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Compact, Wideband and Low Profile Planar Inverted-L antenna

Conference Paper · April 2014

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 The 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2014)

A Compact, Wideband and Low Profile Planar

Inverted-L Antenna
Saqer S. Alja’afreh1, Yi Huang2, Lei Xing3
Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3GJ, UK
S.Al-jaafreh@liverpool.ac.uk; Yi.Huang@liv.ac.uk; Lei.Xing@liv.ac.uk

Abstract— This paper presents a modified planar inverted-
L antenna (PILA) for mobile handset applications. The
proposed antenna has a low profile with a wide bandwidth. It
covers most of cellular mobile system frequency bands, such
as 2G systems DCS 1800 (1710-1880 MHz) and PCS 1900
(1850-1990 MHz), 3G system likes UMTS (1920-2170 MHz),
it is also compatible with 4G systems (LTE and LTE-advanced
between 1700 MHz and 2700 MHz). Furthermore, WiFi
(2400-2448 MHz), Bluetooth and S-DMB frequency bands are
also covered by this design. This antenna comprises a small
top plate which is fed by a feeding strip and a modified ground
plane which plays an important role in changing the strong
capacitive electric field between the top plate and the ground
plane. To widen the lower frequency to 1700 MHz, the top
plate is also modified, and excellent results have been
obtained.
Index Terms— Planar inverted-L antenna, handset antenna,
wideband antenna, low profile antennas..
I. Introduction
Over the past 25 years, the mobile communication industry
has enjoyed a rapid growth; it is evolved from 1G to digital 2G
and then moved to high capacity wireless communications like
3G and now 4G systems [1]. In conjunction with this
evolution, the market trend is now moving to smart phones that
can accommodate other wireless communication systems such
as: WiFi (2.4 GHz), Bluetooth (2.45 GHz) and satellite digital
multimedia broadcasting S-DMB (2.655 GHz). As a result, the
level of challenges in achieving a small size multi-system
handset terminal that can make roaming everywhere is
increased. To meet aforementioned challenge, the design of
low profile multiband or broadband antennas has received a lot
of research attention.
In literature, three well-known antenna structures are
widely used as internal antennas in handset devices: loop
antenna [2, 3], planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) [4-6] and
folded monopole antenna [7-9]. A folded monopole antenna is
very suitable for low profile, multiband or wideband
applications (better than a PIFA which has a moderate
operational bandwidth), while a loop antenna can give an
excellent bandwidth in high frequencies by merging different
resonances [1], but it is not suitable for low frequency
applications such as GSM 900 MHz and LTE 700 MHz due to
its large size.
The planar inverted-L antenna (PILA) is one of earliest
low profile antennas; it was found to be a promising candidate
as an internal handset antenna because of its low profile and
simple structure [10]. However, due to its low input resistance
and high input reactance caused by the horizontal top plate, the
PILA suffers from high mismatching loss that makes it less
attractive for small and low profile antenna design. To
overcome this obstacle, a traditional solution usually used is to
modify the PILA structure to PIFA by adding another shorted
inverted-L section. Therefore, very few designs utilized PILA
as a handset antenna and most existing designs are of high
profile. For example, a wideband folded-L antenna was
produced by utilizing a shorted parasitic-L radiator in [11], and
a wideband hybrid ILA was developed with the aid of a
shorted planar monopole as a feed in [12]. In [13], a dielectric
resonator has been used as a feed to enhance the radiation
characteristic of PILA. Furthermore, in 2010 three PILA
antennas were reported for diversity applications in handheld
terminals, also a wide band response was achieved at the
expense of using extra antenna height [14].
It can be concluded that most of reported designs of PILA
used the same technique to enhance radiation characteristics of
PILA; they only modified the radiator structure either by
adding a shorted strip to convert it to PIFA or by modifying the
feed. To our knowledge, there is no study on the interaction
between PILA and ground plane. This study presents a
modified design of a small and low profile PILA that can
support a wide bandwidth for most of frequency bands used in
2G, 3G and 4G systems. The proposed antenna can also cover
other wireless communications applications that are widely
used in mobile handset such as: WiFi, Bluetooth and S-DMB.
The proposed antenna satisfies the return loss, bandwidth and
gain requirements for above applications in the frequency
range (1.7-2.75 GHz). The antenna configuration and design
parameters are presented in Section II and the simulated results
for reflection coefficients, radiation patterns are characterized
and discussed in Section III with an extra explanation about the
working mechanism of the proposed antenna.

978-88-907018-4-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 3283

 The 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2014)

II. Antenna configuration system frequency bands; Fig. 4 shows that it has 10-dB return
loss impedance bandwidth (1700-2750 MHz) with fractional
The proposed antenna is depicted in Fig. 1. The top plate bandwidth about 47 %. It can be seen that this design can be a
with dimensions Wp × Lp is placed at height h above the good candidate for recent smart phones; it serves DCS (1710-
grounded FR-4 substrate with dimensions Wg × Lg × t, 1880 MHz), PCS (1850-1990 MHz), UMTS (1920-2170 MHz)
relative permittivity İr = 4.4 and loss tangent tan į = 0.025. and twenty bands of LTE system in the range (1700-2700
The radiating top plate has feed strip with dimensions Wf × h. MHz). Also, this design covers other wireless communication
In order to enhance radiation properties of PILA, three main systems that are integrated with recent smart phones like WiFi
techniques are employed: the first one is demonstrating by (2400-2448 MHz), Bluetooth and D-SMB.
position of radiator; the structure is place over ground plane
edges corners where the maximum chassis electric field is
existed (Low Q chassis mode) [15]. As a transmission line
antenna type, the radiation characteristics can be enhanced by
modifying the excited electric field between top plate and
ground plane; this can be done by partially removing part of
ground plane underneath structure, the dimensions of ground
free area are Ws × Ls. Although the radiation resistance is
increased by removing part of ground plane but the resonance
frequency of structure is increased. To reduce resonance
frequency, the third technique is applied by increasing
effective length of top plate; this can be done by bending top
plate with right angle. The dimensions of the bended plate are
Wt × h, the width of this plate (Wb) has strong effect on
modifying electric field underneath top plate and increasing
operational bandwidth. Finally, a small parasitic ground plane
strip is added with dimensions Wst × Lst to form J-shaped
ground plane monopole slot that provide longer current path to
reduce the lower edge frequency up to 1700 MHz. Fig. 2. Proposed antenna compared to iPhone 3GS smart phone (a) proposed
design and (b) circuit board for iPhone 3GS mobile phone.

Fig. 1. Geometry of proposed antenna

Fig. 3. Prototype of the proposed antenna

III. Antenna Charactrization 0

A parametric investigation of proposed antenna is carried -5

Reflection Coefficient (dB)

out using CST microwave studio [16]. The optimized antenna -10
parameters are: Lg = 100 mm, Wg = 55 mm, Lp = 15 mm, Wp =
5 mm, h = 5 mm, t = 1.5 mm, Ws = 9 mm, Ls = 39 mm, Wst = -15
2 mm, Lst = 14 mm, Wb = 11 mm. It can be shown from Fig 2 -20
that the size of system ground plane and circuit board are
similar to recent smart phone circuit board dimensions likes -25
iPhone 3GS. Simulated
-30
The antenna is fabricated and shown in Fig. 3. Both Measured
simulation and measured reflection coefficients are presented -35
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
in Fig. 4. A very good agreement between them can be seen. Frequency (GHz)
The proposed antenna covers most of 2G, 3G and 4G mobile
Fig. 4. Measured and simulated reflection coeffcients

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 The 8th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2014)
In order to further understand the physical insight behind
achieved results; the enhancement in radiation properties of
PILA can be interpreted from the perturbation of electric field
distribution between top plate and ground plane. It can be seen
from Fig. 4 that conventional PILA (Fig. 5(b)) has strong
electric field between top plate and ground plane where the
transmission line mode can be easily observed. While Fig. 5(a)
has electric field component in direction of propagation; due to
this, dramatic changes are occurred on the radiation
characteristics of PILA. In another word, it can be said that the
radiation mode of PILA is converted from conventional mode
(short monopole + patch mode) into modified mode (short
monopole + monopole mode).
Fig. 5. Electric field distribution at resonance frequency (a) modified PILA
mode and (b) conventional PILA mode
As mentioned in previous, the addition of ground plane
strip at the top edge of ground plane increases the 10 dB
return loss operational bandwidth from low frequency edge.
As a result, in addition to PILA resonance frequency at 2.64
GHz, a new resonance mode is appeared at 1.95 GHz from J-
shaped ground plane slot. The 3D simulated far field pattern
are shown in Fig. 6.
(a)
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(b)
Fig. 6. Far field Pattern (a) at 1.95 GHz and (b) at 2.65 GHz
IV. conclusion
A novel version of conventional PILA has been presented
and studied in this paper. The proposed antenna has a low
profile, a small size and a wide bandwidth due to
modifications on both the ground plane and the top plate. It
covers the frequency band ranging from 1.7 GHz to 2.75 GHz
such as: DCS 1800, PCS 1900, UMTS 2100, WLAN 2400
and LTE frequency bands (1700-2700).
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