Bandwidth Enhancement of a Coupled Meander-Line-Feed High Gain Whip Antenna

High gain whip antenna fed by a meander-line with a coupled tuning stub for bandwidth enhancement is proposed and experimentally investigated. Both impedance and radiation characteristics of this antenna are studied. Experimental results indicate that a 1:2 VSWR bandwidth of 700 MHz is achieved at operating frequencies around 2.4 GHz, which is nearly nine times that of a conventional 5/8-wavelength whip antenna. Finite-difference time-domain simulation is used for optimization of the antenna and the results agree well with the measurement. The gain variations are less than 1.5 dBi in the resonant band. The experimental results of the constructed prototype are presented.