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fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2763987, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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Broadband and Low-Profile Microstrip Antenna

Using Strip-Slot Hybrid Structure
Wangyu Sun, Yue Li, Senior Member, IEEE, Zhijun Zhang, Fellow, IEEE, and Zhenghe Feng, Fellow, IEEE

 for millimeter wave applications [8] and over 25% on a

Abstract—In this letter, a low-profile microstrip antenna with low-temperature cofired ceramic substrate (LTCC) [9]. Based
strip-slot hybrid structure is proposed to enhance the bandwidth on double-Y-shape aperture-coupling technique, a 10-dB
up to 41% within a height of 0.06λ0 (λ0 is the center operating impedance bandwidth of 71% (3.28 – 6.76 GHz) is achieved in
wavelength in free space). The proposed antenna consists of four
[10] with the size of 28 ×28×15 mm3. Recently, the concept of
strips, which are separated by three narrow slots. By controlling
the dimensions of the strips and the slots, dual modes, i.e., TM 10 metamaterial-inspired microstrip antennas are investigated to
mode and antiphase TM20 mode, are excited and coupled to achieve wide bandwidth, e.g., mushroom [11] and grid-slotted
increase the operating bandwidth. The strip-slot hybrid structure [12] structures with 25% and 28% impedance bandwidth,
can be excited with optimized impedance matching using an respectively.
aperture-coupled Y-shaped feeding microstrip line. A prototype In this letter, with the purposed to improve the impedance
of the proposed antenna is constructed and tested. Experimental
bandwidth of traditional microstrip antennas, a low-profile
results show an impedance bandwidth of 41% for the reflection
coefficient less than -10 dB, achieving an obvious improvement of wideband microstrip antenna with strip-slot hybrid structure is
operating bandwidth with a low profile of 0.06λ0. proposed. The strip-slot hybrid structure is composed of four
strips and three narrow slots. A Y-shaped microstrip feeding
Index Terms—Microstrip antennas, broadband antennas, line is introduced to feed this antenna through a coupling
antenna feeds. aperture on the ground. By optimizing the sizes of the strips and
the slots, TM10 mode and antiphase TM20 mode are excited, and
I. INTRODUCTION coupled together to enhance the impedance bandwidth up to

A s the rapid development of wireless communications, the

microstrip antenna has been generally applied in many
communication devices because of its obvious advantages, e.g.,
41% with a low profile of 0.06λ0. The proposed strip-slot
hybrid structure is systematically simulated using the full-wave
simulation software of High Frequency Structure Simulator
low manufacturing cost, easy fabrication and low profile [1]. (HFSS) and validated experimentally.
However, the main limitation of traditional microstrip antennas
is the narrow impedance bandwidth (typically less than 3% II. DESIGN PROCEDURE
with reflection coefficient lower than -10 dB). For various
A. Antenna Structure and Configuration
wideband wireless communication services, several bandwidth
enhancement techniques based on microstrip antennas have The overall geometry of the proposed microstrip antenna
been studied and verified [2-6]. The use of six rectangular strips with strip-slot hybrid structure is illustrated in Fig. 1. This
in [2] realizes a larger impedance bandwidth of 6%. A antenna has a three-layer structure and Fig. 1 (a) shows the
broadband circular microstrip antenna achieves a fractional perspective view of the layered structure. There are three
bandwidth of 13.6% using diamond-shaped slot in [3]. By metallic layers: radiating patch on the top layer, ground plane
embedding a U-shaped slot within the rectangular patch, the with coupling aperture on the middle layer and Y-shaped
impedance bandwidth is achieved over 20% [4]. A broadband feeding structure on the bottom layer. Between the three
E-shaped microstrip antenna is presented in [5] to achieve an metallic layers, there are two layers dielectrics with the same
excellent bandwidth of 30.3%. And a Y-shaped stub proximity relative permittivity ε0 of 3.38 and loss tangent tan δ of 0.0027.
coupled V-slot microstrip antenna presented in [6] shows an The overall volume of the upper dielectric is GW×GL×h and the
enhanced impedance bandwidth of 21%. As another feasible overall dimension of the lower dielectric is GW×GL×h0.
solution to improve the bandwidth of microstrip antennas, In Fig. 1 (b), we can see that the radiating patch has a
planar multi-layer configuration is used in [7] with 25% strip-slot hybrid structure, which is composed of four identical
bandwidth. With the similar strategy, aperture-coupled stacked strips arranged periodically with three narrow slots between
microstrip antennas are achieved with the bandwidth over 20% each two adjacent strips. The length and width of each strip are
Wp and w, and the slots are with the same width of g. In Fig. 1
(c) and Fig. 1 (d), the coupling aperture is cut on the ground
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China plane, and placed underneath and parallel to the center slot on
61771280, the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project
2015T80084, and the National Basic Research Program of China
the top layer. The dimensions of the coupling aperture are
2013CB329002. W. Sun, Y. Li, Z. Zhang, and Z. Feng are with the department Ls×Ws. The 50-Ω Y-shaped microstrip feeding structure is
of electronic engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China (e-mail: printed on the bottom layer of the lower dielectric and it is
[email protected]).

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2763987, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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Fig. 2. Geometries and simulated reflection coefficients of the three antennas

with different radiating patches and feeding structures

distance between the two arms is W. By optimizing the

dimensions of the strip-slot hybrid structure and Y-shaped
feeding structure, the impedance bandwidth of this antenna can
be improved obviously. The side view of the proposed antenna
is shown in Fig.1 (e) and all the optimized dimensions of the
proposed antenna are tabulated in Table I.
B. Structure Evolution
Fig. 1. Geometry and dimensions of the proposed antenna: (a) Perspective
view of the layered structure, (b) top layer of the radiating patch with strip-slot With the purpose of increasing the impedance bandwidth of
hybrid structure, (c) middle layer of the ground with the coupling aperture, (d) microstrip antenna, we modify the structure of the radiating
bottom layer of the Y-shaped feeding microstrip line. (e) Side view of the
overall structure. patch and the microstrip feeding line based on the traditional
configuration. The geometric evolution process of the proposed
antenna is shown in Fig. 2. Firstly, the Ant 1 is composed of a
TABLE I square radiating patch and a straight microstrip feeding line.
OPTIMIZED DIMENSIONS OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA (UNIT: MM)
And then, the Ant 2 applies the strip-slot hybrid structure as the
radiating patch, which is also fed by a straight microstrip line.
p g Wp GL GW Ws Ls w
Finally, the proposed antenna uses the strip-slot hybrid
10 1.1 40 60 60 3.8 29 8.9
radiating structure and the Y-shaped microstrip feeding
W s Wms Wms2 Lwave h0 h structure together. The radiating patches of these three antennas
8 10 1.85 1.75 15 0.813 3.25 are with the same size and excited by these microstrip lines
through coupling apertures cut on the ground plane. The
simulated reflection coefficients are shown in Fig. 2. The
symmetrically with respect to the x-axis. This microstrip dimensions of the coupling apertures and microstrip feeding
feeding line is composed of two sections: the straight section of lines are optimized to good impedance matching. As we can see,
width Wms and two arm sections of equal width Wms2. The the simulated bandwidth of the reflection coefficient less than
length of the straight section is Lwave. The end of the arm section -10 dB is 4.3 - 4.43 GHz or 3% for the Ant 1 and is 4.49 - 6 GHz
has a vertical distance of s away from the y-axis. And the or 28.8% for the Ant 2. The enhancement of the bandwidth is

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2763987, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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Fig. 4. Photographs of the fabricated antenna: (a) top layer of the radiating
patch with strip-slot hybrid structure, (b) Y-shaped microstrip feeding line in
the bottom layer, and (c) middle layer of the ground with the coupling
aperture.

Fig. 3. Current distributions and operating modes of the proposed antenna at

different resonances: (a) 4.7 GHz. (b) 5.5 GHz. (c) 6.3 GHz.

due to the introduction of the strip-slot hybrid structure, which

excites an extra operating mode, i.e., antiphase TM20 mode. The
TM10 mode and antiphase TM20 mode are coupled together to
increase the operating bandwidth. As for the proposed antenna,
it achieves an impedance bandwidth of 4.37 - 6.55 GHz or
39.9% for the reflection coefficients less than -10 dB.
Compared with the Ant 2, no new mode is excited by the
proposed antenna. The added resonant at 6.3 GHz is introduced
from the impedance matching by the Y-shaped feeding
structure, with 11% incensement of bandwidth. That is to say, Fig. 5. Simulated and measured reflection coefficients of the proposed
microstrip antenna.
this modified feeding structure increases the degree of freedom
for optimizing and improves the impedance matching of the
proposed antenna. A parasitic mode appears at 4.1 GHz with a
different broadside radiation pattern, and not included in the
bandwidth of 4.37 - 6.55 GHz.
C. Operating Mechanism
To understand the operating mechanism of the proposed
antenna, the snapshots of the current distributions at three
resonances are shown in Fig. 3. These three resonances appear
at the frequency of 4.7 GHz, 5.5 GHz and 6.3 GHz, respectively.
Except the radiation of the slots between adjacent strips, the
current distributions at 4.7 GHz is similar to the TM 10 mode
excited in the traditional microstrip antenna. On the other hand,
the current distributions at 5.5 GHz and 6.3 GHz are almost the
same and the resonant mode resembles the antiphase TM20
mode. Due to the radiation of the coupling aperture and the
strip-slot hybrid structure, the opposite sides of the center slot Fig. 6. Simulated directivity, simulated gain and measured gain of the
have the antiparallel E-fields. The theoretical analysis and proposed microstrip antenna.
calculation of the antiphase TM20 mode can be carried out by analyzer is used to measure the reflection coefficient, and the
using the transmission-line model [12]. By coupling the two ETS-Lindgren AMS8500 anechoic chamber is used to test the
resonant modes together, an enhanced bandwidth of the radiation performance of the proposed antenna.
proposed antenna can be realized. The simulated and measured reflection coefficients are
illustrated in Fig. 5. The simulated bandwidth of the reflection
III. PROTOTYPE AND MEASUREMENTS coefficient less than -10 dB is 4.37 - 6.55 GHz or 39.9% and the
Based on the optimized dimensions in Table I, the proposed measured bandwidth of the reflection coefficient less than -10
complete structure of the antenna is fabricated and measured to dB is 4.42 - 6.76 GHz or 41.1%. The simulated and measured
validate the broadband performance. Fig. 4 (a)-(c) show the results are in good agreement and the slight difference is mainly
photographs of the fabricated antenna (Top view, GND layer caused by manufaction and measurement error. In Fig. 6, we
and bottom view). The Agilent E5071B vector network show the simulated directivity, simulated and measured gain of

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LAWP.2017.2763987, IEEE
Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, to increase the bandwidth of the traditional
microstrip antenna, a broadband microstrip antenna with
modified radiating patch and feeding structure is proposed. The
square radiating patch is replaced by a strip-slot hybrid
structure, which contains four strips and three narrow slots.
Modified from the straight microstrip feeding line, a Y-shaped
microstrip line is applied to improve the matching performance.
By coupling the two resonant modes together through proper
impedance matching, the bandwidth of the proposed antenna
can be broadened greatly. Compared with the similar antennas
[12] [13] in Table II, the proposed antenna achieves a wider
bandwidth of 41.1% with a low profile of 0.06 λ0. Due to the
characteristics of broad band and low profile, the proposed
antenna using strip-slot hybrid structure is with the potential in
modern wireless communication systems.

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF BANDWIDTH FOR VARIOUS MICROSTRIP ANTENNAS
(λ0 is the center operating wavelength in free space)
Antenna Methods Profile BW
Ref. [12] Metamaterial-based 0.06 λ0 28%
Ref. [13] Shorting Pins-loaded 0.032 λ0 15.2%
Proposed Strip-slotted 0.06 λ0 41.1%

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