LIU et al.

: COMPACT OPEN-SLOT ANTENNA WITH BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT

1

Compact Open-Slot Antenna With Bandwidth

Enhancement
WeiXing Liu, YinZeng Yin, WenLong Xu, and ShaoLi Zuo

Abstract—A compact open-slot antenna for bandwidth enhance-

ment is presented. Multiple resonances are generated by using an
asymmetrical rectangular patch with the U-shaped open-slot struc-
ture. Two bevels are cut on the patch to improve the impedance
matching. The proposed antenna provides a wide impedance band-
width of 122% from 2.95 to 12.1 GHz with 10-dB return loss. It is
shown that the impedance bandwidth can be enhanced from 28%
to 122% by using different antenna types. Moreover, this slot an-
tenna is with a small size of mm , while main-
taining the ultrawideband (UWB) performance.
Index Terms—Bandwidth enhancement, compact antenna,
microstrip slot antenna, printed antennas, ultrawideband
(UWB).

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna.

I N MODERN wireless communication systems, antennas

are required to be simple in structure, compact in size, and
stable in radiation patterns while retaining an extremely broad
operating frequency range. However, the design of a wideband
antenna is not an easy task, especially for a portable device since
a compromise between the size, cost, and bandwidth has to be
achieved simultaneously. Recently, printed planar slot antennas
have become very attractive candidates for wireless systems due
to their low profile, wide bandwidth, compact size, ease of
fab- rication, etc. When a slot antenna is fed by a microstrip
line, it does not add weight and size to the system and is
suitable for portable applications. A variety of printed slot
antenna config- urations have been reported in the open
literature [1]–[5], in- cluding straight slot, wide slot, L-
shaped slot, inverted T-slot, step slot, and fractal-shaped slot.
However, the traditional slot antenna is about a half-
wavelength resonance, which is a large size. On the other
hand, some slot antennas have the limited bandwidth, which
is not enough to use for more applications. To reduce an
antenna size and enhance its bandwidth, a open slot
with the nonsymmetric ground is used in [6], and the
obtained bandwidth is about 94% (2.2–6.1 GHz). A tapered
slot is used in the design of an antenna for lower ultrawide-
band (UWB) (3.1–4.85 GHz) applications [7], but the band-
width is too limited to meet the demands for UWB systems.
Manuscript received July 07, 2011; revised August 08, 2011; accepted Au-
gust 11, 2011. Date of publication August 18, 2011; date of current version
September 01, 2011.
The authors are with National Key Laboratory of Antennas and Microwave
Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: liuwx@mail.xi-
dian.edu.cn; yyzeng@mail.xidian.edu.cn; xwenlong0232@163.com; zuoshao-
li@163.com).
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.2011.2165197
An inverted-L-shaped open slot antenna [8] and a linear
tapered slot antenna [9] are presented to enhance the
impedance band- width. In [10], a stepped-slot antenna is
effective in enhancing the bandwidth (3–11 GHz). However,
its size mm is slightly large. Therefore, it is
important to further reduce the size of the antenna.
In this letter, a new open-slot antenna with bandwidth
enhancement and size reduction is presented. The measured
impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is about 122%
from 2.95 to 12.1 GHz (defined by 10-dB return loss). In ad-
dition, the proposed antenna has a simple structure and a small
size mm . The designed antenna has been
successfully implemented, and the effects of the key structure
parameters on the antenna performances are also analyzed and
discussed.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION AND DESIGN
The geometry of the proposed open-slot antenna is shown in
Fig. 1. The antenna is printed on an FR4 substrate (thickness
mm, relative permittivity , loss tangent of 0.027).
The dimensions of the substrate are mm .
This proposed open-slot antenna has a bevelled rectangular
patch on the top side of the substrate, which is fed by a 50-
microstrip line of width and length . The patch size is op-
timized to achieve a miniaturized design. A U-shaped open slot
is etched on the ground plane to enhance the bandwidth in the
opposite side. By using the asymmetrical beveled rectangular
patch and the U-shaped open slot, a wideband impedance char-
acteristic (2.95–12.1 GHz) can be obtained.
The design evolution of the open-slot antenna is shown in
Fig. 2, and the corresponding simulated return losses are
shown in Fig. 3. For detailed design, all parameters of the
antennas are

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 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10,
2 2011
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Fig. 2. Design evolution of the proposed antenna.
Fig. 3. Simulated return losses of antenna in different types corresponding to
Fig. 2.
TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE ANTENNAS
simulated using the Ansoft HFSS commercial software and
are given in Table I.
It begins with the design of Antenna I, which consists of
a straight microstrip feed line and a U-shaped open slot. As
shown in Fig. 3, when the slot antenna is fed by a straight line,
a 10-dB return loss bandwidth of 28% from 3.45 to 4.6 GHz
is achieved, which is like that in [3]. After using a rectangular
patch instead of the straight microstrip line (Antenna II), the
an- tenna can get three relative impedance bandwidths with 10-
dB return loss about 15% (3.1–3.6 GHz), 59% (4.9–9 GHz),
and 12% (10–11.2 GHz), respectively. However, it still cannot
sat- isfy the requirement for UWB systems. The impedance
char- acteristics of the slot antenna may mainly suffer from
strong ground-plane effects.
Fig. 4. Photograph of the proposed antenna. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.
Fig. 5. Simulated and measured return losses of the proposed antenna.
It is worth mentioning that when the rectangular patch of
the antenna is asymmetrically fed by a 50- microstrip line,
mul- tiple resonances can be generated in the operating band.
How- ever, the impedance matching of the antenna is poor,
especially at the lower frequencies.
To improve the impedance matching of the proposed
design, two bevels are cut on the rectangular edges (Proposed
Antenna). In the design procedure, we found that the
rectangular patch with two bevels could improve impedance
matching of the an- tenna at both lower and higher
frequencies. The proposed an- tenna could get an ultrawide
impedance bandwidth with good impedance matching after
two bevels are cut and its simulated 10-dB return loss
bandwidth is up to 122% (2.95–12.1 GHz),
as shown in Fig. 3.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 4 shows a photograph of the implemented proposed
antenna, and Fig. 5 shows the simulated and measured return
losses of the proposed antenna. The simulated and measured
results present a very good agreement. From the measured
result, a wide operating bandwidth of about 122% from 2.95
to 12.1 GHz with 10-dB return loss has been achieved. From
Fig. 5, it can be observed that combination of the U-shaped
open slot and the asymmetrical beveled rectangular patch
could produce multiple resonant frequencies covering the UWB
band. The rectangular patch affects resonances at 5–9 GHz,
and the resonance mode at lower frequency is due to the open
slot.
To further understand the phenomenon behind this wide
impedance performance, the simulated input impedance of
the proposed antenna on a Smith chart is shown in Fig. 6.
It
 Fig. 8. Effects of varying width on impedance matching.

Fig. 6. Simulated input impedance on a Smith chart of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 7. Effects of varying width on impedance bandwidth.

presents four loops on the Smith chart, corresponding to four

resonant frequencies present on its return loss plot in Fig. 5.
The U-shaped slot comprises two vertical slots and one
hori- zontal slot. The width of the vertical slot affects
impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna. Fig. 7 shows
the simu- lated return loss curves for different values of
with other parameters are fixed. The simulated 10-dB return
loss band- widths are about 68% (4.02–8.17 GHz), 119% (2.95–
11.6 GHz), and 122% (2.95–12.1 GHz), respectively, when
varies. In- creasing enlarges the impedance bandwidth of Fig. 9. Radiation patterns at 4, 7, and 10 GHz in the -plane and -plane.
the antenna. This is mainly due to the mutual coupling
between the separate ground plane and the rectangular patch is L-shaped ground plane plays an important role in impedance
reduced. matching, especially at higher frequencies.
The width of the horizontal slot affects the impedance The simulated and measured radiation patterns at 4, 7, and
matching of the proposed slot antenna. As shown in Fig. 8, when 10 GHz in the E-plane ( -plane) and H-plane ( -plane) are
is increased, impedance matching of the open-slot antenna plotted in Fig. 9. From a view of the results, the proposed an-
is significantly improved. This indicates that the gap distance tenna displays omnidirectional radiation patterns in the H-plane.
between the separate ground plane and the lower edge of the
 rectangular patch with the U-shaped open-slot structure,
impedance bandwidth of the designed antenna is improved
from 28% initially to 122%. Effects of key parameters on the
antenna performances are also investigated. The proposed an-
tenna features an ultrawide impedance bandwidth from 2.95 to
12.1 GHz with a small size, which is very suitable for portable
UWB applications.

REFERENCES

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Fig. 10. Peak gain of the proposed antenna.
The asymmetrical radiation patterns in the E-plane are due to its
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Finally, the simulated antenna gains against frequency are
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The impedance bandwidth of the antenna (on an FR4
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