Compact broadband antenna with Vicsek fractal slots for WLAN and WiMAX applications

This article belongs to the Special Issue Photonic Technologies and Systems Enabling 6G.This paper aims to design a compact broadband antenna for wireless local area network (WLAN) and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WIMAX) applications. The suggested antenna consists of an octagonal radiator with Vicsek fractal slots and a partial ground plane, it is printed on FR-4 dielectric substrate, and its global dimension is 50 × 50 × 1.6 mm3. The antenna is designed and constructed using both CST MICROWAVE STUDIO® and CADFEKO electromagnetic solver, and in order to validate the acquired simulation results, the antenna is manufactured and tested using vector network analyzer E5071C. The measurement results show that the designed antenna attains a broadband bandwidth (S11 < −10 dB) from 2.48 to 6.7 GHz resonating at 3.6 and 5.3 GHz, respectively. The broadband bandwidth covers the two required bands: WiMAX at the frequencies 2.3/2.5/3.3/3.5/5/5.5 GHz and WLAN at the frequencies 3.6/2.4–2.5/4.9–5.9 GHz. In addition, the suggested antenna provides good gains of 2.78 dBi and 5.32 dBi, omnidirectional measured radiation patterns in the E-plane and the H-plane and high efficiencies of 88.5% and 84.6% at the resonant frequencies. A close agreement of about 90% between simulation and measurement results is noticed.The authors appreciate the funding from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant 801538. In addition the partial support from the Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP-2021/58), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is acknowledged