Frequency-Tunable Mobile Phone Antennas with Matching Circuits

Luyi Liu, Richard Langley

EEE Department, University of Sheffield Mappin Street, Sheffield. S1 3JD, United Kingdom R.J.Langley@sheffield.ac.uk Luyi.Liu@sheffield.ac.uk
Abstract Cognitive Radio systems require antennas and microwave components to be actively tuned for different parts of the frequency spectrum. In this paper results of a study of two antenna tuning techniques are presented. The first antenna is a dual-port antenna which is comprised of two capacitive-fed plates sharing one lower-band patch, operating at 5 mobile phone bands (GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS). The third port incorporating matching circuits will also be presented covering 2400 3600MHz, and at the same time, to obtain acceptable mutual couplings between ports with a low profile. The second antenna is a compact single-port PIFA antenna with a tunable matching network integrated into the feed line, enabling the impedance bandwidth to gradually operate at the DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) band 470 702MHz.

alternative tuning method, which can provide extra tuning range with impedance match improvement [10]-[14]. II. DUAL-PORT RECONFIGURABLE PIFA ANTENNA WITH TWO CAPACITIVE-FED PLATES In order to integrate more multimedia functions, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, into one handset, and meanwhile retain the basic mobile phone operation simultaneously, multi-port internal antennas become potential candidates.

I. INTRODUCTION Mobile devices demand that antennas operate at many frequency bands and in the future cognitive radio requirements will demand reconfigurability. There are a number of ways in which microwave antennas can be tuned such as by using pin diodes, varactor diodes and MEMs switches [1] [2] and by varying substrate properties such as with ferrites [3] and ferroelectrics [4]. Microwave antennas have been reported in [5]-[7], which are tuned using nematic liquid crystal (LC) substrates. The permittivity of the LC can be changed by applying a DC bias voltage and consequently the dielectric constant can be altered by up to 30% [8]-[9]. Reference [6]-[7] reports a 2.9% and 3.8% tuning range for a microstrip patch antenna using LC as substrate materials at 5 GHz and 2GHz, respectively. Although the LC mixture with low loss tangents at lower frequencies are not yet commercially available, LC can in theory provide reconfigurable components at lower frequencies for future reconfigurable systems. Further LC development is needed to synthesize advanced mixtures at microwave frequencies for LC tuned antennas to become useful in this frequency range. On the other hand, the RF current distribution on an antenna can be varied to modify its planar radiating aperture for different standards by applying RF MEMS switches, PIN diodes, variable capacitors (varactors) or other variable elements. Possible reconfigurable components include radiating elements such as slots and meandered slits on the patch [2], changing the geometry of nested patches to adjust the radiation pattern [10], and shifting the feed position [1]. Furthermore, using tunable matching circuit is another

Fig. 1 Geometric schematic of Dual-port Reconfigurable PIFA

In Fig.1, a multi-port reconfigurable PIFA, of size 6*10*38mm, is proposed which is currently in development. The antenna consists of one main patch shorted to the ground plane, one 0.8mm thick FR4 substrate and two capacitive-fed plates placed on the back side of the FR4, which are connected to two separate ports. Only one port is actively fed at each time. Port 1 is responsible for GSM850, GSM1800 and 1900, whereas, port 2 is for GSM900 and UMTS. Due to

its dimensions and modifications, the main patch resonates at the lower resonant frequency of the antenna - GSM850/900. The two capacitive feed plates connecting to port1 and port2 are modified to operate at frequencies around GSM1800/1900 and UMTS, respectively. The simulated return loss plot is plotted in Fig 2.
0

and to provide sufficient mutual coupling between port 3 and the other two ports - S13/S31and S23/S32.

-5

-10

-15

-20 S11 S22 -25 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

Fig. 4 Return Loss S33 of the antenna shown in fig 3. (Red curve is the original return loss without the matching circuit. Blue curve is with the matching circuit.)

Fig. 2 Simulated Return loss of the dual-port PIFA shown in Fig 1

Radiation efficiencies were also studied using CST simulation software, and these were 64% at 0.85GHz, 75% at 1.8 GHz, 85% at 1.9 GHz from Port 1; 72% at 0.95 GHz, 66% at 2.1Ghz from Port 2.

The input impedance performance of port 3 with/out the circuit is shown in Fig 4. The impedance bandwidth from port 3 is significantly improved by introducing the matching circuit, and the lower resonances near 900, 1500 and 1800MHz have been significantly removed, which increases the isolation between port 3 and other ports. It is clearly seen that the bandwidth measured at -10dB is 2920 -3490MHz without the matching circuit, and 2270 3650MHz with the matching circuit, finally obtaining a broadband behavior.
-10

-20

-30

Fig. 3 Geometric schematic of the third port with matching circuit

-40

Mutual Coupling S31 S13 S23 S32 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

In this antenna, one more port is added to excite further resonances for the frequency range of 2400-3600MHz, covering WLAN 2.4 GHz and 3.5 GHz Wi-Fi bands. Fig 3 illustrates the structure of this port. A capacitive feeding pad is placed underneath the FR4 substrate, which is connected to a circuit by a post. The circuit is depicted in Fig 3 as well, containing 3 lumped components, which are used to accomplish two main functions: to modify the fundamental resonant mode in order to achieve an impedance bandwidth enhancement at the higher frequency band (2400 3600MHz),

Fig. 5 Mutual coupling between port3 and other two ports

Furthermore, as mentioned above, an acceptable isolation performance between port3 and other two ports is presented in Fig 5, which reaches to at least -12dB mutual coupling, as the circuit also acts as an isolating circuit for lower bands to create enough coupling and to facilitate component integration of the antenna.

III. SINGLE-PORT RECONFIGURABLE PIFA ANTENNA WITH TUNABLE MATCHING CIRCUIT In handset antenna designs, one of the most challenging applications is the integration of a DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting for Handset) antenna into a mobile telephone terminal. A possible solution is using a variable capacitor to tune the electrical length of the antenna and obtain the large tuning range required. Here, we present a tunable mobile phone antenna design, which has the potential to cover the DVB-H band of 470-702 MHz. It is based on one PIFA antenna with the volume of 2.4cm, ground plane of 40*95mm, and one capacitor C1 across one gap of the patch. Assigning C1 to an appropriate value it is possible to shift the impedance resonance of the antenna downwards from 2GHz to around the range of the DVB-H band. A proper matching network with tuning ability has also been specifically designed for the 232MHz bandwidth of the DVB-H frequency band. It contains 3 lumped elements. In order to obtain enough tuning range, one of them needs to be a variable capacitor with tuning range of 1.5pF to 42pF.

with the variable capacitor will be designed and tested in future, as the variable capacitor for this design requires a large tunabillity and it is not yet commercially available.

Fig.7 Measured return loss with the capacitor tuning from 1.5 to infinite

IV. CONCLUSIONS This paper has demonstrated two compact multi-band reconfigurable internal antennas for mobile handsets. One uses two individual feeding ports for 5 mobile phone operational bands and the third port for the WLAN 2.4 GHz and WiFi 3.5 GHz bands, Whereas, a single-port reconfigurable PIFA antenna with tunable matching circuit is applied in the other design. Including a variable capacitor in the matching circuit improves the bandwidth but the challenge is to develop a circuit requiring a lower range of variable capacitance. The possibility of both designs has been verified by CST Microwave Studio software and measurement. ACKNOWLEDGMENT Many thanks to Prof. Simon Kingsley and Antenova Ltd. for funding the project and technical support. REFERENCES
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The design has been prototyped and tested recently. Fig 7 plots the measured return loss, in which the variable capacitor applied for the upper half of the band is a surface-mount component, whereas the 10pF and 15pF capacitors are miniature plate types, which were somewhat larger in value so that better impedance performance would be expected compared with SMD capacitors. Additionally, the solid wire was used to achieve the largest capacitance in test. Therefore, a tuning circuit including a fixed-value capacitor in parallel

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