Design of A CPW-FED C-Shaped Slot Array Antenna for Coal Mine/Tunnel Applications

This article proposes a C-shaped slot array antenna for coal mine or tunnel communications fed by a coplanar waveguide slot line. Each antenna element has a short-ended C-shaped slot pair. Instead of working at the basic mode, in the way that traditional half-wavelength straight slots do, the proposed C-shaped slot pair of each element operates at the first high-order mode to realize maximum bidirectional radiation at boresight. The design procedure is generalized, and some influential parameters are studied. A four-element C-shaped slot array antenna sample is designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured impedance bandwidth for |S11|-10 dB is 230 MHz (2.37 GHz to 2.60 GHz), and the measured in-band maximum gains lie in the range of 9.0-11.1 dBi. The measured bidirectional radiation patterns remain stable without main beam tilting across the 2.4-GHz WLAN band. The measured and the simulated results show good agreement. (c) 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1784-1789, 2013