IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2014

6515

A Compact Dipole Antenna for DTV Applications by

Utilizing L-Shaped Stub and Coupling Strip
Chien-Jen Wang and Yu-Lin Lee

AbstractIn this study, a small dipole antenna for digital television

(DTV) reception band (470862 MHz) is developed. The antenna is composed of a pair of bent dipoles, which are coupling fed by a coaxial cable.
. Two
The resultant antenna has compact size of
parasitically coupling strips are added to excite one additional resonance
mode. Bent dipole antennas and feeding structures are fabricated on
the different planes of the substrate to embed two L-shaped stubs, thus
resulting in improvement of the impedance matching condition. After
careful optimization of the geometrical parameters of the antenna, the
resonances are merged and thus, a wide impedance bandwidth is obtained.
The measured 6-dB bandwidth of the antenna in free space is 615 MHz
(80.4%).

Fig. 1. Schematic configuration of the proposed dipole antenna.

TABLE I
GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED DIPOLE ANTENNA

Index TermsCoupling strip, digital television, dipole antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, with the advantages of high-data-rate transmission, interactive services, and low-power operation, digital television (DTV)
terrestrial broadcasting system has become very attractive for applications in mobile handset devices [1]. Microstrip dipole antennas have
attracted much attention because of broad bandwidth, easy impedance
matching, small size, and light weight [2][6]. With a step-shaped
gap inside the antenna structure, the printed dipole antenna has been
comprehensively investigated for the DTV signal reception [2]. The
wide operating band of the antenna is formed by two excited resonance
modes, which result from two different traveling paths. In [5], by
utilizing an L-shaped coupling strip for a bent dipole, a broadband
operation is shown for 2G/3G/LTE applications. A C-shaped parasitic
strip is embedded inside an asymmetric dipole antenna to move the
resonant band so that the frequency characteristics can be modified
[6]. The triple-band performance can be changed to a dual-band one
by varying the strip length.
In this study, we present a new wideband dipole antenna for DTV
signal reception in the 470862 MHz band. The design introduces two
notched coupling strips beside a pair of bent dipoles and two L-shaped
metal stubs close to the feeding point. Through the antennas parameter analysis, the introduction of coupling strips and L-shaped stubs
excites a wide bandwidth with the merging of three resonance modes.
In addition, the antenna shows stable radiation characteristics, which
are similar to those of the conventional dipole antenna. Details of the
design are presented and discussed by showing comparisons of simulated and measured results.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The schematic configuration of the proposed dipole antenna with a
feeding coaxial cable is shown in Fig. 1. The geometric parameters
Manuscript received March 21, 2014; revised September 17, 2014; accepted
September 21, 2014. Date of publication September 26, 2014; date of current
version November 25, 2014. This work was supported in part by the Ministry of
Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant NSC 101-2221-E-024-012-MY2.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan (e-mail: cjwang@mail.nutn.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2014.2360554

of the antenna are listed in Table I. The antenna is printed on an FR4

microwave substrate with thickness 0.8 mm and relative permittivity
4.4. In general, the length of a dipole antenna is usually about a
half-wavelength. This constrains the antenna size to be small, about
200 mm (length). In order to reduce the whole
20 mm (width)
antenna size, the two ends of the dipole are bent. The bent technology
causes poor impedance matching. The width of the dipole trace is
varied and a loaded stub is added at the end of the dipole arm to solve
the problem. As similar as the electromagnetically coupled design for
the monopole antenna [7], two parasitically coupling strips are added
beside the dipole arms so that there will be an additional resonance
mode. Furthermore, two L-shaped metal stubs are embedded close to
the feeding point to reduce the impedance mismatch.
III. RESULTS
The design evolution of the new coaxial-fed dipole antenna was conducted using the EM software Ansys high frequency structure simulator (HFSS). The expected characteristics of the antenna can be fully
studied, especially over the excited operation frequencies, with the assistance of this software. The development of the antenna and its corrediagram are presented
sponding simulated reflection coefficient
in Fig. 2. Prototype A is a conventional bent dipole antenna. Two resonance modes, centered around 0.46 and 1.04 GHz, are generated. The
frequency band around 0.46 GHz is dominated by the half-wavelength
of the dipole antenna. Prototype B is a modified topology of Prototype
A. After adding the two coupling strips, from the simulated results, the
of the
impedance characteristics show that the length
coupling strips is approximately half of a wavelength of the resonant

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014

Fig. 4. Simulated surface current density distributions of the proposed dipole

antenna.

Fig. 2. Simulated reflection coefficient

and proposed dipole antenna.

of the prototype A, prototype B,

Fig. 3. Simulated input impedance of three types of the dipole antenna by the
EM software.

frequency at 0.74 GHz. It was realized that Prototype B exhibits one additional operated band with a range of 0.71 to 0.78 GHz. The dipole resonance modes are slightly affected. The resonance mechanism will be
explained using the current distribution. By adding a pair of inverted-L
stubs at the feeding point (Proposed antenna), the impedance-matching
condition is significantly improved and the proposed antenna demonstrates large bandwidth. The cause of bandwidth enhancement for the
proposed dipole antenna is the reduction in the input reactance. Fig. 3 is
the comparison of the input impedance of three dipole antennas. Owing
to the high-impedance characteristics of the notched-strip topology,
the coupling strips provide the inductance to cancel the strong capacitance of the bent dipole (Prototype A), and the reactance of Prototype
B approaches zero around 0.74 GHz, thus resulting in a new resonance
mode. The increase of the inductance comes from the in-phase current
distribution of the driven dipole and the parasitic strips [8]. The current phenomenon is treated as the even mode, which is mechanism of
the inductance [9]. Furthermore, after embedding the L-shaped stubs
(Proposed antenna), the reactance of the dipole antenna continuously
increases and the impedance-matching condition improves.
In Fig. 4, the simulated distributions of the surface current density
of the proposed dipole antenna are shown to clarify the mechanism
responsible for the impedance-bandwidth improvement. From the re-

sults, because the dipole is center-fed, the electric currents on the dipole
are symmetrical and go to zero at the ends. In Fig. 4(a) and (b), the
0.49 GHz and 0.68 GHz modes are mainly induced with the current
and
. Owing to one maximum
paths of approximately
point along the antenna trace, the two resonance modes are the fundamental mode. The injection power of the antenna at 0.68 GHz is coupled with the parasitically notched strips via the inverted-L stubs. As
for the 0.95 GHz mode shown in Fig. 4(c), its current path is approxi. It is seen that there are two null points. Therefore, the
mately
resonance mode at 0.95 GHz can be determined by the harmonic mode.
The current distributions at the three operated frequencies are similar
and
modes.
to the
The photographs of the proposed dipole antenna in the free space
and with the system ground plane (calling in-case) were fabricated according to design dimensions in Section II, as shown in Fig. 5. The
performances of the proposed dipole antenna were measured and compared with the simulated results by the software. Fig. 6 shows a comparison of the simulated and measured frequency characteristics of the
proposed antenna, where the measurements of the proposed free-space
and in-case antennas are included. According to the concept of the antenna measurements in [10], the measured reflection coefficients of the
in-case antenna are derived by placing the antenna beside the system
ground plane of the antenna-under-test (AUT) like a tablet personal
computer. To avoid forming a close current contour of the bent dipole,
only one arm of the dipole can be close to the system ground plane. The
separation between the system ground plane and the dipole antenna is
8 mm. It is observed that the impedance bandwidth of the in-case antenna increases to 630 MHz from 615 MHz of that in free space. The
frequencies of the fundamental and harmonic modes of the bent dipole
shift down. The effect may be attributed to the increase of the internal
capacitance, resulting from coupling effect between the antenna and
system ground plane. The impedance-matching condition around 0.54
GHz will deteriorate if the separation is smaller than 8 mm.
As depicted in the figure, the measured reflection coefficients are
smaller than 6 dB within the operation band. The discrepancies between the simulated and measured results might be attributed to fabrication tolerances and material parameter uncertainty. The measured
impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna ranges from 0.46 to 1.07
GHz, a 0.61 GHz impedance bandwidth (80.7%), whereas the simulated bandwidth is from 0.47 to 1.02 GHz, a bandwidth (73.8%) of 0.55
GHz. According to the results of the measured reflection coefficient,
the proposed antenna has a wide bandwidth due to the contribution of
the three resonance modes.
Fig. 7 shows the simulated and measured radiation patterns in two
and
planes, for the three operation
principal planes, namely the
frequencies (0.49, 0.68, and 0.95 GHz) utilized in the DTV systems.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014

6517

Fig. 5. Photographs of the fabricate dipole antenna: (a) In free space and
(b) with the system ground plane.

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured reflection coefficient for the proposed dipole
antenna.

The radiation patterns of the proposed antennas are measured in the

anechoic chamber. It is seen that the measured radiation patterns are
similar to the simulated ones. Due to the bent topology and compact
size, most of the power radiates out from the horizontal component of
the dipole arms. The radiation patterns of the proposed dipole antenna
look like those of a conventional dipole antenna.
A comparison of the radiation efficiency and gain of the proposed antenna for frequencies across the operation band is presented in Fig. 8.
The average efficiencies in the measurement and simulation for the
band are higher than 62%. The gain comparison method, in which a
pre-calibrated standard gain antenna was used, is applied to determine
the gain of the proposed dipole antenna. The gains are 0.57 to 1.15
dBi from 0.47 GHz to 0.862 GHz. The measured and simulated results agree well. Table II presents the comparison of some past reports
and our study for the DTV applications. Note that some reports are
designed by using the monopole antenna [11][14]. To compare with
the performance of other antennas in the table, the bandwidth, antenna
gain, and radiation efficiency of the proposed dipole antenna are good
and acceptable for applications of the DTV system.
A parametric study of the proposed dipole antenna is carried out
in order to understand the frequency-characteristics effect on the ge-

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna in

the xz- and yz- planes at (a) 0.49 GHz, (b) 0.68 GHz, (b) 0.95 GHz.

ometrical structure. Simulations are carried out using Ansys HFSS and
an investigation of the antenna parameter dependence is made. Fig. 9
shows the dependence of the reflection coefficients on the length
of the capacitive end of the bent arm. It can clearly be observed that
when the length increases, the resonances around 0.49 GHz and 0.95
GHz shift down because of the increase in the electric length of the
of the parasitically coupling
bent arm. The effects of the length
strip on the frequency response of the proposed dipole are depicted in
Fig. 10. It is clearly observed that the frequency of the middle resonance
around 0.68 GHz moves up by decreasing the strip length. The upper
two resonance bands merge into one band and the impedance matching
condition is enhanced if the length is less than 55 mm. Fig. 11 exhibits
of the inverted-L stubs at the
the effects of adjusting the length
feeding structure on frequency performance. The change does not only
controls the impedance matching conditions between three resonance
modes, but also modifies the location of the second resonant mode,

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF SOME PAST REPORTS AND OUR STUDY

Fig. 8. Comparison of radiation efficiency and gain of the proposed dipole

antenna.

Fig. 10. Simulated reflection coefficients on the length

cally coupling strip.

Fig. 11. Simulated reflection coefficients on the length

stubs.
Fig. 9. Simulated reflection coefficients on the length

of the parasiti-

of the metal

of the bent dipole.

IV. CONCLUSION
dominated by the parasitically coupling strips. It is proven that the operated frequency of the mode shifts down because of the enhancement
of the inner capacitance, resulting from increase in the stubs. When
, the variation of the reflection coefficient from 0.47
to 0.87 GHz is roughly 6 dB.

This communication presents the design of a small dipole antenna

with a coaxial feeding structure for the applications of the DTV
system. By utilizing the bent dipole topology and a pair of parasitically
coupling strips, three resonance modes can be excited. By embedding
the inverted-L stubs as an inner capacitor, the impedance-matching

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2014

performance of the proposed antenna is improved, thus providing

an impedance bandwidth larger than that of a conventional dipole
antenna. Stable radiation patterns, similar to those of conventional
dipole antenna, have been observed. This proposed antenna can be
applied to the notebook or tablet personal computer after fitting the
case frame and fine tuning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Assistance in the form of simulation tools from the National Center
for High Performance Computing, Hsinchu, Taiwan is acknowledged.
The authors wish to thank Y. Tai, Wistron NeWeb Corporation,
Hsinchu, Taiwan, for his assistance in the radiation pattern measurement of the antenna. They are also grateful to D.-H. Hsieh for his
assistance in the measurement of the antenna with the system ground
plane.

REFERENCES
[1] Y. W. Chi and K. L. Wong, Wideband printed dipole antenna for DTV
signal reception, Proc. IEEE, vol. 40, pp. 14, 2007.
[2] Y. W. Chi, K. L. Wong, and S. H. Yeh, End-fed modified planar dipole
antenna for DTV signal reception, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol.
49, no. 3, pp. 676680, Mar. 2007.
[3] C. T. Lee and K. L. Wong, Broadband planar dipole antenna for
DTV/GSM operation, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 50, pp.
19001905, Jul. 2008.
[4] P. Wu, Z. Kuai, and X. Zhu, Multiband antennas comprising multiple
frame-printed dipoles, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 10,
pp. 33133316, Oct. 2009.
[5] Y. H. Cui, R. L. Li, and P. Wang, A Novel broadband planar antenna
for 2G/3G/LTE base stations, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61,
no. 5, pp. 27672774, May 2013.
[6] C. Y. D. Sim, H. Y. Chien, and C. H. Lee, Dual-/triple-band asymmetric dipole antenna for WLAN operation in laptop computer, IEEE
Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 61, no. 7, pp. 38083813, Jul. 2013.
[7] J. Jung, H. Choo, and I. Park, Design and performance of small electromagnetically coupled monopole antenna for broadband operation,
IET Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 536541, Apr. 2007.
[8] S. Risco, J. Anguera, A. Andjar, A. Prez, and C. Puente, Coupled
monopole antenna design for multiband handset devices, Microw.
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 52, no. 10, pp. 359364, Feb. 2010.
[9] J. S. Hong and M. J. Lancaster, Microstrip Filters for RF/Microwave
Applications. New York, NY, USA: Wiley, 2001.
[10] J. Anguera, A. Andjar, M.C. Huynh, C. Orlenius, C. Picher, and C.
Puente, Advances in antenna technology for wireless handheld devices, Int. J. Antennas Propag., vol. 2013, 2013 [Online]. Available:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/838364, Article ID 376531
[11] W. Y. Li, K. L. Wong, and S. W. Su, Broadband integrated DTV antenna for USB dongle application, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol.
49, no. 5, pp. 10181021, May 2007.
[12] C. K. Hsu and S. J. Chung, A wideband DVB forked shape monopole
antenna with coupling effect for USB dongle application, IEEE Trans.
Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 9, pp. 30293036, Sep. 2010.
[13] D. B. Lin, P. C. Tsai, I. T. Tang, and P. S. Chen, Spiral and multimode
antenna miniaturization for DTV Signal Receptions, IEEE Antennas
Wireless Propag Lett., vol. 9, pp. 902905, 2010.
[14] C. Yang, H. Kim, and C. Jung, Broad dual-band PIFA using self-complementary structure for DVB-H applications, IET Electron. Lett., vol.
46, no. 21, pp. 14181419, Oct. 2010.

6519

De-Polarization of On-Body Channels and Polarization

Diversity at 60 GHz
Yuriy I. Nechayev, Constantinos C. Constantinou, Xianyue Wu, and
Peter S. Hall

AbstractMeasurements of on-body dynamic propagation channels

have been performed at 60 GHz using dual-polarized scalar horn antennas.
Comparison of the statistics of the measured signals showed that the choice
of polarization (vertical or horizontal) does not affect the path losses
significantly, and the relative polarization of the two antennas depends on
their placement on the body. In volatile links, such as those from the wrist
to other parts of the body, random movements equalize the differences
between different polarization configurations. These depolarization effects
can be exploited to improve link performance through the use of receive
diversity with maximal ratio combining. More advanced multiple-input
multiple-output diversity methods are found to produce only marginally
better performance compared to receive maximal ratio combining.
Index TermsMillimeter wave propagation, personal area networks, polarization diversity.

I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless communications at the V-band frequencies around 60 GHz
promise to provide a number of benefits in wireless body-area network (WBAN) applications. Up to 7 GHz of spectrum is available
in this band for unlicensed short-range use in many countries around
the world. Thus, data rates of tens of Gb/s can be potentially achieved
using advanced encoding methods, such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). Two proposed network standards, WiGig
(IEEE 802.11ad) [1] and WirelessHD [2], utilize this frequency band
achieving data rates of up to 7 Gb/s, and up to 28 Gb/s with spatial
multiplexing [3].
Electromagnetic waves in the 60 GHz frequency band are subject
to fast attenuation with distance and absorption by oxygen molecules
in atmosphere. This helps to reduce interference between neighboring
communication networks and also enhances network security and
covertness. In [4], it was demonstrated that WBANs using communication links at 60 GHz with omnidirectional monopole antennas
are detectable at distances more than 10 times shorter than WBANs
operating at 2.45 GHz. This is a particularly attractive property for
WBANs worn by military personnel in the battlefield.
Covertness of such WBANs can be improved even further, at the
same time increasing the wanted signal levels, if omnidirectional antennas are replaced with high-gain directional antennas. If such an antenna is pointed in a nearly vertical direction, it will be less visible to
any ground-based detectors, whilst maintaining strong signal strengths
along the human body. The challenges posed by this solution include
transmit and receive antenna misalignment and polarization mismatch
caused by body movements of the WBAN user. The effect of such
movements on the radio channel with monopole antennas was investigated in [5] and measurements of radio channels with horn antennas
Manuscript received January 28, 2014; revised May 23, 2014; accepted
September 02, 2014. Date of publication October 02, 2014; date of current
version November 25, 2014. This work was supported by the UK EPSRC
under Grant EP/I010491/1. (Corresponding author: C. C. Constantinou.)
The authors are with the School of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, U.K.
(e-mail: c.constantinou@bham.ac.uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2014.2361140

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redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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