A Tri-Band Meander-Shaped Patch Antenna for
WLAN and Radio Navigation Applications
Juin Acharjee, Member, IEEE Kaushik Mandal, Senior Member, IEEE
St. Thomas College of Engineering & Radio Physics & Electronics, CU
Technology, Kolkata, India
juin.ece@gmail.com kaushikrpe@ieee.org
Abstract— In this paper, a compact tri-band antenna is
proposed for radio navigation and WLAN applications. The
proposed antenna is designed to operate in the frequency
bands 2.26-2.46GHz, 4.02-4.42GHz, and 5.15-5.5GHz with
resonating frequency 2.36GHz, 4.2GHz, and 5.3GHz
respectively. The first lower resonating frequency has been
achieved by using the meander-shaped patch and other two
higher resonating frequencies have been generated by using
two inverted L-shaped back resonators. Extensive analyses of
the reflection coefficient, radiation patterns, and peak gain at
different resonating frequencies are presented. The peak gain
at three different resonating frequencies is 3.42dBi, 4.12dBi,
and 3.47dBi respectively. Multiple bands and higher gain
performance of the proposed design make it suitable for the
practical applications.
Keywords— Tri-band, meander patch, back resonator, radio
navigation, WLAN
I. INTRODUCTION
Design of a small-size, simple multiband antenna
covering most of the useful wireless frequency bands is a
very challenging task to the antenna designer. Different
techniques have been reported by the researchers for
designing multiband antenna, such as use of different shaped
defected ground structure (DGS) [1, 2], open-ended stubs
attached parallel to the meander structure [3], taking different
shaped patches [4, 5], using shorted parasitic element with
the ground plane [6], and placing shorting pin between patch
and ground plane [7]. Reconfigurable multiband can also be
designed by switching the feed location or switching the
ground plane [8]. Most widely used technique for multiband
antenna designing is the use of a meander-shaped patch. This
technique is very popular for mobile applications due to its
compactness without affecting the performance of the other
parameters like radiation pattern, gain, and polarization. The
meander line antenna basically resonates at a shorter length
than straight wire monopole antenna. Now a day the meander
line antennas are mostly used for RFID and WLAN
applications. As for these systems, antenna size plays an
important role for better system performance [9]. Different
structures of the meander line for multiband applications are
investigated. A compact triple band antenna operating at
900MHz, 1800MHz and 2450MHz is designed using
triangularly shaped meander line and two coupled line [10].
H-shaped meandered patch is proposed for L, S, C, and X
band communication systems [11]. Using meandering
technique and back microstrip line dual-band [12] at 2.4GHz
and 5.8GHz is achieved. In [13] a compact high gain antenna
operating at 2.4 GHz, applicable for ISM band applications
has been designed using a patch attached with a meander
line.
978-1-5386-7070-6/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
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Sujit Kumar Mandal, Member, IEEE
NIT Durgapur
Kolkata, India Durgapur, India,
skmandal2006@gmail.com
In this paper, a triple band small size meander-shaped
patch antenna containing partial ground plane with two back
resonators is designed. The first lower frequency band (2.26-
2.46GHz) is introduced by adjusting the overall length and
spacing between the meander lines. The second and third
higher frequency bands (4.02-4.42 GHz) and (5.15-5.5 GHz)
are appearing due to two inverted L-shaped resonators which
are placed on the opposite side of the substrate by keeping at
an optimized distance from the partial ground plane. By
changing the width, length, and position of the resonators the
operation frequency bands can be tuned at different
frequencies. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed
design is 200 MHz (about 8.47%) for the 2.36GHz band,
400MHz (about 9.5%) for the 4.2GHz band and 350MHz
(about 6.60%) for the 5.3 GHz band which are very close to
the frequency band used for WLAN and radio navigation
applications. These characteristics of the designed structure
are investigated by using MoM based electromagnetic solver,
Ansoft Designer V2.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The proposed meander-shaped antenna applicable for
WLAN and radio navigation systems is shown in the Fig. 1.
The proposed antenna is designed on FR4 substrate with
thickness (h) 1.6mm, relative permittivity ( r) 4.4 and loss
tangent (tan δ) 0.02. The total dimension of the antenna is
about 19×29 mm2. The meander-shaped patch has been
considered for constructing the antenna. Therefore the
meander-shaped patch and a partial ground plane with
dimension of 19×16.5 mm2 play an important role in
controlling the lower frequency band. Two inverted L-
shaped resonators are also considered at the back side of the
substrate to achieve second and third operating bands. The
optimized dimensions of the antenna parameters are as
follows:
L1= 13mm, L2= 8mm, L3= 5.45mm, L4= 5mm, L5=
19mm, W1= 22mm, W2= 5mm, W3= 3.4mm, W4= 5mm,
W5= 1.5mm, Wg= 16.5mm,LR1= 6mm, LR2=7mm, WR1=
6.85mm, WR2= 7.5mm, WTR1= 2mm, WTR2= 1.5mm.
The proposed antenna is designed using the following
procedures
• Step 1: In the first step a meander-shaped patch of
length 3.7λ1 and a ground plane of size 19×29 mm2 are
considered where λ1 is the corresponding wavelength of
the operating band resonant frequency (f1). Basically, the
total length of the meander-shaped patch antenna
depends on the total number of turns by the vertical and
horizontal line and the spacing between them.
• Step 2: With the above-mentioned dimension of the
ground plane the impedance of the operating band for
 WLAN band (2.4-2.45 GHz) is not matched properly.
To match the impedance properly the total width of the
ground plane is varied and finally optimized at the
dimension of 19×16.5mm2. Therefore using a meander-
shaped patch and partial ground plane the antenna is
operating at 2.26-2.46GHz with 2.36 GHz as resonance
frequency.
• Step 3: On the opposite side of the substrate at some
distance from the partial ground plane, one inverted L-
shaped resonator with an overall length of 0.2λ2 mm has
been printed where λ2 is the corresponding wavelength
of the resonating frequency of the operating band. The
length of this resonator is varied accordingly and finally
optimized for 14.5mm. Due to this resonator one band,
4.02-4.42 GHz is introduced with 4.2 GHz resonating
frequency which is used for radio navigation
applications.
• Step 4 (Proposed): In order to achieve the third band
Fig. 2. Stepwise improvement of reflection coefficient (S11) with the
another same kind of resonator with a length of 0.22λ3 structure modifications.
above the ground plane has been considered, where λ3 is
the wavelength corresponding to the resonating The effects of different parameter are discussed in the
frequency of the operating band. After that, the total following section.
length of this resonator is varied accordingly and finally,
it is optimized to 12.85mm. Due to this resonator, one A. Effect of size variation of the partial ground plane
more band 5.15-5.5 GHz is appearing with a bandwidth
of 350 MHz and resonating frequency of 5.3GHz. The width of the partial ground plane plays an important
role in the tri-band operation. As we decrease the total width
The sstepwise improvement of the reflection coefficient (S11) of the ground plane the bandwidth of the first operating
is illustrated in Fig. 2. band remains constant only the reflection coefficient is
improved. The bandwidth of the second operating band is
III. PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS changing, but the third operating band has been affected
Different design parameters such as the size of the partial significantly and it starts to vanish. The effects of ground
ground plane, the overall width of the resonators play plane width variation on the three operating bands are
important roles to adjust the three operating bands. summarized in Fig. 3.
B. Effect of overall width variation of the first back
resonator
The first back resonator is responsible for the second
operating band 4.02-4.42 GHz of the proposed tri-band
antenna. As the overall width of the first resonator increases,
the second operating band of the proposed antenna is shifted
to the lower frequency region but overall bandwidth remains
approximately same. After few variations, the overall width
of the first resonator is optimized at WTR1= 2mm. For this

(a) (b)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed tri-band antenna (a) front view
(b) back view.
Fig. 3. Effect on reflection coefficient (S11) for the variation of partial
ground plane width.

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Fig. 4. Effect on the reflection coefficient for varying the width of the first
back resonator.
Variation, the resonating frequency of the first operating
band slightly shifted to the left side, whereas the third
operating band is not affected by this variation. The effect on
the reflection coefficient due to the variation of the overall
width of the first back resonator is shown in Fig. 4.
C. Effect of overall width variation of the second back
resonator
The second back resonator is responsible for the third
operating band 5.15-5.5GHz with resonating frequency
5.3GHz. As we decrease the total thickness of the second
resonator the operating band is shifted to the lower frequency
domain and after few variations, the optimized width is fixed
at WTR2= 1.5mm, but for WTR2= 0.5mm the operating band
vanishes completely. For these variations, no such changes
are observed in the first and second operating bands. The
effect on the reflection coefficient due to the variation of the
overall width of the second back resonator is shown in Fig. 5.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The simulated reflection coefficient (S11) of the proposed
Fig. 6. Simulated reflection co-efficient (S11) and peak gain of the proposed
tri-band antenna.
tri-band antenna with peak gain variation throughout the
operating bands is shown in Fig. 6. It shows that the antenna
operates in three distinct frequency bands 2.26-2.46GHz,
4.02-4.42GHz, and 5.15-5.5GHz centered at 2.36 GHz,
4.2GHz, and 5.3GHz respectively. These frequency bands
are mainly used for WLAN (2.26-2.46GHz and 5.15-
5.5GHz) and radio navigation (4.02-4.42GHz) applications.
The simulated peak gain at three different bands is about
3.42dBi, 4.12dBi, and 3.47dBi respectively and that can be
accepted for the practical applications.
The effectiveness of the designed structure in compared
to the other published works is illustrated in Table I,
considering the size of the antenna, number of operating
bands, and the peak gain. The effects of different sensitive
parameters on the performance of the operating band of the
tri-band antenna are also discussed elaborately. By adjusting
the length and width of the backed resonator the obtained
frequency band can be tuned at different frequency band.
The current distributions at three different resonating
frequencies are shown in Fig. 7. It shows that at the lower
resonating frequency most of the current concentrated along
the radiating patch whereas for other resonating frequencies
maximum current is concentrated around the corresponding
resonators. This distribution also proves the less amount of
coupling between the backed resonators.
TABLE I: PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF THE MEANDERED SHAPED
MULTIBAND PATCH ANTENNA

Related Antenna size Resonating Peak gain

works frequency
[10] (30×60×1.6) mm3 900 MHz -0.2 dBi
1800 MHz 1.1 dBi
2450 MHz 0.8 dBi
[12] (30×20×1.6) mm3 2.4 GHz 0.2 dBi
5.8 GHz 1.1 dBi
[13] (15×10×10) mm3 2.44 GHz 2.73dBi

Proposed (19×29×1.6) mm3 2.36 GHz 3.42 dBi

Work 4.2 GHz 4.12 dBi
5.3 GHz 3.47 dBi

Fig. 5. Effect on reflection coefficient for varying the width of the second
back resonator.

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Fig. 7. Simulated current distributions at the different resonating frequency
(a) 2.36GHz, (b) 4.2GHz, and (c) 5.3GHz.
Fig. 8. Simulated radiation patterns at both principal plane E-plane and H-
plane at the different resonating frequency (a) 2.36GHz, (b) 4.2GHz, and (c)
5.3GHz.
The simulated radiation patterns at both the principal
planes for three different resonating frequency of the
proposed structure are shown in Fig. 8. In both, the plane at
three resonating frequency lower cross-polarization level is
observed.
V. CONCLUSION
A compact meander-shaped monopole antenna for tri-
band applications is presented in this paper. A simple
meandering technique is used for designing the patch of the
antenna which is responsible for the lower operating band.
Other two higher frequency bands are achieved by using two
simple inverted L-shaped back resonators with different
dimensions. By controlling the structural parameters of these
back resonators two higher frequency operating bands can be
tuned at different frequencies. Simulation results show that
the designed antenna has the suitable gain for the practical
applications. The proposed antenna operates at 2.26-2.46
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GHz, 4.02-4.42 GHz, and 5.15-5.5GHz with the bandwidth
of 400MHz, 400 MHz, and 350 MHz respectively. So, this
antenna can be used for WLAN, and radio navigation
applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is financially supported by Ministry of
Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of
India under Visvesvaraya Young Faculty Fellowship
Visvesvaraya Ph.D. scheme (Grant No. Ph.D.-MLA-4(29)/
2015-16).
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