IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

9, 2010 63

Compact Slot Antenna for UWB Applications

Chow-Yen-Desmond Sim, Member, IEEE, Wen-Tsan Chung, and Ching-Her Lee, Member, IEEE

Abstract—A novel compact microstrip-fed slot antenna design is

proposed. By properly loading a notch to the open-ended T-shaped
slot and extending a small section to the microstrip feed line, mul-
tiple resonant frequencies are excited and merged to form a large
enough 10-dB return loss bandwidth (measured from 3.1 to 11.45
GHz) for ultrawideband (UWB) applications. The vital parameters
of the proposed antenna are illustrated, and a prototype is con-
structed and experimentally studied. The measured results show
good radiation patterns and stable signal transmission within the
band of interest.
Index Terms—Microstrip-fed, slot antenna, ultrawideband
(UWB) antenna. Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed UWB slot antenna. l = = 2, = 22,
l l
l =4 ,w =2 ,w =35 : , and w =65: (Unit: mm).

I. INTRODUCTION
so as to achieve impedance matching, an action considered to
be unnecessary.
In this letter, a low-profile (around ) and compact
WING to its wide bandwidth, high data rate, and
O short-range characteristics, ultrawideband (UWB) com-
munication has been widely used in radar and miniature laptop
slot antenna designed for UWB applications
is proposed. The antenna is constructed by etching a T-shaped
open-ended slot in the ground plane that is excited by a mi-
applications. In the future, it can also be used in a wireless crostrip feed line. Instead of modifying the feed structure as
body area network (WBAN) and a wireless personal area in [9]–[11], inserting a small notch into the slot is proposed
network (WPAN). To match these applications or network to improve the impedance matching around the lower resonant
technologies, compact antennas designed specifically for UWB frequencies, while the impedance matching for the middle and
operating from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz have become more and more upper resonant frequencies are achieved by extending a small
attractive in recent years [1]–[4]. In order to achieve low section to the feed line. Further measurement shows good fre-
profile, cost reduction, and compactness for a UWB antenna quency-domain characteristics that validate the capability of the
while preserving good antenna performances such as ease of proposed antenna in applying to any short-range and high-data-
impedance matching, stable radiation pattern, steady gain, and rate UWB communication systems.
transmission characteristics, printed planar antennas (mostly of
monopole design) have been commonly proposed [2]–[4]. II. ANTENNA ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Although an alternative compact planar configuration such as The geometry of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The
the slot design is also recommended due to its wideband char- total dimensions of the ground plane are only 28 14.5 mm ,
acteristic, a large ground plane and a thick substrate of around which can be considered as one of the smallest UWB slot an-
(here, is the free-space wavelength at 3.1 GHz) are tennas found in the open literature. The antenna is fabricated
usually necessary for such UWB antennas [5]–[8]. To further re- on a thin FR4 substrate of thickness 0.8 mm, with relative per-
duce the size of a UWB slot antenna to around (or about mittivity 4.4 and loss tangent 0.02. The T-shaped open-ended
30 mm) in length, many recent designs have suggested that an slot is comprises two individual open-ended slots along the x-
open-ended slot be embedded in a small ground plane [9]–[11]. and y-axes, and a small notch with dimensions 2 1.5 mm is
In these designs, multiresonant frequencies are excited to form embedded at the right bottom corner of the latter one. At the op-
a UWB via only a microstrip feed line, a strategy considered to posite side of the ground plane, a microstrip feed line of width
be novel. However, these designs require that the width of mi- 1.5 mm is printed centrally along the y-axis, and at the open end
crostrip feed line be partially adjusted (increase, reduce, or cut) of this microstrip line, an additional feed section of dimensions
2 1.5 mm is extended along the x-axis.
Manuscript received December 18, 2009. Date of publication January 29,
2010; date of current version March 05, 2010. A. Design Evolution
C.-Y.-D. Sim is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Feng Chia
University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan (e-mail: cysim@fcu.edu.tw).
The development of the proposed UWB slot antenna stems
W.-T. Chung and C.-H. Lee are with the Department of Electronics Engi- from the commercial software High Frequency Structure Simu-
neering, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua 500, Taiwan lator (HFSS). With the aid of this software, the expected charac-
(e-mail: m97672004@mail.ncue.edu.tw; iecher@cc.ncue.edu.tw). teristics and performances of this proposed antenna can be thor-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. oughly investigated, especially over the excited resonant fre-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2010.2041629 quencies. The design evolution of the proposed antenna and its
1536-1225/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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64 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 9, 2010

Fig. 2. (left) Design evolution of the proposed UWB slot antenna and (right)
its corresponding simulated return losses results.

corresponding simulated return loss diagram are presented in

Fig. 3. Simulated and measured return losses of the proposed UWB slot
Fig. 2. It begins with the design of Prototype A, which is a mod- antenna.
ified version of the proposed antenna discussed in [11]. In this
case, various vital parameters such as the length of the feed line
, widths, and positions of both open-ended slots ( , , , TABLE I
SIMULATED TRENDS OF BOTH RESONANT FREQUENCIES AND
and ) of Prototype A are carefully selected to excite a reso- THEIR RESPECTIVE INPUT IMPEDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF THE
nant frequency at around 3 GHz so that a lower-end edge fre- GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED SLOT ANTENNA
quency of slightly less than 3.1 GHz for the designed UWB can (SIGN —: SMALL OR NO VARIATION)
be achieved. As shown in Fig. 2, the resonant modes centered
around 3, 4, and 8 GHz for Prototype A are clearly mismatched,
with the exception of the 10-GHz band. Interestingly, during
the simulation process, it is realized that when the notch is in-
serted (by varying the vital parameter ) in the absence of the
extended feed section (Prototype B), the whole scenario is to-
tally reversed. Although excellently matched 3-, 4-, and 8-GHz
bands are now observed, the impedance bandwidths around the
6- to 7-GHz and 10-GHz region are still slightly mismatched.
Therefore, a dual-band operation is observed from Prototype B,
whose lower and upper bands range from 3.1 to 5.7 GHz and
7.3 to 10.1 GHz, respectively. Since the Prototype B is unable
to fulfill the UWB 7.5-GHz bandwidth requirement, to resolve
this deficiency in bandwidth, further simulations on various vital
parameters are performed, which led to the discovery of the in-
fluence of parameter , the length of an extended microstrip
feed line orthogonal to the feed line (as depicted in Figs. 1 pointing down at SWR) are observed. The rest of the parameters
and 2). By carefully tuning this parameter to 2 mm (for the shown in Table I will not be further discussed here for brevity.
proposed antenna), besides exciting an additional middle reso-
nant mode at around 6 GHz, the 10-GHz resonance is also re- III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
stored with a larger bandwidth that further demonstrated a better
return loss for the upper frequencies. Interestingly, the loading A prototype of this proposed antenna is fabricated and mea-
of both the notch and extended feed section does not affect the sured. As depicted in Fig. 3, the measured return loss validates
lower-end edge frequency of the UWB, which in this case re- well with its simulated counterpart, showing a larger bandwidth
mains at 3.1 GHz. of 8.35 GHz 115%, centered at 7.275 GHz. The measured radi-
For better understanding of the antenna parameters and their ation patterns in two principal planes—namely, the and
effects on the proposed antenna, the simulated trends of all reso- planes—for the five resonant frequencies ( to ) that merged
nant frequencies and their respective input impedance as a func- to form an UWB are presented in Figs. 4–8, respectively. In
tion of the geometrical parameters of the proposed antenna are these figures, it is realized that all the measured patterns re-
presented in Table I. From this table, it is realized that further semble the simulated ones well. Nearly omnidirectional pat-
increasing the length of parameter (arrow sign pointing up) terns at copolarization in the plane and bidirectional pat-
will only affect the middle resonant frequency (arrow sign terns at cross polarization are observed in the lower bands (
pointing up means that will move toward higher frequencies), to ), while the copolarization for the upper bands ( and
while its corresponding impedance matching will also be im- ) shows notable differences between and . Further-
proved (arrow sign pointing up at SWR). Although such action more, the cross-polarization pattern for is rather insignifi-
will not affect the movement for the rest of the resonant fre- cant, whereas has demonstrated an obvious bidirectional pat-
quencies (showing a sign ), impedance mismatch (arrow sign tern (especially in the simulation) that in comparison is a few

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SIM et al.: COMPACT SLOT ANTENNA FOR UWB APPLICATIONS 65

Fig. 4. Radiation patterns of proposed antenna at resonant frequency f . Fig. 8. Radiation patterns of proposed antenna at resonant frequency f .

Fig. 5. Radiation patterns of proposed antenna at resonant frequency f .

Fig. 9. Measured peak gain of proposed antenna.

Fig. 6. Radiation patterns of proposed antenna at resonant frequency f .

Fig. 10. Measured group delay and jS j of proposed antenna.

drop in the antenna’s efficiency at the higher end of the X-band.

Fig. 7. Radiation patterns of proposed antenna at resonant frequency f . Note that these measurements were performed in an anechoic
chamber, whereby the peak gain for each displayed frequency
is selected from either principal planes of the radiation patterns
decibals smaller than the lower bands. For the plane, bidi- (whichever is the largest).
rectional patterns at copolarization are observed at all five fre- To ensure distortionless transmission for UWB pulses, it is es-
quencies. Note that the dips observed at around boresight di- sential for any UWB antennas to maintain a constant and stable
rection (measured copolarization) could be due to the fact that group delay with respect to frequency. Therefore, two identical
the feed line is printed directly behind the horizontal slot (along proposed antennas are orientated in copolarized (y-axis direc-
the y-axis). As for the dips observed at around , it is sus- tion) face-to-face and side-by-side manners, as shown in Fig. 10,
pected to be due to blocking by the cable connected to the an- for measuring the group delay and transmission gain using
tenna during measurement. an Anritsu 37269C vector network analyzer (VNA). Because
Fig. 9 shows the measured peak gain of the proposed antenna of the small output power of the VNA and the lack of a power
at various frequencies, which demonstrated an increasing peak amplifier, both antennas are thus arranged within a close prox-
gain variation from 2.6 to 4.5 dBi when measured from 3 to imity. In this figure, although the variation of the side-by-side
9 GHz. A slight reduction in gain after 9 GHz could be due to a orientation is different from the face-to-face orientation due to

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66 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 9, 2010

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