A wide-band slot antenna design employing a fictitious short circuit concept

A wide-band slot antenna element is proposed as a building block for designing single- or multi-element wide-band or dual-band slot antennas. It is shown that a properly designed, off-centered, microstrip-fed, moderately wide slot antenna shows dual resonant behavior with similar radiation characteristics at both resonant frequencies and therefore can be used as a wide-band or dual-band element. This element shows bandwidth values up to 37%, if used in the wide-band mode. When used in the dual-band mode, frequency ratios up to 1.6 with bandwidths larger than 10% at both frequency bands can be achieved without putting any constraints on the impedance matching, cross polarization levels, or radiation patterns of the antenna. The proposed wide-band slot element can also be incorporated in a multi-element antenna topology resulting in a very wide-band antenna with a minimum number of elements. It is also shown that, by using only two of these elements in a parallel feed topology, an antenna with good radiation parameters over a 2.5:1 bandwidth ratio can be obtained.