Design of flexible EBG loaded wideband antenna
for 2.4GHz WLAN applications
Amit Baran Dey
2020 Advanced Communication Technologies and Signal Processing (ACTS) | 978-1-7281-7097-8/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ACTS49415.2020.9350406
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Silchar
Cachar, Assam
amitnitsece17@gmail.com
Abstract—This paper presents a new design of a rectangu-
lar patch structure integrated with Elecromagnetic Band Gap
loading applicable for WLAN applications. The antenna is
electromagnetically excited by a 50Ω micro-strip feed line. The
suggested antenna has an operational bandwidth ranging from
1.93-3.05 GHz leading to a frequency bandwidth of 1.12 GHz. The
antenna provides a good impedance matching hence exhibiting
a merit over the conventional patch antennas. The radiation
pattern achieved is bidirectional in E-plane and omnidirectional
in H-plane. The suggested antenna has an efficiency of 79.4%
and a gain of 3.65dB. The antenna is also able to cover the
2.4GHz frequency band in case of extreme deformation which is
due to the flexibility of the substrate. The proposed antenna
has advantages of having compactness, simple structure and
miniaturization, that can be utmost applied to the different
wireless mobile or wireless communication system.
Index Terms—Electronic band-gap EBG, patch antenna, meta-
material antenna, omnidirectional radiation pattern, flexible
antenna.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Recently many developments had taken place in Wireless
Communication System. Metamaterials [1] are recently being
in attention during the last half due as they exhibit both nega-
tive permeability and permittivity. In the recent past efforts are
being delivered for achieving very low-power and miniaturized
electronic RF devices. Its different possessing properties has
applications as microwave absorbers [2], thermal detectors [3]
also they are used as a perfect lens [4], as cloaking devices
[5] etc.
Due to the rapid developments in wireless communication
technology many devices have arrived in the recent era such as
wireless terminal devices, smartphones etc. which are capable
for integrating both WiMAX and WLAN applications which
are now-a-days in great demand [6]. Basically, the design
of the antenna is focused on multiband [6] and wideband
[7] operations considering minimal size along with simple
structures.
In [8], a T-shape monopole has been presented in which
only two operating frequency bands are supplied which is as
same as the antenna in [9] whereas the antenna in [10], a CPW
fed monopole along with the advantage of diminished size of
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Wasim Arif
National Institute of Technology, Silchar
Cachar, Assam
arif.ece.nits@gmail.com
antenna has been proposed. They can be used for different
tri-band application, but still the antenna with the attained
radiation pattern is unstable.
Various methods have been suggested to expand the sen-
sitivity of the monopole planetary antennas. The antenna de-
scribed in [11] uses a parasitic plane for a microstrip antenna.
In [12], the T-shaped monopole antenna utilizes a shortening
pin to achieve broad band. A broadband monopoly antenna
[13] energized by a probe feed may be installed on massive
ground. Furthermore, here EBG band-gap characteristics are
being widely used for improving the overall efficiency and
matching the impedance of the printed antennas [14], [15] and
hence they usher in reducing the mutual coupling of the anten-
nas [16]. In order to provide flexibility to the structural design
various different approaches based on substrate selection has
been proposed [18], [19].
Inspired by [20]–[22], the paper presents a new design of
rectangular patch antenna. The design is incorporated with
a semi ground structure inductively combined with EBG
loading. The resultant of EBG loading leads to miniaturization
and bandwidth widening which provides resonance at 2.4GHz
for WLAN applications. The parametric analysis has also been
presented in the paper leading to show the impact of various
parameters in the design.
The remainder of the paper is structured as per follow-
ing. Section 2 describes the configuration and simulated S-
parameter of the antenna. Section 3 explains the parametric
design and calculation of other antenna parameters. Section 4
discusses the works as a whole.
II. D ESIGN C ONFIGURATION OF THE S UGGESTED
A NTENNA
A. EBG unit cell, antenna design and S-parameter
The radiating element is in the shape of a rectangular
patch which is designed on a Rogers 3003 dielectric substrate.
The substrate has a relative permittivity of 3, loss tangent of
0.0013 and the thickness of 1.5 mm. The EBG unit cell is
illustated in fig. 1 whereas the reflection phase and dispersion
diagram are shown in fig. 2 and fig. 4 respectively. The
overall antenna dimension of the suggested design is 40 x
45 x 1.5mm3 , as shown in fig. 3. The simulations have been
carried out by ANSYS high frequency solver [17]. The antenna
is electomagnetically excited by a microstrip feed line and
has an operational bandwidth covering the 2.4GHz WLAN
band. The back of the antenna structure is designed with a
semi-copper ground in conjuction with EBG loading which is
shown in fig. 3. Compared to the conventional patch antennas,
a new design of rectangular patch is introduced with EBG
loading which ultimately provides a significant increase of
the net capacitance and inductance that reduces the operating
frequency. The physical dimensions of the suggested design
are illustrated in Table 1.

Fig. 1. Excitatation of EBG unit cell.

Following the EBG architecture particularly for antenna

design, the transmission and reflection phase are appropriate
for examining the band gap characteristics. The EBG resonant
Fig. 3. Front and rear view of the proposed rectangular antenna consisting
frequency is calculated by [23]. of EBG loading
¯
jωL
Z= TABLE I
1 − ω 2 LC
D IMENSIONAL CONSTRAINTS OF THE PROPOSED EBG LOADED ANTENNA
1
fr = √ Paramenters Values (in mm) Parameters Values (in mm)
2π LC W 45 L1 14
L 40 L2 23
W1 11 L3 24.5
W2 3.8 L4 4.8
W3 4.1 L5 0.7

with EBG loading is coupled in order to form a capaci-

Fig. 2. Reflection phase of the EBG unit cell.
B. Simulated S-parameter
The patterned electromagnetically coupled rectangular patch
structure is withheld as a radiating surface. The ground plane
tive–inductive equivalent circuit that leads to induce a back-
ward propagating wave which travels along the incident plane
of the radiating structure and inturn induce radiation which is
more in the plane of the suggested antenna. As the antenna
is being fed by a 50Ω transmission line, the EBG pattern
consistency is being created for the transmission line. The S11
plot is shown in the fig. 5 which covers a frequency bandwidth
measuring from 1.93-3.05 GHz covering the WLAN 2.4GHz
band.
III. PARAMETRIC DESIGN AND OTHER PARAMETERS
A parametric analysis of the patch (L1) and EBG (L3)
dimensions are presented in this section. From the analysis
of L3 it can be inferred that the dimension decrease leads to
a forward shift of the resonance band from 2.4GHz to higher
frequency band.

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 Fig. 7. Parametric analysis for L4.
Fig. 4. Dispersion diagram of the EBG cell

Also, from L1 analysis it is observed that there is a

resonance frequency shift towards lower side as the size of
the patch increases. The parametric analysis of the antenna is
illustrated in fig. 6 and fig. 7 respectively.
A. Radiation Pattern and other antenna parameters
The radiating antenna structure in free space has a dipole
and omnidirectional radiation pattern in E and H-plane respec-
tively.

Fig. 5. Simulated Return loss plot of the antenna with EBG loading.

Fig. 8. Simulated E and H-plane radiation patterns of the antenna at 2.4GHz.

Fig. 6. Parametric analysis for L3.

The antenna in view, has the majority of its radiated energy
focussed towards the half space with HPBW in E and H-plane

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respectively. Such type of radiation pattern is important for
off-body communication. The simulated radiation pattern for
E and H-plane are illustrated in fig. 8.
The surface current plot is illustrated in fig. 9. From
the graph it can be inferred that majority of the current is
concentrated on the feedline and the EBG structure leading to
bandwidth widening.

Fig. 11. 3D polar plot of the suggested EBG loaded antenna.

Fig. 9. Surface current distribution of the suggested antenna.

The electric field plot illustrating the concentration of elec-

tric field distribution is shown in fig. 10.

Fig. 12. Gain vs efficiency plot.

Here a parameter ”Rb ” is being used to denote the radius

of bending of the antenna. As illustrated in the fig. 13, the
antenna with four different radius of curvature values are being
examined, including Rb = 20, 25, 30 and 40(mm).
The effect of bending on the antenna leads to a change
in S-parameters as shown in fig. 14. From the simulation, it
is observed that as the bending radius decreases there is a
shifting of resonant frequency. The bandwidth also decreases
Fig. 10. Electric field distribution of the suggested antenna. with lower bending radius but the antenna is still able to
cover the 2.4GHz WLAN frequency band making the antenna
It can be observed that the maximum field concentration is
a suitable candidate for applicable in domain of deformative
towards the upper part of the feed and the patch respectively.
loading.
The polar plot of the suggested antenna is shown in fig. 11.
The effect on S-parameters and bandwidth due to antenna
The gain and efficiency of the EBG loaded antenna is analysed
bending is depicted in Table 2.
and shown in fig. 12. From the results, it can be observed that
the gain is 3.65dB and the average efficiency is found out to
be 79.4% at 2.4GHz. TABLE II
BAND OF OPERATION OF ANTENNA AT DIFFERENT RADIUS OF CURVATURE
AFTER STRUCTURAL DEFORMATION .
B. Effects of structural deformation of the antenna
The antenna has to be deformed in certain applications Antenna bending radius Frequency of Operation
Rb =20mm 1.69 - 2.60GHz
such that it conforms over some particular surfaces. Before Rb =25mm 1.85 - 2.70GHz
investigating the loading effect of the antenna structure to Rb =30mm 2.08 - 2.61GHz
different surfaces, the antenna performance needs to examined Rb =40mm 2.05 - 2.81GHz
under different degrees of structural deformation in free space.

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Fig. 13. Structural deformation of the antenna for different radii values.
Fig. 14. S-parameter results for antenna bending over different radius of
curvature values.
IV. C ONCLUSION
This paper presents an EBG loaded antenna to cover the
WLAN 2.4GHz band. By electromagnetically loading EBG
structure into the rectangular patch antenna a good impedance
bandwidth operating from 1.93-3.05GHz is obtained. The
operating resonant frequency of the EBG loaded structure can
easily be adjusted by changing the dimensional constraints.
The proposed antenna shows nearly an dipole and omnidirec-
tional radiation pattern in E and H-plane respectively. The gain
and efficiency are found to be 3.65dB and 79.4% respectively
at 2.4GHz. In addition, the simulation validation have also
proven that the antenna is vigorous to structural deformation
and the antenna performs well to adaptively interchanging
environment.
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