IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO.
3, MARCH 2014
IV. CONCLUSION
By incorporating a varactor diode into its CLL-based NFRP ele-
ment, a frequency-agile version of a passive fixed-value capacitor, ef-
ficient monopole antenna was obtained. This frequency-agile version
increased the effective fractional impedance bandwidth by more than
a factor of four from its original value. The final configuration empha-
sized the simplicity of its design; it was fabricated and tested. The mea-
sured results demonstrated that the frequency-agile NFRP monopole
antenna prototype has good impedance matching, relatively high radia-
tion efficiency, and stable and uniform radiation patterns over its entire
frequency-agile range, in good agreement with the predicted values.
Because of the favorable simulation results presented for the larger tun-
able capacitance range, alternate varactor diodes are being considered
to achieve a prototype with these design parameters and confirm the
predicted substantially larger frequency-agile range.
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0018-926X © 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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tion.
Hybrid Fractal Shape Planar Monopole Antenna Covering
Multiband Wireless Communications With MIMO
Implementation for Handheld Mobile Devices
Yogesh Kumar Choukiker, Satish K. Sharma, and Santanu K. Behera
Abstract—A hybrid fractal shape planar monopole antenna cov-
ering multiple wireless communication bands is presented for mul-
tiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) implementation for handheld mobile
devices. The proposed structure is the combination of Minkowski island
curve and Koch curve fractals. It is placed with edge to edge separation
of at 1.75 GHz. The T-shape strip is inserted and rectangular
slot is etched at top side of ground plane, respectively to improve the
impedance matching and isolation between the antennas. A measured
impedance matching fractional bandwidths ( dB) are 14%
from 1.65 GHz to 1.9 GHz for the band 1 and 80% from 2.68 GHz to
6.25 GHz for the band 2. Acceptable agreement is obtained between
the simulated and measured antenna performance parameters. These
characteristics demonstrate that the proposed antenna is an attractive
candidate for handheld mobile devices.
Index Terms—Hybrid fractal antenna, multiple-input-multiple-output
(MIMO), multiband wireless communications, planar monopole.
I. INTRODUCTION
There is a great demand to enhance data throughput in hand-
held/portable devices for wireless communications such as live high
definition television (HDTV) broadcast, online game, real-time video
streaming, and mobile electronic devices [1]. Fractal antennas allow
compact, multiband and broadband antenna designs [2], [3]. Most
Manuscript received February 11, 2013; revised November 11, 2013; ac-
cepted December 08, 2013. Date of publication December 17, 2013; date of
current version February 27, 2014. The work of Y. K. Choukiker was supported
by the TEQIP-II, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Govt. of India.
Y. K. Choukiker was with the Antenna and Microwave Laboratory (AML),
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State Uni-
versity, San Diego, CA 92182 USA. He is now with the Microwave and
Antenna Design Laboratory, Department of Electronics and Communication
Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India (e-mail:
yogesh.ku.84@gmail.com)
S. K. Sharma is with the Antenna and Microwave Laboratory (AML), De-
partment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University,
San Diego, CA 92182 USA (e-mail: ssharma@mail.sdsu.edu).
S. K. Behera is with the Microwave and Antenna Design Laboratory, De-
partment of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of
Technology, Rourkela, India (e-mail: skbehera@nitrkl.ac.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are avail-
able online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2013.2295213
1484
Fig. 1. Three initial stages of generation (a) Koch curve fractal and
(b) Minkowski curve fractal geometries.
Fig. 2. Geometry of the proposed hybrid fractal MIMO antenna: (a) front view,
(b) top view, and (c) hybrid fractal design dimensions.
fractal objects have self-similar shape, with different scales [4]. The
fractal shape can be carried out by applying the infinite number of
iterations using multiple reduction copy machine (MRCM) algorithm
[5]. The space filling property, when applied to an antenna element,
leads to an increase of the electrical length. The more convoluted
and longer surface currents result in lowering the antenna resonant
frequency for a given overall extension of the resonator. The fractal
miniaturization technique has already been applied to Koch wire
monopole [6], combination of fractal geometries [7]–[11], and the
Sierpinski fractal-shape antennas [12]–[14]. Although the essence of
this technique falls into the inductive loading, the radiation patterns of
the antennas derived from this technique are maintained because of
the self-similarities of the fractals.
Recently, theoretical and experimental published articles [15]–[23]
confirm the superior data rate, multipath fading reduction and
co-channel interference suppression capability when the antennas
are implemented in MIMO arrangements. Moreover, the trend for
mobile terminals nowadays is to accommodate the increased number
of wireless communication applications.
In [15], [16], MIMO implementation of the microstrip antennas
is applied for the wireless digital television (DTV) media players
covering long term evaluation (LTE) bands and for USB dongle for
wireless LTE/WLAN bands, respectively. Various techniques have
been reported to enhance the isolation between the MIMO antenna
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, MARCH 2014
Fig. 3. Simulated scattering parameters and isolation of the MIMO antennas
with different iterations.
Fig. 4. Simulated scattering parameters and isolation of the MIMO antennas
with different configuration of the grooved area and T-shape strip.
Fig. 5. Simulated surface current distributions of the MIMO antennas: (a) An-
tenna 1 at 1.75 GHz and 4.5 GHz and (b) Antenna 2 at 1.75 GHz and 4.5 GHz.
elements. Further, there is demand for diversity antennas in the
LTE/WiFi/Wimax/WLAN bands [17].
In [18], the authors reduced the isolation between the antennas using
bent slit and a metal strip between the two antennas. In [19], the authors
used neutralization lines for achieving the isolation. The isolation/mu-
tual-coupling between two pots are good across the bandwidth. How-
ever, it cannot cover the most desired bands, such as LTE and UMTS in
limited antenna volume. Another paper [20] reports a quad band MIMO
antenna for wireless communication terminal, where the radiating ele-
ment is combination of the C-shaped slot and T-shaped slit. In [21], the
authors show the closely spaced element with large bandwidth. How-
ever, the relatively large antenna volume and strong coupling between
its two elements restrict its applications. In [22], a dual band MIMO
antenna with two back-to-back monopoles in symmetric configuration
is presented. Here, radiating elements are placed on a large volume of
metal case which makes it difficult to be applied in a hand held/porta-
bles mobile devices.
For fractal MIMO implementation in [23], the authors used a Koch
curve edge in microstrip patch. Another fractal MIMO antenna in [17]
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, MARCH 2014
Fig. 6. Simulated 3D gain radiation patterns for the antenna 1 (a), (c), (e), and (g) and the antenna 2 (b), (d), (f), and (h). (a), (b) are at 1.75 GHz; (c), (d) are at
3 GHz; (e), (f) are at 4.5 GHz; and (g), (h) are at 6 GHz.
shows Koch curve and Minkowski curve based fractal MIMO imple-
mentation for multiband applications. To enhance data throughput for
wireless communications, multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) an-
tennas should be implemented in a handheld/portable device. Also,
to support several wireless communication applications on a device,
multiband antennas are desired. Such a task becomes even more chal-
lenging when, besides multiband operations, a high degree of miniatur-
ization is required. Fractal structure, having self-similarity and space
filling properties, can produce a very long length or a wide surface
area in limited space. Therefore, in this communication, we propose
a hybrid fractal shaped planar monopole antenna as a radiating el-
ement for the MIMO implementation. It is a combination of Koch
curve and Minkowski island fractals with compact size of 10 10 mm
. The proposed antenna covers LTE/WiFi/WiMAX/WLAN
wireless communication bands with near omni-directional radiation
patterns. Here, a defected ground plane structure is used (a combina-
tion of rectangular grooved area and T-shaped strip) to obtained high
isolation between the two MIMO antenna elements. Parametric study
is performed to analyze the effect of the T-shaped strip and grooved
ground plane parameters on the operating frequency as well as the iso-
lation between the two antennas. The Ansys high frequency structure
simulator (HFSS) version 14 was used for modeling and analysis of the
proposed antenna. In Section II, geometry of the proposed antenna and
simulation results are presented. Experimental verification of proposed
antenna is discussed in Section III. Finally, Section IV concludes major
findings.
II. ANTENNA GEOMETRY AND SIMULATIONS RESULTS
A. Antenna Geometry
The recursive procedure of the Koch and Minkowski island curve
fractals are shown in Fig. 1. To obtain the self-similarity dimensions,
the geometry is scaled down, but with identical copies of itself. If there
are such copies of original geometry scaled down by a function ,
the similarity dimension is defined in the following:
(1)
For example, a square can be divided into four copies of 1/2 scale,
nine copies of 1/3 scale, 16 copies of 1/4 scale, or copies of 1/n
scale. Substituting in the above formula, the dimension of the geom-
etry is ascertained to be 2. This approach can be followed in deter-
mining the dimension of fractal geometries. For construction of Koch
and Minkowski curve fractals, one can start with a straight-line
called initiator and it is divided into three equal parts . In case of
1485
TABLE I
DIMENSIONS OF PROPOSED HYBRID FRACTAL MIMO ANTENNA
the Koch curve, the middle segment is divided and replaced with two
other segment of the same length. Besides, in case of the Minkowski
island curve, the middle segment is replaced by two horizontal and
a vertical segment of equal lengths. This is the first iterated version
of geometry and is called “generator” for higher iterations, as shown
in Fig. 1(a) and (b). This procedure is iterated recursively to result in
self-similar fractal geometry by taking the order of iteration and the
dimension (1) as the input parameters. Basically, individual itera-
tions are applied to both the Koch and Minkowski curves which are
then combined to get hybrid fractal geometry. For further optimiza-
tions, dimension “ ” for both fractals are varied simultaneously.
Geometry of the proposed hybrid fractal MIMO antenna is shown
in Fig. 2(a) along with its final dimensions as listed in Table I. Koch
curve fractal and Minkowski island curve fractal are applied to the
edges of the square patch up to the second iteration. Its dimensions
are also indicated in Fig. 2(c). The motivation behind using such ge-
ometry is to improve the space filling, a feature that translates into re-
duced antenna physical size and for the increased number of resonant
frequency bands. The antenna is fed through the 50 SMA coaxial
probe connected to the microstrip line with matching section over the
grooved ground plane. As shown in Fig. 2, MIMO antenna consists
of the edge-to-edge separation of 28.02 mm ( at 1.75 GHz) be-
tween the two symmetrical hybrid fractal radiating elements. The FR-4
substrate of size 100 50 mm with height is used. The
radiating elements are placed on one side of the substrate
and grooved ground plane of size 86 50 mm is located on the other
side. It should be noted that the grooved area ( and is located
on top of the ground plane with T-shape strip ( and with fixed
width of 2 mm. It is introduced to improve the impedance matching
and isolation between the antennas.
B. Simulation Results
As the number of iterations increase, the average electrical length
of the monopole also increases, just like the inductive loading and slot
loading techniques reported in [24], [25], which consequently, lowers
the operating frequency of the proposed antenna and leads to an effec-
tive antenna miniaturization. However, for the iterations higher than the
second, the reduction of operating frequency is not achievable since
1486 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, MARCH 2014

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured envelope correlation coefficients (ECC) of the

proposed MIMO antenna.

Fig. 7. Photographs of the fabricated hybrid fractal MIMO antennas: (a) top
view and (b) bottom view.

Fig. 10. Simulated and measured capacity loss of the proposed MIMO antenna.

Fig. 4 shows the simulated and of the proposed

Fig. 8. Simulated and measured scattering parameters of the proposed antenna.
(a) Reflection coefficient magnitude ( and ) and (b) isolation (
).
the antenna design becomes quite complicated and its fabrication is
difficult.
The reflection coefficient magnitudes of the antennas and
isolation between the antennas are shown in Fig. 3. It is
observed that, when the number of iterations increase, the fractional
matching bandwidths ( dB definition) of the antenna
also increases. There are several visible multiple resonances within the
bandwidth. For the iteration 2, impedance bandwidths are 14% from
1.65 GHz to 1.9 GHz for the band 1 and 80% from 2.68 GHz to 6.45
GHz for the band 2, which covers LTE band (1.7–1.9 GHz) and sev-
eral wireless communication bands like WiFi/WiMAX/WLAN bands
(2.68–6.45 GHz). In addition, the isolation is below dB
and dB for the band 1 and band 2, respectively.
monopole antenna for the grooved ground plane and T-shape strip for
the two cases. In case I, the grooved rectangular slot ( mm and
mm) is present without T-shape strip. It is observed that, the
reflection coefficient magnitude and isolation are not good enough for
the desired frequency bands (LTE/WiFi/WiMAX/WLAN). In case II
( mm, mm, mm and mm), it is
observed that the reflection coefficient magnitude and isolation are well
below the acceptable criteria for our desired operating bands. Thus, the
proposed structure is providing very satisfactory performance for the
both bands 1 and 2 with the case II design parameters.
Fig. 5(a) and (b) shows the surface current distributions at 1.75 GHz
and 4.5 GHz for the proposed MIMO antenna with grooved ground and
T-shape strip. As can be seen, when antenna 1 is excited and antenna 2
is terminated in 50 load, and vice versa, the surface current flows in
the feed line as well as in T-shape strip at both the frequencies. It can
be noticed that there is negligible current on the second radiator due
to the presence of T-shape strip, thereby improving isolation between
and the antennas. This tends to decouple current on antenna 2 and hence
it enhances the isolation between the two radiators efficiently at 1.75
GHz and 4.5 GHz.
Fig. 6(a)–(h) shows the gain 3D radiation patterns for the antenna 1
and antenna 2 at 1.75 GHz, 3 GHz, 4.5 GHz and 6 GHz. It can be seen
that, the gain of the proposed monopole antenna at all the frequencies
within the bands are more than 2 dBi. The 3D patterns are omni-direc-
tional towards the lower frequency band and becomes nearly omni-di-
rectional with multiple lobes towards the higher frequency end. Table II
provides the measured gain, simulated gain and simulated total antenna
efficiency at the band 1 and band 2. From the table, we can observe
that, some variation in measured and simulated gain occurs but the dif-
ference is not consistent in nature. This may be attributed to fabrica-
tion tolerances associated with fractal shape, when simulation expected
sharp edges, but fabrication provided rounded corners. This may result
in a different surface current on the antenna structure than the simu-
lated ones, hence variation in gain. Also, scattering effects due to the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, MARCH 2014
Fig. 11. Measured radiation pattern for the antenna 1 (a), (c), (e), and (g) and the antenna 2 (b), (d), (f) and (h). (a), (b) are at 1.75 GHz (XZ and YZ Co- and
Cross-pols.); (c), (d) are at 3 GHz (XZ and YZ Co- and Cross-pols.); (e), (f) are at 4.5 GHz (XZ and YZ Co- and Cross-pols.); and (g), (h) are at 6 GHz (XZ and
YZ Co- and Cross-pols.).
TABLE II
GAIN AND TOTAL ANTENNA EFFICIENCY
feed cable and antenna under test (AUT) mount attributes to this vari-
ation. However, total antenna efficiency, which includes all the losses,
are more than 80% throughout the band 1 and band 2.
III. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
Proposed hybrid fractal MIMO antenna is milled on the copper
side of FR-4 substrate using LPKF-42 Protomat milling machine.
Photographs of fabricated antenna are shown in Fig. 7. The antenna
is measured using Anritsu (model #37486D) vector network analyzer
(VNA) for impedance matching. The radiation patterns were measured
in an anechoic chamber, both available at the antenna and microwave
laboratory (AML) at SDSU. Measured and simulated values of the
reflection coefficient magnitude and isolation
are plotted in Fig. 8(a) and (b), respectively. These results exhibit
reasonable agreement although there is a frequency shift that can be
attributed to reflection from SMA connector and some uncertainty in
the electrical properties of the substrate. As can be seen, measured
impedance bandwidth is 14% from 1.65 GHz to 1.9 GHz for the band
1 and 80% from 2.68 GHz to 6.25 GHz for the band 2. The band-
widths achieved meet the requirements of LTE/WiFi/WiMAX/WLAN
communication applications. The isolation between the two antennas
is below dB and dB for the lower and higher frequency
bands, respectively.
For MIMO application, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC)
can be computed using either the far field radiation patterns [16] or
scattering parameters method [15]. Due to complication of the 3D far
1487
field radiation pattern measurements and consequently, ECC calcula-
tion, the S-parameters based ECC computation is preferred. According
to [15], the ECC of the two antenna systems can be computed
using the following (2):
(2)
Fig. 9 shows the simulated and measured ECC across the desired
frequency bands. As can be seen, the value of ECC is well below the
practical threshold value of 0.5 for both the band 1 and band 2.
Similarly, capacity loss (b/s/Hz) is another performance parameter
which characterizes quality of a MIMO antenna system. Channel ca-
pacity is the tightest upper bound on the rate of information that can
be reliably transmitted over a communications channel. This can be
defined using the correlation matrix given in [27], and is calculated by
using the following (3) [18], [26] which is found to be below 0.4 b/s/Hz
(3)
where is the receiving antenna correlation matrix that is given by:
and
Fig. 10 shows the comparison of measured and simulated capacity
loss values of the proposed MIMO antenna. It can be observed that,
the capacity loss does not exceed 0.3 b/s/Hz and it is well below the
threshold value 0.4 b/s/Hz for both the band 1 and band 2.
Fig. 11 shows the measured radiation patterns at the band 1 and band
2 for XZ (Co-pol. and Cross-pol.) and YZ (Co-pol. and Cross-pol.) cut
planes. During the measurement, only antenna 1 is excited while an-
tenna 2 is terminated with a 50 broadband load. It can be seen from
Fig. 11(a)–(h) that the patterns are omni-directional but towards the
1488 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 62, NO. 3, MARCH 2014
Fig. 12. Measured peak realized gain (dBi) of the antenna 1 for the band 1 and
band 2 while antenna 2 is matched terminated.
higher frequency band, it is nearly omni-directional with some mul-
tiple lobes. In the proposed MIMO antenna, the radiators are placed
symmetrically, therefore, it will provide complementary or diversity
patterns when one antenna is excited at a time and the other one is
matched terminated. The measured gain is plotted in Fig. 12. Due to
symmetry of the antenna structure and their common fabrication toler-
ances; the gain values of the two radiators are almost the same. There-
fore, only the gain of the antenna 1 is presented, while the antenna 2 is
terminated in a 50 matched load. The measured peak gain is varying
between 0 and dBi with a maximum gain of around 2 dBi for the
band 1. Similarly, for the band 2, it is varying between 2.5 dBi and 4.85
dBi with a maximum gain of 7 dBi.
IV. CONCLUSION
A hybrid fractal planar monopole MIMO antenna has been investi-
gated. By incorporating the Minkowski island curve and Koch curve
fractals it is found that the operating frequency of the fractal antenna is
lowered greatly which provides measured bandwidths of 14% for the
band 1 (1.65–1.9 GHz) and 80% for the band 2 (2.68–6.25 GHz). The
simulated and measured ECC computed using the scattering parame-
ters is very low for the proposed antenna. Similarly, the capacity loss
remains below 0.3 b/s/Hz throughout the communication bands. The
simulated 3D radiation patterns and measured 2 D cut patterns show
acceptable omni-directional patterns. Overall, the antenna performance
is suitable for handheld devices covering several wireless communica-
tion bands (i.e., LTE/WiFi/WiMAX/WLAN).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Y. K. Choukiker thanks the Antenna and Microwave Lab (AML) at
San Diego State University for offering him resources to perform the
work. He is also thankful to B. Babakhani, and S. Fernandez for their
support during the simulation and measurements.
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