Some techniques to improve small groundplane printed monopole performance

Printed planar monopole antennas are enjoying considerable popularity and publicity to their low-profile, wide bandwidth, quasi-omnidirectional radiation characteristics and their ease of integratability into devices. The impedance bandwidth and radiation properties of a strip monopole have been shown to be heavily dependent on groundplane size. The groundplane (GP) is of primary importance and when miniaturised, the antenna properties change significantly. Techniques to improve the performance of printed antennas on small groundplanes are presented.