A Compact Dual Band Antenna Design with Bandwidth Enhancement for Sub-6 and Sub-7 GHz Applications

Abstract This work proposes a compact microstrip patch antenna incorporating rectangular patches to support 5G New Radio (NR) operations in the n40 (2.3 -2.4 GHz) and n41 (2.496 -2.690 GHz) sub-6 GHz bands, as well as n96 (5.9 GHz -7.1 GHz) sub-7 GHz band. The dual-band two T-shaped patch antenna is designed, simulated, and analysed using commercially available CST Studio Suite. The proposed antenna was fabricated on an FR-4(εr = 4.4) laminate with a thickness of 0.254 mm (10 mils) and 1 Oz (0.035 mm) thick copper used for both the ground and radiating planes. FR4 is a composite laminate consisting of epoxy resin and reinforced woven fiberglass fabric and manufactured using lamination techniques typical in polymer composites. The overall size of the dual-band dual T-stub antenna is 50 × 30 × 0.254 mm³. The simulation and measured results highlight the superiority of the proposed design, which achieves bandwidths of 0.560 GHz at 2.625 GHz and 0.240 GHz at 6.6 GHz, with corresponding gains of 2.12 and 2.55 dBi, respectively. Parametric studies of the proposed antenna further examine the performance of rectangular T-stub dimensions on antenna performance. These findings improve the potential of the proposed dual-band dual Tshaped MPA for wide bandwidth along with compact size implementations in sub-6 and sub-7 GHz, suitable for 5G mobile/wireless communication systems.