A Practical Miniature Antenna Design for Future

Internet of Things Enabled Smart Devices

M. Arif Khan∗ , M. Aziz ul Haq† , Sabih ur Rehman‡
∗‡ School
of Computing and Mathematics, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Email:{∗ [email protected],† [email protected],‡ [email protected]}

Abstract—Internet of Things (IoT) will play an important

role in the contemporary communication networks. In this
modern and future communication paradigm hundreds of
different smart Internet enabled devices will communicate with
each other continuously. For such communication networks
and smart devices, apart from the sophisticated communication
protocols, efficient hardware will also play a very crucial role.
Antennas being at the front end of communication, are one of
the important components of such a hardware. The antennas
for IoT applications are required to exhibit three important
characteristics, namely; (i) small size, (ii) energy efficiency and
(iii) ability to operate in multi antenna environment. In this
paper, we propose an antenna design that fulfils these important
requirements. We propose an ultra-wideband antenna that is
small in size compared to other existing designs, with dimensions
24 × 28 mm2 , that can easily fit in hand-held mobile devices.
Measured results indicate that the antenna not only has a very
small power return loss but also exhibits a low mutual coupling
that highlights that the proposed design is capable to operate in
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configurations.
Smart Mobility Smart Energy/Grid
Smart Home Smart Health
Keywords: Ultra Wideband (UWB); IoT; Compact antenna; Smart Agriculture
Smart devices.
I. I NTRODUCTION Fig. 1: A potential Internet of Things (IoT) architecture
Internet has revolutionised the way we gather information
in today’s era. As manufacturing cost is going down, more
and more small devices are being created with a capability of utilised. Antennas are the most important and crucial hardware
connecting to the Internet and this has visualised the founda- component of such a connected world. However, choosing the
tions of Internet of Things (IoT). Primarily IoT envisions to right antenna for an application device presents a key design
extend internet connectivity beyond traditional devices such challenge for the manufacturers, since these devices works on
as desktop computers and tablets to a diverse range of other utilising several radio bands and each band requires different
devices that utilises the embedded technology to communicate type and number of antennas to make this communication pos-
and interact via the Internet. According to a recent survey [1], sible. Creating effective antenna performance for IoT devices
it is projected that by the end of coming decade, there will requires researchers to examine a number of factors including
be 50 billion such devices around us that will source such antenna size, utilising low cost substrate as well as an effective
information via Internet. Figure 1, represents a prospective design that can cater for low power (energy) consumption.
design architecture for such a network that exhibits a global A lot of research has been focused on exploring novel
village where devices are connected to a shared medium to components and manufacturing technologies for the next gen-
get up-to-date information for user needs. eration wireless components and systems that will be suitable
The required hardware architecture for manufacturing these for IoT devices [2], [3]. These devices exhibit features high-
IoT devices differs from other already available hardware lighted IEEE 802.15.3a standard such as high data transmis-
utilised in our daily lives such as wireless routers, smart- sion, simple hardware configuration, low power consumption,
phones and laptops. In order to design the hardware architec- small size, low interference, omnidirectional radiation patterns
ture, one has to be aware of the applicability of these devices and a linear phase response [4]. The industrial use of the
in future communication systems, since each device will be frequency band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for communication
used for a specific application. The current requirement for and data transmission has been set in 2002 by the Federal
these devices is to provide low data rate communication and Communication Commission (FCC) [5]–[7]. UWB antennas
several spectral bands such as 900MHz, 2.4GHz and 5GHz are have great attention in wireless transmission for short range

978-1-5090-0941-1/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

and high speed wireless systems such as ground penetrating
radars, eHealth applications, Wireless Local Area Networks
(WLAN), military communication systems and short pulse
radars for robotics [8]–[10].
In terms of design aspect, an antenna as a front component
of any wireless device, is required to have a wide bandwidth,
good radiation pattern, linear phase response and switchable
ability [11]. From UWB systems point of view, the response
of the antenna should cover the entire operating bandwidth,
and the antenna should not be effective by the signals outside
the specified band [12], [13]. Hence, antenna is one of the
crucial components which determine the performance of UWB
communication system [14]. In the past, narrow bandwidth
characteristics of microstrip patch antenna was a real chal-
lenge for researchers. It was reported that previously narrow
bandwidth characteristics was a major limitation of 15 to
50% of commonly used antennas such as dipoles and wave
guides horns in most of the wireless devices [15]. This narrow
bandwidth limitation was successfully removed by achieving
a matching impedance bandwidth ratio by using the matching
techniques or adjusting the size of the feeder line [16]. There Fig. 2: Geometry of the proposed antenna
are many design schemes for UWB antenna systems which
are reported by different researchers recently [7], [17]. The
that is fabricated on an FR-4 substrate with the thickness
most familiar method to achieve UWB response is to cut
of 1.6 mm and the dielectric constant of 4.4. It shows the
slots on feeder line, patch or ground plane [7]. It is also
frequency bandwidth of 9 GHz in the frequency range of
noticed that U-shape or semi-elliptical slot is also helpful in
3.1 − 12.1GHz with −10 dB impedance bandwidth. The
most of the design cases for the purpose of increasing the
antenna is fed through a microstrip line by optimizing the
bandwidth [18]- [19]. In [20], authors introduced a parasitic
width and length of the partial ground structure. For the
open-circuit element at the terminal of slot. While in [17], [22],
entire UWB range, the VSWR is ≤ 2 that is one of the
authors achieved UWB signals by using tapered microstrip
desired characteristic of an efficient antenna designing. It
transmission line with parasitic patches. These all designs are
is also notify that our proposed design is of low cost and
having their own limitation regarding feed line width and some
easy to fabricate that makes it a favourable choice to install
of the antennas are too complex to design.
for UWB applications. The proposed antenna is simulated
There are many challenges for researchers to focus on
and fabricated to demonstrate the desired characteristics. The
while designing antenna. In modern communication, most
proposed antenna is well capable to address these challenges
antennas are complex in design with irregular patches and
like bandwidth efficiency and antenna dimensions.
dielectric substrates. Another important and challenging factor
for researchers in the antenna design is the size reduction The rest of the article is structured as follows. Section
of the antennas. The characteristics of such type of antennas II presents the geometry and design of the proposed UWB
can also be affected by the geometry of mounting devices on patch antenna. Section III presents the measured and simulated
which antennas are being placed. Hence, high bandwidth with results and discussion. Finally, Section IV concludes the paper.
smallest antenna dimensions with simple design is required.
II. A NTENNA S TRUCTURE AND D ESIGN
In [2], authors have presented a structure of a compact UWB
monopole antenna for IoT applications where the key factor in The geometry of the proposed UWB antenna includes the
achieving a small size is achieved by carefully designing the radiator, ground plane, a slot on radiator structure, and a mi-
architecture while maintaining acceptable level of electrical crostrip transmission line as shown in Fig. 2. The antenna was
performance. The final design exhibits dimensions of only designed and simulated using ANSYS HFSS [27] software as
9.45 × 18.5 mm and footprint of 175 mm2 . The design well as fabricated and measured. The photographs of the fab-
consists of microstrip-fed rectangular radiator as well a ground ricated prototype of the proposed antenna is shown in Fig. 3.
plane with a rectangle slit as well as a L-shaped stub. In The antenna was fabricated on FR-4 substrate with permittivity
[22], U-shaped antenna is designed which operates in 3-8 r = 4.3, height 1.6 mm, loss tangent δ = 0.025, width and
GHz frequency range. It is important to notice that antenna length 24×28 mm2 . The radiator and the ground plane are on
is excited through coaxial feed line. This technique is not the top and bottom of the dielectric substrate, respectively, and
popular due to some drawbacks [23]. While in [24]–[26], both are made of copper material with thickness 0.035 mm and
authors presented some antenna designs for UWB applications. conductivity σ = 5.96e7 S/m. A rectangle shape patch with
In this paper, we present the design of the proposed antenna dimensions width and length 12 × 8 mm2 is designed on the
 Fig. 3: Fabricated antenna

top surface of antenna. Further, a circular slot was introduced

on the patch with 9 mm diameter. To achieve a 50 Ω input (a) Return Loss
impedance matching, a microstrip transmission line is used to
excite the suitable set. The most important and interesting part
in this design is the introduction of corner truncated ground
plane of proposed antenna. A slots cutting technique on ground
is used to extend the frequency at high frequency to increase
the bandwidth [9]. Over all, the impact on the performance
of the proposed antenna due to truncated ground structure is
described in Section III. The proposed antenna operates well
within UWB frequency operating range and has a low cost of
manufacturing. Table I highlights the attributes of the proposed
antenna with other compared approaches.

TABLE I: Size comparison of the proposed antenna with other

existing antennas.

Ref. Size(mm) Freq.(GHz) Feed Method

[22] 60 × 50 3.0 – 8.0 Coaxial
[24] 30 × 18 3.1 – 10.6 Microstrip line (b) Effect of corner truncation
[25] 50 × 34 1.73 – 10 Microstrip line
Fig. 4: Return loss of fabricated antenna
[26] 55 × 42 4.5 – 10 Microstrip line
This work 28 × 24 3.1 – 12.1 Microstrip line
√
then equation (1) implies ZT 2 = Zo ZL ⇒ ZT = Zo ZL .
A. Quarter-Wave Transformer Through this technique, if we use our feeder line ( λ4 ) then
When the impedance of a load is same as the characteristic we can get a maximum matching in our antenna. As a result
impedance of the transmission line i.e, there is no reflected maximum part of input power will be transmitted, resulting in
wave and all the input power is dissipated at the load. There are a maximum radiation.
many ways to achieve this impedance matching. One of them
III. C HARACTERIZATION OF THE P ROPOSED A NTENNA
is a presented technique called Quarter-Wave Transformer.
A quarter wave transformer, like low frequency transformers In this section, we present the simulated and measured
changes the impedance of the load to another value so that results of the proposed UWB antenna system. We used HFSS
matching is possible. A quarter wave transformer uses a software to simulate the antenna. The parameters of interest in
section of the line of characteristic impedance ZT of λ4 long this study are the antenna S-Parameters, VSWR and radiation
[28]. To have a matching condition, we want Zin = Zo . Since pattern. We explain each parameter separately in the following
sub-sections.
ZL + jZT tan( π2 ) ZT 2
Zin = ZT π = . (1) A. S-Parameters
ZT + jZL tan( 2 ) ZL
The proposed UWB antenna is tested on Agilent PNA-X
In case of Quarter-Wave Transformer, ZT = l = λ4 . Hence, N5242A network analyzer. A comparison of simulated and
tan βl = tan( 2π λ π
λ )( 4 ) = tan( 2 ) = ∞. Further, if Zo = Zin measured S-parameter is shown in Fig 4a. From the simulated
 Fig. 5: VSWR of the proposed antenna (a) E-Plane

and measured results, it is clear that the proposed UWB

antenna resonates with the bandwidth of 9 GHz covering the
frequency range (3.1 - 11) GHz. It is evident that measured
result exhibit a very good agreement with the simulations. It
is also obvious that the proposed UWB patch antenna design
is compatible for WLAN, radar and satellite applications.
B. Effect of Corner Truncation
Now days, corner truncation is a famous technique to
enhance the bandwidth of antenna. Through this phenomena
we can shift the frequency at higher values [9]. A graphical
explanation of this phenomena is shown in Figure 4b. Single
corner truncation shifted the frequency to lower band with
increase in return loss. So one by one corner truncation process
was carried out to observe the behaviour of return loss. Return (b) H-Plane
loss improvement was observed after the truncation of both
Fig. 6: E-Plane and H-Plane Radiation [dB]
corners of the ground and shown in Figure 4b. The change in
the behaviour of return loss is due to the current distribution
on the patch surface.
shown in Figures 6a and 6b. The operating frequency range
C. Voltage Standing Wave Ratio is between 3.1 to 12 GHz and the antenna is simulated at
Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) is another important 4 GHz, 6 GHz and 8 GHz to plot the radiation patterns.
parameter in antenna design that shows how good an antenna The H-plane radiation pattern is much omnidirectional while
is matched with the tranmission line. The lower the VSWR, E-plane pattern is roughly dumbbell shape. This represents
the better the antenna will be, since most of the power the consistency in transmission power of the antenna. It is
is transmitted to the antenna. In general, VSWR of less observed that E and H plane patterns are increasing with the
than 2 for an antenna is acceptable in most of the wireless frequency.
communication systems. Figure 5 shows the simulated result
E. MIMO Configuration
for VSWR of the proposed UWB patch antenna. According
to -10 dB bandwidth, the VSWR for the entire frequency MIMO antennas provide high spectral efficiency in contem-
range, i.e., (3.1 - 11) GHz is less than 2 which ensures the porary wireless communication systems without requiring ex-
minimum power loss (less than 10%) at the input terminals of tra power and bandwidth. The proposed antenna for future IoT
the antenna. devices has the capability to be used in MIMO configuration
as shown in Figure 7. This prototype shows only two antenna
D. Radiation Pattern elements placed at a distance of 28 mm apart from each
Another important parameter to investigate the performance other. However, this configuration can be extended by carefully
the proposed UWB patch antenna is E and H planes in terms noticing the effect of antenna separation on the antenna
of radiation patterns. In this work, we show the simulated performance. The configuration may be extended by including
E and H plane radiation patterns of the proposed antenna as more antenna elements as per the application requirement such
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