A compact ultra-wideband receiving antenna for monitoring applications

In this paper, a compact ultra-wideband receiving antenna is proposed. It consists of a top loaded planar monopole and a circular ground plane. This design combines various techniques such as the comb shaped top loading and the integrated lumped elements to effectively reduce the antenna size, while keeping a wide bandwidth and a reasonable realized gain. The proposed antenna operates across a wide frequency range from 20 to 8 GHz (for S-11 <-6 dB), occupies a compact volume of 500 x 500 x 340 mm(3) (0.033 lambda(0) x 0.033 lambda(0) x 0.023 lambda(0) at 20 MHz) and has a stable omnidirectional radiation pattern in azimuth plane from 20 to 6 GHz. Simulations and measurements are conducted to validate the antenna performance. It is demonstrated that this antenna is well suited to a variety of wideband radio frequency receivers for monitoring use.