A novel tri-band mobile-phone PCB antenna

Xuedong Wang
School of Communication and Information Engineering, Shanghai University, shanghai, 200072, China
Yingfan Ni
Shanghai Detian Display Expo co., Ltd. Shanghai, 200062, China

Abstract: A novel external PCB (print circuit board)

antenna suitable for applications in GSM/DCS/PCS
tri-band mobile phones is presented. A microstrip
resonator with stubs is introduced to this antenna. This
structure can decrease camera’s influence on antenna’s
electrical performance. The experimental results of this
antenna are presented.

I INTRODUCTION
With the development of wireless communication,
antennas [1-4] for dual-or triple-band operation in the
extended global system for mobile communication (EGSM,
880-960MHz), the digital communication system (DCS,
1710-1880MHz) and personal communication system (PCS, (a) meander line and pad
1850-2990MHz) are being used in more and more fields. (b) rectangular microstrip with stubs
For external mobile phone antennas, helical ones are mature. Figure 1 The proposed PCB antenna. (the unit is millimeter)
There is a main drawback about this kind of antenna: the side of the PCB is meander line and pad which is connected
electrical performance is not stead in mass production. The to mobile phone’s feed point; on the other side of the PCB is
PCB (print circuit board) antenna has two advantages over rectangular microstrip resonator with stubs [5] as figure1(b)
usual helical antenna. 1 there is more scope to designing a shows. Meander line resonants on low frequency. Changing
more fashionable, sleeker looking phone. 2 the RF the length can change low resonant frequency.
performance is very robust because everything is fixed.
In this paper, we propose another novel PCB antenna for
application as a mobile-phone antenna. A microstrip
resonator [5] with stubs is introduced to this antenna. The
proposed antenna has wide impedance bandwidths for
EGSM, DCS and PCS. The main advantage of this antenna
is that this antenna decreases the influence of the camera on
electrical performance. Details of the proposed antenna are
described, and the experimental results of this constructed a Capacitive loading
prototype are presented. b Inductive loading
Figure 2 Equivalent transmission line models
II ANTENNA DESIGN Figure2 shows the equivalent transmission line models for
Figure1 shows the geometry of the proposed antenna the rectangular resonator with stubs. Rectangular microstrip
mounted on the two sides of a Nelco4000-12 substrate. The resonants on high frequency. Changing the number and size
unit is millimeter in figure1. The PCB size is only about of the stub can change high resonant frequency.
19.8mm × 5.4mm × 1.6mm. On one

0-7803-9433-X/05/$20.00 ©2005 IEEE. APMC2005 Proceedings

 19 May 2004 13:56:44
is better about 1.5dBi than usual PCB antenna in the case of
CH1 S 11 log MAG 10 dB/ REF 0 dB 4_:-11.659 dB

1 850.000 000 MHz camera’s influence.

PRm
1_:-9.9187 dB
880 MHz
Cor
MARKER 4 2_:-7.8784 dB
960 MHz
1.85 GHz
IV CONCLUSION
Del
3_:-6.8706 dB
1.71 GHz
5_:-12.647 dB
1.99 GHz
A novel low-profile PCB antenna suitable for mobile
communications has been proposed. The antenna covers
4

1
2 3
GSM/DCS/PCS triple band. A microstrip resonator with
5

stubs is introduced to this antenna which decreased the

influence of mobile phone camera.
START 600.000 000 MHz STOP 2 200.000 000 MHz
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Ping Chen and Li Chen of
Figure 3 measured return loss for the proposed antenna
Skycross for useful help and support on this paper.
1. 5
1
0. 5 REFERENCES
0
- 0. 5
1 R. Johnson., Antenna engineering handbook,
-1
McGraw-Hill, Inc. New York, 1998.
- 1. 5
peak gai n aver age gai n
-2 2 K.L.Wong, Planar antennas for wireless communications,
- 2. 5
870 890 910 930 950 970 Willey, New York, 2003.
3 P.L.Teng and K.L.Wong, Planar monopole folded into a
Figure 4 Measured antenna gain across the EGSM (880-960 compact structure for very low-profile multi-band mobile
MHz) phone antenna, Microwave Opt Technol Lett 33 (2002),
22-25.
4 H.C.Tung, C.Y.Fang, and K.L.Wong, An inverted-L
monopole antenna loaded with a meander wire for
GSM/DCS dual-band mobile phones, Microwave Opt
Technol Lett 33 (2002), 212-214.
5 Karto Q. da Costa and Victor Dmitriev, A simple
theoretical model for rectangular microstrip resonator with
stubs, Microwave Opt Technol Lett 41 (2004), 119-123

Figure 5 Picture of the designed antenna.

III EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

A prototype of the proposed antenna was constructed and
tested on one mobile phone fixture. In fact, the PCB is put
into an interface, installed a sheath and then assembled to
the mobile phone. Figure3 shows the measured return loss. It
is -9.9dB at 880MHz, -7.9dB at 960MHz, -6.9dB at
1710MHz and -12.6dB at 1990MHz. The two
wide-impedance bandwidths obtained cover the operating
bandwidths of the GSM/DCS/PCS bands. Figure 4
presented the measured antenna peak and average gain
against frequency in GSM band. Figure 5 shows a picture of
the designed antenna. The antenna peak gain is about
0.3-0.9dBi and the average gain is about -1.9-0.3dBi which