IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

11, 2012

543

Bandwidth Enhancement of CPW-Fed Circle-Like Slot Antenna With Dual Band-Notched Characteristic
Seyed Ramin Emadian, Changiz Ghobadi, Javad Nourinia, Member, IEEE, Mir Hamed Mirmozafari, and Javad Pourahmadazar, Student Member, IEEE
AbstractA novel single-layer dual band-notched printed circle-like slot antenna for ultrawideband (UWB) applications is presented. The proposed antenna comprises a circle-like slot, a trident-shaped feed line, and two nested C-shaped stubs. By using a trident-shaped feed line, much wider impedance bandwidth is obtained. Due to inserting a pair of nested C-shaped stubs on the back surface of the substrate, two frequency band-notches of 5.16.2 (WLAN) and 33.8 GHz (WiMAX) are achieved. The nested stubs are connected to the tuning stub using two cylindrical via pins. The designed antenna has a total size of 26 30 mm and operates over the frequency band between 2.5 and 25 GHz. Throughout this letter, experimental results of the impedance bandwidth, gain, and radiation patterns are compared and discussed. Index TermsC-shaped stubs, circle-like slot, dual bandnotched antenna, ultrawideband (UWB).

I. INTRODUCTION N RECENT years, microstrip ultrawideband (UWB) antennas have attracted much attention owing to their advantages such as simple structure, low prole, high data rate, easy integration with monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), and ease of fabrication. Despite all these advantages, the narrow impedance bandwidth (BW) is one of the main challenges of microstrip antenna design. In recent years, various techniques have been presented to overcome the narrow impedance BW of these antennas. Some of the bandwidth enhancement techniques that are used to design planar antennas have been stated as below: Etching polygon-like slot antennas [1], modied elliptical antennas [2], using a fork-like tuning stub [3], and parasitic elements [4]. On the other hand, the frequency range for UWB systems between 3.110.6 GHz will cause interference to the existing wireless communication systems, such as WiMAX (3.33.7 GHz) and 51505350/57255825 MHz (specied by IEEE 802.11a) bands. Therefore, design of UWB antennas with multiband ltering functions to avoid potential interference with these
Manuscript received February 13, 2012; revised April 11, 2012; accepted April 30, 2012. Date of publication May 14, 2012; date of current version May 24, 2012. This work was supported by the Iran Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC). R. Emadian, C. Ghobadi, J. Nourinia, and M. Mozafari are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran (e-mail: ramin.emadian@gmail.com; ch.ghobadi@urmia.ac.ir; j.nourinia@urmia.ac.ir; M.Mirmozafari@yahoo.com). J. Pourahmadazar is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Urmia Branch, Islamic Azad University, Urmia, Iran (e-mail: javad. poorahmadazar@gmail.com). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2012.2199274

Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed single-layer slot antenna with dual bandnotched function (unit: millimeters).

frequency bands is necessary. For this purpose, different techniques with single, dual, and multiple notch functions have been recently reported [5][8]. In these designs, by employing fractal-shaped tuning stubs [5], embedding a pair of L-shaped slots in the interior of the polygon slot [1], and using a pair of short L-shaped stubs [6], one or two rejected bands have been obtained. In this letter, a novel compact coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed slot antenna with increased impedance bandwidth and dual band-notched characteristic is proposed. Due to using a trident-shaped feed line, much wider impedance bandwidth is obtained. Moreover, by employing a pair of C-shaped stubs on the back surface of the substrate, dual band-notch function can be obtained through 5.16.2-GHz (WLAN) and 33.8-GHz (WiMAX) bands. II. SLOT ANTENNA CONFIGURATION Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed dual band-notched slot antenna, which consists of a circle-like slot, a trident-shaped feed line, and two nested C-shaped stubs. The proposed slot antenna is printed on a 26 30-mm FR4 substrate with permittivity of 4.4, a loss tangent of 0.024, and thickness of 1.6 mm . Three main features have been incorporated in the proposed design: a trident-shaped feed line and circle-like slot mainly for enhancing the impedance bandwidth, and two

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

Fig. 2. Surface current distributions of the proposed antenna with (left) tridentshaped and (right) simple feed at 15.5 GHz.

Fig. 3. Simulated VSWR of the proposed antenna with simple and trident feed without nested C-shaped stubs [Fig. 1].

nested C-shaped stubs for ltering. As illustrated in Fig. 1, the proposed antenna is symmetrical with respect to the longitudinal direction ( -axis). To realize the dual band-notch function, a pair of nested C-shaped stubs is placed on the back surface of the substrate and couples to the radiating patch. Note that two nested C-shaped resonant stubs are connected to the tuning stub using two cylindrical via pins (colored circles, see Fig. 1). The two nested C-shaped stubs comprise one horizontal arm (with length of 9.9 and 6.6 mm, respectively) and two vertical L-shaped arms (with length of 3.6 and 1.7 mm, respectively) connected at their ends. The nested C-shaped stubs widths are uniform ( mm) along their length. As illustrated in Fig. 1, these two stubs are placed 8.4 mm away from the lower side of the circle-like ground plane (GND) and separated by a 0.6-mm distance. The width of the CPW feed line is xed at 2.6 mm to achieve 50- characteristic impedance. The horizontal feed section ( -axis) is separated from the GND by a gap of 0.3 mm (see Fig. 1). III. ANTENNA DESIGN AND PARAMETRIC STUDY A. Full-Band UWB Slot Antenna Ansoft HFSS simulation tool is employed to perform the design and optimization process. The circle-like slot of the antenna is an effective part of this layout. Design of the circle-like slot is guided at reducing the slot area while satisfying the purpose that the input impedance is matched for whole UWB band. As mentioned earlier, by using a trident-shaped feed line, the antenna bandwidth is greatly increased. This impedance bandwidth enhancement is noted by multiplying the accesses to the rectangular tuning stub. For clarifying the frequency performance of the trident-shaped feed in the main patch, surface current distributions of the proposed antenna are presented in Fig. 2. It is clearly seen that the bandwidth enhancement is due to the vertical current alignment in the tuning stub through the branches resulting in much regular distribution of the magnetic current in the slot. The simulated VSWR curves for simple and trident-shaped feed systems are plotted in Fig. 3. From the simulation results in Fig. 3, it is observed that the BW increases as the trident-shaped feed is used, thus we have maximum impedance BW for modied antenna. Therefore, due to using this modied feed system, the upper band-edge frequency will be increased from 15 to more than 25 GHz.

Fig. 4. Geometry of the single band-notched slot antenna (unit: millimeters).

B. Single Band-Notched UWB Slot Antenna To reduce the interferences from the WLAN system, the band-notched function is desirable in the UWB system [9]. Fig. 4 shows the proposed single band-notched slot antenna. To realize the antenna with single band-notched function, a C-shaped stub is printed on the back plane of the substrate. This stub is connected to the tuning stub using a cylindrical via-pin with inner diameter of 0.5 mm. The total length of the C-shaped stub is close to at the desired center frequency of the rejected band. Therefore, the C-shaped stub will act as a half-wavelength resonator. In proposed structures, at the notch frequency, the surface currents are concentrated around the C-shaped stub, and they are oppositely directed between the C-shaped stub and the tuning stub. Hence, the resultant radiation elds cancel out, and high attenuation near the notch frequency is produced [7][9]. Therefore, the single band-notched antenna does not radiate efciently in rejected band frequencies. Figs. 5 and 6 show the VSWR curves for different values of and , respectively. As illustrated in Fig. 5, by adjusting the total length of the C-shaped stub, the position of the rejected band is controllable. From Fig. 6, it can be observed that by tuning the position of the C-shaped stub, it will be possible to control the bandwidth of the rejected band. As shown in Table I, by increasing the

EMADIAN et al.: BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT OF CPW-FED CIRCLE-LIKE SLOT ANTENNA

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Fig. 5. Simulated VSWR for proposed single band-notched antenna (Fig. 4) when mm. with different values of

Fig. 7. Simulated surface current distributions of the proposed dual band-notched antenna (Fig. 1) (a) at 3.6 and (b) 5.5 GHz.

Fig. 6. Simulated VSWR for proposed single band-notched antenna (Fig. 4) when mm. with different values of

TABLE I SUMMARY OF SIMULATED RESULTS OF THE SINGLE BAND-NOTCH AND IMPEDANCE CHARACTERISTICS CENTRAL NOTCHED FREQUENCY ( ) AND NOTCH BANDWIDTH OF THE SINGLE BAND-NOTCHED ANTENNA AND FOR VARIOUS

Fig. 8. Measured and simulated VSWR results of the proposed dual bandnotched antenna (Fig. 1).

Fig. 7 shows the simulated surface current density of the proposed dual-band notched antenna (Fig. 1). As shown in Fig. 7(a), for the lower-frequency notch (33.8 GHz), the current density is concentrated over the exterior nested C-shaped stub. Also, the highest surface current concentration exists over the interior nested C-shaped stub at the higher-frequency notch (5.16.2 GHz) [Fig. 7(b)]. IV. MEASUREMENT AND RESULTS DISCUSSIONS An Agilent 8722ES vector network analyzer was used to measure the electrical performance of the proposed antenna such as impedance bandwidth, VSWR, and gain. Fig. 8 shows the measured and simulated VSWR curves of the dual band-notched antenna. As shown in Fig. 8, a good agreement between the simulated and measured results is observed. The small difference between the measured and simulated results is due to the effect of SMA connector soldering and fabrication tolerance. The designed antenna has a very wideband performance of 2.525 GHz for , with dual notched bands of 33.8 and 5.16.2 GHz. Figs. 9 and 10 show the measured normalized far-eld radiation patterns in the H- and E-planes at sampling frequencies of 2.8, 3.6, 5.5, 7.5, 13, and 19 GHz. It is found that the antenna has nearly good omnidirectional radiation patterns in the H-plane ( -plane) and dipole-like radiation patterns in the E-plane. The radiation patterns at 3.6 and 5.5 GHz show that the antenna has much lower gains in the notched bands compared to

length of the , the notch frequency ( ) is increased from 4.6 from 5.7 to 6.7 GHz. Also, by decreasing the length of the to 1.3 mm, the notch bandwidth is remarkably decreased while the notch frequency ( ) is constant. C. Dual Band-Notched UWB Slot Antenna Besides the WLAN system, WiMAX from 3.33.7 GHz also operates in the UWB band. To minimize the potential interferences between the UWB system and narrowband systems, in this design a new dual band-notched antenna is presented (see Fig. 1). To achieve the dual band-notched characteristics, two nested C-shaped stubs are printed on the bottom surface of the substrate. These stubs are connected to the tuning stub by via connections. On the substrate, two via-pins with diameters of 0.5 mm are used to connect the C-shaped stubs to tuning patch. The simulation results show that by adjusting the total lengths of the C-shaped stubs to be approximately half-wavelength of the desired notched frequency, a ruinous interference can take place.

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

Fig. 11. Measured results of the proposed dual band-notched antenna (Fig. 1) gain versus frequency.

components of H-plane radiation patterns are increased. It can be caused by the more horizontal current modes on the antenna main patch. The measured gain of the full-band and dual bandnotched antennas are illustrated in Fig. 10. The measured dual band-notched antenna gain show a atness gain except in two notch bands [10]. As shown in Fig. 11, two minimums occur in the measured gain results around the 3.6- and 5.5-GHz frequencies of the lower and upper notched bands. V. CONCLUSION In this letter, a novel circle-like slot antenna with dual band-notched function has been presented. We indicated that by using a trident-shaped feed line connected to the rectangular tuning stub, a very wide impedance bandwidth (more than 162%) can be achieved. Furthermore, two nested C-shaped stubs are printed on the bottom of the substrate to create dual band-notched characteristics. The good impedance matching characteristic, constant gain, and omnidirectional radiation patterns over the entire band make this antenna a good candidate for UWB applications and systems. REFERENCES
[1] N. Farrokh-Heshmat, J. Nourinia, and C. Ghobadi, Band-notched ultra-wideband printed open-slot antenna using variable on-ground slits, Electron. Lett., vol. 45, no. 21, pp. 10601061, 2009. [2] D. Abed, H. Kimouche, and B. Atrouz, Small-size printed CPW-fed antenna for ultrawideband communications, Electron. Lett., vol. 44, no. 17, pp. 10031005, 2008. [3] J.-Y. Sze and K.-L. Wong, Bandwidth enhancement of a microstrip line-fed printed wide-slot antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 49, no. 7, pp. 10201024, Jul. 2001. [4] K. Chung, T. Yun, and J. Choi, Wideband CPW-fed monopole antenna with parasitic elements and slots, Electron. Lett., vol. 40, no. 17, pp. 10381040, 2004. [5] W. J. Lui, C.-H. Cheng, Y. Cheng, and H. Zhu, Frequency notched ultra-wideband microstrip slot antenna with a fractal tuning stub, Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 294296, Feb. 2005. [6] A. Ghobadi, Ch. Ghobadi, and J. Nourinia, Band-notched planar monopole antenna for ultrawideband applications, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 9, pp. 608611, 2010. [7] R. Zaker, C. Ghobadi, and J. Nourinia, Bandwidth enhancement of novel compact single and dual band-notched printed monopole antenna with a pair of L-shaped slots, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 12, pp. 39783983, Dec. 2009. [8] Q.-X. Chu and Y.-Y. Yang, A compact ultrawideband antenna with 3.4/5.5 GHz dual band-notched characteristics, IEEE Tran. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 12, pp. 36373644, Dec. 2008. [9] K.-H. Kim, Y.-J. Cho, S.-H. Hwang, and S.-O. Park, Band-notched UWB planar monopole antenna with two parasitic patches, Electron. Lett., vol. 41, no. 14, pp. 783785, July 2005. [10] R. Emadian, Ch. Ghobadi, and J. Nourinia, A novel compact dual band-notched slot antenna for ultrawideband applications, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., pp. 13651368, 2012.

Fig. 9. Measured (left) H-plane and (right) E-plane radiation patterns of the proposed dual band-notched antenna (Fig. 1) at 2.8, 3.6, and 5.5 GHz.

Fig. 10. Measured (left) H-plane and (right) E-plane radiation patterns of the proposed dual band-notched antenna at 7.5, 13, and 19 GHz.

other frequencies. This is due to the severely increasing current distribution on the C-shaped backed plane stubs at the notch frequencies. At the higher frequencies, the cross-polarization