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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Harmonic Suppressed Slot Loop Antenna Fed by

Coplanar Waveguide
Yu-Wei Liu, Yen-Ju Lu, and Powen Hsu, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA harmonic suppressed coplanar waveguide

(CPW)-fed slot-coupled circular slot loop antenna is proposed.
Two coupling slots placed inside the radiating slot loop and connected directly to the CPW are used for the harmonic suppression.
By properly adjusting the coupling slot lengths, the second and
third harmonics can be suppressed separately or simultaneously.
The principle of harmonic suppression is discussed, and simulation and measurement results are also presented and discussed.
Index TermsCoplanar waveguides, harmonic suppression, slot
antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE SUPPRESSION of higher-order harmonics is an

important design issue in many wireless communication
systems, especially in active integrated antennas (AIAs). This
is because the undesired harmonic emissions may reduce the
system efficiency, degrade the system performance, and cause
the possible electromagnetic interference and compatibility
problems. Adding filters in AIAs is a conventional and commonly used technique to suppress the higher-order harmonics.
However, it suffers from the increases in size and cost of
RF front ends and yields an additional insertion loss at the
fundamental frequency [1], [2]. Thus, designing a harmonic
suppressed antenna (HSA) for elimination of the filter becomes
a better choice, especially when the size of the device is strictly
limited. Many techniques and structures have been used to
design various HSAs, such as the photonic band-gap structure
(PBG) [3], defected ground structure (DGS) [4], hybrid PBG
and DGS structure [5], [6], tuning length with resonator element [7], slot on microstrip patch antenna [8][10], T-shaped
slot antenna [11][14], etc. All these have a complicated
structure, and they are not suitable for uniplanar designs. For
uniplanar designs, an inductively coupled stepped-impedance
slot [15] and two rectangular slots etched on the center conductor of the coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission line [16]
have been used to suppress the harmonics of a CPW-fed slot
antenna. PBG structures have also been successfully applied to
the uniplanar design to suppress the harmonics of a CPW-fed
slot loop antenna [17]. However, since the PBG structures are

Manuscript received June 14, 2014; accepted June 24, 2014. Date of publication July 09, 2014; date of current version July 17, 2014. This work was
supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under Contract NSC 1022221-E-002-042-MY2.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering, National Taiwan University,
Taipei 10617, Taiwan (e-mail: phsu@ntu.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2335194

Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed CPW-fed slot-coupled circular slot loop antenna with harmonic suppression.

attached to the feeding CPW line, the overall antenna size is

much increased.
In this letter, a novel uniplanar harmonic suppressed
CPW-fed slot-coupled circular slot loop antenna is proposed.
The structure of the proposed antenna is very simple. Since
the coupling slots used for harmonic suppression are placed
inside the slot loop, the overall antenna size would not be
increased. The principle of harmonic suppression is discussed,
and simulation and measurement results are also presented and
discussed.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
The geometry of the proposed uniplanar harmonic suppressed CPW-fed slot-coupled circular slot loop antenna is
shown in Fig. 1. The widths of strip and gap of the feeding
CPW are denoted as and , respectively. A pair of concentric
arc slots, namely the coupling slots, with radius , width
,
and spreading angle
with respect to the center of the CPW
transmission line is connected to the two gaps of the CPW. A
circular slot loop with radius
, width
, spreading angle
360 , and having a breach surrounding the CPW is placed
outside the coupling slots. The width of the metallic strip gap
between the coupling slot and the radiating slot loop is .
The principle of harmonic suppression for the proposed antenna can be explained by the coupled line filters [18]. The coupling region indicated in Fig. 1 can be seen as a coupled transmission line, of which one is a coupling slot and the other is a
portion of the radiating slot loop. Although the coupling region

1536-1225 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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LIU et al.: HARMONIC SUPPRESSED SLOT LOOP ANTENNA FED BY CPW

1293

Fig. 2. Coupled line section equivalence of coupling region in Fig. 1.

is depicted on only the left-hand side of the antenna, there is

another coupling region on the corresponding right-hand side.
Since the ends of the coupling slot and the slot loop are both
terminated with short circuits, the coupling region can be modeled as a four-port coupled line section with two of the four
ports terminated with short circuits, as shown in Fig. 2. Thus,
the four-port coupled line section becomes a two-port circuit. In
Fig. 2, represents the electrical length, and
and
represent the image impedances defined by:
input impedance at port 1 when port 2 is terminated
with
.
input impedance at port 2 when port 1 is terminated
with
.
Under matched condition, i.e.,
, the image impedance
derived from [18, Table 8.8] becomes

Fig. 3. Geometry of the proposed harmonic suppressed CPW-fed slot-coupled

circular slot loop antenna with unequal lengths of coupling slots.

(1)
where
and
are characteristic impedances when the coupled line section is driven in even and odd modes, respectively.
When the coupled line section is set to be a half-guided-wavelength long, i.e.,
, the image impedance
reduces to
zero, indicating a stopband.
Using above principle, if the lengths of both arms of the coupling slot in Fig. 1 are designed to be a half-guided-wavelength
at the 2nd harmonic resonant frequency of the radiating slot
loop, then the coupled line section works as a bandstop filter for
the 2nd harmonic, and the radiating slot loop can resonate with
its 2nd harmonic frequency suppressed. Similarly, if the lengths
of both arms of the coupling slot in Fig. 1 are designed to be a
half-guided-wavelength at the 3rd harmonic frequency, then the
3rd harmonic frequency of the radiating slot loop can be suppressed. If the pair of coupling slots is designed with unequal
lengths corresponding to half-guided wavelengths at the 2nd
and 3rd harmonic frequencies, respectively, as shown in Fig. 3,
then both 2nd and 3rd harmonics can be suppressed. Comparing
Fig. 3 to Fig. 1, an additional spreading angle
is used in this
double harmonic suppression case.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
All simulations for the proposed antenna are carried out by
using the high frequency simulator ANSYS HFSS 11.0. The
substrate used is FR4 with dielectric constant
, loss tangent
, and thickness
mm. Three CPW-fed
slot-coupled slot loop antennas are simulated and fabricated,
namely the 2nd harmonic suppressed antenna, the 3rd harmonic
suppressed antenna, and the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna, which correspond to suppressions of only the 2nd harmonic, only the 3rd harmonic, and both 2nd and 3rd harmonics,
respectively. For comparison, a conventional circular slot loop

Fig. 4. Geometry of the conventional circular slot loop antenna fed inductively
by a CPW.

antenna fed inductively by a CPW, as shown in Fig. 4, is also

simulated and fabricated using the same substrate. It should
be noted that resonances for a CPW inductively fed slot loop
occur when its perimeter is equal to the odd integer multiples of
a half-guided-wavelength, e.g.,
. The corresponding resonant frequencies are
, respectively,
where is the fundamental resonant frequency. Since the fundamental resonance is hardly excited without adding additional
tuning structures [19], the first three resonant frequencies that
can be excited would be
, and
. In the following design,
is chosen to be 0.8 GHz, thus the first three harmonic
frequencies excited are 2.4, 4.0, and 5.6 GHz.
A 50- CPW transmission line with width of strip
mm
and width of gap
mm is utilized for feeding the antennas. The overall antenna size for each of the antennas is the
same, i.e.,
mm and
mm. As stated above, the
design frequency for the 1st harmonic resonance is set at
GHz. The parameters of all antennas are adjusted so that they
have the closest possible 1st harmonic resonant frequency and a
good input match. For the 2nd harmonic suppressed antenna, the

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 6. Simulated instantaneous current distributions for 2nd harmonic suppressed antenna at (a) 2.4 and (b) 4.0 GHz; 3rd harmonic suppressed antenna
at (c) 2.4 and (d) 5.6 GHz; and hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna at (e) 2.4,
(f) 4.0, and (g) 5.6 GHz.

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured reflection coefficients for the conventional slot
loop antenna and the three proposed harmonic suppressed antennas.

parameters used are:

mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
, and
mm.
For the 3rd harmonic suppressed antenna:
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
, and
mm. For the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna:
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
, and
mm. For the conventional circular slot loop antenna:
mm and
mm. The simulated and measured reflection coefficients for the conventional circular slot
loop antenna and the 2nd, 3rd, and hybrid harmonic suppressed
antennas against frequency are shown in Fig. 5. The simulated
and measured results are in good agreement.
It can be seen from Fig. 5 that the first three resonant
frequencies for the conventional circular slot loop antenna
are 2.4, 4.0, and 5.6 GHz, respectively, that the 2nd and
3rd harmonics are suppressed for the 2nd and 3rd harmonic
suppressed antennas, respectively, and that both 2nd and 3rd
harmonics are suppressed simultaneously for the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna. The measured 10-dB reflection

coefficient bandwidths of the 2nd, the 3rd, and the hybrid

harmonic suppressed antennas at the first harmonic frequency
is 7.77% (2.352.54 GHz), 7.35% (2.362.54 GHz), and 8.62%
(2.332.54 GHz), respectively.
Simulated instantaneous current distributions at 2.4 and
4.0 GHz for the 2nd harmonic suppressed antenna are plotted
in Fig. 6(a) and (b), respectively; those at 2.4 and 5.6 GHz for
the 3rd harmonic suppressed antenna are in Fig. 6(c) and (d),
respectively; and those at 2.4, 4.0, and 5.6 GHz for the hybrid
harmonic suppressed antenna are in Fig. 6(e), (f), and (g), respectively. At the first harmonic frequency of 2.4 GHz, strong
current distributions around the slot loop shown in Fig. 6(a), (c),
and (e) reveal that the circular slot loop is resonating with its
perimeter equals
. At the suppressed harmonic frequency
of 4.0 or 5.6 GHz, Fig. 6(b), (d), (f), and (g) show that most of
the currents are concentrated around their respective coupling
slot, that the coupling to the slot loop is very small, and that the
slot loop is not resonating. All these phenomena comply with
the design principle discussed previously in Section II.
Radiation patterns simulated and measured at 2.4 and
4.0 GHz for the 2nd harmonic suppressed antenna are plotted
in Fig. 7(a), those at 2.4 and 5.6 GHz for the 3rd harmonic
suppressed antenna are in Fig. 7(b), and those at 2.4, 4.0, and
5.6 GHz for the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna are in
Fig. 7(c). The H- and E-planes indicated in these figures are and -planes, respectively. From Fig. 7(a)(c), the simulated
and measured patterns are in reasonable agreement. The peak
gains measured at the suppressed harmonic frequencies are

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1295

inside the radiating slot loop, the overall antenna size remains
unchanged. It has been shown that by properly adjusting
the coupling slot lengths, the 2nd and 3rd harmonics can be
suppressed separately or simultaneously. The principle of
harmonic suppression has been discussed, and experimental results have been presented to verify the principle. This coupling
slot technique can also be used to suppress the harmonics for
rectangular slot loop and slot dipole antennas.
REFERENCES

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured radiation patterns for (a) the 2nd harmonic
suppressed antenna, (b) the 3rd harmonic suppressed antenna, and (c) the hybrid
harmonic suppressed antenna.

lower than those measured at the 1st harmonic frequency by

at least 5 dB. These results are consistent with those of the
reflection coefficient measurements shown in Fig. 5. The radiation patterns of the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna are
not symmetric compared to those of the 2nd and 3rd harmonic
suppressed antennas. This is because the 2nd and 3rd harmonic
suppressed antennas, as shown in Fig. 1, are symmetric with
respect to the
-plane, however the hybrid harmonic suppressed antenna, as shown in Fig. 3, is not. The antenna gains
in the broadside direction of the 2nd, the 3rd, and the hybrid
harmonic suppressed antennas at 2.4 GHz are 3.4, 3.9, and
3.8 dBi, respectively.
IV. CONCLUSION
A uniplanar harmonic suppressed CPW-fed slot coupled
circular slot loop antenna has been presented. Since the two
coupling slots used for the harmonic suppression are placed

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