Small printed sinusoidal antennas: A simple design guide for smooth meander-line structures with augmented bandwidth

Abstract

We present small sinusoidal printed monopoles as enhanced meander-line antennas shaped after smooth curves. The antennas were designed at 2–3 GHz according to the size and bandwidth constraints of multimedia sensor networks. Their performance was characterized in terms of electrical size, bandwidth, and broadband radiation efficiency. A suitable scalar quantity was used to capture the overall performance. Results show that the sinusoidal monopole achieves 68% more bandwidth compared to a meander-line antenna of similar size and efficiency. Antenna performance depends heavily on electrical size, which depends on the size of the ground plane; its effect on radiation was also studied.