DESIGN OF DUAL-BAND SERIES-FED DIPOLE PAIR ANTENNA USING PROXIMITY-COUPLED STRIP AND SPLIT-RING RESONATOR DIRECTORS

In this paper, a design of a dual-band series-fed dipole pair (SDP) antenna using proximity- coupled strip and split-ring resonator (SRR) directors is presented. Two different types of directors are placed close to the top element of the SDP antenna. First, a thick strip director is used to enhance the bandwidth and gain characteristics of the SDP antenna. Next, a pair of SRR directors is appended to both sides of the strip director to create a new resonance for dual-band operation. The performance of three different SDP antenna structures (with a strip director, with a pair of SRRs, and with both directors) are compared with the conventional SDP antenna without directors. When the strip and SRR directors are used together, the mutual coupling might affect the impedance matching of the original frequency band of the SDP antenna and the distance between the two directors is an importance parameter to decide the performance of the antenna. The effects of the distance between the strip and the SRR directors on the input voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) and realized gain characteristics are studied. A prototype of the proposed dual-band SDP antenna operating in the global positioning system L1 (1.563-1.587 GHz) and 1.7-2.8 GHz bands is designed and fabricated on an FR4 substrate. The experiment results show that the antenna has dual-band characteristics in the 1.56-1.63 GHz and 1.68-2.87 GHz frequency bands for a VSWR < 2. Measured gain is 5.9-7.5 dBi in the former frequency band, whereas it ranges from 6.2 dBi to 7.3 dBi in the latter.