A Double U-slot Patch Antenna with Dual Wideband
Characteristics
Vedaprabhu. B1 and K.J. Vinoy2


12

Microwave Laboratory, ECE Dept.,

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, 560 012
1

E-Mail: vedaprabhub@gmail.com; 2E-Mail: kjvinoy@ece.iisc.ernet.in


Abstract— Microstrip patch antennas are strong candidates for
 provide a comparatively less bandwidth. Furthermore, the use
use in many wireless communications applications. This paper
proposes the use of a patch antenna with two U-shaped slots to
achieve dual band operation. A thick substrate helps broaden
the individual bandwidths. The antenna is designed based on
extensive IE3D simulation studies. A prototype antenna is
fabricated and experimentally verified for the required
performance.
Keywords— Microstrip antenna, Wireless antenna, Broadband
antenna, U-slot patch
I. INTRODUCTION
With the wide proliferation of wireless technologies in
modern life, one can not afford to be offline for long, even
during flights. Although present regulations do not allow the
use of wireless devices, there is a distinct possibility that
several wireless bands would be released soon for use during
flights. An ideal possibility in this regard would be to integrate
the antenna with materials used in existing cabin panels. In
this context, the present study investigated the possibility of
designing a wireless antenna catering to applications at
frequencies 1.7-2.2GHz, 2.4-2.5GHz, 5.15-5.35GHz, and 5.45-
5.85 GHz, making use of typical panel materials employed in
such an environment. A dual wide-band antenna operating at
1.7-2.5GHz and 5.15-5.85GHz bands would meet the
requirements for all the above applications.
Microstrip patch antenna is widely considered to be
suitable for many wireless applications, even though it usually
has a narrow bandwidth [1]. To meet the above requirements,
two individually challenging modifications may have to be
combined to design a microstrip antenna with dual-frequency
characteristics and wideband operation [2]. Several broad
banding techniques for microstrip antennas are widely known,
prominent among them are the use of stacked patches or use of
parasitic patches [4] [5]. The stacked patch antennas have
multilayer structure consisting of several parasitic radiating
elements placed one above the other and above the driven
element [4]. However this approach has the inherent
disadvantage of increased overall thickness and issues related
to aligning various layers precisely. The second approach uses
patch antenna closely surrounded by parasitic patches. The
structure looks like a coplanar parasitic subarray [5]. This
approach, although thin, the antenna occupies considerable
lateral area.
In addition to the above, one can use shorting pins to obtain
bandwidths up to 20% [6]. Though these reduce the size they



of shorting pins reduces the ease of fabrication. A relatively
simple approach is to use a thick, low dielectric constant
substrate. Yet another approach to design broadband
microstrip antenna is to use slots in the patch [7]. Usually a U-
shaped slot is used for antennas typically operating at high
frequency range (>3GHz). It may however be noted that many
of the broadbanding techniques discussed above are suitable
only for single wideband operation.
ws1
W ls1 ws2
d
ls2
bs2
bs1
L
Fig.1. Geometry of the patch antenna with two U-slots.
Designing dual- and multi-band microstrip antennas is
equally challenging [1]. Patches with suitably designed slits or
slots are useful in this context [2]. A double-U-slot antenna
has been proposed for dual band operation for operating
frequencies of 3.5-4GHz and 5.8-6.3 GHz [8]. This antenna
has a fractional bandwidth of 6.2% at the lower band and about
10% at the higher frequency band. One may also notice that
the ratio of mid-frequencies of operating bands is only 1.4.
However, an antenna with about 40% bandwidth at the lower
band and 15% at the higher band is required to meet the
current requirements. Furthermore, the first frequency of
operation is almost half as much as reported in [8]. Hence the
design approach in [8] has to be significantly modified to meet
the current requirements.
Compared to earlier approaches of broadbanding, the
modification of this design approach offers the promise of
saving space while meeting the antenna performance
specifications.The proposed design results in an antenna with
two wideband operational bands centered at 2.125GHz and
5.4GHz. This design uses a customized 3-layer substrate
material with a total thickness of 9.75mm. The antenna
geometry, simulation studies and design procedure is
introduced in Section II. Experimental results are compared
with simulations in Section III.
II. ANTENNA DESIGN & PARAMETRIC STUDIES
The proposed antenna consists of a rectangular patch with
two U slots as shown in Fig. 1, supported by a customized
substrate. The substrate used here has a three layer internal
structure. The outer skin layers have a dielectric constant
r=3.5 and thickness of 0.6mm. The sandwiched honeycomb
 
a U-slot of same dimensions, results in a similar return loss
characteristic above 5GHz.
It may be recalled that this configuration uses a thick
multilayer substrate which helps broadband operation at both
bands. U-slots used in this patch introduce capacitance which
cancels with the probe inductance at the respective bands to
bring in an additional resonance close to the patch resonance
so that an effective broadening of operational band results at
two distinct ranges of frequencies.

layer in the middle is 8.5mm thick. Two U slots are provided 0

on the patch to facilitate dual band operation. All dimensions
of this antenna are listed in Table-I. -5

Table-I Geometrical parameters of the antenna [all dimensions in mm]

-10
Parameter Label Dimension
-15
Patch length L 71
Width W 52 -20
Outer slot length ls1
  40
b s1   18 -25

Width ws1   4
-30
Inner slot length ls2
  13 1.5 1.7 1.9 2.1 2.3 2.5 2.7 2.9
b s2   5 Frequency,GHz

Width ws2   1 Slot= 70mm 80mm 90mm 100mm

Feed offset d 9
Fig.2. S11 variation as the total length of the outer slot is varied from 70 mm
to 100mm. Other dimensions of the antenna are in Table 1.

The dual band characteristic of the proposed antenna is 0

achieved by incorporating two U-shaped slots. The center
frequencies of these bands are decided by the electrical length -5

of these slots. In addition to other factors, the thick multi-layer

-10
substrate helps in achieving the required bandwidth. The feed
location is moved from the center of the geometry to get the -15
best possible impedance match to the antenna. Simulation
studies reported here are carried out using IE3D v12.0. -20

In the absence of a complete analytical approach for the

-25
design of such an antenna configuration parametric studies are
conducted to arrive at the desired performance. Based on the -30
center frequency of the first band (2.125GHz), the outer 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6
dimension of the patch is obtained using standard design Frequency ,GHz
expressions [3]. An additional resonance is brought in by
incorporating a U-slot whose length (2ls1+bs1) is equal to the Slot=26mm 30 mm 34 mm 38 mm 42 mm
   

slot wavelength at a frequency close to this. By adjusting the
width of the slot (ws1), the impedance matching can be further
 
improved. The parametric variation with the length of the
outer slot is shown in Fig. 2. The required bandwidth (1.7GHz
-2.2GHz and 2.4-2.5GHz) is obtained for a total length of
90mm.
Similarly, the adjustment of the return loss characteristics
of the second band of interest is done by including the inner
slot. The undesired operation below 4GHz is removed, and an
operational band ranging from 5.15 to 5.85GHz is obtained
when the total length of this slot is 30mm. As shown in Fig. 3,
this design makes the S11 below -6dB in the above band. As
in the previous case, the slot width (ws2) marginally affects the 
impedance matching. Incidentally, a small stand-alone patch
whose dimensions could be fitted within the outer U-slot, with
Fig.3. S11 variation as the total length of the inner slot is varied from 26mm
to 42mm. Other dimensions of the antenna are in Table 1.
III. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
A prototype antenna is fabricated on the customized three
layer substrate. The patch is etched on a copper sheet of 50 m
thickness. This is attached to the substrate using glue. A
photograph of the fabricated antenna with dimensions in Table
I is shown in Fig. 4. An SMA connector with long pin is used
for RF connection. The antenna is characterized using a
network analyzer to study its return loss characteristics. The
simulated and measured S11 are compared in Fig. 5. It may be

seen that in the 1.7 to 2.5GHz band and in the 5.15 to 5.85
GHz band there is a very good agreement between the
simulated and measured results. The graph in Fig 5 can also be
obtained by merging the 90mm case of Fig 2 and the 30mm
case of Fig 3.
The radiation pattern was measured in an in-house
microwave anechoic chamber by a swept frequency
measurement. The normalized radiation patterns at few
indicative frequencies of interest are shown in Fig. 6.
Beamwidths for vertical and horizontal polarizations are nearly
equal. Cross polarization level in the lower frequency range is
below -15dB. These are acceptable for the application. The
measured boresight gain of the antenna is above 6dB for the
lower band. However since the pattern does not show a
distinct peak at the higher frequency band, the boresight gain is
lower.
(b) 2.2 GHz

Fig.4. Photograph of the fabricated antenna with two U-slots (c) 2.45GHz

-5

-10

-15

-20

-25

-30

-35

-40
1 2 3 4 5 6

Frequency, GHz
(d) 5.15 GHz
Simulated Measured

Fig.5 S11 characteristic of the fabricated antenna.

(e) 5.85GHz
Fig. 6 Measured radiation patterns at various frequencies

(a) 1.7 GHz

 IV. CONCLUSIONS
The design of a microstrip patch antenna to operate for
several wireless bands with frequency ranges of 1.7-2.2GHz,
2.4-2.5GHz, 5.15-5.35GHz, and 5.45-5.85GHz is proposed
here. The antenna uses panel materials currently used in
airplane cabin and hence can be easily integrated and
deployed. The primary advantage of this approach is the ease
of fabrication as the design does not require alignment between
multiple layers of dielectrics and metals. Two U-slots are
included to provide the above operating frequency bands. By
adjusting the width and aspect ratio of slots and the offset of
feed location from the centroid on this thick substrate, the
desired bandwidths can be obtained for the antenna.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by Aerospace Network Research
Consortium (ANRC).
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