Wideband half U-slot patch antennas with shorting pin and shorting wall

Microstrip antennas have the advantages of low profile, light weight and ease of fabrication. However, they have narrow bandwidth and relatively large size in the microwave frequency range. One design which gives wideband operation is the U-slot patch. Applying shorting wall and shorting pin techniques results in further improvements (Guo, Y.X. et al., Micro. and Opt. Tech. Lett., vol.28, p.328-30, 2001; Shackelford, A.K. et al., Electronics Lett., vol.37, p.729-30, 2001). The areas of small wideband patch antennas can be further reduced, by a factor of two, by using a half U-slot instead of the full U-slot (Deshmukh, A.A. and Kumar, G., IEEE AP-S Digest, p.876-9, 2003). Two miniaturized wideband half-U-slot patch antennas with shorting pin and shorting wall have been designed. Simulation results show that the bandwidth and gain of the reduced size antennas are similar to those of the original full U-slot structure in both cases. Measurement results confirm the simulation results on the half-U-slot patch with shorting wall. Experimental results on the second design are in progress.