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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

Bandwidth Enhancement of Monopole UWB

Antenna With New Slots and EBG Structures
Zheng Guo, Huiping Tian, Xudong Wang, Qun Luo, and Yuefeng Ji

AbstractTwo methods in terms of bandwidth broadening are

proposed and compared for monopole slot ultrawideband (UWB)
antennas supporting mobile terminal applications. The original
antenna has a bandwidth of 9.27 GHz (1.7311 GHz) that covers
PCS1900, UMTS2000, TD-SCDMA, WLAN 802.11b/g or Bluetooth, LTE, WiMAX, and UWB frequency range. In this letter,
by cutting two new slots on the ground plane, the antenna can
expand its bandwidth to 9.33 GHz (1.6711 GHz) that is available
at extra DVB-H, DCS1800 services. Meanwhile, the bandwidth of
the antenna with conventional mushroom-type electromagnetic
band-gap (CMT-EBG) embedded on both sides of a 50- microstrip line can be enhanced to 9.47 GHz (1.5311 GHz) with the
extra GPS covered. The largest impedance bandwidth of 151%
can be obtained. Moreover, the comparisons of gain characters
as well as the radiation patterns are discussed at the bands of
interest. It is illustrated that the gain of the antenna based on
CMT-EBG is higher than other two cases except to the range of
5.195.93 GHz and the radiation patterns are basically identical.
The antennas are fabricated on FR4 substrate, and the deviations
between measured results and simulated results are discussed.
Index TermsElectromagnetic band-gap (EBG), mobile antenna, monopole slot ultrawideband (UWB) antenna, slot antenna,
UWB antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

ECENTLY, there has been an increasing focus on wideband antennas for wireless communication system.
Many techniques can be used to achieve an antenna applied for
mobile terminal devices. One of the most popular methods is to
employ a shorted strip placed above the ground plane to form
the planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) [1], [2]. However, the
height of these antennas is sensitive to the resonant frequency,
resulting in narrow bandwidth and low efficiency. Another
promising wideband antenna is the monopole antenna [3][5].
The thin and long strip embedded in these antennas can contribute to size compactness and lower frequency. With the
attractive characteristics of low cost, easy fabrication, and wide

Manuscript received October 17, 2013; accepted November 11, 2013. Date
of publication November 20, 2013; date of current version December 11, 2013.
This work was supported in part by the National 973 Program under Grant No.
2012CB315705, the NSFC under Grant No. 61372038, the National 863 Program under Grant No. 2011AA010305, and the Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications (Beijing University
of Posts and Telecommunications), China.
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics
and Optical Communications, School of Information and Communication
Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing
100876, China (e-mail: hptian@bupt.edu.cn; jyf@bupt.edu.cn).
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.2013.2292063

bandwidth, the monopole antenna has received more attention

for wireless communication systems. The bandwidth of such
antennas is claimed to cover the 1.57510.6-GHz frequency
band for most of mobile terminal applications, which include
GPS, DVB-H, DCS1800, PCS1900, UMTS2000, TD-SCDMA,
WLAN 802.11b/g or Bluetooth, LTE, WiMAX, and ultrawideband (UWB). Much research on the designs of UWB monopole
antennas has already appeared for wireless communication
systems [4], [5]. However, most antennas concentrate on upper
frequency ranges (3.110.6 GHz) [5], which can be only operated at higher wireless services. The topic to design the antenna
operating at all these services is relatively challenging [6].
Two different methods are investigated to broaden the bandwidth of the monopole antennas. One can cut slots on the system
ground plane [7], [8]. The additional resonances generated by
the introduction of the slot can couple to original resonances
of the antenna, which can contribute to bandwidth enhancement. Another popular method is to etch shapes of electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) structure on the antenna [9], [10]. The
inherent characteristics of dielectric materials are helpful to improve the impedance bandwidth. However, the comparison of
the two different methods has not been investigated in the published papers.
In this letter, two slots are used in the monopole slot UWB
antenna as the new slots placing on the ground plane. With
the definition of input reflection coefficient
6 dB, which
is frequently used in the manufacturers specification [4], the
bandwidth can be expanded from 9.27 to 9.33 GHz. Furthermore, a larger bandwidth expansion from 9.27 to 9.47 GHz
can be obtained by embedding the conventional mushroomtype electromagnetic band-gap (CMT-EBG) [11] on the original monopole slot UWB antenna, which is available for most
wireless communication services. The novelty of the proposed
methods can be concluded that the bandwidth can be enhanced
without deteriorating the previous UWB performance, and the
largest impedance bandwidth of 151% can be obtained.

II. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS OF UWB ANTENNAS

A common structure of the monopole slot UWB antenna is
presented in Fig. 1 (named as antenna 1) to design new UWB antennas for broadening bandwidth. An FR4 substrate with thickmm, relative permittivity
, and loss
ness
is applied for simulation. As shown in Fig. 1,
is fed by a 50- microstrip
a circle radiator with radius of
mm.
and
denote the width
line with width
and length of the antenna. The dimensions of antenna 1 are
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,

1536-1225 2013 IEEE

GUO et al.: BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT OF MONOPOLE UWB ANTENNA WITH NEW SLOTS AND EBG STRUCTURES

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Fig. 1. Configuration of antenna 1. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.

Fig. 4. Simulated reflection coefficient for antennas 13.

Fig. 2. Configurations of (a) antenna 2 and (b) antenna 3.

due to the current flowing through the metallic pins, whereas

the capacitance is a result of the gap effect between different
adjacent cells. In order to adapt to the structure of CMT-EBG,
the dimensions of antenna 3 can be slightly tuned so that
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm, and
mm.
III. SIMULATION AND DISCUSSION
To investigate the performance of the antennas, the High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) software is used for simulation study. The results are analyzed in this section. First, the
comparison of simulated reflection coefficient is presented and
studied. Then, the gain and radiation patterns are revealed.
A. Bandwidth Characteristics of Antennas

Fig. 3. Structure of CMT-EBG.

mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm, and
mm.
To broaden the antenna bandwidth, two different methods
are applied to antenna design as shown in Fig. 2. The antennas
are named as antenna 2 and antenna 3. Fig. 2(a) describes
the configuration of antenna 2. Two new slots are cut on the
system ground plane for lower frequency. The size of new slots
is
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm, and
mm. Other parameters are the same
as antenna 1. The configuration of antenna 3 is denoted in
Fig. 2(b). There are 3 3 periods of CMT-EBG cells placed on
both sides of the microstrip-fed line with the gap
mm.
The distance between the lower edge of ground plane slot and
the upper edge of CMT-EBG is
mm. As shown
in Fig. 3, the CMT-EBG is made up of a rectangle patch
and a metallic pin shorted to the system ground plane. The
parameters of CMT-EBG are
mm,
mm,
mm, and
mm. The structure of CMT-EBG can
be equivalent to the
resonance circuit. The inductance is

The comparison on reflection coefficient of antennas 13 is

shown in Fig. 4. It is clear that antenna 1 has the bandwidth
of 1.7311 GHz, which can cover PCS1900 (1.851.99 GHz),
UMTS2000 (1.922.17 GHz), TD-SCDMA (1.852.62 GHz),
WLAN 802.11b/g or Bluetooth (2.42.484 GHz), LTE 2.5 GHz
(2.52.69 GHz), WiMAX (2.32.7 GHz, 3.43.6 GHz),
and UWB bands (3.110.6 GHz). Compared to antenna
1, the band of antenna 2 has a bandwidth of 9.33 GHz
(1.6711 GHz) covering extra DCS1800 (1.711.88 GHz),
DVB-H (1.671.675 GHz) operation. Meanwhile, a much
larger bandwidth can be achieved in antenna 3, which can reach
9.47 GHz (1.5311 GHz) and covers extra GPS (1575 MHz) as
well as DCS1800, DVB-H. It is realized that both cutting the
new slots on the ground plane and placing CMT-EBG around
the patch can contribute to bandwidth enhancement of the
UWB antenna without disturbing the previous UWB behavior.
B. Gain and Radiation Characteristics of Antennas
The gain and radiation efficiency comparisons of the antennas
are described in Fig. 5. The gain performances of antennas 1 and
2 are basically identical, which can be demonstrated in that the
new slots have little effect on antenna gain. However, in addition
to the range of 5.195.93 GHz, the gain of antenna 3 is higher

1552

IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

Fig. 5. Comparisons of the gain and radiation efficiency among antennas 13

and with reflector.

Fig. 7. Comparison of the simulated radiation patterns among antennas 13.

(a) 1.8 GHz. (b) 3.5 GHz. (c) 7 GHz.

Fig. 6. Current distributions of antenna 3 at the typical frequencies.

(a) 1.8 GHz. (b) 5.6 GHz.

than antennas 1 and 2. The radiation efficiency of antennas 13

are the highest from 1.5 to 3 GHz, and then antennas 1 and 2 stay
between 70%50% all the way to 11 GHz, while antenna 3 drops
to 45% in the range of 5.195.93 GHz. Fig. 6 presents the simulated current distributions of antenna 3 for further investigation.
It is revealed from Fig. 6(a) that the CMT-EBG current distributions are weak at the typical frequency of 1.8 GHz. In this
case, the current distributions are approximately concentrated
on the radiator, which can contribute to surface wave suppression, whereas, as shown in Fig. 6(b), the current of 5.6 GHz is

mainly distributed on the CMT-EBG. The phenomenon means

surface wave cannot be well suppressed by the existence of the
CMT-EBG at 5.6 GHz. It is mainly due to the fact that the
resonant frequency
[12] is about
5.6 GHz. Therefore, high gain and high efficiency cannot be obtained around 5.6 GHz. In order to solve the problem, a reflector
with suitable design can be placed under the antenna to achieve
better performance [13], [14]. An average 3-dBi gain can be obtained with the reflector used in antenna 3 as shown in Fig. 5.
The antennas are printed in the -plane. As the monopoles
are in the -direction, they are -polarized. Hence, the H-plane
for the antennas is the -plane, and the E-plane is the -plane.
The E-plane and H-plane simulated radiation patterns at the typical frequencies of 1.8, 3.5, and 7 GHz are depicted in Fig. 7. It
is implied that the radiation patterns of the antennas are basically identical. Therefore, the existence of either the new slots
or CMT-EBG has little influence on the monopole slot UWB
antenna in terms of radiation patterns.
IV. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT
The prototypes of these antennas are shown in Fig. 8. They
were fabricated on FR4 substrate with the relative permittivity
and a 0.8-mm thickness to verify the simulated reflection coefficient. An SMA adapter was connected at one end
of the microstrip line for measurement, which was directed by

GUO et al.: BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT OF MONOPOLE UWB ANTENNA WITH NEW SLOTS AND EBG STRUCTURES

Fig. 8. Photographs of (a) antenna 1, (b) antenna 2, and (c) antenna 3.

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been proposed for bandwidth enhancement. The monopole

slot antenna has a bandwidth of 9.27 GHz (1.7311 GHz),
which can operate at the PCS1900, UMTS2000, TD-SCDMA,
WLAN 802.11b/g or Bluetooth, LTE2.5GHz, WiMAX, and
the UWB bands. With the new slots cut on the ground plane,
the bandwidth can be expanded to 9.33 GHz (1.6711 GHz) so
that the extra DCS1800 and DVB-H can be covered. On the
other hand, the bandwidth of the monopole slot UWB antenna
etched the CMT-EBG on both sides of the microstrip-fed line
is broadened to 9.47 GHz (1.5311 GHz) with the GPS covered
again. The comparisons of gain and radiation characteristics
have been discussed. In addition to the range of 5.195.93 GHz,
the gain of the antenna with CMT-EBG is higher than others
because of its resonant frequency at about 5.6 GHz formed by
CMT-EBG. Furthermore, it is realized that the introduction
of either the new slots or CMT-EBG has little effect on the
monopole slot UWB antenna in terms of radiation patterns due
to their basically identical curves at the typical frequencies. The
antennas have been fabricated for measurement. The rationality
and creditability of the simulation results are verified.
REFERENCES

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured reflection coefficient for (a) antenna 1, (b) antenna 2, and (c) antenna 3.

TABLE I
COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE SIMULATED AND MEASURED BANDWIDTH

Agilent E5071C ENA RF network analyzer with the highest frequency at 20 GHz.
Fig. 9 demonstrates the simulated and measured reflection coefficient for these prototype antennas. As shown from the figure
curve, the conformance of the simulated and measured results
is noticed for all the antennas. The correctness of the simulation
results can be verified. The specific comparisons are illustrated
in Table I; the discrepancies between simulations and measurements are presented. It is observed that all the measured bandwidth is smaller than the corresponding simulated ones with
similar frequency deviations, and there is a mismatch with the
simulated results at higher frequencies in antennas 1 and 2. This
could be caused probably by the fact that EBG in antenna 3 is
more resistant to outside interference.
V. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a monopole slot UWB antenna with new
slots and CMT-EBG applied in mobile terminal devices has

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