Recent Patents Review on Low-profile Ultrawideband Antennas for Future Broadband Communications (Invited Paper)

This paper provides a review on patents linked with low-profile Ultrawideband (UWB) antennas in the last decade for broadband communications. Six selected patents on this topic including tapered slot antennas with reduced profile, planar dipole antennas with flat reflector and planar slot antennas with flat reflector are highlighted and discussed in detail. The trend of using structural compensation instead of using absorbing loads at the end of feeding lines or at the body of antennas is rather obvious for improved antenna efficiencies as well as reduced fabrication costs. At the same time, difficulties of impedance matching encountered for structural compensation and reduced profile are partly overcome by using new structural mechanisms, such as the coupled feeding schemes, inductance loaded structures and compact baluns. These noticeable progresses on this topic could play an important role in the development of various broadband communications and other broadband applications.