plane is theoretically investigated for designing a compact low‐profile antenna. According to the properties and the E‐field distribution of the dominant TM₁₀₁ mode, the half‐wavelength (λ/2) DDP can be bisected by effectively shorting the center plane to the ground, resulting in a miniaturized half‐cut λ/4 DDP. The size of the DDP is effectively reduced by 50% while maintaining the original resonant frequency of the dominant TM₁₀₁ mode. The half‐cut λ/4 DDP can be well excited through aperture coupling for antenna design. The design procedure of the proposed antenna is given in detail. For demonstration, an antenna prototype centered at 4.15 GHz is implemented and measured. The simulated and measured results are given, showing good agreement.     

A‐shaped wideband dielectric resonator antenna for wireless communication systems and its MIMO implementation

In this article, a new A‐shaped dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) excited by a conformal strip is proposed for wideband applications. The wide bandwidth is achieved by combining two adjacent modes that is, TM₁₀₁ and TM₁₀₃. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed DRA offers an impedance bandwidth (for S11?10 dB) of 59.7% (3.24‐6.0 GHz), covering IEEE 802.11 and U‐NII bands. The antenna provides a fairly stable radiation pattern with the gain ranging from 5.29 to 7 dBi across the operating bandwidth. A dual‐element multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) system is also realized using the proposed wideband DRA. The impedance bandwidth of the dual‐element MIMO antenna is 59.2% and 60.9% for Port1 and Port2, respectively and the isolation between the ports is better than 20 dB across the bandwidth. For Port1, the gain of the MIMO antenna ranging from 6.03 to 7.45 dBi is obtained across the bandwidth. Furthermore, the diversity performance of the MIMO antenna is found to be good with envelope correlation coefficient below 0.003 over the operating band. The proposed antenna could be the potential candidate for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), wireless local area network (WLAN) and lower European UWB frequency band (3.4‐5.0 GHz) applications.     

A TM03 mode reduced side lobe high‐gain printed antenna array in K band for UDN and IoT applications in 5G

A single layer simple feed reduced side lobe gain‐enhanced microstrip antenna array using higher‐order modes is analyzed and designed in this work. The relationship between the relative magnitude of equivalent magnetic currents and directivity are studied. Modal analysis for rectangular patch is considered for broadside and non‐broadside radiation. Comparative investigations on antenna radiation and impedance characteristics for fundamental and higher‐order modes are presented. It is observed that an array can be designed to operate in TM₀₃ mode for enhanced gain with broadside radiation. Parametric optimization is carried out to attain low side lobe level. The proposed theory is validated by designing and fabricating a single layer single feed 2 × 2 microstrip patch array in the K band operating in TM₀₃ mode. The simulated and measured realized gain of the fabricated TM₀₃ mode array is 16.1 and 15.5 dBi, respectively, at 22 GHz with consistent broadside radiation pattern and linear polarization.     

A triple‐slotted substrate integrated cavity‐fed 2 × 2 metasurface antenna with wide bandwidth

This article presents a triple‐slotted substrate integrated cavity (SIC)‐fed 2 × 2 metasurface antenna. Three modes can be obtained including TM₁₀ mode of the metasurface, TE₂₁₀, mode and TE₃₁₀ mode of the SIC. The TE₂₁₀ mode of SIC radiates through the two side slots and is coupled to the metasurface mainly by the two side slots, while the TE₃₁₀ mode of SIC is mainly coupled to the metasurface by the middle slot. Comparing with the reported SIC‐backed slot antenna, dual‐slotted SIC‐fed patch antenna or the metasurface antenna, the proposed antenna exhibits the advantage of wide bandwidth with flat gain. One prototype operated at 10 GHz was fabricated and measured with 10‐dB fractional bandwidth of 33%, the gain of 8.1 dBi at the center frequency, the cross polarization level of 20 dB and the gain ripple of 1.5 dB.     

Spur line integrated single‐/dual‐/triple‐notched ultra‐wideband monopole antenna

Design and realization of spur line loaded frequency‐notched planar ultra‐wideband (UWB) antenna is proposed in this article. Accommodating the spur line (lines) of quarter wavelength long on the feeding microstrip line of UWB antenna, contributes to the notch‐filtering action in the feeding section itself which in turn can provides single/double/triple notch (notches) within the UWB spectrum of the antenna. The proposed technique is very simple and radiator independent as the filtering is performed in the feed region and hence the UWB radiator can be independently designed. The spur line based filtering sections are first separately designed and verified by S‐parameter measurements of the fabricated prototypes. Single, double, and triple spur line loaded microstrip sections are separately used as the feed section of a circular monopole antenna (MPA) to invoke single‐, dual‐, and triple‐notched UWB response of the MPA. All the designed prototypes are fabricated and characterized in terms of impedance and radiation parameter measurements, yielding very close correspondence with that of results obtained from full wave simulation.