Ground Slot Application in Microstrip Antenna for Portable Wireless Devices

An investigation into the effect of ground slot in a microstrip antenna is presented. Initially, a planar inverted-F antenna dedicated for 2.45 GHz WLAN lower band is designed. Its rectangular ground plane is then introduced with slots to excite new magnetic resonance for 5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN upper band. The slots are optimized by tuning their three different configuration parameters which are the length, width and location. As a result, a new antenna design with dual open-ended ground slot with enhanced bandwidth is proposed. The new proposed antenna offers a compact radiator size with wideband coverage between 2.31 and 6.63 GHz bandwidth. It is not only applicable for 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN for IEEE 802.11 a/b/g, but also covers other services within this range such as the 2.5/ 5.5 GHz WiMAX application. With such coverage and nearly omni-directional radiation pattern, the antenna is a promising candidate for multiband application in portable wireless devices.