Compact Meandered Monopole Antenna for Dual-Bands WLAN Application

A compact meandered dual-bands monopole antenna for the application of a wireless local area network (WLAN) is proposed. This antenna has two operating frequency bands which are 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz and denoted as lower and upper operating bands respectively. In the antenna design, a meandered arms structure has been proposed to obtain a compact size monopole antenna with an overall dimension of 30 mm x 21 mm. Furthermore, the dual-bands operating frequency is achieved with the contribution of two meandered arms structure as well as a partial ground plane proposed in the antenna design. The copper layer traces with the thickness of 0.035 mm has been used as the radiating patch and the partial ground plane has been printed at the back side of the FR-4 substrate with the permittivity, ε_r of 4.5 and the thickness of 1.6 mm. The proposed antenna has a simple design, small size, easy to fabricate and low cost. The measured and simulated results were compared to analyse the performance of the designed antenna. From the simulation, the operating frequencies achieved are at 2.44 GHz and 5.23 GHz, while from the measurement at 2.50 GHz and 4.44 GHz. Other antenna parameter such as radiation pattern and gain has also been evaluated and analysed.