IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

1239

Electromagnetic Behaviors of Thin Film CPW-Fed

CSRR Loaded on UWB Transparent Antenna
M. S. A. Rani, Sharul Kamal Abdul Rahim, M. Ramlee Kamarudin, Tom Peter, S. W. Cheung, and B. M. Saad

AbstractThe electromagnetic behavior of the coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed loaded complementary split-ring resonator
(CSRR) to the ultrawideband (UWB) transparent antenna is presented in this letter. The transparent material known as conductive
silver-coated thin films (AgHT-4) is one of the unique materials
that is now being implemented in antenna designs. This material
has very unique advantages of very thin thickness and high transparency. However, it exhibits different electromagnetic properties
compared to the conventional Fire Retardant-4 (FR-4) due to its
surface resistivity and conductivity. Meanwhile, split-ring resonators (CSRRs) are one of the metamaterial artificial structures
that are implemented in antenna design for their unique negative
permittivity/permeability properties. CSRR will be designed
using the transparent material to achieve bandstop filter properties centered at 5.8 GHz so as to reduce the interferences from
wireless local area network (WLAN) and dedicated short-range
communication (DSRC) applications. The characteristics of the
SRRs/CSRRs when implemented on the high resistivity thin film
is compared to those implemented using copper radiating element.
Index TermsBand notch, complementary split-ring resonators
(CSRRs), conductive silver-coated thin film (AgHT), transparent
antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

N RECENT years, there has been growing interest in developing miniaturized and aesthetic antenna made of thin film.
The major advantages of the thin film antenna are its very low
thickness and high transparency percentage. Several works on
the application of the thin film in antenna design based on design developments and efficiency enhancement on transparent
antennas have been reported in [1][7]. Most of these transparent antennas are coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed antennas,
operating at ultrawideband (UWB) frequencies. UWB covers
the whole 3.1-GHz until 10.6-GHz frequencies, which includes
the dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) and wireless
local area network (WLAN) operating frequencies, which range
from 5.15 to 5.925 GHz. Thus, a filter is crucial for these UWB
antennas to reduce the interferences from these applications.

Manuscript received May 04, 2014; accepted May 28, 2014. Date of publication July 01, 2014; date of current version July 08, 2014. (Corresponding
author: Sharul Kamal Abdul Rahim.)
M. S. A. Rani, S. K. A. Rahim, M. R. Kamarudin, T. Peter, and B. M.
Saad are with the Wireless Communication Centre, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Malaysia (e-mail:
msubri2@live.utm.my; sharulkamal@fke.utm.my;
ramlee@fke.utm.my;
tom.peter@live.com; engrbash@yahoo.co.uk).
S. W. Cheung is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The Hong Kong University, Hong Kong (e-mail: swcheung@eee.hku.
hk).
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.2014.2332514

Lots of works have been reported on implementation of

metamaterials in antennas to achieve frequency notching,
implementing metamaterials in antenna design for their unique
double-negative media of negative permittivity and permeability [8]. These metamaterials are implemented for their
distinct electromagnetic (EM) characteristic of negative refraction that can be applied as filters. Split-ring resonators (SRRs)
are among the favorites as they can produce band-notch characteristics with low space consumption (miniaturized design) [9].
Several different techniques are introduced in [10][16]
that consist of implementing SRRs/complementary SRRs
(CSRRs) on the same layer of the CPW transmission line.
These SRRs/CSRRs were optimized to obtain a good notch
at their respective resonant frequencies. On the other hand,
previous works in [17][19] had conducted some analyses on
the electromagnetic behaviors of the SRR loaded to the CPW
transmissions lines. However, all of these optimizations are
made based on the common nontransparent materials (FR-4,
Rogers, Duroid), which utilize copper as the main radiating
element. Since the thin film exhibits different surface resistivity
and conductivity, the electromagnetic properties of the designs
based on this material are different compared to the works that
have been reported.
In this letter, some analyses on the electromagnetic behavior
of the CSRR-integrated CPW-fed UWB transparent antenna are
proposed. The analyses of integration between CSRR and thin
film are conducted because CSRR can ensure a miniaturized antenna design. A notched antenna can be designed with miniaturized size when CSRR is integrated to thin film. The proposed
analyses are on the insertion loss due to the change of the radiating element used. Then, the insertion loss due to the CSRR
on AgHT thin film is compared to the equivalent design based
on the copper. Since the surface resistivity of the AgHT is high
compared to copper, it will be hard to couple the CSRR to the
antenna. Thus, the analyses will focus on the possibilities and
effects of adding the CSRR elements on the UWB transparent
antenna design. The proposed designs and antenna will be simulated and measured for its performances. The results will be
discussed and presented in Section III.
II. ELECTROMAGNETIC BEHAVIOR
THIN FILM

OF

CSRR

ON

AgHT

A two-port network connecting a full ground CPW transmission line is constructed to analyze the insertion loss between
the two ends. The proposed designs are constructed and simulated using the EM simulation tool CST. The transparent
thin film AgHT-8 (height
mm) with PET
polymer substrate of relative permittivity
, height

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 1. CPW transmission line.

Fig. 4. Fabricated two port network using AgHT.

Fig. 2. Insertion loss of two-port network at varied transmission line width

.

Fig. 5. Insertion loss of CSRR-loaded CPW transmission line.

Fig. 3. (a) Location of the CSRR in the transmission line. (b) Geometry of the
CSRR.

Fig. 6. Proposed UWB antenna. (a) Without CSRR. (b) With CSRR.

mm, and surface resistivity

m is used
for the design CPW. Then, the material of the radiating element
is changed from AgHT-4 to copper for comparison. The width
of the CPW transmission line is varied, and the effects on the
insertion loss are recorded. Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the
proposed design for the analysis. Meanwhile, Fig. 2 shows the
insertion loss of the two-port network when the width of the
transmission line,
, is varied for both copper and AgHT
radiating elements. (
mm).
Then, after analyzing the insertion loss of the CPW line, a
CSRR is added to the transmission line as in Fig. 3(a). The addition of this CSRR inside the transmission line will interrupt
the current flow in the transmission line, thus affecting the insertion loss between the two ports. The overall geometries of
the SRR are as in Fig. 3(b), where all the parameters are optimized to achieve resonant frequency at 5.8 GHz (
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm).
The desired bandwidth of the SRR is 600 MHz, which covers
both DSRC and WLAN frequencies. Both copper and AgHT
are used as the radiating element for comparison. The two-port
network with CSRR using AgHT is fabricated and measured to
validate the simulated insertion loss. Fig. 4 shows the fabricated
two-port network using AgHT.
Based on the results in Fig. 5, both the simulated and measured insertion loss of the AgHT CPW transmission line loaded

with CSRR are very poor when compared to insertion loss of

copper. The CSRR embedded inside of the AgHT transmission
line is poorly excited, resulting in no significant drop of insertion loss. However, the insertion loss for copper transmission
line drops by 11.5 dB at the center frequency of 5.8 GHz. Since
the overall geometry of the CSRR is the same for both copper
and AgHT radiating element, these results have shown the exact
effects of the differences in conductivity value to the insertion
loss. Hence, it can be said that a CSRR alone cannot be used
to produce a notch in an antenna due to its low excitation. Additional optimization is needed if CSRR is to be implemented
using AgHT and to create a good notch.
III. UWB TRANSPARENT ANTENNA WITH CSRR
A UWB transparent antenna with circular radiating element
and CPW feeding is designed to further improve the performances of the CSRR when integrated with an antenna. Fig. 6(a)
shows the geometries of the UWB transparent antenna. Later, a
CSRR with the same dimension as in Section II is added inside
the circular radiating element, located at the end of the CPW
transmission as in Fig. 6(b) (
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm).
Fig. 7 shows the
results of the proposed configurations.
The CSRR introduced in the UWB transparent antenna has

RANI et al.: ELECTROMAGNETIC BEHAVIORS OF THIN FILM CPW-FED CSRR LOADED ON UWB TRANSPARENT ANTENNA

1241

Fig. 9. Proposed optimization of the CSRR. (a) Optimized UWB antenna.

(b) Fabricated antenna.

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured

of proposed UWB antenna with CSRR.

Fig. 10. Simulated surface current distribution at 5.8 GHz for UWB antenna
(a) with CSRR and (b) optimized CSRR.

Fig. 8. Simulated

of varied CSRR geometries.

slightly increased the

at the 5.8-GHz resonant frequency
of the CSRR. However, this increment is insufficient to notch
the 5.8-GHz frequency. The measurement results are in good
agreement to the simulated.
Based on the previous works in [17][19], the electromagnetic behavior of the SRR will vary when their geometries are
changed. Realizing that fact, some analyses are made to study
the electromagnetic behaviors of the CSRRs when AgHT is
used instead of copper radiating element. Fig. 8 shows the
of the transparent UWB antenna with different geometries of
CSRRs. The initial geometries of the CSRR are
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm.
Fig. 8 shows that the changes in CSRR geometries have no
significant effects on the
when AgHT is used. The resonating frequency of the CSRRs is not shifted, only the
at
5.8 GHz is slightly increased. These results are different from
the results reported in [17] and [18]. According to [18], these results are due to the magnetic resonances at the CSRR. Since the
AgHT used has very low conductivity, the magnetic resonance
at the CSRR is very poor. The CSRR alone cannot produce a
notch when integrated to the antenna due to the high insertion
loss and low coupling. The CSRR needs to be optimized if it
were to be integrated to an antenna. Since the conductivity of
AgHT is much lower than copper, the intensity of the current is
also very low. The optimization needs to be made to the area of
UWB antenna with high surface current intensity, so that better
excitation can be achieved.
Figs. 9 and 10 show the optimizations made and the surface
currents of the proposed UWB antenna, respectively. Initially,
two arc slots are added to the UWB antenna, together with transmission line tapering. The CSRRs are modified by adding three
separation gaps to shift the resonant frequency [18]. The radius

Fig. 11. Simulated and measured

UWB transparent antenna.

proposed optimization of CSRR and

and total length of the arc slots are 22.7 and 4.2 mm, respectively. Even with the arc slots, the CSRR still failed to produce
a notch at 5.8 GHz. The second optimization is made to the
ground of the UWB antenna because the surface current density
is high in between the transmission line and CPW ground. Two
modified CSRRs are added to the ground, fed by another arc slot
of 20.9 mm length. The arc slots at the ground are very important
because they will help to excite the CSRRs inside the ground.
(
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm).
The effects of every optimization process are analyzed based
on the reflection coefficient ( ) as in Fig. 11. All the simulation and measurement results are in agreement. A result from
previous work [16] is included in Fig. 11 for comparison. The
design in [16] consists of a circular radiating element with complementary split-ring resonator, designed using FR-4 with permittivity 4.4. The result shows that a single complementary
split-ring resonator can introduce a notch at 5.8 GHz when FR-4
is used. However, there is no significant notch introduced when
the same design is implemented on thin film. Further optimization on the complementary split-ring resonator is needed to introduce a notch when using thin film. After the first optimization, the
of the proposed antenna increased by 6 dB to

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

REFERENCES

Fig. 12. Measured gain of the proposed antenna.

15.2 dB, which is still not enough for a band notch. However, after the second optimization, the simulation and measurement
has shown a steady increment at 5.8 GHz to 4.5 and
5.6 dB, respectively. These results shows that the overall optimization has successfully tuned the excited the CSRRs embedded in the UWB antenna and produced a notch at 5.8 GHz.
The prototyped antennas are measured using the antenna
measurement equipment, Satimo StarLab, at The Hong Kong
University, Hong Kong. Fig. 12 shows the measured gains
of the antennas. It can be seen that the highest gain achieved
is 5 dBi, which is comparable to the transparent antenna
designed in [5] and [6]. These gain values are expected when
using the AgHT-4 film because of its low conductivity and
lossy nature of the material itself [5]. The optimized UWB
antenna with modified CSRR and arc slots shows a drop in gain
of about 4 dBi in the region of the notched frequencies centered
at 5.8 GHz. Since the notch is not deep ( 5 dB), only small
gain drops are achieved.
IV. CONCLUSION
Some analyses on the electromagnetic behavior of the CSRR
when designed using AgHT have been presented. The insertion
loss and surface loss of AgHT is very high compared to copper.
The low conductivity of AgHT has also caused low magnetic
field around the CSRR. Hence, further optimization is needed
if the CSRR is to be implemented to antenna design because its
excitation level is not enough to produce a band notch on its
own. A transparent UWB antenna with optimized CSRR that
can notch 600 MHz frequency bandwidth centered at 5.8 GHz is
also presented. The notch band from 5.6 to 6.2 GHz for rejecting
the WLAN and DSRC signals is created using a CSRR. The
proposed antenna is a good candidate for short-range UWB applications on glass windows and panels of homes and buildings.

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