Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences (2016) xxx, xxx–xxx

King Saud University

Journal of King Saud University – Engineering Sciences

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REVIEW

Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band

applications
Noor M. Awad *, Mohamed K. Abdelazeez

Electrical Engineering Department, The University of Jordan, Amman 11962, Jordan

Received 25 May 2014; accepted 21 December 2015

KEYWORDS Abstract In this paper designs of both planar ultra-wide band (UWB) antenna and UWB antenna
Multislot; with two rejected bands are given. The antenna consists of a rectangular patch etched on FR4-
UWB; substrate with 50 O feed line. The rectangular patch has one round cut at each corner with one slot
Patch; in the ground plane. The simulated bandwidth with return loss (RL) P 10 dB is 3.42–11.7 GHz.
Band rejection; The rejected bands are the WLAN and X-bands, achieved by inserting slots in the patch and the feed.
HFSS The simulated results of the proposed antenna indicate higher gain at the passbands while a sharp
drop at the rejected bands is seen. The radiation pattern is of dipole shape in the E-plane and almost
omnidirectional in the H-plane. The high frequency structure simulator (HFSS) is used to design and
simulate the antennas behavior over the different frequency ranges. Measurements confirm the
antenna characteristic as predicted in the simulation with a slight shift in frequencies.
Ó 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
2. UWB rectangular patch antenna design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
3. Band rejection using slots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
3.1. Rejection of the WLAN frequency band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
3.2. Rejection of the X-band frequency range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
3.3. Rejection of both WLAN and X bands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
4. Experimental verifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (N.M. Awad), abdelazeez@ieee.
org (M.K. Abdelazeez).
Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University.

Production and hosting by Elsevier

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
1018-3639 Ó 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
2 N.M. Awad, M.K. Abdelazeez

5. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
Acknowledgment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 00

1. Introduction 2. UWB rectangular patch antenna design

The rapid growth in wireless communication systems created The proposed rectangular microstrip patch antenna, shown in
huge demands for wide band antennas to satisfy high gain Fig. 1(a) and (b), is built on FR4 substrate with er ¼ 4:4 and
and large bandwidth covering all frequency ranges for these tan d = 0.02. The antenna dimensions (in mm) are: the sub-
systems. In 2002, FCC approved the UWB technology in the strate has Wsub ¼ 30, Lsub ¼ 35 and h = 1.6, the rectangular
frequency range of 3.1–10.6 GHz with maximum radiated patch has width W = 15 and length L = 14.5, the microstrip
power
41.3 dBm/MHz and data rate between 110–200 Mbps feed line has Wf ¼ 2:85 and Lf ¼ 13:5, the partial ground plane
within 10 m distance (FCC, 2002). The advantages of the has width Wg ¼ 30 and length Lg ¼ 12:5.
UWB technology are high data rate, less interference, secure, To improve the antenna BW and matching, round steps are
low cost and low complexity. It is used in different applications added to the lower and upper corners of the patch besides add-
such as radar, imaging in medicine and military communica- ing the ground slot. Cutting steps at the bottom of the radiator
tion. UWB patch antennas could be designed with different increases the distance between the patch and the ground plane,
geometries; i.e. triangular, circular disk, strip loop and square which tunes the capacitive coupling between them
(Lin et al., 2005; Jin-Xiang et al., 2010; Sameena et al., 2009; (Mohammadirad et al., 2010), cutting steps in the upper cor-
Mohammed and Mohammed, 2011). Several methods are used ners of the patch tunes the inductive part of the antenna that
to enhance its bandwidth (BW) by using parasitic structures neutralizes the capacitive coupling between the ground and
and other different arrangements (Ojaroudi et al., 2011; the patch to get pure resistive input impedance (Yu and
Chen et al., 2011; Rahayu et al., 2010). Chunhua, 2009), while the ground slot neutralizes the capaci-
Recently, researches focus on designing UWB antenna with tive effects through the inductive nature of the patch to get
band rejection characteristics to eliminate any interference nearly pure resistive input impedance (Liu et al., 2011). The
from narrowband wireless applications. This is achieved by simulated RL results show better impedance matching and
adding slots with different shapes in the patch, feed and wider BW when adding one lower round step rather than
ground plane (Choi et al., 2005; Eshtiaghi et al., 2010; Ali two, a small enhancement in the impedance matching when
et al., 2012; Li et al., 2011; Ahmed and Abdel-Razik, 2009), adding one upper round step compared to that without upper
or using defected ground structures (DGS) (Soltani et al., steps over the whole frequency range, while adding ground
2011) or by inserting quarter wavelength open ended slits slots improve the impedance matching at the higher frequency
(Yoon et al., 2005). In this paper the UWB antenna is pre- band more than the lower band.
sented in Section 2 and the UWB antenna capable of rejecting The simulated RL which is equal to –S11 (scattering param-
two bands is given in Section 3. Measurement results for these eter), shown in Fig. 2, for the proposed antenna shown in
antennas are given in Section 4. Finally the paper is concluded Fig. 1(c), shows that with RL P 10 dB the antenna has BW
in Section 5 with acknowledgement and references 3.42–11.7 GHz with minimum RL of 17 dB. The best
respectively. dimensions (in mm) for the proposed antenna are

Figure 1 The proposed antenna: (a) side view, (b) without modifications, (c) final design.

Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
Multislot microstrip antenna for band application 3

Figure 2 The simulated S11 for the proposed antenna shown in Fig. 1 (c).

Figure 3 The Simulated peak gain of the proposed antenna.

R1 = R2 = R3 = R4 = 2, w1 = 11 and w2 = 6.075. The proposed antenna has higher BW than that in

suggested ground slot combines the square and triangle slot (Mohammadirad et al., 2010; Dargar et al., 2013; Kasi et al.,
shapes with w = 3, L = 0.75 and L1 = 1. 2011). The proposed design has the lowest RL in dB compared
The simulated peak gain, presented in Fig. 3, indicates an to (Dargar et al., 2013; Vuong et al., 2007).
increase in the gain with increasing frequency reaching 6 dBi
at 11.7 GHz. The radiation patterns for the proposed antenna 3. Band rejection using slots
are presented in Fig. 4, where the E and H planes are the yz
plane (u = 90o and 0° < h < 180°) and the xz (u = 0° and
0° < h < 180°) respectively, at different frequencies: 5, 6 and Two rejected bands are achieved, the WLAN and X bands, by
7.8 GHz. Radiation patterns in the E-plane are about the same introducing slots in the antenna patch and the feed line.
as that of a dipole antenna, the number of lobes rises with the
increase in frequency due to the existence of higher order 3.1. Rejection of the WLAN frequency band
modes. The radiation patterns in the H-plane are nearly
omni-directional at lower frequencies. Four slot shapes (M, inverted-U, inverted-E and H) which are
Comparing the proposed antenna with other works, the symmetrical around the vertical central axis are inserted in the
proposed design has one round step at each corner of the patch patch to reject the WLAN (5.15–5.825 GHz) band. The slot
while the antenna in (Mohammadirad et al., 2010) has six length is half a wavelength at the central frequency with the
rectangular steps and a wide rectangular ground slot. The effective dielectric constant eeff ¼ er þ1
2
(Gupta et al., 1996;

Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
4 N.M. Awad, M.K. Abdelazeez

Figure 4 The Simulated radiation pattern, _____ E-plane and - - - - H-plane, for the proposed antenna; (a) f = 5 GHz, (b) f = 6 GHz,
(c) f = 7.8 GHz.

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 5 (a) H-slot in the patch, (b) U-slot in the feed line and (c) Multi-slot H–U proposed antennas.

Kumar and Ray, 2002). To study the effect of the slot param- 3.3. Rejection of both WLAN and X bands
eters on the RL, parametric study was performed on the
H-shape slot components T1, C1 and C2 shown in Fig. 5(a). After investigating various slot shapes, in the patch and the feed
Low values of T1 cause a narrow rejection bandwidth and high line, and observing their performance with regard to the UWB
RL values at the center frequency of the rejected band, while antenna requirements, we combine the two slot types in the pro-
high values of C1 and C2 cause a decrease in the center fre- posed antenna to form an antenna which rejects two bands as
quency of the rejected band with lower RL values. The best shown in Fig. 5(c). The simulated RL results for the H–U
slot dimensions (in mm) which are used to reject the multi-slots antennas show that the rejection bands are narrow
5–6 GHz band are given by C1 = 7.77, C2 = 5.7, C3 = 3.8, enough to reject the desired interferences from the WLAN
D1 = 1 and T1 = 0.37. and the X-band frequency ranges. RL curves for the proposed
antennas without slots, with U-slot in feed only, with H-slot
3.2. Rejection of the X-band frequency range in the patch only and with multi-slots (H–U) are shown in Fig. 6.
The simulated peak gain for the H–U multi-slot antenna is
To reject the X-band downlink 7.25–7.75 GHz and uplink shown in Fig. 7, where it varies between 2.2–5.6 dBi in the pass
7.9–8.4 GHz frequency ranges, slots are inserted in the micro- band frequency ranges. A significant reduction in gain
strip feed line. Two slot shapes U and J are proposed as shown occurred at the two central frequencies of the rejected bands.
in Fig.5(b). Parametric study is done for the U-shape slot The radiation patterns for the H–U multi-slots antenna are
parameters, and it was found that varying them will affect presented in Fig. 8, where the E and H planes are the yz plane
mainly the location of the central frequency of the rejected (u = 90° and 0° < h < 180°) and the xz (u = 0° and
band. The optimized values of the slot parameters (in mm) 0° < h < 180°) respectively at 4.1 GHz, 6.5 GHz and
are S1 = 5.63, S2 = 1.45, t1 = 0.31 and d1 = 5. 9.5 GHz. Radiation patterns in the E-plane are about the same

Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
Multislot microstrip antenna for band application 5

Figure 6 The simulated S11 curves for the antenna without slots, with U-slot in feed only, with H-slot in the patch only and with multi-
slots H–U.

Figure 7 The Simulated peak gain of H–U multi-slot antenna.

Figure 8 Simulated radiation pattern, - - - - E-plane and _____ H-plane for the H–U multi-slots antenna; (a) f = 4.1 GHz, (b)
f = 6.5 GHz and (c) f = 9.5 GHz.

Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
6 N.M. Awad, M.K. Abdelazeez

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 9 Prototype of the proposed antenna, (a) without slots (b) multi-slot antenna and (c) bottom view.

Figure 10 Simulated and measured S11 for the proposed antennas: (a) without slots (b) with H–U slots.

Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
Multislot microstrip antenna for band application 7

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Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003
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Please cite this article in press as: Awad, N.M., Abdelazeez, M.K. Multislot microstrip antenna for ultra-wide band applications. Journal of King Saud University –
Engineering Sciences (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jksues.2015.12.003