Miniaturized Fractal Antenna Design for 6-GHz 5G Advanced Communications

In this article, a miniaturized, low-profile fractal antenna is designed and prototyped for 6-GHz n104 band 5G advanced communications. Antenna miniaturization is achieved here by considering the random Sierpinski fractal concept and optimizing the structure with the genetic algorithm. Initially, the proposed antenna is designed and optimized using Ansys HFSS. Subsequently, the performance of the antenna is also tested for different atmospheric conditions in MATLAB real-time simulation environment for advanced 5G applications in the presence of foliage and rain. The proposed antenna resonates at 6.5 GHz with an impedance bandwidth of 380 MHz and a gain of 5.21 dBi. The antenna has a low size of 0.39 λ0 x 0.30 λ0 with a size reduction of 76% compared to its conventional design, where λ0 is the free space wavelength. The proposed low-profile antenna with balanced performance characteristics is found to be a suitable candidate for n104 band 5G advanced communications.