Compact Planar Triple-Band Folded Dipole Antenna for WLAN/ Wimax Applications

A planar folded dipole antenna with triple-band operation for WLAN and WiMAX applications is proposed. It comprises a pair of symmetrical branch arms, which occupy a compact size of 35(L)x4(W) mm to be easily embedded inside a portable device as an internal antenna. By properly designing the branch radiating strips, three operating bands covering 2.39-2.5 GHz, 3.3-3.94 GHz, and 5.06-6.06 GHz can be acquired with the antenna. Moreover, the antenna's resonance can be appropriately adjusted to optimize the radiation performance for actual application. A fabricated prototype of the proposed antenna is tested and analyzed. Experiments show that good omnidirectional coverage and stable gain variation to enhance communication quality for WLAN/WiMAX operations can be obtained with the antenna.