Characteristics of ultraband printed slot antenna using FDTD method

A cross-shaped microstripline-fed printed slot antenna with wide bandwidth is presented in this paper. The proposed antenna is analyzed using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. It was found that the bandwidth of the antenna depends highly on the characteristics of the proposed antenna, which depend highly on the design parameters (ls, Ws, offset,lu, and ld). We also compare the optimized offset/Ws ratio and the calculated bandwidth of RT-5880 substrate for slot width Ws. When Ws is 32 mm, the optimized offset/Ws ratio is 0.344, and the calculated bandwidth is 3.744 MHz (112.6%). The experimental bandwidth of this antenna is from 1.85 to 5.70 GHz, which is approximately 115.5%, for VSWR ≤ 2.0. The proposed antenna showed triresonance characteristics due to the wide bandwidth. Experimental data for the return loss and the radiation pattern of the antenna are also presented, and are in good agreement with the FDTD results. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 44: 162–165, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20576