In this paper, a printed monopole antenna with stable omnidirectional radiation patterns is presented for applications in ocean buoy and the marine Internet of Things (IoT). The antenna is composed of a rectangular patch, a cross-ground structure, and two frequency-selective surface (FSS) unit cells. The cross-ground structure is incorporated into the antenna design to maintain consistent monopole-like radiation patterns over the antenna's operating band, and the FSS unit cells are placed at the backside of the antenna to improve the antenna gain aiming at the L-band. In addition, the FSS unit cells exhibit resonance characteristics that, when incorporated with the cross-ground structure, result in a broader impedance bandwidth compared to the conventional monopole antenna. To validate the structure, a prototype is fabricated and measured. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results show that the proposed antenna exhibits an impedance bandwidth of 83.2% from 1.65 to 4 GHz, compared to the conventional printed monopole antenna. The proposed antenna realizes a peak gain of 4.57 dBi and a total efficiency of 97% at 1.8 GHz.
Keywords: cross-ground; frequency-selective surface (FSS); monopole antenna; ocean buoy; omnidirectional; radiation pattern flatness; wideband.