110 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

9, 2010

A Compact CPW-Fed Slotted Patch Antenna

for Dual-Band Operation
Wen-Chung Liu, Senior Member, IEEE, Chao-Ming Wu, and Nien-Chang Chu

Abstract—A compact coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed patch

antenna designed by simply embedding two types of shaped slots
into a rectangular patch for achieving dual-band operation is
presented. The use of embedded slots can effectively excite mul-
tiresonant modes together with good dual-impedance bandwidths,
especially ultrawide for the upper bandwidth. By fabricating
and measuring the prototype of the proposed optimal antenna,
dual operating bands with 10-dB return-loss bandwidths of about
230 MHz centered at 2.42 GHz and of about 73% ranging from 4.8
to 9.62 GHz covering the required bandwidths of 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz
WLAN standards and the C-band satellite communication were
obtained. Also, a stable monopole-like radiation pattern and an
average antenna gain of 1.4 and 5.1 dBi, respectively, across the
dual operating bands have been measured.
Index Terms—Coplanar waveguide (CPW), dual-band, patch
antenna, ultrawideband, WLAN.

Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed CPW-fed slotted patch antenna for dual-
I. INTRODUCTION band operation.

ECENTLY, the ability to integrate more than one com-

R munication standard into a single system has become an
increasing demand for a modern portable wireless communi-
integration with system circuits, it is therefore feasible for de-
signing a simple and compact dual- or multiband antenna by
cation device. However, it is difficult to simultaneously set the composing both the slot structure and the CPW-feeder.
dual or multiple antennas and a diplexer into such a device due In this letter, a simple dual-band design of a CPW-fed
to the device’s limited space. This indicates that a modern an- monopole antenna consisting of a compact rectangular
tenna requires not only the function of providing a dual- or patch and a couple of twin embedded slots is presented.
multiband operation, but also a simple structure, compact size, By properly selecting shapes and dimensions of these
and easy integration with the system circuit. For this, many embedded slots, good dual-band impedance bandwidths
promising dual- or multiband planar antenna designs such as as well as suitable radiation characteristics for use in
the microstrip-line-fed antennas [1]–[3], the probe-fed antennas 2.4 (2.4-2.484)/5.2 (5.15-5.35)/5.8 (5.725-5.825) GHz WLAN
[4]–[6], the planar inverted-F antennas (PIFAs) [7]–[9], the di- and C-band (4–8 GHz) satellite operations can be achieved. The
electric resonator antennas [10], [11], and the coplanar wave- effects of the embedded slots to the resonance were studied,
guide (CPW)-fed antennas [12]–[14] have been reported. How- and an experimental prototype of the proposed antenna design
ever, most of them have either a large overall size or a compli- working at these frequencies was fabricated and measured,
cated structure to reduce the antenna’s application. Considering verifying the design concept.
that the planar slot antenna has a low Q-factor that can thus pro-
vide a wide impedance bandwidth and is easy to generate mul- II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND DISCUSSIONS
tiresonance by simply varying the slot width and shape, it has The configuration of the proposed dual-band CPW-fed
received much attention recently [15], [16]. Meanwhile, for the slotted patch antenna is shown in Fig. 1. The antenna was
known attractive features of the CPW-fed antenna such as low etched on a 1.6-mm-thick FR4 substrate with relative per-
profile, light weight, a single metallic layer, easy realization, and mittivity 4.4. The basis of this antenna structure is a
rectangular patch with dimensions of mm or
Manuscript received December 16, 2009; manuscript revised January 28, about with respect to the desired lower resonant
2010. Date of publication February 25, 2010; date of current version March frequency 2.4 GHz. This incidentally makes the patch be the
16, 2010. This work was supported by the National Science Council of the
Republic of China (on Taiwan) under Grant NSC 98-2221-E-150-045.
quarter-wavelength antenna candidate. A couple of twin slots
W.-C. Liu and C.-M. Wu are with the Department of Aeronautical including dual folded slots and dual inverted-L-shaped slots
Engineering, National Formosa University, Yunlin 632, Taiwan (e-mail: were embedded into the patch to form the antenna as a CPW-fed
wencliu@nfu.edu.tw). rectangular patch monopole with four protruded strips, which
N.-C. Chu is with the Institute of Electro-Optical and Materials Science, Na-
tional Formosa University, Yunlin 632, Taiwan. include dual side strips and dual short strips. However, dif-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2010.2044135 ferent from a conventional CPW-fed patch antenna, each of
1536-1225/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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LIU et al.: COMPACT CPW-FED SLOTTED PATCH ANTENNA FOR DUAL-BAND OPERATION 111

Fig. 2. Simulated return loss against frequency for the proposed antenna with
Fig. 3. Simulated return loss against frequency for the proposed dual-band
different embedded slots.
slotted patch antenna with different slot embedment. All dimensions are the
same as listed in Table I.
TABLE I
OPTIMAL GEOMETRICAL PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED CPW-FED
DUAL-BAND SLOTTED PATCH ANTENNA

the two side strips was shorted to the ground. Such a design
skill was found to be helpful for improving the antenna’s
impedance matching. In examining the performance of the
proposed antenna configurations in terms of enhancing the dual
bandwidths, the commercially available moment method code
IE3D was used for required numerical analysis. Via iterative
design process, the proper parameters for optimal dual-band
operation of the proposed antenna were finally obtained and are
listed in Table I. Note that in this design, the width of all slots
was selected as 0.5 mm.
Fig. 2 shows the simulated frequency response of return loss
for the proposed antenna, denoted as ant 1. It is clearly seen that Fig. 4. Simulated return loss against frequency for the proposed dual-band
dual impedance bandwidths (10 dB return loss) of 210 MHz slotted patch antenna with various L . Other parameters are the same as listed
(2.34–2.55 GHz) and 5.05 GHz (4.8–9.85 GHz) with two dom- in Table I.
inant resonant modes excited at 2.42 and 5.21 GHz were ob-
tained. Particularly, an ultrawide bandwidth for the upper oper-
ating band was produced as two more resonances at 6.86 and To further investigate the effect of each slot to the proposed
9.5 GHz were excited to thus form an ultrawide continuous antenna’s bandwidth characteristic, the frequency response of
bandwidth. The bandwidths clearly cover the required band- return loss for the proposed antenna with different slot embed-
widths of the WLAN 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz standards and the C-band ment was also analyzed and is shown in Fig. 3. Obviously, for
satellite communication. Meanwhile, to examine the effects of the case with the folded strip (ant 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9), the upper-
the embedded slots to the antenna’s matching condition, the band resonance was effectively excited, and especially, good
simulated results of return loss for the proposed antenna without ultrawideband impedance matching was achieved as the dual
part of the embedded slots were also studied and plotted in folded strips were simultaneously embedded. Similarly, better
Fig. 2. Obviously, for the case without the upper portion for lower-band matching condition was obtained when inserting the
each folded slot (denoted as ant 2), only a worse resonance was dual inverted-L-shaped slots into the patch. These results clearly
excited at the lower band of about 2.45 GHz, which is mainly indicate that existence of the inverted-L-shaped slots can signif-
due to the fundamental mode of the rectangular patch. However, icantly affect impedance matching to the lower band, whereas
for the case of the proposed antenna without the two inverted-L- the upper portions of the two folded slots will seriously change
shaped slots (denoted as ant 3), multiresonant modes with worse the excitation of the upper-band resonant modes.
and good impedance matching for the lower (3.1 GHz) and Fig. 4 presents the tuning effect of the length for the dual
upper (5.45 GHz) bands, respectively, were excited. inverted-L-shaped slots with selected values from 3 to 7 mm

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

Fig. 5. Simulated return loss against frequency for the proposed dual-band Fig. 6. Measured and simulated return loss against frequency for the proposed
slotted patch antenna with various L . Other parameters are the same as listed dual-band slotted patch antenna.
in Table I.

on return-loss response. As predicted, the lower-band resonance

is significantly affected by this parameter. The lower opera-
tion band is moved toward the lower frequency when in-
creases, whereas that of the upper band is almost unchanged.
Such a band-tunable function for the lower band is very helpful
when this antenna is expected to also be used for communication
standards operating at around 2 GHz, such as the GSM-1900,
UMTS, and IMT-2000, etc.
Fig. 5 illustrates the effect of length for each folded slot
with varying dimensions of 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 mm on the frequency
response of the return loss for the proposed antenna. Note that
the case of mm is the proposed optimal design. The re-
sults show that the upper operation band is shifted toward the
higher frequency and has a narrower bandwidth when de-
creases, whereas the lower resonant mode is almost unaffected.
The main reason for and to significantly affect the lower
and upper operating bands, respectively, is due to the lengths of
the dual side strips and the dual short strips, which appropriately
provide the electric current paths for the lower and upper reso-
nances and are changed by varying and . The larger the
, the longer the side strip (short strip) to thus shift the
lower (upper) operating band toward the lower frequency, and
vice versa. The above study is very vital for the designer to have Fig. 7. Measured far-field radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at dif-
information in achieving the desired operating band for various ferent frequencies (E —; E 000 ). (a) 2.42, (b) 5.21, and (c) 6.61 GHz.
applications based on this antenna prototype.

9.35 GHz accompanying an ultrawide bandwidth of 4.82 GHz

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
(4.8–9.62 GHz). Agreement between simulation and measure-
The prototype of the proposed antenna, denoted as ant 1 ment seems very good, allowing for a bandwidth discrepancy
in Fig. 2, was constructed and experimentally investigated. (230 MHz) of % at the upper operating band.
Fig. 6 presents the measured return loss against the frequency The far-field radiation characteristics at frequencies of 4.42,
for this antenna. Obviously, dual-band operations, especially 5.21, and 6.61 GHz for the proposed antenna have also been
an ultrawide bandwidth for the upper operating band, were measured and are shown in Fig. 7. The results, in general, show
obtained. The lower-band resonance was excited at 2.42 GHz this antenna has a stable monopole-like radiation pattern with
with impedance bandwidth of 210 MHz (2.34–2.55 GHz), conical radiations in the elevation planes (xz and yz planes) and
whereas the upper-band resonances occurred at 5.12, 6.61, and a nearly omnidirectional pattern in the azimuth plane (xy plane).

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LIU et al.: COMPACT CPW-FED SLOTTED PATCH ANTENNA FOR DUAL-BAND OPERATION 113

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