Patent Application
20060267842
This application claims the benefit of Taiwan Patent Application No. 94117602, filed on May 27, 2005, which is hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes as if fully set forth herein.
1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to an antenna, and more specifically to an antenna with a vertical complementary fractal structure.
2. Related Art
With the rapid development of wireless communication and semiconductor technology, wireless communication has become an indispensable part of life. A wireless communication system is comprised of a transmitter/receiver and antennas, wherein the antennas are used to convert electrical energy into electromagnetic energy or vice versa. This is one of most important components in communication systems. Given the demand for the miniaturization and multi-band capability of electronic devices, the current trend of antenna design is towards miniaturization, structural simplification, and multi-band or wide-band capability.
Many existing studies have focused on microstrip antennas and array antennas. In general, microstrip antennas have the advantages of being easy to produce, small in size, light weight, and low profile. However, they also have the problems of low radiation efficiency and narrow band.
Another type of antenna under development is the fractal antenna. By drawing upon electromagnetic theory, the concept of the fractal structure has been successfully applied to issues related to electromagnetic radiation, transmission, and scattering field. Because of their characteristic of self-similarity, fractal antennas are characterized by unlimited bandwidth. Thus the development of fractal antennas has received increasing attention.
At present, there are two kinds of applications of the fractal structure: one is to directly use existing fractals and the other is to develop new fractal structures based on the characteristic of self-similarity of fractals. By incorporating the array fractal antennas to microstrip antennas, the problems of microstrip antennas may be overcome with the multi-band capability and high gain of fractal antennas.
The relevant prior art discloses a fractal antenna, and the main idea of the fractal antenna is to change the shapes of the holes of the ground connection plane to control the radiation efficiency. See, for example, Ban-Leong Ooi, “A Modified Contour Integral Analysis for Sierpinski Fractal Carpet Antennas With and Without Electromagnetic Band Gap Ground Plane”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 52, NO. 5, MAY 2004.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,127,977 discloses a fractal antenna using a two-layer fractal structure to increase bandwidth and radiation efficiency. U.S. Pat. No. 6,642,898 discloses a fractal cross slot antenna using cross slots with a linear fractal structure instead of conventional non-fractal cross slots. The type of fractal antenna disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,476,766 achieves its compact design by staggering the slot structures at the upper level and lower level.
Reducing the size of antennas has always been an important objective of the field. In general, antennas without consideration of the ground connection plane design are of a larger size. Antennas with a ground connection design are of a smaller size; however, they occupy a large area of ground and space. Because fractal antennas are a type of newly-developed antenna that have attracted a great deal of attention, it is often thought that certain characteristics of fractal antennas are helpful to reduce the size, increase the bandwidth, and to improve the radiation field of the antennas. However, in practical use, in order to achieve higher radiation efficiency, fractal antennas usually do not adopt a ground connection plane. The prior art does not disclose any fractal antennas having a ground connection design.
The invention provides a vertical complementary fractal antenna to solve the problems described above.
An exemplary embodiment of the invention provides a vertical complementary fractal antenna having a first fractal structure, wherein the first fractal structure is defined as a superposition over N iterations of a fundamental motif, with N≧1, and a ground layer made of a conductive material having a second fractal structure corresponding to the first fractal structure.
According to another exemplary embodiment of the invention, in order to decrease the size of the antenna and also incorporate a ground connection plane in its design, an antenna with a vertical complementary fractal structure is provided. Previously, since antennas were simple in structure, the ground radiation of antennas with a vertical complementary fractal structure was limited. Microstrip antennas with a vertical complementary fractal structure as disclosed in the invention have a fractal structure at the upper level and a ground connection plane having a complementary fractal structure at the lower level, which not only increases ground radiation, but also reduces the overall size of the antennas and improves the isolation of the radiation from the circuit connected to the antennas.
Further scope of applicability of the invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.
The above and other objects, features and other advantages of the invention will be more clearly understood from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which:
Reference will now be made in greater detail to a preferred embodiment of the invention, an example of which is illustrated in the accompanying drawings. Wherever possible, the same reference numerals are used throughout the drawings and the description to refer to the same or like parts. Reference in the specification to “one embodiment” or “an embodiment” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodiment of the invention. The appearances of the phrase “in one embodiment” in various places in the specification are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiment.
Referring to
The signal layer 10 made of a conductive material includes a first fractal structure 11, which is defined as a superposition over N iterations of a fundamental motif, with N≧1. As shown in
The ground layer 20 is also made of a conductive material and has a second fractal structure 21 corresponding to the first fractal structure 11. As shown in
The fractal structure shown in
Referring to
Referring to
Referring to
Referring to
In the exemplary embodiments described above, the half portion of the first fractal structure and the half portion of the second fractal structure are used at the point of zero current of the antenna resonant frequency so as to reduce the area the antenna occupies, as shown in
From the observation of the resonant frequency (S11), it is apparent that the bandwidth of an antenna with a complementary structure disclosed in the invention is wider than that of an antenna with an ordinary fractal structure, especially in the high-frequency section, wherein the bandwidth of the antenna with only a first fractal structure is 7.3 GHZ˜8.4 GHZ, while the bandwidth of the antenna with a first fractal structure and a second fractal structure complementary to the first fractal structure is 6.8 GHZ˜9.8 GHZ. Therefore, the complementary structure increases the bandwidth of the antenna.
As described above, given the multi-band characteristic of fractal antennas, exemplary embodiments of the invention provide a fractal antenna with a complementary ground connection structure wherein the ground layer could be used for radiation so that the antenna may take less space.
The invention being thus described, it will be obvious that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the invention, and all such modifications as would be obvious to one skilled in the art and are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 94117602 | May 2005 | TW | national |
