A Novel Quad-Band Branched Monopole Antenna with a Filter Suppressing Higher Order Modes

This paper proposes a novel quad-band branched monopole antenna with a filter. The proposed antenna has a simple configuration in which branch-elements are added to a basic configuration consisting of a mast and dielectric wires. The antenna is characterized by performances such as wideband impedance matching, gain stabilization, and gain enhancement. Wideband impedance characteristics satisfying the voltage standing ratio of less than 2 are obtained by exciting a parallel resonance at the lowest band and multi-resonance at high bands. The filter suppressing higher order modes is used for gain stabilization, so that averaged gains above 5 dBi are obtained at the quad-band. The antenna has a high gain of 11.1 dBi because the branch-elements work as an end-fire array antenna at the highest band. Furthermore, it is clarified that an operating frequency is switched by using a variable bandpass filter at the lowest band. Last, a scale model of the antenna is fabricated and measured, then the effectiveness of the proposed antenna is demonstrated.