IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
15, 2016
Multiband Antenna for WiFi and WiGig
Communications
Dian Wang, Student Member, IEEE, and Chi Hou Chan, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—This letter presents a low-cost printed circuit board
(PCB)-based dual-band antenna for future wireless local area
network (WLAN) applications. The antenna is designed to fully
cover both WiFi channels (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz) and Wireless Gigabit
Alliance (WiGig) channels (57–64 GHz). At the WiFi frequency
bands, the antenna is based on a printed monopole, while at the
WiGig frequency band, a wideband higher-order-mode patch
antenna is adopted. A compact microstrip resonance cell (CMRC)
low-pass filter is also designed to allow feeding the monopole
antenna at WiFi frequency bands while isolating the monopole
from the patch for WiGig operation. The design is fabricated
by standard PCB and plated-through-hole technologies, and its
performance is validated by measurement.
Index Terms—60 GHz, 802.11, higher-order-mode patch
antenna, printed monopole, wideband, WiFi, WiGig, WLAN.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N TRADITIONAL WLAN, IEEE 802.11 standards are
widely adopted for communications over a distance of
several tens of meters. WiFi is generally used as a superset of
these standards, and it has already been a mature technology.
Plenty of research works have been conducted on WLAN
antennas at 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz [1]. Various types of antennas
are proposed to cover these frequency bands, such as dipole,
monopole, dielectric resonator antenna (DRA), patch, and
planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) [1]–[7]. Multiband and wide-
band antennas covering current WLAN frequency bands have
also been reported. In previous studies [8]–[10], antennas are
designed for 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN or 2.5/3.5 GHz WiMAX
bands. Today’s rapid development of multimedia technology
and the Internet appeals for much higher-data-rate communi-
cations, and WiGig is the next-generation communications for
WLAN and wireless personal network (WPAN). The standard
of 802.11ad has already been set for WiGig at 60 GHz. The
system can provide a transmission rate of multigigabit [11].
Previous works [12]–[14] have demonstrated several possible
antenna designs for WigGi applications, and several 60-GHz
radios are also available [15], [16]. However, little work has
been done to demonstrate a single antenna for the new possible
Manuscript received March 25, 2015; revised April 30, 2015; accepted May
24, 2015. Date of publication June 09, 2015; date of current version February
19, 2016.
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves (Hong
Kong), City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail: aeolus@live.hk;
eechic@cityu.edu.hk).
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.2015.2443013
1536-1225 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
309
tri-band enabled devices covering 2.4, 5, 60 GHz after the
merging of WiFi and WiGig. In the future, a mobile device
should be more adaptable to the signal environment and ca-
pable to switch between high-data-rate short-range connections
(WiGig) and traditional connections (WiFi).
Studies in [17] and [18] presented millimeter-wave an-
tennas fabricated on generic substrate using standard printed
circuit board (PCB) and plated-through-hole technologies.
The antenna can fully cover the whole WiGig channels. Prior
work [19] presented a compact microstrip resonance cell
(CMRC)-based multiband base-station antenna. Nevertheless,
the bands are close to each other and located only in microwave
frequency. In this letter, we propose a multiband antenna
fully covering microwave WiFi and millimeter-wave WiGig
bands. The design of WiFi band antenna based on a wideband
printed monopole [3] shows an impedance bandwidth from 2 to
10 GHz, which fully covers current WiFi bands as well as other
bands such as WiMAX (2.5/3.5 GHz). At 60 GHz band, the
antenna acts as a shorted higher-order mode patch [17], [18].
The impedance bandwidth of the patch antenna is up to 18%,
covering the whole 60 GHz WiGig band. Experimental results
are presented to validate the multiband design covering both
WiFi and WiGig.
II. ANTENNA STRUCTURE AND WORKING PRINCIPLE
The top view of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1.
The entire antenna is printed on a single layer of Duroid 5880
substrate with a dielectric constant of 2.2 and thickness of
0.254 mm. The antenna is constructed with three parts. Part
A is a shorted higher-order mode patch antenna. The slot
is added to introduce both and modes for the
patch. At lower frequencies of the 60 GHz band, the patch A’
operates at the fundamental mode. In contrast, at higher
frequencies, the shorted patch A operates at the higher-order
mode. The combination of these two modes broadens
the impedance bandwidth of the antenna element to cover the
entire 60 GHz band [17], [18]. The slot also inherently prevents
low-frequency WiFi signals from shorting to the ground. The
vias are realized by plated-through-hole technology. This part
of the antenna is probe-fed by a V-band SMA connector. The
higher-order mode patch has a ground plane with length
and width on the opposite side of the substrate. Detailed
design and analysis of this shorted higher-order mode patch is
shown in [17]. Part C is a printed rectangular monopole with
two corners close to the feed port beveled. The feedline can
be tuned for impedance matching. There is no ground plane
printed on back of the monopole. Part B is a conventional
CMRC low-pass filter described in [20]. It is used to connect
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Fig. 1. Antenna structure and parameters involved.
the feed to the printed monopole at low frequency band while
serving as an open circuit, isolating the monopole antenna from
the microstrip patch. All the parameters involved are listed in
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2 demonstrates the simulated performance of the CMRC
structure. It can be shown that the insertion loss is less than
0.1 dB below 10 GHz, while the isolation at WiGig band is
more than 20 dB. With the CMRC inserted to the structure, the
antenna can be analyzed separately in two different frequency
bands. At the lower frequency bands (WiFi bands), the current
will go through the probe, followed by the CMRC and then the
transmission line to the printed monopole as shown in Fig. 3(a).
At this frequency band, the higher-order-mode patch acts as a
small portion of the feedline with an electrical length of less than
0.03 wavelengths at 2.4 and 5 GHz. Similar current distribution
at 5.8 GHz is shown in Fig. 3(b). At WiGig frequency band,
the CMRC, serving as an open circuit, will prevent the current
from going through the transmission line to the monopole patch.
Therefore, the higher-order-mode patch can function well. The
current distribution at 60 GHz is plotted in Fig. 3(c). It is noted
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 15, 2016
Fig. 2. Simulated and of a single CMRC.
that little current is induced on the monopole at 60 GHz from
the radiation of the shorted high-order microstrip patch.
III. ANTENNA PERFORMANCE
To validate the design, the antenna was fabricated, and a pro-
totype is shown in Fig. 4. An external fixture was used to sup-
port the antenna and mount the connector because the substrate
is thin and insufficiently rigid. The fixture was fabricated by 3-D
printing with material properties of and loss tangent of
0.01. It is noticed that the external fixture has some influence on
the matching of lower frequency band, but has little effects on
high-frequency performance. Thus, additional simulation result
with the fixture is also given for the microwave frequency band.
The reflection coefficient was measured by a millimeter-wave
Agilent Network Analyzer ranging from dc up to 67 GHz. The
measured and simulated reflection coefficients are plotted in
Fig. 5. The frequency shift at the lower frequency band could
come from simulation (uncertainty of characteristic of 3-D
printing material), fabrication, or both. However, the results
demonstrate good impedance bandwidth across the WiFi bands.
At WiGig band, the fixture has little effect on the performance
of the antenna because of the shielding of the ground plane
below the structure. Both simulation and measurement confirm
that sufficient bandwidth is achieved.
Radiation patterns and gains at low and high frequency bands
were measured by SATIMO and NSI near-field measurement
systems, respectively. For the SATIMO system, both front and
back radiation can be measured. On the other hand, the NSI
system can only provide the front radiation patterns. Radiation
patterns at 2.45 GHz and 60 GHz are plotted in Fig. 6. As dis-
cussed previously, the antenna works as a printed monopole at
WiFi bands, and its radiation pattern in the -plane is bidirec-
tional, while that in the -plane is omnidirectional as shown
in the figure. Similar radiation patterns are obtained for 5.2 and
5.8 GHz. The measured peak gain of the antenna agrees well
with the simulation. For some applications, if a unidirectional
antenna is needed at this frequency band, a ground plane can
be added below the antenna or other wideband antennas can
be applied to replace the printed monopole. At 60 GHz band
for WiGig application, the antenna works as a higher-order-
WANG AND CHAN: MULTIBAND ANTENNA FOR WiFi AND WiGig COMMUNICATIONS 311

Fig. 4. Antenna prototype with an external fixture (a) top and (b) bottom view.

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured reflection coefficient and broadside gain.

Fig. 3. Current distribution at (a) 2.4, (b) 5.8, and (c) 60 GHz.

mode patch antenna, and thus it has similar radiation charac-

teristic as in [17] and [18]. Nevertheless, the radiation pattern
has been tilted in the -plane due to the presence of the printed
monopole as shown in Fig. 6. The tilted angle increases as fre-
quency goes higher, and thus the broadside gain drops. Never-
theless, the radiation pattern remains similar in broadside direc-
tion crossing the band from 57 to 64 GHz. The cross-polariza-
tion level is also much higher in the -plane due to the presence Fig. 6. Simulated and measured radiation patterns at 2.45 and 60 GHz.
of shorting pins. However, these problems mentioned are ac-
ceptable for a mobile device antenna under multipath signal en- for portable terminals requiring short-range high-speed commu-
vironment. In regard to the antenna gain, it can provide a stable nications at 60 GHz, such as smart watches and portable wire-
5–6 dBi gain across the millimeter-wave band, which is suitable less storages. This short-ranges wireless personal network has
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great advantages on transmission speed, band efficiency, and se-
curity. In addition, the antenna is fed by a V-connector for ex-
perimental demonstration in this study. In applications, V-con-
nector is not necessary, and the probe fed to the antenna can be
replaced by a conducting via connected to a small metal pad
that is separated from the ground plane. There are several ap-
proaches to feed the antenna through the metal pad and built-up
packages for integration, such as wire bonding, flip-chip sol-
dering, or coplanar waveguide (CPW) connecting [21], [22].
IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a low-cost multiband antenna covering both
WiFi and WiGig frequency bands (2.4/5.2/5.8/60 GHz) has
been demonstrated. The antenna is designed on a single-layer
PCB, and it acts as a monopole at microwave frequency and
a shorted higher-order-mode patch at millimeter-wave fre-
quency. At both frequency bands, the antenna demonstrates
good radiation performance for mobile device applications.
It provides a possible solution for future-generation devices
where both WiFi and short-range WiGig links are demanded in
different environment.
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