5. H. Lee, K. Lee, and S.

Hong, Wideband VGAs using a CMOS transconductor in triode region, In: Proceedings of the European Microwave Conference, Manchester, England, September 2006, pp. 14491452. 6. B.P. Otis, Y.H. Chee, and J. Rabaey, A 400 uW-RX, 1.6 mW-TX super-regenerative transceiver for wireless sensor networks, In: IEEE ISSCC Digital Technology Papers, San Francisco, CA, February 2005, p. 396. 7. Y.-H. Chen, C.-W. Wang, C.-F. Lee, T.-Y. Yang, C.-F. Liao, G.-K. Ma, and S.-I. Liu, A 0.18 lm CMOS receiver for 3.1 to 10.6 GHz MB-OFDM UWB communication systems, In: RFIC Symposium Digest Papers, San Francisco, CA, 2006, 4 p. 8. D.C. Daly and A.P. Chandrakasan, An energy efcient OOK transceiver for wireless sensor networks, In: IEEE Proceedings of the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, San Francisco, CA, June 2006. 9. J. Ryckaert, M. Badaroglu, V.D. Heyn, G.V. der Plas, P. Nuzzo, A. Baschirotto, S.DAmico, C. Desset, H. Suys, M. Libois, B.V. Poucke, P. Wambacq, and B. Gyselinckx, A 16 mA UWB 3 to 5 GHz 20Mpulses/s quadrature analog correlation receiver in 0.18 lm CMOS, In: IEEE ISSCC Digest Technology Papers, San Francisco, CA, February 2006, pp. 368377. 10. F.S. Lee and P. Chandrakasan, A 2.5nJ/bit 0.65V pulsed UWB receiver in 90 nm CMOS, IEEE J Solid-State Circ 42 (2007), 28512859.
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Recently, various types of printed dipole antennas (PDAs) have been also studied to meet the increasing trend for wideband WLAN antennas, and several techniques for size reduction and bandwidth enhancement have been proposed [5, 6]. In particular, the double-sided PDA is one of these techniques in case of multiband operation [6], which is an easy fabricated and simple structure with easy integration into solid-state devices. In this article, a novel design of a spider-shaped antenna for 2.4/5.2 GHz dual-band applications is presented. The antenna uses a pair of printed spider-shaped dipoles, which can completely cover the two standards IEEE WLAN with compact size. Compared with the single layer antenna, the double-sided printed antenna can obtain better impedance matching and isotropic radiation pattern. The antenna has not only dual bands characteristics but also could be matched well without external matching circuitry in quite wide frequency ranges. Good frequency responses, radiation patterns, and antenna gains are also observed and discussed.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN

Figure 1 shows the geometry and structure of the presented spider-shaped dipole antenna for WLAN applications. The antenna consists of two dipoles printed on top and back surfaces of the substrate, respectively. As a matter of fact, these two dipoles are identical except the center parts. The top layer comprises two

BROADBAND DUAL-FREQUENCY SPIDER-SHAPED PRINTED DIPOLE ANTENNA FOR WLAN APPLICATIONS

Xiumei Shen, Yingzeng Yin, Chengyue Su, and Shaoli Zuo Antenna Institution, Xidian University, Xian, China; Corresponding author: meizijidian@163.com Received 14 June 2009 ABSTRACT: A novel broadband dual-frequency spider-shaped dipole antenna for 2.4/5.2 GHz wireless local area networks (WLAN) is proposed. The antenna consists of a double-sided printed dipole, whose long arms and short center-stubs can produce dual bands and lead to good impedance matching in a wide dual-band without external matching circuitry. For the experimental study, excellent performance for operating frequencies across 22403260 MHz and 47005970 MHz bands has been observed. Good radiation characteristics of dipole-like patterns, and 2.6- and 4.6-dBi peak antenna gains for the lower and upper bands, respectively, have been obtained. And this antenna could be easily printed and integrated on the system circuit board for WLAN C 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol applications. V Lett 52: 917919, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.25041 Key words: spider-shaped; printed dipole antenna; WLAN; dual-band 1. INTRODUCTION

With the rapid development of the wireless communications, the multiband operations are in great demand, especially for the wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, such as IEEE 802.11b/g (24002484 MHz) and IEEE 802.11a (51505950 MHz) bands. Many applications are designed and implemented to satisfy varying regulations and spectrum availability in various parts of the world. To make mobile WLAN devices work with all these standards, antennas for WLAN operation are necessary and developed. Planar monopoles [1, 2] printed invertedF antennas [3, 4] have been proposed for WLAN applications.

Figure 1 Top (a) and bottom (b) layout of the spider-shaped antenna (unit: mm)

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Figure 4 Simulated and measured return loss of the spider-shaped antenna. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com]

cylinders with radius of 0.5 mm. The branch 1 of the spidershaped antenna can broaden the surface dimensions of the radiation elements. So, the horizontal currents distributions are developed. Thereby, the impendence bandwidth of the lower frequency can be extended too. Figure 1 also shows the back layer geometry, which is slightly different from the top one. The rectangular stub of this layer can also be a matching section. By adjusting the variation

Figure 2 The simulated surface current for the proposed antenna (a) f_2400 MHz; (b) f_5200 MHz. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com]

coplanar ower-shaped elements, which are placed oppositely to each other. Figure 2 shows the simulated surface current for the proposed compact dual-band antenna. As we can see that the long dipole branch 1 is for generating the lower operating mode at 2.4 GHz. And the short branches are for obtaining the upper operation mode at about 5.2 GHz. These short branches 2 and 3 (placed on top and back layers) with different shape and length could produce two near resonance modes. The unit of these two modes can form the wide upper operating band of the antenna. The top and back units are connected together by four copper

Figure 3 The prototype of the proposed antenna. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience. wiley.com]

Figure 5 Measured E-plane (x-z plane) and H-plane (y-z plane) radiation patterns for the proposed antenna in Figure 2: (a) f_2400 MHz; (b) f_5200 MHz. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com]

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the upper band, by only using two different branches (i.e., branches 2 and 3), a bandwidth of 42305970 MHz is obtained and can provide the required bandwidth for the IEEE 802.11a (51505950 MHz) bands. However, due to the feeding cable, there are discrepancy between the simulated and measured results at upper band. The radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna are also studied. The measured radiation patterns of both copolarization and cross-polarization for the frequency at 2.4, 5.2 GHz are shown in Figure 5. As expected, the radiation patterns at the two frequencies are close to those of the conventional halfwavelength center-fed dipole antenna. However, there is slight nonroundness existing at the H-plane, which is mainly due to the effect of the feeding cable. Figure 6 shows the measured peak gains of the proposed spider-shaped dipole antenna across two operating bands. Peak gains for both the two operating bands are measured to be 2.7 and 4.6 dBi, respectively.
4. CONCLUSIONS

A dual-band spider-shaped dipole antenna for the WLAN applications has been designed, fabricated, simulated, and tested. Simulation and experimental results showed good agreement with each other. The proposed antenna exhibits two wide bands, covering the 2.4 GHz (22403260 MHz) and 5 GHz (4270 5950 MHz) WLAN bands without external matching network. Over the wide operating band, stable radiation characteristics have also been obtained. The antenna has wide use in potential applications for WLAN or other wireless systems that work in these bands.
REFERENCES 1. M.J. Ammann and Z.N. Chen, Wideband monopole antennas for multi-band wireless systems, IEEE Antennas Propag Mag 45 (2003), 146150. 2. N.P. Argawall, G. Kumar, and K.P. Ray, Wideband planar monopole antennas, IEEE Trans Antennas Propag 46 (1998), 294295. 3. A.C.W. Wong and W.H. Leung, Integrated Inverted F Antenna and Shield Can, U.S. Patent 6,850,196 B2, Feb. 1, 2005. 4. D. Nashaat, H.A. Elsadek, and H. Ghali, Dual-band reduced size PIFA antenna with U-slot for bluetooth and WLAN applications, IEEE Trans Antennas Propag 2 (2003), 962965. 5. Y.H. Suh and K. Chang, Low cost microstrip-fed dual frequency printed dipole antenna for wireless communications, Electron Lett 36 (2000), 11771179. 6. H.-M. Chen, J.-M. Chen, P.-S. Cheng, and Y.-F. Lin, Feed for dual-band printed dipole antenna, Electron Lett 40 (2004).
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Figure 6 Measured gain vs. operating frequency for the proposed antenna (a) f_2400 MHz; (b) f_5200 MHz

7.710 mm, a better impendence matching can be obtained at the upper operated frequency. The structure of the simplied feed for a PDA with a coaxial line is shown in Figure 3, which is printed on an FR4 substrate of thickness h 1 mm and relative permittivity of 4.4. The antenna has dimension of 34 mm 48 mm needs no external matching circuitry to obtain good impendence matching for the two desired operating bands. In addition, by properly adjusting the distance between the two ower-shaped elements, good coupling can be achieved. The best distance is 2 mm via iterative experiment.
3. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A COMPACT TRI-BAND PIFA ANTENNA FOR WLAN AND WiMAX APPLICATIONS

Shaoli Zuo, Yingzeng Yin, Zhiya Zhang, and Weijun Wu Key Laboratory of Antennas and Microwave Technology, Xidian University, Xian, Peoples Republic of China; Corresponding author: zuoshaoli@163.com Received 19 June 2009 ABSTRACT: A tri-band planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) for WLAN and WiMAX applications is proposed. By combining F-T-shaped slots in the radiating structure and using a trapezoidal feeding plate, three resonant modes are generated and impedance bandwidth of the antenna is enhanced. The fabricated radiation patch has a compact size of 25 11 8 mm3 with a rectangular ground plate of 26 40 mm2. For S11

The proposed spider-shaped antenna for WLAN applications has been simulated by Ansoft HFSS software. The prototype (see Fig. 3) is fabricated and experimentally analyzed. Figure 4 shows the simulated and experimental results of the return loss for the antenna design of Figure 1. It is clearly seen that good agreement between the measured and simulated results is obtained. From the results, the lower band has a bandwidth (1:2.0 VSWR or about 10.0-dB return loss) of 22403260 MHz, covering the required IEEE 802.11b/g (24002484 MHz). For

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