This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2014.2321503, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
A Dual-band High-gain Base Station Antenna
for WLAN and WiMAX Applications
Huiqing Zhai, Member, IEEE, Qiqiang Gao, Changhong Liang, Senior Member, IEEE ,
Rongdao Yu, and Sheng Liu
 [4] are choices for dual-band design. Fractal antenna [5] is
Abstract-A dual-band base station antenna with high gain is
proposed in this paper. The antenna consists of a pair of planar
patches and vertical shorted patches. Each of the two planar
patches is composed of three U-shaped slots that differ in size.
The bigger U-shaped slots which are connected to vertical
patches operate at high frequency (3.5-GHz) and the smaller
ones work at low frequency (2.4-GHz), which can be applied to
wireless local area network (WLAN) and worldwide
interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) operations.
This antenna also exhibits high gains of near 8.0 dBi and 11.0
dBi at the low and high working frequencies, respectively. Good
cross-polarization performance is also verified by measured
results. It is also demonstrated that the two working bands can
be flexibly controlled by suitable changes of corresponding
parameters of U-shaped arms.
Index terms-- Dual-band base station antenna, high gain,
wireless local area network (WLAN), worldwide interoperability
for microwave access (WiMAX).
I. INTRODUCTION
ith the rapid development of outdoor and indoor
W wireless communications, higher requirements for good
performance of base station antennas are inevitable in
the terminal system. Particularly, demands for antennas used
in the area of wireless local area network (WLAN) and
worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX)
communications have caught enormous attentions in the past
few years. In order to cover the above two working bands, a
multiband antenna is very attractive because of its
cost-effective solution for reducing the number of antenna
units and minimizing the installation area for base station [1].
Thus, it is desired to design antennas that have the properties
of multi-band, high gain, simple construction.
To design a multi-band antenna for multi-mode wireless
communication system, various methods have been explored.
U-shaped strip [2], E-shaped monopole [3], and V-shaped slot
This work is supported by the NSFC under Contract No.61101066,
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JB140232),
Huawei Innovation Research Program, Foundation for the Returned Overseas
Chinese Scholars in Shaanxi Province and in part by the Natural Science
Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China under Grant No.
2013JZ019.
H. Q. Zhai, Q. Q. Gao, and C. H. Liang are with National Laboratory of
Science and Technology on Antennas and Microwaves, the School of
Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, China (e-mail:
hqzhai@mail.xidian.edu.cn).
R. D. Yu, and S. Liu are with Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen,
518129, China.
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another option for multiband design. Dielectric resonator
antennas (DRA) are popularly used to provide dual-band
operation [6]. And dipole arrays can be projected for
multi-band antenna design [7]. Besides, multi-layer structures
are presented for reconfiguration two-band base station
antenna [8]. It is noted that there are still some improvements
for us to deal with. The substrate structure [2-3], [5-6] makes
greater energy loss which results in low efficiency, low gain,
meanwhile the use of substrate will lead to low power capacity
and add to fabrication cost. These factors give rise to
constraints to their wide applications. Truly, array antenna [7]
achieved a high gain. However, it somehow increases the
design difficulty due to design of its feed network. Though
different layer radiation patches designs provide dual-band
operations in [4][8], the multi-layer design space and
complexity still somehow limit its further planar and
integrated application.
In this research, a new design of dual-band high gain
antenna composed of planar U-shaped slots that operates at a
low frequency band of 2.26-2.5GHz and a high frequency
band of 3.28-3.88GHz is proposed, which can be well used for
2.4-GHz WLAN and 3.5-GHz WiMAX applications. The
maximum gains of the two bands can approximately reach 8.0
and 11.0dBi, respectively. The present antenna is also
fabricated and good agreements between simulated and
measured results can be achieved, which also verify the
advantages of proposed dual-band base station antenna: easy
configuration, high gain, planar design, and good cross
polarizations, low back lobe, great power capacity,
qusi-symmetrical radiation pattern. The main parameters of
U-shaped slots are also investigated to effectively and flexibly
adjust each of the two working bands, which make our base
station antenna design easily extended to other communication
bands.
II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION
The geometry of the proposed dual band base station
antenna is shown in Fig.1. Both radiator and feeding line lie
upon the upper side of a square ground plane (marked in light
blue), as is plotted in Fig.1 (a) and (b). The radiator includes
two parts: the planar patch and the vertical patch (marked in
yellow). The two vertical patches, between which are the
feeding line (marked in green), have a height of H and a width
of V. They are arranged with a gap of S, shown in Fig.1 (c)
and (d). Two U-shaped planar slots are introduced here to
perpendicularly connect the shorted patches, and the detailed
physical parameters are plotted in Fig.1 (b). Here, two larger
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2014.2321503, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
2

U-shaped slots (marked in red) are considered to design and
excite the resonance mode at high frequency. Two smaller
U-shaped slots (marked in dark blue) which are used to
produce a low resonance mode are loaded at separated ends of
the two larger U-shaped slots.
adjacent radiator of the antenna, which is also shown in Fig.1
(c) and (d). So as to get the center pin of the SMA connector
to the feeding line, a circle is etched on the ground plane. The
ground pin of the SMA connector is connected to the ground
plane. This could also been seen from Fig.1(c) and (d).

Copper plate III. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION

GL
Ground plane In reference to Fig.1, simulation of relevant parameters are
carried out by commercial software: high frequency structure
simulator (HFSS) [10]. Based on parameters' analysis, the line
width of both U-shaped slots is chosen as 5 mm. Other
z detailed optimized parameters' values are also listed in Table I.
y
GW TABLE I DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE PROPOSED ANTENNA

Parameters GW GL S V H
x Feed to SMA connector
Value(mm) 160 160 17 16 20
(a) Parameters b c a p L
c L10 Value(mm) 12 1 9.5 5 10
Parameters W W10 W11 L10 L11
W10
Value(mm) 60 12 12 25 25
W W11
p
y L11

x
d

S
L
(b)
z Feed line

y a
Copper plate Fig.2. Prototype of the manufactured antenna.

b
H 0

-5
Ground plane
-10
SMA connector
S11(dB)

(c) -15
z V
-20

-25
Simulated results
x Copper plate Measured results
-30
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
Frequency(GHz)
Ground plane SMA connector
Fig.3. Simulated and measured results of S11 of the present antenna.
(d)
Fig.1. (a) 3D view. (b) Top view. (c) Front view. (d) Side view of the
proposed antenna. Fig.2 shows the prototype of the manufactured antenna. The
simulated and measured S11 is shown in Fig.3, from which it
To excite this antenna, a Γ-shaped strip line folded by a can been seen that two results have good agreement, though
rectangular copper line with a width of 5mm is applied, which some manufacture and measurement error leads to small shift
turns out to be efficient for good impedance matching [9]. In of measured results. From the measured S11, it is clear that the
order to transfer electromagnetic energy from the coaxial feed proposed antenna works at 2.38GHz with a -10dB bandwidth
to the radiating element, one end of this feeding line connects of 240MHz (2.26-2.5GHz) and works at 3.58GHz with an
to a SMA connector mounted on the ground plane and the impedance of 600MHz (3.28-3.88GHz), which can be well
other end is open-ended which helps to couple energy to the applied to 2.4GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) and

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2014.2321503, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
3

3.5GHz worldwide interoperability for microwave access corresponding physical parameters of the radiation arms,
(WiMAX) operations. which will be investigated in section IV.
The simulated and measured radiation patterns are shown in
Fig. 4, in which cross polarizations at different working
12
frequencies are also plotted to reveal the radiation
performance of the present antenna. For the front direction of 10

the antenna, the measured cross polarization level at two

Gain(dBi)
8
working bands is about 24dBi and 30dBi respectively. As for
the front-to-back ratio, a value of near 30dBi for both low 6

band and high band is obtained from the measured results. Simulated gains
Measured gains
Besides, radiation patterns for both E plane and H plane are 4

almost symmetrical at two operating bands with the maximum 2

2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 3.2 3.4 3.6 3.8 4.0
gain in the front direction.
Frequency(GHz)

0
Fig. 5. Simulated (black line) and measured (red line) gain of presented
330 10 30
antenna in two working bands.
0

-10
300 60
-20

-30

-40
270 90
-40

-30

-20
240 120
-10

210 10 150
180

1(a) (b)
(a) (b)
Fig. 6. Current distributions on radiation patches. (a) 2.4 GHz and (b) 5 GHz.
0 0

330 10 30 330 30
10
0 0

300
-10
60 300 -10 60 IV. PARAMETRIC STUDY
-20 -20

-30 -30 In this section, some main physical parameters of present

-40 -40
270
-40
90 270
-40
90 antenna will be investigated to show their affects on its
-30 -30 working frequency band. The following pictures will show
240
-20
120 240
-20

-10 120
how some main parameters influence the antenna’s
-10

0 0 performance.
10 10
210 150 210 150 0
180 180

-5

(c) (d) -10

-15
simulated co-pol simulated cross-pol
S11(dB)

-20
measured co-pol measured cross-pol -25
H=15mm
-30
H=20mm
Fig.4. Simulated and measured radiation patterns for co-polarization and -35
H=25mm
cross-polarization. (a) E-plane at 2.4 GHz. (b) H-plane at 2.4GHz. (c) E-plane
at 3.5GHz. (d) H-plane at 3.5GHz. -40
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
Frequency(GHz)
In Fig.5, the simulated and measured gains with different Fig. 7. S11 versus frequency with different H.
working frequency points are plotted. It can be seen from
measured results that this antenna can provide stable high Firstly, the Fig.7 shows S11 versus frequency with different
gains of near 8.0 dBi and 11.0 dBi at the low and high H. It is noted that if H is too large, take 25mm for example,
working frequencies, respectively. the gamma matching turns bad, especially for low frequency.
The current distributions at different frequencies are shown And when H is too small, the impedance matching between
in Fig.6 to comprehend the radiation mechanism of the present 2.4GHz and 3.5GHz gets close to -10dB which is not for
antenna. As is shown, the smaller U-shaped slots play the dual-band design. Thus, the value of H is chosen as 20mm for
dominant role in the radiation at low frequency 2.4GHz in dual-band antenna design.
Fig.6 (a). From current distributions of Fig.6 (b), the bigger Simulated S11 with a different width (W) of the big
U-shaped slots play the major role of the high resonance mode U-shaped slots case1: W=60mm; case2: W=70mm; case3:
at 3.5GHz. According to above explanations, it is possible to W=80mm are shown in Fig.8. From the results, we can find
effectively control two frequency bands according to that W plays a significant part in tuning the position of high

1536-1225 (c) 2013 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See
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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI
10.1109/LAWP.2014.2321503, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters
4

working frequency, and has very small influence on the low
working frequency. Basically, a smaller value of W
corresponds to a higher operating frequency, which is due to
the increase of resonance current path.
Fig.9 depicts responses of S11 with different dimensions of
small U-shaped slots in the case that the large U-shaped slots
keep unchanged. These investigated parameters include the
length of small arms: L10, and the width of small arms: W10.
The three cases are considered to control the position of low
working frequency: case4: L10=25mm, W10=2mm; case5:
L10=24mm, W10=12mm; case6: L10=20mm, W10=22mm.
As the inner arms of small U-shaped patches may produce
coupling which may affect the current distribution. Unequal
arms are taken into consideration. Here W11 and L11 are
chosen with the value of 12mm and 35mm separately. With
different combinations of W10 and L10, the center frequency
of low band can be flexibly changed.
To conclude, different physical size of U-shaped slots can
provide effective and flexible control on the positions of the
two working bands of the presented base station antenna,
which could be as the reference for the adjustment to possible
practical manufacture error and extension to other possible
communication band.
As for the use of the proposed antenna, it is our further
work to deal with. Taking outdoor coverage as an example,
the proposed antenna could be used for WLAN and WiMAX
application. In order to cover different communication areas,
reasonable arrangement for arrays could be constructed to
accomplish omnidirectional of the base station antennas. For
example, linear antennas could be placed in the form of circle,
rectangular or hexagon etc, as described in [9]. The proposed
antenna could be designed for arrays that compose of multiple
antennas to satisfy higher requirement of omnidirectional,
high gain and low back lobe radiation.

V. CONCLUSION
A dual-band unidirectional antenna with high gain is
presented in this research. According to measured results , it is
found that the antenna have a bandwidth and peak gain of
10.0%, 8.0dBi, and 16.7%, 11.0dBi at the working frequencies
of 2.38 GHz and 3.58 GHz, respectively. The positions of two
working bands can also be separately controlled according to
0
some main parameter changes. The good performances make
-5
it better candidate for base antenna design in WLAN/WiMAX
-10
communication system.
-15
S11(dB)

-20
case1(sim.) VI. REFERENCES
-25 case2(sim.)
case3(sim.)
-30
case1(mea.) [1] S. Chaimool, and K. L. Chung, “CPW-fed mirrored-L monopole antenna
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-40
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 [2] M. A. Toaha, I. M. Tariqul, M. Norbahiah, “A novel high-gain dual band
Frequency(GHz) antenna for RFID reader applications,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag.
Lett., vol.9, pp.653-656, 2010.
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U-shaped slots. case1: W=60mm; case2: W=70mm; case3: W=80mm. monopole antenna for MIMO application,” IEEE Antennas Wireless
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[4] W. X. An, H. Wong, K. L. Lau, S. F. Li, and Q. Xue, “Design of
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Antennas Propag.,vol.60, no.3, pp.1592-1595, 2012.
[5] S. Behera, K. J. Vinoy, “Multi-port network approach for the analysis of
dual band fractal microstrip antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.,
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[6]H.-M. Chen,Y.-K. Wang,Y.-F. Lin,S.-C. Lin, and S.-C. Pan, “A compact
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0 [7]M. Hamid, D. Mojgan, M. Pedram, “A dual-band high-gain resonator
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antenna with orthogonal polarizations,” IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag.
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S11(dB)

[9] K. M. Luk, and B. Q. Wu, “The magnetoelectric dipole - a wideband

-20
case4(sim.) antenna for base stations in mobile communications,” Proc. IEEE, vol.100,
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case5(mea.)
PA.
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case6(mea.)
-40
2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0

Frequency(GHz)
Fig.9. Simulated and measured S11of different dimensions of the small
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case5:W10=12mm, L10=24mm. case6:W10=22mm, L10=20mm.

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