Design of triple band fork shape encircled by annular ring antenna for WLAN/WiMAX and 5G sub-6 GHz frequency band applications

This paper presents a small, low-profile planar triple-band annular ring fork-shape microstrip antenna for WLAN/WiMAX and 5G sub-6 GHz applications. The objective of this paper is to design an antenna that can excite multiple bands simultaneously to incorporate WLAN and WiMAX communication standard with 5G sub-6 GHz frequency operation in a single device. The proposed multiband antenna is composed of face-to-face fork-shaped radiators surrounded by an annular ring with a defect ground structure plane. The designed antenna has a compact size of 22×32mm2 (0.176λ0×0.256λ0). Optimum dimensions were obtained using parametric study of key parameters. The proposed antenna provides three distinct bands: I from 2.28–2.73, II from 3.3–3.76 and III from 4.8–6.4 GHz that evidently cover entire WLAN (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz) and WiMAX (2.5/3.5/5.5) bands along with 5G sub-6 GHz frequency operation. Finally, a simulated antenna was built and experimentally studied to verify the design concept as well as validate the simulation results. The good agreement of the simulation results with the measured results proved that the antenna can operate simultaneously over WLAN (2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz), WiMAX (2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz) and 5G sub-6 GHz (450 MHz to 6 GHz) frequency bands.