Design of Slot Antenna for Wideband Applications

Gaddam Hemanth Indian Institute of Science

Abstract—In this report, the design of a microstrip-fed slot

antenna for wideband application is discussed. The bandwidth
enhancement of the antenna discussed, is achieved by cutting
two open ended slots in the ground plane. The bandwidth of the
antenna is from 2.69 to 10.24 GHz,

I. I NTRODUCTION

Microstrip antennas can be divided into two basic types

by structure, namely microstrip patch antenna and microstrip Fig. 1. Top view
slot antenna. The slot antennas can be fed by microstrip
line, slot line and CPW. In this paper, we presented the
design of slot antenna fed by microstrip line. The designed
antenna has the frequency range from GHz. Slot antennas are
popular omnidirectional microwave antennas. These antennas
feature omnidirectional gain around the azimuth with horizon-
tal polarization. Slot antennas exhibit wider bandwidth, lower
dispersion and lower radiation loss compared to microstrip
antennas. The numerical simulation and analysis for the anten-
nas was performed using the Momentum software package of
the Advanced Design System (ADS) by Agilent Technologies, Fig. 2. Bottom view
which is based on the method of moments.

II. A NTENNA S TRUCTURE III. DESIGN PROCEDURE

The antenna is designed at 3.1GHz with the structure, as This slot antenna composed of two small slots in the ground
shown in Figure 1(a) [2]. This antenna is designed on AD350, plane that are in T shape.
the substrate with thickness (t) of 0.762mm and dielectric Design :The parameters of this structure are as following:
constant r of 3.5. The T-shaped open-ended slot is made in the • L1 =28mm (total length of slot antenna)
ground plane. The slot is comprised of two open-ended slots • L2 = 22mm (length of the slot along y-axis)
along the x and y-axes. A small notch with dimensions 2X1.5 • L3 = 3.5mm(length of extended notch)
mm was made at the right bottom corner of the slot along
Y-xis. At the opposite side of the ground plane, a microstrip
feed line of width 1.5 mm is printed centrally along the y-
axis. The microstrip line feed is designed to be 50 ohms in
order to match the characteristic impedance of transmission
line. At the open end of this microstrip line, an additional
feed section of dimensions 2X1.5 mm is extended along the
x-axis. The dimension of the slot antenna is referred to the
guide wavelength λg which given by [1] [3]

c/f
λg = √ (1)
eff

where eff is an effective dielectric constant.

r + 1
eff ≈ (2)
2
In this case, λg at frequency 3.1 GHz is 28.1 mm. Fig. 3. Return loss of the designed antenna
 2

Fig. 4. Return loss without feed notch

Fig. 5. Return loss without slot notch

Fig. 6. Measured Return Loss of the designed antenna (S11)
TABLE I

Bandwidth(GHz)
With notch 7.55
without feed notch 2.4

• W1 = 4mm and W2 = 5mm.

• The width of the strip line t=1.53mm.
• Figure 3 show the characteristic of return loss S11 of the
Design.
• The simulation results are shown in Table I.

IV. S IMULATION RESULTS

When varying the width of slot, its effect on bandwidth and
return loss are shown in Table II.

TABLE II

L1 L2 W1 W2 Bandwidth(GHz) Return loss(dB) Fig. 7. Gain and Directivity at 5GHz

28 22 3.5 4.5 7.55 -20
28 22 4 5 7.12 -12
 3

Fig. 8. Radiation field of E-plane at 5GHz

Fig. 9. Radiation field of H-plane at 5GHz

V. CONCLUSION
A small-size microstrip-fed slot antenna for wideband ap-
plications was designed and successfully implemented. Wide
operating bandwidth is achieved by unifying different resonant
frequencies, whereby impedances matching are accomplished
by loading a small notch and extending a microstrip feed
section. The proposed antenna design is simple and small in
size.

R EFERENCES
[1] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory. PHI, 2002.
[2] W. T. C. Chow Yen Desmond Sim, Member and C. H. Lee, “Compact
slot antenna for uwb applications,” vol. 9. IEEE ANTENNAS AND
WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, 2010.
[3] Prof. K J Vinoy, “Lecture slides RFIC and MEMS design jan 2010.”