850 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

10, 2011

Compact Open-Slot Antenna With Bandwidth

Enhancement
WeiXing Liu, YinZeng Yin, WenLong Xu, and ShaoLi Zuo

Abstract—A compact open-slot antenna for bandwidth enhance-

ment is presented. Multiple resonances are generated by using an
asymmetrical rectangular patch with the U-shaped open-slot struc-
ture. Two bevels are cut on the patch to improve the impedance
matching. The proposed antenna provides a wide impedance band-
width of 122% from 2.95 to 12.1 GHz with 10-dB return loss. It is
shown that the impedance bandwidth can be enhanced from 28%
to 122% by using different antenna types. Moreover, this slot an-
tenna is with a small size of mm , while main-
taining the ultrawideband (UWB) performance.
Index Terms—Bandwidth enhancement, compact antenna,
microstrip slot antenna, printed antennas, ultrawideband (UWB).

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed antenna.

I N MODERN wireless communication systems, antennas

are required to be simple in structure, compact in size, and
stable in radiation patterns while retaining an extremely broad An inverted-L-shaped open slot antenna [8] and a linear tapered
operating frequency range. However, the design of a wideband slot antenna [9] are presented to enhance the impedance band-
antenna is not an easy task, especially for a portable device since width. In [10], a stepped-slot antenna is effective in enhancing
a compromise between the size, cost, and bandwidth has to be the bandwidth (3–11 GHz). However, its size mm
achieved simultaneously. Recently, printed planar slot antennas is slightly large. Therefore, it is important to further reduce the
have become very attractive candidates for wireless systems due size of the antenna.
to their low profile, wide bandwidth, compact size, ease of fab- In this letter, a new open-slot antenna with bandwidth
rication, etc. When a slot antenna is fed by a microstrip line, it enhancement and size reduction is presented. The measured
does not add weight and size to the system and is suitable for impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is about 122%
portable applications. A variety of printed slot antenna config- from 2.95 to 12.1 GHz (defined by 10-dB return loss). In ad-
urations have been reported in the open literature [1]–[5], in- dition, the proposed antenna has a simple structure and a small
cluding straight slot, wide slot, L-shaped slot, inverted T-slot, size mm . The designed antenna has been
step slot, and fractal-shaped slot. However, the traditional slot successfully implemented, and the effects of the key structure
antenna is about a half-wavelength resonance, which is a large parameters on the antenna performances are also analyzed and
size. On the other hand, some slot antennas have the limited discussed.
bandwidth, which is not enough to use for more applications.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION AND DESIGN
To reduce an antenna size and enhance its bandwidth, a
open slot with the nonsymmetric ground is used in [6], and The geometry of the proposed open-slot antenna is shown in
the obtained bandwidth is about 94% (2.2–6.1 GHz). A tapered Fig. 1. The antenna is printed on an FR4 substrate (thickness
slot is used in the design of an antenna for lower ultrawide- mm, relative permittivity , loss tangent of 0.027).
band (UWB) (3.1–4.85 GHz) applications [7], but the band- The dimensions of the substrate are mm .
width is too limited to meet the demands for UWB systems. This proposed open-slot antenna has a bevelled rectangular
patch on the top side of the substrate, which is fed by a 50-
microstrip line of width and length . The patch size is op-
Manuscript received July 07, 2011; revised August 08, 2011; accepted Au- timized to achieve a miniaturized design. A U-shaped open slot
gust 11, 2011. Date of publication August 18, 2011; date of current version is etched on the ground plane to enhance the bandwidth in the
September 01, 2011.
opposite side. By using the asymmetrical beveled rectangular
The authors are with National Key Laboratory of Antennas and Microwave
Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an 710071, China (e-mail: [email protected] patch and the U-shaped open slot, a wideband impedance char-
dian.edu.cn; [email protected]; [email protected]; zuoshao- acteristic (2.95–12.1 GHz) can be obtained.
[email protected]).
The design evolution of the open-slot antenna is shown in
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Fig. 2, and the corresponding simulated return losses are shown
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2011.2165197 in Fig. 3. For detailed design, all parameters of the antennas are

1536-1225/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

LIU et al.: COMPACT OPEN-SLOT ANTENNA WITH BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT 851

Fig. 2. Design evolution of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 4. Photograph of the proposed antenna. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.

Fig. 3. Simulated return losses of antenna in different types corresponding to

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured return losses of the proposed antenna.
Fig. 2.

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE ANTENNAS It is worth mentioning that when the rectangular patch of the
antenna is asymmetrically fed by a 50- microstrip line, mul-
tiple resonances can be generated in the operating band. How-
ever, the impedance matching of the antenna is poor, especially
at the lower frequencies.
To improve the impedance matching of the proposed design,
two bevels are cut on the rectangular edges (Proposed Antenna).
In the design procedure, we found that the rectangular patch
with two bevels could improve impedance matching of the an-
tenna at both lower and higher frequencies. The proposed an-
tenna could get an ultrawide impedance bandwidth with good
impedance matching after two bevels are cut and its simulated
10-dB return loss bandwidth is up to 122% (2.95–12.1 GHz),
as shown in Fig. 3.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

simulated using the Ansoft HFSS commercial software and are Fig. 4 shows a photograph of the implemented proposed
given in Table I. antenna, and Fig. 5 shows the simulated and measured return
It begins with the design of Antenna I, which consists of losses of the proposed antenna. The simulated and measured
a straight microstrip feed line and a U-shaped open slot. As results present a very good agreement. From the measured
shown in Fig. 3, when the slot antenna is fed by a straight line, result, a wide operating bandwidth of about 122% from 2.95
a 10-dB return loss bandwidth of 28% from 3.45 to 4.6 GHz to 12.1 GHz with 10-dB return loss has been achieved. From
is achieved, which is like that in [3]. After using a rectangular Fig. 5, it can be observed that combination of the U-shaped
patch instead of the straight microstrip line (Antenna II), the an- open slot and the asymmetrical beveled rectangular patch could
tenna can get three relative impedance bandwidths with 10-dB produce multiple resonant frequencies covering the UWB band.
return loss about 15% (3.1–3.6 GHz), 59% (4.9–9 GHz), and The rectangular patch affects resonances at 5–9 GHz, and the
12% (10–11.2 GHz), respectively. However, it still cannot sat- resonance mode at lower frequency is due to the open slot.
isfy the requirement for UWB systems. The impedance char- To further understand the phenomenon behind this wide
acteristics of the slot antenna may mainly suffer from strong impedance performance, the simulated input impedance of
ground-plane effects. the proposed antenna on a Smith chart is shown in Fig. 6. It
852 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

Fig. 8. Effects of varying width on impedance matching.

Fig. 6. Simulated input impedance on a Smith chart of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 7. Effects of varying width on impedance bandwidth.

presents four loops on the Smith chart, corresponding to four

resonant frequencies present on its return loss plot in Fig. 5.
The U-shaped slot comprises two vertical slots and one hori-
zontal slot. The width of the vertical slot affects impedance
bandwidth of the proposed antenna. Fig. 7 shows the simu-
lated return loss curves for different values of with other
parameters are fixed. The simulated 10-dB return loss band-
widths are about 68% (4.02–8.17 GHz), 119% (2.95–11.6 GHz),
and 122% (2.95–12.1 GHz), respectively, when varies. In-
Fig. 9. Radiation patterns at 4, 7, and 10 GHz in the -plane and -plane.
creasing enlarges the impedance bandwidth of the antenna.
This is mainly due to the mutual coupling between the separate
ground plane and the rectangular patch is reduced. L-shaped ground plane plays an important role in impedance
The width of the horizontal slot affects the impedance matching, especially at higher frequencies.
matching of the proposed slot antenna. As shown in Fig. 8, when The simulated and measured radiation patterns at 4, 7, and
is increased, impedance matching of the open-slot antenna 10 GHz in the E-plane ( -plane) and H-plane ( -plane) are
is significantly improved. This indicates that the gap distance plotted in Fig. 9. From a view of the results, the proposed an-
between the separate ground plane and the lower edge of the tenna displays omnidirectional radiation patterns in the H-plane.
LIU et al.: COMPACT OPEN-SLOT ANTENNA WITH BANDWIDTH ENHANCEMENT 853

rectangular patch with the U-shaped open-slot structure,

impedance bandwidth of the designed antenna is improved
from 28% initially to 122%. Effects of key parameters on the
antenna performances are also investigated. The proposed an-
tenna features an ultrawide impedance bandwidth from 2.95 to
12.1 GHz with a small size, which is very suitable for portable
UWB applications.

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