HIGH GAIN FLEXIBLE CPW FED FRACTAL ANTENNA FOR BLUETOOTH/WLAN/WPAN/WIMAX APPLICATIONS

A dual-band flexible antenna incorporated with the fractal structure using coplanar waveguide (CPW) is proposed for 2.42 GHz WLAN and 3.78 GHz WiMAX applications. The antenna is printed on a low-cost FR4 substrate having a thickness of 0.5 mm with an overall antenna dimension of 97.48 x 80 mm(2). Incorporation of fractal geometry leads to improvement in terms of impedance bandwidth and radiation efficiency. The simulated and measured results of the proposed antenna in terms of return loss (S-11), gain, and radiation pattern are presented here which show great correlation. The measured impedance bandwidth and gain of the flexible antenna are 17.08% (2.20 GHz-2.61 GHz), 16.30% (3.38 GHz-3.98 GHz), 4.56 dBi and 1.09 dBi, respectively. The proposed dual-band antenna shows omnidirectional and bidirectional radiation patterns in H and E-planes which makes it suitable for its use in low-cost Bluetooth/WLAN/WPAN/WiMAX applications.