The ground plane effect of a small meandered line antenna

In this paper a discussion of the effect of the size and position of the ground plane of a meandered line antenna operating at 2.4 GHz is presented. The meandered line antenna was first designed with a ground plane that extends underneath the antenna. In order to improve the antenna performance, the ground plane was truncated and its position underneath the antenna was changed. These adjustments to the ground improved the antenna efficiency by a factor of 3.6, bandwidth by a factor of 2, as well as achieving omni-directional radiation patterns. However, the changes also resulted in high current distribution on the coaxial test cable, which was then corrected by extending the ground plane width.