IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

1357

Dual-Polarized Dual-Band Patch Antenna Loaded

With Modified Mushroom Unit Cell
Kushmanda Saurav, Student Member, IEEE, Debdeep Sarkar, Student Member, IEEE, and
Kumar Vaibhav Srivastava, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractIn this letter, novel designs of a triple-band linearly

polarized patch antenna as well as a dual-band dually polarized
patch antenna are proposed. A square slot is etched out along the
diagonal of a conventional patch antenna, which is further loaded
with a modified mushroom unit cell to achieve a triple-band operation. The lower-order modes are combined to achieve a circularly polarized mode, thus leading to the design of a dual-band dually polarized patch antenna. Both the triple- and dual-band prototypes of a modified mushroom loaded patch are fabricated to
validate the results obtained in simulation. The results obtained in
both the electromagnetic (EM) simulations and measurements are
in good agreement.
Index TermsCircular polarization, complementary split-ring
resonator (CSRR), mushroom unit cell, patch antenna.

I. INTRODUCTION

O COMPLY with the requirements of modern-day

communication appliances, the design of compact and
multiband antennas is becoming increasingly popular. A patch
antenna being low-profile and conformable with planar and
nonplanar surfaces is the most attractive candidate [1] for
such applications. A circularly polarized antenna allows stable
data transmission irrespective of orientation of transmitter and
receiver. Hence, it is most suitable for portable and handheld
mobile devices. Circular polarization (CP) in a conventional
patch antenna can be achieved by simultaneous excitation of
two orthogonally polarized modes with a 90 phase difference [2]. In literature, there exist a large number of techniques
of achieving CP in a microstrip patch antenna using both singleand dual-feed configurations [2]. However, the single-feed design is more popular as it avoids the use of an external power
divider. Recently, the use of subwavelength resonators to
achieve multiband performance in the conventional printed antennas has become very popular [3][4]. Loading metamaterial
resonators in addition to the conventional edge trimming and
cutting slots in patch antennas to achieve circular polarization
are also gaining wide attention [5][12]. In [12], the orientation
of the gap of a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR)
relative to the feedpoint in the patch is utilized to achieve a CP
for the CSRR-loaded patch antenna.
In this letter, a mushroom unit cell loaded with a CSRR is
placed into the square-shaped slot etched along the diagonal of

Manuscript received May 29, 2014; accepted June 29, 2014. Date of publication July 21, 2014; date of current version July 25, 2014.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India (e-mail:
kushmandasaurav@gmail.com; debdeep1989@gmail.com; kvs@iits.ac.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2337911

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed slotted patch antenna loaded with
mm,
mm,
mm,
a mushroom unit cell.
mm,
mm.

Fig. 2. Photograph of fabricated antenna. (a) Top view. (b) Bottom view.

a patch antenna to achieve triple-band operation (see Figs. 1

and 2). The first two frequency modes are orthogonally polarized. The slot parameters are tuned to enable excitation of the
two orthogonally polarized lower-order modes simultaneously,
resulting in a circularly polarized mode, thus finally leading
to the design of a dual-band dually polarized patch antenna.
The CSRR is etched out from the conventional mushroom unit
cell for the reduction of its shunt resonance frequency. Unlike
in [12], the orientation of the CSRR does not affect the polarization characteristics of the proposed antenna.
Commercial FEM based electromagnetic simulator Ansys
HFSS is used for the design and optimization of the proposed
antenna.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN METHODOLOGY
A. Reference Antenna Design
A conventional square patch antenna operating at around
2.5 GHz is chosen as the reference design. Low-cost FR4 epoxy
substrate (
,
) with copper trace of 17 m
is used for the antenna design. A square slot is cut out along the

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 3. Top and side views of mushroom unit cell. (a) Conventional sievenpiper
mushroom unit cell. (b) Modified mushroom unit cell loaded with CSRR.
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm,
mm.
Fig. 5. Plot of
with frequency for three different antennas: (a) reference
patch antenna; (b) patch loaded with square slot; (c) proposed slotted patch antenna with mushroom unit cell.

Fig. 4. Dispersion characteristics of the mushroom unit cell.

diagonal of the patch at a distance of

from the center. The
slotted patch antenna operates at two orthogonally polarized
modes, one centered at 2.24 GHz and the other at 2.48 GHz.
B. Modified Mushroom Unit Cell
The mushroom unit cell used in the antenna design is a modified version of the conventional sievenpiper mushroom unit
cell [13][15]. The CSRR is etched out from the center of the
sievenpiper mushroom unit cell (Fig. 3). Thus, the shunt resonance frequency of the unit cell can be tuned by changing the
parameters of the CSRR. The unit cell provided in this letter is
similar to the unit cell given in [15]. However, here only one unit
cell is used as a loading element in the slotted patch antenna to
get multiband performance, whereas multiple unit cells are used
as electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) in [15]. Fig. 4 shows the
dispersion characteristics of both the conventional and modified
mushroom unit cell. The shunt resonance frequency is shifted
from 4 to 2.4 GHz by etching out the CSRR from the conventional mushroom unit cell. Hence, the electrical size of the conventional mushroom unit cell is miniaturized by 40%.
C. Triple-Band Antenna Design
For designing the triple-band antenna, the modified mushroom unit cell bearing shunt resonance frequency of 2.4 GHz is
loaded into the slot. Fig. 5 shows the comparison of the
of
the reference patch antenna, patch with square slot, and slotted
patch loaded with modified mushroom unit cell. The slotted
patch along with the mushroom unit cell operates at three resonant frequency bands as shown in Fig. 5. The first and third
resonance frequency bands centered at 2.24 and 2.52 GHz are
orthogonal modes of the slotted patch antenna, while the second

Fig. 6. Electric field distribution on the substrate and patch for the three different frequencies (a) 2.24, (b) 2.36, and (c) 2.52 GHz.

resonance frequency band centered at 2.36 GHz is due to the

modified mushroom unit cell loaded in the slotted patch.
The orthogonal modes of the slotted patch are polarized along
the respective diagonals of the patch antenna as shown in Fig. 6.
The diagonal along
bearing the slot corresponds to the
higher resonant frequency band centered at 2.52 GHz, while the
other diagonal along
corresponds to the lower resonant
frequency band centered at 2.24 GHz. Since the mushroom unit
cell is loaded into the slot etched along
, the resonant
frequency mode that is inspired from the mushroom resonance
is also polarized along
. The field concentration is
more on the mushroom unit cell at 2.36 GHz, which clearly
indicates that the resonance is inspired due to shunt resonance
of the mushroom unit cell.
Comparison between the simulated and measured
of
the modified mushroom loaded slotted patch is depicted in
Fig. 7. Measured impedance bandwidth (
dB) of
2.2%, 1.01%, and 2% for the three resonant frequency bands
are achieved in measurement. Due to some inaccuracy in
fabrication, impedance matching in the second band is somewhat affected as compared to the simulation. Fig. 8 shows the
simulated and measured radiation patterns at the three resonant
frequencies along
and
planes. Peak realized

SAURAV et al.: DUAL-POLARIZED DUAL-BAND PATCH ANTENNA LOADED WITH MODIFIED MUSHROOM UNIT CELL

Fig. 7. Plot of

1359

with frequency for the proposed triple-band antenna.

Fig. 9. Variation of
(millimeters).

Fig. 10. Plot of

patch antenna.

with frequency for different values of slot parameter

with frequency for the proposed dual-band dually polarized

Fig. 11. Plot of axial ratio with frequency for the proposed dual-band dually
polarized patch antenna.
Fig. 8. 2-D radiation pattern of the triple-band patch antenna. (a)
(2.24 GHz). (b)
(2.24 GHz). (c)
(2.36 GHz). (d)
(2.36 GHz). (e)
(2.52 GHz). (f)
(2.52 GHz).

gains of 2.44, 2.12, and 1.64 dBi are achieved at 2.24, 2.36,
and 2.52 GHz respectively.
D. Dual-Band Dually Polarized Antenna
In the previous design, the electric fields are oriented orthogonally at the two lower-order frequency modes, one along
and the other along
. The phase difference of 90 is automatically introduced between the modes, as
the probe used for feeding the antenna is located centrally and
the wave goes from the probe to the two diagonal lines with
a phase lead and lag of 45 [6]. To achieve a circularly polarized mode, the two orthogonal modes have to be excited simultaneously. The simultaneous excitation of the two lower-order

modes are achieved by varying the slot parameter . Fig. 9

shows the variation in
with the change in the values of
. Circularly polarized mode is achieved corresponding to the
mm.
value of
Fig. 10 shows the simulated and measured
of the proposed dual-band dually polarized antenna. In simulation, 10-dB
bandwidths of 3.5% centered at 2.3 GHz and 1.97% centered
at 2.56 GHz are obtained, whereas the measured result shows
bandwidths of 4.56% centered at 2.31 GHz and 2.15% centered
at 2.56 GHz. Fig. 11 shows the plot of simulated and measured
axial ratio for the proposed antenna. Due to fabrication tolerance, the lower-order modes could not be merged properly, and
a minimum axial ratio of 1.8 dB at 2.33 GHz is achieved in comparison to 0.5 dB at 2.31 GHz in simulation. However, 3-dB
axial-ratio bandwidths of 1.2% and 1.1% are achieved both in
measurement and simulation, respectively.

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

. The radiapolarized behavior. It is polarized along

tion patterns in E-plane (
) and H-plane (
) are
shown in Fig. 13(c) and (d). LHCP gain of 2 dBic is achieved
at 2.3 GHz in simulation, while peak realized gain of 2.27 dBi
is achieved at 2.54 GHz.
III. CONCLUSION

Fig. 12. Surface current distribution on the slotted patch for different time instants at 2.31 GHz.

The idea of loading a slotted patch antenna with a modified

mushroom unit cell to achieve a triple-band operation with orthogonally polarized modes is introduced. The lower-order orthogonally polarized modes are further combined to achieve a
circularly polarized mode. Thus, the dual-band antenna exhibits
a circularly polarized behavior at the lower band while retaining
linearly polarized nature in the upper band. The radiation patterns for both the triple-band and dual prototype resemble that of
the reference patch antenna. The simulated and measured return
loss and far-field radiation patterns of the proposed antennas are
in good agreement. The patch, slot, and modified mushroom unit
cell dimensions can be varied to make the operating bands encompass several wireless communication standards.
REFERENCES

Fig. 13. 2-D radiation pattern of the dual-band dually polarized patch antenna
(circularly polarized at 2.31 GHz (Sim.)/2.33 GHz (Meas.); linearly polarized
[2.31 GHz (Sim.)/2.33 GHz (Meas.)]. (b)
at 2.52 GHz). (a)
[2.31 GHz (Sim.)/2.33 GHz (Meas.)]. (c)
(2.52 GHz). (d)
(2.52 GHz).

Surface current distributions on the slotted patch confirm the

left-handed orientation of circularly polarized mode (Fig. 12).
The density of surface current is very high on the modified
mushroom unit cell. In order to have a better visualization
of left-handed CP (LHCP) mode at the CP frequency, vector
surface current distribution is shown only on the slotted patch.
The simulated and measured LHCP and right-handed CP
(RHCP) patterns corresponding to the minimum axial-ratio
frequency in both planes (
and
) are shown
in Fig. 13(a) and (b). The mode at 2.52 GHz retains its linearly

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