IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO.

8, AUGUST 2011

choices in the type and position of reactive components. The proposed

method has been successfully applied in designing monopole antenna
for a mobile handset satisfying GSM900/UMTS2100/WiBro/Bluetooth requirements.

3045

Band-Notched UWB Antenna Incorporating a Microstrip

Open-Loop Resonator
James R. Kelly, Peter S. Hall, and Peter Gardner

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank RadiNa Inc. Ltd. in Korea and the
Brain Korea 21 project for manufacture and measurement support.

REFERENCES
[1] K. L. Wong, Planar Antennas for Wireless Communications.
Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2003, pp. 2653.
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666669.

AbstractUltrawideband (UWB) systems require band notch filters

in order to prevent sensitive components, within the front-end of the
receiver, from being overloaded by strong signals. Recently, it has been
shown that these filters can be integrated into the UWB antenna, to great
advantage. This communication presents a new method for forming a
notch band within the frequency response of a UWB antenna. An open
loop notch band resonator is located on the back of the substrate, used
to support the UWB monopole. The act of separating the resonator from
the antenna means that they can now be designed in isolation, using the
standard approach described in the literature, and then combined. A
prototype was constructed and good agreement has been obtained between
simulation and measurement. The radiation patterns are consistent over
the frequency range of interest.
Index TermsBand-stop filters, coplanar waveguides, monopole antennas, ultrawideband (UWB) antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION
There is much interest in the use of ultrawideband (UWB) signals
(from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz) for short range, high-data rate communications
[3]. UWB radar systems have been used to improve the detection of
early stage breast cancer [1], [2]. UWB ground penetrating radar can
be used to detect mines and damaged utility pipes. Interference from
a strong narrowband signal, within the UWB band, could overload the
receiver and band-stop filters have been suggested to mitigate for this.
This filter might be a separate component, connected in series with the
antenna [4], which will increase the size, weight, and complexity of
the system or it could be integrated into the antennas feed-line [5].
A substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity filter is used in [5],
within the feed-line of an UWB monopole antenna, but antenna performance degradations result. An alternative is to integrate some form
of band-stop filter into the radiating element. The majority of designs
use a resonant slot within the planar monopole antenna [6][15]. Unfortunately most of the current solutions are limited by having: 1) poor
return loss, i.e., >1.5 dB [5], [7], [13], [14], [25] or >2.5 dB [9], [10],
[12], [16]; 2) poor gain suppression, i.e., <5 dB [10], [14] or <10 dB
[6], [12], [13], [16], [17]; 3) or low quality factor (<10) [14], [15] at
the notch frequency. A further disadvantage associated with some of
the designs is that the geometry is complex and/or three dimensional
[5], [7], [8], [11][13], [15], [17], [19].
This communication presents a new approach for producing a notch
band within an UWB antenna. The key innovation is to situate the notch
band resonator on the rear of the substrate which is used to support
the UWB antenna. This change of approach enables one to design the
resonator and antenna in isolation, before combining them later. The
Manuscript received March 03, 2010; revised November 10, 2010; accepted
December 28, 2010. Date of publication May 10, 2011; date of current version
August 03, 2011. This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/F017502/1.
J. R. Kelly is with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, U.K. (e-mail:
james.kelly@sheffield.ac.uk).
P. S. Hall and P. Gardner are with the Department of Electronic, Electrical
and Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT,
U.K..
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2011.2152326

0018-926X/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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= 5:5 mm, d = 11:52mm, g = 6:52mm,

= 1 4 mm Gray = metal layer 1, black = metal layer 2.

Fig. 1. Structure of the antenna. b

:
.
and w

Fig. 2. Distribution of current on antenna at 3.07 GHz (i.e., the fundamental

mode). (a) metal layer 1, (b) metal layers 1 and 2.

communication is laid out as follows: Section II describes the structure

of the antenna, and the principles of device operation. Key results, such
as the return loss performance, radiation patterns and gain are provided
in Sections III and IV. Section V presents a series of equations which
can be used to design the resonator.
II. STRUCTURE OF THE DEVICE
The new antenna is based around an UWB circular disk monopole
[20] (see Fig. 1). A microstrip open-loop resonator [21] is employed
to generate a frequency band-notch. This resonator is shaded black in
Fig. 1. The disk monopole is etched into the front-side of the substrate,
whilst the microstrip resonator is etched onto the backside. In order to
produce a band-notch having a high quality factor the design is printed
onto a high permittivity Rogers 3010 substrate material ("r = 10:2),
having a thickness of 0.635 mm. The disk monopole is fed using a short
section of coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission-line. The signal
line is 1.93 mm wide and the two longitudinal gaps are 0.5 mm; giving
the CPW-line an impedance of 50
. A variety of different forms of
resonator could be employed in order to create the frequency notchband. A microstrip open-loop resonator has been used to create microwave filters [21], [22]. If the gap g is set to a small value a fourth
order mode is strongly excited. This is a major disadvantage which effectively degrades the return loss of the antenna towards the upper end
of the frequency band. By increasing the gap length it was possible to
remove this limitation.

Fig. 3. Distribution of current on the antenna at 7.93 GHz (i.e., the third order
mode). (a) metal layer 1, (b) metal layers 1 and 2.

III. SURFACE CURRENT DISTRIBUTIONS

Figs. 2 to 4 show the distribution of surface current on the antenna
at three different frequencies. These frequencies correspond to the first
and third return loss zero for the UWB monopole (i.e., 3.07 GHz and
7.93 GHz, respectively) as well as the center of the notch-band (i.e.,
5.24 GHz). At each of the return loss zeros the current is primarily
concentrated around the periphery of the resonator and the upper edge
of the ground plane, as indicated by inspection of Figs. 2 and 3. There
is very little current flow within the interior of the disk.
The microstrip open-loop resonator is positioned above a point on
the disk where the surface current splits equal streams which flow in
opposing directions. This is indicated by the arrows in Fig. 4(a). The
currents cancel perfectly in the center of the resonator leading to a null.
Consequently the resonator is only capable of supporting a surface current distribution which is even, that is to say symmetrical, about the
center line (shown dotted in Fig. 4(b)). For the resonator dimensions,

Fig. 4. Distribution of current on antenna at 5.24 GHz (i.e., notch-band frequency). (a) metal layer 1, (b) metal layers 1 and 2.

specified in Fig. 1, the first even mode occurs at 5.24 GHz, as mentioned earlier. At this frequency most of the energy supplied to (or intercepted by) the disk monopole couples very strongly into the resonator
(see Fig. 4) causing a band notch at this frequency. If the resonator is
moved along the y-axis, left or right of the center line then there is no
longer a null in the center of the resonator. For this reason it is then
able to support an unsymmetrical, or odd, mode.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 59, NO. 8, AUGUST 2011

3047

Fig. 7. ZX-plane radiation patterns at (a) 3.89 GHz, (b) 8.31 GHz.
Fig. 5. Return loss performance of the antenna.

Fig. 6. XY-plane radiation patterns at (a) 3.89 GHz, (b) 8.31 GHz.

Fig. 8. ZY-plane radiation patterns at (a) 3.89 GHz, (b) 8.31 GHz.

IV. RESULTS
A. Return Loss
Fig. 5 plots the return loss as a function of frequency. There is good
agreement between simulation and measurement, throughout the FCC
UWB band. For example the band-notch center frequency, obtained
through simulation (i.e., 5.24 GHz), lies just 90 MHz above that obtained through measurement (i.e., 5.15 GHz). In measurement the return loss, at this frequency, is 1.14 dB. These results suggest that the
antenna provides a high level of rejection to signal frequencies within
the notch band. The UWB antenna provides a 10 dB return loss bandwidth which extends from 3 GHz to 4.5 GHz; where it is interrupted
by the notch band. At frequencies above the notch band the antenna
provides a 10 dB return loss bandwidth which extends from 5.38 GHz
to 10.28 GHz. This is sufficient to cover the majority of the bandwidth
which was allocated, by the FCC, for license exempt UWB systems.
On either side of the notch band the S11 reduces rapidly, as confirmed
by comparing the 01 dB, 03 dB and 010 dB bandwidth figures (i.e.,
3.2%, 6.4% and 18.8%, respectively).
All of the simulation results, reported in this communication, were
obtained using the Transient Solver in CST Microwave Studio, which
uses the finite integration method.
B. Radiation Patterns
Figs. 68 illustrate co-polar radiation patterns for the antenna. These
patterns were taken at frequencies corresponding to the first and second
return loss zeros. The locations of these features differ slightly between
simulation and measurement. The patterns obtained are typical of those
for a monopole (i.e., omni-directional in azimuth and a figure-of-eight
in the elevation plane). The radiation patterns are consistent over the

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured peak gain for the antenna.

frequency range of interest and there is good agreement between simulation and measurement.
Fig. 9 shows the realized gain, as a function of frequency, for the
band-notched antenna alongside that of a reference antenna. The reference antenna is identical to the band- notched antenna except that the
open-loop resonator is removed. At the center of the stop-band, the gain
of the band- notched antenna is almost 11 dB lower than that of the reference. This represents 11 dB of gain suppression. In this respect the
antenna outperforms many of the other designs reported in the literature
[6], [10], [12][14], [16][18]. From inspection of Fig. 9 it is clear to
see that the antenna delivers progressively more gain as the frequency
increases. This is a common feature of planar monopole antennas and
can be attributed to an increase in the directivity of the radiation patterns. Each of the data points, used to plot Fig. 9, represents gain in the
direction of maximum directivity, at a particular frequency.

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Fig. 10. Agreement between simulation data and empirical equations.

V. DESIGN EQUATIONS
A series of empirical equations are presented below as an aid to engineering design. From Fig. 10 it is clear that there is a good standard
of agreement between the simulation data (derived from the parametric
study) and the design equations, presented below. It is also likely that
the equations would remain accurate for frequency values both below
and above the range considered here

= 0:0054fc3 + 0:31fc2 0 5:80fc + 26:57

g = 6:58fc 0 28:08
2
w = 0 0:17fc + 2:81fc 0 8:69:
b

VI. CONCLUSION
This communication presents a novel band-notched ultrawideband
antenna. The antenna consists of an UWB disk monopole which provides the ground plane for a microstrip open-loop resonator. A prototype was constructed, and there is good agreement between simulation
and measurement. The proposed antenna achieves a 10 dB return loss
bandwidth of 110% (i.e., 3 GHz to 10.28 GHz), which is interrupted
only by a notch-band at 5.15 GHz. Further work is required in order
to adjust the bandwidth and location of the notch so that it covers the
WLAN band. Section V presents three simple polynomial equations
which can be used to determine the resonator geometry which is required in order to create a notch-band at a specific operating frequency.

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