Planar half-disk antenna structures for ultra-wideband communications

Printed antennas are cheap, lightweight, easy to-fabricate with high precision, and adaptable to mass production. These features are desirable for both indoor and outdoor handheld UWB antenna applications. In this paper, we consider planar versions of the half-disk antenna with different feed structures. These versions are compared with respect to radiated pulse width (to get higher data throughput), pulse amplitude (for a better efficiency), phase linearity (to prevent distortion), and omnidirectional radiation characteristics. A 1"×1"×31 mil size microstrip-fed half-disk antenna is presented as a solution to these needs.