Wideband Dipole Antenna for WLAN

Zhijun Zhang, Magdy F. Iskander, Jean Christophe Lange?, Jim Mathews

I . Patent Pending 2. Amphenol T&MAniennas, 82s cooperale woods pkny, Vemon Hiils, IL60061 USA 3. Hawaii Center for Advanced Communications, College o Engineering, Universily of Hawaii al f Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA

I. Introduction Wireless communication has developed rapidly in the past decade and it has already dramatic impact in our life. Wireless local area network (WLAN) is one of the most important applications of wireless communication. WLAN takes advantage of license free frequency bands, industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) bands. W A N frequency span is from 2.412GHz to 2.482GHz (IEEE 802.11b and IEEE 802.11g) and from 5.15GHz to 5.825GHz (IEEE 802.lla). The integration of both bands into one device using a dual-band antenna design becomes critical.
Various kinds of antennas, such as a reduced size PIFA [l], a dual loop antenna [2] and a double T antenna [3] have been proposed to provide dual-band operation. These antennas are suitable for low profile installation but can not provide uniform omni-directional coverage. Suh and etc. reported a printed dipole antenna [4] for dual-band operation, in which two separate dipoles of different arm lengths are printed on both sides of a dielectric substrate. Su and etc. also reported a dual-band dipole [5] with two resonances obtained by cutting U-slot on the arms of dipole. Chen reported a multi-band printed sleeve dipole antenna [6]. This antenna uses different strip pairs to compose various frequency resonances. Existing dual-band designs are to obtain full resonance at both bands. Following this approach existing dual-band dipoles achieve either low efficiency [6] or limited bandwidth in the 5GHz band [4,5].

A novel dualband dipole antenna for wireless local area network (WLAN) is proposed in this paper. A prototype dipole was made and measured. Measured VSWR 2:l bandwidth is 710MHz at 2.4GHz band and wider than IGHz at 5GHz band. Measured 3:l bandwidth is wider than 3.6GHz. ranging from 2.32GHz to above 6GHz. The dipole achieves 85%-87% efficiency in the 2.4GH.z band and 55-64% efficiency in the 5GHz band.
11. Theory The approach proposed in this paper is to design an antenna with full resonance only in the 2.4GHz band and use a matching network to get artificial resonance at the 5GHz band. The design goal is to obtain optimal performance with the simplest matching network. The antenna impedance should be designed as close as possible to the source impedance, typically S n If the o. antenna complex impedance is kept inside some special range, it is proven that the matching network can be reduced to a single component. Due to variations in mass production, the antenna bandwidth should be wider than the working bandwidth, for example 5GHz to 6GHz instead of 5.15GHz to 5.825GHz, to guarantee a good yield. As a rule of thumb, to obtain acceptable radiated performance, VSWR of 5GHz band without matching network should be less than 5:l

To widen the bandwidth of a single band dipole, increasing the width of dipole arms is a widely used method. In this paper increasing the width of printed dipole was also used but for a different purpose: to increase the radiation impedance in the 5GHz band. Figure 1 shows the geometry of a dipole of length L, width W used in simulation. The dipole is printed on an FR4 ( ~ ~ 4 .substrate 5) with thickness H. The two hatched rectangular pieces in Figure 1 are copper traces on the top of the substrate. The gap between the two traces is G and the printed dipole is fed at the middle of the gap.

Figure 1 Diagram of printed dipole

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HFSS@ is used to simulate geometries of the dual-band dipole. Figure 2 shows simulated VSWR The other and impedance of dipoles with different widths W (W=Zmm, 7mm and 12"). parameters are kept fixed for all simulations: L=48mm, G=lmm and H=0.45mm. VSWR and Smith charts are shown in Figures 2a and 2b respectively. Figure 2a shows that the bandwidth at 2.4GHz increases with the width W and that the VSWR in SGHz band decreases. VSWR in the SGHz band is approximately 6:l for a 7mm wide dipole, 4:l for a 12" wide dipole. Figure 2b shows that, as the width of the dipole arms increases, the SGHz impedance moves out of the range where a single serial inductor can match the antenna.

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Figure 2 Simulated VSWR and impedance for dipoles of different widths Dipole (L=48mm, G=lmm) on an FR4 board (~,=4.5,H=0.45mm) To match the SGHz band without deteriorating the 2.4GHz band response, only a serial inductor or a shunt capacitor can be used as matching component. The dual band dipole proposed in this paper is always capacitive at 5GHz, thus only a serial inductor can be used. It is the case when the antenna impedance of 5GHz band falls into any of the two shaded areas shown in Figure 2b. The attempt is now to modify the antenna design to shift the 5GHz band impedance back in shaded Area. Different techniques can be used to move impedance points on a Smith chart, such as cutting slots in the dipole or using a variable width design. In this paper, copper traces are chamfered symmetrically near the feeding point (see Figure 3). The antenna impedance can be tuned with the chamfer angle, which is set in this paper to 45 degrees, and the chamfer length t, which value ranges from 0 to W/2.

Figure 3 Diagram of 45' chamfered printed dipole Figures 4a and 4b show respectively simulated VSWR and impedance of dipoles with different ". The other parameters are set as follows: L=48mm, chamfer lengths (t=Omm, 2mm and 4) G=lmm, H=0.45mm, W=12mm. Figure 4a shows a slight decrease in the 2.4GHz bandwidth and slight improvement in the 5GHz VSWR when t increases. Figure 4b shows that the 5GHz band impedance moves anti-clockwise as t increases so that the 5GHz band impedance falls into the shaded Area when t=4mm. A 1.5nH series inductor is then used to match the antenna impedance to an acceptable VSWR level.

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a. VSWR b. Impedance Figure 4 Simulated VSWR and impedance of different chamfered dipoles. L=48mm, G=lmm, W=12mm FR4 board ( q 4 . 5 ) thickness H=0.45mm

11 1. Experiments The final dipole was built on a FR4 board with thickness H=0.45mm. The parameters of the dipole are L=45mm, G=lmm, W=lZmm and t 4 m m . A Johanson Technology 1.5nH inductor was connected in series between the center wire of coaxial cable and one arm of the dipole as a matching component. The outer conductor of the coaxial cable was connected to the other arm of the dipole. The self-resonant frequency of the 1.5nH inductor is higher than 15GHz, which is much higher than the highest operating frequency of the dipole proposed in this paper.
Figures 5 and 6 show respectively VSWR and Smith charts of this dipole. Simulated and measured results are consistent. The VSWR 2:1 bandwidth at 2.4GHz is 710MHz,ranging from 2.32GHz to 3.03GHz. The VSWR 2:1 bandwidth at 5GHz ranges from 5GHz to a frequency point above 6GHz. The 3:1 bandwidth is larger than 3.6GHz and ranges from 2.32GHz to frequencies above 6GHz.

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Figure 5 Simulated VSWR vs. measured VSWR Figure 6 Simulated vs. measured Impedance

Figure 7 shows measured antenna pattems. A SatimoB 3D near field chamber is used to measure radiation pattems in different plane cuts, and provides in particular efficiency numbers of the antenna. Eficiency ranges from 85% to 87% in the 2.4GHz band, and from 55% to 64% in the 5GHz band. The efficiency drop seen in the 5GHz is due to mismatch, dielectric, conductor and matching component losses. The average gain in the azimuth (y-z) plane ranges from 1.3 dBi to 1.5 dBi in the 2.4GHz band and from -0.2 dBi to 0.3 dBi in the 5GHz band.

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IV. Conclusion A dual band dipole was proposed in this paper. A single serial inductor is used as a matching network to get optimal performance in both WLAN bands. The dipole was prototyped and tested. Measured and simulated results are consistent. The VSWR 2 1 bandwidth is 710MHz in the 2.4GHz band and larger than lGHz in the 5GHz band, which exceed the bandwidth requirements of any WLAN application. The 3:l bandwidth is larger than 3.6GHz and ranges from 2.32GHz to frequencies above 6GHz. Free space efficiency for the proposed dipole ranges from 85% to 87% in the 2.4GHz band and from 55% to 64% in the 5GHz band.
References [I] D. Nashaat, H. A. Elsadek and H. Ghali, Dual-band reduced size PIFA antenna with U-slot for bluetooth and WLAN applications, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2003, USA, vol. 2, pp. 962-965 [2] C. C. Lin, G. Y. Lee and K. L. Wong, Surface-mount dual-loop antenna for 2.4/5GHz WLAN operation, Electron. Lett., vol. 39, pp. 1302 -1304, September4 2003. [3] Y. L. Kuo and K. L. Wong, Printed double-T monopole antenna for 2.4/5.2 GHz dual-band W A N operations, IEEE transactions on antennas and propagation, vol. 51, n 9, pp. 2187-2192, September2003 [4] Y. H. Suh and K. Chang, Low cost microstrip-fed dual frequency printed dipole antenna for wireless communications,Electron. Lett., vol. 36, pp, 1177-1 179, July 6,2000. [SI C. M. Su, H. T. Chen and K. L. Wong, Printed dual-band dipole antenna with U-slotted arms for 2.4/5.2GHz WLAN operation, Electron. Lett., vol. 38, pp. 1308-1309, October 24,2002. [6] T. L. Chen, Multi-band printed sleeve dipole antenna, Electron. Lett., vol. 39, pp. 1&15, January 9, 2003.

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