504

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

UWB CPW-Fed Fractal Patch Antenna With

Band-Notched Function Employing
Folded T-Shaped Element
M. Naser-Moghadasi, R. A. Sadeghzadeh, T. Sedghi, T. Aribi, and B. S. Virdee, Member, IEEE

AbstractA compact coplanar waveguide (CPW) monopole antenna is presented, comprising a fractal radiating patch in which
a folded T-shaped element (FTSE) is embedded. The impedance
match of the antenna is determined by the number of fractal unit
cells, and the FTSE provides the necessary band-notch functionality. The filtering property can be tuned finely by controlling of
length of FTSE. Inclusion of a pair of rectangular notches in the
ground plane is shown to extend the antennas impedance bandwidth for ultrawideband (UWB) performance. The antennas parameters were investigated to fully understand their affect on the
antenna. Salient parameters obtained from this analysis enabled
the optimization of the antennas overall characteristics. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate that the antenna exhibits the desired VSWR level and radiation patterns across the
entire UWB frequency range. The measured results showed the
antenna operates over a frequency band between 2.9411.17 GHz
with fractional bandwidth of 117% for
, except at the
notch band between 3.34.2 GHz. The antenna has dimensions of
14 18 1 mm .
Index TermsBand-notch, coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed,
fractal, monopole antennas, ultrawideband (UWB) applications.

I. INTRODUCTION

LTRA-WIDEBAND (UWB) communication systems

possess extensive bandwidth enabling high-speed data
rate transmission to be achieved [1]. According to the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), the operational bandwidth of UWB antennas is defined between 3.110.6 GHz [2].
This technology has offers unique advantages not achievable
by conventional narrowband technology, which includes low
power requirements, high-speed transmission, immunity to
multipath propagation, and simple hardware configuration.
UWB is targeted as a cable replacement technology. Applications include wireless home networking, high-density use in
business cores, wireless speakers, wireless USB, high speed
Manuscript received February 10, 2013; revised March 17, 2013; accepted
March 19, 2013. Date of publication April 12, 2013; date of current version
April 18, 2013.
M. Naser-Moghadasi, T. Sedgh, and T. Aribi are with the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
(e-mail: mn.moghaddasi@srbiau.ac.ir).
R. A. Sadeghzadeh is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khajeh Nasir Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
B. S. Virdee is with the Faculty of Life Sciences and Computing, Center
for Communications Technology, London Metropolitan University, London N7
8DB, U.K.
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.2013.2256455

WPAN, wireless sensors networks, wireless telemetry, and

telemedicine. The UWB antenna is a crucial component of such
systems. The best choice for implementation of ultrawideband
antennas is on planar technology as it allows easy integration
with microwave integrated circuits (MICs) and is lightweight
and relatively low-cost [3]. UWB technology requires electrically small antennas for wireless and personal communication
systems. This is essential and presents a design challenge.
Miniaturized and low-profile antennas have undesirable intrinsic attributes such as narrow bandwidth and inefficient
radiation characteristics resulting from reducing the antennas
dimensions smaller than a quarter-wavelength at operating
frequency. It has been demonstrated that fractal geometries,
which are based on space filling and self-similarity attributes,
can be useful to improve the performance of antenna [4]. Also,
fractal-based antennas can effectively couple energy to free
space [5][7]. In addition, different feeding methodologies
can be applied on fractal antennas without degrading their
performancefor example, microstrip lines [8] and coplanar
waveguide (CPW) [9]. CPW transmission-line feed method is
popular because of lower loss, low radiation leakage, and more
convenience with shunt and series connection on the same side
of substrate avoiding via holes [10].
Interference is a significant problem for UWB systems.
Therefore, in these systems, rejection of interfering signals
from WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) [11] and 4-GHz C-bands [12]
satellite communications systems (for downlinks) is an essential requirement. One approach to suppress interfering
signal is to utilize a spatial filter such as a frequency selective
surface (FSS) [13], however these require precious space and
precludes miniaturization. To mitigate this problem, UWB
antennas need to incorporate within them band-reject function,
which for printed monopole antennas can be achieved by:
1) embedding specific shaped slots (U-shaped, arc-shaped)
on the radiator [14]; 2) utilizing parasitic elements beside the
antenna radiator to reject the specified band [15]; and 3) placing
a slit in the ground plane or feedline [16].
In this letter, a novel CPW-fed UWB antenna with bandnotched characteristic is proposed. The antenna consists of a
fractal patch resembling a tree structure with a folded T-shaped
element (FTSE) etched on it. To extend the antennas impedance
bandwidth, the ground plane is curved in the vicinity of the
patch, and rectangular notches are cut out from its sides. These
notches affect the antennas upper- and lower-band edge frequencies, thus enabling control of the antennas impedance bandwidth. It is also shown that by increasing the number of fractal

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505

Fig. 1. Configuration of proposed monopole fractal antenna.

Fig. 3. Simulated VSWR characteristic for Ant. 0 and Ant. 1 as a function of
.

Fig. 2. Steps required in the implementation of the fractal antenna.

unit cells, the antennas impedance bandwidth is enhanced. Rejection band functionality is achieved by the folded T-shaped
element that is attached to the fractal patch. Controlling the
length of the folded T-shaped element is important for tuning
the frequency of the notch band. By optimizing the length of
the folded T-shaped structures arms, WiMAX (IEEE802.16,
3.33.7 GHz) and C-band satellite communication at downlink (3.74.2 GHz) are filtered from UWB band. The proposed
method is validated through simulation and practical measurement. Detail of the antenna design and comparison between the
experimental and simulation results are presented.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The configuration and parameters of the CPW-fed fractal antenna are shown in Fig. 1. The antenna is printed on commercial dielectric substrate FR4 with a thickness of 1 mm,
of 0.024, and relative permittivity of 4.4. The substrate dimensions are
, and the feedline has a width
mm, which corresponds to a characteristic impedance of 50 ,
and
mm. The feedline is tapered to optimize the
impedance matching to the antennas fractal tree patch [7].
The fabricated CPW-fed antenna consists of a fractal
patch with an array of fractal unit cells oriented to resemble
the branches of a tree and includes a symmetrically placed
folded T-shape element. The antennas rectangular ground
plane is etched on the same side as the patch. The process of
ground-plane modification consists of curving the rectangular
ground plane at the top and cutting out rectangular-shaped
slots from its sides, as illustrated in Fig. 2. This modification
to the ground plane enhances the matching characteristics
between the patch and the feedline, which results in the antenna
exhibiting UWB performance.
To achieve band-notch property by the antenna in the
WiMAX band, the FTSE structure is added to the antennas
fractal patch. The FTSE structures dimensions dictate the
band notch and the filtering performance of the antenna. Fig. 2
depicts the steps used to develop the antenna, namely the
following.

Step 1) Create a tapered CPW feedline forming the trunk for

the fractal patch, and add four fractal unit cells to
form the branches in the patch (Ant. 0).
Step 2) Add another four unit cells to the patch (Ant. 1).
Step 3) Apply ground-plane modification in order to extend
the antennas impedance bandwidth for UWB performance (Ant. 2).
Step 4) Embed a folded T-shaped structure (Ant. 3).
The antenna dimensions were optimized through parametric study using Ansofts High Frequency Structure
Simulator (HFSS). Optimal parameters of the proposed
antenna are as follows:
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm. The length of
is set to
, (
corresponding to notch frequency of
3.7 GHz.) By parametric study, optimized value is set to
.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this section, the parameters of the CPW-fed fractal antenna are discussed, and the numerical and experimental results
presented. The antennas dimensions were determined through
the optimization process. The effect of individual parameters
was ascertained by changing the parameter in question while
keeping all other parameters fixed. It was observed that the
ground-plane length ( ) has a major effect on the antennas
impedance matching property. Fig. 3 depicts the variation of
VSWR with parameter
for Ant. 0 and Ant. 1. The upper and
lower values of
relative to its optimized value (
mm)
decreases the operational bandwidth of Ant. 1. The upper- and
lower-frequency edge of the antennas UWB response is controlled by curving the top of the ground plane and embedding
rectangular notches in its sides, transforming Ant. 1 to Ant. 2.
The VSWR of Ant. 2 is marginally affected by varying the dimensions of the rectangular slot configuration in the ground
plane as shown in Fig. 4. This figure clearly shows how the rectangular notches in the ground plane can extend the antennas
impedance bandwidth, i.e., the lower-band edge extends backwards from 3.78 to 3.1 GHz, and the upper-band edge extends
from 9.89 to 11.1 GHz, thus satisfying the requirement of UWB
band. It is observed in Fig. 4 that by increasing both parameters

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

Fig. 4. Simulated VSWR as a function of ground-plane slot dimensions for

Ant. 2.

Fig. 7. Surface current distribution at notch frequency of 3.6 GHz for Ant. 3.

Fig. 5. Simulated VSWR curves with different values of

for Ant. 3.

Fig. 8. Measured and simulated VSWR response for Ant. 2 and Ant. 3. Inset
is the photograph of the two antennas.

Fig. 6. Simulated VSWR curves for Ant. 3 as a function FTSE arm lengths for
) of 5.5 mm.
fixed arm width (

from their optimized value (

mm and
mm), the
matching characteristics deteriorates along with some reduction
in the bandwidth performance. The optimum values for
and
were obtained through parametric study.
The proposed fractal patch is composed of repeating unit-cell
patterns in which the folded T-shape element structure is embedded to provide the antenna with filtering function. It is obvious that by increasing the iteration of the fractal patch, the antennas impedance matching is improved. The process of adding
the band-notch function to the antenna consists of three steps.
Step 1) A single vertical stripline is added to fractal patch of
antenna, as depicted in Fig. 5.
Step 2) A pair of horizontal arms is added to vertical
stripline.
Step 3) A pair of vertical arms is added to Step 2, as shown
in Fig. 6.

As shown in Fig. 5, the vertical stripline element leads to

reduction in the antennas bandwidth because of mismatching.
However, by attaching two horizontal arms to the vertical
stripline, the impedance bandwidth improves, and the notch
property is realized. The effect of FTSE width (
) on
Ant. 3 is shown in Fig. 5. The size of the width determines the
degree of notching function as well as its frequency location.
Fig. 6 shows how the antennas performance is affected by
the length (
) of the vertical stripline sections added to the
FTSE structure. The optimum value of
is 1.5 mm for our
goal. Fig. 7 shows the simulated current distribution over Ant. 3
at the notch frequency of 3.6 GHz. It is clear that the FTSEs
surface current flows in reverse direction of the fractal patch
and feedline Thus, the total effective radiation is very low, and
therefore notched band is obtained.
Fig. 8 shows the simulated and measured responses of Ant. 2
and Ant. 3. The results show that Ant. 2 covers the UWB range
for
. The measured impedance bandwidth for Ant. 2
is 3.111.1 GHz, and for Ant. 3 is 2.9411.17 GHz with the exception of the stopband. Fig. 9 shows the extracted peak gain for
the fabricated antennas over 211 GHz. The measured peak gain
of Ant. 3 decreases drastically over the rejected band between

NASER-MOGHADASI et al.: UWB CPW-FED FRACTAL PATCH ANTENNA WITH BAND-NOTCHED FUNCTION EMPLOYING FTSE

507

IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured peak gain of Ant. 2 and Ant. 3.

Fig. 10. Measured radiation patterns at 3.6, 6, and 10 GHz.

3.34.2 GHz, however it gradually increases with rise in frequency. The measured H-plane and E-plane radiation patterns
of the final antenna at 3.6, 6, and 10 GHz are shown in Fig. 10.
The H-plane radiation pattern results show that the proposed antenna is characterized by omnidirectional pattern for all in-band
frequencies with cross polarization down by more than 27 dB.
Although the E-plane radiation is bidirectional, it becomes increasingly omnidirectional with increase in frequency. In the
E-plane, the cross polarization is down by around 27 dB.

This letter described a novel and compact CPW-fed fractal

antenna incorporating a folded T-shape element structure to
provide a band-rejection function to suppress interference
with existing WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) and C-band systems.
The ground plane is curved and includes dielectric notches at
its side to enhance the antennas impedance bandwidth. The
dimensions of the notches effectively control the upper- and
lower-band edges of the antenna. The antenna exhibits omnidirectional radiation pattern in the H-plane over the full UWB
frequency range. The antenna dimensions are 14 18 1 mm .
These attributes makes the antenna suitable for UWB wireless
systems that require low-profile antennas.
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