Flexible Wideband Filtering Monopole Antenna With Stable High Omnidirectionality

Abstract

This article presents a wideband flexible filtering monopole antenna with symmetric structure for stable high omnidirectionality. It is based on a monopole antenna, which is printed on a single-layer flexible substrate. Two folded parasitic strips with different length are devised on both sides of the driven monopole, giving filtering responses in the higher and lower band without filtering circuits. Since the asymmetric filtering structure adversely affects in-band omnidirectionality, this baseline design is extended with symmetric filtering structure to improve omnidirectionality and bandwidth. In the proposed design, a pair of parasitic strips are devised on the both sides of monopole antenna symmetrically, achieving a radiation null in the higher band. Then, by loading a pair of folded parasitic strips on the both sides of feed line with slotted metal ground, a radiation null is realized in the lower band. Besides, the driven monopole is slotted symmetrically for wideband operation. By adopting a fully symmetric filtering structure, the proposed design effectively suppresses the impact of the parasitic elements on the in-band omnidirectional radiation pattern, thereby achieving high omnidirectionality. Furthermore, the proposed antenna exhibits stable performance under different bending radii. To verify our design concept, an antenna prototype is fabricated. Both the flat and bent antennas are measured. The results show that the proposed antenna has a -10 dB impedance bandwidth of 45.6%, an in-band gain about 2 dBi, and an out-of-band radiation suppression more than 11 dB. The measured omnidirectionality has variations less than 0.8 dB without bending and 1 dB with a bending radius of 30 mm. This design offers several advantages including stable high omnidirectionality across a wide bandwidth, flexible conformal capability, and filtering property.