IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS

959

Ultrawideband Antenna With Triple Band-Notched

Characteristics Using Closed-Loop Ring Resonators
Mohammad Almalkawi, Student Member, IEEE, and Vijay Devabhaktuni, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThe design of a simple multilayered triple bandnotched ultrawideband (UWB) antenna is presented in this
letter. The proposed antenna is compact in size, suitable for
ultrawideband applications, and exhibits triple narrow frequency
band notches to suppress the interference of the nearby wireless
communication systems within a UWB frequency range. The
narrow band notches are realized by adding closed-loop ring
resonators designed to cover the 3.33.7-GHz, 5.155.35-GHz,
and 5.7255.825-GHz bands. The center frequencies of the
band notches can be adjusted by varying the ring resonators
mean diameters. The designed antenna has a compact volume
of 33 30 1.524 mm . The antenna is fabricated and tested
providing broadband impedance matching, appropriate gain, and
stable radiation pattern.
Index TermsClosed-loop ring resonators, multilayered, triple
band-notched, ultrawideband (UWB) antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

ECENTLY, there has been increasing demand in designing ultrawideband (UWB) systems, and more particularly so after the release of the frequency band 3.110.6 GHz
by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) [1]. The
main objective of UWB is the handling of high data rates
in the presence of wireless communication standards, which
cause electromagnetic (EM) interference with the UWB systems, such as the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave
Access (WiMAX) system operating at 3.33.7 GHz and
wireless local area network (WLAN) system operating at
5.155.35 and 5.7255.825 GHz. Since antennas are essential
components for a host system application, it is desirable to
design UWB antennas that comprise narrow band notches
within the UWB frequency range. The early works on frequency band-rejected UWB antennas were realized by utilizing
small strip bars [2][4], an open-loop resonator [5], U-shaped
slots [6][8], an -shaped slot [9], a half-mode substrate integrated waveguide cavity [10], and a pentagonal radiating patch
with two bent slots [11]. In [2][9], however, the elements
were developed on the same layer within the antenna radiator
or on the back side of the same layer for generating single-

Manuscript received August 26, 2011; accepted September 01, 2011. Date of
publication September 12, 2011; date of current version October 03, 2011. This
work was supported in part by the EECS Department and the College of Engineering of the University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, under graduate assistantships
and a startup grant, respectively.
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606 USA (e-mail: Mohammad.
Almalkawi@utoledo.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.2011.2167649

Fig. 1. Structure of the proposed triple band-notched UWB antenna in three

layers configuration. (a) 2-D double-sided view of each layer. (b) Top view.
(c) Side view.

and/or dual-frequency band-notched antennas. Therefore, due

to the space limitation, it is difficult to generate multiple band
notches. On the other hand, in [10] and [11], the designs have
complicated structures leading to increased fabrication costs,
antenna size, and difficulty in the integration with microwave
integrated circuits.
The objective of this letter is to present a simple and compact realization with stable radiation performance of a triple
band-notched planar antenna suitable for UWB applications. It
will be shown that the proposed antenna in Fig. 1 possesses
the desirable feature of compactness while achieving an acceptable impedance bandwidth performance. Closed-loop ring resonators have been utilized because of their narrow bandwidth,
compact size, and low radiation loss [12] essential to ensuring
relatively omnidirectional far-field radiation pattern (which is

1536-1225/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS

originally due to the actual rectangular slot patch monopole

antenna).
The organization of this letter is as follows. Section II describes the configuration of the proposed antenna. Section III
presents measured and simulated results, while conclusions are
given in Section IV.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION
The monopole UWB antenna illustrated in Fig. 1, top side of
layer 3, is realized using a rectangular slot patch with a 50- microstrip feed line. Triple-frequency band notches are achieved
by vertically aligning three ring resonators (with their centers
aligned along an axis) on multilayered planes. Here, each ring
is responsible for creating a frequency band notch.
The antenna is printed on three layers of Rogers substrate
(RO4003) with a dielectric constant of 3.55 and a loss tangent
of 0.0027. The thicknesses of the layers have been arbitrarily selected, and each layer has a thickness of 0.508 mm as illustrated
in Fig. 1(c). The antenna is connected to a 50- SMA connector
between the feed line on the top side of layer 3 and the ground
plane on the bottom side of layer 1.
Full-wave EM simulations are performed using ANSYSHFSS [13], leading to the following optimal dimensions for the
proposed antenna:
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm.
In this design, the fundamental stopband center frequency
corresponding to each ring is approximately given by

Fig. 2. Simulated VSWR versus frequency by varying mean diameter of the

ring resonator located on the top side of layer 2.

Fig. 3. Simulated VSWR versus frequency by varying the axial position along
the -direction and adjusting both width and mean diameter of the ring resonator
located on the top side of layer 2.

(1a)
Therefore
(1b)
where is the mean diameter of the ring, is the guided wavelength, is the speed of light in free space, and
is the effective relative dielectric constant. The arrangement of the ring
resonators could be either above and/or below the actual antenna radiator. Each ring in the structure resonates at different
resonant frequencies by varying the mean diameter. Rings on
the top and bottom side of layer 1 are responsible for generating
the rejection bands for upper WLAN and WiMAX standards,
respectively, while the ring on top of layer 2 is responsible for
generating the rejection band for the lower WLAN standard.

Fig. 4. Measured and simulated VSWR performance of the proposed antenna.

TABLE I
CALCULATED AND OPTIMIZED RING RESONATORS PARAMETERS
CORRESPONDING TO THE REJECTED CENTER FREQUENCY
AND THE REQUIRED BANDWIDTH

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this section, parametric studies have been carried out using
ANSYS-HFSS for providing a better understanding of the antenna operation. Moreover, measured impedance bandwidth
and radiation pattern are discussed. For convenience, results
in Figs. 2 and 3 have been obtained using one ring resonator
located on the top side of layer 2, with the other resonators
removed.
Fig. 2 shows the variation of the VSWR with frequency for
different mean diameters of the ring resonator. Increasing the

mean diameter of the ring resonator leads to negative shift in

the resonant frequency.

ALMALKAWI AND DEVABHAKTUNI: UWB ANTENNA WITH TRIPLE BAND-NOTCHED CHARACTERISTICS

961

Fig. 5. Measured far-field radiation pattern of the proposed antenna at (a) 4, (b) 7, and (c) 9 GHz.

From Fig. 3, it can be seen that for a given rejected center

frequency, the bandwidth is a function of the axial position along
the -axis ( ) as well as the mean diameter ( ) and the ring
width ( ). By fixing the axial position ( ) and applying the
above analysis, the optimized dimensions for each of the ring
resonators ( and ) were found using ANSYS-HFSS after
calculating the mean diameter using (1b) as listed in Table I.
Fig. 4 shows both measured and full-wave EM simulated VSWR characteristics of the proposed antenna. The
frequency performance demonstrates three rejection bands

with VSWR
covering all of WiMAX and lower/upper
WLAN applications, while maintaining VSWR
out of the
rejection bands. A very good agreement between measured
and simulated results is observed. Slight discrepancies could
be attributed to the effects of the SMA connector, which is not
considered in our simulation.
Measurements are carried out for the far-field radiation pattern on the triple band-notched UWB antenna in the custombuilt anechoic chamber with a triple-ridged horn antenna as a
reference at WRTest Labs, Belleville, MI [14]. Fig. 5 depicts

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS

33 30 1.524 mm . The antenna radiator design comprises

a rectangular slot patch fed with a 50- microstrip line.
Triple band-notched frequencies are realized by adding three
closed-loop ring resonators sharing the same vertical axial and
implemented on multiple layers. Having the ring resonators
sharing the same vertical axis led to straightforward fabrication.
The antenna has been fabricated and measured for the purpose
of validating our design. The performance of the proposed
antenna exhibits a good impedance matching and radiation
performance.
It is therefore possible to conclude that the presented antenna
will prove advantageous in modern multilayered microwave circuits such as microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMIC)
or low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technologies.
Fig. 6. Measured and simulated gains of the proposed antenna versus frequency.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their gratitude to
Dr. M. Alam, Chair of the EECS Department, University
of Toledo, Toledo, OH.
REFERENCES

Fig. 7. Photograph of the fabricated antenna. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.

the measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna along

-, -, and -planes at 4, 7, and 9 GHz, respectively. The
-plane (i.e., -plane) patterns are almost omnidirectional for
the three frequencies, in a manner similar to the conventional
dipole antenna. On the other hand, the -plane (i.e., -plane)
patterns are relatively similar to those of a monopole.
Fig. 6 shows the measured and simulated antenna gains, while
Fig. 7 shows a photograph of the fabricated antenna. The gain
was measured at the broadside direction as shown in Fig. 6,
where two identical antennas are separated by a distance of
0.98 m. The transmission coefficient
was measured after a
full two-ports calibration was carried out to a Rhode & Schwarz
ZVB20 vector network analyzer (VNA) and used to calculate
the antenna gain using the following formula [15]:
(2)
where
,
are respectively the transmitter and receiver gain
and are equal in this case.
,
are the transmitted and received powers, and is free-space wavelength in meters.
It is observed that the average gain of the proposed antenna is
about 24.5 dB over the entire operating band, exhibiting general flat gain performance. As well, it is clearly evident that at
the notch bands, the antenna gain drops sharply.
IV. CONCLUSION
A compact and simple multilayered triple band-notched
UWB antenna for WiMAX and lower/upper WLAN applications has been proposed. The overall antenna volume is

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