LAUSR

A high efficiency and transparent sea-water monopole antenna operating at 2.4 GHz for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications is proposed in this Letter. The antenna has high transparency (>85%) achieved by using sea-water as its conductive medium contained within a clear acrylic tube. To improve the radiation efficiency of the antenna, a short metal tube with a metal disk at the base was loaded into a feeding probe to achieve greater excitation. The antenna is simulated and its properties are verified through this experiment. Measurement results show a -10 dB bandwidth of 1.1 GHz (2.1-3.2 GHz) and a high radiation efficiency (>71%) over the entire WLAN band (2.4-2.5 GHz). These results demonstrate the proposed antenna as an attractive alternative to conventional metal monopoles for WLAN applications.