Shared-Aperture Slot-Based Sub-6-GHz and mm-Wave IoT Antenna for 5G Applications

In this article, a square concentric slot-based antenna is presented for sub-6-GHz and millimeter-wave (mm-wave) 5G-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The proposed antenna design exhibits an octaband operation for the sub-6-GHz spectrum while resonates at 28GHz as well. The unique feature of the proposed design is the shared radiating aperture for both sub-6-GHz as well as mm-wave bands. The antenna consists of three concentric square slots etched out from a ground (GND) plane dimensions of 50 x 50 x 0.508mm(3). For the sub-6-GHz band, the antenna is excited by a single open-ended microstrip transmission line, while 1 x 8 power divider (PD) is used to excite the planar connected antenna arrays at the mm-wave band. The proposed antenna covers the following eight bands for sub-6-GHz operation: 1.05-1.23 GHz, 1.4-1.55 GHz, 1.9-2.3 GHz, 2.3-2.7 GHz, 3.1-3.7 GHz, 4.04-4.511 GHz, 4.83-5.2 GHz, and 5.66-6.151 GHz. The mm-wave band covers 27.4-28.4 GHz with the minimum bandwidth (BW) of 1 GHz. The proposed antenna covers most of the IoT bands, thus, it is a potential candidate for next-generation 5G-enabled IoT devices.

Automated summary

This article presents a square concentric slot-based antenna for sub-6-GHz and millimeter-wave 5G-enabled IoT devices, exhibiting octaband operation for the sub-6-GHz spectrum and resonating at 28GHz. The unique feature is the shared radiating aperture for both sub-6-GHz and mm-wave bands.