Printed Wide-Slot Antenna for Wideband Applications

The design and analysis of a novel printed wide-slot antenna, fed by a microstrip line, for wideband communication systems is presented. Detailed simulation and experimental investigations are conducted to understand its behavior and optimize for broadband operation. The designed antenna has a wide operating bandwidth of over 120% (2.8-11.4 GHz) for S11 <-10 dB. In addition to being small in size, the antenna exhibits stable far-field radiation characteristics in the entire operating bandwidth, relatively high gain, and low cross polarization. By properly choosing the suitable slot shape, selecting similar feed shape and tuning their dimensions, the design with very wide operating bandwidth, relatively small size and improved radiation pattern is obtained. A comprehensive parametric study has been carried out to understand the effects of various dimensional parameters and to optimize the performance of the designed antenna. Results show that the impedance matching of this kind of antenna is greatly affected by the feed-slot combination and feed gap width, with the slot shape being a main contributor of the radiation characteristics. The simulated and measured Results for return loss, far-field E and H-plane radiation patterns, and gain of designed antenna are presented and discussed.