International conference on Communication and Signal Processing, April 3-5, 2013, India
Co-axial Fed Double L-Slot Microstrip Patch Antenna Array
for WiMAX and WLAN Application.
R. Jothi Chitra, M.Yoganathan and V. Nagarajan
Abstract In this paper, a co-axial fed double
L-shaped slotted micro-strip patch antenna array is
proposed for multi-band operation satisfying WLAN
(Wireless Local Area Network) and WiMAX
(Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access)
application. A single micro-strip rectangular patch
antenna is designed with center frequency at 3.6 GHz
for WiMAX application and it also reduces the
resonance frequency using double L-slot on the patch
from 3.6 GHz to 2.6 GHz, which is also suitable for
WLAN (IEEE 802.11b standard frequencies from 2.23
GHz to 5.35 GHz) applications. A measured 7 dB gain is
achieved with array (1x2) antenna. The bandwidth is
increased up to 60% at upper band of operating
frequencies than the single patch antenna. The
simulation results such as radiation pattern, VSWR,
gain, and return loss are simulated using Ansoft HFSS.
Measured and simulated results of return loss for both
single patch and array antenna are analyzed and
presented.
Keywords- Co-axial feed, L Slot, WiMAX, and WLAN
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently multiband antenna plays vital role in wireless
communication. In wireless communication technology,
WiMAX applications covering frequency bands and WLAN
applications covering frequency bands becomes demanding
in practical application. To satisfy this application, low
profile antennas such as Microstrip antennas may be
employed. Microstrip antennas are very versatile in terms of
bandwidth, beam width resonant frequency, polarization,
pattern, and impedance. Though there are many feeding
technique available, Co-axial feeds provide numerous
advantages such as reduced radiation leakage and less
dispersion than micro-strip transmission lines.
R.Jothi Chitra is Asst. Professor with Department of ECE,
Adhiparasakthi Engineering College, and Melmaruvathur, India.
(sureshashika@gmail.com)
M.Yoganathan is PG Student with Department of ECE, Adhiparasakthi
Engineering College, and Melmaruvathur, India.
(muthaiyan.raja@gmail.com)
Dr.V.Nagarajan is professor and Head, Department of ECE,
Adhiparasakthi Engineering College, and Melmaruvathur, India.
(nagarajanece31@gmail.com)
978-1-4673-4866-9/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE
1159
A Microstrip slot antenna may be properly biased with a
coaxial feed line. For a 50- coaxial feed the distance
should be about /20 to match impedance easily. In this
paper the width and length of the patch are chosen as
L<0/2r and W<=0/ r [1]-[2]. A 94-GHz microstrip
aperture-coupled antenna was designed to satisfy the
millimeter applications in which -18dB and 585% return
loss and efficiency are achieved respectively [3]. A
microstrip leaky-wave antenna (LWA) was designed with
aperture-coupled and 2D dual-beam scanning feature to
enhance the dual band operation [4]. Microstrip antenna
designed with a 60-GHz, has a three stage pseudomorphic
high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier
integrated with an antenna in which used an Alumina
substrate to improve gain about 14.6-dBi with double array.
An aperture-coupled microstrip antenna was proposed and
which was fed by a series microstrip line-feed and provided
switchable polarization [5]-[6].A microstrip antenna was
designed to operate in the -band and the antenna was
circularly polarized and attained high gain and 3dB-axial-
ratio bandwidth. A proximity-coupled microstrip antenna
was designed for broadband impedance matching exceeds
40% when thicker laminate and narrow cavity configuration
was used [7]-[8].
A wideband stacked offset microstrip antenna having
dimensions of (42mm x 55mm x 4.8mm) was presented to
satisfy the high gain applications, which has an
arrangement to avoid affecting with impedance matching
bandwidth was about 34.9%, the peak gain of 8.07 dBi was
obtained[9]. An emerging technology of millimeter-wave
wireless application was presented, in which an optimized
microstrip antenna arrays were used, to achieve both the
high gain and largest bandwidth. In the need of wideband
for the recent communication systems a new super fractal
microstrip antenna was designed, by which it was suited
with to operate in 10GHz-50GHz frequency range [10]-
[11]. A standing-wave microstrip array antenna was
designed and presented [12], in [13], single feed, dual-
frequency microstrip antenna has been designed for
satisfying satellite applications. A compact single-layer
antenna was designed with Rogers RT/duroid 5880
substrate, with thickness of 1.58mm and which was
designed to operate in the dual-band. In [14] a thin
magneto-dielectric substrate was used for miniaturization of
a rectangular microstrip antenna has been presented. The
area of a rectangular microstrip antenna was reduced up to
65%, with an operating frequency of 2.4GHz. Multimode
concentric circular microstrip antenna radiation
characteristics were studied. The radiation characteristic of
proposed antenna was controlled by exciting TMn1 higher
order modes [15]. Microstrip antenna with low profile was
studied by designing frequency reconfigurable antenna with
biasing network and which was driven by a low cost PIC
microcontroller, switches operated through a software
control network[16]-[18]. In [19], a double U-slot
microstrip patch antenna array for only WiMAX application
was presented. Further in [20], a double U-slot microstrip
patch antenna array for WiMAX application with both
simulation and measured results has been presented. In
[21], a CPW (Coplanar Waveguide) fed double L-slot
microstrip patch antenna array for both WiMAX/WLAN
application was designed and only simulation results were
presented. In [22], a CPW fed double L-slot microstrip
patch antenna array for WiMAX and WLAN application
with both measured and simulated results were presented.
dimensions of the L-slots and feed positions are varied to
obtain desired operating range of WiMAX and WLAN.
By iterative method the final optimized dimensions of
proposed antenna are length of the rectangular patch is
L=15.1mm, width of the rectangular patch W=25.4 mm,
Slot length L1=8 mm, L2=6 mm and having width
Ws=1mm.The height of the co-axial feed is 3.2mm, height
of the substrate SH= 3.2mm, length of substrate SL=28 mm,
and substrate width SW=30 mm. The dimensions also same
for array antenna which is shown in Figure 3.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section II

presents methodology of antenna design. Simulation results
of various parameters of antenna are discussed in section Figure 2. Side view of L-slot patch antenna
III. Section IV describes experimental results and
Conclusion was described in section V.

II. ANTENNA DESIGN

The geometry of proposed single infinite ground Co-axial

fed dual-band antenna is shown in Figure 1 and the side
view is shown in Figure 2. The proposed antenna is
fabricated on FR4 epoxy substrate with dielectric constant
of 4.4, thickness 3.2 mm and the loss tangent of 0.02. The
proposed antenna consists of a rectangular patch in which
two L-shaped slots are embedded. The advantages of co-
axial feeding technique are the feed can be placed at any
location at patch in order to achieve better impedance
matching and to avoid unwanted radiations from the feed. Figure 3.Dimensions of double L-slot Array antenna

The specifications of the rectangular antenna are listed in

Table1.
Table1

DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS OF RECTANGULAR

PATCH ANTENNA

Center frequency,f0 3.6GHz

Substrate FR4_Epoxy
Substrate height 3.2mm
Dielectric constant 4.4
Loss tangent 0.02
Feeding impedance 50
Figure 1. Geometry of double L-slot antenna.

Initially a single patch antenna with coaxial feed was

designed. In order to improve the performance
characteristics of the antenna a double patch antenna array
was designed on same substrate with separate feed for two
patches. The dimension of the proposed double L-slot
antenna was calculated using transmission model [1]. The
widths of both L- slots are same with dimension of 1mm
but the length is different along X-axis and Y-axis. The
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section simulation results of return loss, VSWR
and radiation pattern of single patch and array antenna was
simulated using Ansoft HFSS and presented. The simulated
return loss for single patch antenna is shown in Figure 3. To

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satisfying antenna operation in both applications
simultaneously the return loss for the proposed single patch
antenna is reached about -10dB at 2.6GHz and -17.34dB at
3.6GHz. Figure 4 shows the simulated VSWR of single
patch antenna .it is observed that the VSWR in the range of
1 to 2 which is achieved for the 2.6 and 3.6 GHz frequency
range which is about 1.9 and 1.3.

Figure 6. Simulated VSWR of the array antenna

Terminal impedance response for the frequency range

from 2 to 8 GHz of the patch antenna is shown in Figure 7
and the input impedances observed at 2.6GHz and 3.6GHz
are 65 and 68 respectively.

Figure 3. Simulated return loss of the single patch antenna

Figure 7. Impedance plot of patch antenna.

Simulated gain of the proposed Co-axial fed Microstrip

antennas array is shown Figure 8.

Figure 4. Simulated VSWR of the single patch antenna

For achieving better impedance bandwidth, double

microstrip patch antenna array antenna was designed and
simulated. The simulation results of return loss for array
antenna to satisfy both WiMAX /WLAN applications are
shown in Figure 5. To satisfying antenna operation at upper
band in both applications simultaneously the return loss for
the proposed array antenna is reached about -36.8dB at
4.2GHz and -19.9dB at 5.1GHz. The corresponding VSWR Figure 8. Total Gain of single patch antenna
is also achieved for array antenna about 1.6 and 1.9 for
4.2GHz and 5.1GHz respectively is shown in Figure 6. Figure 9, represents the radiation patterns for different
frequencies with different angles of planes. From this
figure it is observed that the proposed antenna radiates in
desired direction. The radiation pattern is unidirectional.

Figure 5. Simulated return loss of the array antenna (a) f=2.4GHz (b) f=2.5GHz

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 (c) f=3.5GHz (d) f=5.2GHz

Figure 12 Co-Polarization and Cross Polarization

Relationship between the co-polarization (desired) and

cross-polarization (undesired) components can also be
measured by current distribution. The surface currents
mainly flow along the edges of slot and along the signal
feed line as shown in Figure. 13. The maximum radiation
depends on the current distribution on the patch.

(e) f=5.5GHz (f) f=5.8GHz

Figure 9. Radiation patterns for different frequencies

Figure 13. Current distribution of single patch antenna

Figure 10. Comparision between various S-Paramters

Figure 10 represents the comparison between IV.EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

various S parameters for antenna array such as S11, S12,
S21 and S22 in which the maximum bandwidth is
increased up to 60%. The radiation characteristic of an The prototype model of single patch antenna and double
antenna depends on the strength of electric field. The patch antenna array was shown in Figure 14 and 15. An
strength of electric field is 53mV. Figure 11 represents Agilent vector analyzer is used to measure the return loss of
the 3D total gain pattern of array antenna. The gain of the proposed antenna.
the antenna is 3.4dB. The gain can be increased up to
7dB by increasing the array. Figure 12 represents the
propagation of co-polarization and cross polarization, it
has less cross polarization of about -40 dB.

Figure 14 . Photo of fabricated single patch antenna

Figure 11. Simulated 3D gain total array antenna

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Figure 15 . Photo of fabricated double patch antenna array
Figure 16. Measured Return Loss of single patch antenna
The measured return loss value of single patch
antenna at frequency 4.4 GHz and 5.15 GHz are -30.45 dB
and -34.40 dB respectively are shown in Figure 16. The
measured return loss value of double patch antenna at
frequency 4.4 GHz and 5.15 GHz are -20.73dB, and
-31.45dB respectively are shown in Figure 17. The small
discrepancies between the simulated and measured results
are due to SMA connector and due to soldering.
. Transactions On Antennas And Propagation, Vol. 59, No. 4,
Figure 17. Measured Return Loss of Array Antenna
V. CONCLUSION
A compact coaxial fed double L slot microstrip patch
antenna array was designed to achieve both WiMAX and
WLAN applications. By employing coaxial feed technique
the antenna exhibits good impedance match performance
and achieves a return loss of -24.24 dB at 3.6GHz for
WiMAX and a return loss of -34.40dB is achieved at 4.5
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GHz for WLAN. The radiation pattern of proposed antenna
is unidirectional for both WiMAX/WLAN applications.
Due to its compact size and good radiation performance the
proposed antenna is good candidate for wireless
communication.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Agilent Technologies for
assistance with the measurements of antenna hardware
model in their Lab and also thank Adhiparasakthi
Engineering College for providing facilities in their
Research Lab
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