Wideband E-shaped Patch Antennas for Advanced Wireless Terminals

Low-profile patch antennas have become ubiquitous in wireless terminals, especially as devices have become smaller and demand more functionality out of their RF subsystems. While their shape and size is attactive for many applications, their narrow bandwidth hinders their usage in many systems. With the rise of computer-aided design, many patch antenna design concepts have been presented with enhanced bandwidth capabilities. The E-shaped patch antenna, whose original shape presented in the early 2000’s resembles the letter E, offers compelling performance with reasonable manufacturing complexity. In it most basic form, this antenna was linearly polarized and either wideband or dual-band. Over the last two decades, many variations of the E-shaped patch have been presented in literature: circularly polarized, miniaturized, frequency reconfigurable, or even polarization reconfigurable. This paper summarizes these efforts in realizing novel functionalities with a relatively simple design geometry.