Ram Horn-Shaped Inspired Folded Compact Antenna for 4G LTE-A and WLAN Portable Mobile Applications

A compact dual-band ram horn-like folded antenna is presented in this work. The antenna is based on a ram horn-like folded strip, asymmetric microstrip feeding (AMF) technique, partial ground, and protruding stub at the ground plane. The dimension of the proposed antenna is 0.11 lambda(g) x 0.17 lambda(g) at 2.3 GHz (10 x 15 mm(2)). The proposed shape is achieved through the combination of two circular arcs with different radii. The antenna operates at 2.3 GHz and 5.8 GHz with a measured bandwidth of 100 MHz and 820 MHz, a gain of 0.62 dBi and 2.2 dBi, and radiation efficiency of 93.67% and 99.87%, respectively. The prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. The measured result shows a good agreement with the simulated result. The parametric study of the proposed antenna is performed and results are presented. Besides, a comparative study between the antennas proposed in this work and the state of the art is performed and presented. The proposed antenna is comparatively small in size than all the recently reported works in the literature while ensuring good radiation characteristics. Therefore, the antenna proposed in this work is a better candidate for future portable sub-6GHz fifth-generation (5G), Advance Long-term Evolution (LTE-A), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) applications.