The 3rd International Conference on Wireless and Telematics 2017
July 27 - 28, 2017, Palembang, Indonesia
A New Method of Bandwidth Widening for Square
Patch Antenna Fed by Proximity Feeding Line
Citra Zaskia Pratiwi and Achmad Munir†
Radio Telecommunication and Microwave Laboratory
School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia
† munir@ieee.org
Abstract—In this paper, a design of square patch antenna
with bandwidth widening using multiple slots is proposed. The
resonant frequency of antenna is designed at the frequency of
5.3GHz for C-band application. The shape of patch antenna is
square with the dimension of 12.3mm × 12.3mm. The antenna
which has the total thickness of 1.6mm is fed by proximity feeding
line through a 50Ω SMA connector. The number of slots are 7
located diagonally over the patch and separated 1.2mm each other
which also produce circular polarization. Each slot has different
length where the center slot has the longest length. To show the
feasibility of bandwidth widening, a conventional antenna made
of square patch without slots is also investigated. FR4 epoxy
dielectric substrates with the relative permittivity of 4.3mm are
used for both antennas. The simulation result shows that the -
10dB bandwidth response of square patch antenna with multiple
slots increases up to 210% compared to the conventional one
demonstrating the feasibility of proposed method in enhancing
the characteristic of square patch antenna.
Keywords—Bandwidth widening; multiple slots; proximity feed-
ing line; square patch antenna.
I. I NTRODUCTION
It is already well-known that microstrip patch antenna is
frequently used in radar and wireless communication system
due to its inherent advantages such as low profile, low cost,
light weight and ease of fabrication [1]– [2]. Moreover, mi-
crostrip patch antenna which is also preferred as microstrip
antenna or patch antenna can produce linear or circular po-
larization [3]– [5]. In comparison with linear polarization,
the antenna with circular polarization has some benefits such
as loss reduction of multipath fading effect, enhanced gain
provision, robust in bad weather condition, and suitable for
outdoor communication system [6]– [7].
As complements of mentioned advantages above, the ma-
jor disadvantage of microstrip patch antenna is very narrow
bandwidth [8]. Recently, many methods have been proposed
for bandwidth widening both in linear and circular polariza-
tions [9]– [14]. The methods of multiple slots, fractal slot
and artificial magnetic conductor incorporated into linearly
polarized microstrip patch antenna have been implemented
experimentally to improve the bandwidth [9]– [11]. In [12],
an irregular slot has been applied to enhance the bandwidth
of circularly polarized patch antenna up to 2.28GHz at the
This work is partially supported by the postgraduate team research program
(Penelitian Tim Pasca Sarjana) FY2017 from the Ministry of Research,
Technology and Higher Education, the Republic of Indonesia.
978-1-5090-6419-9/17/$31.00 ⃝2017
c IEEE
-- 98 --
center frequency of 2.25GHz. Meanwhile, a circularly polar-
ized microstrip patch antenna with gap-coupled method has
been proposed for gain and bandwidth enhancement [13].
Circularly polarized annular ring patch antenna has achieved
the bandwidth of 38% compared to the conventional circular
patch of 29.7% [14].
In this paper, a simple method by using multiple slots over
the patch of antenna is proposed to achieve a wide bandwidth.
The method is developed from the previous work which has
been successfully demonstrated to enhance the bandwidth of
microstrip rectangular patch antenna up to 70.8% [9]. The
antenna which is designed on FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate
is intended to resonate at the frequency of 5.3GHz for C-band
application. Meanwhile, the feeding technique for exciting
the antenna uses proximity coupled feed which is connected
with a 50Ω SMA connector. As comparison, the design of
conventional antenna made of square patch without slots is also
investigated. Some overview of antenna design and discussion
of characterization results will be presented.
II. D ESIGN OF S QUARE PATCH A NTENNA
A. Microstrip Patch Antenna
Basically, a microstrip patch antenna consists of a very
thin metallic patch (𝑡 ≪ 𝜆0 ) placed on a small fraction
of wavelength (ℎ ≪ 𝜆0 ) above a groundplane, usually
0.003𝜆0 ≤ ℎ ≤ 0.05𝜆0 . The position of patch and groundplane
is separated by a dielectric sheet which is usually referred
as the dielectric substrate. Rectangular, dipole (strip), and
circular are the most common shape of microstrip patch. A
numerous applications of micorstrip patch antenna can be
easily found in radar and wireless communication due to its
advantages including ease of fabrication and having attractive
characteristic as well as low cross-polarization [1]–[2].
Theoretically, the effective length of patch antenna (𝐿)
which determines the resonant frequency of microstrip patch
antenna can be calculated using (1) [8],
1
𝐿= √ √ − 2Δ𝐿 (1)
2𝑓𝑟 𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 𝜇0 𝜖0
where 𝑓𝑟 , 𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 , 𝜇0 , 𝜖0 , Δ𝐿 are resonant frequency (Hz),
effective permittivity of dielectric substrate, permittivity of
vacuum (F/m), permeability of vacuum (H/m), and extended
incremental length (m), respectively. The effective permittivity
of dielectric substrate (𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 ) is given by (2) [8],
 5.3GHz for C-band application. Therefore, based on (1)–(3) the
𝜖𝑟 + 1 𝜖𝑟 − 1 1
𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 = + √ (2) initial patch dimension can be determined theoretically. After
2 2 1 + 12 ℎ conducting some parametric studies by involving multiple slots
𝑊
over the patch, the antenna has patch dimension of 12.3mm
× 12.3mm. Since the technique of proximity feeding line is
where 𝜖𝑟 , ℎ, and 𝑤 denote relative permittivity of dielectric applied for antenna excitation, hence the proposed square patch
substrate, thickness of dielectric substrate (m), and width of antenna with multiple slots is constructed using two layers
strip (m), respectively. Furthermore, the extended incremental of FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate which is yielding the total
length of patch antenna (Δ𝐿) is expressed in (3) [8]. thickness of 1.6mm.
[( )( )]
The slots which take the number of 7 due to the available
𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 + 0.3 𝑊 ℎ + 0.264
Δ𝐿 = 0.412ℎ ( )( ) (3) space are located diagonally over the patch to produce circu-
𝜖𝑒𝑓𝑓 − 0.258 𝑊 ℎ + 0.8 larly polarized antenna. Each slot is separated 1.2mm from the
adjacent one and has different length where the longest one is
positioned in the center diagonal with the length of 7.6mm.
B. Circular Polarization Three different lengths of slot in the left and right sides of the
It is an important thing in the antenna design to know longest one is 5.6mm, 3.6mm, and 1.6mm, respectively. The
whether the polarization of antenna is linear or circular. square patch with multiple slots is placed on the top substrate,
Knowing the difference between polarizations is essential to while the feeding line is on the bottom substrate connected
maximize their benefit. A linearly polarized antenna radiates through a 50Ω SMA connector. The total dimension of antenna
the wave in one plane containing the direction of propagation. is 29.1mm × 29.1mm including the feeding line which has the
Whilst in a circularly polarized antenna, the plane of polariza- length of 12.9mm and the width of 2.5mm.
tion rotates in a circle whether left-handed circular polarization
Furthermore, a conventional antenna made of square patch
(LHCP) or right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) making
without slot is also investigated to show the feasibility of
a complete revolution during one period of the wave.
bandwidth widening as shown in Fig. 2. The total thickness
There are some practical ways to achieve nearly circular of conventional antenna which is also constructed using two
polarization from a square patch antenna which basically has a layers of FR4 epoxy dielectric substrate and excited by prox-
linear polarization. For a square patch as illustrated in Fig. 1, imity feeding line is the same as the square patch antenna
this can be accomplished by making a diagonally rectangular with multiple slots, i.e. 1.6mm. To resonate at the frequency
thin slot over the patch in which the dimension of slot is of 5.3GHz, by using (1)–(3) and applying some parametric
determined in (4)–(5) [8], studies, the conventional antenna has the patch dimension of
13mm × 13mm which is placed on the top substrate. While
𝐿 𝑊 to achieve impedance matching, the feeding line positioned on
𝑐= = (4) the bottom substrate has the length of 14.1mm and the width
2.72 2.72
of 1.5mm. It is noted that the parts of both antennas such
as square patch, feeding line, and groundplane are made of
𝑐 𝐿 𝑊 copper with the thickness of 0.035mm.
𝑑= = = (5)
10 27.2 27.2
where 𝑐 and 𝑑 denote length and width of rectangular thin slot,
respectively.

C. Multiple Slots
The illustration of proposed square patch antenna with
multiple slots is shown in Fig. 2 in comparison to the conven-
tional antenna made of square patch without slot. The resonant
frequency of antenna is designed around the frequency of

Fig. 1. Circular polarization for square patch antenna with rectangular thin Fig. 2. Design of square patch antenna; left is proposed square patch antenna
slots over patch; left is RHCP; right is LHCP. with multiple slots; right is conventional square patch antenna without slot.

-- 99 --
 III. S IMULATION AND D ISCUSSION
A. Parametric Studies
In order to obtain bandwidth widening for square patch
antenna, some parametric studies are performed based on
the configuration shown in Fig. 2 for square patch antenna
with multiple slots. The parametric studies are carried out
by investigating the effect of slots number, slot width, slot
length, and slot spacing. The -10dB bandwidth response is
analyzed through the reflection coefficient of the antenna for
each parametric study.
1) Effect of Slots Number
The effect of slots number is investigated by varying the
number of slots where each number of slots achieves different
bandwidth. The simulation uses 4 different numbers of slot in
which every total number of slots is odd number. The width
of each slot is 0.3mm and the spacing between slots is 0.5mm.
Fig. 3 plots the simulation results which indicate that the
number of slots significantly generates dual band frequency
responses affecting to the bandwidth widening with the widest
one achieved for the slots number of 7.
2) Effect of Slot Width
The simulation to investigate the effect of slot width uses
the slot width of 0.3mm, 0.4mm, 0.5mm, and 0.6mm. The
Fig. 3. Reflection coefficient for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots in varied slot number.
Fig. 4. Reflection coefficient for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots in varied slot width.
-- 100 --
length of slot is set to be 7.6mm with the spacing of 1mm.
The simulation results are depicted in Fig. 4 shows that the
variation of slot width also produces dual band frequency
responses. The narrower slot width gives remarkably effect
to the bandwidth achievement especially for the first-band. It
is seen that the slot width of 0.3mm has the -10dB bandwidth
response of 170MHz and 250MHz for the first and second
bands, respectively. Its reflection coefficient is also the lowest
one among other slot widths.
3) Effect of Slot Length
The effect of slot length is investigated by using the slots
number of 7 with the slot width of 0.3mm and the spacing of
0.5mm. The slot length of 6.8mm, 7.2mm, 7.6mm, and 8mm
is applied for the center slot as the longest length. Meanwhile,
the other slots are set to have the different length of 2mm from
the previous slot length. The simulation result depicted in Fig.
5 shows that the length of 7.6mm achieves the widest -10dB
bandwidth response of 590MHz. It also shows that the dual
band frequency response is achieved when the length of slot
is 8mm. The -10dB bandwidth of first band is 200MHz from
the frequency of 4.95GHz to 5.15GHz, while the second band
is 260MHz from the frequency of 5.35GHz to 5.61GHz.
4) Effect of Slot Spacing
The investigation of slot spacing effect is performed by
Fig. 5. Reflection coefficient for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots in varied slot length.
Fig. 6. Reflection coefficient for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots in varied slot spacing.
varying the separation between slots to be 0.6mm, 0.8mm,
1mm, and 1.2mm. The number of slot is 7 with the center slot
dimension of 7.6mm and the width of 0.3mm. The simulation
result plotted in Fig. 6 shows that the bandwidth of proposed
square patch antenna with multiple slots is inversely propor-
tional to the reflection coefficient. The widest -10dB bandwidth
response is obtained when the slot spacing is 1.2mm.

B. Antenna Characterization
Based on the optimum result from the parametric studies
above, the proposed square patch antenna with multiple slots
is configured by 7 slots in which the width of each slot is Fig. 9. Radiation pattern for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots; left is 𝐸–plane; right is 𝐻–plane.
0.3mm and the spacing of slot is 1.2mm. The center slot has
the length of 7.6mm with the other slots have the different
length of 2mm from the previous slot length. Fig. 7 plots the
reflection coefficient of proposed square patch antenna with
multiple slots in comparison to the the convectional square
patch antenna without slot.
From the result comparison, it shows that the center fre-
quency of proposed square patch antenna with multiple slots
is shifted to lower frequency around 10MHz compared to
the conventional antenna. The -10dB bandwidth response is
510MHz whereas the conventional antenna has the bandwidth
of 170MHz with the center frequency of 5.3GHz. It means (a) 0o (b) 90o
the -10dB bandwidth response of proposed antenna is wider

(c) 180o (d) 270o

Fig. 10. Surface current distribution for proposed square patch antenna with
multiple slots.

Fig. 7. Reflection coefficient for proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots in comparison with conventional square patch antenna without slot.

Fig. 11. Axial ratio for proposed square patch antenna with multiple slots.

340MHz than the contentional square patch antenna without

slot, hence the -10dB bandwidth response has been improved
up to 200%. This will give more beneficial for C-band appli-
Fig. 8. Gain for proposed square patch antenna with multiple slots. cation which requires wide bandwidth response.

-- 101 --
 Moreover, the characterization results of proposed square
patch antenna with multiple slots are shown in Figs. 8–11
for gain, radiation pattern, axial ratio, and surface current
distributions, respectively. The proposed antenna has the higher
gain at the higher frequency band compared to the lower
frequency band for more than 2dB. Meanwhile, Fig. 9 shows
that the proposed antenna has a wide -3dB beamwdith response
of radiation pattern at the frequency of 5.3GHz. Due to the
use of multiple slots over the patch, the proposed antenna has
circular polarization indicated by the distribution of surface
currents illustrated in Fig. 10. It is noted that the surface
current distributions were taken at the center frequency of
5.3GHz for 4 different phases. To determine the axial ratio
bandwidth for circular polarization, as plotted in Fig. 11, the
proposed antenna has axial ratio bandwidth of 530MHz from
the frequency of 5.47GHz to 6GHz in which it is shifted from
the frequency of 5.3GHz.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A new method of bandwidth widening for square patch
antenna has been presented by implementing multiple slots
over the patch. The proposed antenna has been configured
using 7 slots placed diagonally over the patch in which this
method could produce circular polarization. From the result,
it has been shown that the method of multiple slots could
improve bandwidth up to 200% or 510MHz. The center
frequency of proposed square patch antenna with multiple
slots was shifted around 10MHz lower than the conventional
antenna of 5.3GHz. In addition, the characterization results of
proposed antenna such as gain, radiation pattern, surface cur-
rent distributions, and axial ratio have satisfied specifications
required for C-band application.
R EFERENCES
[1] J. R. James and P. S. Hall, Handbook of Microstrip Antennas, London:
Peter Peregrines, 1989.
[2] R. Garg, P. Bhartias, I. Bahl, and A. Ittipiboon, Microstrip Antenna
Design Handbook, Norwood: Artech House, 2000.
-- 102 --
[3] K. M. Singh, Design of Square Patch Microstrip Antenna for Circular
Polarization: Design and Testing in IE3D Software, LAP LAMBERT
Academic Publishing, 2012.
[4] C. E. Santosa, J. T. Sri Sumantyo, A. S. Budiyanta, and A. Munir,
“Broadband X-band circularly polarized microstrip antenna with ellip-
tical patch ring-slotted for airborne SAR system,” in Proceedings of
Progress in Electromagnetic Research Symposium (PIERS), St Peters-
burg, Russia, May 2017.
[5] A. Munir, Y. P. Saputra, F. Kurniawan, and J. T. Sri Sumantyo, “Linearly
polarized slotted patch antenna array fed by power weighting distribu-
tion,” in Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Antennas
and Propagation (AP-S), San Diego, USA, Jul. 2017.
[6] X. Bao and M. J. Ammann, “Printed circularly-polarised antenna
with ultra-wide axial-ratio bandwidth,” IET Microw. Antennas Propag.,
Vol. 5, No. 9, pp. 1089–1096, Jun. 2011.
[7] F. Kurniawan, J. T. Sri Sumantyo, Mujtahid, and A. Munir, “Effect of
truncation shape against axial ratio of left-handed circularly polarized
X-band antenna,” in Proceedings of 15th International Conference on
Quality in Research (QiR), Bali, Indonesia, Jul. 2017.
[8] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory, Analysis and Design, 3rd ed., New
Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2005.
[9] A. Munir, G. Petrus and H. Nusantara, “Multiple slots technique for
bandwidth enhancement of microstrip rectangular patch antenna,” in
Proceedings of 13th International Conference on Quality in Research
(QiR), Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Jun. 2013, pp. 64–67.
[10] W. L. Chen, G. M. Wang, and C. X. Zhang, “Bandwidth enhancement
of a microstrip-line-fed printed wide-slot antenna with a fractal-shaped
slot,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., Vol. 57, No. 7, pp. 2176–2179,
Jul. 2009.
[11] R. R. Ihsan and A. Munir, “Utilization of artificial magnetic conductor
bandwidth enhancement of square patch antenna,” in Proceedings of 7th
International Conference on Telecommunication Systems, Services and
Applications (TSSA), Bali, Indonesia, Oct. 2012, pp. 192–195.
[12] F. Kurniawan, J. T. Sri Sumantyo, G. S. Prabowo, and A. Munir,
“Wide bandwidth left-handed circularly polarized printed antenna with
crescent slot,” in Proceedings of Progress in Electromagnetic Research
Symposium (PIERS), St Petersburg, Russia, May 2017.
[13] T. N. Chang and J.-H. Jiang, “Enhance gain and bandiwdth of circu-
larly polarized microstrip patch antenna using gap-coupled method,”
Progress In Electromagnetics Research (PIER), Vol. 96, pp. 127–139,
2009.
[14] Y. X. Guo, L. Bian, and X. Q. Shi, “Broadband circularly polar-
ized annular-ring microstrip antenna,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
Vol. 57, No. 8, pp. 2474–2477, Aug. 2009.