2358 | BHATTACHARYA
achieve polarization, a slit and a stub which is orthogonal to
each other is placed on the ground plane. In this article,
antenna 1 and antenna 2 have same front end but the ground
layer of the antenna 2 is shaped in a parabolic manner to tilt
the radiation pattern towards a particular direction by 508.
The 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth is increased to 21.42%
(4.375.42 GHz) from 8.61% (4.0164.38 GHz). The pro-
posed antenna has good impedance bandwidth, axial ratio
bandwidth, and radiation performances which can be applied
in satellite and mobile applications.
R EF ERE NC ES
[1] Rezaeieh SA. Dual band dual sense circularly polarised monop-
ole antenna for GPS and WLAN applications. Electron Lett.
2011;47(22):12121214.
[2] Hoang TV, Le TT, Li QY, Park HC. Quad-band circularly
polarized antenna for 2.4/5.3/5.8-GHz WLAN and 3.5-GHz
WiMAX applications. IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett.
2016;15:10321035.
[3] Khalily M, Rahim MKA, Kamarudin MR, Shaneshin M,
Danesh S. Ultra wideband printed monopole antenna with
dual-band circular polarization. In: Proceedings of the 5th
European Conference on Antennas and Propagation
(EUCAP);. 2011.
[4] Hsu S-H, Chang K. A novel reconfigurable microstrip antenna
with switchable circular polarization. IEEE Antennas Wireless
Propag Lett. 2007;6:160162.
[5] Ray KP, Anob PV, Kapur R, Kumar G. Broadband planar rec-
tangular monopole antennas. Microwave OptTechnol Lett. 2001;
28(1):5559.
[6] Singh R, Kumar G. Broadband Planar Monopole Antennas.
M. Tech Credit Seminar Report, Electronic Systems Group, EE
Department, IIT Bombay; 2003.
[7] Wang CJ, Hisao KL. CPW-fed monopole antenna for multiple
system integration. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2014;62(2):
10071011.
[8] Bao XL, Ammann MJ, McEvoy P. Microstrip-fed wideband cir-
cularly polarized printed antenna. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag.
2010;58(10):31503156.
[9] Ghobadi A, Dehmollaian M. A printed circularly polarized Y-
shaped monopole antenna. IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett.
2012;11:2225.
[10] Wu JW, Ke JY, Jou CF, Wang CJ. A microstrip-fed broadband
circularly polarized monopole antenna. IET Microwave Antennas
Propag. 2010;4(4):518525.
[11] Zhang L, Jiao YC, Ding Y, Chen B, Weng ZB. Microstrip-fed
wideband circularly polarized printed antenna. IEEE Trans
Antennas Propag. 2013;61(9):48244828.
[12] Abbosh AM, Bialkowski ME. Design of ultra wideband planar
monopole antennas of circular and elliptical shape. IEEE Trans
Antennas Propag. 2008;56(1):1723.
[13] Thomas KG, Sreenivasan M. Printed elliptical monopole with
shaped ground plane for pattern stability. Electron Lett. 2009;45
(9):445446.
ET AL.
How to cite this article: Rekha S, Nesasudha M.
Design of circularly polarized planar monopole antenna
with improved axial ratio bandwidth. Microw Opt
Technol Lett. 2017;59:23532358. https://doi.org/10.
1002/mop.30733
Received: 12 February 2017
DOI: 10.1002/mop.30730
Compact slotted UWB
monopole antenna with
tuneable band-notch
characteristics
Ankan Bhattacharya1 |
Bappadittya Roy1 |
Santosh K. Chowdhury2 |
Anup K. Bhattacharjee1
1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National
Institute of Technology, M. G. Road, Durgapur 713209, India
2
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Jadavpur
University, R. S. C. Mallick Road, Kolkata 700032, India
Correspondence
Ankan Bhattacharya, Department of Electronics and Communication
Engineering, National Institute of Technology, M. G. Road, Durgapur
713209, India.
Email: bhattacharya.ankan1987@gmail.com
Abstract
In this article, a compact slotted ultra-wideband (UWB)
monopole antenna with tuneable band-notch characteris-
tics for wireless local area network has been investigated.
The proposed antenna includes a defected ground structure
and a hexagonal radiating element. The notched frequency
has been obtained by etching an inverted U-shaped slot
from the surface of the hexagonal radiator and by fine tun-
ing of the slot dimensions. Analysis of simulated and
measured results reveal that an impedance bandwidth of
2.811.1 GHz has been obtained with band-notch charac-
teristics centered at 5.2 GHz. The notch-band frequency
can be tuned to 5.5 GHz by appropriate choice of slot
dimensions. Satisfactory results have been obtained on fre-
quency and time-domain analysis of the proposed
structure. Simulated and measured results show a good
agreement. Compactness, simplicity in design, and
BHATTACHARYA ET AL.
frequency tuning ability for notch-bands justify the applic-
ability of the proposed antenna in UWB communication
systems.
KEYWORDS
band-notch characteristics, defected ground structure, slotted geometry,
tuneable frequency, UWB communication
1 | INTRODUCTION
Ultra-wideband (UWB) technology came into picture after
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), US offi-
cially announced its applicability in the frequency range of
3.110.6 GHz for radio frequency applications (unlicensed)
for indoor and for outdoor systems in February 2002. Since
then, UWB technology has become a topic of high interest
in academic, research, and in telecommunication industries.
Till now, researchers in antenna from all over the world have
proposed several UWB antennas of various shapes and sizes,
which have gained huge popularity in the communication
industries and research and development sectors. Basically,
most of these antennas use a monopole configuration with
square, rectangular, circular, elliptical, pentagonal, or
hexagonal-shaped radiating elements. Most of these configu-
rations are not planar, that is, the radiating elements are per-
pendicular to the ground plane. For this reason, these
antennas cannot be integrated with ease in printed circuit
boards (PCBs). Though UWB technology has been formal-
ized to be operated in the frequency range of 3.110.6 GHz,
there are several narrow-band operating systems such as the
IEEE 802.11a wireless local area network (WLAN) operat-
ing in the 5.155.825 GHz frequency range. So, there arises
a potential risk factor of interference of these bands with the
UWB system. These interference effects can be minimized
by the application of band-reject spatial filters. But use of
these spatial filters increases the complexity and overall cost
of the system. An UWB antenna featuring band-notched
behavior is therefore a better choice to minimize the interfer-
ence effect from the narrow band WLAN systems. Various
techniques of band-notched antenna design have been
reported in recent literatures. An UWB rectangular aperture
antenna having the dimensions 35 3 35 mm2 has been
reported by Lin et al.1 The notch band lies in the frequency
domain of 5.06.0 GHz. An UWB antenna using ground-
stub having a dimension 30.0 3 39.0 mm2 with band-notch
feature in 5.155.825 GHz has been proposed by Weng
et al.2 Lin et al. proposed a monopole antenna with band-
notch behavior at 5.126.08 GHz in Ref. [3]. The parametric
dimension of the proposed antenna is 30 3 35 mm2. A
printed antenna using Inverted L-Slit and having a dimension
| 2359
T A BL E 1 Comparison table of various UWB band-notched
antennas
Ref. Dimension Notched band
[1] 35 3 35 mm2 5.006.00 GHZ
[2] 30 3 39 mm2 5.155.83 GHZ
[3] 30 3 35 mm2 5.126.08 GHZ
[4] 30 3 36 mm2 4.856.04 GHZ
2
[5] 35 3 30 mm Centered at 5.0 GHZ
Proposed 18 3 35 mm2 Centered at 5.2/5.5 GHZ
of 30 3 36 mm2 has been proposed by Yoon et al.4 The
notch-band lies in the frequency domain of 4.856.04 GHz.
A monopole antenna with open loop resonator having a
dimension of 35 3 30 mm2 and band-notch frequency at
5.0 GHz has been proposed by Wu et al.5 Other antenna
types with band-notch functions have been presented in
Refs. [612]; but in each case, there exists an issue regarding
compactness and frequency tuning ability of the antenna. A
comparison table of recently reported UWB antennas with
band-notch characteristics has been presented in Table 1.
In this work, a compact slotted UWB monopole antenna
with tuneable band-notch characteristics for WLAN has been
investigated. The proposed antenna includes a defected
ground structure (DGS) and a hexagonal radiating element.
The notched frequency has been obtained by etching an
inverted U-shaped slot from the surface of the hexagonal
radiator and by fine tuning of the slot dimensions. An imped-
ance bandwidth of 2.811.1 GHz has been obtained with
band-notch frequency centered at 5.2/5.5 GHz, to mitigate
the interference effect from the 5.155.825 GHz WLAN net-
work. Compared to other existing antennas with band-notch
characteristics as available in literature, the proposed antenna
is simpler in design and configuration, with more compact
dimensions along with an additional frequency tuneable
feature.
2 | ANTENNA DESIGN AND
ANALYSIS
Three antenna structures, Antenna 1 (Figure 1), Antenna 2
(Figure 4), and Antenna 3 (Figure 5), have been designed
and analyzed here. The VSWR characteristics of the anten-
nas have been displayed in Figure 3. Antenna 1 shows an
impedance bandwidth of 2.811.1 GHz. Antenna 2 shows an
impedance bandwidth of 2.810.6 GHz with a frequency
band-notch centered at 5.2 GHz. Antenna 3 has been
designed by slight modification of the dimensions of
Antenna 2 (the parameters governing the band-notch
2360 | BHATTACHARYA ET AL.

FIGURE 2 Return loss plot of Antenna 1, 2, and 3

FIGURE 1 Hexagonal monopole antenna (Antenna 1). [Color figure dimension of the antenna is W 3 L 5 18 3 35 mm2.
can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] Detailed parameter dimensions are provided in Table 2. The
thickness of the proposed structure is 1.5 mm. Arlon material
frequency as discussed in later section), having an impedance having a relative dielectric constant, Er of 2.5 and loss
bandwidth of 2.810.6 GHz with a frequency band-notch tangent, tan d of 0.0013 has been used as the substrate
centered at 5.5 GHz. Figure 1 shows the geometry of an material. The feed line has been designed to match the 50 X
UWB hexagonal monopole antenna, which has been consid- characteristic impedance using Equations (1) and (2).
ered as a reference antenna (Antenna 1). The overall Er 11 Er 21 1
Eeff 5 1 p (1)
2 2 1 112 h=w
T A BL E 2 Parameter dimensions in millimeters (Antenna 1, 2, and 120 p
3) Zo 5 p w
 (2)
Eeff h 11:3910:67 ln wh 11:44
Parameters Basic dimension where Zo is the characteristic impedance and Eeff is the
W 18.00 effective dielectric constant of the substrate.
As observed from Figure 2, Antenna 1 shows an ultra-
L 35.00
wide-frequency band extending from 2.8 to 11.1 GHz. The
Gw 18.00 VSWR vs frequency response of Antenna 1 has been shown
Gl 10.75

Sw 02.00

Sl 06.75

Fw 01.50

Fl 13.00

S1 10.00

S2 07.50

S3 03.00

S4 09.50

S03 04.00

S04 08.50

S5 02.00
FIGURE 3 VSWR plots of Antenna 1, 2, and 3
BHATTACHARYA ET AL.
F I G U R E 4 Slotted hexagonal monopole antenna (Antenna 2).
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
in Figure 3. The VSWR obtained for Antenna 1 is 2 (a
practically accepted value) throughout the entire bandwidth
of operation. The objective of our work is to introduce a fre-
quency band-notch in the 5.155.825 GHz WLAN operating
region. Therefore, to incorporate the band-notch feature, an
inverted U-shaped slot has been etched from the surface of
the hexagonal radiating element (Figure 4). The dimension
of the slot can be approximately calculated using the follow-
ing equation,
kg
Si 5s3 1s4 173w551 (3)
2 the antenna and to investigate the effect of certain geometri-
where Si is the inner perimeter of the U-shaped slot, S3 and
S4 are the outer dimensions of the slot, w is the slot width,
and kg is the guided wavelength, which can be expressed as,
F I G U R E 5 Modified slotted hexagonal monopole antenna (Antenna
3). [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
| 2361
FIGURE 6 Effect of S3 and S4 on VSWR
c
kg 5 (4)
fnotch Eeff
where c is the frequency of light in vacuum, fnotch is the
notch-band frequency, and Eeff is the effective permittivity of
the material. The inner perimeter of the slot Si computed is
approximately equal to 5 1 kg/2.
3 | PARAMETRIC STUDIES AND
DISCUSSION
Now, to understand the frequency response characteristics of
cal parameters on the band-notch feature, a parametric study
has been performed. As the U-shaped slot is mainly responsi-
ble for the band-notch feature, the effect of the slot parame-
ters S3 and S4 on the band-notch behavior of the antenna and
on the impedance bandwidth have been investigated. The
combined effect of slots S3 and S4 on VSWR has been dis-
played in Figure 6. With S3 5 03.00 mm and S4 5 09.50 mm
(Antenna 2), the monopole shows a sharp band-notch cen-
tered at 5.2 GHz. The notch-band gradually shifts from 5.2
to 5.6 GHz as the dimension of S3 is increased from 02.50 to
04.50 mm and S4 is decreased from 10.00 to 8.00 mm. With
S3 fixed at 04.00 mm and S4 fixed at 08.50 mm (Antenna 3),
the antenna shows a band-notch, which is centered at
5.5 GHz.
The parametric studies confirmed that the frequency
band-notch for WLAN can be generated by the insertion of a
U-shaped slot in the main radiating element of the antenna.
Also it has been affirmed that the impedance bandwidth and
the center frequency of the band-notch can be adjusted by
fine tuning of the dimensions of the U-shaped slot. It has
also been established that by altering the dimensions of the
slot, the VSWR of the antenna in the UWB range remains
2362 | BHATTACHARYA ET AL.

FIGURE 7 Surface current distribution pattern of (A) Antenna 1, (B) Antenna 2, and (C) Antenna 3. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlineli-
brary.com]

FIGURE 8 Fabricated prototype of (A) Antenna 1, (B) Antenna 2, and (C) Antenna 3. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

F I G U R E 9 VSWR plot of Antenna 1 (measured vs simulated). FIGURE 10 VSWR plot of Antenna 2 (measured vs simulated).
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
BHATTACHARYA ET AL.
FIGURE 11 VSWR plot of Antenna 3 (measured vs simulated).
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
almost unchanged except at the notched frequency band(s).
To further understand the technique of band-notch, the sur-
face current distribution of the slotted monopole antenna has
been studied. The antenna surface current distribution has
been displayed in Figure 7. It has been observed that at the
proposed band-notch frequency point(s), the surface current
is mainly concentrated around the U-shaped slot and sparsely
FIGURE 12 Radiation pattern of Antenna 1, 2, and 3: (a) 2 GHz, (b) 4 GHz, (c) 8 GHz, and (d) 10 GHz
| 2363
FIGURE 13 Antenna gain vs frequency plot (measured)
distributed elsewhere. As observed from the figure, the sur-
face current at the bottom of the slot, is directed in opposite
direction. These oppositely directed surface currents cancel
out the radiating fields, creating notches in the frequency
band due to high attenuation at the concerned frequency
point(s).
The prototypes of Antenna 1, Antenna 2, and Antenna 3
have been fabricated and the antenna responses have been
measured using Anritsu VNA Master and Spectrum
2364 | BHATTACHARYA
FIGURE 14 Measured group delay plot of Antenna 1, 2, and 3
Analyzer. The measured results have been compared with
the simulated values. Figures 8(AC) shows the fabricated
prototype of Antenna 1, Antenna 2, and Antenna 3, respec-
tively. As observed from the figure, the dimension of the fab-
ricated structures is comparable to that of a coin of one
rupee. Figures 911 show the comparison plots of simulated/
measured VSWR for Antenna 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The
results bear a good agreement. Slight deviation between the
results may be due to the soldering effect and fabrication
errors.
The radiation patterns of Antenna 1, Antenna 2, and
Antenna 3 have been shown in Figure 12. As observed from
the figure, the E-plane and H-plane radiation patterns are
somewhat omnidirectional in nature with well isolation
between the co- and cross-polarized components. The radia-
tion pattern is somewhat similar for Antenna 2 and Antenna
3. Figure 13 shows the measured gain versus frequency char-
acteristics of Antenna 1, 2, and 3. As observed from the fig-
ure, maximum gain has been achieved in the lower and
higher operating bands, which is around 3.0 dBi, whereas
the gain value has been abruptly lowered in the notched
bands centered at 5.2 and 5.5 GHz.
Instead of continuous wave transmission, narrow pulses
are usually transmitted in the UWB communication systems.
Hence analyzing the time domain behavior of the antenna,
that is, the group delay is extremely crucial. Group delay can
be expressed as,
Du
Group Delay52
Dx
where Du and Dx are the phase and frequency deviations of
the signal, respectively. The variation in group delay is
mainly responsible for the distortion of signal. The group
delay remains almost constant with some discrete variations
ET AL.
1 ns when the antennas are placed at a distance of
R 5 10 cm for Antenna 1 (Figure 14). As observed from the
figure, the group delay is within acceptable limits except at
the notched bands throughout the entire operation bandwidth
for Antenna 2 and Antenna 3. Ripples are present in the sig-
nal due to the effect of noise.
4 | CONCLUSION
A compact slotted UWB antenna with tuneable band-notch
characteristics for WLAN (5.155.825 GHz) has been investi-
gated in this article. The overall dimension of the structure is
18 3 35 mm2. A U-shaped slot has been etched from the sur-
face of the radiating element to realize the band-notch charac-
teristics. The center frequency of the band-notch has been kept
at 5.2 GHz (Antenna 2). It can also be tuned to 5.5 GHz
(Antenna 3), according to requirement, by appropriate tuning
of the slot dimensions. On observation of the measured results,
it can be concluded that the UWB characteristic has been
maintained throughout, except at the notched frequency bands
centered at 5.2/5.5 GHz. Compared to other existing UWB
antennas with band-notch characteristics as available in litera-
ture, the proposed antenna is simple in design and configura-
tion, along with frequency tuneable properties. Moreover, due
to symmetry in radiation pattern, satisfactory gain limits and
smooth time domain behavior except at the frequency band
notches, the proposed antenna deserves to be included in the
modern UWB communication system.
R EFE RE NC ES
[1] Federal Communication Commission (FCC); Revision of part 15
of the commissions rules regarding ultra-wideband transmission
systems; First report and order, ET Docket 98153, FCC 0248,
adopted: Feb. 2002, released in April 2002.
[2] Lin YC, Hung KJ. Compact ultra wideband rectangular aperture
antenna and band-notched designs. IEEE Trans Antennas
Propag. 2006;54(11):30753081. Vol. No.
[3] Weng YF, Cheung SW, Yuk TI. Compact ultra-wideband anten-
nas with single band-notched characteristics using simple ground
stubs. Microwave Opt Technol Lett. 2011;53(3):523529. Vol.
No.
[4] Liu HW, Ku CH, Wang TS, Yang CF. Compact monopole
antenna with band-notched characteristic for UWB applications.
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag Lett. 2010;9:397400. Vol.
[5] Yoon C, Lee WJ, Kim WS, Lee HC, Park HD. Compact band-
notched ultra-wideband printed antenna using inverted L-slit.
Microwave Opt Technol Lett. 2012;54(1):143144. Vol. No.
(5) [6] Wu SJ, Kang CH, Chen KH, Tarng JH. Study of an ultra wide-
band monopole antenna with a band-notched open-looped reso-
nator. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2010;58(6):18901897.
Vol. No.
[7] Bhattacharya A. An Analytical Approach to Study the Behavior
of Defected Monopole Structures. Springer; 2014. Emerging
AL-ADHAMI AND ERELEBI
Trends in Computing and Communication, Lecture Notes in
Electrical Engineering; vol 298.
[8] Tang MC, Wang H, Deng T, Ziolkowski RW. Compact planar
ultrawideband antennas with continuously tunable, independent
band-notched filters. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2016;64(8):
32923301. no. Aug.
[9] Roy B, Bhattacharya A, Chowdhury SK, Bhattacharjee AK.
Wideband snowflake slot antenna using koch iteration technique
for wireless and C-band applications. AEU Int J Electron Com-
mun Elsevier. 2016.
[10] Chen HD. Broadband CPW-Fed square slot antennas with a
widened tuning stub. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag. 2003;51(4):
19821986.
[11] Horestani A, Shaterian K, Naqui Z, Martn JF, Fumeaux C.
Reconfigurable and tunable S-shaped split-ring resonators and
application in band-notched UWB antennas. IEEE Trans Anten-
nas Propag. 2016;64(9):37663776. in no. Sept.
[12] Roy B, Chakraborty U, Chowdhury SK, Bhattacharjee AK.
Design of U-shaped antenna using different substrate with
enhanced bandwidth for WLAN/WiMAX applications. Micro-
wave Opt Technol Lett. 2016;58(4):959963.
How to cite this article: Bhattacharya A, Roy B,
Chowdhury SK, Bhattacharjee AK. Compact slotted
UWB monopole antenna with tuneable band-notch char-
acteristics. Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2017;59:2358
2365. https://doi.org/10.1002/mop.30730
Received: 15 February 2017
DOI: 10.1002/mop.30747
Plasmonic metamaterial dipole
antenna array circuitry based
on flexible solar cell panel for
self-powered wireless systems
Yasir Al-Adhami | Ergun Erelebi
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of
Gaziantep, Gaziantep, Turkey
Correspondence
Yasir Al-Adhami, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
University of Gaziantep, Gaziantep, Turkey.
Email: yasser.essam18@yahoo.com
Abstract
A broadband plasmonic metamaterial dipole antenna array
(PMDAA) circuitry for self-powered wireless systems is
presented. The PMDAA circuitry is integrated on the
| 2365
surface of a flexible photovoltaic solar-panel for solar
energy harvesting. The proposed antenna performs an
ultra-wide band that my suite different wireless technolo-
gies. Nevertheless, the proposed antenna shows a very low
shadowing area that has a negligible effect on the solar
panel efficiency. A numerical simulation based on a finite
integral technique of CST MWS formulations is conducted
to study the antenna performance. HFSS software package
is invoked in this study to validate the PMDAA circuitry
performance before conducting the experimental study. It
is found that the antenna circuitry covers the frequency
range from 0.5 to 16.7 GHz. The antenna gain is found to
vary from 3 dB up to 19 dB. Finally, the antenna is fabri-
cated and measured experientially in anechoic chamber
environments that led to excellent matching with the simu-
lated results.
KEYWORDS
energy harvesting, plasmonic antenna, solar cell, ultra-wide band
1 | INTRODUCTION
Since most integrated wireless systems rely on batteries that
suffer from different drawbacks such as charging losses, low
charge and discharge cycle life, overheat failure, substantial
maintenance costs, and intelligent power management sys-
tems, an urgent need is increased to invoke the green energy
techniques as alternatives.1
Recently, wireless systems integrated to solar panels
have been widely used to carry out the power generation
intelligently in storing devices.2 Photovoltaic panels were
used to power light wireless sensor nodes for long usage
conductions using fast super charging capacitors.3 This is
realized through different attempts to couple the antenna
structures with solar panels in one integrated system by the
following approaches.4-8 First, the solar cell was posited
directly on top of the radiating element or ground plane with
suitable space around the antenna for radiation leakage as
discussed by Danesh and Long.4 Second, the solar cell was
introduced to provide an auxiliary support to a parabolic
reflector antenna.5 Next, the solar cell was conducted as a
radiating patch element.6 Then, the solar cell was used as a
ground plane for a patch antenna.7 Finally, fully solar inte-
grated antennas were generated whereby the solar cell forms
the radiating element without the need for additional metallic
structure.8
Most researchers integrated the solar panels to the
antenna structures in an effort to miniaturize the wireless sys-
tem size.9 For example, a 920 MHz coplanar waveguide
inverted-F antenna (IFA) with a-Si solar cells was introduced