Miniaturized curved slotted patch antenna over a fractalized EBG ground plane

Abstract

In this paper, a miniaturized coaxial feed curved-slotted microstrip patch antenna over a fractalized uniplanar compact electromagnetic bandgap (F-UC-EBG) ground plane is proposed and investigated. Compact size is achieved by cutting the curved slots along the orthogonal directions of the patch radiator. The curved-slotted microstrip patch antenna is 38.30% miniaturized as compared with the conventional microstrip patch antenna resonating at 2.38 GHz. Furthermore, the ordinary ground plane of the curved slotted patch antenna is replaced by the F-UC-EBG ground plane. Due to the slow wave phenomenon created in the F-UC-EBG structure and the better impedance matching at the lower frequency further miniaturization and improved performance are obtained. The proposed antenna shows 74.76% miniaturization as compared with the conventional microstrip patch antenna resonating at 1.57 GHz and has 2.61% 10-dB fractional bandwidth, 1.49 dB gain, and 81.59% radiation efficiency. The proposed antenna is fabricated on a low-cost FR4 substrate having an overall volume of 0.184λ0 × 0.184λ0 × 0.0236λ0 at 1.57 GHz GPS band. The measured and simulated results are in good agreement and predicting appropriateness of the antenna in portable and handheld communication systems for GPS applications.