Miniature PIFA without empty space for 2.

4 GHz ISM band applications

H.-W. Liu and C.-F. Yang
A novel miniature planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) design without empty space is presented for 2.4 GHz ISM band applications. The antenna fabricated on an FR4 substrate has an overall size of only 10 (L) 3 (W) 3.5 (H) mm3 to be embedded inside the portable devices. By properly adding a shorting pin and etching a bent slot, the operating frequency of the antenna can be lowered more exibly. Moreover, owing to no additional empty space, the circuit routing on the PCB is permitted underneath and around the antenna. The impedance bandwidth of the antenna is about 160 MHz from 2.39 to 2.55 GHz. Good omnidirectional radiation pattern with appreciable gain across the band can be obtained so that the proposed antenna is suitable for Bluetooth and WLAN applications.

to fabricate the antenna to avoid interference from the PCBs circuit. By lengthening the distance between the antenna and the PCBs circuit, good stability has been achieved because the mutual coupling between them can be reduced well. Based on the PIFA structure, the resonant length of the antenna was about quarter-wavelength at the operating frequency. Thus the lowest operating frequency fl may be approximated by c fl p 4 1r Ll Ll L2 L3 L4 W2 W3 1 2

Introduction: For applications in the 2.4 GHz ISM band, such as Bluetooth and WiFi systems, an antenna effective in both radiation performance and space requirement is a critical part of the portable devices. Thus, many planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) designs used in those devices have been reported [1 5] to achieve various demands like being compact, efcient, and omnidirectional for commercial applications. By suitably designing a shorting structure near to the feed, the whole antenna size of several studies presented in [1 3] can be reduced. To have better performance, the PIFAs are developed in terms of bandwidth enhancement [4] and tunable frequency [5]. However, an additional empty space must be added near to the antenna for these designs to obtain good performance, so that a large device size will be expected. In this Letter, we propose a miniature and simple PIFA without empty space suitable for 2.4 GHz ISM band applications. To avoid the interference from the PCBs circuit, the antenna fed by a 50V microstrip line is fabricated on a 3.5 mm-thick FR4 substrate to provide good stability. This may be mainly due to the lower mutual coupling between the antenna and the PCBs circuit. A bent slot etched on the radiator is capable of adjusting and controlling the operating frequency. Therefore, the empty area usually needed by using other built-in antennas is not required with our antenna design. Circuit routing on a multilayer PCB will not be restricted because of the antenna, and circuit components can even be placed surrounding the antenna. Experiments show that quite good omnidirectional radiation patterns with suitable gain over the operating band from 2.39 to 2.55 GHz can be acquired for the proposed antenna. Details of the antenna design are presented and discussed with the simulations and measurements.
L1 z L3 x W2 L4 RF feed L2 y unit: mm W2 W4

where c is the speed of light in free space, e r the dielectric constant and Ll is the estimated longest current path. Consequently, a suitable central frequency for the proposed antenna can be designed at 2.45 GHz. To miniaturise the antenna size and broaden the operating bandwidth, an interval between the feed and shorting pin has been properly optimised to be L5 1.7 mm. Moreover, the bent slot is etched on the radiator with a width of 0.4 0.5 mm, so that good impedance matching across the band can be obtained through the capacitive coupling. An electromagnetic solver, HFSSTM has been employed to analyse the electrical features and radiation performance of the antenna. In Table 1, comparisons of the proposed antenna with those presented in [1 5] on antenna sizes are given. Signicant reduction in size has been achieved with our antenna design, which is embedded on a test board of 100 (L) 40 (W) mm2 to model the effects for a portable device on the antenna. To ensure antenna performance, the test board size is suggested at least a quarter-wavelength for the operating frequency.

Table 1: Comparisons of antenna size among proposed antenna and other studies
Published literature [1] Cho et al. [2] Yu and Tarng [3] Chiu et al. [4] Chattha et al. [5] Komukainen et al. Size comparison (proposed/literature) 9.92% 5% 20% 3.75% 3.62%

W1

R L5 shorting pin

porposed PIFA 3.5 mm 50W microstrip feed line z x y 50W SMA connector ground plane

Results and discussion: The simulated and measured return losses of the antenna mounted on a test board are shown in Fig. 2, where good agreements have been obtained. The impedance bandwidth with 10 dB return loss is from 2.39 to 2.55 GHz, corresponding to 6.48%, which also covers the 2.4 GHz ISM band. Fig. 3 indicates the measured radiation patterns in xz-, yz- and xy-planes for the frequency at 2.45 GHz, and then good omnidirectional radiation pattern with appreciable gain can be observed in the yz-plane. Figs. 4a and b illustrate the frequency variation of the antenna for various slot lengths and antenna heights, respectively. It is clearly shown that both the longer slot and the lower antenna height are capable of lowering the operating frequency. However, the bandwidth is also reduced without retuning the antenna. Figs. 5a and b simulate the performance change in terms of gain and efciency for different antenna heights and substrate losses, where the central frequency of the antenna is well adjusted to be 2.45 GHz. As expected, by using a thicker substrate with low-loss feature, good radiation performance for the proposed antenna may be achieved exibly.
0 5

FE4 test board (100400.8mm3)

m 0m 10

40

mm

Fig. 1 Proposed miniature PIFA

a Antenna geometry Unit: mm, L1 10, L2 2, L3 3.4, L4 6.4, L5 1.7, W1 1.4, W2 0.5, W3 2, W4 3, R 0.4 b Photograph

return loss, dB

10 15 20 25 simulated (HFSS) measured

Antenna design: Fig. 1 illustrates the whole geometry of the proposed miniature PIFA. This antenna is composed of a radiator with a bent slot and fed by a 50V microstrip line, which only occupies a compact size of 10 (L) 3 (W) 3.5 (H) mm3. In our design, a thick FR4 substrate with a dielectric constant of 4.4 and a loss tangent of 0.02 is used

30 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 frequency, GHz

Fig. 2 Simulated and measured return loss of proposed antenna

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90 0dBi

90 0dBi

20dBi

20dBi

180

40dBi

180

40dBi

20dBi

20dBi

Conclusions: A novel, miniature PIFA without empty space for 2.4 GHz ISM band applications is presented. This antenna achieves not only a simple structure but also nearly omnidirectional radiation patterns with appreciable gain across the operating band. In such design, the circuit routing on the PCB is permitted underneath and around the antenna so that signicant reduction in device size can be realised. For these reasons, the proposed antenna is suitable to be embedded in portable devices for Bluetooth and WLAN systems. # The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2010 9 November 2009 doi: 10.1049/el.2010.3149 One or more of the Figures in this Letter are available in colour online. H.-W. Liu and C.-F. Yang (Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Keelung Road, Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan) E-mail: D9407303@mail.ntust.edu.tw

0dBi Ef, mea. 270 xz-plane Eq, mea. 90 0dBi

0dBi 270 yz-plane

20dBi

180

40dBi

20dBi

References
0dBi 270 xy-plane

Fig. 3 Measured radiation patterns at 2.45 GHz of proposed antenna

0 5 10 return loss, dB return loss, dB 15 20 25 30 35 40 2.0 2.2 2.4 various L2 lengths 2 mm (proposed) 4 mm 6 mm 2.6 2.8 3.0 10 15 20 25 30 2.0 various antenna heights 3.5 mm (proposed) 2.5 mm 1.5 mm 2.2 2.4 2.6 2.8 3.0 0 5

1 Cho, Y.-J., Shin, Y.-S., and Park, S.-O.: Internal PIFA for 2.4/5 GHz WLAN applications, Electron. Lett., 2006, 42, (1), pp. 8 10 2 Yu, Y.-C., and Tarng, J.-H.: A novel modied multiband planar inverted-F antenna, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., 2009, 8, pp. 189 192 3 Chiu, C.-Y., Shum, K.-M., and Chan, C.-H.: A tunable via-patch loaded PIFA with size reduction, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2007, 55, (1), pp. 6571 4 Chattha, H.-T., Huang, Y., and Lu, Y.: PIFA bandwidth enhancement by changing the widths of feed and shorting plates, IEEE Antennas Wirel. Propag. Lett., 2009, 8, pp. 637640 5 Komulainen, M., Berg, M., Jantunen, H., Salonen, E.T., and Free, C.: A frequency tuning method for a planar inverted-F antenna, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., 2008, 56, (4), pp. 944950

frequency, GHz

frequency, GHz

Fig. 4 Simulated variation of return loss at various L2 lengths and various antenna heights
a At various L2 lengths b At various antenna heights
3 80 70 efficiency, % gain, dBi 60 50 gain efficiency 0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 40 30 3.5 1 0.00 gain, dBi 2 3 70 2 gain efficiency 0.01 0.02 FR4 loss tangent, tan 60 50 0.03 4 90 80 efficiency, %

antenna height, mm

Fig. 5 Simulated variation of gain and efciency at various antenna heights and at various losses
a At various antenna heights b At various losses

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