Flexible and Compact Tri-Band Graphene Antenna for Conformal Wi-Fi/WiMAX/5G Applications
Ye Dong, Haoran Zu, Zelong Hu, Yitong Xin, Jiannan Guo, Rongguo Song, Daping He
Abstract
A flexible and compact tri-band antenna based on highly conductive graphene assembled film (GAF) is proposed. The antenna has a small size of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$42\times 30.5\times 1.025$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm3, including three complementary split-ring resonators (CSRR) to realize triple band-notched characteristics. The GAF antenna effectively offers three operating bands of 2.28-2.56 GHz, 3.28-3.85 GHz, and 5.06-7.30 GHz, satisfying the Wi-Fi 7 band at 2.45/5.2/5.8/6 GHz, WiMAX band at 3.5/5.5 GHz, and 5G sub-6 NR n78 band, with the peak realized gains of 1.66/1.97/3.58 dBi. The GAF antenna performance is relatively stable with regard to the operating band and radiation pattern under bending condition. To demonstrate the practical application, the GAF antenna is installed on a commercially available router for data rate experiments. The results indicate that this brief expands the RF applications of carbon-based materials, and endows Wi-Fi antennas with more operating frequency bands, more compact configuration, lighter weight, better mechanical stability, and conformal ability, which is superior for integration in Wi-Fi/WiMAX/5G communication and conformed on various devices.