Development and analysis of a folded shorted-patch antenna with reduced size

The length of a wall-shorted rectangular patch antenna can be reduced from similar to lambda(0)/4 to similar to lambda(0)/8 by a simple folding operation, which results in a stacked shorted-patch (S-P) structure with a resonant frequency that can be controlled by modifying the distance between the stacked (lower and upper) shorted-patches. A theoretical analysis based on a simple transmission-line model is presented and compared with numerical simulations, showing good agreement if the height of the folded patch is much smaller than the patch length. The physical insight of the variation of the resonant frequency for this reduced-size antenna can be understood by considering the antenna as a shorted patch loaded with a capacitor. An experimental verification is carried out for a 15 rum x 15 mm x 6 mm folded S-P antenna prototype designed for the 2.4 GHz ISM band that can achieve a 10-dB return loss bandwidth of 4% and results in a nearly omni-directional radiation pattern.