Half-Loop Frame Antenna for the LTE Metal-Casing Tablet Device

Abstract

The use of metal casing is attractive to achieve robustness of modern slim tablet devices. The metal casing includes the metal back cover and the metal frame around the edges thereof. For such metal-casing tablet devices, the frame antenna that uses a part of the metal frame as an antenna’s radiator is promising to achieve wide bandwidths for mobile communications. In this paper, the frame antenna based on the simple half-loop antenna structure to cover the long-term evolution 746–960 and 1710–2690 MHz bands is presented. The half-loop structure for the frame antenna is easy for manufacturing and increases the robustness of the metal casing. The dual-wideband operation of the half-loop frame antenna is obtained by using an elevated feed network supported by a thin feed substrate. The measured antenna efficiencies are, respectively, 45%–69% and 60%–83% in the low and high bands. By selecting different feed circuits, the antenna’s low band can also be shifted from 746–960 MHz to lower frequencies such as 698–840 MHz, with the antenna’s high-band coverage very slightly varied. The working principle of the antenna with the elevated feed network is discussed. The antenna is also fabricated and tested, and experimental results are presented.