Small-Size Planar LTE/WWAN Antenna and Antenna Array Formed by the Same for Tablet Computer Application

Abstract

For eight-band LTE/WWAN operation (704–960/1710–2690 MHz) in the Ultrabook or thin-profile tablet computer, a planar antenna of simple structure and small size is presented. The proposed antenna is obtained by modifying a simple planar inverted-F antenna and can be printed on one surface of a thin FR4 substrate of size 10 × 45 mm2 only. The antenna's lower band bandwidth is greatly widened by embedding a proper chip capacitor of 2.7 pF at the feeding strip. This chip capacitor combines with the antenna's shorting strip can control the excitation of a parallel resonance to modify the impedance matching of the antenna's lower band such that a widened bandwidth is easily obtained to cover the LTE700/GSM850/900 operation. Conversely, the antenna's upper-band bandwidth is also greatly enhanced by using a coupled section in the antenna's radiating strip and adding a parasitic shorted strip near the feeding strip, which lead to multiple resonant modes excited to form a wide bandwidth (>1 GHz) to cover the GSM1800/1900/UMTS/LTE2300/2500 operation. Owing to its small size and simple structure, the proposed antenna is very suitable to be applied in achieving an antenna array with high isolation for MIMO or dual talk (dual WWAN) operation. Promising high-isolation antenna arrays formed by the proposed antennas are presented. The obtained isolation between the antennas in the antenna array is better than 12 dB, and the envelope correlation coefficient is less than 0.15 for frequencies over the LTE/WWAN bands. Details of the proposed antenna and antenna array are presented. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1928–1934, 2013