Small Planar Monopole Covers Multiband BRANs

The use of a single antenna which can cover a wide range of frequencies is a desirable feature for future wireless communications systems. The emerging self-organising and ad-hoc networks require more than an octave of bandwidth to facilitate multiband operation. A shorted planar monopole antenna is optimised for future wireless networking bands by suitable choice of planar dimension and feedgap separation. The antenna offers a return-loss greater than 10 dB from 1.60 GHz to 5.90 GHz. The radiation pattern is shown to be quasi-omnidirectional within the 10 dB return-loss bandwidth. Antenna properties are compared with the simple planar monopole.