Wideband dipole antenna for WLAN

The wireless local area network (WLAN) is one of the most important applications of wireless communication. The WLAN frequency span is from 2.412 GHz to 2.482 GHz (IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g) and from 5.15 GHz to 5.825 GHz (IEEE 802.11a). The integration of both bands into one device using a dual-band antenna design becomes critical. A novel dual-band dipole antenna for WLAN is proposed. A prototype dipole was made and measured. The measured VSWR 2:1 bandwidth is 710 MHz at the 2.4 GHz band and wider than 1 GHz at the 5 GHz band. The measured 3:1 bandwidth is wider than 3.6 GHz, ranging, from 2.32 GHz to above 6 GHz. The dipole achieves 85-87% efficiency in the 2.4 GHz band and 55-64% efficiency in the 5 GHz band.