Tri-band rectangle-loaded monopole Z

Y
antenna with inverted-L slot for WLAN/ X
6.5
WiMAX applications 0.4

FR4 substrate
23
7.5
36
H. Chen, X. Yang, Y.-Z. Yin, J.-J. Wu and Y.-M. Cai

12.9
0.4

7
0.4

A novel coplanar waveguide-fed tri-band monopole antenna with a 0.5

12
compact radiator (10 × 23 mm2) for WLAN/WiMAX applications is 3.5
presented. By etching properly an inverted-L slot on the straight strip
loaded with a rectangular tuning patch and further adjusting the dimen- 10.25
25 units: mm
sions and positions of these structures, three distinct wide bands can be
a b
achieved. The measured and simulated results show that the proposed
antenna has 10 dB impedance bandwidth of 470 MHz (2.38–2.85 GHz),
360 MHz (3.36–3.72 GHz) and 890 MHz (4.98–5.87 GHz) to cover all Fig. 1 Configuration and photograph of proposed antenna
the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX a Configuration
bands. Also, the proposed antenna produces good dipole-like radiation b Photograph
pattern over the covering bands.
0

Introduction: Currently, the wireless local area network (WLAN) and

10
the worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) have
been widely used in mobile devices. To support the WLAN

return loss, dB
20
and WiMAX applications in the 2.4 (2.4–2.484 GHz)/5.2 (5.15–
5.35 GHz)/5.8 (5.725–5.825 GHz) and 2.5 (2.5–2.69 GHz)/3.5
(3.4–3.69 GHz)/5.5 (5.25–5.85 GHz) bands, respectively, many multi- 30

band antennas have been reported. In [1], the antenna with a dual-layer
metallic structure is presented for WLAN/WiMAX applications. In [2], 40 antenna 1 antenna 2 antenna 3

three types of structures are used to achieve triple band to cover the
WLAN/WiMAX bands. However, these proposed antennas are compli- 2 3 4 5 6 7
frequency, GHz
cated in structure and the resulting bandwidth is not sufficient to cover
the 2.5 GHz WiMAX band. To achieve sufficiently large bandwidth to Fig. 2 Simulated return loss of various antennas involved
cover all the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX
bands, several antennas are proposed, including a microstrip-fed rect- Results and discussion: According to the dimensions shown in Fig. 1, a
angular monopole antenna with a large parasitic patch on the back of prototype for the proposed antenna is fabricated and tested. The photo-
the substrate [3], a coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed antenna formed by graph of the prototype is exhibited in Fig. 1. Fig. 3 shows the simulated
a triangular monopole and a U-shaped monopole [4], and a CPW-fed and measured return loss of the proposed antenna. It is seen from Fig. 3
monopole antenna with two bent slots [5]. Although the antennas in that good agreement between the simulated and measured results can be
[3, 4] can generate two wide bands to meet the whole WLAN/ obtained. The 10 dB bandwidth of measured return loss reaches
WiMAX applications, the dual wideband might cause interference 470 MHz (2.38–2.85 GHz), 360 MHz (3.36–3.72 GHz) and 890 MHz
with other communication systems. Moreover, the oversize of the (4.98–5.87 GHz), respectively, and can cover all the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz
antenna [5] is somewhat large (40 × 40 mm2). WLAN and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX bands.
In this Letter, the mode method [6] is introduced to design a novel
tri-band monopole antenna covering all the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN
0
and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX bands. The proposed antenna has a
small size of 25 × 36 mm2, which is smaller than the antenna proposed
in [5]. Meanwhile, compared with the antennas presented in [1, 2], the 10
proposed antenna is much simpler in structure. The antenna is designed
return loss, dB

and optimised by using the electromagnetic simulation tool ANSYS

20
HFSS 13. Details of the antenna design and the simulated and measured
results are presented and discussed. simulated
30 measured

Antenna design: The configuration of the proposed tri-band monopole

antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The antenna is designed on a 1.6 mm-thick 40
2 3 4 5 6 7
FR4 dielectric substrate with a relative permittivity of 4.4 and a loss frequency, GHz
tangent of 0.02. A 50 Ω CPW transmission line with a signal strip
width of 3.5 mm and a gap distance of 0.5 mm between the signal Fig. 3 Simulated and measured return loss of proposed antenna
strip and the coplanar ground plane is used to feed the antenna. First,
the proposed antenna is designed as a straight monopole antenna
2.5 GHz
(antenna 1 depicted in Fig. 2) to excite two resonant modes at about 3.5 GHz
5.5 GHz
2.4 and 6.7 GHz, respectively. The return loss of antenna 1 is shown j=0 q=0
330 30 330 0 dB 30
in Fig. 2. Secondly, based on the mode design method mentioned in 0 dB

[6], a rectangular tuning patch is added to the straight strip of 300

–20 dB
60 300 –20 dB
60

antenna 1 to make the resonant frequency of the mode at about –40 dB

270 90 270 –40 dB
6.7 GHz shift towards lower frequency. Thus, antenna 2 depicted in 90

Fig. 2 comes into being. By adjusting the dimensions of the tuning

240 120 240 120
patch and its position along the straight strip, two resonant modes at
about 2.5 and 5.2 GHz, respectively, are generated, as shown in 210
180
150 210
180
150
Fig. 2. Finally, the proposed antenna (antenna 3 depicted in Fig. 2) is a b
formed to produce a resonant path at about 3.5 GHz by etching an
inverted-L slot on the straight strip of antenna 2. By optimising the para- Fig. 4 Measured radiation patterns of proposed antenna
meters of the proposed antenna, as shown in Fig. 2, it can produce three a xoy-plane (H-plane)
distinct wide bands centred at about 2.5, 3.5 and 5.5 GHz, respectively, b xoz-plane (E-plane)
to cover all the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz
WiMAX bands. The optimised dimensions of the proposed antenna The measured far-field normalised radiation patterns in xoz (E-plane)
are shown in Fig. 1. and xoy (H-plane) plane at 2.5, 3.5 and 5.5 GHz, respectively, are

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th September 2013 Vol. 49 No. 20 pp. 1261–1262

plotted in Fig. 4. It is seen that the proposed antenna exhibits a good dipole-like radiation pattern performance. All this demonstrates that it
omnidirectional H-plane pattern and a bidirectional E-plane pattern could be a suitable candidate for WLAN and WiMAX applications.
over the operating bands. The measured peak gain of the proposed
antenna is depicted in Fig. 5. The average gains of 1.77, 1.65 and © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013
3.27 dBi for the lower, middle and upper bands, respectively, are 13 July 2013
obtained. doi: 10.1049/el.2013.2329
One or more of the Figures in this Letter are available in colour online.
5 H. Chen, X. Yang, Y.-Z. Yin, J.-J. Wu and Y.-M. Cai (National
Laboratory of Science and Technology on Antennas and Microwaves,
4 2.4–2.7 GHz Xidian University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710071, People’s Republic of China)
3.4–3.7 GHz
E-mail: keyan_ch2013@163.com
peak gain, dBi

5.15–5.85 GHz
3

References
2
1 Xu, Y., Jiao, Y.-C., and Luan, Y.-C.: ‘Compact CPW-fed printed mono-
1
pole antenna with triple-band characteristics for WLAN/WiMAX appli-
cations’, Electron. Lett., 2012, 48, (24), pp. 1519–1920
2 Wang, P., Wen, G.-J., Huang, Y.-J., and Sun, Y.-H.: ‘Compact CPW-fed
0
2 3 4 5 6
planar monopole antenna with distinct triple bands for WiFi/WiMAX
frequency, GHz applications’, Electron. Lett., 2012, 48, (7), pp. 357–359
3 Chu, Q.-X., and Ye, L.-H.: ‘Design of compact dual-wideband antenna
with assembled monopoles’, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2010, 58,
Fig. 5 Measured peak gains of proposed antenna
(12), pp. 4063–4066
4 Pan, C.-Y., Horng, T.-S., Chen, W.-S., and Huang, C.-H.: ‘Dual wide-
Conclusion: A novel compact tri-band monopole antenna for WLAN band printed monopole antenna for WLAN/WiMAX applications’,
IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., 2007, 6, pp. 149–151
and WiMAX applications is presented. The proposed antenna consists
5 Liu, H.-W., Ku, C.-H., and Yang, C.-F.: ‘Novel CPW-fed planar mono-
of a straight strip with an inverted-L slot and a rectangular tuning pole antenna for WiMAX/WLAN applications’, IEEE Antennas Wirel.
patch. The antenna has a small size of 25 × 36 mm2 and is simple in Propag. Lett., 2010, 9, pp. 240–243
structure. Measured and simulated results show that the proposed 6 Wong, K.-L., and Huang, C.-H.: ‘Printed loop antenna with a perpen-
antenna can generate three wide bands covering all the 2.4/5.2/ dicular feed for penta-band mobile phone application’, IEEE Trans.
5.8 GHz WLAN and 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX bands, and exhibit Antennas Propag., 2008, 56, (7), pp. 2138–2141

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 26th September 2013 Vol. 49 No. 20 pp. 1261–1262

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