Compact UWB antenna and radio propagation analysis for indoor wireless communications

Abstract

As most of the wireless communications happens in indoors, understanding indoor propagation is becoming increasingly important. Information sharing between user / devices wirelessly is rapidly growing fast. Transfer of the information instantly anywhere anytime is the need of the hour. As a result short range, high data rate wireless communication created a huge expectation among users. Based on this, our primary objective is to design an Ultra Wideband (UWB) antenna based on fractal geometry, suitable for indoor wireless communication. We designed a Custom-made omnidirectional UWB antenna that operates over 3.1–10.6 GHz; with maximum gain around 4.9 dB. The antenna is of compact size with dimension of 34 × 32 × 1.6 mm3 built on FR4 substrate. The antenna is designed and simulated using Electromagnetic (EM) simulation tool and validated with Radio Frequency equipment. The proposed antenna for indoor communications is validated through the radio propagation analysis utilizing EM computations and path loss models for the line of sight as well as the non-line of sight scenarios.