Design, Development and Testing of an Ultra-Compact Antenna with Enhanced Gain for Wireless Sensor Nodes

In this paper, a highly miniaturized monopole-like patch antenna for wireless sensor nodes with an enhanced gain is proposed. To mitigate the issue of low gain while designing a low-profile antenna for sensor nodes, the designed square shape planar antenna is employed with the symmetric modified Swastika-shaped Electromagnetic Bandgap (EBG) structure. The overall size of the proposed antenna is 0.116 𝜆 0 × 0.116 𝜆 0 . Miniaturization of the antenna is obtained by introducing the partial ground and the slots in the radiating patch. The simulation result indicates the proposed antenna has a gain of -3.62 dB at 2.4 GHz. Further, on employing the proposed EBG reflector beneath the antenna, the peak gain is increased by 4.7 dB. The combinational structure of the EBG reflector is a 6 × 4 array and the antenna operates with a peak gain of 1.54 dB. The measurements show that the fabricated antenna has good radiation performance, high gain, and good matching with simulated results. To validate the proposed antenna, a fabricated prototype is tested and analyzed using the sensor node in a real-time environment. Based on this analysis, the proposed antenna is found to be a good candidate for sensor node applications.