Design and Characterization of Miniaturized Printed Antenna for UWB Communication Systems

An electrically small ultra-wideband antenna for modern compact devices is presented in this paper. The antenna is constructed using a low-cost FR4 substrate, where etching slot and stub loading techniques are utilized to achieve miniaturization. The antenna comprises of simple geometrical structure with an overall size of 0.13 lambda(o) x 0.19 lambda(o) x 0.02 lambda(o) (lambda(o) is the free-space wavelength at 3.5 GHz). A sample prototype was fabricated and tested to validate various performance parameters of the antenna. The antenna has measured 10 dB impedance bandwidth ranging from 3.55-12.16 GHz with a stable gain having a maximum value of 4.52 dBi. The performance comparison with state-of-the-art works shows that the proposed antenna offers the advantages of miniaturized size, simple geometry along with competitive bandwidth and stable radiation characteristics.