Design and Development of Dipole Array Antenna for Wi-Fi Applications

This paper illustrates the design and development of the series-fed two-dipole-array antenna (STDA) for Wi-Fi applications. The proposed antenna consists of two dipole elements of different lengths, which are serially joined by the coplanar strip line. The design incorporates a coaxial/probe feeding technique with balun as an alternative feeding mechanism. The main goal of this paper was to create a high-gain antenna with an array configuration for Wi-Fi applications. For STDA array configurations, antenna performance parameters such as return loss, radiation pattern, gain, and directivity are investigated. It operates at 2.4 GHz and has a high gain of 21.6 dBi when used with a reflector. In order to improve overall gain, the STDA was analyzed for different array configurations in the formation of 1 × 4, 1 × 8, and 2 × 8 STDA arrays. The proposed antenna is made of a FR-4 substrate with a dielectric constant of 4.4 and a loss tangent (tan) of 0.007 and a thickness of 1.6 mm. An antenna measures approximately 105 mm × 80 mm in size. The proposed antenna meets the requirements for a 2.4-GHz antenna with a bandwidth of 200 MHz, and thus, it is found to be suitable for Wi-Fi applications.