A Novel Compact Monopole Antenna with Staircase Shaped Ground Plane for UWB Applications

This paper proposes a compact monopole microstrip patch antenna with Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) characteristics. The antenna is printed on the FR4 substrate with dimensions 15x15x1.5 mm
³
. The radiating element is a modified circular patch fed using a microstrip feed line. A partial ground plane is connected to a stair case shaped parasitic element. The impedance bandwidth of the design is from 2.9 GHz to 12.2 GHz (fractional bandwidth of 123%). The evolutionary stages of the antenna along with a parametric study is presented. The design shows stable E and H Plane radiation patterns over a wide frequency range. The applications such as WLAN, WPAN, radar as well as satellite and military applications can be targeted using the designed antenna.