Compact printed monopole antenna array for dualband WLAN application

This paper presents a printed two C-shaped monopoles antennas array for dual-band WLAN application. The two antenna elements are closely spaced at a distance of only 0.09λ_2.4GHz. High isolation between these two radiation elements is achieved by using the neutralization technique, which has been demonstrated as an effective way to increase the isolation for single band PIFA antennas. In this work, the neutralization technique has been implemented to the printed monopole antenna design. We demonstrate that by introducing two RF switches, we can not only design a compact monopole antenna array with high isolation for single band operation but also can extend this method to design a compact dual band antenna array. The proposed antenna array contains two C-shaped monopoles with a shorting line, on which two RF switches were integrated, connecting two arms of the antenna elements. Experiment results indicate that the proposed antenna array has a -10dB bandwidth that covers the required frequencies for dual-band WLAN applications (2.4/5.2GHz) with isolation higher than 15dB over both operation bands. The proposed antenna has been designed and optimized using Ansoft HFSS.