CRLH UNIT CELL LOADED QUAD-BAND
MONOPOLE ANTENNA
Sourav Nandi and Akhilesh Mohan
Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication
Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal, India; Corresponding
author: sourav.nandi@ece.iitkgp.ernet.in
Received 21 July 2015
ABSTRACT: A novel design of quad-band monopole planar antenna
has been presented in this letter. Initially, a dual-band monopole
antenna is excited at two distinct frequencies using monopoles of two
different lengths in the same design. Furthermore, the longer monopole
with lower operating frequency is loaded with composite right/left
handed (CRLH) unit cell, due to which two additional operating narrow-
band frequencies are obtained. The special characteristic of the CRLH
unit cell lies in the design trick of the meandered stub inductor, a signif-
icant length of which is adjusted by doubly folding it within a smaller
area leading to an electrically smaller unit cell size. The resonant fre-
quencies of the fabricated quad-band antenna are found at 0.85, 1.61,
2.42, and 3.55 GHz. The prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated
and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with the
simulated results. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt
Technol Lett 58:653–658, 2016; View this article online at
wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.29636
Key words: quad-band; monopole; composite right/left handed unit
cell; SIW
1. INTRODUCTION
The monopole antennas have been proved a very convenient
and lucrative choice in the field of wireless communication for
a long time. Not only have the monopole antennas been evolved
from three-dimensional (3D) topology into planar technology
form but also with the rapid growth and changing application,
for example, use of Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiMAX at different
bands in same device, they are required to be operated in more
than one frequency. Moreover, monopole antennas provide
nearly omnidirectional radiation pattern which is necessary for
these types of applications.
For the last few years, the research on conventional planar
antennas loaded with metamaterial cell has drawn attention of
the researchers due to its distinct advantages. Besides all the
features of a regular planar antenna, viz. ease of integration, low
fabrication cost, low profile, and so forth, this category of anten-
nas has a distinct characteristic. Due to generation of zeroth
and/or negative order modes, operational frequency below the
normal resonant frequency (e.g., quarter wavelength frequency
for simple monopole antenna) are obtained in the same structure
along with the original quarter wavelength frequency, which
leads to effective size reduction of the antenna and finds appli-
cation in multiband operation, especially in modern wireless
communication systems.
The concept and theory of metamaterial have been imple-
mented in different techniques to design various types of
metamaterial-inspired antennas and composite right/left handed
(CRLH) unit cell loaded antennas. In [1–9], various works on
monopole antennas based on the concepts of metamaterial trans-
mission (MTM TL) line are reported. While in [1–3,6,7], differ-
ent metamaterial-loaded or metamaterial-inspired multiband
monopole antennas are designed, [4,5,8,9] deal with the concept
of monopole antennas loaded with a CRLH unit cell. Till date,
a very few designs of quad-band monopole antenna, with the
application of single CRLH unit cell, have been reported as per
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2016
Figure 1 (a) Proposed quad-band monopole antenna loaded with
CRLH unit cell and (b) geometry of the CRLH unit cell (L1 5 9.51 mm,
L2 5 5.8 mm, L3 5 12.74 mm, WC 5 13.5 mm, WL 5 0.2 mm,
W 5 0.3 mm, LS 5 1 mm, d 5 0.6 mm, h1 5 0.4 mm, gC 5 0.3 mm,
gL 5 0.3 mm). [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
authors’ knowledge. In [10], surface mount technology (SMT)
chip components are used to excite four resonance frequencies.
These SMT components have certain limitations like they can-
not be implemented in MMIC technology and are applicable
only at low frequencies due to their self-resonance and are
available commercially only in discrete values, which curbs the
flexibility up to some extent [11]. In [12], two inverted-F arms
along with two CRLH unit cells are used to achieve four bands
which make the structure as well as the equivalent circuit repre-
sentation complicated. It is, therefore, a challenge to design
quad-band monopole antenna with lesser complexity and good
performance.
In this letter, a quad-band microstrip-fed planar monopole
antenna is presented (Fig. 1). The present work uses only one
CRLH unit cell loaded monopole and a simple bent monopole.
In our proposed design, a compact and electrically small CRLH
unit cell of dimension 0.038 k0 3 0.016 k0 at lowest operating
frequency is used. The uniquely designed doubly folded mean-
dered stub inductor leads to 50% size reduction in area of the
CRLH unit cell. This novel design is particularly advantageous
as the length of the inductor can be varied over a long range for
tuning the first three resonant frequencies over a considerable
frequency range without much changing the CRLH unit cell
size. The antenna covers Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz) and WiMAX (2.3,
2.5, and 3.5 GHz) and two narrow bands with resonant frequen-
cies 0.85 and 1.61 GHz. The design is simulated in commercial
electromagnetic simulator HFSS (version 13).
2. PROPOSED CRLH UNIT-CELL LOADED QUAD-BAND
ANTENNA
2.1. Dual-Band Monopole Antenna
Initially, a dual-band monopole antenna with two different arm-
lengths is designed [Fig. 2(d)]. The antenna is designed on Rog-
ers RT Duroid 5880 (Er 5 2.2 and tan d 5 0.0009) with a sub-
strate dimension of 95 mm 3 56 mm and a thickness of
1.57 mm. The antenna consists of two monopoles of different
lengths viz. Lm1 and (Lm2 1 Lm3). The width of the each monop-
ole is equal (Wm 5 1.5 mm) and the gap between them is also
Wm. Figure 3 shows the S11 parameters with various cases.
When only longer monopole is present, the antenna (Antenna I)
resonates at 2.26 GHz, while the antenna resonates at 3.56 GHz,
653
Figure 2 (a) Antenna I, (b) Antenna II, (c) Antenna III, and (d) Antenna IV (L 5 95 mm, Wg 5 56 mm, Lg 5 55 mm, fW 5 4.5 mm, Wm 5 1.5 mm,
Lm1 5 28.05 mm, Lm2 5 9.525 mm, Lm3 5 7 mm).
when only shorter bent monopole is simulated (Antenna II). In
case of the proposed dual-band monopole antenna [Fig. 2(d)],
with both Monopole-I and Monopole-II, it resonates at 2.2 and
3.69 GHz simultaneously. Therefore, the longer monopole
(Lm1 5 28.05 mm and corresponds to 0.21 free-space wavelength
at f1 5 2.26 GHz) is mainly responsible for lower resonant fre-
quency, while the higher frequency can be controlled by the
length of the shorter bent monopole (Lm2 1 Lm3 5 16.525 mm
and corresponds to 0.20 free-space wavelength at
f2 5 3.56 GHz). The return loss of Antenna III and Antenna IV
are almost same, however, the second resonant frequency has
been shifted slightly toward the higher frequency in case of the
Antenna IV, compared to that in case of the Antenna III (Fig.
3). This shift in frequency is due to the fact that the effective
length of Monopole-II has been decreased in case of the bent
one due to proximity coupling near the bent region.
Figure 4 shows the variation of S11 parameter for different
lengths of the ground plane. It is clear from Figure 4 that the
Figure 3 Simulated S11 parameters of the monopole antenna for vari-
ous cases. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
654 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2016
length of the ground plane (Lg) has a significant effect on proper
impedance matching and excitation frequencies of the antenna.
Therefore, it can be concluded that Lg 5 55 mm is chosen to be
the minimum ground length for which a better impedance
matching condition is obtained at both of the resonant
frequencies.
2.2. Design of CRLH Unit Cell
The proposed CRLH unit cell is shown in Figure 1(b). The
overall dimension of the unit cell is 13.5 mm 3 5.8 mm. For
the lowest resonant frequency, that is, 0.85 GHz, kg/
4 5 59.49 mm. Therefore, the longer dimension of the unit cell
WC is less than kg/4 (WC  kg/4). So we can consider the unit
cell as effectively homogeneous CRLH TL and can be analyzed
accordingly [11]. The CRLH unit-cell is comprised of an inter-
digital capacitor (IDC) and two short-circuited doubly folded
meandered stubs as shown in Figure 5(a). The right handed
series inductance (LR) and shunt capacitance (CR) are general
Figure 4 Variation of S11 parameter for different length (Lg) of
ground plane. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 5 (a) Design of the CRLH unit cell and (b) equivalent circuit model of the CRLH unit cell. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
in-built properties of any microstrip structure. The left handed
series capacitance (CL) has been generated by IDC, whereas the
left handed shunt inductance (LL) is realized by adding short-
circuited meandered stub, which effectively increases length and
hence the magnitude of LL. Each of the two stubs is shorted
with a metallic via, which has a diameter of 0.6 mm and con-
nects the upper layer and CRLH unit cell ground plane. The
equivalent circuit of the unit cell is represented in Figure 5(b).
The unit cell is constructed symmetrically with respect to its
central vertical axis, so that the radiation from right and left
side of the CRLH unit cell could cancel each other and only the
monopoles become the prime determining factor behind the
radiation pattern [13]. The ground plane of the unit cell is
detached from the ground plane of the monopole antenna.
2.3. Proposed Antenna with CRLH Unit Cell Loaded
Monopole-I
The CRLH unit cell, mentioned in the previous section, is inte-
grated with the Monopole-I of the dual-band antenna shown in
Figure 2. The design of the proposed antenna, loaded with the
CRLH unit cell, is shown in Figure 1.
In case of a monopole loaded with m numbers of CRLH
unit-cells, the condition of resonance is mathematically given by
[10],
utotal 5umonopole 1m3uCRLH 5n390 ;
Figure 6 Dispersion diagram of proposed CRLH unit cell shown in
Figure 5(a)
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2016
n50; 61; 63; . . . ð1Þ
where, utotal is the total phase shift across the monopole with
CRLH cells, umonopole is the phase shift due to the monopole
without the CRLH unit cell, uCRLH is the phase shift caused by
one CRLH unit cell, m is number of CRLH unit cells, and n is
the mode order.
The dispersion diagram of the proposed CRLH unit cell is
shown in Figure 6. The proposed quad-band monopole antenna,
shown in Figure 1(a), have four resonant frequency bands
(S11 < 210 dB) at 0.85, 1.61, 2.42, and 3.55 GHz (Fig. 7).
Among these four resonant frequencies, the last one is excited
by Monopole-II. The operational mechanism of the remaining
three bands can be explained in the light of the dispersion dia-
gram of the unit cell along with the resonant frequency of
Monopole-I.
The antenna is first excited at 0.85 GHz, which is located in
the lower stop-band region of the CRLH unit cell (Fig. 6). The
IDC can be treated as an open circuit at this band. In this mode
of operation, the antenna is effectively a monopole along with
meandered inductors. The surface current mainly flows through
the meandered stubs and a current flow path generated between
top surface and CRLH ground plane through two metallic
via-holes [Fig. 8(a)]. The second resonant frequency, excited at
1.61 GHz, is within the lower passband of the unit cell. At this
Figure 7 Simulated S11 parameters of the dual-band monopole antenna
and the proposed quad-band monopole antenna. [Color figure can be
viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
655
 Figure 10 Simulated S11 parameters for varying capacitance of the
IDC. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available
at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Figure 8 Vector surface current density on the proposed monopole

antenna at (a) 0.85 GHz, (b) 1.61 GHz, (c) 2.41 GHz, and (d) 3.55 GHz.
[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

resonant frequency, the phase lead obtained from the CRLH

unit cell exactly equals the phase lag provided by the
Monopole-I. Equation (1) is satisfied in this case for m 5 1 and
n 5 0. According to the characteristic of n 5 0 mode, the surface
current should be uniform along the monopole with a step dis-
continuity at the boundary of the unit cell. This fact is also evi- Figure 11 Fabricated proposed unit-cell loaded quad-band monopole
antenna (a) top view, (b) enlarged view of bounded region, and (c) bot-
tom view. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

Figure 9 Simulated S11 parameters for varying length of doubly

folded meandered stub shown in inset. I: 19.1 mm, II: 40.3 mm, and III:
61.5 mm (digits mentioned are the total length of each of the meandered Figure 12 Simulated and measured S11 parameters of the proposed
stubs, located at both sides of the IDC). [Color figure can be viewed in antenna. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is avail-
the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com] able at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

656 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2016 DOI 10.1002/mop
TABLE 1 Comparison of Simulated and Measured Results

Resonant Resonant
Frequencies Frequencies Bandwidth Bandwidth Efficiency
(Sim) (Meas) (Sim; %) (Meas; %) (Sim; %)
1 0.85 0.93 2.59 4.3 94
2 1.61 1.59 3.17 3.14 94
3 2.42 2.34 12.64 16.23 98
4 3.55 3.63 9.24 9.09 96

dent in Figure 8(b), where the current distribution in the

Monopole-I maintains uniformity and having a higher value
below the unit cell, while its magnitude suddenly drops to
almost zero at the upper boundary of the unit cell with an abrupt
change in direction. The resonance frequency of the third band
is the quarter-wavelength resonance of the Monopole-I [i.e., Eq.
(1) is satisfied for n 5 1]. From Figures 6 and 7, we can see that
the lower part of the (S11 < 210 dB) of the third band (up to
2.12 GHz) falls in the region where b 5 0, that is, phase shift
obtained from CRLH unit cell is zero (Fig. 6). Therefore, the
effective monopole length for n 5 1 mode is (L1 1 L3), which is
evidently shorter than the total Monopole-I length Lm1. As a
result, the third resonant frequency is shifted from 2.2 to
2.41 GHz along with the whole band. In this case, the surface
current above the CRLH unit cell tends to decrease gradually
and becomes zero at the top end, unlike previous two cases,
where it becomes zero just above the unit cell.
The frequency of operation of the fourth band is mainly the
function of Monopole-II and the effect of CRLH unit cell on it
is almost negligible. Figure 8(d) shows that the current distribu-
tion is dominant along the length of Monopole-II and the cur-
rent is continuous, uniform, and unidirectional throughout the
length.
The variation of S11 parameter along with the change of
length of doubly folded meandered stub inductance is shown in
Figure 9. All the four resonance frequencies have shifted
toward lower frequency with increasing left-handed inductance.
Although only the first two resonances are directly dependent
on the inductance of the CRLH unit cell, but the shift in higher
two frequencies are observed due to monopole-CRLH unit cell
interaction and coupling. Thus, by increasing length of the stub
antenna miniaturization can be achieved over a wide range.
Not only that, all the four resonances can be tuned in this way,
keeping other part of the antenna unchanged. The variation of
resonant frequencies with increasing capacitance of IDC is
observed in Figure 10, where with increasing left-handed
capacitance the first three resonance frequencies have
decreased and the fourth one remained unchanged, as slight
change in capacitance has almost no influence on Monopole-II.
Therefore, frequency tunability can also be achieved in this
Figure 13 Simulated and measured normalized 2D radiation patterns
manner.
of the proposed antenna. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The fabricated antenna of the prototype is shown in Figure
11. The S11 parameters of the fabricated antenna are meas-
ured in Anritsu MS2038C vector network analyzer and plot- tion tolerance, SMA connector loss, and limitations of simu-
ted in Figure 12, which shows that simulated and measured lation environment.
values are in good agreement. The measured resonant fre- The radiation patterns in all four resonant frequencies are
quencies are obtained at 0.93, 1.59, 2.34, and 3.63 GHz. The shown in Figure 13. From the 2D plots, it is evident that all
simulated and measured results are compared in Table 1. The the radiation patterns are quasi-omnidirectional. The simulated
slight discrepancies between two is generated due to fabrica- peak realized gains are 20.59 dBi at 0.93 GHz, 1.54 dBi at

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 58, No. 3, March 2016 657
TABLE 2 Comparison of Different Parameters Between Proposed and Published Works
Total Electrical Size
Proposed 0.269 k0 3 0.159 k0
Work
[9] 0.282 k0 3 0.166 k0
[13] 0.393 k0 3 0.173 k0
[12] 0.3 k0 3 0.12 k0
Where, k0 is the free space wavelength at lowest resonant frequency.
1.59 GHz, 3.26 dBi at 2.34 GHz, and 3.53 dBi at 3.63 GHz.
The comparison between the proposed work and other published
works is shown in Table 2.
4. CONCLUSION
A novel microstrip-fed quad band monopole planar antenna,
loaded with compact CRLH unit cell of electrical size 0.038 k0 3
0.016 k0 only at 0.85 GHz, is designed and fabricated. The first
three bands are generated from the combined effect of CRLH unit
cell and a conventional quarter-wavelength monopole, while the
fourth band is achieved by properly designing an additional bent
monopole on the same antenna. A huge size reduction of 61% is
achieved due to loading of CRLH unit cell to the Monopole-I. The
S11 parameters of the fabricated antenna are measured and they
are in good agreement with those of the simulated results. The
radiation patterns obtained are quasi-omnidirectional in all operat-
ing frequencies. The proposed antenna would be useful for Wi-Fi
(2.4 GHz) and WiMAX (2.3, 2.5, and 3.5 GHz) applications.
Addition to that, another two narrow bands at 0.85 and 1.61 GHz
are also available. The antenna efficiencies are 94% and above in
all the operating bands.
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2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A BROADBAND KU-BAND MICROSTRIP
REFLECTARRAY ANTENNA USING
SINGLE-LAYER FRACTAL ELEMENTS
Fei Xue,1,2 Hong-Jian Wang,2 Min Yi,2 and Guang Liu2
1
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;
Corresponding author: 07083003xuefei@163.com
2
The Key Laboratory of Microwave Remote Sensing, National Space
Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190,
China
Received 22 July 2015
ABSTRACT: A novel single-layer microstrip reflectarray element with
fractal structure is proposed. Ansoft HFSS is used to analyze the reflect
phase for the fractal element in honeycomb lattice. A 469-element prime
focus microstrip reflectarray antenna composed of the proposed fractal
elements is designed, manufactured, and measured. The measured gain
level of 29.8 dB is obtained at the center frequency of 13.58 GHz with
1-dB gain bandwidth of 15.3%. V C 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:658–662, 2016; View this article online
at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.29637
Key words: reflectarray; fractal structure; single-layer; honeycomb lat-
tice; broadband
1. INTRODUCTION
The conventional parabolic reflector antenna has been widely
used in both military and civil field. Due to the increasingly
high requirements for flexible communication system, the disad-
vantages of the traditional parabolic reflector antenna have
become increasingly apparent, such as heavy, bulky, and nonpla-
nar. To avoid the disadvantages, efforts have been made to
replace a parabolic reflector by its equivalent such as a micro-
strip reflectarray [1]. A reflectarray antenna consists of an array
of microstrip patch elements, each one imparting an appropriate
phase delay to the incident wave to produce a collimated beam
in front of the antenna aperture plane.
The main limitation to reflectarray performance is the narrow
bandwidth, generally lower than 5% and even less for large
reflectarrays [2]. The element bandwidth and spatial phase delay
dispersion are the two factors limiting the reflectarray band-
width. However, for the moderate gain antennas, the element
bandwidth seems to be the main reason of bandwidth limitation
[3]. The bandwidth of the radiating element can be improved by
an appropriate design of the phase-shifter element. The F/D ratio
DOI 10.1002/mop