Evolution of Broadband Antennas from Monopole Disc to Dual-polarized Antenna

Seong-Youp Suh*1, Alan E. Waltho1, Vijay K Nair1, Warren L. Stutzman2, and William A. Davis2 Radio Communications Lab Intel Corporation, 2200 Mission College Blvd, Santa Clara, CA, USA {seong-youp.suh, alan.e.waltho, vijay.k.nair}@intel.com Virginia Tech Antenna Group, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA {stutzman, wadavis}@vt.edu
2 1

Introduction
The demand for broadband wireless communication is rapidly increasing due to the need to support more users and to provide more information with higher data rates. Wideband antennas are essential front-end element for broadband wireless communications. In several applications, it is also desirable for broadband antennas to have dual-polarization, especially for advanced wireless communication systems employing diversity and MIMO techniques. Most broadband antennas reported in the literature are forms of monopole, dipole, or crossed-dipole antennas. This paper summarizes broadband antennas and proposes an evolution process from the monopole disc antennas to broadband dual-polarized antennas.

A. Monopole disc antennas [1-10] The monopole disc antenna is a primitive broadband antenna that has been used for several decades. Fig. 1a ~g show some representative disc antennas studied in this report as prior art [1-9]. All of the antennas are mounted above a large ground plane and provide very broad bandwidths, typically greater than 10:1. The step-shaped metal plate antenna shown in Fig. 1h was reported recently, providing enhanced radiation patterns compared to a rectangular disc antenna [10]. B. Single polarized antennas [11-12, 19] Fig. 2 shows the evolution of broadband antennas from the teardrop-shaped monopole disc antenna to the four-point shaped, dual-polarized antenna. All antenna elements are printed on Rogers 5870 (r=2.33) dielectric material of thickness 0.79 mm or 1.6 mm. The antenna evolved from a teardrop shaped monopole disc (Fig. 2a), which is also called the planar inverted cone antenna (PICA), that provides more than 10:1 impedance bandwidth and 4:1 pattern bandwidth in a vertically-polarized monopole configuration above a large ground plane [11, 19]. The PICA antenna evolved from the antennas listed in Figs. 1a~g [1-9]. However, the teardrop-shaped PICA antenna element provides unique features in terms of broad pattern bandwidth and as a fundamental basis for the dual-polarized antennas shown in Figs. 2 d~i. Fig. 2b shows the dipole PICA antenna (called the diPICA) that evolves naturally from the monopole PICA [12]. The diPICA antenna is singular-polarized, providing a dipole-like omni-directional pattern over 8:1 bandwidth. The dipole PICA antenna is fed by a dual-coax cable in a balanced 180 out-of-phase source configuration at the center of the antenna structure. In many cases a broadband high-gain antenna with a uni-directional pattern is desired for point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communications. These challenging features can be achieved by placing the diPICA antenna above a large ground plane at a height of 0/4 as shown in Figs. 2c [12]. The diPICA antenna above a ground plane provides a gain of 7~9 dBi and half-power beamwidth (HPBW) of 60 ~ 80 over 2.2:1 pattern bandwidth. However, the impedance bandwidth of the antenna is more than 10:1 which is much broader than the pattern bandwidth.

Antenna evolution: Monopole to dual-polarized antennas

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C. Dual polarized antennas [13-18] Dual polarization evolves from the single polarized dipole PICA antenna by adding additional elements perpendicular to the dipole PICA antenna as shown in Fig. 2d, resulting in the Fourtear antenna [13]. The orthogonal pairs of elements are identical with element pairs rotated 180 relative to one another as shown in Fig. 2d. The element shape, however, can be altered to other shapes by resizing the dimensions of the four elements. The Fourtear antenna can be viewed as a generalized form of dual-polarized crossed dipole antenna. The Fourtear antenna in Fig. 2d provides broad impedance bandwidth of more than 10:1 for both feed configurations of a-a and b-b but with reference impedances of 100 and 200 , respectively, due to the asymmetric structure of the Fourtear antenna. Symmetric structures tend to perform better for dual polarization. Thus, the Fourtear antenna was modified to the configuration shown in Fig. 2e, which has better symmetry but not identical elements [14]. A perfectly symmetric dual-polarized antenna was achieved using the four-clover shapes shown in Fig. 2f; the antenna has identical impedance characteristics for the two feed configurations [15]. Both modified Fourtear and Fourclover antennas in Figs. 2e and f provide more than 10:1 impedance bandwidth referenced to 150 and 188 respectively. A 50- reference input impedance is desired in many wireless communication situations. Fig. 2g shows the Fourpoint antenna, which is a reshaped form of the Fourclover antenna in Fig. 2f to achieve a reference input impedance of 50 [16]. Specifically, the width and flare of the slots in the Fourclover antenna are modified from the shape of Fourpoint antenna (Fig. 2g) to obtain an input impedance of 50 . The Fourpoint antenna has a bandwidth of 67% with dualpolarization. One predecessor of the Fourpoint antenna is the Foursquare antenna shown in Fig. 2h [16~17]. The Foursquare antenna has mostly inductive input impedance, which gives an impedance bandwidth of 37%. The Fourpoint antenna in Fig. 2g is obtained by tapering the slots on each side of the Foursquare antenna, leading to an enhanced bandwidth of 67% with the same antenna size. Further bandwidth enhancement from the Fourpoint antenna was achieved by employing a tuning plate printed on the back of the Fourpoint antenna as shown in Fig. 2i [18, 19]. The side view of the Fourpoint antenna with tuning plate is shown in Fig. 2j. The Fourpoint antenna with a tuning plate gives a dramatically increased bandwidth of 93% for the same size as the Foursquare and Fourpoint antennas in Fig. 2g and h. VSWR (referenced to 50 ) and measured E-and H-plane radiation patterns at 900 MHz for the Fourpoint antenna with a tuning plate are shown in Fig. 3; the E-plane is the plane containing the feed and the H-plane is orthogonal plane to the E-plane. Coplanar waveguide feed configuration is very desirable for printing the antenna on a circuit board. Broadband antenna is configured as shown in Fig. 2k [20] with a coplanar waveguide feed on the same plane with the antenna. The antenna operates in the frequency of 2.4 ~ 10.9 GHz instantaneously covering both 802.11a/b and UWB bands. Fig. 2l [21] shows an UWB antenna with a sailboat-shape providing a notch in the frequency of 5.25 GHz. The sailboat antenna may reject an unwanted signal from 802.11a into UWB radio. The CPW-fed Sail-boat antenna provides stop-band notch of 11 ~ 13.5 dB in the frequency range of WLAN band.

Conclusions
The evolutionary process of broadband antennas was discussed to show how broadband dualpolarized antennas evolve from the monopole disc antenna. The key antenna element for the dualpolarized antenna is the teardrop-shaped PICA (Planar Inverted Cone Antenna) antenna shown in Fig. 2a. The evolution shown in Fig. 2 is not chronological, but rather is by increasing antenna performance. Further antenna performance and characteristics are found in [11-19] and antenna characteristic details will be discussed in the presentation.

References:
[1] [2] N. E. Lindenblad, Antennas and Transmission Lines at the Empire State Television Station, Communications, pp. 10-26, April, 1941. Radio Research Laboratory (U.S.), Very High-frequency Techniques, McGraw Hill, New York, pp. 1-25, 1947.

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[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]

[13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]

[19] [20]

[21]

J. D. Kraus, Antennas, McGraw Hill, New York, pp. 9, 1950. B. J. Lamberty, A class of low gain broadband antennas, 1958 IRE Wescon Convention Record, pp. 251-259, August 1958. George H. Brown and O. M. Woodward Jr., Experimentally Determined Radiation Characteristics of Conical and Triangular Antennas, RCA review, vol. 13, pp. 425-452, December 1952. S. Honda, M. Ito, H. Seki and Y. Jinbo, A disc monopole antenna with 1:8 impedance bandwidth and omni-directional radiation pattern, Proc. ISAP 92 (Sapporo, Japan), pp. 1145-1148, Sep. 1992. R. M. Taylor, A broadband Omni-directional Antenna, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium Digest (Seattle), vol. 2, pp. 1294 1297, June 1994. N. P. Agrawall, G. Kumar, and K. P. Ray, Wide-band Planar Monopole Antennas IEEE Trans. on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 294-295, Feb. 1998. R. M. Taylor, A broadband Omni-directional Antenna, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium Digest (Seattle), vol. 2, pp. 1294 1297, June 1994. K.-L. Wong, S.-W. Su, and C.-L. Tang, Broadband Omnidirectional metal-plate Monopole Antenna, IEEE Trans. on Ant. and Prop., vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 581-583, Jan. 2005. S. Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman and W. A. Davis, A New Ultra-Wideband Printed Monopole Antenna, the Planar Inverted Cone Antenna (PICA), IEEE Trans. on Ant. and Prop, vol. 52, No. 5, 1361-1365, May, 2004. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. Waltho, and J. Schiffer, A Novel Broadband Dipole Teardrop Antenna, LPdiPICA, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium Digest (Monterey), vol. 1, pp. 775 778, June, 2004. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. Waltho, and J. Schiffer, A Generalized Crossed Dipole Antenna, the Fourtear Antenna, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium Digest (Monterey), vol. 3, pp. 2915-2918, June, 2004. S.-Y. Suh, A Comprehensive Investigation of New Planar Wideband Antennas, Ph.D. Dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA, pp. 113 ~ 121, July 2002. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. Waltho, and J. Schiffer, A Novel Printed Dual Polarized Broadband Antenna The Fourclover Antenna, International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP), Sendai, Japan, pp. 77-80, Aug. 2004. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, and W. A. Davis, Low-profile, dual-polarized broadband antennas, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium Digest (Columbus), vol. 2, pp. 256-259, June, 2003. J. R. Nealy, Foursquare Antenna Radiating Element, U.S. Patent No. 5,926,137, 1999. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. Waltho, K. Skeba and J. Schiffer, A Novel Low-profile, Dual-polarization, Multi-band Base-station Antenna Element The Fourpoint Antenna, 2004 IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2004-Fall, Los Angeles, CA, 2004. S.-Y. Suh and W. L. Stutzman, Fourpoint Antenna US Patent number, 6,842,141, 2005. S.-Y. Suh; W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. E. Waltho, J. Schiffer, A novel CPW-fed disc antenna, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, 2004. IEEE Vol. 3, June 2004, pp.2919 2922. S.-Y. Suh, W. L. Stutzman, W. A. Davis, A. E. Waltho, K. W. Skeba, J. L. Schiffer, A UWB Antenna with a Stop-band Notch in the 5 GHz WLAN band, IEEE ACES Symposium, April 2005, Session 5.8.

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(a) Volcano antenna [1-3] (b) Rectangular antenna [4](c) Triangular antenna [5]

(d) Circular/elliptical [6-8]

(e) Half-disc [9] (f) Step-shaped metal plate [10]

Fig. 1 Broadband monopole disc antennas since 1940s.

(k) [20]

(l) [21]

a b a

a b a

(a) [11]

(b) [12]

(c) [12]

(d) [13]

(e) [14]

Dielectric substrate Tuning plate

Metallization Foam

b a a b

b a a b

(g) [16] Solder

Tuning plate

(f) [15]

Ground plane

(i) [18,19] Coaxial feed

(j) Side view of the Fourpoint antenna in (i) (h) [17] Fig. 2 Evolution of broadband antennas from monopole disc antenna in (a) to the dual-polarized Fourpoint antenna with tuning plate in (i). Arrows on each antenna indicate polarization(s).

(a) VSWR (b) Measured patterns at 900 MHz Fig. 3 Computed (solid curve) and measured (circles) VSWR (referenced to 50-) and the measured radiation patterns of the Fourpoint antenna shown in Fig. 2 (i).

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