THE DESIGN OF A DUAL BAND

OMNIDIRECTIONAL HORIZONTALLY
POLARIZED ANTENNA WITH ARC-
SHAPED LINES AND OVERLAPPING
LINES
Jae-Sung Park,1 Hak-Keun Choi,1 and Jung-Hun Oh2
1
Department of Electronic Engineering, Dankook University, Korea;
Corresponding author: [email protected]
2
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI),
Daejeon, Korea

Received 2 September 2015

ABSTRACT: This article proposes a dual-band horizontally polarized

omnidirectional antenna for wireless local area network (WLAN) appli-
cations. Typically, multiple elements with different sizes have been com-
bined to create antennas that operate in two separate bands. Unlike
such previous attempts, the proposed antenna achieves dual band opera-
tions by modifying the form of the feed line. The proposed antenna has
a similar structure as the Alford loop antenna, but the existing straight
feed lines of the Alford loop antenna are modified to arc-shaped lines.
The arc-shaped feed lines are then attached to the antenna elements in
four different directions. The voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of the
proposed antenna is <2:1 at the 2.4 (2.4–2.48) and 5 (5.15–5.825) GHz
WLAN bands. The gain of the proposed antenna is above 0 dBi at the
two bands. VC 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett

58:1117–1121, 2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com.

DOI 10.1002/mop.29745

Key words: low-profile antenna; omnidirectional antenna; horizontal

polarization; dual band antenna; arc-shaped line; overlapped lines

1. INTRODUCTION
As wireless communication technologies advance, the use of
wireless local area networks (WLANs) has become more wide-
spread, replacing existing wired local area networks (LANs).
While a wired network user is tied up with cables, WLAN users
can move freely within the base station’s coverage area. With Figure 1 Geometry of omnidirectional horizontally polarized antenna
enhanced mobility and flexibility, WLAN devices need to be with arc-shaped lines (a) Inner and outer loop. (b) Design parameter of
small enough to be carried around by a person; therefore, a the antenna. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
smaller antenna is needed. WLAN applications also require a available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
dual-band antenna that covers the 2.4 (2.4–2.485) and 5 (5.15–
5.825) GHz bands, as specified in the IEEE 802.11 standards antenna employs the Alford loop antenna, but it changes the
[1]. Previous works have combined multiple elements of differ- straight feed lines of the Alford loop antenna to arc-shaped
ent sizes to create a compact dual-band antenna for 2.4/5 GHz lines. The arc-shaped lines are positioned in four different direc-
WLAN applications. For example, previous studies have pro- tions: 08, 908, 1808, and 2708. The proposed antenna is bilater-
posed a monopole antenna consisting of two rectangular ele- ally symmetrical, having elements on the surface and underside
ments with different sizes, a patch antenna consisting of two L- of a single dielectric substrate. This structure looks like a com-
shaped slots with different sizes, and a monopole antenna that bination of two Alford loop antennas of different sizes in which
satisfies the 5-GHz band by adding a parasitic element to the
2.4-GHz element [2–5].
Antennas for WLAN applications should have an omnidirec- TABLE 1 Parameters of the Proposed Antenna
tional radiation pattern and a low profile. To satisfy such
requirements, a loop antenna that produces a horizontally polar- Design Parameter Value (mm)
ized omnidirectional radiation pattern in a horizontal plane has L1 8
been proposed. However, it has a low radiation resistance and L2 3.2
high reactance, which makes impedance matching very hard [6]. L3 9.3
A number of studies address this issue. The antennas suggested R1 14
in [7–9] adopt the Alford loop-type structure to reduce an anten- R2 22
na’s physical dimensions and to be capable of dual-band or W1 3.2
W2 2.2
broadband operations [7–9].
W3 3.2
This article proposes a dual-band horizontally polarized
W4 2.1
omnidirectional antenna for WLAN applications. The proposed

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 5, May 2016 1117
 Figure 3 The current distribution of omnidirectional horizontally
polarized antenna with high-band overlapping line (a) 2.45 GHz. (b)
5.5 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is avail-
able at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

of different sizes are formed, depicted as dotted circles in Figure

1(a). This enables the proposed antenna to have the characteristics
Figure 2 The current distribution of omnidirectional horizontally of dual-band operation. The inner loop consists of smaller arcs and
polarized antenna with only arc-shaped lines (a) 2.45 GHz. (b) 5.5 GHz. the outer loop consists of larger arcs.
[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at
Figure 1(b) presents the design parameters of the proposed
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
antenna. Table 1 lists the values of the design parameters. The
elements of the proposed antenna are placed on the surface and
an inner loop and an outer loop are formed, but it can only underside of a single substrate. The dielectric material of the
accomplish 5-GHz operations. For WLAN dual band operations, substrate selected for this design is FR-4 Epoxy, which has rela-
the arc-shaped feed lines arranged in four directions should have tive permittivity of 4.4. The radius of the substrate is 52
overlapping lines at each truncated edge of the arc-shaped lines. (R3 5 52 mm), and the thickness is 1.6 mm. A 50-X SMA con-
The overlapping lines in the inner loop cover the higher band of nector is used to feed the antenna.
5 GHz, and the overlapping lines in the outer loop cover the Figure 2 shows the current distribution of the proposed antenna
lower band of 2.4 GHz. The proposed antenna achieves the that consists of arc-shaped lines only. Figure 2(a) is the current dis-
WLAN dual bands by modifying only the shape of feed lines, tribution at 2.45 GHz and Figure 2(b) is the current distribution at
making it simple and compact.
5.5 GHz. In Figure 2(a), the arc-shaped strips arranged in four
directions have an equal current direction, but the current direc-
2. DESIGN OF THE DUAL BAND OMNIDIRECTIONAL
HORIZONTALLY POLARIZED ANTENNA WITH ARC-SHAPED tions of the inner and outer loops are opposite to each other. The
LINES AND OVERLAPPING LINES inner loop has lower current intensity than the outer loop. Figure
This section describes the design of a dual-band horizontally 2(b) presents the current distribution at 5.5 GHz. There is no over-
polarized omnidirectional antenna for WLAN applications. lapping line, so the inner loop is disconnected. Hence, it exhibits
Figure 1 depicts the proposed horizontally polarized omnidir- characteristics that are different from the Alford loop antenna.
ectional antenna that has arc-shaped lines. Figure 1(a) presents the In Figure 3, the proposed antenna consisting of arc-shaped
inner and outer loops of the proposed antenna. As can be seen in strips has overlapping lines at the edges of the smaller arcs. Figure
the figure, a smaller arc and a larger arc form a resonant piece of 3(a) shows the current distribution at 2.45 GHz, and Figure 3(b) is
transmission line. These line pieces are arranged in four different the current distribution at 5.5 GHz. The current direction of the
directions, and they are placed symmetrically on the surface and inner loop is opposite to that of the outer loop in Figure 3(a). On
underside of a dielectric substrate. The antenna consisting of large the other hand, the inner and outer loops have the same current
and small arc strips has a similar structure as the Alford loop direction at 5.5 GHz, as shown in Figure 3(b). Here, the proposed
antenna, but its loops are not continuous. When overlapping lines antenna is similar to the conventional loop antenna in terms of cur-
are added to the places marked by a circle in Figure 1(a), two loops rent distribution. This indicates that the overlapping lines that

1118 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 5, May 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 4 The current distribution of omnidirectional horizontally
polarized antenna with high-band overlapping line and low-band over-
lapping line (a) 2.45 GHz. (b) 5.5 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed in
the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

bridge the adjacent arc-shaped lines influence the current distribu-

tion of the antenna.
In Figure 4, the proposed antenna has overlapping lines at
Figure 6 The fabricated omnidirectional horizontally polarized antenna
the edges of the smaller and larger arcs. Figure 4(a) shows the
with arc-shaped lines (a) top view. (b) bottom view. [Color figure can be
current distribution at 2.45 GHz; Figure 4(b) shows the current viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
distribution at 5.5 GHz. Unlike Figure 3(a), the inner and outer
loops have an equal current direction in Figure 4(a). In Figure
affect the current direction of the inner loop. The current inten-
4(b) of 5.5 GHz, the inner and outer loops have the same cur-
sity of the outer loop is lower than that of the inner loop.
rent directivity, which was also the case in Figure 3(b). This
Figure 5 presents the voltage standing wave ratios (VSWRs)
indicates that the overlapping lines in the outer loop do not
of the proposed antenna’s three variations. The antenna with
arc-shaped lines only has a resonance point at 5 GHz when the

Figure 5 Comparison of VSWRs. [Color figure can be viewed in the Figure 7 The measured VSWR of the proposed antenna. [Color figure can
online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com] be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 5, May 2016 1119
Figure 8 The measured radiation pattern of the proposed antenna. (a) 2.4 GHz. (b) 2.45 GHz. (c) 2.5 GHz. (d) 5 GHz. (e) 5.4 GHz. (f) 5.8 GHz.
[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

VSWR is under 2:1, and it has a bandwidth of 8% at 4.8– there is a deviation of about 2.5 dB in the horizontally polarized
5.2 GHz. The antenna with overlapping lines at the smaller arc radiation pattern at 5 GHz.
edges has a bandwidth of 15.5% at 5.05–5.9 GHz, but it exhibits
no characteristic of resonance at the 2.45 GHz band. Finally, the
antenna with overlapping lines at the smaller and larger arc 4. CONCLUSION
edges has a bandwidth of 6.9% at 2.35–2.52 GHz and a band- This article presents the design of a dual-band horizontally
width of 15.6% at 5–5.85 GHz. polarized omnidirectional antenna for WLAN applications. The
proposed antenna uses two different sized arcs to construct feed
lines and places overlapping lines between adjacent arc-shaped
3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS lines to form a loop. The proposed antenna’s structure resembles
A prototype of the designed antenna with overlapping arc- a structure that is created by combining two Alford loop anten-
shaped lines was fabricated on a dielectric substrate to verify nas of different sizes. The proposed antenna satisfies 2.4/5 GHz
the simulation results. Figure 6 shows the fabricated prototype WLAN dual-band requirements. It can easily be extended to
antenna that has a bilaterally symmetric structure. cover more frequency bands by increasing the number of arcs.
Figure 7 presents the measured VSWRs of the fabricated The radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna are similar
prototype antenna. The measured VSWRs of the fabricated to the Alford loop antenna that radiates a horizontally polarized
antenna agree reasonably well with the calculated (simulated) omnidirectional radiation pattern in the horizontal plane. The
ones at the two bands. The VSWRs of the antenna is <2:1 over proposed antenna is mounted on a single dielectric substrate,
2.4- and 5-GHz frequency ranges. This demonstrates that the which makes its structure simple and compact.
proposed antenna is suitable for use in dual band WLAN
systems.
Figure 8 shows that the measured radiation patterns of the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
fabricated antenna are in agreement with the calculated ones at This work was supported by Institute for Information & commu-
the respective WLAN bands. The experimental results verify nications Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the
that the inner and outer loops have the same current direction at Korean government (MSIP) [No. R0101-15-244, Development
2.45 and 5 GHz. That is, the proposed antenna has radiation of 5G Mobile Communication Technologies for Hyper-
characteristics similar to those of the loop antenna. However, connected smart services].

1120 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 5, May 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop
REFERENCES
1. X.L. Sun, L. Liu, S.W. Cheung, and T.I. Yuk, Dual-band antenna
with compact radiator for 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN applications,
IEEE Trans Antennas Propag 60 (2012), 5924–5931.
2. A. Rathore, R. Nilavalan, H.F. AbuTarboush, and T. Peter, Compact
dual-band (2.4/5.2GHz) monopole antenna for WLAN applications, Int.
Workshop on Antenna Technology (IWAT), March 2010, pp. 1–4.
3. S.C. Basaran and Y.E. Erdemli, A dual-band split-ring monopole
antenna for WLAN applications, Mircow Opt Technol 51 (2009),
2685–2688.
4. T.H. Kim and D.C. Park, Compact dual-band antenna with double
L-slits for WLAN operations, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett
4 (2005), 249–252.
5. W.L. Stuzman and G.A. Thiele, Antenna theory and design, Wiley,
New York, 1981, pp. 99–104.
6. C.C. Lin, L.C. Kuo, and H.R. Chuang, A horizontally polarized
Figure 1 Diagrams of (a) a binary corporate combiner and (b) a spa-
omnidirectional printed antenna for WLAN applications, IEEE Trans
tial combiner
Antennas Propag 54 (2006), 3551–3556.
7. Y. Yu, F. Jolani, and Z. Chen, A wideband omnidirectional horizon-
tally polarized antenna for 4G LTE applications, IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag Lett 12 (2013), 686–689.
8. C.H. Ahn, S.W. Oh, and K. Chang, A dual-frequency omnidirec-
tional antenna for polarization diversity of MIMO and wireless com-
munication applications, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett 8
(2009), 966–970.
9. T. Milligan, Modern antenna design, 2nd ed., Wiley, New Jersey,
2005, pp. 261–262.

C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

V

A COMPACT PLANAR POWER

COMBINER WITH COMPLEX
IMPEDANCE MATCHING
Te-Chuan Chen, Xiaoju Yu, and Hao Xin
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Figure 2 Proposed planar power divider/combiner structure. [Color figure
Arizona, 1230 E. Speedway Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85719; Corresponding can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.
author: [email protected] com]

Received 5 September 2015 ing stages. These combiners work quite well with small number of
devices combined. As the number of combined devices increases,
ABSTRACT: This article presents a compact power combiner/divider
the number of combining stage is increased as well, thus increas-
for solid-state amplifier applications inspired by spatial combiner. The ing the loss of the combining network. One disadvantage of a cor-
proposed “one-stage” combining structure is realized by a single port porate combiner is that the combining efficiency decreases with
tapered to an oversized microstrip connecting to parallel multiport increasing number of devices [1]. On the other hand, spatial
microstrip sections. By adjusting the geometries of the structure, uniform
amplitude/phase, and complex impedance matching at the multiport out-
puts can be achieved. A prototype 1-to-4 divider/combiner is designed
and characterized at 5 GHz. Measured and simulated results showed
similar trend and decent agreement. The measured combining efficiency
of the circuit is 82.44% at 5 GHz. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:1121–1125, 2016; View this article

online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.29752

Key words: power divider; combiner; microstrip; complex matching

1. INTRODUCTION
Individual solid-state power device in RF/microwave systems has
limited power capability. Consequently, high power level is
achieved by combining the outputs of several active devices with
roughly identical characteristics. There are two common practices
for power combining when designing power amplifiers. Binary
corporate combiners, such as Wilkinson power combiners, are Figure 3 Time shots in sequence of the surface current distribution at
straightforward combiners to develop where each unit combines 5 GHz simulated by ADS Momentum (a) when port 1 is excited and (b)
two inputs into one output, as shown in Figure 1(a). The number when ports 2–5 are excited (Light region—lower current density. Dark
of devices combined is generally 2N, with N as number of combin- region—higher current density)

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 5, May 2016 1121