Small-sized, printed 2.4/5-GHz WLAN notebook antenna aimed for 4×4 multiple transmit/receive antennas in future Gbps communications

Abstract

To embrace Gbps data rate with higher through-put performance, 4×4 wireless local area network (WLAN) antennas embedded in the notebook computers can be foreseen in the near future. This will create more challenges for antenna engineers because antenna real estate is already a very limited commodity for current large screen-to-body-ratio notebooks. To deploy more antennas, the single antenna itself must be even smaller and yet does not compromise on its antenna performance. In this paper, a small-sized, 2.4/5-GHz WLAN monopole antenna well suited for large screen-to-body-ratio notebook computers is presented. The antenna height was 4 mm only and constructed on a low-cost dielectric substrate of size 4 mm × 30 mm to be easily placed within the ultra-thin bezel surrounding the top edge of the notebook display. The antenna consisted of two radiating arms of unequal lengths to generate the lower and the higher bands. By properly loading each radiating arm with a shorting chip inductor, the proposed antenna was capable of generating the 2.4-GHz (2400–2484 MHz) and the 5-GHz (5150–5825 MHz) WLAN bands with a very low antenna profile. Details of the proposed design are described and discussed in the article.