Design and simulation of a modified Minkowski fractal antenna for Tri-Band application

Abstract

This work presents a novel tri-band Minkowski planar antenna, using a modified planar monopole-shaped ground plane. The fractal structure is advantageous in generating multiple resonances, while the modified ground plane was found to be capable of enhancing each bandwidth. Application of the Minkowski fractal structure was also successful in reducing the arm length, and consequently, sideways size of the designed antenna. The proposed antenna was designed to effectively support WiMAX, WLAN and HiperLAN applications, at frequencies of 2.3 GHz, 2.45 GHz and 5.2 GHz, respectively. The performance properties of the antenna such as return losses, radiation patterns and gain were determined by simulation. A conventional Minkowski antenna with full ground plane was also designed to provide proper benchmarking of the improvement level provided by the modified ground plane.