1982 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO.

8, AUGUST 2003

Broadband CPW-Fed Square Slot Antennas With a

Widened Tuning Stub
Horng-Dean Chen, Member, IEEE

Abstract—By using a coplanar waveguide (CPW) feed with a

widened tuning stub, a square slot antenna for broadband oper-
ation is presented. Experimental results show that the impedance
matching for the proposed antenna strongly depends on the loca-
tion of the tuning stub in the square slot, and the impedance band-
width is mainly determined by the width and length of the tuning
stub. By properly choosing the location and the size of the tuning
stub, a wide impedance bandwidth of 60% can be obtained, which
is about 1.9 times that of a conventional CPW-fed square slot an-
tenna with a simple tuning stub. Details of the experimental results
are presented and discussed.
Index Terms—Broadband operation, coplanar waveguide
(CPW)-fed, square slot antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

B ECAUSE the coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed wide slot an-

tennas have the advantages of wide bandwidth and easy
integration with monolithic microwave integrated circuits, the
designs of the CPW-fed wide slot antennas have recently re- Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed CPW-fed slot antenna with a widened tuning
ceived much attention. A few attempts have been made to in- stub.
crease the bandwidth of CPW-fed slot antennas, including the
use of a wide rectangular slot [1], [2] or a bow-tie slot [3], [4]. has a side length of . Square radiating slot of dimensions
Other broadband designs such as using a patch element loaded is also chosen. A 50 CPW feed line, having a metal strip of
in a circular slot [5] or the hybrid slot [6] have also been used to width and a gap of distance , is used to excite the proposed
obtain a dual-resonance response. However, for these published antenna. The widened tuning stub of length and width is
CPW-fed broadband designs, their impedance bandwidths are connected to the end of the CPW feed line. The spacing between
generally less than 50%. In this paper, an alternative method the tuning stub and edge of the ground plane is . For the de-
for enhancing the impedance bandwidth of CPW-fed square slot sign studied here, the dimensions are chosen to be mm,
antenna is proposed. For this design, a widened tuning stub is mm, mm, and mm. The three
used, and the parameters of the location and size of the tuning parameters of the tuning stub (i.e., , , and ) affect the broad-
stub can control the coupling between the CPW feed line and the band operation of the proposed antenna, and details of the design
radiating slot, which facilitates the impedance matching of the are studied in the following section.
antenna and thus leads to a large bandwidth of 60% obtained. In
this study, several designs are experimentally investigated, and III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
the characteristics of the input impedance and radiation patterns
The proposed antennas with various design parameters have
are analyzed and discussed.
been constructed. As a first step, the capability of the impedance
matching to a 50 CPW feedline for the proposed antenna with
II. ANTENNA DESCRIPTION
a widened tuning stub is considered. In this case, the spacing
Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the proposed CPW-fed square is varied and the effect on the impedance matching is in-
slot antenna with a widened tuning stub. The antenna is printed vestigated. Figs. 2 and 3, respectively, show the measured input
on an FR4 substrate of thickness 1.6 mm and relatively per- impedance on a Smith chart and the corresponding return loss
mitttivity 4.4 . The ground plane is chosen to be square and for different spacings of , where the tuning stub with a length
of mm and a width of mm is used. It is seen
Manuscript received March 16, 2001; revised April 4, 2002. that the resonant input resistance increases as the spacing de-
The author is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Cheng-Shiu creases. A small resonant impedance loop for the antenna with
Institute of Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 833, R.O.C. (e-mail: hd-
chen@cc.csit.edu.tw). mm is observed and moved toward the center of the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2003.814747 Smith chart. The small loop of impedance locus implies that the
0018-926X/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
CHEN: BROADBAND CPW-FED SQUARE SLOT ANTENNAS WITH A WIDENED TUNING STUB 1983

Fig. 3. Measured return loss against frequency for the antennas studied in
Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Measured input impedance on Smith chart for different spacings (S ); of the return loss for the case of mm, obtained from
L = 44 mm, G = 72 mm, ` = 22:5 mm, w = 32 mm, " = 4:4, h = Ansoft High-frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) simulation
1:6 mm, w = 6:37 mm, g = 0:5 mm.
software, is also shown in Fig. 5. Good agreement is observed
between the simulation and the measurement.
coupling between the widened tuning stub and ground plane be- Moreover, it is found that the impedance bandwidth of the
comes stronger as the spacing is reduced. A good impedance proposed design can be further improved by adjusting the
matching for the proposed design is thus obtained by enhancing tuning-stub width . Fig. 5 presents the measured return
the coupling between the widened tuning stub and ground plane. loss for various tuning-stub widths. The corresponding perfor-
Also observed in Fig. 3, the present proposed antenna with a mances are listed in Table I, in which the center frequency
good matching can be implemented only when the spacing is defined as , where and are the lower
mm, and the optimal spacing is found to be about 0.5 mm. and higher frequencies with 10 dB return loss, respectively. In
Next, the effect of the tuning-stub length on the these cases, the optimal tuning-stub length of mm
impedance matching of the antenna is studied. Here, the and the spacing of mm are considered to perform the
width of the tuning stub and the spacing are fixed to be broadband operation. For comparison, the reference antenna
mm and mm, respectively. The typical has been constructed using the same process. This reference
measured impedance loci for various tuning-stub lengths are antenna is completely identical to the proposed antenna with
shown in Fig. 4. For the case of mm in Fig. 4(a), a widened tuning stub except that a simple tuning stub of
there are two resonant modes excited; the lower resonant mm extending into the square slot is used. The
mode is mainly due to the widened tuning stub in this design, reference antenna is also found to have a maximum impedance
excited as a quarter-wavelength monopole antenna, and the bandwidth occurring at mm, and its bandwidth is
higher resonant mode is contributed from the fundamental about 32% or 611 MHz with respect to the center frequency
resonant mode of the square slot antenna. However, the two at 1895 MHz. From the results shown in Fig. 5, it is seen that,
resonant modes are not excited at close frequencies, thus for when the tuning-stub width is less than 36 mm, the lower
the frequencies in-between the two resonant modes, the return frequency with 10 dB return loss is slightly affected with
loss is less than 10 dB. On the other hand, when is decreased, the variation in the tuning-stub width. However, the higher
we see that impedance loci of Fig. 4(b) and (c) only have a frequency with 10 dB return loss significantly increases
resonant loop. This is because the lower resonant frequency with an increase of the tuning-stub width. On the other hand,
is mainly dependent on the length of the tuning stub, and when the width is larger than 36 mm, the lower frequency
the higher resonant frequency is primarily a function of the dramatically increases with an increase of the width,
length of the square slot. Thus, by decreasing the length but the higher frequency is only slightly affected by
of the tuning stub, the higher resonant frequency is only changing the tuning-stub width. From another point of view,
slightly affected, while the lower resonant frequency is quickly the impedance bandwidth increases when the tuning-stub
increased and shifted close to the higher resonant frequency. In width increases from 6.37–36 mm, but decreases when
this case, all the frequencies between and in the two resonant the tuning-stub width increases further from 36–40 mm.
modes have a return loss larger than 10 dB. It can be concluded Consequently, the maximum impedance bandwidth is found
that by properly selecting the tuning-stub length, two resonant to occur at about mm and reaches 1320
modes can be generated at close frequencies and thus results MHz (1560–2880 MHz) or about 60% with respect to the
in a wide bandwidth operation. From the results obtained, it center frequency at 2220 MHz, which is about 1.9 times that
suggests in the proposed design that the optimal length of the (32%) of the reference antenna with a simple tuning stub of
tuning stub for bandwidth enhancement should be selected to mm. It is also noted that an impedance bandwidth
be about 0.5 (22.5 mm). In addition, the simulated result larger than 50% can be obtained when is chosen in the
1984 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003

(a) (b)

(c) (d)
Fig. 4. Measured input impedance on Smith chart for various tuning-stub lengths (`) with S = 0:5 mm and w = 40 mm; other parameters are the same as in
Fig. 2. (a) ` = 32 mm. (b) ` = 27 mm. (c) ` = 22:5 mm. (d) ` = 17 mm.

TABLE I
PERFORMANCE OF THE PROPOSED CPW-FED SLOT ANTENNA WITH VARIOUS
TUNING-STUB WIDTHS (w ); L = 44 mm, G = 72 mm, " = 4:4,
h = 1:6 mm, w = 6:37 mm, g = 0:5 mm, ` = 22:5 mm

Fig. 5. Measured and simulated return loss against frequency for various
tuning-stub widths (w ) with S = 0:5 mm and ` = 22:5 mm; other parameters MHz for antenna 3 in Table I. At MHz,
are the same as in Fig. 2.
the vertical component of the surface current is the main contrib-
utors to the radiation, and the horizontal component contributes
wide range from 26 to 40 mm . This to the cross polarization. Similarly, at MHz, the ra-
suggests that the proposed antenna is relatively insensitive to diation from the vertical component of the electric field is dom-
the fabrication tolerance for achieving a broadband operation. inant, and the cross polarization is largely due to the horizontal
The surface current distribution on the tuning stub and elec- component of the electric field. Thus, for the present design, the
tric field distribution on the square slot for the proposed an- two frequencies are expected to have similar broadside radiation
tenna are simulated and analyzed by using the HFSS simulation characteristics. Fig. 7 shows the measured E plane (y-z plane)
software. Fig. 6 shows the simulated surface current distribu- and H plane (x-z plane) radiation patterns at 1560, 2220,
tion on the tuning stub at the frequency MHz and and 2880 MHz for antenna 3. From the results, it demonstrates
the electric field distribution on the square slot at the frequency that all the operating frequencies have the same polarization
CHEN: BROADBAND CPW-FED SQUARE SLOT ANTENNAS WITH A WIDENED TUNING STUB 1985

(a)

(a)

(b)

(b)
Fig. 6. (a) Simulated surface current distribution on the tuning stub at the
=
(c)
frequency f 1900 MHz , and (b) simulated electric field distribution on
the square slot at the frequency f = 2650 MHz for the antenna studied in Fig. 7. Measured E plane and H plane radiation patterns for the antenna studied
Fig. 5 with w = 36 mm (antenna 3). in Fig. 5 with w = 36 mm (antenna 3). (a) f = 1560 MHz, (b) f = 2220 MHz,
(c) f = 2880 MHz.

planes and similar radiation patterns. It is also noted that both

the E plane and H plane patterns show relatively large cross-po-
larization radiation. This behavior is largely due to the strong
horizontal components of the surface current and electric field
observed, which leads to a significant increase of the cross-po-
larization radiation. Finally, the measured antenna gain in the
broadside direction on the air side is presented in Fig. 8. Result
shows that the measured antenna gain throughout the operating
bandwidth is within a range of 3.75–4.88 dBi.

IV. CONCLUSION

CPW-fed square slot antennas with a widened tuning stub Fig. 8. Measured antenna gain in the broadside direction of the antenna studied
in Fig. 5 with w = 36 mm (antenna 3).
for broadband operation have been designed and successfully
implemented. The proposed antenna with a good impedance
matching has been achieved simply by tuning the spacing be- 0.59 to 0.9 times the slot length, an impedance bandwidth more
tween the tuning stub and the ground plane. In addition, by in- than 50% has been implemented. Further, when the tuning-stub
corporating the use of the tuning-stub length having about half width is chosen to be about 0.81 times the slot length, an optimal
of the slot length and the tuning-stub width ranging in about impedance bandwidth reaching about 60% has been obtained.
1986 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 51, NO. 8, AUGUST 2003

REFERENCES Horng-Dean Chen (S’95–A’95–M’99) received the

B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National
[1] X. Ding and A. F. Jacob, “CPW-fed slot antenna with wide radiating
Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, R.O.C., in
apertures,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng/ Microwave Antennas Propagation, 1984 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
vol. 145, pp. 104–108, 1998.
engineering from National Sun Yat-Sen University,
[2] J. F. Huang and C. W. Kuo, “CPW-fed slot antenna with CPW tuning Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C. in 1992 and 1995,
stub loading,” Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 19, pp. 257–258, respectively.
1998.
From 1995 to 1999, he was an Associate Professor
[3] E. A. Soliman, S. Brebels, P. Delmotte, G. A. E. Vandenbosch, and E. with the Department of Electronic Engineering,
Beyne, “Bow-tie slot antenna fed by CPW,” Electron. Lett., vol. 35, pp.
Nai-Tai Institute of Technology. Currently, he is
514–515, 1999. an Associate Professor with the Department of
[4] M. Miao, B. L. Ooi, and P. S. Kooi, “Broadband CPW-fed wide slot
Electronic Engineering, Cheng-Shiu Institute of Technology, Kaohsiung,
antenna,” Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 25, pp. 206–211, 2000. Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include print microstrip and slot antennas
[5] E. A. Soliman, S. Brebels, E. Beyne, and G. A. E. Vandenbosch,
for wireless communications.
“CPW-fed cusp antenna,” Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 22, pp.
288–290, 1999.
[6] A. U. Bhobe, C. L. Holloway, M. Piket-May, and R. Hall, “Coplanar
waveguide fed wideband slot antenna,” Electron. Lett., vol. 36, pp.
1340–1342, 2000.