IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2005 871

Fig. 1. Geometry of the hybrid-resonator antenna.

IV. CONCLUSION
A hybrid DRoP antenna has been tested experimentally. The proto-
type antenna demonstrated a 23.5% bandwidth and a consistent radia-
tion pattern with a low cross-polarization level. Such hybrid antennas
may be useful for broadband wireless devices where the area available
for the antenna is highly restricted.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank Macquarie Engineering and Technical Services
(METS) for antenna fabrication, and Drs. A. Weily and Y. Ge of Mac-
quarie University and Mr. K. Smart of the CSIRO ICT Centre for as-
sistance with the measurements.
Fig. 2. Measured magnitude of the input reflection coefficient.

REFERENCES
TABLE I
MEASURED PEAK GAIN AND CROSS POLARIZATION OF THE DROP ANTENNA [1] K. P. Esselle, “A dielectric-resonator-on-patch (DROP) antenna for
broadband wireless applications: Concept and results,” in Proc. IEEE
Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Int. Symp., vol. II, Boston,
MA, Jul. 8–13, 2001, pp. 22–25.
[2] A. Petosa, A. Ittipiboon, Y. M. M. Antar, D. Roscoe, and M. Cuhaci,
“Recent advances in dielectric-resonator antenna technology,” IEEE An-
tennas Propag. Mag., vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 35–48, Jun. 1998.
[3] H. Y. Lo, K. W. Leung, K. M. Luk, and E. K. N. Yung, “Low-profile
equilateral-triangular dielectric resonator antenna of very high permit-
tivity,” Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 25, pp. 2164–2166, Dec. 9, 1999.
[4] R. Q. Lee and R. N. Simon, “Bandwidth enhancement of dielectric res-
onator antennas,” in Proc. IEEE Antennas and Propagation Soc. (AP-S)
Int. Symp., vol. 3, 1993, pp. 1500–1503.
[5] V. Gupta, S. Sinha, S. K. Koul, and B. Bhat, “Suspended microstrip patch
antenna with dielectric resonator loading for enhanced bandwidth,” pre-
sented at the Asia-Pacific Microwave Conf., Sydney, NSW, Australia,
Dec. 3–6, 2000.

Radiation Efficiency of Electrically Small Microstrip

Antennas With Width Discontinuities
Choon Sae Lee and Kuo-Hua Tseng

Abstract—When patch segments of different widths are adjoined to form

a microstrip antenna, the resonant frequency is significantly lower than
that of a conventional rectangular microstrip antenna with the same overall
length. It is shown, however, that the radiation efficiency is substantially
reduced as the antenna becomes small at a given frequency. As the resonant
Fig. 3. E- and H-plane radiation patterns of a DRoP antenna at 5.3 GHz. frequency decreases, the radiated power is lowered at a faster rate than the
conduction and dielectric losses.
the second assembly, which had the narrowest bandwidth of 5.14–6.51 Index Terms—Electrically small antennas, microstrip antennas, radia-
GHz. In this case all pieces were glued together using silicone glue. The tion efficiency.
third assembly was also glued with different epoxy glue and it showed
a bandwidth of 5.05–6.55 GHz. For an antenna with >23% bandwidth,
Manuscript received October 21, 2002; revised June 20, 2004.
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Southern
such minor variations should not be a major problem as they normally Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 USA (e-mail: [email protected]).
fall within typical design safety margins. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2004.841282

0018-926X/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE

872 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2005

Fig. 1. Electrically small antenna with two width discontinuities.

I. INTRODUCTION
As use of wireless communications has grown drastically in recent
years, antennas for portable devices have become increasingly smaller. Fig. 2. Resonant frequency and radiation efficiency as a function of the width
Microstrip antennas have been used for such wireless applications due of the narrower patch w1 with that of the wider patch w2 fixed at 60 mm. The
to their numerous advantages over other types of antennas, such as low physical dimensions are as follows: l1 = 8 mm, l2 = 12 mm, and thickness
profile and easy fabrication. However, implementation of patch an- t = 1:524 mm. The substrate material is RO4003 of Rogers Corporation
with "r = 3:38 and the normalization frequency f0 is 2.04 GHz, which is
tennas in practical applications has been limited because the antenna the resonant frequency with w1 = w2 when the microstrip patch becomes
becomes too large at low frequencies. One of the most popular electri- rectangular.
cally small microstrip antennas is a planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA)
where kn = k2 0 kyn
[1], [2]. The PIFA provides a good antenna efficiency. However, the 2 and kyn = (2n )=(w2 ). Once the k value is
size reduction is limited, and the antenna requires a vertical conducting
available, the resonant frequency is evaluated using
component that connects the radiating patch to the ground plane. Using
shortening pins, Kan [3] was also successful in reducing the size of a p
f = kC=(2 "r ) (3)
conventional microstrip antenna as much as 75%.
This paper presents an electrically small antenna that does not require where C is the speed of light and "r is the dielectric constant of the
nonplanar components such as shortening pins. It has been shown that a substrate material. The value of  is small compared to the other two
relatively simple alteration of the microstrip patch with symmetric sharp terms and does not affect the resonant frequency much. Thus the size
width discontinuities reduces the antenna size drastically at a given op- reduction is mainly due to the variation of the characteristic impedance
erating frequency [4], [5]. However, like any other small antenna, when of the microstrip patch with its width discontinuities.
the antenna becomes smaller, the radiation efficiency degrades [6]. In the In the above cavity-model approximation, the microstrip edges are
following sections, the radiation efficiency of the electrically small mi- assumed enclosed by the virtual vertical walls of a perfect magnetic
crostrip antennas with width discontinuities is investigated in detail. conductor (PMC). This approximation becomes less valid when the
width of the thin inner strip becomes too small, approaching the sub-
II. SMALL ANTENNA WITH WIDTH DISCONTINUITIES strate layer thickness. In order to take into account the fringe fields
along the strip edges, we have used effective widths and dielectric con-
The proposed electrically small antenna is shown in Fig. 1. Patches stants for the microstrip lines [7].
of different widths are connected at junctions, which are placed sym- The radiation efficiency is derived from the ratio of the radiated
metrically to ensure maximum radiation at the zenith and reduce the power carried by the space wave to the total dissipated power, which
cross-polarization [4], [5]. It is noted that a substantial portion of the includes the radiation through both space and surface waves, the di-
incoming wave from the feed is reflected at the junctions, and standing electric loss in the substrate medium, and the conduction loss on the
waves are formed within the entire antenna cavity that consists of metallic surface. As the antenna size is reduced, the power carried by
both the narrow and wide patches. A coaxial feed is connected at a the surface wave is negligible because the substrate thickness is much
proper location near the center of the narrower patch to match the smaller than the wavelength. While the conduction and dielectric losses
input impedance for the resonating antenna cavity. decrease as the frequency is lowered, the radiated power is reduced at
For theoretical analysis, a cavity model is used in conjunction with a a faster rate, producing a smaller radiation efficiency at a lower fre-
mode-matching technique. In the cavity model, all the opening edges are quency.
assumed enclosed by a perfect magnetic conductor. The field excitation
under each patch is expressed as a sum of modal fields that satisfy all
III. THEORETICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
the boundary conditions except at the junctions of width discontinuity.
By imposing continuity of both the electric and magnetic fields at the Fig. 2 shows the theoretical resonant frequency and the radiation ef-
junctions, a matrix equation can be obtained for the theoretical resonant ficiency as a function of the width of the narrow patch w1 , in compar-
frequency. Assuming a constant magnetic field at the junction, a simple ison with experimental data. The experimental radiation efficiencies
transcendental equation for the unknown wavenumber k is derived as were obtained by comparing the measured gains with the theoretical
directivities that were computed assuming the ground plane was infini-
tan kl1 0 w1 =w2 cot kl2 +  = 0: (1) tively extended. As w1 is reduced relative to the width of the wider
patches w2 , the resonant frequency monotonically decreases, resulting
Here  indicates the effect of the fringe fields near the junction, which in a small antenna size at a given frequency. On the other hand, the
is given by radiation efficiency is lowered sharply at small values of w1 . The di-

4k
1 2
sin (nw1 =w2 )
rect consequence of the smaller radiation efficiency is narrowing band-
= (2) width. For instance, the bandwidth at w1 =w2 = 0:258 was measured
w1 w2 kn k 2
yn to be 0.26% compared to 0.46% at w1 =w2 = 0:642.
n=1
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 53, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2005 873

Fig. 3. Various relative power losses in the resonant antenna cavity as a

function of the width of the narrower patch w1 with that of the wider patch
w2 fixed at 60 mm. The physical dimensions are as follows: w2 = 60 mm,
l1=8 mm, l2 = 12 mm, and thickness t = 1 524
: mm. The substrate
material is RO4003 of Rogers Corporation with "r= 3 38: , and loss tangent
= 0 00221
: .

The efficiency degradation at a small value of w1 =w2 can be ex-

plained as follows. Compared to conventional rectangular microstrip
antennas, there exist extra radiating sources along the inner edges of the
wider patches toward the center of the new antenna structure (x = 0l1
and +l1 in Fig. 1). The equivalent magnetic currents on these extra
edges radiate the fields that are destructively interfering with those from
the radiating components along the outer edges of the wider patches
(x = 0l1 0 l2 and l1 + l2 in Fig. 1). Since the radiation from the added
edges interferes destructively with that from the conventional radiating
edges, the radiation efficiency decreases as the added edges become
longer. In other words, the thinner the narrower patch is, the less ef- Fig. 4. E- and H-plane radiation patterns at f = 1 013
: GHz. The physical
dimensions are as follows: w1 = 15 5 : mm, w2 = 60 mm, l1 =8 mm,
ficient the antenna becomes. This observation is clearly illustrated in
Fig. 3, in which various losses in the resonant cavity are compared with l2 = 12 mm, and thickness t = 1 524
: mm. The SMA feed is placed at 3 mm
from the center of the narrow patch. The substrate material is RO4003 of Rogers
one another. When the width of the inner strip becomes small, the ra- Corporation with "r = 3 38: , and loss tangent = 0 00221
: . (a) E plane and
diated power is substantially reduced and the dielectric and conduction (b) H plane.
losses become dominant over the radiation loss through the space wave.
As indicated above, the loss through the surface wave is negligible. IV. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Since the antenna is much smaller than a wavelength, the radiation
patterns are broad as shown in Fig. 4. The theoretical patterns were A relatively simple structure is presented for size reduction of a mi-
crostrip antenna. Junctions formed by width discontinuities in a mi-
computed assuming equivalent magnetic currents at the radiating edges
crostrip patch are shown to be effective in reducing the length of a
on an infinitively extended ground plane. The discrepancies between
resonating microstrip antenna. However, as the antenna size becomes
the theory and experiment near the grazing angle are likely to be due
small, the radiation efficiency also decreases due to the fact that the
to the finite size of the ground plane.
space-wave radiation is reduced at a faster rate than the conduction and
The cross-polarization vanishes theoretically at both E and H planes dielectric losses.
due to the symmetric property of the antenna geometry. The maximum
cross-polarization occurs at the plane between E and H planes near
REFERENCES
the grazing angle with the ground plane. Since the fields from edge
diffraction are dominant in this region, it is difficult to measure the [1] Z. D. Liu, P. S. Hall, and D. Wake, “Dual-frequency planar invert-F an-
tenna,” IEEE Antennas Propag., vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 1451–1457, Oct.
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creases, the antenna efficiency is reduced and radiation from the nonra- [2] C. R. Rowell and R. D. Murch, “A capacitively loaded PIFA for compact
mobile telephone handsets,” IEEE Antennas Propag., vol. 45, no. 5, pp.
diating edges that contributes to the cross-polarization becomes larger. 837–842, May 1997.
However, since the resonant frequency is also reduced in this case, [3] H. R. Kan and R. B. Waterhouse, “Size reduction techniques for shorted
the net effect of a small value of w1 =w2 on the cross-polarization patches,” Electron. Lett., vol. 35, no. 12, pp. 948–949, 1999.
[4] C. S. Lee, P.-W. Chen, and V. Nalbandian, “Electrically small microstrip
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[5] C. S. Lee and K.-H. Tseng, “Size reduction of microstrip antennas,”
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[7] T. S. Chu, T. Itoh, and Y.-C. Shih, “Comparative study of mode-matching
mined mainly by other scattering mechanisms such as the edge diffrac- formulations for microstrip discontinuity problems,” IEEE Trans. Mi-
tion from the finite ground plane. crowave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-33, no. 10, pp. 1018–1023, Oct. 1985.