IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

13, 2014

1019

A Small and Bandwidth-Extended Dipole Antenna

With Nonperiodic Left-Handed Transmission
Line Loading
Wei-Ping Cao, L. Shafai, Fellow, IEEE, Bing-Zhong Wang, Member, IEEE, Si-Min Li, and Bei-Bei Li

AbstractA miniaturized and bandwidth-extended dipole

antenna using a nonperiodic left-handed (LH) transmission line
is proposed. The LH transmission-line structure is composed of
a ladder network of unit cells having different series capacitors
and shunt inductors. The radiation performance of a four-cell
nonperiodic LH dipole antenna is compared to the periodically
loaded antenna with the same size. Simulated and measured
results show that, when the length of the antenna is about
,
dB can be
a 4.8% impedance bandwidth for
obtained through appropriately nonperiodic
loading without
any additional matching network, and well-behaved radiation
patterns have been displayed.
Index TermsImpedance bandwidth, left-handed dipole,
nonperiodic loading.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE CONCEPT of left-handed (LH) dipole was first proposed by Iizuka and Hall in 2006 [1]. Attributing to the
dispersion relation of LH transmission line, the resonance frequency and input impedance of an LH dipole antenna are mainly
decided by the value of loaded components, nearly independent of the dimension of the antenna. Moreover, LH dipole antenna can operate at negative-order modes, and increasing mode

Manuscript received December 10, 2013; revised March 08, 2014 and April
22, 2014; accepted May 10, 2014. Date of publication May 29, 2014; date of
current version June 06, 2014. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Funds under Grant No. 61361005, the Guangxi Natural Science
Funds under Grant No.2012GXNSFAA05 3233, the Science and Technology
on Information Transmission and Dissemination in Communication Networks
Laboratory under Grant No. ITD-U1300 x/K13600xx, and the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Manitoba. (Corresponding author: Wei-Ping Cao.)
W.-P. Cao is with the Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information
Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Ministry of Education,
Guilin 541004, China, and also with the Science and Technology on Information Transmission and Dissemination in Communication Networks Laboratory,
Shijiazhuang 050081, China (e-mail: weipingc@163.com).
L. Shafai is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada (e-mail: shafai@ee.
umanitoba.ca).
B.-Z. Wang is with the Institute of Applied Physics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610051, China (e-mail:
bzwang@uestc.edu.cn).
S.-M. Li is with School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China (e-mail: siminl@guet.edu.
cn).
B.-B. Li is with Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Ministry of Education,
Guilin 541004, China (e-mail: guetbeibeili@126.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LAWP.2014.2326433

number occurs at decreasing resonance frequency. These suggest that a reduced-size dipole antenna can be implemented.
However, the LH dipole antenna typically suffers from low radiation efficiency and narrow bandwidth [2], [3]. Several attempts
have been adopted to improve the radiation efficiency [4], [7].
However, none of the previous research has been referred to extend the bandwidth.
In this letter, the resonant character of the LH transmission
line, which is specified by the relationship between resonance
frequency and phase constant , is described in Section II first.
Then, the bandwidth characteristics of a periodically loaded LH
dipole antennas is analyzed in Section III-A. In order to extend
the bandwidth, a method of nonperiodic loading is proposed in
Section III-B. Since the values of the lumped elements are not
the same for all cells, each cell has its own resonance frequency.
The 4.8% relative bandwidth can be achieved by optimizing the
values of the elements. Moreover, a reasonable radiation efficiency is obtained, and a vertically polarized radiation pattern
can be observed.
II. RESONANT CHARACTER ON COMPOSITE
RIGHT-/LEFT-HANDED TRANSMISSION LINE
Consider the dipole antenna as shown in Fig. 1. In such a
dipole antenna, the transmission line with left-handed loading
actually operates as a composite right/left-handed transmission
line (CRLH TL) due to the parasitic effect. The equivalent circuit model of the lossless unit cell is shown in Fig. 2. In Fig. 2,
the series capacitors
and shunt inductors
act as an LH
transmission line, while the parasitic series inductors
and
shunt capacitors
act as a right-handed (RH) transmission
line. By applying BlochFloquet theory to the equivalent circuit mode [5], the analytical dispersion relation can be written
as

(1)
where is the unit-cell length of CRLH TL. and denote
the series impedance and the shunt admittance of the unit cell,
respectively. We plot the dispersion diagram of (1) in Fig. 3. According to the open boundary conditions, the CRLH TL, which

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 3. Dispersion relation of the CRLH TL versus resonant modes.

Fig. 1. Configuration of the left-handed dipole antenna. (a) Conceptual model.

(b) Prototype.

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit model of the lossless unit cell of the CRLH dipole.

is open-ended, produces standing waves and becomes a resonator [6]. The electrical length of the resonator is a multiple
of , i.e.,
(2)
where is the length of the resonator and is the resonance
mode. From (1), since the CRLH TL can have
at transition frequency and
in the LH range, can be zero and
negative, respectively [6]. For a periodic CRLH TL resonator
consisting of unit cells, the length of the resonator and the
period are related by
, and the resonance frequencies
can be obtained by
(3)
Because of the dispersion relation and bandwidth limited by
the LH high-pass and RH low-pass cutoff frequencies, a CRLH
TL resonator exhibits a finite number (
) of resonance
frequencies as shown in Fig. 3. For example, when the number
of unit cell ( ) is 4, resonance modes can be
.
III. ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
A. Analysis of Periodic Left-Handed Dipole Antenna
A dipole antenna based on a periodic left-handed transmission line, which consists of four unit cells with lumped
loading, is shown in Fig. 1 [2][4]. This periodic LH transmission line is implemented by two parallel wires, and each
cell includes two series capacitors and a shunt inductor. The

capacitors,
, are put on
one of the wires connecting to the feedline, and the inductors,
, are placed in the middle connecting the
two parallel wires. This results in different amplitudes of the
out-of-phase currents
and
on the parallel wires, which
produces radiation. The antenna is printed on FR4 substrate
with a relative permittivity 4.4 , thickness of 1.6 mm, and loss
tangent of 0.02. Conductivity of 5.8
S/m for the copper
wires and 1- losses for the lumped elements are considered in
simulation. The size of each unit cell is
mm, and the
length of the dipole is
mm. The width of the printed
wires is
mm, the distance between the parallel wires is
mm, and the length of lumped elements is
mm.
Although the CRLH TL consisting of
cells has a finite
number (
) of resonance frequencies, a dipole antenna
usually achieves its resonances at odd modes and anti-resonances at even modes. The summation of and of
mode becomes small at the position of 0 mm, and impedance
has an open circuit at feed point. It results that the anti-resonance of
mode does not exist in the return-loss characteristic [7]. Therefore, a four-unit-cell LH dipole can operate
at only two resonance modes:
and
in the LH
region.
Fig. 4 shows the reflection characteristics of the LH dipole antenna with different series capacitors
. In the simulation, the
inductors
is fixed at 22 nH, while the capacitors
varies
from 0.2 to 0.7 pF. It can be observed from the figure that with
the increase of the value of , the reduced operating frequency
can be observed. Moreover, only one resonance mode
was observed when
or 0.3 pF in the frequency range
from 450 to 750 MHz, whereas two resonance modes,
and
, can be observed when
changes between 0.4
and 0.7 pF. However, the LH dipole antenna has a narrow bandwidth on each resonance frequency. Furthermore, the simulated
radiation properties, which are listed in Table I, show that the
space of the two resonance modes becomes greater with an increased
, and the radiation efficiency at mode
is
lower than that at mode
due to the currents and
on the vertical wires, being out of phase and having insignificantly different amplitude.
Next, we propose a new method to extend the bandwidth of
the LH dipole. According to (1) and Fig. 3, the dispersion property is dominated by
and , which implies that the space of

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CAO et al.: SMALL AND BANDWIDTH-EXTENDED DIPOLE ANTENNA WITH NONPERIODIC LH TRANSMISSION LINE LOADING

Fig. 4. Simulated reflection characteristics versus frequency at

pF.

nH,

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured values of

pF.

at

nH,

Fig. 6. Gain of the antenna without dip between

mode.

mode and

TABLE I
SIMULATED RADIATION PROPERTIES OF LEFT-HANDED DIPOLE ANTENNA

Fig. 7. Simulated and measured radiation pattern of periodic LH dipole anMHz. (b) Simulated result at
tenna. (a) Simulated result at
MHz. (c) Measured result at 598 MHz. (E-plane:
, H-plane:
).

the two resonance modes is also controlled by these two parameters. Hence, by adjusting the
and
to appropriate value, the
two resonances can be suitably coupled with each other, and the
dipole can match to about 50 simultaneity at both LH modes,
and
, and an LH dipole antenna with wider
bandwidth can be achieved.
Fig. 5 shows the simulated and measured reflection coefficients of the dipole antenna by loading the optimized values
(
nH,
pF) of inductor
and capacitor
. From the figure, two resonances
MHz and
MHz are observed, and the dipole is well

matched from 602 to 619 MHz with an impedance bandwidth

(
dB) of 2.78%. The simulated result of gain
without dip between
mode and
mode as
the return-loss characteristic shows is shown in Fig. 6. The
simulated values of vertically polarized radiation pattern at
615 MHz for
and 606.5 MHz for
are shown in
Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively. The measured values of reflection coefficients match the simulated values very well, beyond
that the operating frequency range shifts to 590607 MHz.
It means for a dipole antenna of
that the bandwidth
can be much wider than that operating at single modes. The
measured gain is 3.4 dBi at the center frequency of 598 MHz.
Fig. 7(c) gives the measured 2-D radiation patterns, which
clearly indicate a good omnidirectional radiation performance.

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 13, 2014

Fig. 8. Simulated and measured values of scattering parameter about nonperiodic left-handed dipole antenna.

B. Design of Nonperiodic Left-Handed Dipole Antenna

In order to further improve the input impedance and the bandwidth of antenna, a dipole antenna with nonperiodic LH loading
is proposed in this section. We consider the same parameters as
the periodic loaded configuration except for the values of the
elements. For nonperiodic LH loading, the dispersion relation of the unit cell can still be derived from (1). Since the values
of series capacitors and shunt inductors are not the same for all
cells, the phase of resonator can be defined as
(4)
where is the phase constant of the th unit. For the four-cells
LH dipole antenna with a symmetrical configuration, (4) can be
rewritten as
(5)
Equation (5) shows that each unit cell has its own resonance
frequency. Thus, by optimizing these values of the series capacitors and shunt inductors, the bandwidth of nonperiodic LH
dipole antenna can be improved more efficiently than periodic
LH dipole antenna while keeping other characters are invariant.
The measured values and the simulated values of the scattering parameter about the nonperiodic LH dipole antenna are
shown in Fig. 8. The parameter values
pF,
pF,
nH, and
nH
are adopted, and two resonances,
MHz and
MHz, are observed in the simulation. The reflection coefficients meet the goal of
dB. From the
figure, the measured values have very good consistency with
the simulation ones, except the resonance frequencies that shift
accordingly to
MHz and
MHz.
The impedance bandwidth of the antenna (
) for
dB is 28 MHz, which is approximately 4.8%.
This is almost twice as much as that of the dipole using periodic left-handed transmission-line structure. The measured
and simulated 2-D radiation patterns, which are shown in
Fig. 9, show a good omnidirectional radiation performance.
The measured gains are 2.8 dBi at
and 3.8 dBi at
, respectively. At the center frequency of 580.5 MHz,
the measured gain is 2.4 dBi. Considering the directive
gain of the nonperiodic loaded dipole antenna is 1.88 dBi, the

Fig. 9. Simulated and measured radiation patterns of nonperiodic LH dipole

MHz. (b) Simulated results at
antenna. (a) Simulated results at
MHz. (c) Measured results at 580.5 MHz (E-plane:
,
).
H-plane:

efficiencies are about 37% in the

mode.

mode and 27% in the

IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a bandwidth-extended and electronically small
dipole antenna loaded by nonperiodic left-handed transmission-line structure is proposed. The simulated and measured
results show that, compared to the dipole antenna loaded by
periodic left-handed transmission-line structure, it has a better
wideband performance by adjusting the values of the series
capacitors and shunt inductors and exhibits a typical vertically
polarized radiation pattern of a dipole antenna. The investigation for nonperiodic left-handed transmission-line structure
provides a very good approach to broaden the bandwidth of the
left-handed antenna.
REFERENCES
[1] H. Iizuka and P. S. Hall, A left-handed dipole concept, in Proc.
Int. Workshop Antenna Technol., New York, NY, USA, Mar. 2006, pp.
396399.
[2] H. Iizuka, P. S. Hall, and A. L. Borja, Dipole antenna with left-handed
loading, IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 5, pp. 483485,
2006.
[3] H. Iizuka and P. S. Hall, Left-Handed dipole antennas and their
implementations, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 5, pp.
12461253, May 2007.
[4] Q. Liu, P. S. Hall, and A. L. Borja, Efficiency of electrically small
dipole antennas loaded with left-handed transmission lines, IEEE
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[5] C. Caloz, A. Sanada, and T. Itoh, A novel composite right-/left handed
coupled-line directional coupler with arbitrary coupling level and broad
bandwidth, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 3, pp.
980992, Mar. 2004.
[6] C. Caloz and T. Itoh, Electromagnetic Metamaterials: Transmission
Line Theory and Microwave Applications. Hoboken, NJ, USA:
Wiley, 2006, pp. 249252.
[7] Q. Liu, Antennas using left-handed transmission lines, Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Elect., Electron. Comput. Eng., Birmingham Univ., Birmingham, MA, USA, 2009.