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V are reported [9–12]. However, the main shortcoming of all of
CRLH UNIT CELL LOADED TRIPLE BAND
COMPACT MONOPOLE ANTENNA FOR
WLAN/WiMAX APPLICATIONS
Sourav Nandi and Akhilesh Mohan
Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering Department,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India;
Corresponding author: sourav.nandi@ece.iitkgp.ernet.in
Received 20 August 2016
ABSTRACT: A miniaturized triple band monopole antenna, loaded
with complementary right/left handed (CRLH) unit cell, is proposed in
this letter. Due to the loading of CRLH unit cell, two extra resonant fre-
quencies are obtained below the conventional rectangular loop mono-
pole resonant frequency of the antenna and thus the electrical size of
the antenna is reduced in a great extent. The antenna operates in the
range of 2.39–2.6 GHz, 3.38–3.68 GHz, and 5.12–6.51 GHz. Moreover,
the antenna offers omnidirectional radiation pattern and moderate gain,
which makes the proposed design well suited for practical wireless LAN
(WLAN-2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz) and worldwide interoperability for microwave
access (WiMAX-2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz) applications. The physical size of the
antenna is 20 mm 3 21 mm 3 1.57 mm, which is highly compact com-
pared with the earlier published metamaterial inspired tri-band anten-
nas. VC 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett
59:686–691, 2017; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com.
DOI 10.1002/mop.30377
Key words: composite right/left handed; loop; monopole; triple-band
1. INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development and evolution in the field of mod-
ern wireless communication systems, more and more features,
e.g. Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMAX, etc., are being incorporated in a
single portable device, while maintaining its compact size. It is,
therefore, a real challenge to design a miniaturized and low pro-
file multiband antenna, which is operable at those particular fre-
quencies and will cover the respective bandwidths. Monopole
antennas, based on microstrip technologies, are suitable candi-
dates for these types of applications, as they offer compact size,
low cost and can be etched on a single substrate. Moreover, the
omnidirectional radiation pattern, provided by a monopole
antenna, is an important requirement for the aforementioned
purposes. In the literature, there exist several designs of tri-band
planar antennas [1–11], among which some antennas are
686 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2017
Ref. [1], square-slot with symmetrical L-strips is used to obtain
triple band. In Ref. [2], properly designed monopole with
defected ground structure (DGS) provides tri-band. A very com-
plicated design is shown in Ref. [3], which uses a rectangular
ring and an S-shaped strip attached to the feedline, with a
crooked U-shaped strip and three straight strips on the bottom
layer to achieve tri-band. In Ref. [4–6], triple bands are
achieved by variously designing three radiator strips of different
lengths. A pair of symmetrical edge resonators and a T-shaped
stub resonator are designed in Ref. [7] to obtain three bands. In
Ref. [8], triple band is achieved by exploiting open ended slots
of different lengths. But this type of structure suffers from
design complexity. The application of the concept of metamate-
rial is gaining popularity for last few years as it has been proved
very useful for designing multiband antennas. Recently, few
works on CRLH unit cell loaded triple band monopole antennas
those designs is their relatively larger physical sizes, which
make them inappropriate for modern portable communication
devices.
In this letter, a very compact triple band planar monopole
antenna is designed and presented. The rectangular loop mono-
pole antenna offers conventional monopole resonance and it
covers 5.5 GHz WiMAX band. The reactive loading, generated
by CRLH unit cell, is exploited to create two additional reso-
nances below the normal monopole resonance – the first one at
2.51 GHz and the second one at 3.55 GHz – covering 2.4 GHz
WLAN band and 2.5/3.5 GHz WiMAX band. The proposed
antenna offers design flexibility, low profile, uses simple feed-
ing technique, and is single-dielectric-layered, making the struc-
ture easy to fabricate.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN
The design geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig-
ure 1. The antenna is designed on Rogers RT/duroid 5880 sub-
strate (er 5 2.2 and tan d 5 0.0009) of 1.57 mm thickness. The
antenna is fed with a 50 X microstrip line. In the design, a rect-
angular loop monopole antenna is loaded with a single CRLH
unit cell. A CRLH unit cell is comprised of an interdigital
capacitor (IDC) and two short-circuited meandered stubs, as
shown in Figure 2. A metallic via of diameter “d” connects the
end of each of the stubs to the rectangular metallic patch, situat-
ed at the bottom plane just beneath the CRLH unit cell. The
left-handed series capacitance (CL) is realized by incorporating
the IDC, whereas, two short-circuited stubs contribute in gener-
ating left-handed shunt inductance (LL). The effect of loading of
the unit cell is shown in Figure 3. In case of unloaded rectangu-
lar loop monopole antenna, the conventional resonant frequency
is 4.77 GHz. Using of rectangular loop is advantageous as it
decreases the physical size of the antenna compared with the
conventional quarter wavelength planar monopole antennas.
Small conventional microstrip monopole antennas with finite
ground plane always resonate at greater than kg/4 frequency,
where kg is the guided wavelength. Therefore to resonate a con-
ventional kg/4 planar monopole antenna at 4.77 GHz, the sub-
strate length needed will be significantly larger than L. When
the antenna is loaded with a CRLH unit cell, two more resonant
frequencies are obtained below the conventional monopole oper-
ating frequency. Unlike the CRLH unit cells, all of which are
designed to balance around the monopole resonating frequencies
in Refs. [9,10,12], the frequency f0, at which b 5 0 [13], of this
CRLH unit cell is designed at a frequency of 7.5 GHz, which is
DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 1 Geometry of the proposed antenna (a) Top view of the antenna [L 5 21 mm, W 5 20 mm, Lm 5 11 mm, Wm 5 12 mm, Lg 5 9 mm,
Wf 5 4.8 mm, Lh 5 2.2 mm, m 5 0.5 mm], (b) fabricated prototype of the design (Top and Bottom). [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.
com]

Figure 2 (a) Design of the CRLH unit cell [a 5 3 mm, a1 5 2.6 mm, b 5 9.2 mm, d 5 0.6 mm, p 5 0.8 mm, LI 5 2 mm, WI 5 0.2 mm, g 5 0.2 mm],
(b) equivalent circuit model of the CRLH unit cell. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Figure 3 Simulated S11 parameters of the rectangular loop monopole

antenna with and without loading of CRLH unit cell. [Color figure can
be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] Figure 4 Dispersion diagram of the CRLH unit cell

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2017 687
Figure 5 Surface current density distribution at first two resonant frequencies (a) 2.51 GHz and (b) 3.55 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyon-
linelibrary.com]

utotal 5umonopole 1uCRLH 5n390

n50; 61; 63 . . . (1)

Figure 6 Simulated S11 parameters for varying positions of CRLH
unit cell. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
beyond the 210 dB band of the conventional monopole fre-
quency of the unloaded antenna. Since, at this design frequency
of the unit cell, the desired three bands of the antenna can also
be achieved, this frequency can be considered as good starting
point to design the CRLH unit cell. The resonance condition of
a monopole loaded with a CRLH unit cell can be mathematical-
ly expressed as:
where utotal is the total phase shift across the monopole with
CRLH unit cells, umonopole is the phase shift due to the mono-
pole without the CRLH unit cell, uCRLH is the phase shift
caused by single CRLH unit cell, and n is the mode order.
The dispersion diagram of the CRLH unit cell in Figure 4,
where “a1” is the periodicity of the unit cell, shows that the first
two resonant frequencies are obtained at left-handed region of
the unit cell. From Figure 5, it is observed that at lowest reso-
nant frequency, i.e. 2.51 GHz, the surface current density is
dominant at the right part of the lower arm, the right and upper
arms of the rectangular loop and covering up to the meandered
stubs of the unit cell. Therefore, this portion of the rectangular
loop is responsible for the excitation of the antenna at
2.51 GHz. Moreover, this resonant frequency lies in the stop-
band region of the dispersion diagram. At this region, the anten-
na can be considered as the combination of monopole with
meandered stub, since the series capacitor becomes open
circuited [9,10]. In case of the second resonant frequency, the
dominant surface current density prevails over left part of the
lower arm and the left arm including the meandered stubs of
the unit cell, while, it is almost negligible at the right portion of
the loop. So, the prime determining factor behind the second

Figure 7 Surface current density distribution on the monopole at (a) 4.77 GHz without the CRLH unit cell and (b) 5.73 GHz with CRLH unit cell.
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

688 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2017 DOI 10.1002/mop

Figure 8 Simulated S11 parameters for varying finger length of the
IDC. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 9 Simulated and measured S11 parameters of the proposed
antenna. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 10 Simulated and measured normalized 2D radiation patterns of the proposed antenna. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2017
operating frequency is the length along which the surface cur-
rent dominates at that frequency. The shunt inductor has also a
significant role to determine this frequency. Therefore, for
design purpose, by properly adjusting the position of the
CRLH unit cell on the rectangular loop, the first two desired
operating frequencies can be achieved. This is also shown
graphically in Figure 6. The value of Lh is 2.2 mm in the pro-
posed antenna. When the distance Lh is decreased to 1.2 mm,
the total length of upper and right arm portion of the monopole
decreases and length below the unit cell increases. As a result
the first resonant frequency shifts toward higher frequency,
whereas, the second resonant frequency decreases. This second
resonant frequency lies within the left-handed passband region
of the unit cell and satisfies the equation (1) for n 5 0. Accord-
ing to the characteristics of zeroth-order mode, a discontinuity
of surface current density appears just above the CRLH unit
cell boundary, while it is uniform along the dominant surface
current density region, i.e., left part of the lower arm of the
monopole and the portion of the left arm below the unit cell
(Fig. 5).
The third resonant frequency of the antenna is the conven-
tional resonant frequency of the rectangular loop monopole
antenna. The half of the rectangular loop length along OA-AB-
BP in Figure 7(a) is approximately equals to the kg/2. This
length determines the resonant frequency of the monopole
antenna. Figure 3 shows that this frequency is shifted from
4.77 GHz to 5.73 GHz, when the antenna is loaded with the
CRLH unit cell from unloaded condition. The shift of the third
operating band is due to the interaction of the rectangular loop
with the CRLH unit cell. The surface current on the unit cell is
almost negligible at 5.73 GHz, as shown in Figure 7(b). It
implies that, the unit cell does not contribute at all at this fre-
quency. Moreover, due to the presence of the CRLH unit cell,
the position P is shifted to new position P and the difference
between two positions is exactly equal to the length of the
689
TABLE 1 Comparison of Different Parameters of the Proposed and Reference Antenna
Total Physical Total Electrical Relative Frequency Fractional Peak Gain
Ref. Area (mm2) Area Permittivity Bands (GHz) Bandwidth (%) (dBi)
[2] 38 3 25 0.32 k0 3 0.21 k0 4.4 2.4/5.2/5.8 12,29,12 1.85,2.19, 2.57
2.5/3.5/5.5
[3] 35 3 25 0.29 k0 3 0.20 k0 4.4 2.4/5.2/5.8 6.5,21,13.8 2.05,2.6,3.55
3.5/5.5
[4] 22 3 29 0.18 k0 3 0.23 k0 3.38 2.4/3.6/5.4 Not given 1.3,3,2.3
[6] 21 3 29 0.17 k0 3 0.24 k0 4.4 2.4/3.5/5.5 4.9,9.7,26 0.64,1.87, 3.74
[9] 56 3 95 0.39 k0 3 0.17 k0 2.2 0.93,1.23,2.10 Narrow,narrow,54 Not given
[10] 56 3 95 0.28 k0 3 0.17 k0 2.2 0.89,1.66,2.57 4.72,6.33,15.7 1.87,1.03,3.14
[11] 30 3 30 0.30 k0 3 0.30 k0 4.4 3.05/4.9/8.25 Not Given 1.5,3.6,4.4
This work 20 3 21 0.16 k0 3 0.17 k0 2.2 2.4/5.2/5.8 12.4,5.7,41.1 1.29,2.44,3.26
2.5/3.5/5.5
k0 is the free space wavelength at lowest resonant frequency.

CRLH unit cell i.e. “a1.” Therefore, after loading the unit cell,
the length kg/2 along O0 A0 -A0 B0 -B0 P0 is reduced by “a1” and
consequently this monopole operating frequency is increased to
5.73 GHz.
Figure 8 shows the variation of S11 parameters along with
varying length of the finger lengths LI of the IDC. The increased
finger length implies an increase in CL in CRLH unit cell. It is
evident that with increasing value of series capacitance the first
two resonant frequencies will be decreased. Whereas, the change
in third resonant frequency is very negligible, as, this frequency
is mostly dependent on the dimension of the rectangular loop
monopole.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The fabricated prototype of the proposed triple-band antenna is
shown in Figure 1(b). The S11 parameter of the antenna is mea-
sured in Anritsu MS2038C vector network analyzer. The simu-
lated and measured S11 parameters are shown in Figure 9. The
measured and simulated results are in good agreement. Fabrica-
tion tolerance, SMA connector loss and limitations of simulation
environment are the principal factors behind the slight discrep-
ancies between them. The measured resonant frequencies are
obtained at 2.59 GHz, 3.53 GHz, and 5.72 GHz. The measured
210 dB operating bands are obtained in the range from 2.38 to
2.7, 3.43 to 3.63, and 5.25 to 7.6 GHz with fractional bandwidth
of 12.4%, 5.7%, and 41.1%, respectively. The measured two
dimensional normalized radiation patterns, shown in Figure 10,
also match well with the simulated results obtained in full wave
commercial EM solver Ansoft HFSS 13.0. The antenna shows
omnidirectional radiation pattern along xz-plane, while, along
yz-plane, the pattern is nearly bi-directional. The nulls in co-pol
radiation pattern in xy-plane are obtained at oblique angle. This
is due to the fact that, in case of this small antenna, ground
plane is the principal radiator. Since the main radiator is not
evenly distributed below and above the substrate plane, i.e., it is
asymmetric with variation of h along yz-plane, the nulls are
shifted from the substrate plane. The peak realized gain of the
proposed antenna, obtained at 2.51 GHz, 3.55 GHz, and
5.73 GHz are 1.29 dBi, 2.44 dBi, and 3.26 dBi, respectively.
Table 1 shows the comparison of different parameters between
the present work and the earlier published works. As per
authors’ knowledge, the proposed one is the smallest CRLH unit
cell loaded microstrip planar triple band antenna, designed for
WLAN/WiMAX applications.
4. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a novel technique to design triple band monopole
antenna is presented and analyzed. Due to the loading of CRLH
unit cell, apart from the conventional monopole resonance, the
antenna resonates at two more different lower frequencies. The
proposed antenna is highly compact and have a total electrical
size of 0.16 k0 3 0.17 k0. The use of single substrate layer, to
design the antenna, makes it low profile and easily integrable
with other microwave planar circuits. Moreover, the omnidirec-
tional radiation pattern at all three resonant frequencies, judi-
ciously chosen resonant frequencies and proper bandwidths
make the monopole antenna well suited for practical application
purposes like in different handheld devices working in WLAN
and WiMAX bands.
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tions, Electron Lett 48 (2012), 1519–1520.
4. A. Mehdipour, A. Sebak, C.W. Trueman, and T.A. Denidni, Com-
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cations, IEEE Antenna Wireless Propag Lett 11 (2012), 144–147.
5. H. Zhai, Z. Ma, Y. Han, and C. Liang, A compact printed antenna
for triple-band WLAN/WiMAX applications, IEEE Antenna Wire-
less Propag Lett 12 (2013), 65–68.
6. H. Chen, X. Yang, Y.Z. Yin, S.T. Fan, and J.J. Wu, Triband planar
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cations, IEEE Antenna Wireless Propag Lett 12 (2013), 1440–1443.
7. W. Hu, Y. Yin, X. Yang, and P. Fei, Compact multi-resonator load-
ed planar antenna for multiband operation, IEEE Trans Antennas
Propag 61 (2013), 2838–2841.
8. X. Li, X. Shi, W. Hu, P. Fei, and J. Yu, Compact triband ACS-fed
monopole antenna employing open-ended slots for wireless
communications, IEEE Antenna Wireless Propag Lett 12 (2013),
388–391.
9. A.A. Ibrahim, A.M.E. Safwat, and H. El-Hennawy, Triple-band
microstrip-fed monopole antenna loaded with CRLH unit cell, IEEE
Antenna Wireless Propag Lett 10 (2011), 1547–1550.
10. S.V. Reddy, D. Sarkar, D.K. Saurav, and K.V. Srivastava, A com-
pact CRLH unit cell loaded triple-band monopole antenna, Micro-
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12. A.A. Ibrahim and A.M.E. Safwat, Microstrip-fed monopole antennas
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C 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
V
MULTI-WAVELENGTH L-BAND GAIN-
CLAMPED ERBIUM-DOPED FIBER
AMPLIFIER WITH HIGH GAIN AND
FLATNESS BY USING COMPOSITE FBGS
Yang Jiuru1 and Liu Chunyu1,2
1
Key Lab of Electronics Engineering, College of Heilongjiang
Province, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, People’s Republic of
China; Corresponding author: liuchunyu@hlju.edu.cn
2
Electrical Engineering College, Heilongjiang University, Harbin,
People’s Republic of China
Received 2 August 2016
ABSTRACT: The gain-clamped erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA)
can efficiently stabilize the gain fluctuation of signals, but with the price
of gain–loss and worsened flatness. In this paper, we theoretically study
the relationships between clamping and loss and propose a novel linear-
cavity gain controller based on a pair of composite fiber Bragg gratings
(FBGs) to balance gain and clamping, which consist of a uniform FBG
with high-reflectivity and a chirp-FBG with low-reflectivity. The compre-
hensive experiments and comparisons are then conducted in terms of
gain, flatness and clamping capability. Under the optimized central
wavelength and reflectivity of FBGs, the 60.1 dB stability of multi-
wavelength signals is achieved in 30 dB dynamic range. Moreover,
our designed amplifier simultaneously guarantees the high average gain
(24 dB) and low un-flatness (60.8 dB) in the range of 1570–
1610 nm. This is a very promising technology for practicality of L-band
gain-clamped EDFAs due to its simple configuration and adjustment.
C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:691–
V 
695, 2017; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI
10.1002/mop.30376
Key words: erbium-doped fiber amplifier; L-band; gain-clamping;
flatness; fiber Bragg grating
1. INTRODUCTION
The recent Internet applications, such as video on demands,
online games/meeting, social media networks, lead a continuous
increasing in traffic. The requirements of bandwidth then trigger
a lot of researching with respects to hybrid, waveguide, para-
metric and multimode optical amplifiers, etc. [1–4]. Neverthe-
less due to a clear benefit in cost, the traditional erbium-doped
fiber amplifier (EDFA) still plays a significant role in the cur-
rent optical transport networks [5]. To extend the operating
band, long-wavelength-band (L-band, 1570–1610 nm) EDFAs
have received much attention since the end of 1990s. Naturally,
the gain spectrum of erbium-doped fiber (EDF) in L-band is
more flat than that in conventional-band (C-band, 1525–
1565 nm), but the drawback is lower gain efficiency [6]. Two-
stage and dual-pass configurations have been proved to
efficiently enhance the output gain of L-band EDFAs [7,8]. In
addition, according to the principle of lasing resonance, many
ring- and linear-cavity configurations are proposed and to stabi-
lize gain of L-band EDFAs. At lasing wavelength, the gain of
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 59, No. 3, March 2017
signals could be controlled within 60.1 dB in more than 30 dB
dynamic range. However, the narrow-band-based clamping is
difficult to control the gain of multi-wavelength signals and
results in a worsened flatness, and much more gain–loss would
be brought under the condition of wide-band clamping [9–11].
Thus, the simultaneous flattening and clamping with high gain
is so far an open issue in the application of EDFAs.
To get a trade-off of performance, Xia and Xiao use the par-
tial gain-clamped method to avoid the over-loss of gain [10,12].
And based on weak gain-clamped technology, C-band dual-
fiber-Bragg-grating (FBG) are frequently adopted in ring- and
linear-cavity-based L-band EDFAs [13–17]. But their practicali-
ty is limited because of the unmatched central wavelengths of
FBGs. In Refs. [18,19], the broad-/narrow-band single-FBG-
based schemes are presented to enhance output gain of signals
but with low flatness and stability. In this paper, we modify the
conventional dual-FBG configuration and use a pair of compos-
ite FBGs to form a novel linear-cavity-based gain-controller,
which consists of a uniform FBG (denoted by uni-FBG) with
high reflectivity and a chirp-FBG with low reflectivity. Then
through a comprehensive test, the suitable range of FBG with
respects to central wavelength and reflectivity are found, and
the demands of amplifiers are simultaneously guaranteed in
terms of gain, flatness and stability. The experimental results
show that, in our proposed scheme, 24 dB average gain and
60.8 dB flatness in the range of 1570–1610 nm can be
obtained together. In addition, 60.1 dB stability of multi-
wavelength signals is also guaranteed within 30 dB dynamic
range. This is a very promising technology for practicality of
L-band gain-clamped EDFAs.
2. PRINCIPLES
In a typical EDFA, assume the length of EDF is L, and its
absorption, emission coefficient, and background loss are
denoted by a, g*, and l, respectively. Then from Ref. [9], the
gain of an input signal with the central wavelength at ks can be
depicted by
GðkS Þ5ef½aðks Þ1g ðks Þn2½aðks Þ1lðks ÞgL
(1)
where n is the population inversion number, and it can be writ-
ten as
ln Gðks Þ aðks Þ1lðks Þ
n5 1 (2)
L½aðks Þ1g ðks Þ aðks Þ1g ðks Þ
It is obvious that G(ks) is a monotone increasing function of n.
Therefore, to avoid the fluctuation of signals resulting from the
change of add/drop channels, the value of n should be con-
strained in a small range. The all-optical gain-clamped schemes
have been proved to automatically stabilize the gain of signals
in a large dynamic range. As shown in Figure 1, in a linear-
cavity-based gain-clamped EDFA, two reflectors are placed in
Figure 1 Basic principle of linear-cavity-based gain clamping. [Color
figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
691