SMA soldering accuracy and FR4 substrate quality need to be 13.
13. Ansoft Corporation, Ansoft High Frequency Structure Simulation
taken into consideration [14]. Figure 10 shows the measured radi-
ation patterns including co-polarization and cross-polarization in
the H-plane (x-z plane) and E-plane (y-z plane). It can be seen
that the radiation patterns in x-z and y-z planes are nearly omni-
directional for the four frequencies.
4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a compact novel CPW-fed antenna with square
spiral-patch for multiband applications has been proposed for
various applications. The experimental results show that the
antenna can provide five impedance bandwidths of 474 MHz
(2.335–2.809 GHz), 214 MHz (3.362–3.540 GHz), 164 MHz
(4.324–4.488 GHz), 176 MHz (5.811–5.987 GHz), and 492
MHz (7.994–8.486 GHz). The antenna consists of a square-
spiral patch with two L-shape strips. With subjoin square spiral
the number of frequency resonance is increasing. Also by intro-
ducing two L-shape strips in the inside of square spiral, much
wider impedance bandwidth can be produced. The designed
antenna has a simple configuration and easy fabrication process.
The experimental results show that the realized antenna with
simple structure and omnidirectional radiation pattern can be a
good candidate for multiband applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the northwest antenna and microwave research
laboratory (NAMRL) for their beneficial and professional help.
REFERENCES
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DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 1, January 2015
(HFSS), Ver. 13, Ansoft Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA, 2010.
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C 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
V
A COMPACT CRLH UNIT CELL LOADED
TRIPLE-BAND MONOPOLE ANTENNA
S. Venkatrami Reddy, Debdeep Sarkar,
Kushmanda Saurav, and Kumar Vaibhav Srivastava
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology
Kanpur, India; Corresponding author: debdeep1989@gmail.com
Received 10 June 2014
ABSTRACT: In this letter, a microstrip-fed triple-band monopole
antenna loaded with a composite right/left handed (CRLH) unit cell is
presented. The proposed CRLH unit cell comprises of shunt spiral induc-
tors and series interdigital capacitors. Loading of the monopole with
CRLH unit cell induces two additional lower order frequency bands
below the k/4 resonance of the monopole. The measured and simulated
results are in good agreement. The radiation patterns at the three oper-
ating frequencies are quasi-omnidirectional. The proposed antenna can
be used in GSM-900/WLAN/LTE2500 applications. V C 2015 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 57:115–119, 2015; View
this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.28789
Key words: composite right/left handed unit cell; metamaterials;
monopole antenna
1. INTRODUCTION
Metamaterials (MTMs) are artificially effective homogeneous
structures with special electromagnetic properties [1]. Since the
first experimental demonstration of left handed material in the
start of 21st century by Smith [2] and subsequent proposal of
transmission line theory of MTMs [3], the practical applications
of MTMs at microwave and optical frequencies spurred a huge
research interest in the scientific community. Recently, these
MTM unit cells have been used in conjunction with the conven-
tional antenna with an aim to achieve size miniaturization and
multiband operation. Several types of these MTM-inspired
antennas exist in the literature [4–8]. In [9,10], resonant type
monopole antennas loaded with composite right/left handed
(CRLH) unit cells, which allow the antennas to operate at the
zeroth order mode (n 5 0) and negative order modes (n 5 21,
22, 23. . ..), are demonstrated. Even though these configura-
tions [9,10] provide desired multiband functionality, further
reduction of antenna footprint can be achieved by modifying the
parameters of the CRLH unit cell, used as loading element in
the monopole.
In this article, a planar microstrip-fed triple-band monopole
antenna loaded with a CRLH unit cell is presented. The proposed
CRLH unit cell consists of a dual-arm shunt spiral inductors and
a series interdigital capacitor (IDC). The effective shunt induct-
ance is increased by use of dual-arm spiral structure, which leads
to miniaturization. The proposed antenna is simulated in finite
element method based electromagnetic solver HFSS. It is con-
firmed that the proposed antenna has two additional lower order
modes, one in the lower stop band and the other in the LH region
of the CRLH unit cell, apart from the k/4 resonance of the
monopole. While the electrical size of the CRLH unit cell
115
demonstrated in [10] is 0.16k0 3 0.02k0, the proposed CRLH
unit cell is more compact in size and occupies only 0.05k0 3
0.02k0 of the monopole, where k0 is the free-space wavelength
corresponding to the lowest resonant frequency of the antenna.
The operating bands of the proposed antenna can be controlled
by properly engineering the dispersion relation of the CRLH unit
cell. The proposed triple-band antenna has quasi-omnidirectional
radiation pattern in all the operating bands.

2. DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF REFERENCE MONOPOLE

ANTENNA
Figure 1(a) shows the schematic of the reference monopole
antenna. The antenna is synthesized on commercially available
1.57 mm thick Rogers RT Duroid-5880 substrate (er 5 2.2 and
tan (d) 50.0009) and is fed by a 50 X microstrip line. Figure
1(b) shows the variation of S11 with frequency. The monopole
length (“Lm”) is chosen to get operation at 2.3 GHz. The size of
the ground plane (Lg 3 Wg 5 55 mm 3 56 mm) has been opti-
mized based on the guidelines presented in [11] to get an opti-
mum bandwidth of 24.7% at 2.3 GHz. Other design parameters
of the antenna are provided in the caption of Figure 1.

3. MONOPOLE ANTENNA LOADED WITH CRLH UNIT CELLS Figure 2 CRLH unit cell. (a) Schematic diagram in microstrip environment
and (b) Equivalent circuit model; Ws 5 0.9 mm, Ss 5 0.8 mm, a 5 6.5 mm,
3.1. Design and Characterization of the Proposed CRLH Unit Cell Wc 5 0.5 mm, Sc 5 0.28 mm, Lg1 5 Wg1 5 0.5 mm, and via radius 5 0.3 mm
Figure 2(a) depicts the schematic of the proposed CRLH unit
cell in microstrip environment. The lumped equivalent circuit
model of the unit cell is shown in Figure 2(b) [10]. It is noted
that two spiral stubs are shorted to the ground through via to
provide the shunt inductance (Lshunt). The IDC is introduced
into the model as Cseries. They correspond to the LH (left-
handed) contribution [12,13]. The RH (right-handed) contribu-
tion comes from the series inductance (Lseries) and shunt capaci-
tance (Cshunt). Figure 3 represents the dispersion diagram of the
CRLH unit cell obtained from the two port analysis of the unit
cell in microstrip environment [14]. It can be observed that the
LH region is ranging from 1.2–2.3 GHz and RH region is rang-
ing from 2.3–4.45 GHz.

3.2. Monopole Antenna Loaded With CRLH Unit Cell

Figure 4 shows the schematic of the monopole integrated with
one CRLH unit cell. The resonance condition occurs when the
total phase shift across the CRLH-loaded monopole (utotal) sat- Figure 3 Dispersion diagram of the proposed CRLH unit cell
isfies the following condition [10]:

Figure 1 Reference Monopole Antenna. (a) Schematic and (b) Simu- Figure 4 Schematic of the proposed CRLH-loaded monopole;
lated S11 as a function of frequency; Lg 555 mm, Wg 5 56 mm, L1 5 12.74 mm, L2 5 6.52 mm, and L3 5 8.79 mm (other design parameters
Ls 5 40 mm, Lm 5 28.05 mm, and Wm 5 4.5 mm of the monopole are same those provided in the caption of Figs. 1 and 2)

116 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 1, January 2015 DOI 10.1002/mop
 umonopole, phase shift due to the monopole excluding CRLH
unit cell; uCRLH, phase shift caused by one CRLH unit cell; m,
number of CRLH unit cells; n, mode order.
Figure 5 shows the simulated S11 as a function of frequency
for the proposed CRLH-loaded monopole. Three distinct bands
located at 0.89, 1.66, and 2.57 GHz are achieved. The realized
impedance bandwidth (S11 < 210 dB) is 3.9% at 0.89 GHz, 6.8%
at 1.66 GHz, and 17.4% at 2.57 GHz. The associated antenna
size is only 0.05k0 3 0.08k0 (k0 is the free space wavelength cal-
culated at the lowest resonant frequency, 0.89 GHz). The occur-
rence of these three bands can be explained based on the
dispersion relation of the CRLH unit cell shown in Figure 3 as
follows. The first band located at 0.89 GHz is within the lower
stop band of the CRLH unit cell at which the IDC can be consid-
ered as open circuit and all the current goes through the shunt
Figure 5 Simulated S11 as a function of frequency for the proposed branch [Fig. 6(a)]. The antenna in this mode can be considered as
CRLH-loaded monopole a monopole loaded with a spiral inductor. The second resonant
frequency located at 1.66 GHz lies within the LH region of the
/total 5/monopole 1m3/CRLH 5n3908 :n50; 61; 62; 63 . . . unit cell. At this frequency, the CRLH unit cell provides a phase
(1) lead that is exactly equal to the phase lag provided by the
where, monopole, and Eq. (1) is satisfied with n 5 0. The current is

Figure 6 Simulated vector surface current distribution on the monopole loaded with CRLH unit cell at (a) 0.89 GHz, (b) 1.66 GHz, and (c) 2.57 GHz.
[Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 1, January 2015 117

Figure 7 Effect of length of the spiral stubs on (a) Dispersion relation
of the CRLH unit cell and (b) S11 characteristics of the CRLH-loaded
monopole
uniform along the monopole with a discontinuity step at the
CRLH boundaries [Fig. 6(b)], which is a characteristic of the
n 5 0 mode [10]. The third resonant frequency located at
2.57 GHz is the k/4 resonance of the monopole (n 5 1). It is
shifted from 2.3 to 2.57 GHz because at 2.3 GHz the CRLH unit
cell provides a zero phase shift, and hence the modified monop-
ole electrical length at this frequency corresponds to (L1 1 L3),
which is shorter than that of the reference monopole
(L1 1 L2 1 L3). The vector surface current distribution at
2.57 GHz is shown in Figure 6(c). It can be seen that the current
goes to zero after certain distance from the CRLH boundary. This
is in contrast to the resonant modes corresponding to 0.89 and
1.66 GHz, at which the current becomes zero right from the
CRLH boundary.
Figure 8 Photograph of the fabricated one CRLH -loaded monopole.
(a) Top view and (b) bottom view. [Color figure can be viewed in the
online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
118 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 1, January 2015
Figure 9 Comparison between the measured and simulated S11 for the
monopole loaded with one CRLH unit cell
Figure 7 shows the effect of varying the length (“a”) of the spi-
ral stubs on the dispersion curve of the proposed CRLH unit cell
and on S11 of the resulting CRLH-loaded monopole antenna. It is
observed that by increasing the length of the spiral stubs (‘a’), the
inductance loading on the monopole increases. So the first reso-
nance frequency reduces. Secondly, both LH and RH bands move
toward lower frequency, and consequently the second and third
operating frequencies reduce as well. Thus, by increasing the
length of the spiral stubs, the operating bands can be shifted
toward left, leading to effective antenna miniaturization.
3.3. Measurement Results and Discussion
Figure 8 shows the photograph of the fabricated CRLH-loaded
monopole. The S11 of the fabricated antenna was measured
using Agilent N5222A vector network analyzer. The comparison
between the measured and simulated S11 is shown in Figure 9.
Apparently, three resonant modes located at 0.91, 1.69, and
2.55 GHz are achieved in measurement, which are suitable for
GSM-900/WLAN/LTE2500 applications. The measured imped-
ance bandwidth is 4.72% at 0.91 GHz, 6.33% at 1.69 GHz, and
15.7% at 2.55 GHz.
Figure 10 shows the measured and simulated normalized
two-dimensional radiation patterns of the proposed antenna in
the three principal planes. The measurements are performed in
the anechoic chamber using two-antenna measurement setup.
The measured radiation patterns at the three operating bands
are quasi-omnidirectional and consistent with simulated ones.
Moreover, the simulated realized gain has peak values of
21.87 dBi at 0.89 GHz, 1.03 dBi at 1.66 GHz, and 3.14 dBi at
2.57 GHz. While, the measured peak realized gains are 21.58
dBi at 0.91 GHz, 0.9 dBi at 1.69 GHz, and 3.28 dBi at
2.55 GHz. The negative gain at the lower resonant frequency
can be attributed to the smaller size of the ground plane. Table
1 shows the comparison between the performances of the pro-
posed antenna and the antenna demonstrated in [10] in terms
of electrical size and radiation efficiency. It can be seen that at
all operating frequencies the proposed antenna is more com-
pact (as the effective shunt inductance increases due to dual-
arm spiral structure) than the reference antenna with excellent
radiation efficiency.
4. CONCLUSION
A compact triple-band microstrip-fed monopole antenna loaded
with a CRLH unit cell is presented. The resulting antenna has
two lower order frequency bands, in addition to the k/4 resonance
DOI 10.1002/mop
 of the monopole. The electrical size of the proposed antenna is
only 0.05k0 3 0.08k0 at the lower resonant frequency. The pro-
posed antenna can be further miniaturized by increasing the
length of the spiral stubs of the CRLH unit cell as discussed in
section 3(b). The S11 responses, surface current distributions and
radiation patterns are thoroughly examined. The radiation patterns
show quasi-omnidirectional behavior at the three operating bands.
The proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. A good agree-
ment between simulation results and measurements has been
achieved. To achieve multiple operating bands (more than 3), the
monopole can be loaded with more than one CRLH unit cell.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge all members of Micro-
wave Circuit Laboratory, Microwave MTM Laboratory and PCB
Laboratories for their continuous support and IIT Kanpur
authority for the financial assistance. The authors would also
like to express their special thanks to Mr. S. Vinoth Kumar for
kindly assisting us in measurements.

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V

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 57, No. 1, January 2015 119