Novel ladder patch monopole antenna for UWB application

A novel printed microstrip-fed ladder patch monopole antenna is presented for ultrawide band (UWB) application. The antenna consists of rectangular patch elements ladder arrayed at the both sides of the microstrip-fed line on a printed circuit board (PCB) and a rectangular ground plane. The antenna parameters of ladder number N, the rectangular patches geometry of ladder elements, the ladder step length and the length of ground plane are studied to obtain optimized antenna performances. The successfully designed, implemented and measured antenna has a compact size of 12 mm×12 mm and operation frequency band from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) less than 2. Using the ladder patch array in microstrip monopole antenna design makes antennas flexible in terms of controlling resonances, bandwidth, stable radiation patterns, and constant group delay.