A Broadband E-Shaped Patch Antenna of Compact Size and Low Profile

Jiang Xiong*(1), Zhinong Ying(2), and Sailing He(1)

(1) Center for Optical and Electromagnetic Research, Zhejiang University,
Hangzhou 310027, China
(2) Sony-Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Nya Vattertornet, SE-221 83
Lund, Sweden
E-mail: xiongjiang@coer.zju.edu.cn

Introduction

Microstrip patch antennas have been widely studied and commonly used as a
promising candidate in both military and commercial applications, due to their
attractive characteristics, such as low profile, light weight, low cost, ease of
fabrication and good conformability with integrated circuits. It is well known that
the limited bandwidth is an intrinsic drawback of a patch antenna. Many efforts
have been made during the past few decades and several effective methods have
been proposed, such as using thick substrate with low dielectric constant [1],
parasitic patch loading on the same layer with the main patch [2], stacked
multilayer patches [3], chip resistor loading [4], [5], U-slot (or double U-slot)
[6],[7] and E-slot [8], [9] etched on the patch , and L-probe feeding [10]. However,
it’s still a difficulty to achieve such broadband on a miniaturized single layer
patch, especially when the thickness of the substrate is reduced, as the bandwidth
always decreases as the total thickness is reduced [11]. The previous reported
broadband is usually achieved when a relatively thick substrate, more than 0.07λ,
is used. In this paper, an E-shaped patch antenna fed by folded L-shaped probe
with one edge shorted to ground is presented. The resonance of conventional
shorted λ/4 patch, together with other two resonances introduced by coupling of
strips of the E-shaped patch, is made use of to form a broadband. Measurement
results show that bandwidth of 19.8% (with a central frequency of 2.378GHz) is
obtained on the patch antenna. The lateral size of the patch is 25mm×27.7mm
(0.198λc×0.22λc) and thickness of the air substrate is only 4mm (0.032λc),
whereλc is the central wavelength in the free space.

Antenna Structure

The patch and ground of the proposed antenna are made of 0.4-mm-thick copper
plate. The thickness of air substrate is 4mm. As shown in Fig. 1, the E-shaped
patch is formed by three edge-shorted parallel copper strips, denoted as 1, 2 and 3
for ease of description, connected with each other by two coupling sections. The
patch of 25mm×27.7mm is located at the edge of ground plane (62.5mm×
100mm). The patch is fed by a folded L-shaped wire, the tip part of which is
along the axis of strip 2, and the rest wire section outside the patch is 90º folded,

978-1-4244-2042-1/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE

in order to maintain the compact size. The other dimensions of the antenna are as
follows: WG=62.5mm, LG=100mm, WP=25mm, LP=27mm Ladd=0.7mm, H=4mm,
Le=36.5mm, Loffset=8mm, Lf=9.5mm, Wf=17.4mm, h=2.2mm, W1=5.5mm,
W12=2mm, W2=6mm, W23=6mm, W3=5.5mm, L12=2mm, L23=1.4mm.

Fig. 1 Geometry of the proposed antenna

Simulation and Measurement Results

The fabricated antenna prototype with its compact size is shown in Fig. 2. The
full-wave analysis of the proposed antenna is carried out with the aid of the
commercial software package Ansoft HFSS. The prototype of the antenna is
measured with Agilent E8363B network analyzer. The simulated and measured
impedance bandwidths (return loss < -10dB) of 16.5% (2.187–2.580 GHz) and
19.8% (2.143–2.613 GHz) are obtained, as shown in Fig. 3. Three adjacent
resonances, located at 2.236 GHz, 2.438 GHz, and 2.583 GHz respectively, are
observed .The measured gain of the proposed patch antenna is also given in Fig. 3.
A stable gain across the bandwidth with an average value of 3.74 dBi is achieved,
with 4.08 dBi as its peak.

Fig. 2 Fabrication of the proposed antenna

Fig. 3 Return loss and gain of the antenna

Conclusion

With the help of shorting wall loading for minimization, air slots cut on the patch
for multi-resonance introducing, and folded L-shaped probe technique for
impedance matching, a broadband (19.8% centered at 2.378 GHz) E-shaped patch
antenna with compact size and low profile (0.198λc×0.22λc×0.032λc) is
proposed. Three adjacent resonances that help to form the broadband are
observed.

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