Flexible-Screen-Printed Antenna With Enhanced Bandwidth by Employing Defected Ground Structure

A flexible, wideband, and screen-printed antenna is proposed. The antenna is coplanar-waveguide and composed of two inverted L-shaped elements, a matching stub, and a defected ground structure (DGS), with a total size of 55 × 40 × 0.125 mm
³
. Studies show that the DGS can significantly increase the antenna bandwidth from 30% to 119% without sacrificing the size. The antenna has a wide measured bandwidth of 1.77-6.95 GHz, and a measured peak gain and efficiency in the ranges of 2.5-5.9 dBi and 60%-90%, respectively. Furthermore, both simulation and measurement confirm that the performance of the antenna is relatively stable under the bending conditions with various curvature radii.