2290 | PEDRAM
Received: 15 February 2017
DOI: 10.1002/mop.30728
A multiband circularly
polarized antenna with simple
structure for wireless
communication system
Kioumars Pedram | Javad Nourinia |
Changiz Ghobadi | Mohsen Karamirad
Department of Electrical Engineering, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
Correspondence
Kioumars Pedram, Department of Electrical Engineering, Urmia University,
Urmia, Iran.
Email: pedram.qmars@gmail.com
Abstract
A small multiband antenna with circularly polarization is
presented in order to apply in WWAN/WIMAX/WLAN
bands. This antenna consists of a rectangular patch with
2 L-Shaped stubs and 3 slots over a ground which are sep-
arated by a substrate. Moreover, the dimensions of the
proposed antenna are 21 3 213 0.8 mm3. As a result, the
simple design enables the antenna to operate in such fre-
quencies of 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6 GHz which are
across the WWAN/WIMAX\WLAN bands. Furthermore,
3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is 16.5% within the WWAN
band. The simulation and measurement results of the
antenna illustrate a good impedance bandwidth and radia-
tion characteristics cover the whole required band for
WWAN/WIMAX/WLAN application.
KEYWORDS
multiband antenna, circularly polarization, small size, Wireless communi-
cation system, mobile communication system
1 | INTRODUCTION
The growing need for seeking works, using the equipment such
as mobile phones, pagers, and so forth. has been possible
through the wireless networks. If the user or company or applica-
tion program wants to have their required data and information
any time, the wireless networks will be a suitable infrastructure
for them. In today world with growing the population and cities,
the need for connecting the effective communication is
ET AL.
necessary more than ever. And always there are the significant
changes here of that are done by the owners of the communica-
tions industry in the world. The appearance of initial communi-
cation tools such as Morse and the telegraph caused that people
be closer to each other and inventing the telephone made it to
feel closer. The phone has been posed as an extraordinary phe-
nomenon in the communication world and will remain forever.
Finally, with advent of the computers and present internet, a new
horizon has been opened in the field of communication, and so
the communication networks were emerged. Growing the office
community led to grow the computer networks significantly and
today we have a real battle on this field.
The subject about network is very widespread and com-
plex, but here we will explore a new form of communication
and computer networks known as Wireless. The Wireless
technology is used for a long time. The mobile communica-
tion, the intercity or international communication and also
communication between military units are examples of this
technology. But the information exchange from one place to
another has provided a new access in the wireless network,
and the number of its users increases every day. The hard-
ware equipment allows connecting to each other without
using the physical media such as wire and cable. The wire-
less networks contains a wide range of applications, from
complex structures such as cellular wireless networks—
which are often used in mobile phones—and local wireless
network (WLAN—Wireless LAN) to different kinds of sim-
ple structures, such as wireless headphones. Recently, by
growing the wireless communications systems and increas-
ing demand for wireless devices which have the ability to
work in several frequency bands, we will need multiband
antennas. There are many ways to design this kind of anten-
nas that in meanwhile the use of monopole microstrip
antenna is offered because it has easy construction, low cost
and required features in telecommunication systems and
antenna mobile systems with compact size. Now days, it is
common to use one multiband antenna which cover the
intended bands for integrating several antennas to use in
portable devices. The multiband antennas are the most favor-
able option to use in several different bands, so that these
antennas can be satisfactory in terms of size, weight and per-
formance. By means of these features, there are many differ-
ent methods for miniaturization of multiband antennas such
as defected ground structures (DGS), employing slot on radi-
ated patch, and coplanar waveguide (CPW) feed-line.1–16
Multiband antennas are widely used in portable devices
such as laptops, smartphones and tablets. There are several
ways to design multiband antennas. Indeed, some researches
are reported in.1–7 In1 a micro strip feed, F-shaped slot radia-
tors and a DGS are etched to achieve tri-band operation. An
antenna with bowtie patch shape is used for multiband
antenna that has CPW feed2 in3, a CPW-fed antenna after
PEDRAM ET AL.
| 2291

F I G U R E 1 (A), The Layout of the multiband circularly- polarized antenna, (B) top direction, (C) bottom layer. [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

embedding a vertical stub, a T-shaped strip and a slit to the
ground plane was proposed to achieve dual-band CP per-
formance. Fork-shaped antenna uses 3 stubs and rectangle
ground plane for WLAN/WIMAX application4. Furthermore,
an antenna with quad-band CP characteristics has been pre-
sented in.5 However, it has a large size and uses a simple
frequency selective surface to improve its radiation charac-
teristics. A 4-band slot antenna has been proposed in6 using
a rectangular slot and several stubs. The size of antenna is
equal to 48 3 18, but it is too large for practical use. In7
hexa-band planar antenna, asymmetric fork-shaped radiators
are used for multiband and broadband communication

T A BL E 1 The final dimensions of the proposed antenna

Parameters Unit (mm) Parameters Unit (mm) Parameters Unit (mm)

L1 13.5 LF 8 WS1 0.75

L2 14 LT 5 WS2 1

L3 11.5 LS1 11 WS3 0.75

L4 4.75 LS2 8 Wg1 0.45

L5 2.75 LS3 5.25 Wg2 0.5

L6 3.25 WF 1 Wg3 0.25

L7 10 WT 1.5 Lg 5

LSub 21 WSub 21 h1 2.5

Lg1 0.75 Lg3 2.7 HSub 0.8

Lg2 0.5 Lg4 4.75

2292 | PEDRAM ET AL.

2.496–2.690/3.3–3.8 GHz), Wireless Fidelity (2.412–2.4835/

4.9–5.9 GHz). Moreover, the dimensions of the proposed
antennas are optimized in order to achieve almost 5 dBi
gain. The measurement results of the antenna reveal that the
impedance bandwidth and radiation characteristics are appro-
priate for portable and wireless communication systems.

2 | THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

DESIGN AND STRUCTURE

As shown in Figure 1A, the radiation patch is etched on an

FR-4 substrate with thickness of 0.8 mm, loss tangent of 0.02,
and relative permittivity of Er 5 4.4. Prototypes of the pro-
posed antenna are illustrated in Figure 2A. At first, a rectangu-
lar patch and a defected ground plane are considered for the
proposed multiband antenna. A tapered 50 X micro strip fed is
used to enhance the impedance matching. The antenna with
rectangular patch cannot satisfy demanded frequency
response. For this reason, in the next step, 2 L-shaped stubs
and 3 slots on the radiation patterns will be loaded. The 2 L-
Shaped elements are embedded on the patch to obtain a lower
frequency. Since the length of the 2 L-Shaped stubs are
approximately one quarter-wavelength of the operating fre-
quencies, 3 resonant bands at 2.1, 2.6, and 4.9 GHz can be
achieved. The simulated return loss curves are shown in Figure
2B. According to Figure 2A by inserting 3 slots on the

F I G U R E 2 (A) The picture of the evolution of the realized multi-

band circularly polarized antenna, (B) simulated the S11 characteristic.
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

application. In most cases, the antenna has a large size, com-

plicated structure, and resonant frequencies which could not
be tuned independently and are not suitable for portable and
wireless communication device.
In this article, we proposed a small multiband antenna
with circularly polarization for WWAN/WIMAX/WLAN
applications. The presented antenna is a low profile rectangu-
lar patch antenna with 2 L-Shaped stubs and 3 slots printed
on the radiation patch which is fed by 50 X micro strip line.
Not only the design is a low profile antenna as we presented,
but also it resonates at 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6 GHz which
is able to cover the aforementioned wireless communications
standards: Digital Cellular System (DCS) (1.71–1.88 GHz),
Personal Communication System (PCS) (1.85–1.99 GHz), F I G U R E 3 (A) The prototype fabricated antenna (B) the measured
Bluetooth (2.402–2.480 GHz), WLAN (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz), S11 in comparison with simulated one. [Color figure can be viewed at
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (2.3–2.4/ wileyonlinelibrary.com]
PEDRAM ET AL.
| 2293

F I G U R E 4 Analysis of the geometry parameters of the proposed antenna: (A) L1, (B) L2, (C) Ls1, (D) Ls2, and (E) Ls3. [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

radiation patch, new resonances are excited which result in fre-

quencies resonating at 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6 GHz. To
improve the impedance matching and get wider bandwidth, the
corners of the ground plane are truncated and 3 stubs are con-
nected to ground plane as depicted in Figure 2A. The geometry
of the multiband designed antenna is shown in Figure 1B,C.
The optimal antenna dimensions are listed in Table 1.

3 | SIMULATED AND FABRICATED

RESULTS OF THE PROPOSED
ANTENNA

In this section, the optimized antenna is illustrated and the F I G U R E 5 AR of the presented antenna. [Color figure can be
results are discussed. In order to perform the design process, viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
2294 | PEDRAM
FIGURE 6 Current distribution of the presented antenna at frequencies of: (A) 1.9 GHz, (B) 2.4 GHz, (C) 3.5 GHz, (D) 5.2 GHz, and (E) 7.6 GHz.
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
the Ansoft Simulation Software High-Frequency Structure
Simulation is used.
3.1 | The return losses of simulated and
measured of the proposed dual band antenna
The value of power which is dissipated as the result of imped-
ance mismatch between the feed line and its related impedance
is called Return Loss It should be negative because the more
negative it is; the better impedance matching can be
achieved.9–13 The proposed multiband antenna is fabricated on
FR4 substrate and then it is examined experimentally. Figure
3A illustrates a photograph of the fabricated antenna. The
simulated and measured return losses of the proposed antenna
are plotted in Figure 3B. The measurement results are in good
agreement with the simulated results. The proposed antenna
excites multi resonant frequencies at 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6
in order to cover major parts of PCS, DCS, UMTS, BLUE-
THOOTH, WIMAX, and WLAN bands. The lowest fre-
quency at 1.9 GHz has an impedance bandwidth of 326 MHz
with a fractional bandwidth of (1.7127–2.0393 GHz) which
can be used for PCS, DCS, and UMTS applications. The sec-
ond resonant frequency at 2.4 GHz has an impedance band-
width of (2.303–2.509 GHz). As can be seen from Figure 3B,
its return loss is < 215dB, and operates at Bluetooth/WLAN.
The third one resonates at 3.5 GHz with the bandwidth of
ET AL.
(3.235–3.843 GHz) that covers the WiMAX band. The fourth
and the fifth resonant frequencies that cover the bandwidths of
(4.933–5.629 GHz), and (7.5–7.7 GHz) respectively are able
to resonate at the frequencies of 5.2 and 7.6 GHz operating in
WLAN band and almost part of C band.
3.2 | Different values of key parameters
In order to better understand the behavior of the proposed
antenna, the simulation results of return loss are depicted
while the key parameters as the lengths of the first and sec-
ond stub as well as the lengths of the 3 slots are being
changed as shown in Figure 4A,B, the effect of the length of
L1 which has an asymmetric L-Shape on the antenna can
change the impedance matching and bandwidth of the lower
frequency. Accordingly, it has no effect on other radiation
elements. The Simulated return loss reveals that with an
increase in the amount of L2 the resonant frequency of the
lower band decreases and decreases in the value of L2 can
increase the resonant frequency of the same lower band. Fur-
thermore, the values of LS1, LS2, and LS3 are changed and
the optimized values of LS1 5 11, LS2 5 8, and LS3 5 5.25
are obtained. According to Figure 4C-E. It can be realized
that the higher frequencies are significantly affected by the
variation of these parameters. Although changing the lengths
of the stubs and slots can have significant effects on their
PEDRAM ET AL.
F I G U R E 7 Radiation pattern characteristics of the multiband circularly polarized antenna at: (A) 1.9 GHz, (B) 2.4 GHz, (C) 3.5 GHz, (D) 5.2 GHz,
and (E) 7.6 GHz. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
own operational frequencies, they will not have a sharp
impact on other frequency bands.
3.3 | Axial ratio
A patch antenna can produce a circular polarization so long
as 2 perpendicular modes are excited simultaneously with
F I G U R E 8 The derived gain of the proposed antenna. [Color figure
can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
| 2295
the same amplitudes and 90 degrees’ phase difference. In
order to show the functionality of an antenna in circular
polarization, the parameter of 3 dB axial ratio (AR) is
used.5–7 The AR of the proposed antenna is shown in Figure
5. The 3 dB bandwidth of the proposed antenna is in
1.9 GHz positioned between 1.65 and 1.95 GHz.
3.4 | Surface current distribution
To define the multiband performance, current distributions
of the proposed multiband antenna at the frequencies of 1.9,
2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6 GHz are shown in Figure 6A-E, respec-
tively. The current surfaces around the L-Shaped stubs at the
frequencies of 1.9 and 2.4 GHz are more vivid. The current
distributions of the proposed antenna at the frequencies of
3.5, 5.2, and 7.6 GHz are simulated and shown in Figure 6C-
E. As can be clearly seen the antenna radiation is affected
more at the aforementioned frequencies and the surface cur-
rents are more visible in the vicinity of both slots and stubs.
Accordingly, the effects mentioned above show that the pro-
posed antenna operates in multi bands.
2296 | PEDRAM ET AL.

T A BL E 2 Comparison between the results of the proposed antenna and pervious published results

Maximum Number of
gain (dB) separated bands Size (mm) References

3.05 3 19 3 25 3 0.8 [1]

3.93 3 100 3 60 3 0.8 [2]

3.5 2 33 3 27 3 1 [3]

... 3 20 3 37 3 0.508 [4]

6.92 2 55 3 52 3 1.52 [5]

2.3 11 15 3 15 3 0.8 [8]

2.5 2 25 3 38 3 1.6 [12]

6 5 21 3 21 3 0.8 Proposed antenna

3.5 | Radiation pattern and gain ACKNOW L E DGM E NT

In order to show the field power of an antenna in all direc-
tions from a fixed point, radiation patterns are used.14–16 The
radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna are simu-
lated and presented in Figure 7A-E. Belonging to frequency
bands of 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and 7.6, respectively. The simu-
lated far- field radiation patterns of the proposed antenna are
shown in the E- and H-plane at the operating frequency
bands. The radiation patterns for E- and H-plane are omnidir-
ectional in all frequencies. The plot of the gain of the multi-
band antenna is shown in Figure 8. The peak gain of the
antenna at resonant frequencies of 1.9, 2.4, 3.5, 5.2, and
7.6 GHz are 6, 4, 1.5, 1, 1.25 dB, respectively.
Here a comparison between our proposed antenna and
the ones published earlier in this regard in the operational
bands is given. The small structure of the proposed antenna
has better performance in comparison to previously designed
ones that can cover wireless, portable device and communi-
cation systems. As can be seen from Table 2. The proposed
antenna outperforms the ones designed earlier in terms of
good impedance bandwidth and maximum gain.
4 | CONCLUSION
A multiband circularly polarized antenna for wireless com-
munication systems and portable devices is presented. The
proposed antenna here has a simple structure and small size
that can be easily fabricated. It consists of multi communica-
tion band standards including bands for DCS, PCS, UMTS,
Bluetooth, WLAN, WIMAX, and Wi-Fi application. The
antenna has a compact size. The antenna has a circular polar-
ization with 3 dB AR bandwidth of 1.65–1.95 GHz. The
simulated and measured results show that this antenna has
good impedance bandwidth, high gain and good radiation
pattern in the covered bands.
The authors thank the northwest antenna and microwave
research laboratory (NAMRL) for their beneficial and pro-
fessional help.
C O NFL IC T O F IN T E RE S T
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest
with the contents of this article.
R EFE RE NC ES
[1] Gautam A, Kumar KL, Kanaujia BK, Rambabu K. Design of
compact F-shaped slot triple-band antenna for WLAN/WiMAX
applications. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2016;64:1101–1105.
[2] Wu M-T, Chuang M-L. Multibroadband slotted bow-tie monop-
ole antenna. IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett. 2015;14:887–
890.
[3] Chen B, Zhang F-S. Dual-band CPW-fed circularly polarized
slot antenna with improved ground plane structure. Prog Elec-
tromag Res Lett. 2014;46:31–36.
[4] Xu L, Xin Z-Y, He J. A compact triple-band fork-shaped
antenna for WLAN/WiMAX applications. Prog Electromagn
Res Lett. 2013;40:61–69.
[5] Hoang TV, Le TT, Li QY, Park HC. Quad-band circularly
polarized antenna for 2.4/5.3/5.8-GHz WLAN and 3.5-GHz
WiMAX applications. IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett.
2016;15:1032–1035.
[6] CaoCheung YS, Yuk T. A multiband slot antenna for GPS/
WiMAX/WLAN systems. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2015;
63:952–958.
[7] Alibakhshi-KenariNaser-Moghadasi MM, Sadeghzadeh RA,
Virdee BS. Hexa-band planar antenna with asymmetric fork-
shaped radiators for multiband and broadband communication
applications. IET Microw Antennas Propag. 2016;10:
471–478.
[8] Alibakhshikenari M, Limiti E, Naser-Moghadasi M, Virdee BS,
Sadeghzadeh R. A new wideband planar antenna with band-
notch functionality at GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi bands for
WANG ET AL.
integration in portable wireless systems. AEU-Int J Electron
Commun. 2017;72:79–85.
[9] Goswami SA, Karia D. A compact monopole antenna for wire-
less applications with enhanced bandwidth. AEU-Int J Electron
Commun. 2017;72:33–39.
[10] Ellis M, Zhao S, Wu Z, Ding J, Nie XZ, Liu Q-H. A novel sim-
ple and compact microstrip-fed circularly polarized wide slot
antenna with wide axial ratio bandwidth for C-band applications.
IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2016;64:1552–1555.
[11] Saxena S, Kanaujia BK, Dwari S, Kumar S, Tiwari R. A com-
pact microstrip fed dual polarised multiband antenna for IEEE
802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax applications. AEU-Int J Electron Commun.
2017;72:95–103.
[12] Gautam AK, Bisht A, Kanaujia BK. A wideband antenna with
defected ground plane for WLAN/WiMAX applications. AEU-
Int J Electron Commun. 2016;70:354–358.
[13] CuiYang Y, Liu LB, Li R. Multiband planar antenna for LTE/
GSM/UMTS and WLAN/WiMAX handsets. IET Microw Anten-
nas Propag. 2016;10:502–506.
[14] Wang D, Chan CH. Multiband antenna for WiFi and WiGig
communications. IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett. 2016;15:
309–312.
[15] Singh BrarSaurav R, Sarkar KD, Vaibhav Srivastava K. A triple
band circular polarized monopole antenna for GNSS/UMTS/
LTE. Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2017;59:298–304.
[16] HuangDu DZ, Wang Y. Compact octa-band monopole antenna
with independently tuning for WWAN/LTE mobile phones.
Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2017;59:208–214.
How to cite this article: Pedram K, Nourinia J, Gho-
badi C, Karamirad M. A multiband circularly polarized
antenna with simple structure for wireless communica-
tion system. Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2017;59:2290–
2297. https://doi.org/10.1002/mop.30728
Received: 20 February 2017
DOI: 10.1002/mop.30727
Dual-band suspended stripline
filter based on electric
metamaterials
Ruo-Lin Wang | Jia-Fu Wang |
Yong-Feng Li | Ming-Bao Yan |
Zhi-Qiang Li | Hua Ma |
Shao-Bo Qu
College of Science, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an, Shaanxi
710051, China
| 2297
Correspondence
Hua Ma and Shao-Bo Qu, College of Science, Air Force Engineering
University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710051 China
Email: mahuar@163.com and qushaobo@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
Funding information
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61331005, 61471388, and 61501502), the
Science &Technology Research Development Program of Shaanxi Province
(2015KJXX-47) and the Innovation Team of Shaanxi Province (2014KCT-
05).
Abstract
Suspended strip-line (SSL) filter is of wide application
values for its low insertion loss, high quality factor
value, easy integration and compact size. In this letter,
we proposed the design of a dual-band SSL band-pass
filter based on electric metamaterials, which is realized
by introducing a rejection band inside the wide pass-
band of a conventional SSL filter. The electric metama-
terial can produce negative permittivity and thus hinders
the transmission of EM waves along the strip-line. To
verify the design method, a prototype, together with a
conventional SSL filter for comparison, was designed,
fabricated and measured. Both the simulation and
experiment results verify the dual-band band-pass filter-
ing property.
KEYWORDS
suspended strip-line (SSL) filter, dual-band, electric metamaterials,
negative permittivity
1 | INTRODUCTION
With the rapid development of wireless communications,
filters with high performances have attracted more and
more attentions. Especially, the suspended strip-line (SSL)
filters are in great demand for its good properties such as
low insertion loss, easy integration and compact size. Gen-
erally, the core filtering structures of SSL filters are fabri-
cated on a thin suspended dielectric substrate with low
dielectric loss, and most of the electric fields and EM ener-
gies are confined around the structures. In addition, both
sides of the substrate are etched with metallic structures so
that the patches and lines on both sides can be described by
equivalent capacitances and inductances. Also, the cou-
plings between metallic structures on both sides are fairly
strong, leading to quite high quality factor value. Many
SSL band-pass filters have been designed with high selec-
tivity and low insertion loss.1–6 Particularly, Xu3 came up
with a technique to adjust the parameters of the coupling
open loop and thus to improve the performance of out-of-