Compact CPW-fed ground defected In this Letter we present the design of a compact CPW-fed ground

H-shaped slot antenna with harmonic defected antenna with harmonic suppression, suitable for 2.4 GHz
WLAN applications. The radiation behaviour of the antenna is
suppression and stable radiation brought about by creating discontinuities in the CPW transmission
characteristics line, by inserting symmetrical slots in the ground plane. The advantage
of this technique is that the design offers unmatched impedances corre-
R. Sujith, S. Mridula, P. Binu, D. Laila, R. Dinesh and sponding to the higher harmonics, thereby suppressing these modes.
P. Mohanan
Antenna geometry: A CPW-fed open-ended transmission line printed
A compact uniplanar antenna for 2.4 GHz WLAN applications is
on a substrate of dielectric constant 1r ¼ 4.4 and thickness h ¼
presented. This compact co-planar waveguide (CPW)-fed antenna
has an advantage of excellent higher harmonic suppression. This
1.6 mm is shown in Fig. 1a. The width (w) and gap (g) of the co-
characteristic is brought about by suitably inserting symmetrical slots planar waveguide (CPW) feed are derived using standard design
in the ground plane of an open-ended CPW-fed transmission line. equations for 50V impedance [5]. This structure does not radiate and
The proposed antenna with an H-shaped slot exhibits the characteristics behaves as an open-ended CPW-fed transmission line. This line can
of a centre-fed slot dipole together with excellent higher-harmonic sup- be transformed into a radiating structure by modifying as in Fig. 1b
pression. The antenna designed on a substrate of dielectric constant 4.4 and its side view is shown in Fig. 1c. T-shaped slots of width Ws are
and height 1.6 mm offers moderate gain and good radiation character- etched symmetrically on both the ground planes (L2 × L1 ¼ 0.13ld ×
istics. The design equations for the proposed antenna are validated in 0.17ld) of the CPW fed transmission line as shown in Fig. 1b, where
different frequency bands. Details of the simulated and experimental
ld is the wavelength in the substrate at the resonant frequency. The pro-
characteristics of the antenna are presented and discussed.
posed antenna has overall dimensions of 0.3ld × 0.17ld , which is much
smaller than that reported earlier [1 – 4]. From exhaustive studies, the
Introduction: The trend of miniaturisation has forced designers to length of the strip is chosen for required impedance bandwidth. The
miniaturise each and every component of a communication device. photograph of the developed antenna is shown in Fig. 2. It is found
The antenna therefore cannot remain as a standalone device. Present- that this structure acts as an efficient antenna, as demonstrated in the fol-
day compact antenna designers are facing a serious problem of lowing Section.
higher-harmonic generation. It is found that the electromagnetic interfer-
ence caused by higher-order harmonics degrades system performance.
The addition of a bandstop filter between the active device and the
antenna can overcome this problem, but this technique increases the
overall size, insertion loss and fabrication cost. The harmonic suppressed
antennas (HSA) is an alternative by effectively integrating the photonic
bandgap (PBG), defected ground structure (DGS) [1] and different slots
[2] on the ground plane. Since miniaturisation is inevitable, CPW-fed
antennas are an ideal choice and can be easily integrated with monolithic
microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) devices.

L2 L2

Fig. 2 Photograph of proposed antenna working at 2.4 GHz

L1 ¼ 15 mm, L2 ¼ 11.25 mm, L3 ¼ 7.5 mm, L4 ¼ 10.5 mm L5 ¼ 6.25 mm,
L1 L1 L6 ¼ 4.5 mm, Ls ¼ 9.375 mm, W ¼ 3 mm, Ws ¼ 1.5 mm, g ¼ 0.35 mm, h ¼
1.6 mm, 1r ¼ 4.4

Results and discussion: The simulated (Ansoft HFSS) and measured

y (HP 8510C vector network analyser) return loss characteristics of the
z x
a proposed antenna (antenna1) resonating at 2.4 GHz are shown in
L2 L2 Fig. 3. The antenna exhibits a 2:1 VSWR bandwidth from 2.29–
2.49 GHz covering the 2.4 GHz WLAN band.
W
L6 L6

L1 L4 L4 L1
0
L3 Ls L3
L6 L6
L5
g –10
return loss, dB

Ws Ws

–20
b
simulation 1.8 GHz
–30 simulation 2.4 GHz
h r
experiment 1.8 GHz
c experiment 2.4 GHz
–40 without slot
L-slot
Fig. 1 Open-ended CPW-fed transmission line; geometry of proposed
antenna, top view; side view –50
2 4 6 8 10
a Open-ended CPW-fed transmission line
b Geometry of proposed antenna top view frequency, GHz
c Side view
Fig. 3 Return loss characteristics of antenna at 1.8 and 2.4 GHz

CPW-fed antennas with capacitive [3] and inductive [4] slots for
ultra-wideband (UWB) applications have been presented earlier. The
dimensions of the capacitive H-shaped slot in [3] determine the resonant
frequency while the inductive slot antenna [4] uses an inductor with
optimum value at one end of the inductive slot to achieve compactness
and broadband operations. Since the electric field distribution in the slot
significantly affects the input impedance and radiation pattern, the
resonant modes can be easily selected by varying the slot parameters.
A normal open-ended CPW-fed transmission line will not radiate
electromagnetic energy. However, insertion of symmetrical slots (L3)
on the ground plane excites a resonance with stable radiation character-
istics. Meandering these slots (L-shaped slots – L3 + L6) excites higher
harmonics, in addition to lowering the first mode, resulting in a compact
antenna (Fig. 3). The first mode is matched (59V 2 j3V) while the
second mode is suppressed owing to high capacitive reactance
(55V 2 j240V), but the third mode is excited (79V + j56V). The

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 10th June 2010 Vol. 46 No. 12

third harmonic is suppressed by making a T-slot (proposed antenna) to
provide very low impedance (8V + j3V). The slots (L6) will act as two
parallel LCR circuits with equal inductance (L) and capacitance (C) in
each slot. Hence the effective resistance decreases drastically and the res-
onance is suppressed.
The variation of input impedance with signal strip (Ls) is shown in
Fig. 4. The reactive part of the impedance varies cyclically from
highly capacitive to less capacitive as Ls increases. For a given slot,
the impedance is highly capacitive for a small signal strip length. By
increasing the strip length, the inductance increases and the imaginary
part of the impedance reaches zero for an optimised length. So, it is
very interesting to note that the capacitance can be easily tuned by trim-
ming the slot dimension. Similarly, the inductance and real part of the
impedance can be adjusted by trimming the strip length (Ls). At the opti-
mised length, the impedance locus is around 50 V, with affordable reac-
tance at the resonant frequency. For all other frequencies, the structure
acts as an open-ended CPW-fed transmission line. The return loss
characteristics of another antenna (antenna2) operating in the 1.8 GHz
band, fabricated and tested to validate the design criterion, is shown
in Fig. 3. It is also noted that the higher harmonics in both antennas
are absent. The antenna is polarised along the y-direction. The
H-shaped slot can be considered as a centre-fed slot dipole with each
arm of length ld/4. Top loading the dipole arm (L3) with L4 will
increase the effective electrical length as in top loading a monopole.
The measured radiation pattern of antenna1 at resonant frequency and
higher harmonics is shown in Figs 5a and 5b. The pattern is omnidirec-
tional in the H-plane and bidirectional in the E-plane as in a centre-fed
slot antenna. Without any additional filters and external circuits the
antenna successfully suppresses up to third harmonics. The measured
peak gain in the 2.4 GHz band is about 1 dBi with small gain variation
across the band.
100
110
120
130 0.50
Conclusion: A simple printed CPW-fed, H-shaped slot antenna is pre-
sented. The antenna exhibits stable radiation characteristics without
higher-order harmonics. The proposed antenna is easy to fabricate and
is suitable for 2.4 GHz WLAN application and is scalable.
Acknowledgment: The authors acknowledge the Department of Science
and Technology (DST), Government of India for financial assistance.
# The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2010
27 January 2010
doi: 10.1049/el.2010.0236
R. Sujith, D. Laila, R. Dinesh and P. Mohanan (Centre for Research in
Electromagnetics and Antennas, Department of Electronics, Cochin
University of Science and Technology, Cochin 682022, India)
E-mail: drmohan@gmail.com
S. Mridula and P. Binu (Division of Electronics, School of Engineering,
CUSAT, Cochin-682022, India)
References
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photonic bandgap and defected ground structure for a microstrip patch
antenna’, IEEE Microw. Wirel. Compon. Lett., 2005, 15, (2), pp. 55– 56
2 Lin, X.-C., and Wang, L.-T.: ‘A broadband CPW-fed loop slot antenna
with harmonic control’, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag Lett., 2003, 2,
pp. 323– 325
3 Lin, Y-F., Liao, P-C., Cheng, P-S., Chen, H-M., Song, C.T.P., and Hall,
P.S.: ‘CPW-fed capacitive H-shaped narrow slot antenna’, Electron Lett.,
2005, 41, (17), pp. 940 –942
4 Yu, C.-C., and Lin, X.-C.: ‘A wideband single chip inductor-loaded
CPW-fed inductive slot antenna’, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
2008, 56, (5), pp. 1498–1501
90 80 5 Garg, R., Bhartia, P., Bahl, A., and Ittipibon, A.: ‘Microstrip antenna
70
1.00
60 design handbook’ (Artech House, 2001)
2.00 50

140 40

150 Ls = 0.091 30
0

160 0.20 5.00 20

170 Ls = 0.107 0 10

180 0.20 0.50 1.00 2.00 5.00 0

0.00

–170 –10
Ls = 0.075 0
–160 –0.20 –5.00 –20

–150 –30
Ls = 0.059 0
–140 –40
–0.50 –2.00
–130 –50
Ls = 0.043 0
–120 –60
–1.00
–110 –70
–100 –90 –80

Fig. 4 Input impedance on Smith chart for various strip length Ls

90 90
120 60 120 60

150 30 150 30

180 0 180 0
–40 –35 –30 –25 –20 –15 –10 –5 0 –40 –35 –30 –25 –20 –15 –10 –5 0

210 330 210 330

240 300 240 300

270 270

a fundamental mode
b
2nd harmonics
3nd harmonics
4th harmonics

Fig. 5 Radiation patterns of final antenna at resonance and higher

harmonics
a E-plane
b H-plane

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 10th June 2010 Vol. 46 No. 12