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

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.