AEU - International Journal of Electronics and Communications
Regular paperA narrow-frame antenna for WWAN/LTE/WiMAX/WLAN mobile phones
Introduction
Recent smartphone designs have much larger touchscreens which requires antennas with less ground clearance [1], [2]. Moreover, there is an increasing demand for multiband antenna to cover LTE, WWAN, WiMAX and WLAN [3], [4], [5]. However, it is challenging to incorporate multiband antennas covering the aforementioned range of wireless bands in large screen devices with a small non-ground portion [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Previous work, using octa-band antennas with 8 mm or 6 mm of non-ground portion height [7], [8], [9], [10] were able to cover LTE700 (698–787 MHz), GSM850 (824–894 MHz), GSM900 (880–960 MHz), DCS (1710–1880 MHz), PCS (1850–1990 MHz), UMTS (1920–2170 MHz), LTE2300 (2300–2400 MHz), LTE2500 (2500–2690 MHz) bands. However, higher bands such as WiMAX3.5 (3400–3650 MHz), WLAN5.2 (5150–5350 MHz), WiMAX5.5 (5250–5850 MHz) and WLAN5.8 (5725–5875 MHz) were not covered. In [11], a nano-band antenna with 7 mm non-ground portion height is presented that can cover an additional band of LTE3400 (3400–3800 MHz). To the best of our knowledge, [7], [8], [9], [10], [11] are all the narrow-frame antennas with non-ground portion height of 8 mm or less that can cover at least eight bands of LTE700, GSM850, GSM900, DCS, PCS, UMTS, LTE2300, and LTE2500, shown in Table 1.
Generally, Monopole antennas are good candidates for wideband and multiband characteristics [12], [13]. Several techniques are used to employ this feature for fully covering different bands of mobile phones. For example, in [14], [15], [16], the monopole antenna is coupled to the grounded strips to generate multiple resonances. In this paper, we propose a multiband and narrow-frame antenna for a 5.7 in. mobile phone. Our antenna consists of a four-branch monopole that is coupled to a two-branch grounded strip with a non-ground portion height of only 8 mm. The excitation of several resonant modes in the design leads to more bandwidth enhancement in comparison with other narrow-frame antennas. The antenna can cover bands of LTE700, GSM850, GSM900, DCS, PCS, UMTS, LTE2300, LTE2500, LTE3400 (3400–3800 MHz)/WiMAX3.5 GHz (3400–3650 MHz), WLAN5.2 GHz (5150–5350 MHz) and WLAN5.8 GHz (5725–5875 MHz). In addition, no lumped element has been used in the design, which allows for easier and cheaper mass production.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we present the antennas configuration, which is followed by the working principles of the proposed antenna in Section 3. Then, Section 4 presents the simulation and measurement results. Finally, some concluding remarks are given in Section 5.
Section snippets
Antenna structure
Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed antenna. The antenna is printed on 0.8 mm thick Rogers4003 substrate with dielectric constant of 3.55 and loss tangent of 0.0027. An overview of our design is shown in Fig. 1a. The dimensions of the substrate are 75 × 140 × 0.8 mm3. The antenna consists of a monopole with four branches that are coupled to a two-branch grounded strip. The monopole antenna is printed on the top layer of the substrate, while the ground plane and two-branch grounded
Analysis of the proposed antenna
To understand the working principles of our antenna, first, we compare its S11 results with the S11 results of four previous iterations of the antenna design. Then, we study L1, L2, L3 and L4 parameters, which are important for tuning of resonance frequencies, previously shown in Fig. 1c and d. Finally, we simulate and plot the vector surface current distribution of the different resonance frequencies. All the simulations have been done by time domain solver of CST Studio 2017 which is suitable
Measurement results
Fig. 9 shows a fabricated prototype of the proposed antenna. The simulated and measured results of S11 are in good agreement as shown in Fig. 10. The measured -6 dB bandwidths of the antenna are 310 MHz (681–991 MHz), 1080 MHz (1626–2706 MHz), 513 MHz (3300–3813 MHz), 243 MHz (5136–5379 MHz) and 378 MHz (5622–6000 MHz) at low band, middle-bands and high band, respectively. Therefore, the antenna can cover bands of LTE700 (698–787 MHz), GSM850 (824–894 MHz), GSM900 (880–960 MHz), DCS
Conclusion
In this paper, a novel multiband and narrow-frame antenna for LTE/WWAN/WiMAX/WLAN was proposed. The height of non-ground portion of the proposed antenna is only 8 mm. The working principles of the antenna were analyzed and studied. A prototype of the design was fabricated and tested. The simulated and measured results were in good agreement. Excitation of several resonant modes of the antenna provides coverage of ten bands of LTE700, GSM850, GSM900, DCS, PCS, UMTS, LTE2300, LTE2500, LTE3400
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