Design of a tetra-band compact printed antenna for vehicular communications

This paper presents a simple and powerful design of a closely C-shaped microstrip patch antenna for wireless access in vehicular environment. Other wireless technologies such as WLAN, WiMAX, C-band, 5GHz U-NII, X-band and Ku-band applications are also supported. The microstrip patch antenna has been designed on the FR-4 substrate of 4.4 and thickness of h = 1.5mm, with a whole dimension of 25mm × 22mm. The proposed antenna can synchronously operate in multiple frequencies, covering four bands: [2.3538GHz-2.5388GHz], [5.0243GHz-8.0607GHz], [9.2403GHz-10.595GHz], [12.67GHz-15.182GHz]. To being small size, the new antenna exhibits stable far field radiation characteristics in the entire operating bandwidth with a relatively high gain, especially in the broadside direction which is suitable for vehicular systems. Using a full wave electromagnetic commercial simulator CST, a comprehensive study is detailed to understand the characteristics of the antenna in terms of electrical performances by considering reflection coefficient, radiation patterns, gain and VSWR. Results show, that the antenna is suitable for multiband wireless communication systems.