Compact balanced antipodal slot antenna for ultrawideband applications

A novel, miniature balanced antipodal printed slot antenna for ultra-wideband applications is proposed. The antenna is fed by strip-line with a fork-like stab. By employing balanced antipodal structure, not only good omnidirectional performance but also compact size is achieved. Several properties of the antenna, such as return loss, radiation pattern, and gain, have been investigated numerically and experimentally. As is reported, the operation bandwidth of the antenna is from 2.95 to 12 GHz, which is about 4:1. Stable omnidirectional radiation pattern with good polarization purity and flat gain performances over the whole frequency range can be achieved. Furthermore, the size of the antenna is more compact than conventional printed slot antennas for ultra-wideband applications. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.