1182
10, 2011
A CPW-Fed Broadband Circularly Polarized
Regular-Hexagonal Slot Antenna
With L-Shape Monopole
Shui-Wei Zhou, Ping-Hui Li, Yang Wang, Wei-Hua Feng, and Zong-Quan Liu
Abstract—A regular-hexagonal structure of wide-slot antenna
for broadband circular polarization (CP) based on coplanar
waveguide (CPW) feed is presented. By protruding into the slot an
L-shape monopole patch, and featuring two inverted-L grounded
strips around two opposite sides of the slot, wide impedance
bandwidth and wide axial-ratio (AR) bandwidth can be obtained
simultaneously. By notching a rectangle in the ground conductor
near the feed line, the antenna performance is further improved.
The proposed antenna can provide an impedance bandwidth
( 10 dB) of 86% and a 3-dB AR bandwidth of 50%,
respectively.
Index Terms—Broadband antennas, circular polarization (CP),
coplanar waveguides (CPWs), slot antennas.
I. INTRODUCTION
A S THE development of modern communications, the
introduction of many new high-speed communication
technologies has made the bandwidth of microstrip antenna
become an important factor to limit its application. To ob-
tain broad impedance bandwidth and broad axial-ratio (AR)
bandwidth, a variety of methods have been proposed [1]–[10].
Multifeeds are employed in [1] and [2]; with an additional
parasitic patch, the antennas achieve a circularly polarized (CP)
bandwidth of about 45%. Such structures reduce the low-profile
characteristics of microstrip antennas more or less. Addition-
ally, the introduction of power-divider networks increases
the complexity of antennas. Wide slot in the ground plane
of the antenna or ground plane deforming can increase the
bandwidth and simplify its structure. By using an asymmetric
fed monopole patch and embedding a slit and a stub on the
deforming ground, the antenna achieves 31.6% CP bandwidth
and 102.5% impedance bandwidth [3]. In [4], the dipole patches
integrate with the ground on one side of the substrate, and an
L-shaped microstrip feeder is printed on the dorsal. The feed
line is connected to the short arm of the dipole by means of a via.
A CP bandwidth of 25% is achieved in this structure. However,
the gain of this structure is low. Being fed by coplanar wave-
guide (CPW-fed) structures [5]–[10], a microstrip antenna can
Manuscript received July 17, 2011; revised August 29, 2011 and September
21, 2011; accepted October 10, 2011. Date of publication October 19, 2011; date
of current version October 31, 2011.
The authors are with the Institute of Communications Engineering, PLA
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210007, China (e-mail:
zhoushuiwei1984@163.com; Li_ph@sina.com; wydmail999@126.com;
fwh110@sina.com; zongquan1984@163.com).
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.2011.2172570
1536-1225/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
obtain wide operating bandwidth, too, and its single metallic
layer is better to meet the requirements of the low profile and
is easier to integrate with the active and monolithic circuits
than traditional antennas. References [8] and [9] proposed two
CPW-fed rectangular slot antennas. The former protrudes an
L-shaped microstrip from one corner into the slot, the latter
features two inverted-L grounded strips around two opposite
corners of the slot as perturbation structures. They realize
circular polarization with axial-ratio bandwidth of 17% and
25%, respectively. The gain is 2 dB higher when compared to
the antennas proposed in [3] and [4]. In [10], meander line and
corrugated structure are used to increase the electrical length of
the antenna. By this way, the antenna size is reduced to some
extent.
This letter proposes a regular-hexagonal-slot antenna based
on CPW-fed. The pair of inverted-L grounded strips works as
perturbation structures so that two orthogonal resonant modes
can be excited. A notch is embedded on the ground to fur-
ther improve the impedance bandwidth and CP bandwidth. The
structure will generate right- and left-hand circularly polarized
(RHCP and LHCP) radiation in - and -directions, respec-
tively. According to measured results, the impedance bandwidth
is about 86%, entirely covering the 3-dB AR bandwidth, which
is about 50%. Meanwhile, the proposed antenna has a relatively
small size, low profile, and simple feeding structure.
II. DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF ANTENNA
The configuration of the proposed antenna is illustrated in
Fig. 1. It comprises an L-monopole and a regular hexagonal
ring combined with a pair of inverted-L strips. The outer and
inner radii of the hexagonal ring are mm and
mm, respectively. The hexagonal ring together with a pair
of L-type strips of width make up the ground plane. The
proposed antenna is fed by a 50- CPW having a feed line of
width and two identical gaps of width . In the slot, there
is an L-shape monopole that connects to the feed line. The short
and long arms of the L-monopole have sizes of and
, respectively. The gap between the short arm and the
side of the hexagonal ring nearest to the arm has a width of
. The whole patches are fabricated on a regular-hexagonal
Polyflon NorCLAD substrate with both side length and radius
of mm, a height of mm, and relative permittivity
. On the rear side of the substrate, there is no metallic
patch.
In general, an ideal circular polarization is generated by two
orthogonal electric field vectors with equal amplitudes and a
ZHOU et al.: CPW-FED BROADBAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED REGULAR-HEXAGONAL SLOT ANTENNA WITH L-SHAPE MONOPOLE
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed CPW-fed antenna.
Fig. 2. Simulated surface current distribution at 3.3 GHz before and after
notching.
90 phase difference (PD). As seen from Fig. 2, two orthogonal
surface currents, including the vertical and horizontal currents,
are generated in the two arms of the L-shape monopole. How-
ever, only elliptically polarized wave is excited in the Fig. 2
“before notching” because the amplitudes of the two orthog-
onal currents are unequal and the PD may not be strictly 90 .
An ideal current distribution is obtained when the amplitudes of
the two orthogonal currents are equal and PD is 90 . To achieve
this, the perturbation of a pair of grounded L-type strips is em-
ployed to adjust the currents in the L-shape monopole so that
amplitudes of the two orthogonal currents tend to be equal. By
adjusting the two arms’ size of the L-shape monopole, the cou-
pling intensity between the L-shape monopole and L-type strips
can be changed, thereby the amplitudes of the two orthogonal
currents are changed. Moreover, embedding a rectangle notch
on the ground further increases the antenna’s impedance band-
width and AR bandwidth. Fig. 2 shows the surface current of
the L-monopole both before and after notching. The main dif-
ference is the amplitudes of the surface currents in the two arms,
and the surface current distribution in the short arm and the
joint of the two arms is a bit more regular after notching. In
Section III, the letter shows that when the notch location and
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Fig. 3. Simulated return losses of the gap width .
Fig. 4. Simulated return losses of the gap width .
sizes are appropriate, the values of return loss and AR are both
reduced.
III. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS FOR THE ANTENNA
In order to achieve good performance for broadband circular
polarization, a series of parameter adjustments have been done.
By changing different parameters one by one to find their im-
pacts on the performance of the antenna, the optimized sizes
of the antenna can be selected. The gap width , , L-shape
monopole, and rectangular notch size are especially examined
and compared to find the influences on the antenna impedance
bandwidth and AR bandwidth. The simulations are carried out
using the finite element method software Ansoft HFSS ver. 10.0.
A. Step One: The Effects of the Two Gap Widths ,
The rectangular notch was not added to the antenna origi-
nally. There is a strong coupling effect as the feed line and the
L-monopole are in close proximity to the ground conductor.
When it tunes , , the return loss curve will be greatly af-
fected. The initial set of , are both 1 mm. Figs. 3 and 4 show
the variety of when adjusting one of the two gap widths with
a value of the other fixed. As can be seen, the results are good
relatively when is 0.7 mm and is in the range of 1 1.3 mm.
B. Step Two: The Effects of L-Type Sizes
Simulated results unveil that the effects of the length of the
long arm ( ) on antenna performance are opposite to that of
1184 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 10, 2011

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured return losses of the proposed antenna.

Fig. 5. Effect of the notch position on antenna parameters: (a) Rerun losses;
(b) AR (in -direction).
Fig. 7. Simulated and measured ARs in -direction of the proposed antenna.

the width of the short arm ( ). The AR is meliorated when

TABLE I
is prolonged, while the return loss gets worse. When DIMENSIONS OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA (UNIT: MILLIMETERS)
is increased, return loss is improved while the AR gets worse,
and vice versa. Based on an overall consideration, the sizes of
the long arm and short arm are selected as 13.3 7.3 mm and
8.3 7.7 mm , respectively. The return loss and AR with the
selected sizes are shown as the “Before notched” curve in Fig. 5.

C. Step Three: The Effects of the Rectangular Notch

As seen from Fig. 5, broad impedance bandwidth and broad
AR bandwidth have been obtained before notching. Considering
the measured results may not be as good as simulated ones, and
in order to further improve the performance of the proposed
antenna, a rectangular notch is embedded in the ground plane
on the left side of the signal strip. Fig. 5 depicts the variety
of antenna performance when adjusting the notch position. The
value of the notch sizes is selected as 4 4 mm , and the width
of , which represents the position of the notch, is selected as
1 mm by comparison of simulated results.
IV. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
According to the results of numerical analysis, the optimized
dimensions of the proposed antenna are listed in Table I. Then,
the antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured and
simulated are shown in Fig. 6. The measured impedance
bandwidth (10-dB return loss) is about 2.7 GHz from 1.8 to
4.5 GHz, representing 86% with respect to the center fre-
quency 3.15 GHz. The measured and simulated results are
in good agreement. Fig. 7 illustrates a plot of the measured
and simulated ARs against frequency. The measured 3-dB
AR bandwidth is from 2.25 to 3.75 GHz, which is about
1.5-GHz bandwidth, corresponding to 50% with respect to the
center frequency 3 GHz. The measured results shift to lower
frequency compared to the simulated ones. The reasons may
be the following three aspects: 1) the rough welded joint of
the SMA connector of the antenna; 2) the existence of leakage
current on the outside of the coaxial cable (these factors may
vary the phase of orthogonal fields, which in turn affects the
measured result); and 3) anechoic chamber measurement error
caused by the environment.
Figs. 8 and 9 depict a simulated AR against frequency and
theta in both -plane and -plane. The measured normal-
ized LHCP and RHCP radiation patterns at frequencies of 2.4
and 3.4 GHz are shown in Figs. 10 and 11, respectively. At
2.4 GHz, the measured 3-dB AR beamwidths in the -plane
and -plane are about 105 and 60 , which are about 70 and
40 at 3.4 GHz, respectively. It shows that the AR beamwidth
of the -plane is broader than that of the -plane and lower
ZHOU et al.: CPW-FED BROADBAND CIRCULARLY POLARIZED REGULAR-HEXAGONAL SLOT ANTENNA WITH L-SHAPE MONOPOLE
Fig. 8. Simulated AR beamwidth against frequency in the -plane.
Fig. 9. Simulated AR beamwidth against frequency in the -plane.
Fig. 10. Measured radiation pattern at 2.4 GHz of the proposed antenna.
Fig. 11. Measured radiation pattern at 3.4 GHz of the proposed antenna.
frequency is broader than higher frequency. The reason why
the CP radiation patterns are not omnidirectional is that the
L-monopole is not a symmetric structure. Fig. 12 shows the sim-
1185
Fig. 12. Simulated and measured gain in -direction of the proposed antenna.
ulated and measured gain against frequency, which is greater
than 2.5 dBic in the 3-dB AR bandwidth.
V. CONCLUSION
Grounding on broadband characteristics of CPW-fed slot
antenna, a novel regular-hexagonal-slot antenna based on
CPW-fed is presented. By protruding into the slot an L-shape
monopole patch and featuring two inverted-L grounded strips
around two opposite sides of the slot together with a rectangular
notch near the signal strip, the proposed antenna can provide an
impedance bandwidth of 86% and an AR bandwidth of 50%,
respectively. The proposed antenna can be used for indoors,
tunnel and subway stations, Wi-Fi/WiMax communication
systems, and other broadband communication systems for its
advantages of low weight, low production cost, simple struc-
ture, easy fabrication, broad bandwidth, and no complicated
feeding networks.
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