A Flexible UWB Slot Antenna with Quad Band-notched Characteristics for Wearable Application

Abstract

The design and analysis of a compact coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed wearable slot antenna with four notched bands for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications are presented in this paper. The antenna is printed on a 0.1-millimeter-thick liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrate, providing flexibility for wearable applications. Split concentric rings (SCRs) engraved on the radiating patch and Lshaped branches loaded on the ground plane provide the antenna's notched features. The impedance bandwidth of the measured antenna ranges from 2.46 GHz to 12.52 GHz, with a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 134.1%, and it exhibits notched bands covering specific frequency ranges, ranging from 2.84 GHz to 3.93 GHz for WiMAX applications, 4.84 GHz to 5.41 GHz for WLAN downlink, 5.66 GHz to 6.26 GHz for WLAN uplink, and 6.94 GHz to 7.79 GHz for X-band satellite communication. Furthermore, the gain of the proposed antenna varies between 1.5 and 6 dBi, excluding the notched band. The antenna is tested, and the flexibility performance is good. In a word, the fabricated antenna shows promising prospects for wearable applications.