Fractal Antennas: A Novel Miniaturization Technique for Wireless Communications

Wireless applications, particularly with multiple resonances, put new demands on antennas pertaining to size, gain, efficiency, bandwidth, and more. One promising approach in this regard is to use fractal geometries to find the best distribution of currents within a volume to meet a particular design goal. In the miniaturization of wire antennas it has been found that the electromagnetic coupling between wire angles limits the reduction of the resonant frequency with increasing wire length. Recent efforts by several researchers around the world to combine fractal geometry with electromagnetic theory have led to an emergence of new and innovative antenna designs. Unique properties of fractals have been exploited to develop a new class of antenna-element designs that are multi-band and compact in size and have been shown to possess several highly desirable properties, including multi-band performance, low sidelobe levels, and its ability to develop rapid beamforming algorithms based on the recursive nature of fractals. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of the fractals and to provide a study and implementation of rapidly growing field of fractal antenna engineering including recent developments. The simulated results for Koch fractal antenna using AWAS and NEC are also provided. Index Terms – Fractals, Fractal antenna , Fractal electrodynamics