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Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
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Miniaturized UHF/UWB Tag Antenna for Indoor
Positioning Systems
Xiaoyong Shan and Zhongxiang Shen, Fellow, IEEE
 will be attached to an object that can be made of different
Abstract— A miniaturized UHF/UWB dual-band tag antenna
with a geometrical dimension of 34.6 mm × 21.5 mm × 6 mm is
presented for indoor real-time positioning systems. A small patch
is employed as the UWB radiator and two U-shape striplines are
used for UHF band. A quarter-wavelength metallic strip is
introduced under the UWB patch to create an extra resonance to
further expand the operation bandwidth. The antenna is backed
by a ground plane to reduce the backside radiation and to
improve the antenna gain in the UWB band. The measured
bandwidth covers the frequency range from 919 MHz to 931 MHz
in the UHF band and 3.28 GHz to 6.95 GHz in the UWB band with
VSWR better than 2:1. The measured radiation patterns within
the above mentioned UHF and UWB frequency bands are very
stable. The attractive features of compact size and wide
bandwidth make it a very competitive candidate of tag antenna
for indoor positioning systems.
Index Terms— Dual-band tag antenna, RFID antenna,
ultrahigh frequency (UHF), ultra wideband (UWB).
I. INTRODUCTION
P RECISE POSITIONING of objects in indoor
environments has found many applications, such as
medical surveillance, inventory management, security control
and many other RFID systems. Due to the lack of Global
Positioning System (GPS) signals, a wide variety of alternative
architectures have been used in indoor real-time locating
system (RTLS), which includes legacy infrared (IR),
ultrasound, low frequency radio frequency (RF), Bluetooth
(BLE), Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and ultra wideband (UWB) [1], [2].
Among these solutions, extremely narrow RF pulses are used in
impulse radio UWB (IR-UWB) systems to provide very high
accuracy at the centimeter level. A more efficient dual-band
system, which combined UWB with conventional narrowband
UHF RFID technology was also proposed and investigated [3].
Many UWB tag antennas have been developed so far [4], [5].
Some UHF/UWB antennas for the dual-band system were also
investigated recently [6], [7]. These antennas have low profile
and good performances have been demonstrated in terms of
radiation patterns, return loss bandwidth and other antenna
parameters. However, in many practical applications, the tag
Manuscript received April 25, 2019; accepted. Date of publication
; date of current version.
X. Shan and Z. Shen are with the School of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798,
Singapore (xyshan@hotmail.com; ezxshen@ntu.edu.sg).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier .
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1
materials. The material can be lossy, conductive or with high
dielectric constant. The impedance matching condition and
radiation patterns of the antenna will then be affected when it is
attached to the object and thus the radio link characteristics will
change accordingly [8]. The impact of the ground plane on the
tag backscattering in the UWB band was investigated in [9]. A
good design rule is to consider all these effects during the
antenna design stage if the tag will be attached to different
objects. A conductive ground plate placed at the back of the
antenna can be used to improve the antenna gain and to reduce
the backward radiation. Thus, no matter what object the tag is
attached to, the radiation patterns and matching condition of the
tag antenna will not change significantly and the whole system
can be very robust. In a typical UHF/UWB dual-band
positioning system, bi-directional radiation is acceptable in the
UHF band since the UHF band is used to transmit clock and
command only. It is very important to minimize the backward
radiation in the UWB band for the high positioning accuracy
because the time-of-arrival of sub-nanosecond pulse in the
UWB band is utilized to determine the distance to the target.
Several dual-band tag antennas with ground planes were
developed recently [10]-[13]. Hirvonen et al. presented a
technique for tuning a single-element planar inverted F antenna
to provide a dual-band operation [10]. A miniaturized
dual-band S-shape tag antenna on a metallic surface was
described in [11]. Since a ground plane is placed right under the
dipole/monopole antenna, the anti-phase current of the image
current will significantly reduce the antenna’s radiation
resistance. This results in a significant mismatch and the
bandwidth of the antennas is limited even after matching. To
overcome this problem, artificial magnetic conductor was used
to expand the frequency bandwidth in a slot dipole antenna
[12]. The bandwidth can be expanded, but the structure is
complicated and costly. A good UHF/UWB antenna was
proposed in [13] recently. The antenna covers the frequency
range from 881 MHz to 913 MHz for the UHF band and 2.9
GHz to 5.35 GHz for the UWB band. However, the size of the
antenna is 100 mm × 50 mm × 9 mm, which is big and should
be further reduced for it to be well fitted in a real RFID tag.
In this letter, a very low-profile, UHF/UWB tag antenna is
presented. By optimizing the shape of the antenna and
introducing a perfect electric conductor (PEC) and a virtual
perfect magnetic conductor (PMC), we are able to reduce the
antenna size to 0.106λ × 0.066λ × 0.015λ, where λ is the
wavelength in free space at the lowest operating frequency of
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Fig. 1. Design of the UWB antenna
the antenna. The antenna sits on one corner of a ground plane
with a size of 50 mm × 80 mm, where the ground size
represents the whole size of the RFID tag. The compact size of
the antenna makes it possible to mount other circuits of the tag
on the same side of the ground plane along with the antenna
and, therefore, significantly reduce the total size of the tag.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
It is known that the size of the dual-band dual-port antenna is
dominated by the UWB antenna because of its wide operating
bandwidth required. Therefore, we focus on the design of the
UWB antenna in this section. Once the UWB antenna is ready,
the UHF part will be added and the UWB antenna can then be
fine adjusted.
We start the initial design of the UWB antenna with the
elliptical dipole on top of a ground plane [13], as shown in Fig.
1 (a). By sweeping the geometric parameters and analyzing the
return loss, surface current, and radiation patterns, we find that
the outer halves of the two elliptical patches shown in the
shaded area in Fig. 1 (a) are not critical and they are not
necessary for achieving better return loss and good radiation
patterns. To reduce the antenna size, the shaded parts in Fig. 1
(a) are cut out. Two small rectangular patches with the same
length as the long axis of the elliptical patches are added next to
the half ellipses for the impedance matching purpose, as shown
in Fig.1 (b).
Since it is a dipole antenna, a PEC can be introduced in the
center location shown in Fig. 1 (b). With the PEC present, the
shaded area in Fig. 1 (b) can be removed, as shown in Fig. 1 (c).
As shown in Fig 1 (a), the dipole antenna is fed by a gap source
between the two patches. In a practical design, a capacitive
coupled dipole probe with a coupled stripline feeding structure
can be used to feed the differential port [13]. Since the distance
between the antenna PCB and the ground is very small, there is
no enough space to accommodate a proper
unbalance-to-balance transition. Both differential mode and
common mode are excited. The differential mode excites the
antenna with a dipole mode as we expected, but the common
mode excites a monopole mode, which significantly affects the
radiation patterns at certain frequency and limits the useful
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2
Fig. 2. Field distributions of the UWB antenna at 3.5GHz. (a) E-field distribution
in xz-plane. (b) Surface current distribution on bottom side of the UWB patch.
(c) H-field between UWB patch and ground. (d) Poynting vectors.
bandwidth of the antenna. By introducing a PEC, the feeding
gap source is now between the ground and one of the patches
and it becomes very easy to excite the antenna mode using an
unbalanced coaxial probe, which avoids the difficulties and
problems of realizing a balanced differential port.
As shown in Fig. 1 (c), a PMC can be inserted in the center of
the antenna. The shaded area in Fig. 1 (c) can then be removed
and the PMC can be approximated by the gap between the
antenna PCB and the ground, similar to the well-known
substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) technology. Finally, the
antenna is reduced to the structure shown in Fig. 1 (d). A 1/4 λ
metallic strip is added on the bottom side of the antenna PCB to
create a resonance at about 3.3 GHz, therefore further reducing
the lowest frequency without increasing the overall size of the
antenna.
In order to better understand of the operation of the UWB
antenna, the simulated EM field distributions of the antenna at
3.5GHz are presented in Fig. 2. We first focus on the small area
between the antenna PCB and ground in the xz-plane. Since the
distance between the antenna PCB and the ground is relatively
small compared to the UWB antenna size, the electric field in
the region between the UWB patch and the ground is along the
z-axis, as shown in Fig. 2 (a). The surface current distribution
on the bottom side of the UWB patch is shown in Fig. 2 (b). It
can be seen that the surface current near the xz-plane is along
the x-axis. Since the magnetic field should always be
perpendicular to the electric field and surface current, the
magnetic field in the area between the patch and the ground is
along the y-axis, as shown in Fig. 2 (c). Since there is no
magnetic field components in the x or z direction in this area,
the gap between the patch and the ground acts like a PMC.
The Poynting vectors in the xz-plane are plotted in Fig. 2 (d).
Due to the presence of PMC in the xz-plane, the energy
radiating into free space is mainly through the shaded area in
Fig. 2 (d). An extra patch is added on the top of the antenna
PCB and is connected to a grounded metallic wall on the side of
the antenna, as shown in Fig. 2 (d). It can be seen that the path
of the energy flow is altered by the metallic wall and the patch
and some reflections are introduced. By adjusting the size of the
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(a)
(b)
(c)
(e)
Fig. 3. Geometry of the UHF/UWB antenna. (a) 3-D view of the UHF/UWB
antenna. (b) Side view of the antenna. (c) Top of the antenna PCB. (d) Bottom of
the antenna PCB. (e) Copper walls. (f) Fabricated antenna.
patch and the distance between the wall and the UWB antenna,
the magnitude and phase of the reflection can be adjusted and
good impedance matching can be achieved.
The final antenna is shown in Fig. 3 (a). The antenna consists
of an antenna PCB, a ground PCB and two copper walls
between the PCBs. Two U-shape metallic strip lines are
employed as the UHF radiators on the top and bottom sides of
the antenna PCB, respectively. Two radiators are connected
together by a via hole and a 16 nH inductor L1 is connected
between the antenna feed point and the radiators to reduce the
overall length. The UHF and UWB antennas are fed by two
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Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
3
TABLE I
GEOMETRIC PARAMETERS OF THE ANTENNA (in mm)
a b C d e f g h i j k l
2 3 3.6 3.09 3.5 1.1 13.43 21.5 6.53 9.19 0.25 34.61
m n o p q r s t u v w x
1.93 1.44 11.45 1.5 9 2 1 1 2.44 9 3.45 6
coaxial probes, which pass through the metallic wall and
connect to the microstrip lines on the back side of the ground
PCB. Via holes are used to connect the top layer to the ground
at the bottom layer. The trace between the UHF feed point to
the first via connected to the ground acts like a shunt inductance
for impedance matching and length c can be adjusted to achieve
good impedance matching for the UHF antenna. Since the UHF
antenna is very small, the surface current on the radiator is very
strong and the loss is significant. Two radiators with relatively
wide width on the top and bottom layers of the PCB will be
helpful to minimize the loss and improve the radiation
efficiency. Also, a low-loss material Rogers Kappa 438 with a
thickness of 1 mm is used in this design. The material has a
dielectric constant of 4.38 similar to the normal FR4 material
and a lower loss tangent of 0.005. Simulated results show that
the antenna gain can be 1 dB higher by using Kappa 438 instead
of the lossy FR4 material and the radiation efficiency is 60% at
924 MHz. As for the UWB antenna, the elliptical curve of the
patch is replaced by an exponential curve, which provides extra
freedom for the antenna matching without affecting the length
and width of the patch. The exponential curve follows the
following equation
𝑥 = 𝑎𝑒 + 𝑐, (1)
where a=0.0703, b=0.2275, c=0.15, and x, y are the coordinates
(d) (in millimeter) in the x and y directions.
Since the antenna size is very small, the mutual coupling
between two antennas in the UHF band becomes very high. A
4.7 pF capacitor (C1) is added in series with the metallic strip
from the feed point of the UWB antenna to ground, which
creates a series resonance and acts as a band-stop filter to
reduce the mutual coupling between the two antennas at the
UHF frequency. The distance between the antenna PCB and the
ground PCB is 4 mm and the top PCB is supported by two
(f)
copper walls in between. Two coaxial transmission lines are
constructed in one of the copper wall to connect the microstrip
lines on the back side of the ground PCB to feed the antenna, as
shown in Fig. 3 (e). The geometric parameters of the antenna
are shown in Table 1.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed UHF/UWB antenna is fabricated and tested.
The fabricated antenna is shown in Fig. 3 (f). The scattering
parameters of the antenna are presented in Fig. 4 together with
the simulated results for comparison. Port 1 is for the UHF band
and Port 2 is for the UWB band. The antenna has a measured 10
dB return loss bandwidth of 1.3% from 919 MHz to 931 MHz
in the UHF band and 71.3% from 3.28 GHz to 6.95 GHz in the
UWB band. The isolation between these two ports is better than
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a) 924MHz, ϕ=0 b) 924MHz, ϕ =90

Fig. 4. Scattering parameters of the UHF/UWB antenna.

c) 3.5GHz, ϕ =0 d) 3.5GHz, ϕ =90

Fig. 5. Gain of the UHF/UWB antenna.

22 dB in the UHF band and 14dB in the UWB band of interest.

The measured results are in very good agreement with those e) 5.9GHz, ϕ =0 f) 5.9GHz, ϕ =90
simulated. Fig. 6. Radiation patterns of the UHF/UWB antenna, where simulation results are
The simulated and measured results of the antenna’s realized in solid line and measured results are in dash lines.
gain in the z direction are shown in Fig. 5. The measured gain is
around -0.5 dBi in the UHF band. In the UWB band, the TABLE II
COMPARISON OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA WITH EXISTING DESIGNS
average measured gain is about 4.5 dBi in the frequency band
from 3.3 GHz to 6 GHz. Lower Higher
Ref. Size (λ in lowest freq.)
bandwidth (%) bandwidth (%)
The measured and simulated radiation patterns at different
[11] 0.58 0.66 0.096 × 0.06λ × 0.006
frequencies are shown in Fig. 6. Due to the small size of the [12] 3.7 42 0.45 × 0.45 × 0.025
proposed antenna, the forward and backward radiation of the [13] 3.6 59.5 0.29 × 0.15 × 0.026
UHF antenna is almost the same. In the UWB band, the This work 1.3 71.3 0.106 × 0.066 × 0.015
radiation patterns are very stable in the forward direction and a
6~10 dB front-to-back ratio is observed. The measured 3 dB
beam width of the UWB antenna is very wide, which is about IV. CONCLUSION
97 in the ϕ=0 plane and 78 in the ϕ=90 plane at 3.5 GHz. A miniaturized UHF/UWB dual-band dual-port RFID tag
There is no dip or significant drop of the antenna gain along the antenna mounted on a small ground plate has been presented in
z direction within the angular range of ±45 over the very wide this letter. The antenna has a very compact size of 0.106λ ×
frequency band. 0.066λ × 0.015λ. The bandwidth is 1.3% for the UHF
Table II compares our proposed antenna against several frequency and 71.3% for the UWB band. The radiation patterns
existing antenna designs in the literature in terms of size and in the forward direction are stable and the 3dB beam width is
impedance bandwidth. It can be seen from the table that our very wide over a wide frequency range of the UWB band. All
proposed antenna exhibits very competitive size and very wide of the above mentioned features make it a very suitable RFID
bandwidth in the same time. tag antenna for dual-band indoor positioning systems.

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