340 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO.

1, JANUARY 2016

Dual-Frequency Folded-Parallel-Plate Antenna With consists of two vertical parallel plates, which are connected at their
Large Frequency Ratio bottom by the ground plane. It will resonate when the separation
between the parallel plates is half of the wavelength. The FPRA
Li Ying Feng and Kwok Wa Leung operates near the cutoff frequency of the T E1 parallel-plate mode [9].
For the microwave part, it makes use of the resonance inside the
two parallel plates. It is well known that a parallel-plate waveguide
Abstract—This communication investigates a new compact dual- supports a propagating TEM mode. Our FPR structure can be viewed
frequency antenna with a large frequency ratio, which consists of a pair of as a truncated TEM mode transmission line that is shorted at one end
folded parallel plates. It integrates the microwave parallel-plate waveguide
resonator antenna (WRA) with the millimeter-wave Fabry-Perot resonator
and left open at the other end. The truncated transmission line can res-
antenna (FPRA), with their resonant frequencies independent of each onate when its length is λ0 /4 [10], where λ0 is the wavelength. Folded
other. Due to the folded structure, the profile of the proposed antenna parallel plates are used in our design to reduce the profile of the struc-
is lower than that of the conventional parallel-plate WRA. The WRA ture, decreasing the height of the antenna from 0.25λ0 to 0.163λ0 .
part is excited by a hook-shaped strip on its top, whereas the FPRA is Another important reason of reducing the height is to decrease the
excited by an L-probe with a half-ring sleeve. To demonstrate the idea,
a dual-frequency antenna that covers the 2.4- and 24-GHz ISM bands Q-factor of the FPR and thus increase the bandwidth of the FPRA.
was designed. ANSYS HFSS was used to simulate the S-parameters, radi- Since the resonant frequencies of the FPRA and waveguide resonator
ation pattern, and antenna gain and reasonable agreement between the antenna (WRA) are independent of each other, it is very easy to design
measured and simulated results is obtained. the dual-frequency antenna.
In our design, the FPRA and WRA parts are excited by an L-probe
Index Terms—Dual-frequency antenna, fabry-perot resonator antenna
(FPRA), low-profile antenna, parallel-plate waveguide resonator antenna and hook-shaped strip (hook-strip), respectively. The dual-frequency
(WRA). antenna was designed using ANSYS HFSS, and the reflection coef-
ficient, radiation pattern, and antenna gain were simulated for each
antenna part. To verify the simulations, a prototype was fabricated and
I. I NTRODUCTION tested. The measured and simulated results are in reasonable agree-
ment. Since the proposed antenna is a three-dimensional resonant-type
Today, there is an increasing demand of dual-frequency wire- antenna, it is of great interest to compare its antenna performance with
less communication systems. Sometimes, a dual-frequency antenna is that of the dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) [11] having the same
required to operate in microwave and millimeter-wave bands [1], giv- antenna size.
ing a large frequency ratio. This motivates studies of dual-frequency
antennas with large frequency ratios. For example, antenna systems
that combine a microwave monopole antenna and a millimeter-wave
II. A NTENNA C ONFIGURATION
microstrip grid array antenna were reported [2], [3]. In [4], a low-
profile shared-aperture dual-frequency antenna was obtained by inte- Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed dual-frequency
grating a P-band patch antenna with a V-band folded reflector array. antenna. It has two ports; each of the microwave WRA and millimeter-
Further, a C- and Ka-band dual-frequency reflectarray antenna was wave FPRA parts has its own port. The antenna consists of two
built by using a dual-layer structure [5]. Very recently, a stacked back-to-back folded plates separated by a distance of dF that deter-
antenna with a Ka-band reflectarray above an L-band patch array mines the resonant frequency of the FPRA part. The two-folded plates
antenna was demonstrated for dual-frequency satellite communica- rest on a horizontal square ground plane with a side length of LG . Each
tions [6]. plate has a height of HP and width of WP . To simplify the assembling
For the designs as mentioned above, the microwave and millimeter- of the antenna, the folded plates and ground plane are fabricated from a
wave antenna parts are individually designed and then combined single aluminum block with a volume of LG × LG × HP . Therefore,
together either horizontally [2], [3] or vertically [4]–[6]. This approach no soldering is needed to connect them. With reference to see Fig. 1(a),
is straightforward, at the expense of increasing the overall antenna the folded vertical plate has an offset of L1 from the grounded vertical
size. To reduce the antenna size, a compact dual-frequency antenna plate. The FPRA is fed by L-probe with its vertical- and horizontal-arm
based on a single antenna structure is proposed in this communication lengths given by LV and LH , respectively. In the previous FPRA [8],
for the first time. It makes use of the microwave parallel-plate waveg- a groove was fabricated on each parallel plate to suppress the cross-
uide resonator and millimeter-wave Fabry-Perot resonator (FPR) that polarized field. Since the cross-polarized field is mainly caused by the
was investigated recently [7]–[9]. In [7]–[9], the FPR antenna (FPRA) current on the vertical arm of the L-probe, it can be suppressed by
introducing a current which is opposite to that on the L-probe. This
Manuscript received February 15, 2015; revised April 05, 2015; accepted can be achieved by adding a half-ring sleeve to the L-probe. In this
April 07, 2015. Date of publication November 13, 2015; date of current version communication, the inner diameter of the sleeve is the same as that of
December 31, 2015. This work was supported by an NSFC/GRF Joint Research the aperture where the L-probe protrudes. To suppress the side lobes of
project (Project no. N_CityU134/13). the FPRA, a pair of ridges [8] of size LR × WR is fabricated at each
L. Y. Feng was with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves,
side opening. These ridges have negligible effects on the WRA.
Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. He is now with the Institute of Antenna and For the WRA part, the plate height HP was arbitrarily chosen as
Microwave Techniques, Tianjin University of Technology and Education, 20 mm, which is 0.163 λ0 at resonance (2.45 GHz). It should be noted
Tianjin 300222, China (e-mail: [email protected]). that this is not a unique design. The excitation hook-strip protrudes
K. W. Leung is with the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, from the ground plane and wraps around the two-folded plates, as
Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, shown in Fig. 1(a). To let the hook-strip pass through the horizontal
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong (e-mail: [email protected]). parts of the folded plates, a rectangular hole of size L1 × W1 is fabri-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this communication are
cated at the top of each folded plate [see Fig. 1(b)]. By varying the strip
available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2015.2500607 width WS [Fig. 1(c)] and the hook-strip offset t from the grounded

0018-926X © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016 341

Fig. 2. Photo of fabricated dual-frequency antenna prototype.

III. M EASURED AND S IMULATED R ESULTS

To demonstrate the idea, a dual-frequency antenna that covers the
2.4- and 24-GHz ISM bands was designed using ANSYS HFSS.
Its prototype was fabricated, as shown in Fig. 2. The measurement
was divided into the microwave and millimeter-wave parts. In the
former, the S-parameters were measured with an Agilent E5071C
network analyzer, whereas the radiation pattern, realized gain, and
the antenna efficiency were measured by a Satimo StarLab system.
For the millimeter-wave part, the S-parameters were measured using
an E8361A network analyzer, and the radiation pattern and realized
gain were measured with an NSI measurement system. Since the
antenna efficiency cannot be directly measured by the NSI system, the
antenna efficiency of the FPRA is calculated from the ratio between its
measured realized gain and directivity.
Fig. 3 shows the measured and simulated reflection coefficients
of the proposed dual-frequency antenna, with reasonable agreement
between them. Fig. 3(a) shows the measured and simulated impedance
bandwidths ( |S11 | < −10 dB) of the WRA, which are given by
9.7% (2.35–2.59 GHz) and 7.3% (2.37–2.55 GHz), respectively. The
difference between them is caused by experimental tolerances.
The proposed antenna is compared with the DRA of the same
antenna dimensions. Fig. 4 shows the configuration of the reference
DRA. It is excited by a coupling slot which is printed on the ground
plane of the microstrip feedline. The DRA has dimensions of WP =
30 mm, LP = 22.7 mm, and HP = 20 mm, i.e., it has the same size
as the proposed antenna. Using HFSS, it was found that the DRA will
resonate at 2.45 GHz when using a dielectric constant of εr = 15.5
therefore, this εr was used in our simulations. For ease of compar-
ison, the simulated reflection coefficient of the DRA is also shown
in Fig. 3(a). With reference to this figure, the DRA has a simulated
impedance bandwidth of 4.9% (2.39–2.51 GHz), which is narrower
than that of the WRA (9.7%). This can be explained by the fact that
the use of dielectric increases the Q-factor and hence reduces the band-
width. Then, the impedance bandwidth of the FPRA is discussed.
With reference to Fig. 3(b), the measured and simulated impedance
Fig. 1. Configuration of dual-frequency antenna: LG = 100 mm, HG = bandwidths of the FPRA are 2.11% (23.91–24.42 GHz) and 2.23%
4 mm, WP = 30 mm, LP = 22.7 mm, HP = 20 mm, DP = 2 mm, LR =
(23.92–24.46 GHz), respectively. This bandwidth is similar to that of
5 mm, WR = 1 mm, L1 = 4 mm, W1 = 6.5 mm, LS = 7.5 mm, WS =
the previous FPRA [9]. The isolation between the WRA and FPRA
2.33 mm, DS = 0.5 mm, LH = 3 mm, LV = 2.8 mm, D1 = 2 mm, φ1 =
6 mm, dF = 6.7 mm, t = 0.5 mm, and g = 1.6 mm. (a) Front view. (b) Top is also given in Fig. 3. With reference to Fig. 3(a), the isolation is
view. (c) Side view. extremely low across the microwave band ( |S21 | < −70 dB). It is
reasonable because the FPRA part is electrically too small to be an
effective radiator in the 2.4-GHz ISM band. Fig. 3(b) shows the mea-
sured and simulated isolations, which are 46 and 30 dB at 24 GHz,
vertical plate [Fig. 1(a)], a 50-Ω hook-strip feedline can be obtained. respectively. Here, a much larger discrepancy than in the microwave
It is found that by adjusting the lengths of the horizontal arm and open case is found because the tolerance problem becomes more severe in
stub of the hook-strip, it is very easy to match the WRA. the millimeter-wave band. An attempt of comparing the FPRA part
342 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016

Fig. 5. Simulated E-field distribution of dual-frequency antenna using HFSS.

(a) WRA at 2.45 GHz. (b) FPRA at 24.15 GHz. Only the E-field in the parallel-
plate region is shown for clarity.

Fig. 3. Measured and simulated reflection coefficients and isolations of dual-

frequency antenna. (a) WRA. (b) FPRA.

Fig. 6. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of dual-frequency antenna.

(a) WRA at 2.45 GHz. (b) FPRA at 24.1 GHz.
Fig. 4. Configuration of reference slot-coupled DRA: LG = 100 mm, HG =
1.57 mm, WP = 30 mm, LP = 22.7 mm, HP = 20 mm, Wf = 4.56 mm,
LS = 9 mm, W = 2 mm, L = 24 mm, εr = 15.5, and εrs = 2.3.
Fig. 6 shows the measured and simulated radiation patterns of the
dual-frequency antenna. As can be observed from this figure, broad-
side radiation patterns are obtained for both the WRA [Fig. 6(a)]
with DRA was made, but given the same DRA size, it needs to have and FPRA [Fig. 6(b)] parts, as expected. For each part, the measured
a dielectric constant of close to 1 for the DRA to resonate at 24 GHz. and simulated cross-polarized fields are weaker than their copolarized
Since this low εr value will lead to a very poor DRA, this comparison counterparts by at least 25 dB in the boresight direction (θ = 0). The
is not given here. It can be observed from Fig. 3 that the antenna fully radiation patterns of the reference DRA were also simulated and the
covers the 2.4- and 24-GHz ISM bands. results are displayed in Fig. 6(a). It can be seen from this figure that
Then, the field distribution of the proposed dual-frequency antenna the H-plane pattern of the DRA is very similar to that of the WRA.
is studied. Fig. 5 shows the simulated E-field between the two-folded However, as compared with the WRA, the DRA has a broader E-
plates at 2.45 and 24.15 GHz. As can be observed from this figure, the plane field pattern with a stronger backlobe. Because of this, it can
E-field of the WRA is along +y direction, whereas that of the FPRA is be expected that the antenna gain of the DRA is lower than that of the
along +x direction as expected. WRA.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016 343

Fig. 8. Measured antenna efficiency of WRA. The inset shows the antenna
efficiency of the FPRA.

IV. PARAMETRIC S TUDY

A parametric study was carried out to characterize the dual-
frequency antenna. In the parametric study, only one parameter was
varied at one time, with all of the other parameters given in Fig. 1. The
effect of the height HP of the folded plate is studied first. With refer-
ence to Fig. 9, the frequency shift of the WRA is much larger than that
HP of the FPRA when HP increases from 19.5 to 20.5 mm. This is
expected because the resonance of the WRA is directly related to HP ,
whereas that of the FPRA is primarily controlled by the separation dF
between the two-folded plates.
Fig. 10 shows the effect HP of on the impedance bandwidth of the
dual-frequency antenna. With reference to this figure, the impedance
bandwidth of the FPRA can be enhanced from 0.93% to 2.19% by
Fig. 7. Measured and simulated antenna gains of dual-frequency antenna in decreasing HP from 26 to 20 mm. This is because the stored energy
boresight direction (θ = 0◦ ). (a) WRA. (b) FPRA. of the FPRA mode is mainly confined between the two parallel plates,
thus decreasing HP will reduce the stored energy and hence the Q-
factor of the FPRA [8]. Therefore, using the folded-plate structure can
Fig. 7 shows the measured and simulated realized gains of the widen the impedance bandwidth of the FPRA. However, it was found
dual-frequency antenna in the boresight direction (θ = 0◦ ). Again, that the effect of HP on the bandwidth of the WRA mode is much
reasonable agreement between the measured and simulated results smaller than for the FPRA mode. It is because the stored energy of the
is obtained for both the FPRA and WRA parts. With reference to WRA mode was found to spread around the entire antenna structure
Fig. 7(a), the measured and simulated peak gains of the WRA are instead of being confined in the parallel-plate region. As a result, when
7.23 dBi (2.46 GHz) and 7.40 dBi (2.44 GHz), respectively. The peak HP is varied, the percentage change of the total energy (and Q-factor)
gain of the reference DRA is also displayed in Fig. 7(a) for com- is much lesser than in the FPRA case.
parison. With reference to this figure, the DRA has a peak gain of The effect of the plate width WP was also studied. It was found that
6.60 dBi (2.45 GHz), which is lower than that of the WRA (7.23 dBi) its effects on the frequencies of the two antenna parts are negligible,
as expected. Fig. 7(b) shows the peak gain of the FPRA. As can be which is expected because WP is not a critical parameter for designing
observed from this figure, the measured and simulated peak gains are the operating frequencies.
11.26 dBi (24.05 GHz) and 12.16 dBi (24.15 GHz), respectively. This Then, the effect of the plate separation dF is investigated in Fig. 11.
gain value is similar to that of the previous FPRA [8]. The results show As can be observed from this figure, when dF increases from 6.53
that the FPRA part is not affected by the WRA part. It is worth men- to 6.87 mm, the resonant frequency of the WRA remains almost
tioning that although the WRA has a wider impedance bandwidth and unchanged but that of the FPRA decreases considerably in a linear
higher antenna gain, the DRA has an advantage that its structure is manner. From these results, it can be seen that the WRA and FPRA
much simpler, which is important in practical designs. parts can be designed independently, greatly facilitating the antenna
Fig. 8 shows the measured antenna efficiency of the WRA using the design.
Satimo StartLab system. With reference to this figure, the maximum To further study the antenna characteristics, the effect of the plate
efficiency of 95% is found at 2.48 GHz, showing that the WRA part height HP on the frequency ratio was studied for three different plate
is a very efficient antenna. The calculated antenna efficiency of the separations of dF = 6.1, 6.7, and 7.3 mm and the results are shown
FPRA is shown in the inset. As can be observed from this figure, the in Fig. 12. With reference to this figure, the frequency ratio linearly
highest antenna efficiency is 78.5% at 24.05 GHz, which is lower than increases with HP for all of the three cases. This is expected because
that (95%) of the WRA. It is acceptable when considering the much the resonant frequency of the WRA decreases with an increase of HP ,
higher operating frequency of the FPRA. whereas the resonant frequency of the FPRA is not sensitive to HP .
344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016

Fig. 9. Simulated reflection coefficient of dual-frequency antenna for plate Fig. 11. Simulated reflection coefficient of dual-frequency antenna for plate
height HP = 19.5, 20.0, and 20.5 mm. Other parameters are the same as in separations of dF = 6.53, 6.70, and 6.87 mm. Other parameters are the same
Fig. 1. (a) WRA. (b) FPRA. as in Fig. 1. (a) WRA. (b) FPRA.

Fig. 10. Simulated bandwidth of FPRA mode as a function of HP , with

fW RA and fW RA (in GHz) being resonant frequencies of WRA and FPRA
modes, respectively. Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 1. Fig. 12. Simulated frequency ratio of dual-frequency antenna as a function of
HP for different dF . Other parameters are the same as in Fig. 1.

The effect of the plate size on the gain of the dual-frequency antenna
is studied in Fig. 13. With reference to this figure, the peak gain of the the plate height HP on the antenna gain was negligible because the
FPRA increases from 11.48 to 12.86 dBi, whereas that of the WRA plate height does not affect the aperture size of the antenna. As for
does not vary significantly, when WP increases from 25 to 35 mm. It the WRA, the antenna gain can only be slightly enhanced by using a
shows that increasing WP can enhance the gain of the FPRA, at the larger ground plane; the gain increases from 6.75 to 7.86 dBi when the
expense of increasing the antenna size. It was found that the effect of ground plane size increases substantially from LG = 60 to 140 mm.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 64, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016 345

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V. C ONCLUSION
A new dual-frequency antenna with large frequency ratio has been
proposed and investigated. It integrates the WRA with the FPRA,
giving a very compact design. The former and latter operates in
microwave and millimeter-wave frequency bands, respectively. Two-
folded plates are used to reduce the size of the antenna. To verity the
idea, a prototype that covers the 2.4- and 24-GHz ISM bands was
designed, fabricated, and tested, and reasonable agreement between
the measurement and HFSS simulation has been observed. The mea-
sured bandwidths of the WRA and FPRA are 9.7% and 2.1%, with
realized gains given by 7.23 and 11.26 dBi, respectively. Broadside
radiation patterns have been obtained for both antenna parts. It has
been found that the resonant frequencies of the WRA and FPRA parts
are primarily dependent on the height of and separation between the
folded plates, respectively. Therefore, the two parts can be designed
independently, making it very easy to design.
The proposed antenna has been compared with a DRA that has the
same antenna size. It was found that the dielectric constant should
be 15.5 and ∼1 for the DRA to resonate at 2.45 GHz (WRA) and
24 GHz (FPRA), respectively. Since the DRA with εr ≈ 1 is not a
good antenna, only the comparison with the WRA has been made in
the study. It was found that as compared with the DRA, the WRA has a
wider impedance bandwidth and a higher antenna gain, at the expense
of using a more complicated antenna structure.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable
comments.