IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 54, NO.

4, APRIL 2006 1105

An Ultrawideband Coplanar Waveguide-Fed Tapered

Ring Slot Antenna
Tzyh-Ghuang Ma, Member, IEEE, and Chao-Hsiung Tseng, Member, IEEE

Abstract—In this paper, we present a new coplanar wave-

guide-fed tapered ring slot antenna for ultrawideband (UWB)

applications. This antenna consists of a 50 coplanar waveguide

feeding line, wideband coplanar waveguide-to-slotline transition,
and a pair of curved radiating slots. The impedance bandwidth
with VSWR 2is from 3.1 GHz to more than 12 GHz. The
actual operating bandwidth is, however, limited by the distortion
of radiation patterns. Such pattern distortion can be attributed to
the antenna mode transition and is investigated in this paper with
the help of the radiation patterns in the traditional sense as well as
a dimensionless normalized antenna transfer function. By suitably
allocating such mode-transition phenomenon to the notched band
in a UWB radio, we demonstrate that antennas with desirable
radiation characteristics in both UWB low and high bands can be
readily achieved. The system responses of a transceiving antenna
system in free space are addressed as well.
Index Terms—Antenna radiation patterns, coplanar waveguide,
slot antennas, ultrawideband (UWB) antennas.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Configuration of the antenna. (a) Top view. (b) Cross-sectional view.

U LTRAWIDEBAND (UWB) technology has experienced

a blooming growth in the past few years and has become
the most promising candidate for future short-range high-speed waveguide-to-slotline transition, and a pair of curved radiating
indoor data communications. In 2002, the U.S. Federal Com- slots. By gradually changing the width of the radiating slots,
munication Commission officially allocated the spectrum from impedance matching between the transmission line and free
3.1 to 10.6 GHz for unlicensed UWB communication applica- space can be accomplished over a very wide bandwidth. The
tions. The antenna implemented in a UWB radio plays a more actual antenna bandwidth is, however, ultimately limited by
unique role than it does in conventional narrowband systems. In the distortion of radiation patterns. In Section II, the antenna
such a system, the antenna behaves like a filter in both spatial geometry and design guideline are first introduced. In the first
and frequency domains and tends to introduce unpleasant signal part of Section III, parameters in the traditional sense including
distortion and degradation. Many studies have been devoted to return loss and radiation patterns are illustrated. With the help
investigating antennas for UWB radios [1]–[11]. Schantz pro- of a dimensionless normalized antenna transfer function [7],
poses a variety of new designs including planar elliptical dipole those antenna parameters frequently involved in UWB antenna
antenna [1] and COTAB magnetic slot antenna [2]. Chen et al. design, i.e., the antenna transfer functions, gain responses,
discuss the considerations for the source pulses and antennas in and group delays, are addressed and discussed in detail in the
UWB radios [3] and also propose new design like the bi-arm second part of Section III. Finally, the system responses as the
rolled monopole [4]. Issues regarding pattern descriptors and proposed antenna serving as both the transmitting and receiving
time-domain effective height have been discussed [5], [6], and antennas in a transceiving antenna system are investigated at
various novel UWB antenna designs have been recently reported the end of this paper.
as well [7]–[11].
In this paper, a new coplanar waveguide-fed tapered ring slot II. ANTENNA CONFIGURATION
antenna is proposed for UWB radios. This antenna is formed
In designing a UWB antenna, there is a need for an impedance
by a 50 coplanar waveguide (CPW), a wideband coplanar
transformer so that the wideband impedance matching between
Manuscript received June 29, 2005; revised September 29, 2005. the transmission line and free space can be accomplished. In [2],
T.-G. Ma is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, National such a transformer is realized by means of a pair of tapered radi-
Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail:
[email protected]). atingslots,whilein[9]itisachievedbygraduallychangingthegap
C.-H. Tseng is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of spacing between the radiator and the ground plane. In this paper,
California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA on leave from the De- we propose a coplanar waveguide-fed tapered ring slot antenna
partment of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10764,
Taiwan, R.O.C. whose mechanism of wideband transformer can be explained as
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TAP.2006.872562 follows. As shown in Fig. 1, which is the antenna configuration
0018-926X/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE
1106 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 54, NO. 4, APRIL 2006

along with the design parameters, the signal is first fed into a 50
coplanar waveguide via a standard miniature adapter (SMA)
connector. At the end of the CPW feeding line, a pair of 100
slotlines are connected in parallel to ensure impedance matching.
The widths of the slotlines are then widened steadily to increase
the characteristic impedance and therefore facilitate the radia-
tion from the slotline to free space. To minimize the required an-
tennadimension,theslotlinesaredirectedbackwardintentionally
and are described by equations of ellipses. For optimum inband
impedance matching, a set of parametric studies were carried out
using Ansoft High Frequency Simulation Solver (HFSS) version
9.0. It is found that the ratio of outer semiminor to semimajor axes
of the elliptical profile, i.e., , is the most significant
parameter to affect the impedance matching. Roughly speaking,
an optimal ratio of 3:4 can be observed for a variety of substrates.
The initial width of the radiating slot is kept the same as the
width of a 100 slotline, and the end width of the radiating slot
can serve as a fine-tuning parameter. A narrower slot will Fig. 2. Measured and simulated return losses of the proposed antenna.
inevitably affect the inband impedance matching while a wider
one may increase the cross-polarization level. It is also found that
III. EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
the ground plane size around the radiation slots, which is defined
by by , can be minimized as long as the inband matching
A. Return Loss and Radiation Patterns
condition is remained.
The lowest operating frequency of the proposed antenna can The simulated and measured return losses are illustrated in
be approximated by Fig. 2. The simulation was performed by Ansoft HFSS 9.0 and
the measurement was taken by an Agilent E8362B vector net-
work analyzer. Fairly good agreement between the results can
(1) be observed and the little discrepancy can be mostly attributed
to the fabrication inaccuracy. The measured antenna impedance
bandwidth with dB (or VSWR ) is from 3.1
where is the estimated to more than 12 GHz. The actual operating bandwidth is, how-
longest current path along the outer boundary of the elliptical ever, ultimately limited by the distortion of radiation patterns.
profile, is the speed of light, and is the ef- Suitable band-notched structures [10], [11] can be introduced
fective dielectric constant. Due to the fact that the bandwidth to the antenna to avert the potential interference due to the co-
of the coplanar waveguide-to-slotline transition is much wider existence of UWB and wireless local-area networks (WLAN)
than that required in UWB radios, the highest antenna operating as well.
frequency, on the other hand, is generally limited by the distor- The radiation patterns were measured and calibrated in an
tion of radiation patterns. Also note that owing to the symmetry anechoic chamber. Fig. 3(a) and (b) illustrates the simulated and
of antenna geometry, bonding wires between the ground planes measured normalized patterns in both E- (or -) and H- (or -)
are not necessary and the proposed antenna is therefore a true planes at the center frequencies of UWB low and high bands.
uniplanar design. The UWB low band is from 3.1 to 5.1 GHz, whereas the high
The proposed antenna was fabricated on a Rogers RO4003 band is from 5.825 to 10.6 GHz. The copolarized components
substrate with dielectric constant and height in the E- and H-planes are and , respectively. It is shown
mm. The loss tangent is 0.0027 at 10 GHz. At the center in the figure that the copolarizations are broadside and bidirec-
frequency of the UWB spectrum, i.e., 6.85 GHz, the design tional, and the slight asymmetry in the measured H-planes can
parameters for a 50 coplanar waveguide are mm be attributed to the alignment mismatch in the measurement as
and mm. The length and width of the 100 slotline well as the reflection from the connecting cable. The cross-po-
and are determined at the same frequency and equal larizations, although not shown here for simplicity, are gener-
to 0.3 and 5 mm, respectively. The antenna geometric param- ally small compared to the copolarizations. It is also interesting
eters are designed in accordance with the design guideline in to note that the patterns in the high band are quite distinct from
the previous paragraphs and are given by mm, those in the low band. This phenomenon is frequently encoun-
mm, mm, mm, tered in UWB antenna design and will be exploited in detail in
and mm. According to (1), the corresponding lowest the next section.
operating frequency is 3.2 GHz. The ratio of is
equal to 0.8, which is close to the ratio for optimum antenna B. Antenna Transfer Functions
inband impedance matching. The ground plane around the radi-
ating slots is minimized by setting as 5 mm, and the overall Due to the extremely large operating bandwidth, UWB an-
antenna size is thus 66.1 44 mm . tennas evaluated solely in the traditional sense are generally not
MA AND TSENG: UWB COPLANAR WAVEGUIDE-FED TAPERED RING SLOT ANTENNA 1107

Fig. 4. (a) Arrangement for measuring the dimensionless normalized antenna

transfer function. (b) Transceiving antenna system with the E-planes of the
transmitting and receiving antennas being aligned with each other.

sulting in a dimensionless normalized antenna transfer function

[7]

dimensionless (2)

Fig. 3. Measured and simulated radiation patterns of the proposed antenna. (a) where represents the normalized IR of an antenna.
E- (yz -) plane. (b) H- (xz -) plane. The main idea behind this revised definition is that the con-
ventional two-antenna gain measurement method can now be
sufficient. Instead, many researchers devote themselves to inves- readily adopted to evaluate the antenna transfer function as long
tigating the derivation of antenna transfer functions or the corre- as the standard antenna for calibration purpose is well matched
sponding antenna impulse responses so as to give a comprehen- to the measuring system and with constant group delay. The
sive description of the antenna performance [12]–[13][14]–[15]. experimental arrangement for evaluating this dimensionless
Baum et al. extend the definitions of antenna gain and radiation normalized antenna transfer function is shown in Fig. 4(a).
pattern into time domain and also describe in detail the relation- With this arrangement, the dimensionless normalized antenna
ship between the antenna transient gain and the conventional transfer function of the antenna under test (AUT) can be deter-
gain definition in the continuous-wave sense [12], [13]. Soergel mined by [7]
et al. compare the measurement procedures for UWB antennas
in frequency domain to that in time domain [14]. Scheers et al. (3)
propose a normalize impulse response (IR) for transverse elec-
where is the measured transmission scattering
tromagnetic mode horns and successfully apply this normalized
parameter of the AUT at a specific angle is
IR in simulating the system responses of various problems [15].
that of the standard antenna in its maximum gain direction, and
These system responses are reported to be curial in UWB an-
is the dimensionless normalized antenna transfer
tenna design as well [3].
function of the standard antenna, which is given by
Recently, we modified the definition of the antenna transfer
function given in [15] by a normalization factor , re- (4)
1108 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 54, NO. 4, APRIL 2006

Fig. 6. Measured antenna group delays at  = 045 ; 0 ; 45 , and 90 in the

E-plane.

6 GHz. As the reception angle deviates from the antenna

mainbeam, i.e., the boresight direction, such notch frequency
becomes less conspicuous and even negligible. Due to the
deep null in the far-field pattern, the received signal strength
at is so small that the periodical fluctuations can
be principally attributed to the mismatch reflections between
the antenna and the instruments. Fig. 5(b) illustrates the gain
responses in the H-plane. The gain response at the boresight
direction is certainly the same as that in the E-plane, and the
little discrepancy is due to alignment mismatch in the mea-
surement. As the reception angle departs from the boresight
direction, the notch frequency moves steadily downward to the
Fig. 5. Measured gain responses of the proposed antenna at  = lower edge of the WLAN bands. Another notch frequency also
0 45 ; 0 ; 45 , and 90 in (a) E-plane and (b) H-plane. can be observed around 9.5 GHz.
In the previous section, we have pointed out that the radiation
and in (4) are the absolute gain and group delay of patterns in UWB low and high bands have noticeable difference.
the standard antenna, respectively. This implies that between the two bands the antenna operation
With the knowledge of the location of antenna virtual source mode may transit from the fundamental mode to the next higher
[15], the group delay of standard antenna can be readily deter- order mode so that the radiation patterns change noticeably. The
mined. The absolute gain can be read from the data sheet as measured gain responses in Fig. 5 further sustain this inference.
well. By substituting (4) into (3), the dimensionless normalized Refer to the figure, the notch frequencies around 5–6 GHz can be
antenna transfer function of the AUT can now be experimen- properly interpreted by this mode transition phenomenon. Owing
tally evaluated. It should be emphasized that the magnitude to the mode transition, additional distortion is inevitably intro-
in decibels of this dimensionless normalized antenna transfer duced to UWB signals, and the system performance suffers ac-
function is exactly the absolute gain of an antenna, and therefore cordingly. For the proposed antenna, however, such signal degra-
will be referred to as gain response in the following discussion dation could be mitigated because the mode transition is now al-
for simplicity. located in the band that will likely not be used in UWB radios due
In this paper, a Spectrum Technologies International to interference problem. We therefore infer that in UWB antenna
DRH-118 double ridged horn antenna was chosen to be design, it is desirable to allocate such mode transitions at the re-
the standard antenna. This antenna is well matched to the jected bands, e.g., the WLAN bands, so as to mitigate potential
measuring system and has a 630 ps group delay. Following the signal distortion as well as to achieve stable radiation patterns si-
measurement procedure in [7], the gain responses and group multaneously in UWB low and high bands.
delays of the proposed antenna were evaluated in both E- Finally, Fig. 6 shows typical antenna group delays at the same
and H- planes from 2 to 12 GHz with a reception angles in the E-plane. It is shown in the figure that
0.025 GHz step. Fig. 5(a) and (b) illustrates the measured gain the group delays demonstrate rather stable responses, and thus
responses at four angles: , and in the E- suggest that the proposed antenna does not introduce pernicious
and H-planes, respectively. The intended masked spectrum at phase distortion to the incoming/outgoing UWB signals. The
the WLAN bands is depicted in the figure as well. Referring to fluctuations in the curves are mostly attributed to the noise in
Fig. 5(a), the gain response in the E-plane reveals dual peaks the measurement. It can be reduced by implementing some av-
at the boresight direction and is with a notch frequency around eraging algorithm to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Further
MA AND TSENG: UWB COPLANAR WAVEGUIDE-FED TAPERED RING SLOT ANTENNA 1109

angles are , and 90 . Referring to the figure, the

responses exhibit dual peaks and remain acceptable in most part
of the UWB bands. The group delays, although not shown here
for simplicity, reveal stable responses over the frequency band
as well. System responses other than those in the E-plane can
also be readily derived as long as the corresponding antenna
transfer functions have been evaluated in advance. Finally, it is
interesting to note that the dimensionless normalized antenna
transfer function is expected to find applications in estimating
the system responses in more realistic environments as well.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new UWB coplanar waveguide-fed tapered
ring slot antenna has been proposed and demonstrated. This an-
tenna possesses adequate impedance bandwidth and quite stable
Fig. 7. Magnitude of the simulated system responses with the E-planes of the radiation patterns in both UWB low and high bands. The pat-
transceiving antenna pairs being aligned with each other. tern distortion phenomenon that commonly occurred in UWB
antenna design has been explained in terms of mode transition,
reducing the intermediate-frequency (IF) bandwidth or using and the suggestion for improving the antenna radiation charac-
time-gating techniques in a vector network analyzer can also teristics has been given. The responses of a transceiving antenna
improve the measurement accuracy at the expense of time. system further certify the suitability of the antenna for UWB
applications. The future works will be in introducing suitable
band-notched structures to mask the WLAN bands and in sim-
C. System Responses
ulating the system responses in a more realistic environment
We have addressed that the system responses of a transceiving with the help of the measured dimensionless normalized an-
antenna system are frequently discussed in UWB antenna de- tenna transfer functions.
sign [3]. It is also noted that an antenna system with desir-
able responses but insufficient impedance bandwidth may be ACKNOWLEDGMENT
even more preferable than that with adequate impedance band-
width but less attractive responses. In this section, it is there- The authors would like to express their sincere gratitude to the
fore interesting to evaluate the system responses as the pro- reviewers and to Prof. S.-K. Jeng at National Taiwan University
posed antenna serving as both the transmitting and receiving an- for their valuable and thoughtful comments.
tennas in a transceiving antenna system. Such system responses
can be experimentally evaluated in an anechoic chamber, or REFERENCES
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[12] E. G. Farr and C. E. Baum, “Extending the definitions of antenna gain Chao-Hsiung Tseng (S’03–M’05) was born in
and radiation pattern into time domain,”, Air Force Research Lab. Sensor Miaoli, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1974. He received the
and Simulation Note 350, 1992. B.S. degree in electronic engineering from National
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related to the traditional continuous-wave (CW) definition of gain,” R.O.C., in 1994 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in
in Ultra-Wideband Short-Pulse Electromagnetics 4, Jun. 1998, pp. communication engineering from National Taiwan
109–118. University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1999 and
[14] W. Soergel, F. Pivit, and W. Wiesbeck, “Comparison of frequency do- 2004, respectively.
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tennas,” in Proc. Antenna Measurement Techniques Assoc. 25th Annu. Microwave Researcher with the Center for Mea-
Meeting Symp., Irvine, CA, Oct. 2003, pp. 72–76. surement Standards, Industrial Technology Research
[15] B. Scheers, M. Acheroy, and A. V. Vorst, “Time-domain simulation and Institute, Hsinchu. From 2001 to 2002, he was a Teaching Assistant with the
characterization of TEM horns using a normalized impulse response,” Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, where he
Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Microw. Antennas Propag., vol. 147, pp. 463–468, became a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2004. He is now a Visiting Scholar
Dec. 2000. with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los
Angeles. His research interests include left-handed metamaterials, microwave
measurements and calibration techniques, and microwave-imaging systems
and techniques.
Tzyh-Ghuang Ma (S’00–M’06) was born in Taipei,
Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1973. He received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and the Ph.D.
degree in communication engineering from National
Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1995,
1997,and 2005, respectively.
In 2005, he joined the Faculty of the Department
of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan Uni-
versity of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan,
R.O.C., where he is now an Assistant Professor. His
research interests include mobile antenna designs,
electromagnetic theory and numerical techniques, ultrawideband antenna, and
passive circuit designs.