A novel supershaped slot-loaded printed dipole antenna with broadside radiation for dual-band WLAN applications

A novel planar dipole antenna featuring super-shaped wing contour was designed for wireless local area network operation. The flairs of the antenna are mathematically defined by the supershape formula and one concave slot is symmetrically introduced in each flair in order two frequency bands to be formed. The substrate of the antenna is elliptically shaped and a differential feeding structure is used. The antenna exhibits very attractive performance characteristics. The bands excited fully meet the requirements of the most widely used IEEE 802.11 standards. The symmetrical characteristics of the antenna and the balanced feeding mechanism yield extremely low cross-polarization. Furthermore, the efficiency levels of the antenna achieved are higher than 98%. Also, unidirectional broadside radiation patterns are for the first time obtained from a wideband dipole antenna due to the successful introduction of a ground plane.