Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Wireless Technology

Novel Design of UWB Antenna with Band Notch

Capability
Elena Pancera#1, Daniele Modotto*2, Andrea Locatelli*3, Filippo M. Pigozzo#4, Costantino De Angelis*5
#

Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova

via Gradenigo, 6 35131 Padova Italy
1

elena.pancera@dei.unipd.it
4
superg@ray.dei.unipd.it

Dipartimento di Elettronica per lAutomazione, Universit degli Studi di Brescia

via Branze, 38 25123 Brescia Italy
2

daniele.modotto@ing.unibs.it
andrea.locatelli@ing.unibs.it
5
deangeli@ing.unibs.it

Abstract An ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna with a narrow

frequency notch is presented. The antenna has been fabricated
on a Duroid 5870 substrate and occupies an area of only 30 35
mm2. Starting from a trapezoidal planar patch exhibiting a
VSWR smaller than 2.5 in the 3.510 GHz band, a frequency
notch at 5.65 GHz is introduced by two slots near the coplanar
waveguide feeding the patch. The measured return loss shows a
good agreement with the simulation results and proves that this
kind of antenna is suitable for reducing the detrimental
interference effects of WLAN, operating around 5.5 GHz, on
UWB radio links.

I. INTRODUCTION
In 2002, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
[1] has released the regulation for UWB technology,
allocating the frequency spectrum from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for
UWB radio applications. After those regulations, several
structures and designs of UWB antennas have been proposed.
However, over the designated UWB frequency band, there
are existing standards such as IEEE802.11a wireless local area
network (WLAN) and HIPERLAN/2, operating in the 5.0
6.0 GHz band. Hence, rejecting such an already used band is
an important goal for UWB antenna design.
A common technique for band rejection is to use an
external stop band filter. However, this solution increases the
dimensions of the circuit causing an increment of the size of
the device itself.
A more useful and dimensions preserving method is to
create the antenna element with intrinsic band-notch
capability. In literature a few antennas are described [2][5]
where the bandnotch is introduced by a slot carved in the
radiating element. In fact, these slots produce a destructive
interference for the excited surface currents, causing the
antenna not to be responsive at frequencies which depend on
the slots dimensions and positions.
The importance of our work lies on the fact that a novel
method of band rejection is presented: the prohibited band is
obtained via slots cut on the ground planes of the Coplanar
Waveguide (CPW) feeding a planar UWB monopole. These
slots block the currents at the desired frequency, letting them
not arrive to the radiating elements.

978-2-87487-003-3 2007 EuMA

This article is organized as follows. In the next Section the

proposed antenna is described and its behaviour is analysed
via simulations using the commercial software CST
Microwave Studio [6]. In order to explain the presence of the
rejected band, attention is paid to the distribution of the
surface currents. Section III illustrates the measurement
results for a prototype antenna. Finally, the results are
summarized in the last Section.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN
In our work we started from an UWB antenna presented in
literature [7]. The antenna has been redesigned over a Duroid
5870 substrate; this material exhibits low losses and a
permittivity of 2.33 and its parameters are thus adequate to
fabricate efficiently radiating antennas. The planar monopole
is fed by a CPW whose central conductor is 3.43 mm wide
and separated from the ground planes by 0.15 mm wide
spacings; the designed CPW has a characteristic impedance of
50 Ohm.
The layout of the proposed antenna is illustrated in Fig. 1
where the geometrical dimensions in millimeters are reported,
as well. This antenna differs from the reference antenna
structure presented in [7], because two slots have been
introduced on the ground planes. The simulations show that if
these slots have a length equal to nearly half wavelength, the
excited surface currents suffer from a destructive interference.
In such a case, the currents do not arrive to the radiating
element and hence the antenna is not responsive at that
frequency. We emphasize that the slots are placed on the
ground planes and are close to the CPW feeding the antenna,
whereas in the antennas discussed in literature the band is
rejected by introducing slots in the radiating monopole [2]-[5].
The dash-dotted line in Fig. 2 shows the simulated return
loss (|S11|) for the reference antenna structure: |S11| is smaller
than -10 dB over the 310 GHz band. Fig. 3 shows the return
loss for the antenna with the slots: |S11| has a local maximum
centred at the frequency 5.65 GHz and its value is -1.9 dB.

48

October 2007, Munich Germany

Moreover, the simulated return loss is below -10 dB over the

frequency spans 35.2 GHz and 6.212 GHz.

notchband width is varied, as well, and thus to achieve an

optimal design, the slot width must be tuned. In fact, the
simulations indicate that the slot width controls the bandwidth
of the notch: the larger the slot width, the larger the rejected
interval.

Fig. 2. Simulated and measured return loss of the reference antenna

structure.

Fig. 1. Band notch antenna topology; all the reported dimensions are
in millimetres.

The effect of the slots is clearly illustrated in Fig. 4, where

the current distributions at the notched frequency and at a
frequency outside the rejected band are presented.
As it can be seen, at the notched frequency of 5.65 GHz the
currents do not propagate towards the radiating element but
are blocked by the slots. In this case, we can observe that the
slots are resonating, causing inhibition of the transmission,
and reception, of this frequency.
On the contrary, the slots do not affect the flowing of the
currents towards the radiating element at 7 GHz, i.e. at a
frequency outside the notched band (see Fig. 3).
The dimensions, shape and position of these slots have
been chosen after a comprehensive numerical study of their
influence on the notchband position and width. As expected
it has been found that the central frequency of the rejected
band is related to the slot length. The slot length is
approximately half wavelength at the centre of the rejected
band: the simulation of Fig. 3 refers to a slot length of 21 mm,
whereas the half wavelength for the slotline waveguides
formed by the slots is 19 mm. The notched frequency, defined
as the frequency with the maximum VSWR in the notched
band, can be easily tuned by varying the slot length. Fig. 5
shows the VSWR for six different slot lengths: by decreasing
the slot length from 25 mm to 18 mm the VSWR peak is
linearly shifted from 4.8 GHz to 6.5 GHz. It must be
underlined that by significantly changing this length the

49

Fig.3. Simulated and measured return loss of the notched antenna.

On the other hand, the distance of the slots from the CPW
line is a factor that slightly influences the band rejection.
The slot distance from the upper part of the ground plane
has a great influence on the quality of the rejection and the
larger is the distance, the lower is the VSWR in the rejected
band.
Furthermore, it has been observed that the L shape of the
slot is important: if the slot is straight, i.e. in the presence of
only vertical or horizontal slots, there is no band rejection.

From the measurements it can be seen that a VSWR higher

than 6 occurs over a 150 MHz wide band in the 5 6 GHz
range. Moreover the measured group delay variation is less
then 1 ns over the transmission band, as expected from
simulations.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A band-notched planar UWB antenna has been designed,
studied in detail by means of numerical simulations,
fabricated and tested. The expected performance has been
confirmed by measuring the return loss with a vector network
analyzer. The notch-band around 5.65 GHz is introduced by
two slots close to the feeding CPW; the rejected-band is 150
MHz wide and comprehensive simulations show that, by
carefully varying the slot dimensions, the central frequency of
the notch can be tuned. Moreover, by fabricating and testing
an antenna without notch, we proved that the measured
rejectedband is due to the slots carved in the CPW ground
planes. By studying the current distribution at the notch
frequency, it can be observed that the slots are resonating and
inhibit the transmission of the forbidden frequencies towards
the trapezoidal patch and the ground plane edges forming the
radiating element.
The proposed antenna is a good candidate for UWB radio
systems that must be robust against interferences from the 5.5
GHz WLAN band. The compact size and the ease of
fabrication make this antenna suitable for integration in low
cost commercial UWB appliances.

Fig. 4. Surface current distributions at 5.65 GHz (left) and 7 GHz

(right). The darker is the grey level, the higher is the current absolute
value.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by
the Italian Ministry of Research and University (MIUR)
within the PRIN 2005 nr 2005093524 and 2006 programmes.
Fig. 5. Simulated VSWR for different slot lengths.

REFERENCES
[1]

III. ANTENNA FABRICATION AND TEST

The designed antennas have been fabricated on a Duroid
5870 substrate, having a thickness of 1.52 mm, dielectric
constant 2.33 and loss tangent = 0.0012. The CPW has a
characteristic impedance of 50 Ohm and it is fed via a SMA
connector. The prototype has an area of 30 35 mm2 (see Fig.
1) and it is thus only slightly less compact than the antenna
described in [7]. Since the notch frequency position is very
sensitive to the slot geometrical parameters and also to the
dielectric constant value, the proposed notchantenna cannot
be fabricated on substrates with poor permittivity control,
uniformity and reproducibility, like FR4 or CEM3.
The realized antennas have been tested and characterized
through a vector network analyzer (Agilent PNA E8361A).
The obtained results are illustrated as solid lines in Fig. 2 and
Fig. 3. The measured notch-band has its peak at 5.7 GHz and
the 50 MHz shift with respect to the simulated value is likely
due to unavoidable small geometrical errors introduced during
the fabrication process.

[2]
[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]
[7]

50

FCC Report and Order of Part 12 Acceptance of Ultra Wideband

(UWB) Systems from 3.1 10.6 GHz, FCC, Washington, DC, 2002.
S.W. Su, K.L. Wong, and F.S. Chang, Compact Printed UltraWideband Slot Antenna with a Band-Notched Operation, Microwave
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 128-130, April 2005.
W.S. Lee, W.G. Lim, and J.W. Yu, Multiple Band-Notched Planar
Monopole Antenna for Multiband Wireless Systems, IEEE
Microwave Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 15, no. 9, pp. 576-578,
September 2005.
K.L. Wong, Y.W. Chi, C.M. Su, and F.S. Chang, Band-Notched
Ultra-Wideband Circular-Disk Monopole Antenna with an Arc-Shaped
Slot, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 188-191, May
2005.
Y.J. Cho, K.H. Kim, D.H. Choi, S.S. Lee, and S.O. Park, A Miniature
UWB Planar Monopole Antenna with 5-GHz Band-Rejection Filter
and the Time-Domain Characteristics, IEEE Trans. Antennas
Propagat., vol. 54, no. 5, pp. 1453-1460, May 2006.
CST Microwave Studio, Version 2006B.
S.H. Lee, J.K. Park, and J.N. Lee, A Novel CPW-Fed Ultra-Wideband
Antenna Design, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 44, no. 5, pp.
393-396, March 2005.