This paper presents wideband split-ring antenna arrays based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) for Ka-band (26.5–40 GHz) applications. The antenna array is fed by a 2.92 mm coaxial connector (K-connector) and the power is equally distributed to each split-ring resonator. The designed coplanar waveguide (CPW), SIW, CPW-to-SIW transition, coaxial-to-CPW transition, and two-stage SIW power divider are described in detail. By using a thin Rogers 6002 substrate with silver epoxy-filled vias, a transition prototype is designed, fabricated, and tested in a back-to-back configuration. A wideband split-ring resonator is developed as a single element and four possible arrangements of antenna arrays are introduced. By combining the designed components and routing paths, two full layouts of the antenna arrays with four split-ring resonators are addressed. As a demonstrator, a 2×2 antenna array prototype in a compact format is designed, fabricated, and tested. The fabricated antenna array achieves a measured directivity of 15.0 dBi with a fractional bandwidth of 23.0% centered at 30.5 GHz.

In this paper, a novel design of compact Coplanar Waveguide-fed planar monopole antenna with enhanced bandwidth and multiband characteristics has been proposed. Two rectangular rings have been incorporated in a rectangular patch to obtain multiband operation for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) (2.3/2.5/5.5 GHz) bands. A parasitic strip and meandering along with double-ringed structure have been used to achieve enhanced impedance bandwidth in WLAN (from 2.26 to 3.03 GHz) and WiMAX (from 4.48 to 6.85 GHz) bands. The parametric analysis is carried out to study effect of varying dimensions on antenna performance. The proposed antenna is optimized and prototype is designed and fabricated. Simulated and measured radiation patterns in elevation and azimuthal planes are also observed. The antenna shows significant gain of 7.33 dBi at 6.54 GHz frequency.

In this study, a dual-layered polarization and frequency reconfigurable microstrip antenna is proposed based on sequential mechanical axial rotation of the circular metal radiator. The antenna can be reconfigured among three different polarized modes, including the linear polarization (LP), left-handed circular polarization and right-handed circular polarization in the band from 4.68 to 4.80 GHz (2.53%). The resonance frequency of the proposed antenna with the same LP mode could also be tuned in the range from 4.70 to 5.03 GHz by mechanical rotation of the breach-truncated circular metal radiator as well as the circular substrate. Furthermore, the polarization characteristic and frequency can be reconfigured, respectively, as the circular radiator is taken an axial rotation with an angle of 360°. The presented antenna in the four different states has been numerically simulated and fabricated for the experimental measurement, the investigated characteristics includes the port reflection coefficient, axial ratio, radiation pattern, gain, and the radiation efficiency. The simulated and test results agreed well with each other. This antenna enriches the novel mechanical reconfigurable method except for the popular electrical approach.

Owing to dynamic nature of vehicular environments, it becomes essential to achieve effective communication via vehicle-to-vehicle and infrastructure-to-vehicle. This leads to the need for an antenna system that supports multiple frequency bands, high gain, broadside radiation pattern, and circular polarization. We propose single-arm penta-band-based spiral antenna with dimensions of 51 × 35 × 1.574 mm3 resonating at navigational wireless frequencies 1.2 GHz for IRNSS and 1.5 GHz for GPS; wireless communication frequencies 2.45 and 3.3 GHz and dedicated short range communication frequency 5.8 GHz. Linear taper feed has been introduced to achieve good impedance matching and the outer edge feed of the spiral on the same plane helps to achieve circular polarization. The measurement result proves the betterment in impedance of the spiral antenna that varies from 50 –55 Ω across the desired operating frequencies.

In this paper, compact single-feed dual-band antennas for different wireless applications are proposed. First, a dual-band antenna with a comparatively large frequency ratio of 2.58 is designed. Then, a novel dual-band antenna is introduced in order to enhance the upper frequency band. The technique consists of modifying the feed line structure, which leads to a 9.23% of impedance bandwidth at the central frequency of 6.5 GHz instead of 2.06%. The designed antennas are fabricated and tested in the laboratory and in a small anechoic chamber in order to measure their reflection coefficient, gains, and efficiencies. Good agreement between simulated and measured results is obtained. The designed antennas are particular because they have low profile, very simple single-feed technique, can be designed for large frequency ratios, and also the bandwidth can be clearly enhanced. Therefore, they can be used for different wireless applications.

A compact size hybrid fractal antenna is proposed for the application in wideband frequency range. The proposed antenna structure is the combination of Koch curve and self-affine fractal geometries. The Koch curve and self-affine geometries are optimized to achieve a wide bandwidth. The feed circuit is a microstrip line with a matching section over a rectangular ground plane. The measured impedance matching fractal bandwidth (S11 ≤ −10 dB) is 72.37% from 1.6 to 3.4 GHz. An acceptable agreement is obtained from the simulated and measured antenna performance parameters.

In this paper, a miniaturized CPW-fed tapered slot antenna (TSA) with a modified CPW to slot-line transition structure was introduced. An air-bridge and tapered slot edge (TSE) structure was also employed to broaden the transition bandwidth. Through these applied modifications, negative features of the original TSA (limitation of transition) and antipodal Vivaldi antenna (bad cross-polarization) are both removed, while all the positive features remained. Results showed that the proposed structure offered a broad bandwidth of 2.6–20 GHz and also exhibited an appropriate current distribution with high radiation efficiency. The radiation pattern was stable in the working frequency band with good directivity, gain, and low cross-polarization. The proposed antenna structure also presented satisfactory time-domain characteristics. In this study, we confirmed the simulation results through data measurements.

In this paper, a 2.45-GHz wideband harmonic rejection rectenna for wireless power transfer is proposed. The rectenna comprises a microstrip-fed circular ring slot antenna (CRSA) and a series-parallel rectifier (SPR). A compact micro strip resonant cell is inserted into the CRSA so that the harmonic suppression over a wide bandwidth (3–8 GHz) can be obtained. The radio-frequency (RF)–DC conversion efficiency of the SPR is improved effectively by loading a proper compensating inductance, especially under the low input power levels. Furthermore, the proposed rectenna can easily achieve large-scale rectenna arrays using its simple structure. The adopted rectenna fabricated on a low cost Taconic RF-35 substrate has been measured. By up to 3rd-order harmonic rejection, the efficiency of the rectenna can achieve 70.2% with the optimum load resistance 1 kΩ. Good agreement among the calculated, simulated, and measured rectenna is observed.

In this paper, an X-shaped fractal antenna with defected ground structure (DGS) is presented for multiband and wideband applications. The X shape is used due to its simple design and DGS is utilized to achieve size reduction with multiband and wideband features in the frequency range of 1–7 GHz. The proposed structure is fabricated on FR4 substrate with 1.6 mm thickness. We have proposed two different antennas both are having X-shaped fractal patch with a slotted ground plane to have more impedance bandwidth and better return loss. Various parameters like scale factor, width of ground plane, number of slots with their dimensions and feed line length are optimized to have size reduction and for enhancing the performance of antenna. Reflection coefficient shows the multiband and wideband features of proposed antenna. One of the proposed antennas covers various applications like IEEE802.11y at 3.65 and 4.9 GHz, IEEE 802.11a at 5.4 GHz, 802.11P at 5.9 GHz. Other antenna covers applications like IEEE802.16 at 3.5 GHz; 5 cm band for amateur radio and satellite and future 5 G communication systems over 6 GHz. The antenna designing was done using CST software and simulation results were compared with experimental results (using E5071C network analyzer).

A low-profile circularly polarized (CP) slot antenna to achieve a wide axial-ratio (AR) beamwidth is proposed in this paper. The radiating patch consists of two orthogonal pairs of parallel slots etched symmetrically onto a ground plane. Firstly, our theoretical study demonstrates that the CP radiation can be satisfactorily achieved at the broadside, when the vertical and horizontal paired-slots are excited in the same amplitude with 90° phase difference. Secondly, the principle of CP radiation of the proposed antenna on an infinite ground plane is described. Through analyzing the spacing between two parallel slots, the |Eθ| and |Eφ| radiation patterns can be made approximately identical with each other over a large angle range. As such, the slot antenna achieves a wide AR beamwidth. After that, the 3 dB AR beamwidth with respect to the size of a finite ground plane is investigated to constitute a practical CP antenna on a finite ground plane. In final, the proposed CP antenna with a 1–4 probe-to-microstrip feeding network is designed and fabricated on a finite ground plane of a dielectric substrate. Measured results are shown to be in good agreement with the simulated ones about the gain, reflection coefficient, AR bandwidth, and radiation patterns. Most importantly, a wide 3 dB AR beamwidth of 126° and low-profile property with the height of 0.036λ0 are achieved.

The development of compact radio frequency identification (RFID) tag is the key requirement for wireless tracking of precious small size goods/packages in transport. A design of compact meander line tag antenna having inductive coupling feed is presented for RFID system operating at ultra high frequency band of 865–867 MHz. The size of the proposed tag antenna is 43 mm × 10 mm, and is designed using Higgs 4 IC chip (made Alien Technology, USA) having impedance of 20.55 − j191.45 Ω at centre frequency 866 MHz. The antenna characteristics such as impedance, radiation pattern, bandwidth, and effect of ground on gain and tag size are analyzed and found to closely match with the simulated values. The observed value of reading range varies from 87.5 to 35 cms depending on mounting on non-metal and metal packages, respectively.

The design and measurement of reconfigurable circularly polarized capacitive fed microstrip antenna are presented. Small isosceles right angle triangular sections are removed from diagonally opposite corners for the generation of circular polarization (CP) of axial ratio bandwidth of 11.1%. Horizontal slits of different lengths are inserted at the edges of the truncated patch to provide the dual-band CP and by switching PIN diodes across the slits ON and OFF, reconfigurable circularly polarized antenna is realized. The antenna shows dual-band behavior with reconfigurable CP. In order to enhance the operation bandwidth of the antenna, an inclined slot was embedded on the patch along with PIN diodes across the horizontal slits. This proposed antenna gave an impedance bandwidth of 66.61% (ON state) ranging from 4.42 to 8.80 GHz and 68.42% (OFF state) ranging from 4.12 to 8.91 GHz and exhibits dual-frequency CP with PIN diode in OFF state and single-frequency CP with PIN diode in ON state with good axial ratio bandwidth. The axial ratio bandwidth of 4.42, 2.35, and 2.72% is obtained from the antenna. The antenna has a similar radiation pattern in all the three different CP bands and almost constant gain within the bands of CP operation.

In this paper, the influence of tree trunks, cylindrical street furniture such as lamp posts, and traffic on ray tracing simulations in an urban scenario is analyzed. Tree trunks and lamp posts are modeled by cylinders and propagation characteristics computed according to the Uniform Theory of Diffraction. The influence of traffic is analyzed by simulations with moving vehicles. In order to get an understanding of the spatial characteristics of the channel, simulations with static and also mobile receivers have been performed, in line with a measurement campaign in the same environment. The simulation results show a good agreement with the measurements.

An array of patch-antennas with meandering-gaps on an optical modulator is proposed for wireless millimeter-wave beam-steering through high-speed radio-over-fiber systems. Wireless millimeter-wave can be received by the array of patch-antennas and directly modulated to lightwave by the optical modulator. The wireless millimeter-wave can be steered using the meandering-gaps at the patch-antennas by controlling interaction between millimeter-wave and lightwave electric fields in electro-optic modulation. The basic operation and analysis of the proposed device are discussed. In the experiment, 5 × 5 antenna array in 40 GHz millimeter-wave bands was designed and realized for device characterization and demonstration to wireless millimeter-wave beam-steering. There were five variations of wireless millimeter-wave beam-steering for one-dimensional in xz- or yz-planes that can be obtained with wireless millimeter-wave steerable beams of about ±30°. Additionally, 25 variations of wireless beam-steering can be obtained for two dimension in xyz-space through orthogonal optical modulation. The proposed device is promising to be applied in millimeter-wave/tera-hertz bands for future directional wireless communication and sensing with high-speed and high-resolution operation.

A novel antenna-harvester co-design paradigm is presented for wireless nodes operating in an Internet of Things context. The strategy leads to compact and highly-integrated units, which are able to set up a reliable and energy-efficient wireless communication link, and to simultaneously harvest energy from up to three different sources, including thermal body energy, solar, and artificial light. The core of the unit consists of a substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) antenna. Its surface serves as a platform for the flexible energy-harvesting hardware, which also comprises the power management system. To demonstrate the approach, two different SIW cavity-backed slot antennas and a novel compact dual linearly polarized SIW antenna are presented. These topologies facilitate the integration of additional hardware without degrading performance. In the meantime, they enable comfortable integration into garments or unobtrusive embedding into floors or walls. Measurements on prototypes validate the integration procedure by verifying that the integrated hardware has a negligible influence on the performance of all discussed SIW antennas. Finally, measurements in four well-chosen indoor scenarios demonstrate that a hybrid energy-harvesting approach is necessary to obtain a more continuous flow and a higher amount of scavenged energy, leading to a higher system autonomy and/or reduced battery size.

This paper describes a linear-polarized reflector that reflects incident wave almost parallel to its surface at 60 GHz, when illuminated by an impinging plane wave with normal incidence. This structure is designed as a simple and low-cost passive repeater with both a quasi-endfire radiation and a flat profile. Working as a transmission relay, it is a quite potential and possible solution to improve the radio-coverage in the T-shaped corridor, which is a typical scenario of non-light-of-sight (NLOS) environment for 60 GHz indoor communications. The proposed repeater consists of an array of parallel grooves with appropriate depths, drilled in a metallic plate. Full-wave simulations and theoretical investigations are carried out to demonstrate the working principle and to optimize the performance. Then, an 80-groove breadboard in the size of 200 mm × 200 mm is fabricated and measured to explore the feasibility of the concept. In a practical measurement, when the distance from the repeater to transmitting antenna (Tx) is 2 m, and to the receiving antenna (Rx) is 1.5 m, the repeater exhibits a main beam at ±75° with gain up to 22.7 dB. The communication between Tx and Rx in NLOS areas is thus successfully recovered.

This paper presents the development of two dual-band radio-frequency (RF) harvesters optimized to convert far-field RF energy to DC voltage at very low received power. The first one is based on a patch antenna and the second on a dipole antenna. They are both implemented on a standard FR4 substrate with commercially off-the-shelf devices. The two RF harvesters provide a rectified voltage of 1 V for a combined power, respectively, of −19.5 dBm at 915 MHz, −25 dBm at 2.44 GHz, of −20 dBm at 915 MHz, and −15 dBm at 2.44 GHz. The remote powering of a clock consuming 1 V/5 µA is demonstrated, and the rectenna yields a power efficiency of 12%.

In this paper, some theoretical aspects and experimental results are discussed with the aim to provide supplementary dc energy to radio frequency identification (RFID) tags by exploiting the nonlinear nature of rectifier devices. Three nonlinear phenomena are treated: (i) the impedance power dependence, (ii) the harmonic production, and (iii) the dependence on the radio frequency waveform. The novelty of the work relies on proposing a double rectifier composite system in where the nonlinearity of each rectifier is exploited to enhance the global powering performance of the system. Using the passive RFID technology as a beacon for the implementation, the approach considers combining the internal rectifier circuit of a commercial RFID chip operating at 868 MHz with an external rectifier circuit operating at 2.17 GHz. The solution triggers in a composite system RFID tag-harvester integrated in a single-feed dual-band antenna. The experimental validation shows 5 dB of tag sensitivity enhancement when it is empowered by the external harvester. The enhanced sensitivity produces an increase in the theoretical reading range distance from 3.3 to 6.1 m.

In this contribution, we study the design and experimental characterization of a reconfigurable transmitarray in X-band with reduced focal distance. To this end, we consider an illumination with four feed horn antennas in two different configurations. The focal distance and the horn configuration in the focal plane have been optimized with an in-house simulation tool. The effects of source placement errors and excitation unbalances are also studied. The numerical results show a reduction of the focal distance by a factor 1.8 if compared with the single-source case, for a reconfigurable 400-element transmitarray designed in X-band. Moreover, generation of multiple beams is considered and demonstrated numerically for spatial power combining applications. The experimental results obtained in radiation are in good agreement with the numerical predictions. This multiple-source transmitarray exhibits similar radiation performances as the single-source one in terms of gain, bandwidth and beam tilting capabilities, but with about half its volume. This technique seems very attractive for a better integration on various platforms such as vehicles, drones, aircrafts, buildings, etc.

In this paper, a miniaturized coaxial feed curved-slotted microstrip patch antenna over a fractalized uniplanar compact electromagnetic bandgap (F-UC-EBG) ground plane is proposed and investigated. Compact size is achieved by cutting the curved slots along the orthogonal directions of the patch radiator. The curved-slotted microstrip patch antenna is 38.30% miniaturized as compared with the conventional microstrip patch antenna resonating at 2.38 GHz. Furthermore, the ordinary ground plane of the curved slotted patch antenna is replaced by the F-UC-EBG ground plane. Due to the slow wave phenomenon created in the F-UC-EBG structure and the better impedance matching at the lower frequency further miniaturization and improved performance are obtained. The proposed antenna shows 74.76% miniaturization as compared with the conventional microstrip patch antenna resonating at 1.57 GHz and has 2.61% 10-dB fractional bandwidth, 1.49 dB gain, and 81.59% radiation efficiency. The proposed antenna is fabricated on a low-cost FR4 substrate having an overall volume of 0.184λ0 × 0.184λ0 × 0.0236λ0 at 1.57 GHz GPS band. The measured and simulated results are in good agreement and predicting appropriateness of the antenna in portable and handheld communication systems for GPS applications.