366 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

7, 2008

A Balloon-Shaped Monopole Antenna for Passive

UWB-RFID Tag Applications
Sanming Hu, Student Member, IEEE, Choi Look Law, Senior Member, IEEE, and Wenbin Dou, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A balloon-shaped ultrawideband (UWB) antenna

is developed, and its scattering characteristics are theoretically
and experimentally studied in both the frequency and time do-
main. The radar cross-section (RCS) and scattering waveforms
of the UWB antenna terminated with three different kinds of
loads are simulated and measured. The results which are in good
agreement show that, the balloon-shaped antenna is with almost
omnidirectional scattering pattern, and its scattering of antenna
mode and structural mode are obviously separated in the time
domain. Therefore, this antenna is an eligible candidate for the
passive ultrawideband-enabled radio-frequency identification
(UWB-RFID) tag applications. Furthermore, the scattering wave-
form of this antenna is valuable to clarify the differences on the
definitions of structural and antenna modes.
Index Terms—Backscattering, radar cross-section (RCS), radio-
frequency identification (RFID), structural and antenna modes, ul-
trawideband (UWB) antennas.
Fig. 1. Prototype and geometry of proposed balloon-shaped UWB antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION
LTRAWIDEBAND (UWB) technology has been widely
U investigated and developed since 1960s [1]. As one of
the most crucial components of UWB systems, UWB antennas
have attracted the attention of many researchers and engineers.
Nevertheless, most of the attention has only been given to the
transmitting and/or receiving performances, whereas the scat-
tering characteristics of UWB antennas, which are important
for the ultra-wideband enabled radio-frequency identification
(UWB-RFID) localization system [2]–[6], are seldom emphati-
cally studied in the published literature.
The UWB-RFID localization systems, which apply UWB
technology into RFID and localization applications, have been
developed and reviewed in [2]. These systems rely on tags
requiring dc power to function. The aim of our project was
to design a passive chipless RFID tag interrogated by a UWB
signal from the reader: a passive UWB-RFID tag [3]. This type
of UWB-RFID tag comprises only antenna or antenna array
but no battery nor chip. To identify the passive tags, variable
antenna terminations are adopted to backscatter a cluster of
Manuscript received November 12, 2007; revised January 2, 2008. Current
version published October 24, 2008. This work was supported by the ASTAR
SERC by Grant 052-121-0086.
S. Hu is with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast
University, Nanjing 210096, China, and also with the Positioning and Wireless
Technology Centre, Nanyang Technological University, 637553 Singapore
(e-mail: sanming.hu@gmail.com).
C. L. Law is with the Positioning and Wireless Technology Centre, Nanyang
Technological University, 637553 Singapore (e-mail: ecllaw@ntu.edu.sg).
W. Dou is with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast
University, Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail: wbdou@seu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2008.928462
1536-1225/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
UWB pulses with comparable amplitude, and the feedline with
different length is employed to control the time interval be-
tween the UWB pulses. It works like the pervasive RF barcodes.
Therefore, the passive UWB-RFID tags will have numerous
advantages such as high range resolution, long life-time, low
cost, and compact size. Nevertheless, this kind of UWB-RFID
tag should be specially designed to make it detectable and iden-
tifiable under the required conditions including long detection
range especially.
In this letter, a balloon-like UWB antenna is designed for
the passive UWB-RFID tag applications. Subsequently, the
backscattering characteristics are simulated and experimentally
verified, and the bistatic scattering from the proposed passive
UWB-RFID tag is further numerically studied. Finally, the
long-standing disagreement on the definitions of structural
mode and antenna mode [7], [8] is clarified using the scattering
waveforms of this balloon-shaped antenna.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
Based on the studies of the petaloid antenna [4] and
printed circular-disc monopole antenna (PCDMA) [5], a bal-
loon-shaped UWB antenna, i.e., printed monopole antenna with
a meandrous feedline, is developed and illustrated in Fig. 1.
To enhance the radiation efficiency which is relative to the an-
tenna mode scattering, Rogers RO4003C
rather than FR-4 is chosen
as the substrate because of its lower loss tangent. The thickness
of the substrate is set as 0.508 mm to ensure that the 50 mi-
crostrip feedline is not too narrow nor too wide. Different from
the aforementioned and many other UWB antennas, the pro-
posed antenna includes a 48-mm meandrous feedline, which is
employed to separate the scattering of structural and antenna
HU et al.: BALLOON-SHAPED MONOPOLE ANTENNA 367

Fig. 3. Backscattering cross-section values of proposed passive UWB-RFID

tags, i.e., balloon-shaped antenna with three different kinds of terminations.
Fig. 2. Return loss curves and boresight antenna gain.

modes in the time domain. Optimal miters are introduced to

minimize the reflection from the bends of the meandrous mi-
crostrip line. An elliptical-ring patch is adopted to reduce not
only the antenna size but also the scattering of structural mode.
Compared with the PCDMA [5] and petaloid antenna [4], this
patch features obvious advantages: even though the relative per-
mittivity of the Rogers RO4003C substrate is lower than
that of FR-4, this antenna is more compact than the PCDMA; its
low-end operating frequency (3.4 GHz) is much lower than that
of the petaloid antenna (6.6 GHz). This antenna is also modified
so that the signal amplitude of the antenna mode approaches to
that of the structural mode. The enhanced performances are dis-
cussed in the following section.

III. ANTENNA PERFORMANCES AND DISCUSSION

A. Return Loss and Antenna Gain

As shown in Fig. 2, the simulated -dB impedance band-
width of the proposed antenna is from 3.6 to 12.4 GHz, while
the measured one is from 3.4 to 11.3 GHz. The antenna gain
varies from 0.6 to 4.7 dBi over the frequency range of 3.1 to
10.6 GHz. The results show that this antenna has ultrawide
impedance bandwidth and flat gain.

B. RCS and Scattering Waveforms

When this antenna is terminated with three kinds of loads,
i.e., open-circuit, short-circuit, and matched-load (50 -loaded
resistor), the radar cross-section (RCS) and time-domain
waveforms of scattering, are calculated by the finite-difference
time-domain (FDTD) method and experimentally verified by
frequency-domain measurement [6]. All results on scattering
shown in this letter are for vertical polarization, and
which satisfies the far-field condition.
The RCS values are shown in Fig. 3. The measured results
agree well with simulated. Generally, the peaks for the cases of
open- and short-circuit load emerge alternatively whereas that of
matched-load almost keeps in the middle of the two curves. This
phenomenon is similar with that of the PCDMA and petaloid
antenna [4], [5]. There is another interesting phenomenon con-
cluded from the curves: different from the narrowband antenna
Fig. 4. Boresight backscattering waveforms of balloon-shaped UWB antenna
with three different kinds of terminations.
which can be designed as a minimum scattering antenna (MSA)
[7], it looks like no UWB antenna can be rendered invisible.
Nevertheless, based on the following time-domain study, it is
predictable that employing a dipole structure or shortening the
feedline may be a solution to design a UWB antenna with min-
imum scattering.
Adopting a normalized FCC-compliant fifth-order Gaussian
pulse as the incident wave along the direction of the negative
axis, the time-domain waveforms of backscattering from the
UWB antenna are obtained and illustrated in Fig. 4. The sim-
ulated and measured pulses are almost with identical shapes.
368
Fig. 5. Bistatic scattering of proposed antenna when it is open-circuited.
The ringing of the measured pulses is due to the non-ideal per-
formances of the Tx/Rx antennas [6]. There are two obviously
separated clusters of pulses. Theoretically, the point at which the
first cluster begins is the time it takes for EM wave to backscatter
from the passive UWB-RFID tag to Rx antenna [6], i.e.,
ns, where is the speed of light in free space;
the interval between the two clusters is the time it costs for
quasi-TEM wave traveling along the meandrous feedline and
reflecting back from the load termination, i.e.,
ns, where
. These the-
oretical values approach to the simulated and measured results
shown in Fig. 4
. both the frequency and time domain. The significance of this
As illustrated in Fig. 4, the early-time responses of the
open-circuited, short-circuited, and match-loaded passive
UWB-RFID tags keep the same pulse shape and amplitude,
whereas the late-time ones change a lot. The late-time pulses
have a phase difference of 180 between the cases of open-cir-
cuit and short-circuit terminations; and for a matched-load
UWB antenna, there should be no late-time pulses (the small
ones shown in Fig. 4 are due to the imperfect matching). The
results are in excellent agreements with the analysis in [4]. The
ratio between the peak-to-peak amplitude of the two measured
time-domain pulses is 5.9 dB whereas that one shown in [4]
is around 20 dB. Therefore, it becomes more feasible to em-
ploy late-time pulses to identify the passive UWB-RFID tags
although only a few information bits can be carried by each
antenna element. Employing antenna array as the passive tag is
a good solution to this problem.
The simulated bistatic scattering waveform of a open-cir-
cuited antenna is shown in Fig. 5. The amplitude variation
with incident signal angle of the late-time responses is within
3.0 dB. It shows that the pattern of the late-time scattering of
this passive tag on the - plane is almost omnidirectional.
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 7, 2008
IV. DEFINITIONS OF STRUCTURAL AND ANTENNA MODES
As stated in [7], although the concept of dividing antenna
RCS into the two components (structural mode and antenna
mode) is simple and easily grasped, there is no single defini-
tion of what constitutes each of the scattering modes. It is clear
that the existing definitions of structural and antenna RCS are
rather arbitrary and depend solely on how the reference scatter
and its associated current are defined. Take an example of the
definition of the structural mode RCS. As the results shown in
Fig. 3, some researchers defined it as the RCS when the antenna
is terminated with matched-load, whereas others related it as
the RCS of the open- or short-circuited antenna. From the fre-
quency-domain point of view, all definitions are reasonable, and
it is difficult to decide which one is the best.
Different angles of view may bring out different landscapes.
The time-domain waveforms shown in Fig. 4 are helpful for
ending the arguments. Among the two separated pulse clus-
ters, the early-time pulses almost keep the same whereas the
late-time ones are dependant on the feed terminations. Based
on the observation of the time-domain results and the general
understanding of structural and antenna modes, we conclude
that, among the existing definitions of these two components,
the most reasonable and straightforward one is given by Green
[8]: the structural mode is the early-time pulse which is scat-
tered from a matched-loaded antenna, whereas the antenna
mode is the late-time response which is due to the termination
mismatching and reradiation.
V. CONCLUSION
A UWB antenna is proposed in this letter, and its scattering
characteristics are numerically and experimentally studied in
UWB antenna includes two folds: for practical applications, it
is suitable for the passive UWB-RFID tags; for theory study, it
is useful to explain why Green’s definition is the best one for
the theory of antenna scattering.
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