A dual‐feed microstrip grid array antenna for balanced or unbalanced operation

The development of a dual‐feed microstrip grid array antenna for either balanced or unbalanced operation to radiate pencil‐beam patterns has been described. As an example, the dual‐feed microstrip grid array antenna on RT/duroid 5880 substrate with a size of 60 × 60 × 0.787 mm³ or 4.8λ × 4.8λ × 0.063λ at 24 GHz were designed and fabricated. The measured results show that the dual‐feed microstrip grid array antenna has achieved excellent performances: 4.85% impedance bandwidth, 9.03% gain bandwidth, and 20.6‐dBi gain at 24.15 GHz as a balanced antenna and 6.05% impedance bandwidth, 7.74% gain bandwidth, and 17.8‐dBi gain at 24.15 GHz as an unbalanced antenna. The dual‐feed microstrip grid array antenna is a suitable antenna candidate for radar and sensor applications.     

Dual‐band dual‐polarized compact planar monopole antenna for wide axial ratio bandwidth application

In this article, a geometrically simple, microstrip line‐fed planar monopole structure with slanting edge ground plane is designed to realize the dual‐band dual‐polarized operation. The proposed antenna consists of a rotated U‐shaped patch and an electromagnetically coupled L‐shaped parasitic radiating element. Owing to the combination of microstrip line‐fed radiating patch and a slanting‐edge rectangular ground plane on the opposite side of the substrate, the proposed dual‐band antenna can generate broad axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) in the upper frequency band. The overall dimension of the prototype is only 32 × 32 × 1.6 mm³. The measured results validate that the proposed antenna has two operational frequency bands, 29.84% (1.54‐2.08 GHz) for linearly polarized radiation and 71.85% (3.96‐8.4 GHz) for circularly polarized radiation. Measured result shows that 3‐dB ARBW of the proposed antenna is 73.54% (3.80‐8.22 GHz) in the higher frequency band. It shows that the higher frequency band exhibits a left‐hand circularly polarized radiation in the boresight direction.     

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 novel RF energy harvesting cube based on air dielectric antenna arrays

In this article, a new 2 × 2 circular microstrip antenna array with air dielectric layer for ambient RF energy harvesting has been proposed. Two pairs of arc‐shaped slots located close to the boundary of the circular microstrip patch have been designed for achieving dual‐band response and extending the frequency bandwidth. The antenna has a frequency bandwidth from 1.85 to 1.93 GHz and from 2.0 to 2.1 GHz which can cover GSM‐1800 and UMTS‐2100 bands. At the frequency of 1.89 and 2.05 GHz, the measured gain is 5.3 and 6.6 dBi, respectively, and high gain of 3.8‐9.3 dBi has been achieved over the whole band. Also, a broadband rectifier that can cover all the bandwidths of the antenna array is designed for the rectenna, which has the maximum rectifying efficiency of 53.6%. Finally, a cube device formed of four antenna and four rectifiers is designed to harvest RF energy, whose maximum output DC voltage is 2.3 V and the maximum output power is 4 mW that can drive four LEDs and an electronic watch.     

一种具有宽带双极化低散射特征的微带阵列天线

针对阵列天线宽带散射缩减设计进行研究,设计了一种基于无源对消技术的低散射阵列天线,该新型微带阵列天线在宽频带内具有双极化低雷达散射截面（RCS, Radar Cross Section）性能;对基于两种散射性能不同的单元组成阵列的RCS性能进行了理论研究,进行了单元的散射幅度和相位对阵列RCS的影响分析;提出了一种加载T型缝隙的新型微带天线结构,该单元结构的辐射性能与散射性能能够进行独立调控和综合优化,该单元与传统微带贴片单元具有相似的辐射特性,并可在宽频带（带内和带外）内与传统微带单元产生有效相位差;将传统微带单元和加载T型缝隙的新型微带单元组成4×4阵列天线,仿真结果表明,提出的阵列天线在3GHz～7GHz（相对带宽80%）频带内实现了同极化RCS缩减,在3.3GHz～7GHz（相对带宽71.8%）频带内实现了交叉极化RCS缩减,缩减峰值分别为16.3dB和36.3dB,带内RCS缩减均值分别为14.1dB 和17.6dB;与传统微带阵列天线相比,提出的阵列天线增益下降小于0.1dB;提出的微带阵列天线具有高效率辐射和宽频带双极化低散射性能,为低散射阵列天线设计提供了新的思路。     

Bandwidth‐enhancement of circularly‐polarized fabry‐perot antenna using single‐layer partially reflective surface

In this article, we investigate bandwidth‐enhancement of a circularly‐polarized (CP) Fabry‐Perot antenna (FPA) using single‐layer partially reflective surface (PRS). The FPA is composed of a single‐feed truncated‐corner square patch antenna, which is covered by the PRS formed by a square aperture array. We revealed that the finite‐sized PRS produces extra resonances and CP radiations for the antenna system, which broadened the impedance matching and axial ratio (AR) bandwidths significantly. For verification, a broadband CP FPA prototype operating near 5.8 GHz was realized and tested. The fabricated antenna with overall size of 125 mm × 125 mm × 23.5 mm achieves a |S₁₁| < ?10 dB bandwidth of 31.7% (5.23‐7.2 GHz), an AR < 3‐dB bandwidth of 13.7% (5.45‐6.25 GHz), the peak gain of 13.3 dBic, a 3‐dB gain bandwidth of 22.38% (5.0‐6.26 GHz), and a radiation efficiency of >91%.     

A wideband compact antenna with quad‐circular polarized bands in its operating regions

This article presents the design of an offset CPW‐fed slot antenna which exhibits a narrow impedance bandwidth (IBW; |S₁₁| ≤ ?10 dB) extending from 1.20 GHz to 1.45 GHz and another wide impedance bandwidth from 1.86 GHz to 8.4 GHz thus covering almost all the conventional operating frequencies. The antenna is loaded with semicircular and rectangular stubs and meandered microstrip lines to realize circular polarization at 1.35 GHz, 3.3 GHz, 4.9 GHz, and 7.5 GHz with axial ratio bandwidth (axial ratio ≤ 3 dB) of 19.25% (1.2‐1.46 GHz), 4.24% (3.24‐3.38 GHz), 4.1%(4.8‐5 GHz), and 5.2% (7.3‐7.69 GHz) respectively thus covering the GPS, WiMAX, WLAN, and X‐band downlink satellite communication application bands. The mechanism of generation of CP is discussed using vector analysis of surface current density distribution. The gain is fairly constant in the wide IBW region with maximum fluctuation of 1.2 dB. The structure is compact with an overall layout area of 0.27λ × 0.27λ, where λ is the free‐space wavelength corresponding to the lowest circular polarized (CP) frequency. A comparison of the proposed antenna with previously reported structures is performed with respect to impedance bandwidth, compactness, number of CP bands, LHCP to RHCP isolation and gain to comprehend the novelty of the proposed design. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and the measured results are in accord with the simulated results.     

A metamaterial hepta‐band antenna for wireless applications with specific absorption rate reduction

Present article embodies the design and analysis of slotted circular shape metamaterial loaded multiband antenna for wireless applications with declination of SAR. The electrical dimension is 0.260 λ × 0.253 λ × 0.0059 λ (35 × 34 × 0.8 mm³) of proposed design, at lower frequency of 2.23 GHz. The antenna consists of circular shape rectangular slot as the radiation element loaded with metamaterial split ring resonator (SRR) and two parallel rectangular stubs, etched rectangular single complementary split‐ring resonator (CSRR) and reclined T‐shaped slot as ground plane. Antenna achieves hepta bands for wireless standards WLAN (2.4/5.0/5.8 GHz), WiMAX (3.5 GHz), radio frequency identification (RFID) services (3.0 GHz), Upper X band (11.8 GHz—for space communication) and Lower K_U band (13.1 GHz—for satellite communication systems operating band). Stable radiation patterns are observed for the operating bands with low cross polarization. The SRR is responsible for creating an additional resonating mode for wireless application as well as provide the declination in SAR about 13.3%. Experimental characteristic of antenna shows close agreement with those obtained by simulation of the proposed antenna.     

Circular polarized dual‐band antenna for WLAN/Wi‐MAX application

A novel square ring printed antenna has been suggested for dual‐band circular polarization (CP). The geometry contains a square patch and a square ring structure for dual‐band operation. Circular polarization is achieved using triangular cut at the boundary and right angle bend with inner perturbation. The suggested antenna is excited from the lower layer through electromagnetic (EM) coupling technique. The antenna shows good impedance bandwidths of 90 MHz (2.43‐2.52 GHz) and 800 MHz (5.7‐6.5 GHz, respectively. The antenna shows 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 20 MHz at lower band and 120 MHz at upper band with improved gain > 6 dBi. The simulated and measured results are well agreed with each other. The antenna is promising wideband operation at the upper band. This antenna was implemented on fiberglass reinforcement laminated Arlon substrate with dielectric constant (?_r = 2.55), and the overall physical dimension of 30 × 30 × 3.048 mm³. The designed antenna can be extensibly applicable in WLAN/Wi‐MAX communication. The presented antenna is designed using hyperlynx IE3D and the simulated results are presented.     

A dual‐band efficient circularly polarized rectenna for RF energy harvesting systems

A multilayered circularly polarized (CP), dual‐band, stacked slit‐/slotted‐patch antenna with compact size and with compact rectifier is offered for RF energy harvesting systems. The compact dual‐band CP antenna size is able to achieve by stacking slotted‐circular‐patch (SCP) on the substrate above the tapered‐slit‐octagon patch (TSOP). Dual‐band CP radiation is realized by stacking the SCP on the TSOP and the microstrip feedline with metallic‐via to SCP. Eight‐tapered‐slit with length difference of 6.25% are embedded along the octagonal directions symmetrically on the TSOP from the patch's center and two unequal size circular slots are embedded in diagonal axis onto SCP to produce dual‐orthogonal modes with almost equal magnitude for CP waves. The designed antenna is realized measured gain of greater than 5.2 dBic across the band (0.908‐0.922 GHz) with maximum gain of 5.41 dBic at 0.918 GHz and gain of greater than 6.14 dBic across the band (2.35‐2.50 GHz) with maximum gain of 7.94 dBic at 2.485 GHz. An overall antenna volume is 0.36λ _o × 0.36λ _o × 0.026λ _o (λ _o is free space wavelength at 0.9 GHz). A compact composite right‐/left‐handed (CRLH) based rectifier with dual‐band at 0.9 and 2.45 GHz is designed, prototyped, and measured. The right‐handed (RH) part of the CRLH transmission line (TL) is formed by a microstrip line. The left‐handed (LH) part of the CRLH‐TL is formed by lumped components. The measured RF‐DC conversion efficiency is 43% at 0.9 GHz and 39% at 2.45 GHz with rectifier size of 0.18λ _o × 0.075λ _o × 0.0002λ _o at 0.9 GHz.     

Dual‐band quasi‐self‐complementary antenna for wireless local network operation

This article proposes a compact (6 × 21 × 0.4 mm³) antenna with dual‐band operation that satisfies the wireless local area network. To achieve optimal impedance matching for the lower and upper operating bands, the proposed antenna structure is designed as a quasi‐self‐complementary (QSC) type, in which the lower (2.4 GHz) operating band is excited through the loop‐like structure of the proposed antenna, whereas its self‐complementary counterpart (rectangular patch structure) induces the upper (5.2/5.8 GHz) operating band. Further investigation was also conducted by printing the proposed QSC antenna onto a flexible substrate of 0.063 mm in thickness. To cover both operating bands, the proposed flexible antenna was restructured to 20.5 × 8 mm². The design and initial characteristics of the two proposed antennas were discussed in detail via simulation, and the experimental results showed satisfactory performance of both operating bands. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:298–305, 2014.     

A modified fractal‐shaped slotted patch antenna with defected ground using metasurface for dual band applications

A novel modified fractal‐shaped slotted patch antenna employing metasurface at bottom plane along with partial ground has been proposed in this work for dual band applications with significant gain. A 4 × 5 order metasurface has been formed in the ground plane by introducing a periodic combination of two L‐type patches with centered C‐type shaped patch. The top conductor and the ground plane are designed on a 1.6 mm thick FR4 dielectric with the dimension of 28 × 28 mm². The antenna is designed in such a way that it operates over the dual frequency ranges viz., 1.80 to 5.70 GHz and 10.38 to 10.94 GHz. The maximum return loss of 21 dB has been achieved over 2.60 GHz while the maximum realized gain of 7.16 dBi has been obtained at 10.92 GHz. The designed antenna offers omnidirectional radiation characteristics in the first band while directional radiation characteristics have been observed in the second band. The proposed antenna can be utilized for WiMAX 3.5/5.5 GHz, mobile, radio astronomy, and microimaging in medical analysis.     

Design and evaluation of a wideband reflectarray antenna using cross dipole with double‐ring elements

This article reports the design and analysis of a wideband, single layer, and dual‐polarized microstrip reflectarray for Ku‐band applications. The array element is constructed using a crossed dipole enclosed by two cross dipole loops. The element is optimized to exhibit a linear phase response and wide reflection phase range. The reflection characteristic of the unit cell is analyzed using an infinite array approach and the results are presented. A 324‐element Ku‐band microstrip reflectarray antenna of size 20 × 20 cm² is simulated, fabricated, and experimentally evaluated. The 2.9‐dB gain‐bandwidth and aperture efficiency of the reported reflectarray are 45.3% and 35%, respectively. The reflectarray operates in the frequency range of 10.6 to 16.8 GHz.     

A beam scanning Fabry–Pérot cavity antenna for millimeter‐wave applications

A beam scanning Fabry‐Pérot cavity antenna (FPCA) for 28 GHz‐band is presented in this article. The proposed antenna consists of a slot‐fed patch antenna and several layers of perforated superstrates with different dielectric constant. The beam of the antenna can be controlled by moving the superstrate over the antenna. By increasing the offset between the feeding antenna and the superstrate, a larger tilt angle can be obtained. The size of the antenna is 0.95λ₀ × 0.95λ₀ × 0.48λ₀ at 28.5 GHz. The results show the proposed antenna achieves an impedance bandwidth (S₁₁ < ‐10 dB) of 10.5% (27.2‐30.2 GHz), and the beam can be scanned from 0° to 14° in the yoz‐plane with the offset changed from 0 mm to 2 mm. The gain of the antenna is enhanced by 5 dBi in comparison with the feeding antenna without the superstrate, which ranges from 10.91 to 11.53 dBi with the different offset. The proposed antenna is fabricated and shows a good agreement with simulated result.     

Gain enhancement and mutual coupling reduction of multiple‐intput multiple‐output antenna for millimeter‐wave applications using two types of novel metamaterial structures

A method to significantly increase the gain and reduce the mutual coupling of microstrip multiple‐intput multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna based on metamaterial concept is presented. The μ‐negative and ε‐negative features of the proposed modified peace‐logo planar metamaterial (MPLPM) and two‐sided MPLPM (TSMPLPM) structures are calculated. The antenna structure consists of eight MPLPM slabs and two TSMPLPM, which are embedded in azimuth plane of a MIMO antenna vertically. The dimensions of MIMO antenna are 28 × 16 × 6.3 mm³ at 40 GHz. As a result, a compact MIMO antenna is simulated in comparison with primary microstrip structures. The corresponding return‐loss of the antenna is better than 10 dB over 34.5 to 45.5 GHz for Ka‐band applications. Good consent between the measured and simulated result is tacked. The maximum simulated gain of the structure is 15.5 dB at 40 GHz, creating a maximum gain improvement of 11.5 dB in comparison with a MIMO antenna without any metamaterial combinations. The value of the insertion‐loss (isolation) is 33 dB, which has improved by more than 25 dB compared to the conventional sample.     

Design of perfect electrical conductor wall‐loaded 2.45 GHz high‐efficiency rectenna

A 2.45 GHz industrial, scientific and medical band rectenna with a two‐layered structure for various applications involving microwave wireless power transmission (WPT) has been designed and measured in this article. A microstrip antenna with two perfect electrical conductor walls loaded for gain enhancement is designed. In addition, a typical single‐diode compact radio frequency (RF) rectifier with a series bandpass structure is presented. The simulated RF to dc conversion efficiency of the rectifier is above 50% when the input power ranges from 0 to 28 dBm. The fabricated rectenna is compact with a dimension of 0.5λ × 0.5λ. A RF to dc conversion efficiency of about 73% is achieved under received power density of 38.5 W/m² with a 500 Ω dc load. Due to the integration design of antenna and rectifier, the proposed rectenna is suitable to be well applied in miniaturization of rectenna array.     

Design of circular patch antenna with a high gain by using a novel artificial planar dual‐layer metamaterial superstrate

This study presents a new dual‐layer metasurface structure proposed to enhance the performance of a circular patch antenna. A novel unit cell planar metasurface is characterized by nearly equal enhanced effective permeability and permittivity ε_r ? μ_r > 1 at the resonant frequency. In addition, a 5*5 array of these unit cells are used as a superstrate over a circular patch antenna which is fed by 50 Ω microstrip line and operating at 2.45 GHz for improving the antenna performance. The patch antenna gain is increased by creating an in‐phase electric field area on the top surface of the metasurface. The obtained results showed that the maximum gain of the antenna increased from 2.31 dBi to 7.5 dBi. A 30% increase in the bandwidth is also remarked. The proposed antenna with metasurface occupies an overall volume of 1.01λ_g ×1.01λ_g ×0.025λ_g . The simulation analysis and measured results were performed using the microwave studio, high frequency structure simulator software, and vector network analyzer. The proposed antenna prototype has been fabricated. The measured results indicate that the antenna has a good impedance matching in the desired operating band (2.37‐2.49 GHz) with the resonant frequency of 2.44 GHz which make the proposed antenna appropriate for microwave applications.     

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.     

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.     

A compact dual‐band zeroth‐order resonator antenna loaded with meander line inductor

A novel zeroth‐order resonator (ZOR) meta‐material (MTM) antenna with dual‐band is suggested using compound right/left handed transmission line as MTM. In this article, suggested antenna consists of patch through series gap, two meander line inductors, and two circular stubs. The MTM antenna is compact in size which shows dual‐band properties with first band centered at 2.47 GHz (2.05‐2.89 GHz) and second band is centered at 5.9 GHz (3.70‐8.10 GHz) with impedance bandwidth of (S₁₁ < ? 10 dB) 34.69% and 72.45%, respectively. At ZOR mode (2.35 GHz), the suggested antenna has overall dimension of 0.197λ_o × 0.07λ_o × 0.011λ_o with gain of 1.65 dB for ZOR band and 3.35 dB for first positive order resonator band which covers the applications like Bluetooth (2.4 GHZ), TV/Radio/Data (3.700‐6.425 GHz), WLAN (5‐5.16 GHz), C band frequencies (5.15‐5.35, 5.47‐5.725, or 5.725‐5.875 GHz) and satellite communication (7.25‐7.9 GHz). The radiation patterns of suggested structure are steady during the operating band for which sample antenna has been fabricated and confirmed experimentally. It exhibits novel omnidirectional radiation characteristics in phi = 0° plane with lower cross‐polarization values.