A Flexible Antenna on Cost-Effective PEN Substrate for Sub-6 GHz 5G Wireless Transceivers

Abstract

In order to realize the dream of high-performance, low-cost, low-power, low-loss, and low-profile wireless transceivers for the emerging 5th generation (5G) technology, there is a dire need to propose innovative antennas which facilitate the transceivers in meeting above-mentioned requirements. This is especially valid for the flexible antennas. Motivated by this need, a flexible microstrip patch antenna for sub-6 GHz 5G applications is presented in this paper. For antenna design, the low-cost polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate with a relative permittivity of 2.9 and a thickness of 0.1 millimeters (mm) has been selected. The model of antenna is comprised of slot-based patch which has been excited by a 50Ω microstrip inset feed-line of a 25 mm length. The operating frequency of the single-band antenna is 5.54 GHz, which falls in sub-6 GHz bands recommended by the FCC for the 5G applications. It has total dimensions of 30 × 44 × 0.1 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> , and exhibits a bandwidth of 87 MHz. The simulation results of ANSYS High Frequency Structure Simulation (HFSS) tool show that the antenna has a good return loss (S <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</sub> ) value of -22.98 dB at 5.54 GHz. It shows a good peak gain of 5.88 dBi, exhibits an excellent radiation efficiency of 94%, and maintains a VSWR of 1.15. Because of its superior performance, miniaturized dimensions, low-cost, and higher flexibility based advantages, the proposed antenna is a promising candidate for sub-6 GHz 5G wireless applications in flexible domain.