Ultrawideband Antennas: Growth and Evolution

Narrowband antennas fail to radiate short pulses of nano- or picosecond length over the broader band of frequencies. Therefore, Ultrawideband (UWB) technology has gained momentum over the past couple of years as it utilizes a wide range of frequencies, typically between 3.1–10.6 GHz. UWB antennas have been utilized for various applications such as ground-penetrating radars, disaster management through detection of unexploded mines, medical diagnostics, and commercial applications ranging from USB dongles to detection of cracks in highways and bridges. In the first section of the manuscript, UWB technology is detailed with its importance for future wireless communications systems. In the next section various types of UWB antennas and their design methodology are reviewed, and their important characteristics are highlighted. In section four the concept of a UWB notch antenna is presented. Here various methods to obtain the notch, such as slots, parasitic resonators, metamaterials, and filters are discussed in detail. In addition, various types of important notch antenna design with their technical specifications, advantages, and disadvantages are presented. Finally, the need of reconfigurable UWB notch antennas is discussed in the next section. Here various insight to the design of frequency reconfigurable notch antennas is discussed and presented. Overall, this article aims to showcase the beginnings of UWB technology, the reason for the emergence of notching in specific frequency bands, and ultimately the need for reconfiguring UWB antennas along with their usage.

Enhancing Gain for UWB Antennas Using FSS: A Systematic Review

This review paper combs through reports that have enhanced antenna gain for ultra-wideband (UWB) frequencies using frequency-selective surface (FSS) techniques. The FSS techniques found across the research landscape were mapped onto a taxonomy in order to determine the most effective method for improving antenna gain. Additionally, this study looked into the motivation behind using FSS as a reflector in UWB frequencies to obtain directional radiation. The FSS suits multiple applications due to its exceptional ability to minimize power loss in undesired transmission areas in the antenna, as well as to hinder the interference that may occur from undesirable and wasted radiation. An efficient way to obtain constant gain over a wide range of frequencies is also elaborated in this paper. Essentially, this paper offers viable prescription to enhance antenna gain for UWB applications. Methods: A comprehensive study was performed using several imminent keywords, such as “high gain using FSS”, “gain enhancement using FSS”, “high gain UWB antennas”, and “gain enhancement of UWB antennas”, in different modifications to retrieve all related articles from three primary engines: Web of Science (WoS), IEEE Xplore, and Science Direct. Results: The 41 papers identified after a comprehensive literature review were classified into two categories. The FSS single- and multi-layer reflectors were reported in 25 and 16 papers, respectively. New direction: An effective method is proposed for FSS miniaturization and for obtaining constant gain over UWB frequencies while maintaining the return loss at −10 dB. Conclusion: The use of FSS is indeed effective and viable for gain enhancement in UWB antennas. This systematic review unravels a vast range of opportunities for researchers to bridge the identified gaps.

MIMO CPW-Fed Bent Antenna Based USB Dongle for ECMA-368 WPANs

A multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) ultra-wideband (UWB ) printed bent antenna, suitable for MB-OFDM ECMA-368 system integration with the wireless universal serial-bus (WUSB) dongle is proposed. The antenna consists of two antenna elements with an overall area of 18 X 53 mm2. Each antenna element is a simple modified folded-monopole fed by a coplanar waveguide (CPW). The design process of proposed MIMO UWB CPW-fed bent antenna configuration is presented in four simple steps. Experimental results show that the proposed design has a good impedance bandwidth in the range of 2.95–18.55 GHz with 147.2% fractional bandwidth (FBW). Moreover, the proposed antenna enjoys, low envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), good diversity gain (DG), low total active reflection coefficient (TARC) and omnidirectional radiation patterns. The bit error rate (BER) of the overall MB-OFDM ECMA-368 system with the existence of the proposed MIMO UWB CPW-fed bent antenna is evaluated in more realistic transmission channel scenario by using the extracted transmitting and receiving UWB antennas transfer functions.

Numerical simulation of the frequency response and phase response of combined UWB antennas in the receiving-transmitting mode

Results of a simulation and experimental study of a combined ultra-wideband antenna, which is a combination of electric and magnetic dipoles, are presented. The input signal recovery of the transceiver path of combined antennas made by the MathCad code and the experimental one were compared. The reconstruction took place according to the frequency and phase responses of the transceiver path of these antennas.

Correction to: Next-generation UWB antennas gadgets for human health care using SAR

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.