IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

11, 2012

411

Very Compact Printed Triple Band-Notched UWB

Antenna With Quarter-Wavelength Slots
Dang Trang Nguyen, Dong Hyun Lee, and Hyun Chang Park

AbstractA very compact coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed

ultrawideband (UWB) printed monopole antenna (PMA) with
triple band-notched characteristics is presented. The antenna
uses three open-ended quarter-wavelength slots to create triple
band-notched characteristics in 3.33.7 GHz for WiMAX,
5.155.825 GHz for WLAN, and 7.257.75 GHz for downlink
of X-band satellite communication systems, respectively. The
open-ended quarter-wavelength slot is analyzed in detail. Surface
current distributions are used to show the effect of these slots.
The antenna shows broad bandwidth and good omnidirectional
radiation patterns in the passband, with a very compact size of
19 24 mm .
Index TermsMonopole antenna, notched band, planar,
quarter-wavelength slot, ultrawideband (UWB).

I. INTRODUCTION

N THE last decade, the ultrawideband (UWB) technology

has become one of the most promising technologies for
increasing data rate in wireless communication. The UWB
antenna, which is an essential part of the UWB system, has
drawn heavy attention from researchers. A UWB antenna
design requires broad bandwidth of 3.110.6 GHz [1] and
good omnidirectional radiation patterns. Among the proposed
UWB antennas, the printed monopole antenna (PMA) is very
promising due to its remarkably small size, simple fabrication,
and easy integration with compact RF front ends. In addition,
the coplanar waveguide (CPW) feed lines have some attractive
advantages compared to microstrip feed lines such as lower
dispersion at high frequencies, unipolar configuration, easy
integration with active devices, and minimal dependence on
substrate thickness [2].
For the integration of the UWB technology in the handheld
terminals that are becoming smaller and thinner each day,
the design of a very compact UWB antenna covering the
whole operating frequency band is one of the most essential
requirements. However, reducing the size of a PMA usually
brings about reduced operating bandwidth. Moreover, there are
some narrow bands for other communication systems existing
in the allocated wide bandwidth of the UWB system, such
as 3.33.7 GHz for WiMAX, 5.155.825 GHz for WLAN,
and 7.257.75 GHz for downlink of X-band satellite communication systems. These bands may cause electromagnetic
Manuscript received November 10, 2011; revised December 25, 2011 and
February 20, 2012; accepted March 25, 2012. Date of publication April 03,
2012; date of current version April 20, 2012. This work was supported by the
Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of
Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology
(20110026869).
The authors are with the Division of Electronics and Electrical Engineering,
Dongguk University, Seoul 100-715, Korea (e-mail: hcpark@dongguk.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2012.2192900

interference with the UWB system. Therefore, it is necessary

to design UWB antennas with band-notched characteristics
that can minimize the potential electromagnetic interference
with these existing systems. According to these assessments, a
very compact CPW-fed UWB PMA with triple band-notched
characteristics at the aforementioned bands and good radiation
performance is highly desired. In this letter, we propose and
demonstrate such an antenna.
Various UWB PMAs with band-notched characteristics have
been recently presented. These antennas were designed with
one notched band [3][8], two notched bands [9][13], or
three notched bands [14][16] at the aforementioned frequency
bands. In order to obtain notched bands, slots of various shapes
were embedded in the patch or in the ground plane. In most of
the cases, the band-notched function was achieved when the
length of the slot was about a half of the guided wavelength
calculated at the intended notch frequency. The operational
principle of these half-wavelength slots was presented in [11].
On the other hand, we have demonstrated the possibility of
using an open-ended slot with the length of about a quarter of
the guided wavelength to create a notched band at a relatively
low frequency of 3.5 GHz [16], and have anticipated a possible
reduction in size of the triple band-notched antenna with the use
of quarter-wavelength slots instead of half-wavelength slots.
In this letter, we propose and demonstrate a very compact
CPW-fed UWB PMA with triple notched bands at as high as
7.5 GHz using only quarter-wavelength slots. Both the radiating
patch and the ground plane are beveled to cover the entire UWB
band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz with VSWR less than 2. The antenna
measures only 19 24 mm .
II. ANTENNA DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
Through simulations with the software Ansoft HFSS, the final
optimized design of the proposed antenna with a very compact size of 19 24 mm was obtained as shown in Fig. 1.
This antenna was printed on the FR4 substrate with thickness
of 1.2 mm, relative dielectric constant of 4.4, and loss tangent of 0.02. The antenna consists of a 50- CPW feed line
and a planar radiating patch with three slots , , and . The
single-layered CPW-fed structures and the small total size of the
antenna make it easy to integrate with RF front ends. Beveled
edges of the radiating patch and the ground plane result in a
smooth transition from one resonant mode to another, ensuring
good impedance match over a broad frequency range [9]. Details of the design procedure are as follows.
A. Basic Antenna Design
In this section, the basic antenna (without any of the slots ,
, and ) covering the full UWB band is first described. The
effects of the geometric parameters of the radiating patch and
the ground plane are discussed.

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

Fig. 4. Leakage current distribution in the substrate of the basic antenna with
and (a)
mm and (b)
mm.
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna (units in millimeters) with (a) top
view, (b) side view, and (c) fabricated antenna.

Fig. 2. Simulated VSWR of the basic antenna (without the slots

) with
mm and different values of .

, and

Fig. 3. Simulated VSWR of the basic antenna (without the slots

) with
and different values of .

, and

Fig. 2 shows the effects of varying the bevel angle

of the
radiating patch on the simulated VSWR with
mm. It
can be seen that the bandwidth for VSWR less than 2 increases
greatly as
increases from 30 to 40 . However, as
increases to 50 , the impedance of the radiating patch and the
input impedance become mismatched at the middle frequencies
of the UWB band. Therefore, we decided on
of 40 as the
optimum, resulting in the bandwidth from 3.4 to 10.7 GHz.
The ground plane also affects the characteristics of the antenna. Fig. 3 shows the simulated VSWR as varies from 0 to
5.5 mm with
. It can be seen that the bandwidth of the
antenna increases as increases from 0 to 4.5 mm, as the lower
edge of the bandwidth decreases from 3.4 to 3 GHz. When
increases to 5.5 mm, the antenna performance becomes worse
at the middle frequencies of the UWB band without further increase in the bandwidth. Therefore, we decided on
mm
as the optimum with the bandwidth from 3 to 11 GHz, covering
the entire UWB band.
This effect can be further investigated in terms of leaky-wave
interaction between the ground plane and the feed line and the
radiating patch. The leaky wave was presented through the

leakage current distribution as shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen

that the leakage current distribution from the ground plane
is weaker in the edge regions (areas inside the black circles
in Fig. 4) when the ground plane is beveled. As a result, the
operational characteristics of the antenna become better as
shown in Fig. 3.
B. Slot Analysis
The configuration of the slots is shown in Fig. 1(a). In the
design, we used guided wavelength
and
, where
is the free-space wavelength [17]. Three
slots with the same line width were cut in the radiating patch,
each with an open gap at the edge of the patch. The length of
slot
mm, is about a quarter of the guided wavelength calculated at the center frequency of the WiMAX band,
3.5 GHz. The length of slot
mm, is about a quarter
of the guided wavelength calculated at the center frequency of
the WLAN band, 5.5 GHz, while that of slot
mm,
is about a quarter of the guided wavelength calculated at the
center frequency of the downlink of X-band satellite communication systems, 7.5 GHz. Due to the compact size of the radiating patch, we used an inverted L-shaped slot
instead of a
straight slot to ensure the quarter-wavelength characteristics.
In our previous antenna [16], the performance of the openended quarter-wavelength slot in getting the notched band became worse at high frequencies as the amplitude of
at the
notched bandin other words, the level of band rejectiondecreased. Therefore, we had to use half-wavelength slots to obtain good band-notched functions at high frequencies, and the
antenna could not be made smaller. To minimize the antenna
size, use of quarter-wavelength slots only is much preferred.
In order to provide a general guidance for the design of the
UWB antenna with notched bands created by quarter-wavelength slots, we carried out an analysis of the UWB antenna
shown in Fig. 1(a), but with slot only, to start with. The length
of the slot was fixed at 8.2 mm. By analyzing the effect of the
width, the position, and the angle of the slot in the radiating
patch, we aimed to find the optimized configuration of the slot
to get a good level of band rejection even at high frequencies.
Fig. 5 shows the influence of the slot width
on the simulated
VSWR of the antenna. It can be observed that both the amplitude and the bandwidth of the notched band for VSWR greater
than 2 increase as
increases from 0.2 to 0.5 mm. When
increases from 0.5 to 1.1 mm, however, the characteristics of
the notched band show minimal changes. Therefore, the slot
width was fixed at 0.5 mm. Fig. 6 shows the influence of the
distance
on the simulated VSWR of the antenna. It can be

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NGUYEN et al.: VERY COMPACT PRINTED TRIPLE BAND-NOTCHED UWB ANTENNA WITH QUARTER-WAVELENGTH SLOTS

Fig. 5. Influence of the width

on VSWR of the antenna.

Fig. 8. Influence of the position of slot

Fig. 6. Influence of the distance

on VSWR of the antenna.

on VSWR of the antenna.

Fig. 9. Surface current distributions on the radiating patch at (a) a passband

frequency of 4.5 GHz, (b) the first notched band at 3.5 GHz, (c) the second
notched band at 5.5 GHz, and (d) the third notched band at 7.5 GHz.

Fig. 7. Influence of the angle

on VSWR of the antenna.

seen that both the amplitude and the bandwidth of the notched
band increase as increases from 2.5 to 6.5 mm. Fig. 7 shows
the influence of the angle on the simulated VSWR of the anmm. Obviously, both the amplitude and the
tenna with
bandwidth of the notched band increase when increases from
70 to 130 . Through Figs. 6 and 7, it can be observed that both
the amplitude and the bandwidth of the notched band increase
when the slot gets closer to the antenna feed line (see the insets
of Figs. 6 and 7). In short, by reasonably choosing the position
and the angle of an open-ended quarter-wavelength slot, we can
obtain a good notched band even at high frequencies.
The proposed antenna with three notched bands was designed
based on the above conclusion. Additional points considered in
the design include the following. First, the angle was fixed at
90 for all slots because multiple slots were employed. Therefore, only the positions of the slots were used to optimize the
band-notched characteristics. Second, although both the amplitude and the bandwidth of the notched band increase when the
slot gets closer to the antenna feed line, an unnecessarily wide
notched band is not desired as this will reduce the useful bandwidth of the UWB band. Third, effects of possible interactions
between the slots were carefully observed. For example, Fig. 8
shows the optimization of slot
by changing
while the
positions of slots
and
are fixed at
mm and
mm, respectively. It can be seen that both the amplitude and the bandwidth of the third notched band increase
as
increases from 3.3 to 4.9 mm, but those of the second
notched band decrease at the same time. Therefore, we decided

on
mm as the optimum position of slot . These
mm
procedures had also been used to come up with
and
mm as the optimum positions of slots
and ,
respectively.
Physical effects of the open-ended quarter-wavelength slot
have been explained in [16] using the concept of the effective
length and transmission-line models. Each slot is modeled as
a short-circuit-terminated stub in the transmission-line model
of the antenna. The first notched band, stub1, corresponding to
slot , works as a quarter-wavelength transmission line terminated in a short circuit. Therefore, it behaves as an open-circuited series stub with infinite input impedance, causing a total
impedance mismatch between the feed line and the radiating
patch. At the second and the third notched bands, slots
and
, respectively play the same role as .
In order to observe the effects of slots , , and in getting
the notched bands, the surface current distributions on the radiating patch of the proposed antenna at four different frequencies are shown in Fig. 9. At a passband frequency of 4.5 GHz
(outside the notched bands), the distribution of the surface current is uniform [Fig. 9(a)]. Meanwhile, in Fig. 9(b)(d), we can
see stronger current distributions concentrated near the edges of
slots , , and
at the center frequency of the first notched
band 3.5 GHz, the second notched band 5.5 GHz, and the third
notched band 7.5 GHz, respectively. These clearly show the
positive effects of the slots upon obtaining the band-notched
characteristics.
III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Fig. 10 shows the simulated and the measured VSWR of
the proposed antenna. The measurement was performed with

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

is about 94.6%. By using only quarter-wavelength slots to

create band-notched characteristics, this antenna was realized
in a much smaller size compared to the previous antenna with
similar functionality [16].
IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 10. Simulated and measured VSWR of the antenna with three notched
bands.

A very compact CPW-fed UWB printed monopole antenna

with triple band-notched characteristics was proposed, fabricated, and discussed. The three designed notched bands were
realized by etching three open-ended quarter-wavelength slots
in the radiating patch. The effects of the width, position, and
the angle of the slot in the radiating patch were analyzed to find
the optimized configuration of the slot to get a good level of
band rejection even at high frequencies. Surface current distributions were used to show the effect of these slots in getting the
notched bands. The fabricated antenna showed good agreement
between measured and simulated results with a wide bandwidth
from 2.45 to 10.65 GHz and three intended notched bands in a
small size.
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