IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL.

11, 2012

403

Ultrawideband Antenna for LTE/GSM/UMTS Wireless USB Dongle Applications

Yong-Ling Ban, Jin-Hua Chen, Li-Jun Ying, Joshua Le-Wei Li, Fellow, IEEE, and Yu-Jiang Wu
AbstractIn the letter, a simply printed planar antenna covering GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS2100 and LTE700/2300/2500 operating frequency bands for wireless USB dongle applications is proposed, designed, and fabricated. The presented antenna consists of a large patch and a matching network in order to enhance impedance bandwidth. The upper operating bands including GSM1800/1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500 are primarily attributed to the large patch. Meanwhile, the lower resonant modes covering LTE700/GSM850/900 bands are generated physically by ground planes of both the USB dongle circuit board and the laptop board. The impedance matching over all bands is improved by the matching network. The proposed antenna occupies a small size of mm and can be easily printed on a 0.8-mm-thick FR4 substrate of conventional dimensions of mm , which makes it promising for wireless USB dongle applications. Index TermsAntennas, printed antennas, ultrawideband antennas, USB dongle.

I. INTRODUCTION ITH rapid development of wireless communication technology such as WLAN and GSM/UMTS/LTE WWAN systems, laptops and other digital devices with wireless network access functions [1][11] are becoming very popular. A wireless USB dongle, a small terminal that can be connected to a computer, has been developed as a wireless adapter designed to compensate for the insufcient bands of laptops and other digital devices. However, realizing internal multiband antenna design in such a small USB dongle with a common size of mm is considerably challenging. In recent years, extensive research activities have been dedicated toward the development of multiband antennas for wireless USB dongle applications [1][9], monopole antennas [1][6], meander-line antennas [7], and planar inverted-F antennas [8], [9]. Most of these designs generally require complicated two- or three-dimensional structures. As a result, it leads to, on one hand, a large size in the radiator in wireless USB dongle devices. On the other hand, some of these complicated antennas [1][9] cannot cover a bandwidth broad

enough for future communication requirements, especially for GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS2100 and LTE700/2300/2500 band. Due to difculties of achieving ultrawideband operations under stringent volume limits, there lacks new progress, and much work needs to be further done. With the above-mentioned issues in mind, a novel surface-mount printed antenna for wireless USB dongle applications is proposed. Compared to most of the existing USB dongle antennas reported in [2] and [4][6], the presently proposed antenna has very simple physical structure and relatively wider operating bandwidths covering GSM850/900/1800/1900/ UMTS2100 (824894 MHz/880960 MHz/17101880 MHz/ 18501990 MHz/19202170 MHz) and LTE700/2300/2500 (698806 MHz/23052400 MHz/25002690 MHz). Design considerations of the presented antenna are described in the following sections, where simulated and measured results for the fabricated prototype are both depicted and discussed. II. ANTENNA PROPOSED FOR USB DONGLE Fig. 1(a) shows the physical geometry of the proposed antenna for wireless USB dongle applications, where dimensions of the metal pattern of the proposed antenna are detailed in Fig. 1(b). In the design, the main antenna component located mm next to the USB interface has a small dimension of and is mounted on an inexpensive 0.8-mm-thick FR4 substrate of relative permittivity 4.4 (which serves as the USB dongles circuit board). Notice that the stated USB dongle ground plane does not cover the entire part of the substrate, leaving a nonground area on the other side of the antenna pattern. Then, the mm is conUSB dongle circuit board with an area of nected to the big laptop ground plane (through the USB interface mm for transmitting wireless data). The with a size of laptop display ground and the keyboard ground form an angle of 90 (as a common professional standard), both with the same mm . In the conguration, the USB dimension of dongle ground is printed on the other side in the antenna design, and RF signal can be transmitted to the antenna via a 50microstrip feed line. The proposed antenna comprises two major portions, that is, a big rectangular patch and a matching network. The network is constructed in terms of a lumped chip capacitance and a lumped chip inductance. Therefore, some electromagnetic energy can be coupled into the USB dongle ground plane and the major laptop ground plane via the gap between the big radiating patch and the USB dongle ground. Moreover, the end of the chip inductance is connected to the USB dongle ground via a metallic hole in order to enhance the performance of the impedance matched over the wide bandwidth of interests. As shown in Fig. 1, both length

Manuscript received February 06, 2012; revised March 05, 2012; accepted March 15, 2012. Date of publication April 06, 2012; date of current version April 23, 2012. This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Project No. 61171046 and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. The authors are with the Institute of Electromagnetics and School of Electronic Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China (e-mail: byl@uestc.edu.cn; 2008jhchen@163.com; ylj195@163.com; lwli@ieee.org; lwli@uestc.edu.cn; wuyu-jiang@126.com). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2012.2192470

1536-1225/$31.00 2012 IEEE

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

Fig. 2. (a) Photograph of the fabricated USB dongle and laptop computer (overall view). (b) Enlarged photograph of the fabricated USB dongle (topical view).

Fig. 3. Measured and simulated return loss of the proposed antenna.

embedded, a big foreground is considered for mobile digital receivers, and at the same time a good performance of the antenna should be maintained. Fig. 2 depicts the proposed antenna printed on the FR4 substrate. III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The proposed antenna was then fabricated and tested. Fig. 3 shows the measured and simulated return losses of the prototype. The simulated results are obtained using Ansoft HFSS and are in agreement with the measured data. Obviously, a broad operating bandwidth of about 2315 MHz (ranging from 685 to 3000 MHz) with return loss better than 6 dB (i.e., 3:1 VSWR) is obtained. As a universal criterion, the 3:1 VSWR denition is generally adopted for the internal mobile terminal device antenna for WWAN operations and serves as a commonly accepted industrial standard. To analyze the excitation mechanism in the studies, we attempt to gure out how the antenna performance is affected by adjusting the chip capacitance and inductance of matching network in Figs. 4 and 5. The simulated input impedance on the Smith chart for the frequency ranges of 6501000 and 17002700 MHz are shown. In the design considerations depicted in Fig. 4 and subsequently in other gures, all dimensions are the same as those given in Fig. 1 if they are not specied. As plotted in Fig. 4, varying the chip capacitance indeed signicantly affects impedance-matching bandwidth in the lower bands. With decreasing the chip capacitance, poor matching bandwidth will be seen in LTE700/GSM850/900 bands, while the upper operating bands will be improved. Obviously, compared to the other chip capacitance, nearly the

Fig. 1. (a) Geometry of the proposed antenna for wireless USB dongle applications. (b) Detailed dimensions of the antenna (whose units are in millimeters).

and width of the radiating patch are 18 mm (which is about 0.25 wavelength at 3200 MHz), and they produce a resonant mode at 3200 MHz. The fundamental resonant mode at about 800 MHz is excited by the gaps between the large patch and the USB dongle ground and the laptop ground. By adjusting the value of the chip inductance and the gap width , two wide operating frequency bands 698960 and 17102690 MHz can be obtained ultimately. In the experiment, the antenna is fed by a 50- microstrip line connected to an SMA connector for testing the constructed prototype of the proposed antenna. Since the design needs to cover two wide bandwidths, LTE700/GSM850/900 and DCS1800/PCS1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500, and a USB dongle of low-prole characteristics should be easily

BAN et al.: ULTRAWIDEBAND ANTENNA FOR LTE/GSM/UMTS WIRELESS USB DONGLE APPLICATIONS

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Fig. 6. Simulated return loss as a function of the proposed design with or without laptop.

Fig. 4. Simulated input impedance on the Smith chart for the proposed antenna as a function of the chip capacitance .

Fig. 7. Simulated return loss as a function of the gaps width between the big radiating patch and the USB dongle ground plane.

Fig. 5. Simulated Smith chart for the proposed antenna as a function of the chip inductance .

entire desired loop of the impedance curve for the proposed design is shifted inside the 3:1 VSWR circle. Similar results can be observed in Fig. 5. By increasing the chip inductance , it is helpful for the lower bandwidth coverage, however the desired upper input impedance matching is poor when equals 15.0 nH. For different designed parameters, the input impedance (Im curves and Re curves) of the proposed design nH is smaller than that of the other chip inductance. Naturally with the impedance matching enhancement for the desired frequencies over the antennas lower band from 698960 MHz, good excitation of a wide operating band for the

proposed antennas upper band from 17102690 MHz can still be achieved (most of the impedance curves fall within the 3:1 VSWR circle). When compared to the reference antenna without the laptop, as shown in Fig. 6, the results clearly indicate that no resonant mode is excited at about 750 MHz. This behavior conrms the lower band is signicantly affected by the laptop ground plane, meaning that the laptop is a signicant portion of the proposed antenna. The proposed antenna is an entire effective radiating structure formed by: 1) the radiating elements; 2) the USB dongle ground plane; and 3) the laptop ground plane. The whole antenna conguration constitutes an effective radiating system. Furthermore, the role of the coupling gap is discussed in Fig. 7. Results of the simulated return loss for varied from 0.5 to 1.5 mm (other dimensions have no variations) show that there are large effects on the impedance matching of the antennas lower band and small variations in the impedance matching of the upper band. This behavior conrms that the lower band is signicantly affected by the coupling gap, meaning that good impedance matching of the lower band can be effectively adjusted by the gap . The measured and simulated radiation patterns at 830 and 2170 MHz are plotted in Fig. 8. At 830 MHz, the measured radiation patterns in all the three planes are nearly omnidirectional, as shown in Fig. 8(a). At 2170 MHz, relatively complicated radiation patterns over the antenna upper band

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 11, 2012

presented. Small variations of the antenna gain (for measured and simulated results) in the range of about 1.32.6 dBi are seen for LTE700/GSM850/900 operation, and the measured radiation efciency varies from about 55% to 64%. For the upper band shown in Fig. 9(b), the measured antenna gain for DCS1800/PCS1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500 operation varies from about 2.3 to 5.6 dBi, and the simulated antenna gain for the upper band is 3.86.2 dBi, while the measured radiation efciency ranges from about 56% to 70%. Obviously, the above results of the obtained radiation characteristics indicate that the presented antenna is a good solution for practical wireless USB dongle (attached to laptop) applications. IV. CONCLUSION
Fig. 8. Measured radiation patterns of the proposed antenna at two frequencies: (a) 830 MHz and (b) 2200 MHz.

A novel printed antenna for wireless USB dongle applications has been designed, presented, and discussed in this letter. Made of a big radiating patch and a matching network, the antenna can cover LTE700/2300/2500, GSM850/900/1800/1900, and UMTS2100 frequency bands entirely, while the occupied printed size of the proposed antenna on the circuit board is only 400 mm in size. Compared to the existing common scheme available elsewhere, the presently proposed USB dongle antenna has a simple structure but a very good radiation performance. Finally, the return loss, radiation efciency, and antenna gain are acceptable. Because the antenna is easily fabricated on the printed circuit board (PCB) (using the printed circuit boards), it is very promising for mobile applications. REFERENCES
[1] L. C. Chou and K. L. Wong, Uni-planar dual-band monopole antenna for 2.4/5 GHz WLAN operation in the laptop computer, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 12, pp. 37393741, Dec. 2007. [2] S. H. Lee and Y. Sung, Multiband antenna for wireless USB dongle applications, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 2528, 2011. [3] S. W. Su, J. H. Chou, and K. L. Wong, Internal ultrawideband monopole antenna for wireless USB dongle applications, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 11801183, Apr. 2007. [4] C. C. Lin, S. W. Kuo, and H. R. Chuang, A 2.4-GHz printed meander-line antenna for USB WLAN with notebook-PC housing, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 15, no. 9, pp. 546548, Sep. 2005. [5] H. B. Kim, K. C. Hwang, and Y. B. Park, Compact stub-loaded meander-line antenna for wireless USB dongle devices, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 52, pp. 22792282, 2010. [6] S. J. Jeong and K. C. Hwang, Compact loop-coupled spiral antenna for multiband wireless USB dongle, Electron. Lett., vol. 46, pp. 388390, 2010. [7] K. L. Wong and L. C. Lee, Multiband printed monopole slot antenna for WWAN operation in the laptop computer, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 324330, Feb. 2009. [8] K. L. Wong and F. H. Chu, Internal planar WWAN laptop computer antenna using monopole slot elements, Microw. Opt. Technol Lett., vol. 51, pp. 12741279, 2009. [9] C. T. Lee and K. L. Wong, Uniplanar printed coupled-fed PIFA with a band-notching slit for WLAN/WiMAX operation in the computer, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 1252125, Apr. 2009. [10] C. H. Chang and K. L. Wong, Internal coupled-fed shorted monopole antenna for GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS operation in the laptop computer, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 56, no. 11, pp. 36003604, Nov. 2008. [11] S. J. Liao, K. L. Wong, and L. C. Chou, Small-size uniplanar coupled-fed PIFA for 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN operation in the laptop computer, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 51, pp. 10231028, 2009.

Fig. 9. Measured antenna gain and radiation efciency of the proposed antenna versus frequency. (a) Lower band for LTE700/GSM850/900. (b) Upper band for GSM1800/1900/UMTS2100/LTE2300/2500.

are obtained and shown in Fig. 8(b). However, there are a few differences between measured and simulated patterns at 830 and 2170 MHz, and the measured results of the proposed antenna are less than the simulated results. In fact, this is owing to that the practical coaxial cable used in measurements leads to radiation variations of the whole structure and also to power loss in experiments, whereas the cable is not assumed in simulations. Fig. 9 shows the measured and simulated antenna gain and measured radiation efciency of the proposed design. In Fig. 9(a), results for the lower band are