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Procedia Computer Science 86 (2016) 23 – 26

2016 International Electrical Engineering Congress, iEECON2016, 2-4 March 2016, Chiang Mai,
Thailand

CPW Fed WLAN Monopole Antenna with Gain Improvement

Amirah Filzah Mat Zaida, Low Ching Yub and Muhammad Ramlee Kamarudinc*
a,b,c
Wireless Communication Centre (WCC), Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), 81310 Skudai, Johor,
Malaysia

Abstract

Monopole antennas have been widely used in the telecommunication industry in recent years. Most of the monopole antennas are
designed to operate at Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) application which has the advantage of unlicensed Industrial,
Scientific, Medical (ISM) bands. ISM bands include of IEEE 802.11 a/b/g WLAN standards which have different speed data
rates and operating frequency. The current issue stated that people always complain about their WiFi's signal coverage which is
normally low. In an effort to solve this coverage problem, improvement must be made on the antenna’s gain. A conventional gain
of a monopole antenna operated at 2.4 GHz is normally 2 dBi. A coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed WLAN monopole antenna
which is operated at 2.4 GHz with gain improvement is designed. In this project, the gain is improved by using the parasitic
element technique. The concept is based on the Yagi-Uda antenna which consists of reflector and directors. The simulated and
measured gain achieved is 6.9 dBi and 7.9 dBi respectively. Hence, the gain increment is 5.9 dBi if compared to the conventional
gain. The designed antenna produced a directional radiation pattern which covers almost 90º of the antenna's coverage area.

©
© 2016
2016TheTheAuthors. Published
Authors. by by
Published Elsevier B.V.B.V.
Elsevier This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of iEECON2016.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of iEECON2016
Keywords: Coplanar Waveguide (CPW); Monopole Antenna; Wireless Fidelity (WiFi); Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

1. Introduction

The wireless local area network (WLAN) is an important application that is commonly used in home networks.
WLAN has the advantage of Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) Band which has the standard of IEEE 802.11
a/b/g/n [1]. IEEE 802.11 b/g is for the frequency of 2.4 GHz to 2.484 GHz [2]. The usage of monopole antenna is
widely used in the implementation of wireless communication due to its low profile and simple structure [1].

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 07-5535350; fax: 07-5535252.

E-mail address: mramlee@utm.my

1877-0509 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of iEECON2016
doi:10.1016/j.procs.2016.05.006
24 Amirah Filzah Mat Zaid et al. / Procedia Computer Science 86 (2016) 23 – 26

Besides that, monopole antenna also exhibits an omnidirectional radiation pattern [3]. Planar monopole antenna
normally has relative low gain [4].
There are many types of antenna used for WLAN application like planar Yagi-Uda antenna, monopole antenna,
patch antenna and fractal antenna. Most of these antennas are normally proposed to be operated at ISM band,
WLAN, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) applications. One of the examples of fractal antenna used for WLAN is as
proposed in [5]. Compact sized antenna using the approach of Koch-Meander Fractal antenna which is used for
WLAN Universal Serial Bus (USB) dongle is presented.
Some of the feeding techniques normally used for monopole antenna are CPW fed and microstrip line fed.
However, CPW fed is more preferable due to the ground plane which is on the same side with the radiating
elements. This characteristic made the CPW fed gained its popularity compared to microstrip line fed which has the
ground plane on the backside of the radiating elements. CPW fed is also easy to integrate with monolithic
microwave integrated circuits [6].
There are many techniques used to improve the gain of the antenna. Some of the techniques used are parasitic
element technique, folding the ground plane technique, suspended ground and metamaterial superstrates technique,
inserting slits technique and metal patch reflection technique. The parasitic elements also play the role to improve
the gain as proposed by [7]. In this paper, the gain is achieved to be more than 8 dBi when the parasitic elements are
mounted on the antenna.
In this paper, a CPW fed monopole antenna operated at 2.4 GHz is presented. The concept of the Yagi-Uda
antenna is applied to the parasitic element technique. The optimized fabricated antenna can cover the frequency
band from 2.31 GHz to 2.41 GHz with the gain of 7.9 dBi at 2.4 GHz.

2. Antenna Configuration

In this project, the substrate used is a FR-4 substrate with a thickness of 1.6 mm, ϵr is 4.4 and the loss tangent is
0.02. The simulated results are obtained using CST Microwave Studio. The geometry of the proposed antenna and
its dimensions is depicted in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna

3. Result and Discussion

The comparison between the simulated and measured result of the resonant frequency, reflection coefficient and
impedance bandwidth are shown in Fig. 2. Based on Fig. 2, it can be seen that the resonant frequency of the
measured result is at 2.37 GHz with the reflection coefficient of -33.38dB. The impedance bandwidth for the
 Amirah Filzah Mat Zaid et al. / Procedia Computer Science 86 (2016) 23 – 26 25

measured result is 100 MHz (2.31 GHz to 2.41 GHz). Meanwhile, the simulated result operated at 2.3 GHz with the
reflection coefficient of -39.68 dB. The bandwidth is covered from 2.24 GHz until 2.34 GHz. For the fabricated
antenna, it has shifted the resonant frequency from 2.3 GHz to 2.37 GHz. The desired resonant frequency that is 2.4
GHz is still in the impedance bandwidth of the simulated result. However, the antenna is introduced, another
harmonic before the desired band in the measured result which operates at 1.94 GHz with the reflection coefficient
of -16.33 dB.
As can be seen from the simulation, a tendency to have a first harmonic before the point of interest is existed, but
the severe significance of the first harmonic has been introduced in the measured result. Although the significance is
more severe in the measurement, another service for LTE band is provided by the first harmonic at 1.94 GHz (LTE
band 36). The discrepancies between the simulation and measurement results are observed in which dual-band is
achieved for the measured data. However in the simulation, another band is also appeared (but not strong) at
frequency 1 GHz, but strongly occurred at 2 GHz for the measurement. The measured and simulated gain of the
antenna are 8 dBi and 7 dBi, respectively. It can be seen that the patterns are very much agreement between
simulation and measurement as shown in Fig. 3. Whilst Fig. 4 shows the prototype of the antenna.

Fig. 2. Comparison for S11 result

Fig. 3. (a) E-plane (x-y plane); (b) H-plane (x-z plane)

26 Amirah Filzah Mat Zaid et al. / Procedia Computer Science 86 (2016) 23 – 26

Fig. 4. Photograph of fabricated antenna

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Education Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for
supporting this work under FRGS grant (4F283) and RUG grants (11H59 and 03G33).

References

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