IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

10, 2011 67

Miniaturized UWB Monopole Microstrip Antenna

Design by the Combination of Giusepe Peano
and Sierpinski Carpet Fractals
Homayoon Oraizi and Shahram Hedayati

Abstract—A fractal monopole antenna is proposed for the appli-

cation in the UWB frequency range, which is designed by the com-
bination of two fractal geometries. The first iterations of Giusepe
Peano fractal are applied on the edges of a square patch, and a Fig. 1. Initiator and generator of the Giusepe Peano fractal.
Sierpinski Carpet fractal is formed on its surface. The feed cir-
cuit is a microstrip line with a matching section over a semi-ellip-
tical ground plane. The presented antenna has an omnidirectional
radiation pattern, a good gain, and high efficiency. The fabrica-
tion and measurement data attest to the satisfaction of the design
specifications.
Index Terms—Broadband antenna, fractal, microstrip antenna,
miniaturization.
Fig. 2. Giusepe Peano fractal as applied to the edges of the metallic patches.

I. INTRODUCTION

T HE INTRINSIC properties of fractal geometries are con-

ducive to the miniaturization of antenna designs and re-
alization of antenna multiband characteristics. Since the fractal
structures are generated by a recursive process, they can produce
a very long length or a wide surface area in a limited space. Con-
sequently, fractal structures can give rise to miniaturized wide-
band antennas having radiation patterns and input impedance
characteristics similar to the larger antennas. In 1951, Mandel-
bort proposed the fractal geometries [1], which were extensively
used in various science and engineering fields. They were also
applied for the design and realization of frequency-independent
and multiband antennas. Multiplication of an antenna size by
a factor generally decreases the operating frequency of the an-
tenna by the same factor. If an antenna is much smaller than
the wavelength of the operating frequency, its efficiency deteri-
orates drastically since its radiation resistance decreases and the
reactive energy stored in its near field increases [2]. These two
factors make the matching of a small antenna to its feeding net-
work difficult. Consequently, fractal antennas are a viable can-
didate for their miniaturization [3]. Antenna geometries and di-
mensions are the main factors determining their operating fre-
quencies [4]. It is shown that if the angular variations define the
antenna geometry, then its performance is independent of fre-
quency because no particular size may be attributable to it [5].
Therefore, the antenna has an effectively infinite bandwidth.
Manuscript received January 04, 2011; revised January 17, 2011; accepted
January 18, 2011. Date of publication January 28, 2011; date of current version
March 14, 2011.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Iran Univer-
sity of Science and Technology, Tehran 16844, Iran (e-mail: h_oraizi@iust.ac.
ir).
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.2011.2109030
1536-1225/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
Fig. 3. Sierpinski Carpet fractal.
The spiral and helical antennas may be considered as examples
of frequency-independent antennas. The self-similarity proper-
ties of log-periodic antennas also make them frequency-inde-
pendent [6].
In this letter, we propose a fractal monopole antenna for
the coverage of ultrawideband (UWB), which is realized by
the combination of Giusepe Peano and Sierpinski Carpet frac-
tals [7]. The Peano fractal is applied to the edges of a square
patch, and the Sierpinski Carpet fractal is implemented by
cutting slots on the patch area [9]. The antenna feed is through a
microstrip line with a matching section [8], [10]. The presented
antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern, a good gain,
and high efficiency.
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED FRACTAL STRUCTURE
The recursive procedure of the Giusepe Peano fractal is
shown in Fig. 1, which is applied to the edges of the square
patch up to the second iteration as depicted in Fig. 2. The
iterations of Sierpinski carpet fractal are shown in Fig. 3. The
proposed antenna applies the above two fractals to the square
patch as shown in Fig. 4. The structure of the proposed fractal
antenna is shown in Fig. 5, where its dimensions are indicated.
The antenna feed is through a microstrip line with a matching
section over a semi-elliptical ground plane. The ground plane is
selected as a combination of the rectangular and semi-elliptical
68
Fig. 4. Proposed geometry.
Fig. 5. Structure of proposed fractal antenna.
shapes in order to obtain an approximately linear phase varia-
tion for for the transmission and reception of narrow pulses
in UWB systems. The group delay should be nearly constant
across the frequency band [11]. As the iteration of fractal
geometry increases, its resonance frequency decreases, which
may lead to an effective antenna miniaturization. However,
for iterations higher than the second iteration, the reduction
of operating frequency is not achievable since the antenna
design becomes quite complicated and its fabrication becomes
difficult. The configuration of Giusepe Peano fractal geometry
becomes quite unwieldy for iterations higher than the second
iteration.
The selected substrate is FR4 with dielectric constant
, substrate thickness mm, and loss tangent
. The metallic square patch has dimensions 20 13 mm .
The feed line is designed for a 50- characteristic impedance,
where its width is 3 mm. The feed line is tapered for impedance
matching.
The ground plane is a combination of rectangular and el-
liptical sheets. Its dimensions are optimized by the HFSS12
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011
Fig. 6. Prototype model of the proposed antenna.
Fig. 7. Computer simulation results and measurement data for the reflection
coefficient.
simulation software, which is also used for the analysis of the
antenna.
III. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
A prototype model of the proposed antenna is fabricated and
is shown in Fig. 6. The computer simulation results and mea-
surement data for the reflection coefficient as are shown in
Fig. 7. Observe that the bandwidth of the proposed antenna (for
the definition of 10 dB) is from 1 to 15 GHz, which may cover
the UWB frequency range. The comparison of of the first
and second iterations of the Giusepe Peano fractal geometry is
drawn in Fig. 8. Observe that the reduction of resonance fre-
quency of the second iteration is quite negligible relative to that
of the first iteration. Furthermore, the bandwidth at the reso-
nance frequency of the second iteration is quite narrower than
that of the first iteration.
The VSWR for the proposed antenna for iterations 1 and 2 is
shown in Fig. 9. The gain versus frequency response for itera-
tions 1 and 2 are drawn in Fig. 10, which shows an acceptable
antenna gain in the UWB range. The radiation efficiency of the
fractal antenna versus frequency for iterations 1 and 2 is drawn
in Fig. 11, which is quite good.
The comparison of antenna characteristics (namely gain,
return loss, radiation efficiency, and SWR) of the first and
second iterations of the Giusepe Peano fractal indicates that
the first iteration has more desirable characteristics and also a
ORAIZI AND HEDAYATI: MINIATURIZED UWB MONOPOLE MICROSTRIP ANTENNA DESIGN
Fig. 8. Comparison of return losses of the fractal iterations 1 and 2.
Fig. 9. VSWR of the proposed antenna versus frequency.
Fig. 10. Gain versus frequency of the proposed antenna for iterations 1 and 2.
simpler fabrication process. The design of the first iteration of
the Peano fractal is conducted by a parametric analysis through
the HFSS12 simulation software.
The real and imaginary parts of the proposed antenna input
impedance versus frequency in first iteration are drawn in
Fig. 12. The phase of the reflection coefficient versus frequency
for the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 13. In a UWB system,
69
Fig. 11. Radiation efficiency of the fractal antenna versus frequency for
iterations 1 and 2.
Fig. 12. Real and imaginary parts of the antenna input impedance versus
frequency.
Fig. 13. Phase of the reflection coefficient versus frequency for the proposed
antenna.
linear phase response of the radiated field as well as stable
group delay response is desirable for not distorting the shape of
70 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

Fig. 16. Comparison of return losses of the Giusepe fractal with other common
fractals.

depicted in Fig. 15 for reference. Their performance as

versus frequency curves are drawn in Fig. 16 for comparison.

IV. CONCLUSION
A monopole square patch antenna is introduced by shaping
its edges into the form of a Giusepe Peano fractal and its sur-
face area as a Sierpinski carpet fractal. Its feeding system is a
combination of a microstrip line and a matching section over a
semi-elliptical ground plane. The proposed antenna has an om-
nidirectional radiation pattern, a good gain, and high efficiency.
Consequently, it is shown that different combinations of fractal
geometries may be introduced for the design of antennas for var-
ious systems such as WLAN and UWB.

Fig. 14. Measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at (a) 3, (b) 8,
and (c) 12 GHz.
Fig. 15. Different fractal shapes.
the transmitted electrical pulse. Therefore, the antenna group
delay is approximately constant within the frequency band
of interest. The measured radiation patterns in the E-plane
and H-plane of the antenna are shown in Fig. 14, where the
solid lines are the co-polarization patterns and the dash lines
are cross-polarization patterns. The configurations of Koch,
Minkowski, T-type, and Giusepe Peano fractal geometries are
REFERENCES
[1] B. B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. San Francisco,
CA: Freeman, 1983, pp. 152–180.
[2] D. H. Werner and R. Mittra, Frontiers in Electromagnetics. Piscat-
away, NJ: IEEE Press, 2000, pp. 48–81.
[3] J. P. Gianvittori and Y. Rahmat-Samii, “Fractal antenna: A novel
antenna miniaturization technique, and applications,” IEEE Antennas
Propag. Mag., vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 20–36, Feb. 2002.
[4] C. Puente_Baliaada, J. Romeu, and R. Cardama, “On the behavior
of the Sierpinski multiband fractal antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propag., vol. 46, no. 4, pp. 517–524, Apr. 1998.
[5] D. H. Werner and S. Ganguly, “An overview of fractal antenna engi-
neering research,” IEEE Antennas Propag. Mag., vol. 45, no. 1, pp.
38–57, Feb. 2003.
[6] C. Borja and J. Romeu, “On the behavior of Koch island fractal
boundary microstrip patch antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 1281–1291, Jun. 2003.
[7] K. T. Mustafa, “Combined fractal dipole wire antenna,” in Proc. 2nd
Int. ITG Conf. Antennas, Munich, Germany, Mar. 2007, pp. 176–180.
[8] S. B. Park, S. M. Kim, and W. G. Yang, “Wideband circular polariza-
tion patch antenna for access point of 802.11B, G WLAN,” Microw.
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 50, no. 4, pp. 46–52, Apr. 2008.
[9] H.-Q. Cheng, L.-B. Tian, and B. J. Hu, “Compact circulary polarized
square microstrip fractal antenna with symmetrical T-slits,” in Proc.
WiCom, 2007, pp. 613–616.
[10] M. Al-Husseini, A. Ramdan, A. EL-Hajj, and K. Y. Kabanon, “Design
of a compact and low-cost fractal based UWB PCB antenna,” in Proc.
26th Nat. Radio Sci. Conf., Mar. 2009, pp. 1–8.
[11] H. Kimouche, D. Abed, B. Atrouz, and R. Aksas, “Bandwidth enhance-
ment of rectangular monopole antenna using modified semi-elliptical
ground plane and slots,” Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 52, no. 1, pp.
54–58, Jan. 2010.