IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.
12, 2013
Novel Dual-Frequency Microstrip Antenna With
Narrow Half-Ring and Half-Circular Patch
Xin Hu, Yuanxin Li, Member, IEEE, Wenkuan Chen, Hong-Zhou Tan, Senior Member, IEEE, and
Yunliang Long, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractA novel dual-frequency microstrip antenna is pre-
sented. The dual-frequency is generated through a half-ring
structure and a half-circular patch element. The half-ring is
narrower than the conventional ring antenna, and the parameters
that decide the resonant frequency of the antenna are studied.
Simulation and measurement results show that the proposed
antenna works at 0.9 and 1.8 GHz.
Index TermsDual frequency, half-circular patch, narrow
half-ring.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HERE are two ways of generating the dual-frequency mi-
crostrip antenna. Among three-dimensional fabrications,
the authors of [1] introduced several means of obtaining dual
frequency, which are too complex to implement for mass pro-
duction. Several methods of notching or adding the slots [2][4]
and the stubs [5] to patch antennas have been reported, whereas
reporting frequency ratio is limited to a confined range. Dual
band can also be generated using monopoles [6], [7].
A conventional half-circular microstrip antenna is analyzed
in [8], which shows dual band by cutting down two circular
dipoles [9]. The design of an orthogonal half-circular patch
ultrawideband (UWB) antenna in a desirable bandwidth is also
shown [10], but it suffers from radiation pattern distortion at
higher frequencies. Two triangular slots [11] are cut from the
edge of the circular antenna, and their sizes are reduced without
compromising performance. Using meandering and enlarge-
ment methods, direct matching of a circular patch antenna was
described using a microstrip feedline [12], [13]. Therefore, a
new anchor structure based on previous research is proposed to
simplify the circular patch and maintain its main properties.
The design of an antenna with two resonant frequencies is
presented in this letter. It consists of a half-width circular mi-
crostrip antenna and a narrow half-ring patch, which are con-
nected by a microstrip feeding line, and has a revised formula
Manuscript received July 15, 2012; revised August 10, 2012; September 16,
2012; and October 23, 2012; accepted November 26, 2012. Date of publica-
tion December 10, 2012; date of current version March 12, 2013. This work
was supported in part by the Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants
60901028 and 61172026, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Uni-
versities, and in part by NSFC-Guangdong under Grant U0935002.
X. Hu is with the School of Information Engineering, Guangdong University
of Technology, Guangzhou 510030, China.
Y. Li, W. Chen, H.-Z. Tan, and Y. Long are with the Department of Elec-
tronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou
510275, China (e-mail: liyuanx@mail.sysu.edu.cn).
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.2012.2232271
1536-1225/$31.00 2012 IEEE
3
to calculate the resonant frequency of the proposed narrow half-
ring structure. The -parameters of the antenna and surface cur-
rent distribution at both radiating frequencies are studied, and
they show the radiation patterns of the measured far-field -
and -planes of the proposed antenna.
II. NARROW HALF-RING MICROSTRIP ANTENNA
This section concentrates on the narrow ring structure. Be-
cause the width of the half-ring microstrip antenna is narrower
than the width of the conventional ring microstrip antenna, it is
difficult to locate the feeding point on the narrow ring. There-
fore, a microstrip line is used to conduct the feeding process.
The mode is the dominant mode, which is respon-
sible for the resonance of the circular patch antenna. The for-
mula to calculate the radius of the normal circular patch an-
tenna [14], [15] is given as follows:
(1)
where represents the effective radius of the circular mi-
crostrip antenna, is the resonant frequency, and is the
dielectric constant of the substrate, whereas the physical radius
is not as the same as the effective radius. Due to fringing,
the effective patch looks electrically larger than the physical
circular patch, and this has been taken into account while com-
posing the physical radius correction factor, which shows
the following relationship:
(2)
where is the height of the dielectric substrate, and represents
the physical radius of the circular patch. calculated in (1) can
be used to calculate in (2), as it would return a more accurate
result for by substituting into (2).
Equation (2) converges to an acceptable tolerance in two iter-
ations, and it predicts the radius with an error of less than 2.5%
for . Equations (1) and (2) are used as a guide for de-
termining the physical radius of the circular patch.
The resonant frequency of the half-ring element is also eval-
uated by these two equations.However, the physical radius is a
little different from (2). Because of the narrow width of the ring,
an inflation coefficient has been introduced in (2) to account
for the increment in the radius of the narrow ring patch
(3)
4 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013
Fig. 1. Layout of the dual-frequency microstrip antenna. ( mm,
mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, , mm, ).
TABLE I
RESULTS OF THE RADIUS AT EACH FREQUENCY FOR BOTH
THE HALF-CIRCULAR PATCH AND THE HALF-RING
where indicates the radius of the narrow ring patch, and the
inflation coefficient is measured in the substrate with a relative
permittivity of and a height of 3 mm. With respect
to the frequency ranging from 0 to 5.8 GHz, it is suggested that
, as the inflation coefficient changes when the prop-
erties of the substrate are adjusted. The calculated results show
that the operating frequency of the proposed structure, which
is predicted by the equation, is higher than that of the original
circular patch. Thus, the radius of the frequency for the narrow
half-ring element is larger than that of the circular patch. Com-
parisons of the radius from (2) and (3) for both the circular patch
and the narrow half-ring are illustrated in Table I. The measure-
ment results show that is close to the resonant length of the
narrow ring patch.
III. DESIGN AND ANALYSES
Fig. 1 illustrates the layout of the proposed microstrip an-
tenna. The antenna is printed on the dielectric substrate that is
3.0 mm in height, and the relative permittivity of the sub-
strate is 2.55. The radius R1 and width W2 of the narrow half-
ring are 69.8 and 11.5 mm, respectively, whereas the radius of
the circular patch R2 is 29.8 mm. A microstrip feeding line is
used to connect the half-ring and the half-circular patch in the
center, whereas the length L1 and the width W1 of the microstrip
feeding line are 38.6 and 4.9 mm, respectively. Also, the an-
tenna is fed by a coaxial cable at ( mm, ) of
the half-circular patch.
The half-ring and the half-circular patch work at 0.9 and
1.8 GHz, respectively. Resonant frequencies are determined
by the values of the radii of the two elements, as predicted by
the expressions mentioned earlier. The feed point that is placed
Fig. 2. Simulated with different R1.
Fig. 3. Simulated with different R2.
on the half-circular patch element is chosen by the methods of
circular patch antennas because the antenna is considered to
be a cavity bounded above and below by electric walls, and
the position varies slightly when the circular patch is cut off.
W1 and W2 are the widths of the shank and the narrow ring,
respectively, whereas W1, W2, and the length of the shank L1
determine the input impedance of the narrow half-ring structure
in part. Minor adjustments have been made to evaluate the
parameters that may affect the performance of the antenna, and
the radii of the half-ring and the half-circular patch structure
determine the resonant frequencies.
The change of one radius affects another resonant frequency
slightly. The with radii of the narrow half-ring and the
half-circular patch structure are shown in Figs. 2 and 3, respec-
tively. When the radius of the half-circular patch R1 changes
from 67 to 72 mm, the frequency alters from 0.95 to 0.86 GHz
accordingly because when R2 decreases from 32 to 28 mm and
R1 remains constant, the operating frequency increases from
1.72 to 1.91 GHz. The adjustment of R1 and R2 follows the
principles of circular patch antennas: The larger the radius, the
lower the resonant frequency, and vice versa. As Fig. 4 shows,
the other parameters, which control the impedance match of the
proposed antenna, change insignificantly when the simulation is
done. For instance, the of 0.9 GHz had a corresponding re-
duction when L1 is shortened. Furthermore, the lower frequency
HU et al.: NOVEL DUAL-FREQUENCY MICROSTRIP ANTENNA WITH NARROW HALF-RING AND HALF-CIRCULAR PATCH
Fig. 4. Simulated with different L1 and W1.
Fig. 5. Measured and simulated of the proposed dual-frequency antenna.
is further decreased when the width of the shank is reduced, and
the depth of at 1.8 GHz is also affected. The width of the
half-ring structure, also known as W2, has little influence on
frequency shift, but affects the performance of .
The simulation and measurement of are shown in Fig. 5.
The half-circular patch structure is responsible for 1.8 GHz fre-
quency, as the narrow half-ring element resonates at 0.9 GHz.
Because of intrinsic narrow bandwidth of the microstrip patch
antennas, those two frequencies are restricted to bandwidths, for
instance, the bandwidth of 900 MHz is 17 MHz. By adjusting
R1 and R2 of the antenna, the desired resonant frequencies can
be obtained, which extends the frequency ratio of the proposed
antenna. To obtain a good , other parameters should be op-
timized appropriately, and the effect of changing the radius R1
of the narrow half-ring is not equal to the radius R2 of a circular
patch antenna, which often lags behind in the circular patch an-
tenna. However, the measured radiation pattern of the two fre-
quencies is similar to the circular patch antenna of the corre-
sponding radii.
To further analyze the property of the proposed structure, the
surface current distribution of the antenna at both the operating
frequencies of 0.9 and 1.8 GHz has been simulated in Figs. 6 and
7. The surface current distribution for 0.9 GHz is mainly dis-
tributed along the narrow half-ring and the shank element. Very
5
Fig. 6. Simulated surface current distribution at 0.9 GHz of the proposed
antenna.
Fig. 7. Simulated surface current distribution at 1.8 GHz of the proposed
antenna.
Fig. 8. Measured and simulated radiation patterns at 0.9 GHz.
little current distribution is observed on the half-circular patch,
and 1.8-GHz surface current distribution is clustered along the
half-circular patch, which agrees well with the observed surface
current distribution of a single half-circular patch antenna that
was fed by a coaxial cable.
IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
The measurements were recorded using an Agilent E5071C
Network Analyzer. The radiation pattern was measured in the
far-field condition, and they were simulated and measured in
both co- and cross polarization. Figs. 8 and 9 show the mea-
sured radiation patterns at 0.9 and 1.8 GHz, respectively. The
proposed antenna has close radiation pattern with circular patch
antennas.
The gain characteristics of the two operating frequencies are
plotted in Fig. 10. It can be seen that the proposed antenna has
a gain of 4.83 and 3.26 dBi at the two resonant frequencies,
respectively.
6 IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 12, 2013

1.8 GHz, and the frequency ratio between two operating fre-
quencies can be extended to a large scale. The radiation patterns
and at their resonant frequencies are similar. This new an-
tenna design reports a method to generate a dual-frequency an-
tenna, and it will be useful in applications of GSM and CDMA
personal communication systems where there is no need of wide
bandwidths.

Fig. 9. Measured and simulated radiation patterns at 1.8 GHz.
Fig. 10. Gain against frequency of the proposed microstrip antenna.
V. CONCLUSION
A novel dual-frequency microstrip antenna with narrow half-
ring and half-circular patch is presented. The layout signifi-
cantly reduces the size of the whole antenna by simplifying the
conventional half-circular patch into a narrow half-ring struc-
ture. Through adjusting the radii of two proposed structures and
other parameters, the desired dual frequency can be obtained.
The new structure makes the antenna to operate at both 0.9 and
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